Leap In The Dark

Following traditional procedure Prime Minister Paul Martin will thus go to the residence of Governor-General Jean Michelle Tuesday morning and request permission to dissolve the current government and call an election. The earliest a vote may be held is 36 days from dissolution, which would make January 9th, 2006 the first possible day for a vote. Since the parties seem to have called a truce from campaigning over the holiday week, they will tack an extra week on and hold the election on Monday January 15th. (All federal elections have to be on a Monday. The only reason I can figure is that this way in the weird event it falls in the first week of November there won't be a conflict with results from an American election day.)

The last federal election we had in wintertime was in February of 1980. This was the year that saw the dramatic rise from the ashes of defeat by Pierre Trudeau. After losing to Joe Clark in the previous election it looked like his political future was in doubt, but he came back and led to liberals to a resounding victory in the subsequent election. That election literally changed the face of Canada as it resulted in the repatriation of our constitution and the implementation of the Charter of Rights And Freedoms, which has been so instrumental in overturning laws and enshrining rights.

But today we don't have any leader with any sort of vision of Canada. They all just seem to float from issue to issue as political expedience requires. One of the reasons the Liberal party has been ruling since that election is that nobody has provided an alternative that a majority of Canadians are comfortable with.

The separatist Bloc Quebecois doesn't run candidates outside of Quebec, the New Democratic Party (N.D.P.) are considered too radical, and the Conservative Party of Canada thought too reactionary. That leaves the Liberal party as the only ones enough people are comfortable with to vote for in significant numbers to have a chance at forming a government.

Even now when they are in the midst of recovering from one of the most damaging political scandals in Canadian history, illegally funnelling money into their own coffers from a series of kickbacks during the 1995 independence referendum in Quebec, they are still maintaining a lead in the polls as we head into the election. Even one of their staunchest detractors, Conservative Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta, has publicly said he believes we will have another Liberal minority government.

So what are the issues heading into the campaign? There are the usual big ones; health care, social programs, aboriginal rights, and housing. In spite of what Bono thinks, most Canadian don't really care about his opinion of our politicians. When we have over a million children living in poverty ourselves and don't do anything about it, did he really expect our government to spend money on foreign aid?

Perhaps military spending will be an issue, which should make our American allies happy. For the first time in a long time the government is realizing that you really should pay a volunteer army enough money so that the rank and file don't have to rely on food banks to eat, and that maybe they should be equipped with stuff that doesn't carry the moniker of "widow maker" Although any increases won't affect our commitment ability, it will allow our troops to be properly equipped and funded.

Don't expect anything original from anybody on any of the issues. The Liberals will try to make it appear that they have been doing things about all the major issues, whether or not they have. The Conservative Party will say they are spending too much money and say the only way to do things is by cutting taxes and let everything else take care of itself. The N.D.P. will say that not enough money is being spent on the right things and argue that Canada needs to invest in itself not a few wealthy people. The Bloc Quebecois, trying to win more seats in Quebec, will demean the Liberals every step of the way.

Since issues aren't going to be an issue in this election, when are they any more anyway, what will they be talking about out on the campaign trail? The Conservatives have shown that they are going to go to any lengths to raise questions about the Liberals moral authority to govern. Already they have used the protection of the house to accuse the Liberals of having ties to organized crime based on what happened during the sponsorship scandal. (Anything you say in the House of Commons cannot be used against you in a court of law, no matter how libellous)

This has prompted the Liberals to both demand an apology and issue a lawyer's letter of warning. If the Conservatives so much as hint to a connection between the Liberals and organized crime on the campaign trail or in public they will find themselves in court. Not that it matters now, because the accusations have been publicized across Canada already.

For their part the Liberals will be playing up the fear factor to the fullest. There are too many Conservative party caucus members and new candidates who are social conservatives for the liking of too many Canadians. While the anti-gay, pro life, Christian, family values talk may play well in some smaller constituencies, in the areas where the Conservatives need to make gains it goes over like a lead balloon.

Even those ethnic minorities that may share some of the same views can be scared off by the Conservative's virulent anti-immigration policies. While the Liberals don't operate what you'd call an open door policy by any stretch of the imagination, the Tories would most likely slam it shut in the face of most refugees and "those looking to take jobs away from Canadians". That kind of talk isn't conducive to overcoming the impression that the Liberal's are the party of the immigrant.

The Conservatives may try to make an issue out of Canada's recent cooling of relations with the current American administration. They will probably cite the softwood lumber dispute as a sample of the results of Liberal policies concerning issues important to the Americans. The fact that one has nothing to do with the other and the former issue predates the current government will have little bearing on the matter.

But if they play this card they will have to be very careful, Canadians are feeling very sensitive about he issue of national identity these days. Paul Martin vacillated over the issue of the missile defence system for that very reason. He didn't want to be seen as kowtowing to the American President if Canadians weren't in favour of the program. As polls began to show that most opposed it, he backed out.

Jean Chretien got lambasted in the conservative press in Canada for refusing to join the American invasion of Iraq, but the majority of Canadians opposed the idea and he received wide spread popular support for the decision. The leader of the Conservative Party, Steven Harper, is already viewed as being a little too cosy with the America government in the parts of Canada where he needs to win seats.

A lot of people were suspicious of his private meeting with President Bush a while ago in Washington. What would an opposition leader be doing meeting with the President of a foreign country? He doesn't go to any other countries and get invited to meet the leadership because he doesn't represent Canada. The last American Presidential election made it clear that most Canadians don't agree with the current administration's policies, and Mr. Harper may want to keep that in mind before he wraps himself in the Stars and Stripes.

The Liberals have spent their last couple of weeks in office pushing through tax cuts, signing agreements on Day Care with provinces, and hosting an inter provincial meeting on Native rights and conditions. In other words playing Santa with a bag full of pre election goodies. Since most of this was stuff they've been planning all along, if the opposition accuses them of "bribing" the electorate, they can respond by saying we knew you were going to shut down the House, so we wanted to pass as much as possible, and if you disagreed so much why didn't you vote against it and call an election earlier?

Unless something happens on the scale of one of the leaders being found in bed with an animal or a dead human, I can't see the results of this election being all that much different than the last. The Bloc Quebecois may gain a seat or two, and perhaps the N.D.P. will win a couple more if the Liberal and Conservatives split the vote enough in a couple of ridings in Ontario and British Columbia.

Even if the Conservatives some how manage to reverse the position of the first two parties, their chances of being able to govern are slim. Unless they are bigger whores for power than I thought, I can't see them forming an alliance with the Bloc.Quebecois that their caucus could stomach for more than a week.

The real fun will begin after the election; that's when the knives will come out and the jockeying will start to happen to encourage leadership reviews in both Liberals and the Conservatives. Neither Steven Harper of the Conservatives or Paul Martins of the Liberals could garner a majority after two elections and that's usually the limit a party gives its leaders.

Which probably means we can look forward to another election around this time next year. The only good thing about so many elections is that it keeps the politicians from doing any real harm. As long as they're campaigning, they're not doing anything to mess up our lives. That's a plus.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:17 AM | Permalink

Yesterday afternoon marked the first official day of being able to register one's winning word count with the folk at NaNoWriMo. After carefully transferring all existing chapter documents into one massive .txt file as required I hit the upload button.

Even though I knew I was well beyond the 50,000-word mark there was still the usual trepidations: what if my software is some sort of bugged version that counted every word six times? Could I survive the disappointment of seeing my assumed winning entry be relegated to "sorry not done status"?

Of course those were needless worries, as after my computer chatted with their server for what seemed an endless time (probably all of thirty seconds) up popped the winner's page. I'm now officially a proud finisher of the 2005 National Novel Writing Month competition. For my troubles I receive a lovely printable certificate, a couple of Icons that I can proudly display on my blog site, and the supposed happy feeling associated with a job well done.

Well as the man says that and a quarter will get you a phone call. As of yesterday there were nine pages of wining authors already posted on the official NaNoWriMo site, some with word counts over 100,000. It's hard to feel unique when you see that many people already registered within the first two hours of the verification program being initiated.

Sure I'm supposed to be filled with a feeling of self-satisfaction and the knowledge that I completed what I set out to do, but in reality what have I done? I have 71,000 words of a first draft of a novel of who knows what quality. I feel like I'm just starting something, not finishing.

Way back at the beginning of the process I was all excited about the prospect of writing 50,000 words. I knew it wouldn't be enough to be called a novel but it felt like it would be enough that I would be able to see the end of the road. Instead I find myself, at best slightly over half done a first draft that will need serious editing and rewriting before I would even dream of submitting it to a publisher.

Does that sound a little self-pitying? Yeah well I guess it does but I had hopped to feel a little more excited about reaching this point. Perhaps because I had hit the 50,000-word mark so early this day was anti-climatic and it's just a natural let down. But what did I expect? Did I actually think I would feel like a different person because I had done this?

Maybe that's it; I had supposed some magic wand would wave wondrously over my head marking me with the sign of the novelist once I had passed the finish line. There would be some sort of distinctive glow about me that would cause people to say: "Look at him he wrote 50,000 words in a month, he's a real writer". Or if not other people at least I would feel that way.

But I still feel like the same person. Than again what's a "real" writer supposed to feel like? Maybe I already "feel" like one. I preoccupy with words, I worry about how to best say something in print, I get withdrawal symptoms if I can't sit at my laptop twice a day and write, I plan every day around my writing schedule, and I resent any and everything that gets in my way.

I fall asleep thinking about when I need to wake up the next morning so that I can at least get something done, even if it's just a few hundred words in the morning. I wake up wondering if I'm going to feel well enough to accomplish what I'd like to today. I negotiate deals with the housework, promising the dishes I'll clean them after I've finished this paragraph.

In short, now that I think about it, my whole life revolves around a little grey box about 20 inches by 20 inches in size that allows me to do this thing called writing. But since I was pretty much doing that before the beginning of November anyway, perhaps the reason I don't feel any different, was there was nothing left for me to change into?

Somewhere else along the way, without me noticing it, I had made the transformation from whatever it was I had been before to being a writer. Could it be that it was always latent within me, and I'm just now stepping out of the closet and saying look at me I'm a writer? (Do we get a parade: march down the street wearing rejection notices yelling slogans like: "Fight For The Right To Write")

Getting hung up on the whole mystique of being a "novelist" is the problem. Somehow I've confused being a novelist and being a writer. A novelist is only one type of writer, although it has a certain cachet to it that other writing may lack, it shouldn't preclude other forms of literary expression (I foresee problems with the parade: will the novelists march with the poets, and the poets with the journalists, and what about those weird hybrids known as bloggers. It could get messy) from being considered writing.

It's like when I used to be an actor. I spent my whole career working with pretty much one company, so very few people outside of school children would have seen me on stage. Invariably when people would ask what you did, and you would reply actor, their first question would be: "Would I have seen you in anything?" As if that's what would validate you in their minds.

Is it only the arts that have that problem? Does anyone ever ask a dentist or a lawyer a similar type of question? Oh whose mouths have you done? Have I seen you on courtroom television? But people have no problems asking writers what books they've published, painters where their work is displayed, actors what movies they've done, and so on.

In other words I should have known better than to fall into that trap, but I obviously did, not respecting others or myself for the work we did because it wasn't the almighty novel. The fact that I, or anybody else for that matter, write at all is pretty darn special. It's not what you write, it's that you write that should matter, but I let that slip away from me in the allure of working on "The Novel"

So where does that leave me at the end of a month of pounding away at a keyboard and a little bit of soul searching? That no matter what happens with this thing that I began on November 1st I am still a writer. I didn't feel any different on November 25th because I wasn't any different.

What I write doesn't change who I am or what I do. Yes it would be great to have this work turn out to be something that a publisher will decide to set loose upon the world. To be able to call myself a novelist as well as a writer would be wonderful, and I cannot deny that has always been my goal and my dream since I started writing.

So I will finish what I've started and I will do all the rewrites that I can. I will send chapters off to publishers and wait to here what they have to say. However I now know that no matter what happens I am a writer even if I end up not being a novelist.

For that realization, if nothing else I will be forever grateful to the National Novel Writing Month Competition.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:27 AM | Permalink

This characteristic becomes most noticeable when contrasted with something that goes outside the boundaries of the conventional. Think of any of the music that you may have listened to by artists who have forced you to actually stop what you've been doing to listen to their lyrics, or concentrate on the music in order to appreciate what is being presented and you'll know what I mean.

Diana Darby's latest CD, The Magdalene Laundries places itself squarely in the middle of this latter category. This is not a disc you're going to put on to wile away the time while doing dishes, or as background to anything. Every song requires careful attention and diligent thinking to be appreciated.
In this her third album Darby recorded the tracks after watching a documentary on the Magdalene Laundries, an Irish home for wayward women that the church ran for 150 years before being closed in 1996. The women committed to this institution were forced to work six days a week in the church's laundry in an attempt to "wash away their sins" Their horrible crimes ranged from being single mothers or simply being deemed too beautiful to walk the streets for fear of their effect on men.

After reading that you can be forgiven for expecting to listen to another earnest recording about the injustice of the Catholic Church and how hard done by women have been etc. etc. ad nausea. But this is not a formula alt.-pop feminist rock disc. It won't be categorised that easily. Instead Diana Darby has created a series of pieces that have been inspired by the women's situation and whose subject matter at first glance may appear to be completely unrelated to the disc's title.

What does a song encouraging rabbits living near her house to run away from her dog have to do with these women? How in the world does a song about Soren Kierkegaard tie in with an Irish penal laundry? Maybe nothing, maybe everything; but try not to think of them literal statements of fact. Think of them as imagery that reflects the feelings that place generated in Ms. Darby and it goes a long way to understanding how a lyric like the following is appropriate.

Bring me all the Rabbits/before they all are dead/Somewhere there are rabbits/awaiting Trouble's breath/Run Rabbit run/Buy me all the flowers/That bloom for no one's eyes/Somewhere there are flowers/that can't be compromised/You bloom then die./ Diana Darby, "Bring Me All The Rabbits". The Magdalene Laundries Delmore Recording Society Release, 2005

The songs are very sparse musically, with only guitar and cello accompaniment. Diana sings so softly as to be almost whispering into the microphone over the music; increasing the demand placed on the listener to pay attention. Despite, or maybe because of this, the pieces are compelling and you want to pay attention.

This is not a disc you can play once and expect to appreciate, or put in your stereo as background music. It requires involvement and a certain amount of commitment on the part of the listener in order for it to be appreciated. But it is an involvement and a commitment that is well worth the effort.

Diana Darby has created a series of contemporary, as opposed to pop, songs around a highly charged and emotional topic. Instead of taking the safe political route of simply condemning and tear jerking, she has chosen to take the risk of composing emotional responses. She succeeds in the fact that she is able to paint a picture of the bleakness and desperation that the women must have experienced.

Think of the feelings expressed in each song and transpose them to the physical existence of those women imprisoned in the actual Magdalene Laundries and the CD The Magdalene Laundries not only makes sense, it becomes impossible to visualize any other musical response.

If you are prepared to listen and willing to think, than The Magdalene Laundries is a disc that will find a place in your library. It might not end up in your regular rotation, but it will also never be relegated to the delete bin.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:56 AM | Permalink

Well I can now add about twenty-five more names to that list. The people at Ruf Records in Germany have released a two disc compilation CD simply called Blues Guitar Women. Compiled by blues player Sue Foley the set is divided along the lines of contemporary and traditional discs so that you can choose which style best suits your mood at the time.

Hard driving rock blues players like Joanna Cooper and Ms. Foley herself on disc one or the sounds of the delta from Precious Bryant or Memphis Minnie on disc two are a just a small sample of the talent represented on these discs. So many blues players exist on the fringe of the mainstream audience's awareness, that for the women player the challenge of overcoming obscurity must be double that of men.

Occasionally they might be recognised, but too often their contributions are relegated to the realm of a novelty act: Oh look a chick with a guitar. The conception that the guitar is the province of men only has been an obstacle that women players have dealt with since the thirties. Too many people equate testosterone not estragon with a sizzling guitar solo.

...the fact that there is enough material to fill two CDs is quite alarming, for even I didn't realize how many there were and are out there. But it seems the scene for women guitar players is vibrant and growing stronger all the time…it would seem that no place is safe from the power of the guitar heroine. Sue Foley, liner notes Blues Guitar Women Ruf Records 2005

Like their male counterparts the women sing about their broken hearts and the ones who've done them wrong. But unlike the male blues artists the women also spread out into issues of social heartbreak as well as the personal type. Perhaps because of their tenuous status within society and their more recent struggles for independence the women seem to have a broader worldview than the men.

Beverly "Guitar" Watkins makes political noise with her "Baghdad Blues" which naturally enough talks about the current war situation and the circumstances leading up to it. "Nothings Changed" sung by Gaye Adegbalola and backed by Rory Block's slide guitar continue the work Gaye started during the period of racial segregation in Virginia. Still encouraging people to stand up for themselves and fight for social justice.

The traditional disc contains some very special tracks that have been preserved through the dedication of archivists and blues enthusiasts in North America. Women like Geeshie Wiley, Elvie Thomas, Battie Delaney, Algie Mae Hinton and Etta Baker of the first generation of blues women; some of who hardly recorded at all, are all represented. These women still continue to play their guitars, although some are in their nineties, and represent a vital link in the chain of American music.

It is their music and their efforts that broke the ground for people like Eve Monsees from Austin Texas who in her early twenties is just beginning her blues career. It's sad to think of all the other women who have played and sang the blues whose music was allowed to pass out of existence with them, but Blues Guitar Women pulls some of these names from the ashes of obscurity.

Sue Foley, who helped compile this collection along with Thomas Ruf, also put together the liner notes and bios for as many of the artists represented on these discs as possible. The notes are informative and informal, written by a blues lady with an obvious passion for and knowledge of her subject. The information presented here is just the forerunner to a book and documentary movie she is preparing called Guitar Women

I don't know how intentional this was, but in almost every one of the artist's pictures included, the woman is shown with her truest companion, her guitar. Propped in the background, cradled in her arms, or hung from around her neck, none of them look like they want to be parted from their friends for very long.

I don't buy albums or anything because it's the correct thing to do; you can't do that with the arts or you kill them. The same goes for recommending something. Don't buy Blues Guitar Women for its title, buy it because it has amazing music on it. Show these woman some respect, appreciate and dislike their music in the same manner you would their male contemporaries. With your eyes closed a slide guitar run sounds the same whoever's plugged into the amplifier and tapped into the world's soul.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:46 AM | Permalink

This director was very down to earth in spite of all his talk about priests and shamanism, and used as his examples the people he called the priests and shamans of our society. He said in terms of what he was talking about, being the focal point of thousands of people that as far as he was concerned Bruce Springstein was the most powerful shaman or priests in our world right now.

Who else, he said, can walk onto a stage and command the attention of 45,000 plus people. Interestingly enough it was only a couple of years latter that Pope John Paul started doing his huge outdoor Masses, where he would become the focal point for tens of thousands of people. Whatever you may have thought of the man personally he was no fool and he knew what kind of potential power there was to tap into from that type of gig.

What brought all this stuff to mind again was watching the latest Peter Gabriel DVD: Still Growing Up: Live & Unwrapped. This is a follow up release to the 2003 DVD Growing Up Live which was shot on the tour of the same name. The 2005 release is a two disc set: disc one is a record of some the smaller more intimate concerts they did after the main elaborate tour and disc two is a primarily a documentary and interview with Mr. Gabriel about the smaller tour.

Shot in a variety of smaller locations across Europe it's a technically pared down version of the tour that places more emphasis on the performers than on a stage show. At least that's what the promo says; if this is what they consider pared down the main tour must have been incredible.

I haven't seen a picture of Peter Gabriel in years; I stopped following his career around the late eighties when I began to lose interest in pop music for a while, so my first sight of as he looks now was quite startling. The man who I remember as a frenetic bundle of energy, like a coiled spring, has evolved into a rock at the centre of a storm on stage.

Perhaps it’s the radical change in his physical appearance in the last fifteen years, rounder and greyer, and the slowing down that age can bring, but now instead of coming across as an entertainer he has the appearance and the demeanour on stage of a monk or guru who is there to impart wisdom and guidance.

He's always been an incredibly intense performer with massive amounts of energy expanded during his performances, but now instead of bouncing all over the place he exudes the same power while standing still. That's not to say he doesn't move anymore and remains fixed in place like a post, but it's no longer necessary for him to be the centre of attention. Whether he's stalking the stage like a large cat, doing some simple choreography with the band, or riding incredible two wheeled standing scooters (as is the case in amazing version of "Games Without Frontiers") he demands attention and commands the stage

I don't think I have seen audiences so riveted and completely in the hand of a performer before. He could just be reading a French introduction to the song he's about to perform and you could hear a pin drop, in an open-air concert. People want to listen to him and share in the experience of his music.

That's the thing that comes across so clearly on the concert disc of this set; Peter Gabriel songs in concert are an experience. They are more than just a band getting up on stage and running through a collection of their hits. Obviously the disc is not able to recreate the atmosphere of being at a live concert, there's almost no way in which to be able to do that. What they have done instead is equally as effective.

We are brought face to face with individual band members; we look into the eyes of Peter Gabriel as he sings. We are given access to the raw emotion that a performer generates while on stage through the magnificent camera work and brilliant editing of director Hamish Hamilton.

They made a risky choice with this film in the way in which they decided to present the songs. Instead of having a song from this venue, and then another song from that venue, they've inter-cut venues in the songs. You could be watching one song, but it's footage from four different venues.

The potential of this being a confusing mess is quite high, but they have managed to bring it off with great success and actually increasing the impact of songs through showing the variety of staging. I don't know if they've used only one audio feed for the song or have edited the sound and the picture of each excerpt into the final result. But whatever they have done the sound is impeccable.

The material on this disc spans the breadth of his career, form "Solsbury Hill" and "Games Without Frontiers" and onwards. "Games Without Frontiers" is the song where you first begin to realise the connection this man has with his audiences. Even while he and his daughter, who sings harmony vocals, are propelling themselves around the stage on these two-wheeled standing scooters, he brings the crowd into the singing of the refrain "Je sans frontiers" (I'm without frontiers) seemingly effortlessly.

In some ways his control over the crowd is actually quite terrifying as it’s a reminder of how easy it is for a charismatic figure to control large numbers of people in a mass rally type situation. His closing song, "Biko", the memorial to Steven Biko, South African activist killed in the seventies by the police, is almost chilling. With its rhythmic chanting of the name Biko the crowd actually continues singing the song after Gabriel has physically left the vicinity ( we see him driving away while the drummer is on stage playing the beat and the audience is still singing away)

The second disc of the set is a documentary of the concerts seen in the first disc. Footage from the concerts, and others, and the travel between gigs are interspersed with an interview with Peter Gabriel. While some it deals with just the specifics of the tour, he also talks in a general manner about his work.

He is at great pains to stress how unimportant he or any pop musician really is. Lines like "I don't buy this genius stuff, Einstein was a genius …" or "Anybody can be an artist…Put a gun to somebody's head and tell them they have a year to produces some great piece of art or the gun will go off I'm sure they will…being an artist is about being exposed to the right kind of people and atmosphere…not just about talent"

There was no false modesty in any of those statements, just the perspective of a man who had his feet firmly on the ground, and is refusing to get caught up in the hoopla surrounding what he does for a living. Perhaps this is why he is so compelling when he is on stage. He genuinely appreciates that he has been given the opportunity to do on a full time basis what millions would love to do.

Still Growing Up Live & Unwrapped is a great release, especially if you are someone like me who has never had the opportunity to see Peter Gabriel in concert. He is one of the most enigmatic and potent pop performers alive today. This two disc set not only lets you sample that power but gives you insight into what makes him tick and some behind the scenes look at touring. This is a great release for those who have never seen him live on disc before, or even if you just haven't seen him in a while. There's been quite a change.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:47 AM | Permalink

Gun Shy is probably one of the best examples of the later genre on the market. Written and Directed by Eric Blakeney and staring Liam Neeson, Oliver Platt, and Sandra Bullock this year 2000 release has the right combination of comedy, pathos, and action to make the whole scenario believable.

Liam Neeson plays Charlie a Drug Enforcement Agent (DEA) whose current assignment took a turn for the worse when he and his partner were set up. He had to sit through his partner's murder, and his life was only saved by the not so timely arrival of the surveillance squad assigned to protect them in case of problems.

Needless to say he's developed "issues" about his career and his safety when it comes to continuing the assignment. His bosses assure him that everything will be fine; all the bad guys who knew he was an agent are dead. No harm no foul. Charlie's not convinced and the state of his nerves and his intestinal track are testament to that.

A chance meeting on a plane flight brings Charlie in contact with a psychiatrist. From that point on the movie splits into following three aspects of Charlie's life; his interpersonal relationships with two Columbia Cartel representatives, a Mafioso hit man (Oliver Platt), and a money launderer; his group therapy sessions; and his burgeoning relationship with the woman who gave him a barium enema (Sandra Bullock) when his shrink sent him for gastrointestinal testing.

Charlie's job is to act as the go between with a Mafia family and the Columbians in a money laundering operation. His bosses want him to ensure that the Columbians sink as much money possible into the venture so they can be arrested and have all their financial resources sucked dry.

Charlie is only able to get through these encounters by ingesting a steady amount of anti anxiety meds. The fact that he is able to fall asleep with a gun being waved in his face impresses Fulvio Neestra, the Mafia hit man immensely. He's never met anyone as cool and intelligent as Charlie.

Oliver Platt as Fulvio is wonderful. He looks and talks like a psychopathic Neanderthal, with a bouffant greaser hair cut. At first he looks like just your standard stereotypical thug. But then we learn he's married to the Don's daughter and kept alive only on sufferance, the fact that he suffers the Don's daughter.

Like Charlie, Fulvio wants out, behind that psychotic veneer lurks the heart of a farmer. His dream is to retire to Italy and grow tomatoes. The beauty of Mr. Platt's performance is that he plays him completely straight. This guy has the intelligence of a pea, and a hair trigger temper. When one of the Columbians comments on his inability to urinate by saying his prostrate needs a workout, Fluvio shoots off one of his testicles. "When somebody starts making fun of your prostrate, what are you going to do?" is his explanation.

But we end up liking him. He's henpecked by an unloving wife, his father in law treats him like shit, and the tomatoes he's so desperately trying to grow in his backyard continue to die. When everything starts to blow up near the end of the movie and he looks at Charlie and says: "You're a cop? I thought you were my friend?" the disappointment and unhappiness are real and poignant.

Charlie enters group therapy at his doctor's suggestion. A chance to put his problems in perspective, and see that he's not so different than others. His group is comprised of other men the same age who are all experiencing anxiety and anguish over their jobs. One after another they talk about how downtrodden and powerless they feel.

When Charlie is asked to "share" he starts by saying the root of his anxiety is his job; everyone nods and smiles. As he starts describing the circumstances of the events: "I was laid out on a platter with an Uzi stuck up my ass" the camera pans around the faces of the paunchy, slightly balding men in suits who are in group with him.

To a man they are stunned, jaw dropped to the floor, smacked in the face with a two by four stunned. But gradually over the course of the sessions and Charlie taking them through the various stages of the meetings, deals, and shootings. They start to get excited and awed by what this guy does, until their own anxieties seem trivial to themselves.

But in a nice turn, the focus is shifted back on to one of the members of the group when he snaps at work one day and self-destructs. He had suffered from an almost irrepressible urge to start shouting completely inappropriate things during meetings and finally had snapped. It's a wonderfully human moment done with perfect balance and timing.

In a movie full of nice turns this one exemplifies how the director manages to prevent the action plot line from gaining ascension over the fact that these people are human beings. The men in the group are reminded that their own live have just as many perils in some ways as Charlie's does and that things can blow up on them too.

I have always had a hard time suspending my disbelief at the way people in movies are thrown together romantically. Unfortunately Gun Shy is no exception. Man goes for barium enema, pretty girl who gives it to him offers him drive home, asks him out on date, they have sex and start a relationship on first date.

That may happen in some universes but not mine. But once the awkwardness of their meeting is overcome their relationship helps provide another contrasting reality for Charlie to consider. Ms. Bullock's character of Judy is a fairly typical spunky Sandra Bullock character but it's early enough in her career that she is still able to keep it fresh.

Primarily it feel like this plotline is just tacked on as love interest, and considering she was the executive producer on the movie you have to wonder if the roll was created for her. There is a funny little bit where she and Charlie bump into his "work buddies" at a restaurant and we have the incongruity of watching them all discussing a home show like any group of upwardly mobile young executives. But aside from that this plot line seems somewhat extraneous.

Liam Neeson in the role of Charlie is wonderful. He is able to bring believability to every aspect of his character; from the thin veneer he has on display for the consumption of those he works with, his developing friendship with Fulvio, and his genuine compassion for the other people in his group therapy sessions.

He's a man walking a very fine line between completely losing it and holding it together. Through his character we see a side of police work that is either rarely depicted or so overblown as to be unbelievable. The real anxiety and stress that comes with being under the continual pressure your life being in danger.

This movie combines comedy, suspense and pathos to create a very real and human picture of people caught in circumstances they can't control, but have to keep working through because they think they have no choice. It's a cop movie, but not like any cop movie you've seen before. Everybody from the villains to the hero is human and real.

I'll leave it to one of the group therapy members to sum up the movie in a nutshell: "You mean even the gangsters are unhappy?"

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:31 AM | Permalink

Over the past few years I've been steadily trying to ignore something that seems to have started appearing on both sides of the political spectrum, a rise in anti-Semitism. Since that infamous day in September 2001 when the planes were crashed into the World Trade Centre undercurrents and whispers have started to pop up all over the place.

From the blatantly ridiculous; Jews knew in advance not to come to work that day so none were killed in the attacks, and that Israeli citizens were evacuated from the Jordanian hotel the day before it was bombed; to the overtly offensive of Wal-Mart selling copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; anti Jewish propaganda has been on the rise.

Anti Semitism has been part of my life in some polite form or another since I was a child. When I was kid we lived in a very WASP part of North Toronto and most of the kids I went to school with were far more affluent than my family. Inevitably each year one of my classmate's would have their birthday party at the Granite Club; a type of a country club in midtown Toronto.

Of course it was exclusive, which really means exclusion, restricted to people who were of Anglo Saxon protestant background. I remember being shocked when I found out about this and wondered aloud to one of my friends about it. His response was, well they wouldn't be comfortable here anyway. Well duh, of course there not going to be comfortable with that sort of attitude.

Of course none of these people would have considered themselves racist or anything like that, that wasn't polite. But if you asked them why they didn't let Jews into their clubs or why they didn't have any for friends it was because they were different: "They're just not like us" They'd tell me things like this, not realising how it must make me feel, because I was different.

Of course as I grew older I began to realise that this was pretty mild compared to what was out there in the way of anti-Semitic activities. The seventies in Toronto saw the rise of several Neo Nazi groups who advocated the usual white power/Jewish conspiracy type of crap. They were also my first exposure to Holocaust denial. I couldn't believe anybody could take that stuff seriously.

The death of six million plus people never happened. Pretty elaborate deception don't you think, with a lot of people involved going to a lot of work to build all those fake camps, crematoriums, mass graves, and faking all those photographs. But then you find out that there are teachers in schools who are telling their students these lies, and people were actually defending their right to do that as freedom of speech.

I don't know how I managed to avoid the Christ killer shit for so long but I did. I don't think I actually heard anyone say that until I was around fourteen or fifteen. How are you supposed to respond to that one: "You killed the son of God" What me personally? Geez I missed that, was it during one of my black outs from drinking too much Manichewitz?

I actually had some kid say to me at school one day that the only reason he didn't like me was because I was a Jew and had killed Christ. I broke his nose. The only fight I got into in my whole adolescence. Pathetic really but he pissed me off. It's people like that guy who made me so grateful to Lenny Bruce latter in life when I heard his take on the topic.

He did this routine where he says: "Okay, Okay I admit it. Me and a couple of the boys took him down in the basement and did him. You happy. Look be glad we did it back then and not now. Think of having to walk around with an electric chair on a chain around your neck" I'm paraphrasing obviously but you get the point. I like a syringe better, but electric chair works.

It’s funny how the Romans got away with that one wasn't it. They were the dudes running the country at the time, responsible for crucifixions and all law and order stuff, but still they managed to pass the buck to the Jews. Of course that has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church I suppose. Oh sorry was that out loud?

It used to be that the predominant source of anti-Semitic thinking was from the right side of the political spectrum. Communist Jewish bankers were out to take over the world. Or the labour movement was rife with Jewish anarchists looking to overthrow the government. Judaism and Communism went together like ham and cheese.

Now though things seem to have changed. The new theory is there is Jewish conservative cabal of bankers and businessmen in Washington who dictate foreign policy for the United States. It's because of them that America supports Israel and is opposed to the Arab countries, and therefore indirectly the towers were destroyed.

Is this the same American government that's the conservative Christian one in power right now, or is this an American government I don't know about? What about a thing called the Senate and the House of Representatives? Don't they have something to do with the running of that country?

I'm not talking about Muslim or Arab world criticisms either, cause that's a completely different kettle of fish. When they lash out at Israel at least you know why, they're at war with them, that's the type of behaviour you expect from countries at war with each other.

This stuff is coming from supposed left wing people and they are now parroting the nazi propaganda of seventy years ago. It would be funny if it weren't so sad and upsetting. I wonder if these people even listen to what they're saying. I have no problem with people criticizing the policies of Israel, hell I do it all the time. But too often the criticisms sound like attacks on Jewish people using the word Israel as a smoke screen.

I expect I'll be roundly criticized for this article; told I'm being over sensitive and paranoid. But tell me how would you feel hearing people regularly say things like they were Jewed out of something, or they Jewed somebody down to get a good bargain?

Nobody ever seems to make a big deal out of the religion of a group of business men or corporate leaders unless they happen to be Jewish; why's that? Have you ever heard Donald Trump being called a Christian businessman?

The world is heading into troubled economic times and things are more and more in turmoil. Now's the time people look for scapegoats, someone else to blame for their troubles. To me it looks like a lot are turning to an old favourite.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:15 AM | Permalink

As usual my political forecasts, which I thought were based on common sense and political considerations, have proven totally wrong. I felt for sure the Conservative Party would not do anything to jeopardise the issuing of the fuel tax rebate checks or run an election campaign over Christmas. Well I was wrong on both those counts. In two of the many scenarios for an election call (if you really want to read about all the possibilities "The Globe and Mail" breaks it down really well) and the ones they favour most, will see time expire before the energy rebate bill can get final reading in our Senate. It will also mean that we could have an election anywhere between Jan.2 2006 and January 16th 2006 (of course there is still the possibility of a December 27th election but I don't think anybody is that suicidal)

The Conservative Party is trailing in the polls, have no polices except Liberals bad Conservatives good, and are now going to piss people off by having an election campaign over Christmas as well as ensuring that no one gets there heating oil rebate this winter.

Maybe they're going for the sympathy vote? We're so stupid vote for us out of pity? That's never worked before. The only other thing I can think of is that party officials don't like the leader and want him to go down to defeat so that they can get rid of him. This wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened in a Canadian political party, just the most blatant.

In fact it is truly amazing what is happening. The opposition parties are looking so power hungry and desperate to bring down the government that they are making the governing Liberals look like the only party that's actually fit to run a country. That is a scary thought in itself, but one that could prove the most telling in the election whenever it happens.

Politics is all about perception these days, and whatever people perceive now during this jockeying will be what stays with them throughout the campaign. Right now it looks like the Conservatives are being incredibly Scrooge like just around Christmas. Any people who had fears about their social policies will see that as confirmation that they are the party without compassion.

It doesn't matter whether it's true or not, its what things look like that matters.

Enough you say, get on with telling us about the four that will be leading their political parties to war over the next two months. I'll introduce you to them in order of standing in the House of Commons as of this moment.

In the Red and White corner, coincidently the colour of our flag, waving the standard of the Liberal party of Canada is Prime Minister Paul Martin. He falls with a resounding thud into the category of the "Old Boy" network of political and economic power in Canada. The son of Paul Martin Sr. who was big in the Liberal Party back in the 1960's, and who missed being crowned king because of that upstart Pierre Trudeau back in 1968, Paul Martin junior was born a Prime Minister in waiting.

His business credentials were established by running the family's shipping business prior to becoming a politician. This of course cemented him as the darling of Bay Street (Canada's equivalent of Wall Street) when he entered the political arena. It seemed like his future as a Prime Minister was assured. But his ambitions got seriously derailed when he lost to Jean Chretien in a Liberal leadership convention prior to the 1995 general election.

When the Liberal swept to power, Paul Martin was named Minister of Finance, where he continued to endear himself to Bay Street by slashing spending everywhere. During his tenure he managed to achieve the politically desirable result of producing surpluses each year in his budgets within a short time of assuming the portfolio.

Everybody who was anybody loved him. But of course he wasn't happy, he needed to be Prime Minister. But he badly overplayed his hand and most likely just to spite him Chretien stayed on for another kick at the can and won another majority government. Mr. Martin had to resign his position as Finance Minister, because it doesn't look good if you're trying to topple your own leader while sitting in his cabinet.

He and his people did their best to discredit Chretien during those two years, until Mr. Chretien finally stepped down. Mr. Martin handily won the leadership convention (I don't think I can name one person that ran against him) and was finally Prime Minister, the title he believed was his by divine right of Kings or something.

It was the first time that he faced the people of Canada that he almost managed to lose the election. It was around this time he earned the elegant nickname of Mr. Dithers, not for Dagwood's tough as nails boss, but because he could never seem to make a decision. He'd just dither around making things worse by vacillating back and forth. It really looked like he was too scared of making a mistake to take action on anything.

He seems to have gotten a little better, in public anyway, with being decisive, but he is still a past master of saying a whole lot of nothing if needs be. He also has an endearing habit of blaming everything bad on his predecessor, while still managing to take credit for anything good that happened during that time.

Paul Martin jr. remains the epitome of the old boy ruling class moneyed elite in Canada. For someone who has always pictured himself as a professional politician his political instincts suck when it comes to understanding how people will react to situations. One only needs look at this delay in responding to last years tsunami off Sri Lanka to see how he completely missed the boat on what Canadians think is important.
Unfortunately for Canadians our options aren't that great. The leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada is a man by the name of Steven Harper. Prior to becoming leader of the party he was in charge of something called the National Citizens Coalition, which despite its universal sounding title had only one agenda. Cut all taxes.

I had briefly explained the gemenation of this party, how it mutated out of a couple previous parties into the bizarre creature that it is now, but I'll give a quick recap for those who missed the previous lesson. The Conservative Party of Canada is an amalgamation of what were once two separate conservative parties: the socially liberal and fiscally conservative Progressive Conservatives and the social and fiscally conservative Alliance Party.

While more than a few people welcome their fiscal ideas, tax cuts and cutting social programs, their big stumbling block continues to be the impression, well founded unfortunately, that they are the home to uncompromising social conservatives who border on dangerous. They have members of parliament who have openly called for criminalizing homosexuality, been Holocaust deniers, believe that Native people were conquered and should just get over themselves, that day care is unnecessary and women shouldn't work anyway, and we are a Christian nation and if you don't like it go back to where you came from.

In the last election when the liberals were foundering they were able to fight back by playing on those fears, and Steven Harper was not able to counter those attacks because he was too busy trying to shut his caucus up as they kept reinforcing that image. In order to form a government in Canada a party has to be able to win a large number of seats in the most populated provinces in Canada, Quebec and Ontario. Being an Anglophone from western Canada leading a party whose is considered anti Quebec and anti French language rights they have little or no chance of even winning one seat in Quebec.

It's Ontario they need to win seats in. Unfortunately for them not even the Progressive Conservative party in Ontario really wants to endorse them. Attitudes like those expressed by certain party members may not matter in some rural ridings, but in the major city areas where all the seats are, they go over as well as a Swastika at a Synagogue.

Like his opposite number in the Liberal Steven Harper doesn't seem to have much substance. He's a leader who is seen as not being able to even get his own party to keep their mouths shut in critical situations. His denials of these same people never seem emphatic enough either to reassure those who are scared by the rhetoric of hate that comes from their mouths.

This is a party that is out of touch with the majority of urban Canada and in some ways represents a far more serious threat to Canada's unity than the Separatists in Quebec. Their policies are designed to appeal to a segment of society only, not the whole country. Mr. Harper has yet to be able to delineate a vision of Canada that is inclusive enough for more than one segment of the population to be comfortable with.
In actual fact he seems to have fallen into the trap of so many opposition politicians of defining themselves by what they aren't (what the government is they are the opposite) than of what they stand for." Cut taxes" is a slogan not a vision of what you see Canada becoming under your rule. There are still far too many variables and unanswered questions from Mr. Harper for a lot of people to feel comfortable.

"The vision thing" is no problem for leader number three. Gilles Duceppe heads up the Bloc Quebecois the official party of Quebec separatism on the federal level. Not only is their sole interest to preserve the interests of Quebec in the House of Commons, but in the event of their ever being a successful vote for separation in Quebec they will be hand to negotiate the deal.

This party was born out of the ashes of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's brilliant idea of loading his cabinet with strident Quebec nationalists so the he could secure seats in Quebec to win an election or two. When he wasn't able to convince the rest of country to cave into their demands for increased privileges for Quebec they quit in a huff and joined the Nationalist/Separatist movement. Only in Canada could you see someone who was a federal cabinet minister one year, appear the next year as leader of a party trying to dissolve the country.

The key factor in any election is how many seats will the Bloc Quebecois take from the Liberals? The Liberal look to be taking a bit more of a hit in Quebec over the whole Sponsorship scandal thing than in the rest of Canada which could translate into more seats for the Bloc. Really the only defence the Liberals have against a Bloc sweep is playing up the fear of what the Conservatives would do if they won power.

But since the Bloc will be doing that, for proof that separation is the only way to guarantee French rights, they'll have to be careful. They want to shore up the French federalist vote, not chase them into the waiting arms of separatists.

As the self styled voice of French rights the Bloc don't care about what happens to the rest of the country. It is highly possible that they could enter into some unholy and cynical alliance with the Conservative party that could leave nine provinces and Quebec as a result. The Conservatives will do almost anything to become the ruling party, even if it means trading one province in exchange

The final entrant into this mess is the leader of the New Democratic Party (N.D.P.) Jack Layton. Mr. Layton was an alderman and city councillor in Toronto for years and only recently switched over to federal politics. Although a political newcomer he showed himself quite adept at exploiting his position of holding the balance of power to push through legislation that was on his agenda.

In exchange for propping up the government last spring he got a $4 billion tax credit for business turned into money for health care, education, and subsidised housing. Unfortunately for him that's probably not going to be remembered this election. Prior to the existence of the Bloc Quebecois the N.D.P. was considered the third party. Since they have never really had a presence in Quebec their numbers haven't really changed all that much in this time.

They get the majority of their seats in urban Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In recent years they have started to make inroads into the Maritime Provinces while losing some of their Western seats to the Conservatives. They have little or no chance of forming the government so their best hope is a continuation of the present circumstances.

Of all the leaders Mr. Layton is the least afraid to say what he stands for and is quite articulate in voicing his party's platform. Socially and fiscally liberal they are in the one real alternative to conservatism of the two major parties. The hardest job they have is convincing people that voting for them is not wasting your vote.

They have to hope that Mr. Layton has been perceived as sincere in his defence of social issues, but not frightening to middle class voters worried about their tax bills. The best-case scenario for them is another minority government and picking up five or six more seats so that they hold the true balance of power.

Ideally they can sneak up the middle in some races as the Tories and the Liberals cancel each other out and the N.D.P. takes the seat in a three-way race. They don't want to take too many seats away from the Liberals because they are the ones who they will be able to work with in a governing situation not the Conservatives.

The worst result that could happen in this election would be for the Conservatives to win a minority and work a deal with the Bloc Quebecois to prop them up. The other parties might be able to make a case preventing them from forming a government because of the Blocs separatist policies, which could be considered a reason for denying them a role in a coalition.

Technically speaking it is up to the Governor General of Canada to ask someone to from a government in these situations. Would she allow Steven Harper and the Conservatives to form a coalition with a Separatist party? Is she able to prevent it? Once before in Canadian history a Governor General of Canada denied a Prime Minister's request. At that time it was to quickly dissolve parliament so he could call a snap election to try and gain a majority in the house.

The Governor General refused and demanded he try and govern with a minority. In those days the Governor General was a direct appointment of the Queen of England, and the person in question was recalled and a new, more amenable gentleman was found.

Well there you go the scorecard for the upcoming election. The polls are showing the Liberals with a lead, but basically it looks like this election, unless someone shoots themselves in the foot, will end up with pretty much the same results as last time. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see another election as soon as this summer.

If we end up with the exact same minority government as we had before. The Conservatives will lose so much credibility that if the Liberals let themselves be defeated when they bring in their budget this spring, they should then win a comfortable majority.

Good luck in trying to understand the action, maybe next time I'll explain how to keep score.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:54 AM | Permalink

Yeah you read right, word count 55,392. I officially went over the top sometime Wednesday November 16th between 4:00 and 4:16 pm. At 4:00 my word count was 49,885 at 4:16 it was 50,508. Somehow or other I had done a major power crunch and tossed off close to 700 words in that fifteen minutes.

It was nice to be clear of it by such a comfortable margin, 50,002 would have looked like I chucked an extra and or but in somewhere just to make the grade. This way it looked like what it was, it just happened to be where I ended typing that day. I knew I was close when I started, but since I hate starting a new chapter at the end of the day, I was just going to have to live with finishing the next day if I couldn't make it on Wednesday.

But there it was, staring me back in the face like a beacon testifying to my perseverance and lack of a life. Although you could look on it like I prefer to, that it is actual testimony that my life is genuinely committed to writing.

I was able to keep up with my plan of still posting at least an article a day to blogcritics, although there was a slight depreciation in quality. Typos and a few other slips made a bit of come back as my focus was wandering a little. A little too much of: "Must finish this so I can get on with the writing" thing for my own good.

The challenge of course is to keep going with this thing that I've created. It doesn't want to let me stop. I tried to take Thursday off from it. I did my post in the morning and said enough is enough damn it; I need to walk away from the laptop for a day. Go out into the world young man and see what you've been missing for the last two weeks and two days.

Absofuckinglutly nothing is what. The whole time I was out, three hours tops, I wanted to be back home writing on my trusty laptop. What was I doing out here not writing, I could be filling pages with words right now, or at least moving onwards with the story.

There's no longer any pressure to write words except for my own desire to write them. They don't have to pile up as counters anymore; they just need to be written so that I can tell the story. It won't let me go. I'm obsessing.

I'll tell you it's a relief too, because my big fear was, and still is, that I would lose interest in the proceedings once I hit 50,000. Get bored with the story or the writing or whatever it is I've gotten bored with the countless other times that I've started something and come no where near to finishing.

I hate to think of all those characters I've left withering out in limbo waiting for something to happen to them: there's that group of hippies stuck in 1978 Banff; the guy living up in Sioux Lookout in the bush, hell he's still having breakfast in the hotel bar as far as I know reading his mail: been there since early 1992; then there are those folk at the commune, couldn't even get it together to decide on how to hold their meetings; and, even now, hanging out in the memory of this laptop, are a guy, and three mythical creatures stuck in a car driving back to Kingston Ontario. The woman they're supposed to be meeting is stuck in some alternate reality in a temple out of Mists of Avalon(no wonder I stopped writing that one, even I couldn't be that blatant a thief)I sort of looked in on them about a month ago, but it was only a half hearted attempt to make me feel like I was doing something.

Deep Breaths. Sorry about that last paragraph and the stream of conscience thing that's been pervading this post. I made the mistake of reading Duke's Belfast deliriums before starting and it left a bit of a hangover. Let's see if I can't get back on track.

After the first week I wrote something along the lines of this being easier than I thought it was going to be. I don't mean to boast or anything, because I know there are people who are good writers out there still struggling through, but it was remarkably easy. I had originally envisioned a good day being 2,000 words. By the end of the first week I was considering anything under 3,000 a day a failure.

I don't even think that I sacrificed quality for quantity either. I never once made the conscience decision to write a certain way that would ensure an elevated word count; I just let everything fall the way it wanted. Even the days when I had to struggle to find the right way of saying something, or to get the information out the object was to tell the story not inflate the word count.

I forced myself not to keep running to the properties tab in "Word" and checking the tally. The only times I would do that were at the end of a session. So in the morning when I was done I would check where I was to get an idea of how close I was to making my quota. Then when the afternoon session started I would try and put it out of my mind.

The only time word anxiety would set in was near the end of the day when I was starting to run out of steam. Then I would begin to hope that I had sufficient numbers to warrant giving it a rest.

It's funny you'd think you'd be able to hazard a guess about your total by how many pages you'd written, but it depended on what you'd been writing. A bunch of short pieces of dialogue eats up the pages quickly without actually advancing your word count very much. Long descriptive passages on the other hand can only take up half a page but utilize a hundred words easy.

I've stuck to my original way of working, which was to basically improvise around the characters, the setting, and the information that I wanted to get out in that scene. It's a technique that I used to use teaching acting; give everybody a motivation, a situation, a character and throw them on stage and tell them to resolve it.

It's a little bit harder when you are the one playing all the roles in a scene, but it's worked out rather well in the end I think. It's also led to some interesting surprises as I find out information about the characters as the scenes develop. They're interaction with each other allows them to be developed more fully as the book progresses. I'm not having to do any deliberate "character development", it's taking care of itself.

That's what really amazes me so far is how much of the story has been doing that; writing itself. The more I think about it the more I get in the way. The day's where I've struggled, and there have been quite a number of them, were the days that I've started worrying about what I was doing, and have tried to impose my will upon what they are doing.

There seems to be a fine line between maintaining control and controlling the action. I need to make sure that everything that happens is pertinent in some manner to the overall flow and subject matter, while leaving the details in the hands of the characters. I think of it as having a topographical map of the story; I know the rough geography of what's supposed to happen. The characters and I then draw in and plot the roads that lead through this uncharted territory.

One thing that I have been very firm about is my refusal to go back and read almost anything that I'd written on a previous day. The most I'll do is take a peak at the last paragraph if I'm having trouble remembering where I left off. I feel that the worst thing I could do at the moment was get bogged down in editing what I've already written. Not only would it eat up time, but I felt if would stagnate my spontaneity.

I'm planning on adhering to this rule until I'm finished a complete first draft. I've been saving the work in chapter format for this very reason. When I finally do finish I can then go back and start dissecting it chapter-by-chapter, paragraph-by-paragraph, sentence-by-sentence. I don't actually anticipate doing very much actual cutting of words, but there will probably be a whole lot of rearranging, maybe even changing the order of chapters in the end.

My first challenge is to finish. Get the characters to the place I envisioned them being when I developed the concept for the book in my head. I also want to maintain the level of detail that I have included up to this point in the story. I don't want to find myself rushing to complete something just for the sake of getting it done. I set out with a particular style of writing and I want to finish with that style.

I remember years ago a friend reading something I'd written and commenting on how it was very 19th century Russian in feel. By that I think he meant I would spend a lot of time on mood and atmosphere, setting the scene so to speak. Well I still do that, and maybe that's my word total went through the roof so quickly, but that's just the way I write. Hell how many other people write close to a 1000 words minimum on an album review and then worries about skimping?

So I'm going to take advantage of the momentum I've generated form this program and try to finish this sucker by end of the month, or at least before Christmas. It feels a bit strange not to be working for a numerical goal anymore, because it changes the nature of the work now. It's no longer a concrete target I'm shooting for, now it's back to the abstract challenge of finishing something with no defined end point except for the one I will end up giving it.

As far as I'm concerned the real challenge has only just begun. Fifty thousand words was the easy part, now I have to finish the thing.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:47 AM | Permalink

"I spent the better part of twelve years in that ancient and beautiful landscape known as India…One of the things which I learned in India is that it's not only about the artist. It's about the song. And it's more about the song than the artist…The music of the east has that spiritual quality of being played in abandonment…When the silence between the notes says as much as the notes themselves, like the gap between breaths, it's all good. The way I see it, Blues is like the earth and Indian music is like the heavens. What I do is find the balance between the two. Harry Manx Mantras For Mandmen

This is the second Harry Manx disc that I've reviewed, as well as being the second one that I've listened to with any degree of attention. I'd heard his music in the background on the ubiquitous Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (.C.B.C.) many a time, and had friends spin his discs on occasion, but you know how it goes, it catches your attention for a second than your drift off into, the what's up with your life game chat with your friend or the radio is just so much noise behind everything else. The details of what you're listening too get lost in aural landscape.

West Eats Meet was his first album that I actually sat down with for an extended period. Not for any specific purpose, but because the sounds and quality of the work were so compelling that it forced me to pay attention to it. It was a disservice to the music to use it as background. With Mantras For Madmen, my reason is different, as for the first time I'm listening primarily as a critic, not a fan. Amazing how that changes your perspective.

Take the quote that I started this review with. It's lifted from the liner notes of the disc. Now one can have a variety of reactions to it, ranging from, running screaming from New Age gloop, saying "Oh Wow" that's so cool, or like me asking, well do you accomplish what you've set out to do with the music on this disc? Have you, Harry Manx found the balance between Heaven and Earth, spiritual and mundane, tantric and sexual; whatever you want to call it, on this album?

I mean I have to be grateful to him, it's not very often that an artist will spell out exactly what they are attempting for the ignorant critics so we can have clues on what to look for. Of course there are many layers of meaning when you say the Blues are of the Earth and Indian music is of the Heavens so that's where it gets tricky for the critic; figuring out which permeations this guy is going to follow.

Okay enough of the philosophical crap for a while. Is the disc good already you want to know? Should I be shelling out my hard earned shekels for it, or will it just end up as a tree ornament for this festive season. Quick answer. This disc is better than West Eats Meet and anybody who call themselves a connoisseur of finely crafted acoustic Blues would be insane not to run out and buy it this second.

While it may not be as down and dirty as one would expect from someone claiming the Delta Blues as inspiration, no driving Muddy Watters type chords here, Harry Manx most definitely posses the soul of a Blues man. Times have changed, a man doesn't just get the blues from having his woman done do him wrong anymore. No, in the twenty-first century it comes at you from far subtler directions.

No matter how hard you try/Life won't give a moments rest/And now you've come to know that/Nothing fails like success/ Harry Manx "Nothing Fails Like Success" Mantras For Madmen Dog My Cat records 2005

What does it take to be happy these days? It's the old theme of material wealth not being sufficient, but in these days that's taken on even more resonance, as the world around us grows increasingly dispassionate. Harry's songs speak to what's lacking in so much of our lives: love. Not just the straight-ahead relationship type love, which is an age-old problem, but the just plain lack of caring, compassion and love in the world period.

Alright so I an hear some of you manly men out there wincing at those words and I'll let you go back to your hard Texas Blues songs in just a second, but before you go think about how many of those songs are about love gone bad. Now instead of a woman's love going bad, it's society's love that's gone bad.

Anyway there's some nice end of relationship songs for you on this album too, although they may not be the kind you're used to. No going to drown your sorrows with a quick twenty four, just regrets about not being able to provide what's needed to make a relations ship work in "It Takes A Tear". In the same category Harry covers, beautifully, The Band's old hit "It Makes No Difference", his sweet rough voice ideally suited to the regret and sorrow expressed so eloquently by Robbie Robertson's lyrics.

But it's when Harry picks up his mohan veena (a what? to find out about this amazing guitar check out Harry's site) that he starts to reach up to connect heaven and earth. Yeah his lap slide work is great, as is his banjo and regular guitar, but when those sweeping sitar like notes start washing through the music, the blues start to bathe your spirit like the river Ganges must wash the devout Hindu clean.

This is what separates Harry Manx from the pack of folk /blues musicians out there. Not just because of the uniqueness or the novelty of the sound, because novelty wears off quickly, but what he accomplishes with it. There has always been a heavy spiritual connection to the blues, it being the secular version of the gospel music of black southern Americans. With the influences that he has been exposed to while learning the mohan veena he brings the spiritual quality back to where it belongs.

You burnt down a mountain, with just a single spark/Words became the candle that rid you of the dark/Laughed until you cried, nothing like the blues/Laughed until you cried, could've sworn the sky was blue/Could've sworn the sky was blue. Harry Manx. "A Single Spark" Mantras For Madmen Dog My Cat records 2005

But instead of the guilt ridden, sin induced blues of the past; Harry gives us an oxymoronic blues of hope. He's not preaching about heaven and earth; how everything we do is subject to judgement and punishment. These are songs about what it takes to find our way clear of the messes we make. Through our tears will come the release we need to continue with what we started when we were born.

"Blues is like the earth and Indian music like the heavens. What I do is find the balance between the two" So we're back there again and this is the moment of truth, where will the critic fall in his judgement? Well I'm going to cop out and say that it's for you to decide. The blues and heaven are highly personal subjects for all of us, and each of us find our own way of transcending beyond our personal grief to find comfort where we need it.

On Mantras For Madmen what Harry Manx does is change the shape of the spiritual nature of the Blues. He infuses the songs with hope for moving through the moments in life where we get stuck in sadness or in frustration. It's all about perspective and knowing that something exists beyond your reality. If like me you feel that's finding the balance between heaven and earth than he succeeds.

Put aside all philosophy for a second again, and just think of it as music: Mantras for Madmen is a damn good album which I don't think any music collection should be without. If along the way it changes your perceptions about stuff, well that's not a bad thing either.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:25 AM | Permalink

Then there are the ones who try to elevate Rock and Roll and pop music to something it isn't. Writing twenty-five minute long epic pieces of drivel celebrating themselves and calling it art. Or using grandiose subject matter and writing a series of pop songs for it in an attempt to elevate the status of the music.

They're sort of like the guy who's going out with a girl they're a little embarrassed to be seen with around their mates. They always have to come up with elaborate reasons to be with her, or exaggerate some of her characteristics. It's not about the girl or the music it's about their own insecurity.

In the late sixties, early seventies there was a huge outbreak of this mentality as rock musicians tried to get themselves taken seriously. Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP, which when you think about how some English people drop their "h's" is so appropriate), Yes, and others churned out excessive twaddle that had nothing to do with rock and roll. ELP even went so far as to "cover" classical pieces in their attempts to look like "real musicians".

All I can say is thank God for Punk rock and Pete Townshend. The former rescued us, temporarily anyway, from the excesses of seventies bloat, and the latter never succumbed to it. Pete Townshend and The Who were a rock and roll band and they never forgot that, and were never embarrassed by it. They were what they were and never pretended or tried to be anything else.

The ultimate glory of both Tommyand Quadrophenia is that they are what they say they are: Rock Operas. Neither piece is an attempt to justify the music as being more than what it is; rather they celebrate the power of what rock music is capable of doing.

Classical operas of earlier eras were initially considered low, common, and base because so much of their subject matter dealt with the common people. The themes and the characters were stuff that the regular person on the street could identify with. To us they sound distant and removed, but only because times of changed and taste in popular music has changed. But Verdi and Bizet have more in common with Townshend than they do with Rick Wakeman or any other so called Progressive rocker.

Like his predecessors Townshend took the music that was popular in his time and wrote his music and songs accordingly. You can orchestrate Tommy and Quadrophenia all you want, but each and every song can still be played by a four piece rock band. Whatever else you may think of these pieces, they remain today, if not the only rock operas, at least the best and truest to their form, ever done.

Rhino records have served up a three disc DVD set that serves as a great celebration of not only the pieces but also the band behind them. The Who: Tommy and Quadrophenia Live are filmed versions of staged tours of the works. Tommy was filmed in 1989 at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles and Quarophenia is compiled from the 1996-97 tour of the piece through the United States. (In the liner notes for the box set they make note that Quadrophenia had been originally only filmed for the band's archives, not for release. Roger Daltry and Aubrey Power worked to create this especially to be seen on DVD)

In the case of Tommy there have been attempts to stage it as a production independent of The Who which have met with success. The concert that was filmed in 1989 is less a staged performance, rather a Who concert of the material with some theatrical elements.

They have included on stage with them a horn section, percussionist (who's absolutely phenomenal) keyboards, and backing vocalists. Of course there are also two significant changes to the main line up with the drumming being handled by Simon Phillips in place of the late Keith Moon, and lead electric guitar being played by Steve "Boltz" Bolton. Pete Townshend's hearing is so precarious that he can no longer withstand prolonged performing on the electric guitar, so had to limit himself to playing the acoustic. (Although it sure doesn't limit his physical activity on stage; he still flies in the air doing his leg kicks on this evening.)

In an effort to make the performance less of a concert there are a few special singing guests brought in to perform specific "roles/songs" Of these the best by far was Phil Collins as "Uncle Ernie". Coming on stage in a ratty bathrobe, ripped undershirt, socks and garters and slippers, he was the epitome of a dirty old man. Even the characterization of his voice fitted the part.

As for the rest of them, Steve Winwood mailed in a performance of "The Hawker" song, Billy Idol was Billy Idol as "Cousin Kevin", and Elton John was surprisingly non-theatrical in his singing of "Pinball Wizard", giving a nice straight ahead rock and roll performance. Only Patti LaBelle as "The Acid Queen" approached Phil Collins in terms of giving a performance. She almost made me forget Tina Turner's memorable version from the God awful Ken Russell movie version of Tommy

While the version of Tommy in this set is more concert than performance, the recording of Quadrophenia manages to move closer to the idea of performance. While there are only two "guest" vocalists, they now seem less like guests but more like actual characters in the story; singing their parts just as any performer in an opera would.

Old British rocker P. J. Proby plays the part of The Godfather, an older greaser, while Billy Idol (who ten years latter is far more sophisticated and accomplished performer) plays the role of The Ace Face, a young Mod. The third actor, Alex Langdon as Jimmy is not on stage. For the actual staged concert his performance was projected on to a Jumbotron screen for the audience to watch.

Initial attempts at staging had included live acting, but that had proven unrealistic when the size of the venues The Who would be performing in was taken into consideration. The utilization of video was a means of seamlessly integrating the music and the spoken words. For the DVD version instead of filming the Video feed along with the band, they have successfully integrated what was obviously the original filmed footage into the concert footage, providing the home viewer with as similar as possible experience as those folk in the live audience.

When looking at this set as a means of judging the pieces' respective merits as "opera" than Quadrophenia is by far the superior of the two. It is a more fully integrated performance piece. But as it was staged nearly ten years latter then the version of Tommy included that is not a fair judgement to make. With access to far more sophisticated technology they were able to integrate story and music with greater ease.

The manner in which both pieces are written, without very many specific roles, and relying heavily on narration, they are more suited to being performed by a set band. Probably it is not technically accurate to call them operas because they lack the theatrical structure in this form to provide for anything else then concert staging.

But that does nothing to detract from their power as pieces of music. Maybe they should be called rock oratorios instead. Like Beethoven's Ninth symphony which is made for orchestra and choir, Tommy and Quadrophenia are full-length works around a theme or story. They make use of the instruments at the disposal of the composer for the genre of music that he is working in, and he takes full advantage.

What's really nice about this package The Who: Tommy and Quadrophenia Live is the third disc included contains live versions of their other music. Hits like "I Can See For Miles", "Won't Get Fooled Again' and "I Can't Explain". Compare the music on the three discs. No matter what you want to call Tommy or Quadrophenia they are still Rock and Roll and still damn good music, in the end isn't that all that matters.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:50 AM | Permalink

B.B. King Blues Session falls into the last category, if I tell you how really phenomenal it is you're going to have a hard time believing me. Like when I say that watching Etta James and Dr. John singing a duet "I'd Rather Go Blind" is as close to a religious experience as I've had recently you'll probably wonder whether I need my med's adjusted.

Or when I talk about the feeling of awe that came over me when I saw Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Albert King, and Eric Clapton line up together on stage playing blues guitar being akin to Moses and his burning bush you'll think I'm wandering into heresy. But think for a moment where this music comes from and you may just get what I'm talking about.

I've heard about devout Christians who get up and "Testify" about the impact of having Christ in their lives, and how powerful and emotional that can be to witness. Now if you put that spirit too music you get gospel. When you make the theme of that music secular, you get the blues.

But I don't think I've ever seen musicians so deeply involved in the blues before, so deep that it's being drawn right out of their souls, that they can be said to be Testifying for the blues, until I'd seen the DVD of this concert done back in 1987. Sure the technical quality of the analog digital transfer is poor, with the picture jumpy in places, but that just makes it all the more real in some ways.

The blues is all about our imperfections and our flaws, those things that make us human, so to have an imperfect copy of this concert almost seems appropriate. At any rate it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the music.

Looking at the line up you may wonder about the inclusion of a couple of the people; Billy Ocean is known more for his sappy soul on middle of the road adult stations, and Gladys Knight for the pabulum she did with Elton John and some others. But given the chance these two folk show that they can find the heart of a song with the best of them.

With the blues there's always a touch of sadness that you're trying to dispel when you're singing and playing. On this disc the poignancy is provided by the knowledge that Stevie Ray Vaughn and Paul Butterfield are both now dead. So when Stevie and Paul joined Albert King on stage you felt your heart skip a beat knowing that moment would never happen again. (The movie is actually dedicated to Paul Butterfield as he died shortly after it was released on video)

There's something about the blues that creates little moments of bonding between the performers, where they pull each other along and help out their friends in need. Gladys Knight, Etta James and Chaka Khan got up to sing "Ain't Nobody's Business But My Own" and whether Chaka was spaced or scared or a little bit of both I don't know, but she was slow picking up her cue in the song, and had a little bit of the deer in the headlight look about her.

Etta James, standing right next to her, put her arm around the smaller woman and gave her a squeeze and you could see her willing Chaka the energy to get through the song. As the song progressed you could see Chaka get visibly more comfortable on stage. At the end she leaned into Etta James' shoulder as if in thanks.

If anyone was a revelation on this disc for me it was Etta James. Either I'd forgotten what this woman was capable of or I never quite knew but she gives new meaning to the words heart and soul. From the opening ensemble when the whole group was introduced for "Why I Sing The Blues" and she came storming on stage you know this is a woman to be reckoned with.

In a line up of some of the biggest names in blues this woman easily moped the floor with her better-known male counterparts in terms of passion. She gave an absolute clinic on what it means to leave every bit of yourself on stage. None of the little sex pot teenagers who pass themselves off as singers these days could hold a candle to this woman when it comes to sensuality of spirit and pure energy.

As host B. B. King was pretty content to stay on the sidelines and more than willing to cede the spotlight to his guests. The one time he let loose with any extended pyrotechnics on the guitar was when Eric Clapton joined him for "The Thrill Is Gone" I haven't seen Clatpton play all that often, but this is the first time I've ever seen him grinning while he's played. I don't think you could share the stage with King and the others and not have fun.

B.B. King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Dr, John, Billy Ocean, Gladys Knight, Etta James, Chaka Khan, and Paul Butterfield together on one stage singing, playing and celebrating the blues makes B.B. King Blues Session one of the best usages of ninety minutes you'll ever get out of your DVD player.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:32 AM | Permalink

Mention opera to most people in North America and they usually wince. They equate it with people singing loudly and unintelligibly while standing around waving their arms a lot. It met with a slight burst of popularity in the seventies and eighties of the previous century with the emergence of Luciano Pavoratti as a singing sensation. But as his career has ebbed so has mass interest in opera.

For most of us any exposure to opera has come indirectly; its use in cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, commercials, and sporting events. One of the excerpts that most people would probably recognize on hearing would be "The Toreador Song" from George Bizet's Opera Carmen. The stirring march has been heard backing up many an entrance in show biz and sports for years. Along with Aida and La Boheme, Carmen is one of the three operas that most people stand a chance of actually having heard if not at least having heard of.

Carmen has all the elements required for popularity; sex and violence, the good old whore/Madonna theme, and even a love triangle of sorts. The sexy Carmen uses her appeal to seduce a straight-laced soldier Don Jose, so as to avoid a jail sentence. He leaves his innocent fiancé, Micaela, behind, and falls madly in love with his seductress. Of course this being opera it all ends badly, with Carmen falling in love with the Toreador Escamillo, and Don Jose stabbing her to death after she rejects him.

What's not to like in a plot like that. It sounds like it could have been lifted from the script of any network soap opera, or prime time drama. Of course here's where people run into problems with opera. They can't understand what's going on. Carmen like most operas was written in the language that the composer spoke, and since Bizet was French his opera's libretto was written in French.

But, truth be told, most people seem to have the biggest problem with the fact that opera is sung in what they consider a totally unrealistic manner. Even English language operas, like those of Kurt Weil, are treated with suspicion. Musical theatre is one thing, the characters sing songs like anybody else sings a song, and they're in between bits of dialogue that tell the story.

But in opera there is hardly any dialogue, it's all singing, and the singing is nothing like anybody else on earth does. The voices soar up and down scales, notes are held for impossibly long times and nothing seems to be happening on stage except for people standing around and singing.

Fair or not, that is how most people in North America think of opera if they think of it at all. It has become associated with money and the upper classes of society; something for the elites to enjoy not for the rest of us. The irony of this is that when most of today's repertoire was written it was considered revolutionary and common.

Instead of the subject matter dealing with the trials of nobility, we have the lead characters in Carmen are a gypsy woman who works in a cigarette factory, a sergeant in the army, and a matador. This wasn't considered material appropriate for people of dignity and class to be watching.

The story was considered decadent and tawdry; the first singer slated to sing the title role was horrified by the character's behaviour; the chorus asked to smoke, fight, swing their hips…threatened to go on strike…The work was premiered on March 3, 1875…The critics destroyed it: they thought the story disgraceful…Robert Levine. Booklet notes: Georges Bizet's Carmen Allegro 2005

A musical instrument that is far more adept at expressing emotions than lets say, a piano or a violin. Judge an opera by what it can make you feel when you hear the singer pouring her heart out over her lost love. How often do you ever really listen to lyrics anyway with most rock bands and pop singers? Usually you're latching onto an emotion generated by the singer's voice combined with the music of the band.

Take for example Opera d'Oro's reissue of a classic live performance of Georges Bizets's Carmen. Originally recorded in 1973 at Covent Gardens in London this three-disc set exemplifies the qualities that can make opera so magnificent. First of all it features three of the great voices in Opera: Shirley Verrett as Carmen, Placido Domingo as Don Jose, and Kiri Te Kanawa as Micaela.

Both Ms. Verrett and Mr. Domingo are in their primes, and Ms. Kanawa, in the less demanding role of Micaela, is just coming into her own. Jose Van Dam as Escamillo the Toreador handles the difficulties of singing a role that ranges from bass to baritone superbly, to round out the quartet of leads.

Each singer brings texture and nuance to their roles, so those expecting loud, louder, and loudest, will be pleasantly surprised. When you listen to an expressive voice add itself to an orchestra it is like listening to a musical note being given emotional life. Each one of these singers is able to accomplish that task, and even more amazingly, supply a variety of tone and colour that provides depth to that life.

Coordinating the whole performance of an opera, from the chorus, to the orchestra, to the big guns is no mean feat. The conductor of the Covent Garden Orchestra and chorus on the occasion of this performance was Sir Georg Solti, one of the great opera conductors of the twentieth century.
I only noticed one place in act one where the mix of orchestra, chorus and leads became a little muddy. I'm not sure if that was a reflection on the actual recording or a slight slip of control on the part of Mr. Solti. Since it is not repeated again through out the performance it means he either was able to correct something on the fly, or it was technical problem that was fixed.

Carmen is full of lively music, energy, and fun. There are very few extended arias or duets that slow down the action and make it hard for the uninitiated to enjoy. Mr. Solti sets a brisk pace as well which feels appropriate to the over all mood of anxiety and frenetic celebration of the opera.

Live recordings of opera are always risky, in that you can never be sure of the sound quality. This recording sounded just fine, with as good if not better singing than I've heard in some studio recordings of the same material. The tempo and energy of Carmen lend itself to a live recording with the performers and audience providing sounding boards for each other; the former feeding off the latter's response to the energy generated on stage.

For those who are new to opera Carmen is an ideal place to get started. Opera d'Oro's reissue of the 1973 performance at Covent Garden, from the Allegro Corporation's latest catalogue of releases, would be an excellent version to make that introduction. Four great voices, a wonderful conductor, good sound quality, the excitement of a live performance, and packaged with a full libretto, (English translation included if you really must follow along) and introductory essay make this one of the best Carmens on the market that I've seen in a long time.

This may just be the ideal time to find out what the fat lady is singing about.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:57 AM | Permalink

That is until Network and Cabal television got their grubby little hands on it. Ever since the first "reality" show aired reality hasn't been the same since. The poor concept doesn't know if its coming or going. Who am I? What am I? You can almost here it yelling in its green room as it prepares for the next close up of someone doing something candidly scripted.

I'm very much out of touch with a lot of popular tendencies because the black box in my living room can only play videos and DVDs. I don't have cabal, a satellite dish, or even an antenna and so can only pick up one station on my television. Sometimes I'll feel a little guilty, as it sits there in the corner of the room staring at me with its big blank eye, it looks so lonely and neglected. But I figure it can cope without me.

A few years back I was at work one day and heard these two women discussing something they called "Survivor". They were sort of stunned that I had to ask what it was, so one of them breathlessly explained the concept to me. When she finished, she was looking at me all expectant like, certain I would want to run out and subscribe to cabal just so I could watch. Well I must have disappointed her because all I could think of to ask was: "What about the other 6 days and 23 hours"?

She looked at me like I was crazy. Which than again maybe I am, but that's a story for another day. She and her friend went back to their happy conversation about who was thrown off the island the night before, who they liked and disliked and why. I'm sure these are common conversations in the workplace North America wide.

Back in the sixties a British filmmaker started a project called Seven Up where he followed a group of seven year olds around. Michael Apted has continued to check back in with each person every seven years since 1963 and has just completed the latest instalment,49 up. His idea was to track these seven people from different backgrounds and check in on them at seven-year intervals to see how the world had changed them.

He doesn't trail them around with cameras through the minutiae of their days, he just sits and talks with them about life and what's been happening with them. There are no false situations, or coerced emotions.

It's reality, pretty much the same stuff that happens to you and me on a daily basis.
in all its dreary boredom and tedious detail. No exciting locations, or pretty people in artfully ripped clothing having to play truth or dare type games to win people's approval. Compared to something like the current batch of T.V. "reality" shows it's pretty tame stuff.

How many of us actually live on tropical islands where we have to figure out how to light a fire? Or how many of us share a house with ten other individuals where once a week one of them is going to be evicted? Or, oh I don't know, the permeations are endless. The point is that none of these are any more real than Fantasy Island back in the seventies was reality.

What is the basis for even calling these shows "Reality" television? They don't use actors? Give me a break; you don't have to be an actor in order to perform when you are given a tightly scripted scenario and tasks to carry out.

If, as they claim, the cameras are rolling twenty four hours a day seven days a week, that means that they've got 168 hours of raw footage they can edit down to make forty minutes worth of television. A good editor and director working together could manufacture an amazing performance from a corpse with that much raw video to work from.

In some ways the show Lost is one of the best pieces of satire on television right now. It takes all the elements that work so well from the reality shows and scripts them for real, instead of pretending to be real and unscripted. The only difference between it and Survivor is that the people who survived the plane crash want to get off the island.

There has always been a blurring of the lines between reality and television, with people identifying strongly with fictional characters on shows. They'll stand around and talk about "Jerry" or "Sam and Diane" as if they know these people, or at the least are people who have real lives. These lines are being even further blurred by the fact that the people they now stand around the water cooler and talk about are no longer fictional characters.

Nobody wants to watch real reality. They don't want to sit around and see people like themselves on television doing their shit job and leading their boring life. But everybody would like to change their reality, and these shows give them at least the opportunity to watch others doing just that: living a different reality.

In the good old days we took acid to alter our perceptions of reality, now you just turn on the television almost any night of the week and get the same experience. It's still too early to tell what the long-term negative effects of this mind-altering experience will be. Although judging by the slack jawed, vacant expression on so many T. V. viewer's faces, early indicators aren't good.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:43 AM | Permalink

So much for my careful analysis of the Canadian political scene published in these illustrious pages on Friday. When will I ever learn, thinking that I can predict what the mind of a politician will (interesting typo just happened: plotician instead of politician. Sometimes dyslexia shows the truth of the matter) do. I seem to have as much success as those guys who track Hurricanes and change their minds on a daily basis where its going to land.

In my own defence I have to say that I didn’t think that anybody would be that politically suicidal to seek an election four days before Christmas. Aside from the fact that the Conservative party is trailing in the polls right now, which alone makes it a stupid decision, they will also have ensured a measure that will hand out heating oil rebate checks to mid and low income Canadians doesn't get through the house, in order to get this election date.

That's not a plan to endear you to the hearts and minds of a lot of people, taking money out of their pockets just before Christmas, to help meet your own political ends. Set aside the fact that you'll have pissed off a huge amount of people by having an election four days before Christmas, do they not see how that will play out in the press?

"Scrooged by The Tories" "Conservatives Cancel Christmas": are just two potential headlines that I can visualize showing up in the press over the next while. Even the hardest hearted capitalist has been known to throw a few bucks into a Salvation Army kettle in the weeks before Christmas guys, this is like the Sheriff of Nottingham cancelling scraps for Lepers in the movie Robin Hood

Of course they have a fallback plan if they can't convince the other two opposition parties to go along with this idea. Time it so that the election will be in the first week of January so that the campaign will take place over the Christmas holidays. Yep that will be just as popular won't it? Overcooked turkey is hard enough to digest without having to have to listen to election drivel at the same time.

Whichever brain trust came up with this plan really needs to have their medication adjusted. Recent polls have suggested two things that should have given these large thinkers pause for thought. All polls suggest that an election called now wouldn't change the configuration of the house an iota, thus solving nothing. The same polls also show that Canadian trust in politicians is at an all time low.

Sound like an ideal time to be manipulating the process in an obvious attempt to grab power. They can sermonize until the cows come home about lack of moral authority to lead and still leave Canadians wondering why they had to have their holidays ruined with a rushed election call. It's going to look like a cynical grab for power no matter how many sugarplums they try to wrap it in.

The date that is in every politician's mind right now is February 1st. That's the day the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal releases its results. Prime Minister Paul Martin has promised to call an election within six weeks of those findings being published. (In my article on Friday I mistakenly said that elections are held six weeks after the dissolution of the House: obviously it's five weeks going by the dates outlined by the Conservatives. My confusion stemmed from the promise offered by Mr. Martin)

In more than a few eyes that would appear as if he is willing to place himself before the Canadian people for judgement. But the opposition don't want him to have an opportunity to hand out even more goodies to Canadians in a pre-election budget. The Conservatives are terrified as it is by the financial statement the government is releasing on Monday, that they want to table a motion of non-confidence on Tuesday.

Although the Conservatives need the unanimous support of both opposition parties, the one they will really have to work on to convince to vote with them on Tuesday is the New Democratic Party (N.D.P.). The Quebec separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, probably don't care when the election is, as they will maintain their seats and probably win a few more no matter when it's called.

But for the N.D.P. it's all about perception. They have been the party shoring the governing Liberals up for the past year; it was their support that passed the budget last spring and prevented the government from being defeated. In the minds of the public they are irrevocably linked to the fate of the government. Even if it's the Conservative Party that introduces the legislation that brings down the government, the chance is there that the public will hold the N.D.P. responsible.

The Canadian public is not particularly happy with politicians of any stripe these days. Oil prices going through the roof, our once vaunted health care system in shambles because of government neglect, and the Gomery Inquiry have combined to breed widespread cynicism and discontent with any overt political manoeuvring.

Cashing in on moral outrage may be seen as a viable enough reason for leading the country into an election either before Christmas or a campaign over the Christmas holidays by the strategists in the Conservative Party. The problem for them is the country just might see it in that light, and make them pay a heavy price for their opportunism.

There are too many examples in recent Canadian political history of parties paying the price for being too cute by half, and going down to ignominious defeat. The Conservative Party of Canada may want to talk to the former Progressive Conservative party members of their caucus before coming to any rash decisions. Having gone from running the country to almost losing party status in the course of one election they know how the public can turn on you.

Perhaps I was guilty of giving these people too much credit for intelligence, but you would think they would at least have developed some sort of survival instinct by now. As of now though, they look pretty intent on self-destruction. I'm sure Liberal strategists are rubbing their hands with glee right now. The Tories could do what few thought possible; give the Liberal party the appearance of integrity.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:44 AM | Permalink

Well I'm nearing the end of the second full week of NaNoWriMo and I think I've cracked the back of the monster, gone over the hump, the end's in sight, home is where the heart is: okay the last cliché didn't fit but what the hell, you're not going to hold that against me are you? I think I'm allowed a little leeway on the silliness front considering how well it's going.

Yesterday I was looking at the word count when it rang up, and I realised that I had significantly less then 20,000 words to write, and for the first time I think that I genuinely believed that I would complete this process. That was really cool because when I set out on this adventure I had no idea how it would go.

If you go back and read any of the earlier posts in this series you'll see how I rattled off all the usual doubts about whether or not I had it "in me" to actually write 50,000 words in a month. Could I maintain the story and the characters and my own interest in them for a long enough time? I had nothing on paper; no outline, no character sketches, not even names for the various races, countries, and people involved.

With none of the props that professional writers use at my disposal I'm totally relying on inspiration as each day of writing starts. Ironically the days that I've discovered hardest, in that I struggle with getting the story out, are the ones where I have left off in the middle of a chapter. I seem to work my best when I can start the day completely fresh with a new idea.

It's funny because I know other people deliberately like to leave off in the middle of something so that they can pick up where they left off. I actually feel impatient and want to finish it because it feels like yesterday's thought, and I want to get on with telling the story, and my next thought. It's like I've skipped ahead in the story, and have to go back and read something I already know has happened because I had read ahead into the next chapter.

This week has also been a bit more of a slog for me. In the first week I seemed to be able to sit down and the words would just pour out without me thinking. I never had to search for the right phrase, the appropriate word, it was always there waiting for me to use it.

I haven't changed my attitude towards the work, it's still the same devil may care what the result is, but there hasn't been quite the same sense of flow. I'm assuming it's what is referred to as the second week slump. The adrenalin isn't pumping quite so high, the initial enthusiasm for the story has started to wane, and you have to become serious about the project.

I've noticed this in the past in the novels that I've worked on and not finished. I have trouble maintaining momentum. I start off fast and enthusiastically and just sort of peter out. I didn't have the discipline required to work through the parts that I hadn't foreseen having to write. Let me try explaining that.

When I have an idea for writing a piece of fiction I generally visualise what's going to happen in a general sort of way. I can see how the characters all get together and have an idea of what they look like. I know what they are going to be doing at key points in the story up to and including the end.

It's all the spots in between, the transition scenes, which up to now have been my nemesis. Since I already knew all the information about the characters in my head, who they were, their motivations etc. It was almost boring to write about and develop them for the reader to get to know. It's like the whole starting in the middle of the chapter thing, I already knew what was coming next and was impatient to get on with the story.

I needed to come up with a way to make those moments interesting to write about and to read. I came up with two ways: one has been to incorporate flashbacks to bring out some of the back-story, and the other has been to create situations where I as the writer can have fun with character. In theatre we used to call it giving someone business, in other words finding them something to do that helps bring out their characteristics.

Finding out that I could continue telling the story while disseminating information to a potential reader made it far easier for me to deal with the lag of energy that always used to assail me as I hit the 20,000-word mark in my writing. To be honest I felt all along that was going to be my biggest obstacle when it came to completing the 50,000 words.

Last time we were talking I mentioned how I found that I wasn't even aware of what I was doing, and the words were just pouring out of me like a fountain. Obviously that hasn't been the case as much this week, although it still has happened. However, something new has begun to happen, and it actually makes me more confidant about the long-term possibilities for this manuscript that I'm working on.

I've been trying to put together some interview questions for a couple of authors, whose book I've recently read and reviewed for B.C., since the beginning of November. We haven't set any timeline for it, but I was hoping to have the questions ready to send off to them next week.

But I've discovered a problem and I had to write them apologizing, but would they mind delaying it. In my e-mail I said: "I'm spending half my time living in a made up version of 14th century Spain during the end of the Muslim occupation, writing about Jews and gypsies and I can't get my head anywhere else."

I've become immersed in the story to the extent that I'm not just thinking about it all the time, but I have such a firm picture of everything in my head that I can't ever get it out of my mind. In my idle moments when I'm not writing I'm walking down the streets of the city their currently living in; experiencing the atmosphere, watching the people, and listening to the gossip on the street corners.

I genuinely feel like I'm living in two separate realities right now: this one where I sit at a keyboard and write, and the one I write about when I sit at the keyboard. I guess it makes sense, how else could I report on what's happening there if I wasn't there to see what was going on?

What's even more interesting is how it seeps over into my real world. I was sitting on the edge of my bed before falling asleep last night, and all of a sudden the tune to an old Yiddish folk song popped into my head. I don't know how old "Dona Dona" is but it seemed so appropriate for the story that I'm going to probably use it for chapter heads, or part divisions in the book.

The lyrics are simple enough, a farmer taking a cow to market, but it's about freedom and it was a song of the Jewish resistance in World War Two. I've always made a connection between this song and the Jewish Diaspora. ( dispersal, or exile is the easiest definition)

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered/Never knowing the reason why./ But whoever treasures freedom,/Like the swallow must learn to fly./How the winds are laughing/They laugh with all their might/Laugh and laugh the whole day through/And half the summer's night. "Dona Dona"

I'm hoping that the next time we get together, I'll be over the 50,000-word mark, and be able to offer you some final insight into the whole process, but the reality is that this only feels like a beginning to me of something larger. I can't be sure of course, who knows what the future holds, but right now I feel like I'm in the grips of something that I no longer have any control over and it's going to demand I see it through to a final conclusion.

For once I've created something that won't let me give up on it and all of a sudden fifty thousand words doesn't seem like a lot after all. To quote the great sage Bugs Bunny: "This feels like the beginnings of a beautiful friendship"

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:34 AM | Permalink

Our current situation is that no one party managed to win enough seats in the House of Commons to have a majority, which means the party that did win the most seats, in this case the Liberals, (don't let the name fool you, they're not that liberal according to our standards) have to win the support of other parties in order to govern. If a major bit of policy, like a budget, gets defeated in the House of Commons, that's called a confidence issue and an election has to be called.

Since the last election there has been a lot of political jockeying, some near soap operatic events, and accusations of attempted vote "buying" in order to keep the government afloat. But it finally looks like they've run out of ways to keep it going and now it's just a matter of when, not if, the election is called. The one thing the Liberals have going for them is that the opposition parties are even less likely to agree with each other than they are to agree with them.

On one side we have something called the Conservative Party of Canada. Now this party was born out of the ashes of what used to be the Progressive Conservative Party (fiscal conservatives, socially liberal) merging with what was once the Reform Party, then the Alliance Party of Canada (fiscal conservatives and socially conservative)

The third largest party is the Bloc Quebecois, who, as you might have guessed by their name, are a separatist party representing the interests of Quebec and Quebec only at the federal level. Their primary concern is to prevent anyone else from winning seats federally in Quebec, which then validates the claim that no one outside of Quebec cares for Quebec, so we should separate.

Last, but not least in this years circus, are the New Democratic Party (N.D.P.), who are the closest thing that Canada has to a socialist party. They usually manage to receive fifteen to twenty seats in the house in each election, normally an inconsequential number, but in a minority government they become very important.

In order for the Liberals to have survived this long they have needed the support of the N.D.P. and the two or three sitting independents to win the close votes. They have taken as much advantage of this as possible. They made the government spend its budget surplus on health care, education, and social housing, instead of offering tax cuts to businesses.

But there are only so many things that the N.D.P. are going to be able to get from their shopping list, and they are very unhappy with how the government has implemented the health care spending. So it looks like they are prepared to pull the plug.

In politics, just like the comedy it is so reminiscent of, timing is everything when forcing or calling an election. We don't have a set election day like there is in the States. The way it works here is that six weeks from the day an election is called, we vote. Fast, dirty and quick, but at least they're painlessly short.

For instance, the Liberal government is releasing a financial statement in the house that will have to be voted on to be accepted. As any vote on budgetary matters is considered a confidence measure, if it is defeated the government will have to call an election. What's six weeks from this week? The week before Christmas.

No political party in its right mind is going to call or force an election to be called where the vote takes place the week before Christmas. That's going to guarantee a really pissed off electorate who will punish the one's responsible. There is no way on earth an election will be called until after the Christmas break.

There are two other factors that are entering into everyone's consideration about when they want the election called. The first is that thing called a Canadian Winter. Since the majority of Canada experiences the equivalent of what North Dakota gets for winter you can see how little that appeals to most politicians. Voter apathy is bad enough without having to worry about snowstorms, white outs, and minus fifty-degree weather keeping people away from the polling stations.

So it looks like all indications point towards a spring election. But this year we have a wild card variable called the Gomery Inquiry. Also known as the Sponsorship Scandal, the inquiry will be issuing its final report on how the Liberal party funnelled money to be used for ad campaigns in the last Quebec independence referendum back into the coffers of the Liberal party's campaign fund.

It's a lovely little tale of kickbacks, bribes and fraud (also known as politics as usual in Quebec) involving people deep and high up in the party. On February first the final naming of names and apportioning of blame will be released.

If you were an opposition member wouldn't you love to have that released in the middle of an election campaign? If you were in the government wouldn't you rather wait for a few months after its release for calling an election? Counting on the public's short memory and attention span to allow you to weather the storm, you call a spring election and capitalize on the warm weather, and the normal optimism that comes with people having survived another Canadian Winter.

The leader of the N.D.P. has come up with what he thinks might be a way to bring about the election to time it for the release of the Gomery Inquiry. Instead of waiting for a bill that all parties can agree on defeating, which could be a long time coming because the Liberals are so adept at playing the left and the right off of each other, they utilize a rarely used constitutional procedure where the opposition can have the House of Commons recalled from its Christmas break for what's known as an opposition day.

One of the parties files what's known as a motion of non-confidence, they vote on it and win, and the government has to call an election. (For a really good analysis of this check out this column by John Ibbitson at the "Globe and Mail") Of course there are difficulties in this ranging form the three opposition parties actually ever being able to agree on anything, to being able to justify not having confidence in the government.

Even if they do manage to pass the bill and have it deemed sufficient to bring down the government it still means holding the election in January/February in Canada. The potential for backlash against the people forcing the election call may still be greater than anything the Gomery Inquiry can produce in the way of ammunition against the Liberals.

When the first bit of the Inquiry was revealed earlier this month, the Liberals poll results dipped for only a couple of days, and now they've started to climb back up again. Before the Christmas break they are going to be passing all sorts of legislation that will win favour with the public including a rebate check for heating fuel for low income Canadians. Those checks will be rolling out sometime in January, along with everyone's Goods and Services Tax rebate checks.

More than one person are going to be having nice thoughts about the government when they are holding checks for about $300.00 in their hot little hands. No one can even accuse them of buying votes, because the heating oil checks have been on the books since Hurricane Rita, and are just now coming up for a vote in the House.

The Liberal party of Canada has been running the country for the last twenty years, they know more about the ins and outs of parliamentary manoeuvring than the other three parties combined. It remains to be seen how everything's going to fall out in terms of when the election will be called first of all, and than how the voters are going to vote.

It would be typically Canadian for the weather to have the deciding vote in our election, but it looks like it could come down to that. At least there will be something on T.V. aside form hockey and curling this winter.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:30 AM | Permalink

I always will remember, ’twas a year ago november, I went out to hunt some deer On a mornin’ bright and clear. I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow, Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow. Tom Lehrer, "The Hunting Song"

I was in no mood to trifle, I took down my trusty rifle And went out to stalk my prey. What a haul I made that day. I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow, Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow. Ibid

In fact I think it's a lot more socially responsible to go out and kill your own food than buying that pre-packaged shit they sell in grocery stores. You're at least not passing the buck, so to speak, when it comes to killing the animal you're eating. You want free-range organic meat, go out and get it yourself, don't have somebody else do it for you. It might ease your liberal conscience to not know how it's done, but it's damn hypocritical.

For anyone who wants to bleat about the inhumanity of hunting your own meat and killing Bambi, may I direct your attention to the nearest slaughterhouse and what happens there. Talk about inhumane treatment of animals. Packed in pens too small for them to move; listening to the death screams of the animals ahead of them in line; smelling the blood and offal from the slaughtering: I'm sure that makes for a swell environment for your last days on earth.

Than there's the whole imbalance in the eco-economics of raising meat cattle: the amount of farmland that has to be used for growing feed, the amount of natural habitat that is destroyed to make room for herds of cattle, (the acres of Amazon rain forest that have been lost for MacDonald's hamburgers alone is nauseating) and the polluting of our water table from cow and pig excrement seepage are three negatives on the balance sheet that springs to mind right away. The amount of food that could be grown in place of what it takes to bring one cow to market weight is depressing to think about. Especially when you consider the number of people starving to death on a daily basis around the world.

So you can see there are a lot of arguments that can be made favouring hunting. Unfortunately there are far too many people who still fall into the bozo in the orange vest and hat category. They may have taken their gun safety course, so they now know which end the bullets come out, which entitles them to get their hunting licence, but has anyone taught them what to do with the animal after they've killed it?

Do they know how to properly bleed it so the chest cavity doesn't fill with blood ruining the meat? Do they know how to clean the guts out properly so the contents don't explode inside the animal? Considering how many pictures I've seen of deer hung by their hind legs I doubt it. To get that permit you should know more than which way to hold your weapon

The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,
And one of the hunters wasn’t insured. Ibid

To my mind that means there is something seriously wrong and there are still far too many people out in the woods blasting away at anything that moves. Which then makes me wonder how many gut shot deer are there each year that can't be eaten; or how many animals are shot and only wounded and left to wander in the woods in pain until they slowly die of infection or bleed to death.

I have a hard time believing any of these organizations that talk about themselves as promoting "responsible hunting practices" If stuff like this is happening on a regular basis, than I want to hear their definition of responsible hunting. Fewer than ten people killed each year? They say they encourage people to hunt down wounded animals. Screw that, they need to make them.

If it means having to assign a guide to every hunting party that goes out into the woods then so be it. I'm sorry if that offends you anti-regulation types out there, but I think the current behaviour of too many hunters is even more offensive. I'm sure there are a lot of responsible individuals out there who wouldn't need the services of a guide, but until hunting organizations come up with a means of policing the yahoos, others are going to have suffer. I'd rather be out with a guide than get a bullet in my head any day of the week.

People ask me how I do it, And I say, there’s nothin’ to it, You just stand there lookin’ cute, And when something moves, you shoot! And there’s ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a purebred Guernsey cow. Ibid

Make a hunter pass some basic skills test for dressing a deer, and marksmanship; figure out a way to enforce if you hit it, track and put it out of its misery; and make it illegal to drink while hunting. Not only will you ensure safety with these measures, but they will also have the bonus of dissuading those who aren't going to be responsible, before they're in the woods armed and loaded in more ways than one.

The only thing wrong with hunting are some the people doing the hunting.

I'd like to thank Mr. Tom Lehrer for the assist in writing this article. I couldn't have done it without you Tom.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:51 AM | Permalink

In The Steerswomen's Road (an omnibus collection of: The Steerswoman and The Outskirter's Secret) We learnt about the wizards who control the magic of the world, something of the nature of that magic, and about the two prominent tribes or races of people.

The people of the Inner lands roughly equate to medieval earth in life style and living. Technology is limited to simple hand tools and basic implements. Like medieval earth a feudal Lord, who in this case is a wizard, dominates most populated areas of the Inner Lands. If the wizard in your area says jump, you ask how high or you could find yourself dead. The wizards rule their fiefdoms through a combination of fear and ignorance. The inhabitants are kept ignorant of the workings of magic and thus fear the wizards.

The Outskirters are nomads who seem to be free of the influence of the wizards. They roam their desolate landscape in continual war against an environment that could kill them if they get careless. Since tribes are constantly on the move searching for better grazing territory, there is almost continual conflict over things like grazing rights and fresh water.

Rowan and her Outskirter friend Bel make an alarming discovery at the end of The Outskirter's Secret The Guidestars that seemingly hang immobile in the sky to serve as points of reference for navigating are not at all what they seem to be. Already they have discovered that there are more than two of these strange satellites, because it was one of them falling out of orbit that caused the distribution of the mysterious blue gems across the known world.

Even more sinister is the fact that the wizards have been using them for a spell called Routine Bioform Clearance every twenty years in the Outskirts. Until recently it has actually been used beneficially, but now it is being turned on the tribes. The wizards are trying to destroy the Outskirts and force the Outskirters into conflict with the people of the Inner Lands through the elimination of their territory.

But it's not something that all the wizards are happy about. They are being coerced themselves by one wizard more powerful then the rest, Slado. In the third book of the seriesThe Lost Steersman we find Rowan searching for information about this mysterious wizard who almost nobody has ever seen. She hopes to find tidings of him in old steerswomen journals. She travels to a remote town of the Inner Lands to visit one of the annexes where these works are stored and preserved.

While she is studying here she makes two important discoveries seemingly unrelated to Slado, but in fact are tied into his plans for what appears to be the destruction of the world's populaces. The first is that life forms of all kinds from the Outskirts are beginning to encroach upon the Inner Lands. These introduced species could eventually come to dominate the environment of the Inner Lands, turning once fertile farming communities into harsh outback.

The second is about one of the species in particular. It is a particularly dangerous creature that is known by the Outskirters as a Demon. It seems to have no discernable head or tail end, and hunts by sound. When it hears a noise it swings an end in that direction and sprays its victim with a highly toxic substance that kills instantly.

Before these creatures were limited to the Outskirts, but now they have invaded the streets of the town Rowan had been staying in three nights in a row, and in increasing numbers. The only clue she has to tracking them down rests with a former Steersman, Janus, who resides in the town.

He had quit under mysterious circumstances and had been placed under the Steerswomen's ban. A Steerswomen is required to answer any question put to her, but in return everybody must answer her questions. If you either lie to a Steerswomen or refuse to answer a question you are placed under a ban that prohibits a Steerswomen from answering even the simplest of your questions.

In the end Rowan makes the long and treacherous journey to the area where the demons live and makes the amazing discovery that they are not just creatures, but they are in fact a sentient life form, who have their own methods of communication. They communicate not through ideas like us, but conceptually through images and shapes.

The females are able to generate forms which they than assemble into a message from which others gather their intent. The males, unable to generate these shapes, literally pick through cast off concepts to form their messages. When Rowan finally finds them they are in the midst of an internal struggle with the males trying to gain acceptance for their means of expression.

While barely escaping with her life she also makes the horrible discovery that it is the ex Steersman, Janus, who has been leading the creatures back to the town. He has been systematically trying to exterminate them, because he believes them to be evil. They have of course been trying to catch him before he can kill them all.

With Slado working so hard to force the three very different sentient beings into closer and closer quarters for what appears to be the purpose of mutual destruction it has become even more important to track him down. But how do you find a man, who nobody has seen in forty-five years, whose power is so great that he has cowed the rest of the wizards into obeying him. Why, with the help of a wizard of course.

At the beginning of their travels together Rowan and Bel had come across a young blacksmith's son named William. Unique among the common folk, William has been able to teach himself some very particular spells. His spells can either cause things to burn or to blow up, dependant on the strength or amount of the spell he uses. At the end of the first book Rowan was able to apprentice William with a wizard, who although not willing to challenge Slado openly, was not happy about following his orders or what he was doing.

When Rowan and Bel show up in the town where Slado was last seen in book four The Language Of Power, they find that William is there as well. He and his master have started to work actively, but discreetly, against Slado. Through William, Rowan and the reader, begin to learn more about the nature of the magic that the wizards of this world employ.

For Rowan who is used to being able to record causes and effects through the simple process of observing things and people in action understanding how the magic works requires a significant alteration in her methods of reasoning and observation. When William shows her a timepiece that he carries her reaction reflects how far she has to go in her understanding:

"It seemed that the Krue(wizards)could confiscate and command the very powers of nature, and this she was forced to accept as fact. But these were powers that already existed, independently. The steerswoman could think of nothing at all in the natural world that would do so peculiar a thing as hang from the end of a bit of string and cheerfully, innocently, count." Rosemary Kirstein, The Language of Power: Random House 2004. p.204

Throughout the novels Ms. Kirstein has been dropping broader and broader hints that the so-called magic used in this world, is in fact what we would call technology. It exists apart from the natural world which is all Rowan has for a frame of reference, so she must attempt to create a new context wherein she can place this new knowledge.

It's a fascinating experience to watch a person come to grips with items you and I take for granted. The world that Ms. Kirstein has created, and the people she has populated it with are ones we can readily identify with. To watch an intelligent and aware person such as Rowan struggle to accept and understand technology reminds us of how amazing these things are.

What is truly remarkable about these books is how they are able to be two things at once. First they are simply a good story, an adventure that is both exciting and interesting as we follow the characters around the world. In each book Rowan and Bel are introduced to a new range of people who they work with, learn from, and teach.

The characters of Rowan the Steerswoman and Bel the Outskirter are complete individuals. Part of the enjoyment of these stories is watching the interplay between the two women. Bel is brash, outspoken, and quite as likely to burst into song as start a fight. Rowan on the other hand is reserved, thoughtful and continually working. Everything is grist for the mill of a Steerswoman's search for knowledge and explanations.

The contrast between the two women, and they way that they begin to change from prolonged contact to each other is fascinating. Bel, instead of seeing things only in terms of survival for her tribe, begins to take a wider worldview of events. She learns to see how something that may not at first seem relevant to her people, will end up affecting them.

Rowan learns to understand that different environments require different ways of thinking. From Bel she learns that one cannot impose the way you are used to living onto a new place. You have to learn how to adapt yourself to it, because it will not change to suit you.

Kirstein's depiction of their friendship's growth is wonderfully done. Even though there is an immediate bond between the women, they still go through a real process of getting to know each other and earning the other's trust and respect. The journey of adventure is not the only path that is walked in this story, so is the path of friendship. It is a remarkable process, within a remarkable series of books.

At each stop on their journey they are able to tell people a little more about what is happening to them, and how the wizards are using them. In Language of Power they take one more step on their road of discovery and understanding. The elusive target of Slado is starting to come into range, and magic is becoming even less of a mystery. It will be fascinating to see how Ms. Kirstein continues this journey in however many more books this adventure takes. I'm eagerly awaiting the next instalment.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:03 AM | Permalink

I checked the spine to see if I recognized the name of the author, but Rosemary Kirstein didn't ring any bells. Along the bottom of the cover it said she had also written a book called The Lost Steersman Since nothing in the title of the book I had in my hand indicated that the two were related I took it home with me to read.

It was only when I cracked the book open that I discovered that I had picked up book number four, the most resent, in an ongoing series. Since I've never let a little thing like continuity stand in my way of enjoyment, I decided to go ahead and read the book anyway.

It says a lot for the skills of Rosemary Kirstein that even though there were references to happenings in the previous books, and some things that would only make sense to someone familiar with them, I was fascinated with the story and her central character, Rowan the steerswoman.

Thus began my hunt to try and track down the three previous volumes: The Steerswoman, The Outskrter's Secret, (these two are now also available in an omnibus edition called The Steerswoman's Road) and the previously mentioned The Lost Steersman. Naturally I tried the library first, figuring since they had volume four they would also have the early volumes as well, but I was wrong. Not one branch in the whole Kingston Public Library system had any of the other volumes.

Even more mysteriously neither did any of the local bookstores carry them. Oh sure I could have ordered them, but I couldn't afford what they were charging. I managed to pick up one in a used bookstore, but I was starting to get desperate. I thought these books were great and wanted to write about them, but it made no sense to do so if I hadn't read them all.

Then the good folks at Random House Canada came to my rescue. I wrote them telling them of my dilemma and within a week they had sent me review copies of the books I needed to be able to write this piece. I'm giving them a much deserved plug right here, for sending me the books based only on the links I provided them to blogcritics.org and a few thank you letters that people had written to me for reviews I had done. I'd feel a lot kindlier towards publishers if more of them were like Random House Canada.

Rowan is a Steerswomen: that makes her different from the rest of the people in the Inner Lands, The Outskirts and the whole known world. She, and the other members of her order, walk the roads and sail the rivers of their world mapping, asking questions, and giving answers. They are the repositories of knowledge, the keepers of wisdom, and the record keepers.

When you ask a Steerswomen a question she is honoured bound to answer you the truth. When she asks you a question you owe her the same obligation. If you refuse a steerswomen's request for an answer or the truth, you are placed under the Steerswomen's ban that means they are forbidden to answer any question you ask, no matter how banal.

The Steerswomen (there are only a few Steersmen) record everything they learn in their journals. These journals are stored by the order as references for Steerswomen to come, and as a record of events of the ages. No scrape of knowledge is beneath the notice of the Steerswomen; the eating habits of goats in the Outskirts might just play a vital part in the survival of people in another part of the world.

Long ago when the wizards and the first Steerswomen came into contact the wizards were placed under the Steerswomen's ban for refusing to answer questions about their powers and what they did in the world. The wizards did not believe themselves to be subject to the laws of the common folk, and used those who lived in their districts with a capriciousness bordering on the cruel.

Seeing how it is the desire of every Steerswomen, and the direction of the order, to find out as much about everything in their world as they possibly can, the wonder is that they haven't come into open conflict with Wizards until now. But it wasn't until Rowan started to investigate mysterious blue jewels that first appeared in the world forty-five years ago that wizards made any move against a Steerswoman.

Rowan has only been a Steerswoman for five years when she comes across a small blue jewel of which there has been no previous record. It is in The Steerswoman that we first meet her as she is beginning her quest into the origins of these strange items. As she discovers more and more samples of them throughout the know territories she starts to realize that they are distributed in a straight line across the lands.

Unlike a normal jewel that is mined, these have shown up in strange places; embedded inside a tree for instance, only discovered because the tree was felled for construction. When Rowan befriends one of the barbarian Outlanders named Bel the mystery only deepens. Bel wears a belt decorated with those same jewels given her as a reminder of her father.

How could these blue jewels describe a straight line from one end of the world to the other? According to Rowan it's like a huge giant threw them in an arc that causing them to rain down on the earth as they lost momentum. But even that wouldn't be possible, even if there were giants in the world, there would be no place high enough where they could stand that their throw could describe that arc.

High above the world, seemingly affixed in the sky, hang the East and West Guidestars. For centuries everybody has used them as their means of direction finding. Only the Steerswomen believe that they may not have always hung in the sky, and so may not be there forever. Only the Steerswomen can navigate without them when necessary.

The Steerswomen novels by Rosemary Kirstein are elaborate anthropological and sociological studies on the clash of cultures and the impact of technology on a world when its secrets are held in the hands of only a few. It doesn't take us a great leap to figure out that the Guidestars are in fact types of Satellites and that they are connected to the jewels. But for the people of Rowan's world this is magic beyond their comprehension.

The people of the Inner Lands and the Outskirts live equivalent lives to what we would consider medieval peasantry. The majority are illiterate and depend on the Steerswomen for telling them their history and keeping them informed of events in the world outside of their own villages.

The Outskirters are nomadic tribesmen that follow grazing pastures for their goats. Never able to stay in one place for long as their herds devour grazing lands, their environment is so hostile and harsh that they consider themselves to be in a war for survival. They do their utmost to kill the land before it kills them.

Even the plant life of the Outskirts can be fatal to humans, never mind the packs of goblins who haunt the wastes, and the treacherous bogs waiting to swallow people whole. When Rowan accompanies Bel back to the Outskirts in The Outskirter's Secret in an attempt to find the fallen Guidestar she gets first hand experience of how difficult life is on the plains.

Although one of their reasons for the trip to the Outskirts was to alert the tribes to the fact that the wizards are a potential threat to all those who dwell in the inhabited lands, it's only while they are there that they learn the true significance of that threat. As they discover more about the true nature of the Guidestars, they begin to realize the enormity of the danger that their world faces.

The wizards, or one of them anyway, whose powerful enough to force the others to do his bidding, seem intent on bringing all the species of the world into conflict. Playing on the inherit fear and mistrust humans have for things they don't understand they hope by forcing contact between peoples and species that the result will be conflict.

All that stands between this are people like Rowan and her sister Steerswomen. They are the only ones who can serve as emissaries between the different segments of the world by learning and than teaching what they've learnt. Steerswomen don't lie, so they will be believed and listened to when they speak.

In The Steerswomen and The Outskirter's Secret Rosemary Kirstein establishes a setting for a study of one of the major problems our own world faces. How a select few try to use superior knowledge and access to information to control the majority.

Ms. Kirstein has created marvellous characters that make the themes she is addressing all the more real. Rowan and Bel; the cool, rational, Steerswoman and the fiery, emotional Barbarian Outskirter, could easily have become stereotypes, or cliches. Instead we are given two individuals who unique even amongst their own people. As the reader we see almost everything through Rowan's eyes, so our worldview evolves in tandem with her's.

We share her revulsion at the things the wizards are doing, her excitement as she learns something new, her pleasure in recounting a story to a willing audience, and her wonder at the mysteries of the world. Through her relationship with Bel, both Rowan and the reader discover how two cultures can utilize their differences to compliment each other. We see her piece this bit of information together with what she's learning about the wizards and watch her try to gain an understanding of what it all means.

Rowan the Steerswoman not only maps the physical geography of the world, but is trying to map out a sociological blueprint for people to follow. Tomorrow in part two of this overview of The Steerswomen books by Rosemary Kirstein I'll look at how the third and fourth books The Lost Steersman and The Language of Power continue the story of Rowan and Bel and their attempts to understand the world around them.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:35 AM | Permalink

Anyway, in one of the comments left about that article a gentleman extolled the virtues of self-publishing, saying that it was the future and it allowed authors to by pass the publishers and speak directly to the public. Now while it's true that self-publishing allows people the chance to put their work on the market without having to go through the process of agents and publishers, is it really the future of publishing?

The answer as far as I can see is the usual, unequivocal, maybe. I think the best way for me to talk about this is to work by example. So since I'm hooked up with one of the self publishing groups, Lulu.com, I'll describe my experiences there and compare it as best as I can to what I know about the official publishing world. I know a couple of people who are published by major houses so I have a little bit of second hand knowledge, and having tried to publish things at various stages in my life, I have some personal experience as well.

The world of self-publishing can be divided into two parts: the vanity presses and the publish on demand presses. Since Lulu.com falls into the second of the two and that's whom I am affiliated with I have the most familiarity with how that system operates. From what I understand though a vanity publisher is someone you send a manuscript to, pay them a set fee, and they bind and print X number of books for you to try and distribute.

You make the investment in your work and take the chance that you are going to sell it. Just like the band that independently produces its own CD you are responsible for all the marketing, selling and distribution. You work out all your deals, and keep every penny that every copy of the book makes.

Publish on demand, at least the way Lulu.com operates, works quite differently. Everything is done online and digitally. (They do more than just books but the rest isn't relevant to what I'm talking about) Once you've created an account, you are free to start uploading your completed product to the site. They give you space to create a store front and you sell your material from there using PayPal or similar on line transaction methods.

You are able to choose how you want to sell your book; hard copy or download, coil bound or stitched, full colour or black and white, you can either use on of their generic cover generators of upload your own covers. When you upload they reformat your document into the appropriate size and voila, you're done.

You set your price; they tack on their set up fee on top of that, and take a small percentage as a royalty as well. If you want to make $2.00 for an article or a chapter of a book, I believe the price ends up being $3.50 for a printed version, and less for a download. You can also use Lulu as a vanity press, and order bulk copies of your own work to distribute. Nominally the price would be the same as if you were a regular customer, but they normally cut you a bulk deal.

Okay, so now you've either uploaded your work to your storefront at Lulu, or you have a couple hundred copies of you major opus sitting in boxes around your house: you now have to convince people to buy them. With Lulu at least you haven't committed any money to the project, they only print when someone wants to buy, but it sure would be nice if someone actually read the stuff you've sweated over.

If you want to have any hope of selling this stuff, and you haven't been able to land a distribution deal with anyone, it means that you have to become a full time public relations/marketing person. One of the first things you'll probably want to do is invest in at least an isbn number so that your book will be listed as being for sale in the great list of books in print. You may even want to consider getting an Amazon equivalent, so that your book is available on the Amazon network worldwide.

This doesn't guarantee any sales but it does assert your right as the author of the work, and if someone walks into a store and asks about it, when it's typed into the computer, it will show up on the database as in print. (I can see myself walking into books stores periodically and asking them to look up my work just to prove to myself it actually exists) If you want to place your book in some local independent bookstores the isbn step is essential; it costs between thirty and forty dollars American to have done so it's not that horrible a cost to incur.

The real killer is how much time and energy you're going to have to expend to get your book out to the public. Letting them know is a full time job that you will have to work at on a daily basis. Sending out press releases, offering review copies to newspapers, magazines, freelancers, on line magazines; then, if people want them, you have to pay for shipping the items to them and putting together a promotional package to go with it.

Most reviewers and entertainment editors at the major newspapers already have enough on their plate dealing with the offerings of the big houses. So unless you're prepared to continually harass them with phone calls and emails you won't have much chance of garnering any coverage.

Go to any one of the self-publishing sites and see how many authors there are: thousands. Most have the same dreams and ambitions of people reading their books and loving them that the rest of us have. They are all competing for the same limited amount of attention that's available.

If you used a vanity press and paid for a bunch of books to be printed, you are probably looking at having to spend the equivalent again for the promotion, and that's just in mailing costs, phone calls and some minor printing expenses. We're not even talking about taking out advertisements in papers or anything, and that's where costs really start to add up.

Even an ad at an online magazine can end up costing a pretty penny. What happens if you don't know how to use that graphics program to lay out an ad? That means you need to hire someone to do it for you, or you might get lucky and have a friend who knows about that stuff. But even than it's a commitment of time and energy that you could have putting to better use; like writing the sequel.

That's the thing you see, if you're going to self publish and seriously try and sell what you wrote you're going to have to stop writing and focus all your energy on promotion. Believe me I have done enough publicity work in my time to know that it is a full time job, not something you can just do for a couple of hours everyday. You'll have to expand all the creative energy that you normally would have used on writing to come up with ideas to get your book noticed

Those are the things a publishing house takes care of for you. All of them; of course they charge you for that privilege, and if you're a new writer you won't nearly get the amount of money allocated to the more established authors. But at least it's something. More importantly is the fact that you don't have to do the work.

Oh sure if you're a big name you may have to go on a book sighing tour; do the daytime talk show circuit, and radio interviews, but for the most part the publishers want you writing. Not for any altruistic motives to be sure, but they want a return on their investment; the more you write the more chances they have of making money from you.

In writing, almost more than any other art form, name recognition plays a huge role in how much you sell. When you go into a bookstore and see a bunch of new books on display, are you more likely to buy the work of the author you've heard of or the one you've never seen before? The majority aren't as perverse as me so they usually tend to go the safe route and buy something by the person they've heard of.

Of course getting picked up by publisher involves almost as much work as writing your novel or promoting your self published work. Even getting your first novel or series of novels picked up is no guarantee of continual contracts. There's also the matter of potentially surrendering some creative control. Publishers will inevitably have suggestions on how a story could be "improved on" to suit the needs of the market.

Is self publishing the future of the written word? Not in its present format. The amount of work required to market a work so that it sells sufficient copies for a writer to live off the proceeds is such that he or she will no longer be able to write. That sort of defeats the purpose.

What's needed is for some sort of melding of the two worlds. Ideally it would be set up like the film industry, where independent producers are picked up by a distributor who becomes responsible for the marketing and selling of the work for a percentage of the royalties. Obviously there are exceptions, but generally speaking until that happens self publishing as it stands is not the solution or the way of the future for authors. It's a step in the right direction, but the process needs to evolve so that the writer is able to be a writer who does a little promotion. Not a publicity person who does a little writing.

If you want to check out an example of a Lulu.com storefront here's mine

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:01 AM | Permalink

The doors of the plane are opened as the first of the shadows approach; soft words are exchanged, and some of the tension leaks out of the air. A sound of a match being struck, and its sudden flare reveals a hard lean face, topped with a beret. More shadows approach the plane and begin to unload wooden crates.

The moon's rays illuminate some more of the faces, one is a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she's cradling a semi-automatic rifle in her arms as she keeps a wary watch on the surroundings. Suddenly she hears something: there, off in the distance a vehicle engine. "Hurry" she shouts, in a charming/sensual French accent.

She turns back to her post, slipping the safety off on her weapon, and you know that he is quite prepared to die tonight: to die for France and freedom. Oh how your heart, and your loins, aches for her and her passion. The sound of the truck motor gets louder and you know that it’s a Nazi troop transport full of identical looking grey suited soldiers intent on killing your beauty.

There: the plane is empty and it's preparing for take off, why doesn't she leave? Ah they will make sure that the pilot can escape even if they risk their own lives. The plane takes off and clears the tree line and the object of your desire and her companions make back into the woods just as the first headlights from the troop trucks hit the field.

The German's pour out of their trucks and yell excitedly in guttural Hollywood bad guy language that lets us know that they found the plane's tire tracks. Mysteriously they look up in the sky but don't think to look in the forest where the woman and her friends are standing just behind the first row of trees. After some more excited talk, they climb back into their trucks and drive away.

Back amongst the trees, the man in the beret comes up to the woman, and you hate him for what is about to happen, he scoops her in his arms, and looks her straight in the eye:
"Don't take risks like that again" he says in some strange sounding accent.

"I would risk everything for France" is her throaty reply

They stare at each other, and then, inevitably, exchange a passionate kiss. One of the extras hisses from the dark. "Queekly ve must go before zey come back." Then they all melt into the shadows from which they came.

Okay so maybe that's a little over the top, but who hasn't seen a variation of that in one movie or another. They didn't have to be French; they could be any ethnic minority fighting some oppressor or other. Usually at some point in the movie either a brave American or Britt will show up to help them win the war, fall in love with the beautiful resistance fighter, etc etc.

No matter how clichéd that may sound or look, that's the image that comes to mind whenever I hear someone use the word partisan. It has always been a positive word to my mind. Evoking images of brave men and women fighting horrible odds in a bid to achieve freedom from oppression.

Obviously those romantic images as portrayed by Hollywood and British filmmakers during World War Two had little to do with the reality of the situation. But little groups of people like that have existed since the Napoleonic wars of the 1800s. In Spain the first guerrilla warfare was fought as resistance to the invasion of their country. They worked with Wellington's armies to help sabotage supply lines and make life miserable for the French troops.

Therefore the word partisan has always had nothing but positive connotations for me. I had never even thought of it in a negative light until the last ten of fifteen years when the word started leaping from the mouths of politicians of all stripes.

Now all of a sudden everything is partisan: newspapers, radio shows, television broadcasts, and of course politicians. Any time anybody has an opinion on any subject that differs from one's own they are branded with the "P" word.

It's like the big clue to the people listening that you can't believe that person because they are biased. Why are they biased? Well because they are letting their support of their party get in the way of their reasoning. What's very confusing is that no one ever seems to question the partisanship of the person making the accusation.

The other thing that nobody asks is what's so bad about party loyalty, or believing in something? Sure one should look at issues with as open a mind as possible, but most people have some sort of belief system that they base decisions on. By labelling all voices of dissent partisan aren't we calling into question a person's right to hold a different opinion, or to have a different belief system?

Yes there are times when partisanship is a negative; when people just blindly follow along with what a party says and don't bother to form their own opinions. But it seems that the people who scream the word the loudest are ones who are on the defensive about something and are being even more partisan than those they are accusing.

When Clinton was being roasted by the Republicans the Democrats screamed partisanship. Now that Bush and company has found themselves in a mess, it's there turn to chant the familiar refrain. If you think about it for a second it becomes really quite ridiculous.

They don't agree with us because they are a different political party. Well duh. Isn't that what's supposed to happen in politics? Isn't that why there are such things as political parties so that people with different idea and beliefs can have a means of expressing themselves?

Think back to our beautiful French woman at the beginning of this article. Part of what makes so appealing is her passion for her cause. The willingness to die for the right to be free: her partisanship. In her we see that as a positive attribute, one to be admired and even emulated.

But we have corrupted the word into something negative. Somehow in the transition from a noun to an adjective the implications of the word shifted. A partisan was someone passionate about their commitment to freedom, and fighting for their rights. But if you're partisan, that commitment is made out to be a detriment.

I also wonder why the word is only used in the political arena; there are other areas in our society where it is just as applicable. You never hear of an especially dogmatic Christian or Muslim being referred to as partisan, even though it is far more likely to happen that people are blinded by faith more than anything else. I can't think of anyone more partisan than the Pope or one of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

There's probably not much point in expecting anybody to change their habits this late in the day; the use of the word partisan as a negative adjective is probably here to stay. I just wish that people would be more careful in their usage of the English language. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't automatically make their opinion partisan.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a rendezvous to attend in a moonlit glade in France with a beautiful partisan: adieu.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:28 AM | Permalink

Things that start in the middle of the week always confuse me. With November 1st falling on a Tuesday this year the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMO) started mid week, so even though we're really only four days in, it feels like the end of the first week. So I hope you don't mind me posting my first weekly update only four days in.

I have to say that I'm really nervous about saying anything about how it's going: I'm terrified that I'll jinx myself. Look at the word total; I'm doing better than 2,000 words a day, far outstripping the goal of 1,700 that would see me finish right on the dote of November 30th. If I'm able to maintain this pace I'll be done around the 24th or 25th of the month.

I've done absolutely no planning, I'm not working from any notes or outline, it just keeps falling off the top of my head each day. Even the characters just show up on the pages when I need them to appear. In an earlier entry I had talked about my pre-season training, where I had done some trial runs on opening pages; those were the closest things to an outline that I had to work from. Seeing as how I didn't keep any of them though, they weren’t much use except for helping me ordering thoughts.

I have to create little cheat sheets for myself as I go: character names and spelling have to be written down somewhere as each new one appears so I don't have to keep scrolling back through pages of text when I can't remember what I called them. The same goes for the names of races, places and anything else I've invented as I go along. I believe you should try and be consistent with things like that or the reader might get confused.

I've been trying to come up with a word to describe the style of writing that I seem to be doing; you know realism, naturalism, something along those lines. The best I can come up with is: atmospheric. Since I'm trying to recreate, sort of, an era, it seemed important to try and impart to the reader a sense of place, time and mood.

When the sirocco blew in the early spring it carried with it more than just the usual smells from across the water. Instead of the hint of sand, salt, and a trace of exotic spice that usually accompanied the swirling winds marking the end of winter rumours of unrest and disquiet were part of its baggage.

The air of unease had actually begun earlier, but with the rains and everyone hunkered down inside, or simply scuttling from home to place of business and back, there wasn't opportunity for it to settle. Perhaps in the back rooms of some of the wealthier merchants, around the fire over the spiced teas favoured by the Kafalah, or in the small tea rooms frequented by the wizened men past working age, some hint or taste of what the spring wind would bring had been heard. But for most of the populace little or nothing reached their ears. Richard Marcus (gypsyman) The Paths Life Takes 2005, p.1

I think you can see what I'm trying to do when you read the opening two paragraphs of the book. I've done that in each of the chapters so far and what I've found is that it makes it so much easier to do things with the characters. They have something to work with and play off besides each other. Of course it's also a great way of getting information out to the reader.

It's not a new idea or anything, but it’s a lot of fun to write. It's also the way I work. I have to be able to visualise what's happening, see my characters in their setting to be able to write about them. In an interview I did with him, the Indian author Ashok Banker likened his style of writing to reporting. Meaning that he places himself in the scene, and reports on what he sees, either through the eyes of a neutral observer, or the character that is involved at that moment.

I guess that is a fairly accurate way to describe what I'm doing as well. The thing is, it's not something I'm conscious of while I'm doing it. I don't sit down at my keyboard every morning and say to myself I'm going to go report on doings in the Kafahld Empire, it just happens.

Do you want to hear something a little weird, and it may even sound kind of trippy so you'll have to forgive me for that. But sometimes when I'm writing I don't feel like I'm directly involved. I feel like I'm merely along for the ride and some other force or person is in control. I feel sort of superfluous to the whole process, and the best thing I can do is just stand back and stay out of the way.

Maybe that's just because things have going well this week, and I've not run into any problems. Everybody seems to know what to do, and has their lives to live out, so I just let them get on with it. I'm sure the first time I run into writer's block that sensation will fly out the window.

Of course it doesn't hurt that I'm not fussing too much about editing. Aside from trying to keep spelling and grammar screw-ups to a minimum, I've relaxed my standards somewhat. If this ends up becoming something more serious than just a one off deal for the contest, than I'll obviously have to go through and tighten things up. I figure it's more important to let things just flow right now than get caught up in perfectionist details.

I've finally discovered the good thing about not being able to sleep for more than three to four hours at a shot. You have lots of time at your disposal. So I've set myself up a writing schedule that takes advantage of my sleep patterns. First thing I do in the morning when I get up is a post for Blogcritics. Depending on how things go with that, how I'm feeling, and what time it is when I'm done that, I'll either try to catch a nap, or do some stuff around the house and any errands that need running.

After that I'll do my first writing session on NaNoWriMo for the day. I'll usually unplug the laptop and hang out with my wife as she's starting her day at the desktop. So she'll drink her coffee, answer emails, and whatever and I'll plug away at the story. My goal with this slot is to try and get as close as possible to my minimum word count of 1,700. So far this has worked out great in that I've either only been a hundred or two words short, or I've gone over during this time.

That way the pressures off to produce anything and I can relax, have some lunch, and try to nap for an hour or so. (By this time if I didn't lie down earlier I've been up since 1 or 2 in the morning after going to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 the previous night) When I get up again in the afternoon I'll grab some coffee, check my email, and get back to writing again.

After four days I'm feeling pretty good about the process. I have no illusions that it will stay this easy; in fact, in a perverse sort of way I'll sort of be disappointed if it does. It would feel like I'm missing out on part of the experience if I don't have at least one day of panic because I come nowhere near making my word count.

Some of you have expressed interest in reading the story as it develops, and I would love it if people did. I had originally said that I would post its URL in this post, but I've started having second thoughts. Too many people have said things about theft and such that publicly displaying the address makes me nervous.

So here's the deal: I've got it up at an as private as possible blog site. If you want to read it just drop me a line at goodnoise2000@yahoo.ca and I'll send you a link as soon as possible. You may end up waiting a bit, but never more than a day; I check my email every morning when I wake up and usually every afternoon.

You'll be able to leave comments at the blog, and I'd like it if you did, but if you could do me a favour and tell what went into forming your opinion I'd appreciate it. One thing to keep in mind is that you are reading it before I am; I'm not planning on reading it until I've at least hit the 50,000 mark. I'm scared that if I do I'll start rewriting and editing instead of producing new pages, and that defeats the purpose. The grammar and spelling should be okay because I'm writing with Word's auto check on, so I'm correcting as I go, but that doesn't mean there won't be typos and I apologise for them in advance.

The link I'll be sending is to the first chapter, after you read that and if you decide you want to continue, just go over to the archives and you'll find anything else that's been published. I'll try and update it every time I finish a chapter, which might be on a daily basis, but don't count on it.

So far this has been a painless process for me, and I wake up every morning excited to be getting back to work on the project. I have to admit that after my opening day butterflies I've been having a hoot. I don't know what the next three weeks holds for me, but I'm hoping this first week was an indication of what's to come.

I'll see you next week with another report from the trenches. Nanu-nanu for now: back to NaNoWriMo for me. (I'm sorry is it just me, but doesn't the abbreviation remind you of Mork?)

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:21 AM | Permalink

In Canada we have something called the Gomery inquiry. Not that this dude Gomery has done anything wrong, he's just the judge who was appointed to investigate the supposed misdeeds of the previous government. It seems that back in 1995 the federal Liberal party as part of their campaign to defeat the separatist referendum in Quebec had funnelled tax payer money into more than just advertising campaigns. Somehow a lot of money ended up being "donated" unofficially back to the Liberal party by the companies hired to create the pro-Canada ads.

The worst thing about all these political scandals is the fall out that accompanies each one. Every time one of these things surface, no matter how inconsequential or horrible they might be, they have the same result. The idea of public service takes a hit from which it will never recover.

There are many people out there who think of government as a bad thing for a variety of reasons; some legitimate, some politically motivated, and some just paranoia. These scandals, real or otherwise simply add fuel to their fire. Look, they can say, pointing at all aspects of the cases in question. They're all equally corrupt. We should get rid of the lot of them.

I sometimes think of people who go to work in the government as public servants as being similar to cops. One hopes that the majority of people who decide to become police officers do so out of a genuine desire to make a difference: to try and help people. Sure there are some who are going to be in it for the power tripping opportunities that the job offers, but they are not the majority.

The whole concept of public service seems to have gone right out the window. It used to be that people who wanted to make a difference in society would go to work for governments so that they could help shape policies that would create a better world, or at least take a stab at improving the lives of their fellow citizens.

Economists, agricultural specialists, health care workers, engineers, architects and many other professions saw nothing wrong in working for the government. It made you feel like you were contributing; giving back to the society that had given you the opportunity to become what you were. That may sound naïve and corny to some of you, especially in this cynical age, but people actually used to believe that.

Of course most readers will scoff at that; but there was a time when people actually felt that helping others was more important than personal gain or the accumulation of material goods and they thought they could best fulfill that by working for the government. Times certainly have changed haven't they?

My wife and I have a very sweet friend who is very much of that mould. She's working towards becoming a lawyer and then writing the Canadian Civil Service exam and working for the government. It's actually lovely to see, someone who still believes that she can serve the people of her country and make a difference. (Of course it's in her blood, a great uncle of hers helped develop the idea of public housing back in World War two)

But how many people out there would choose to work in government for those reasons anymore. Most of them probably see it as either just a job, or the means to establishing themselves until they can get a job in the private sector that pays enough so they can buy their first BMW, or whatever the upwardly mobile car of the week is now.

I know that attitude took its first major hit in the United States during the Viet Nam war, where the administrations were seen as working against the will of a lot of young people. Watergate changed everything, and made people re examine the whole idea of working for the government. How could one work for something in good conscience that acted like that?

Ironically, the people who called for less government were the ones responsible for an upsurge in interest in the public service. When Regan came into power in the U.S. there were plenty of people excited enough by the concepts espoused by his team that they were eager to try and help create the new world he was preaching. But that brief resurgence didn't even last out his presidency with people dismayed by what was done in order to conduct a covert war. The Iran/ Contra mess dashed a lot of hopes and illusions among the starry eyed and idealistic.

Is it any wonder that so many special interest lobby groups have sprung up since that time? Governments have proven themselves inept at serving the people, so people have set themselves up to try and ensure their issues are taken care of.

Although some might say that this is a good thing, I'm not certain for a couple of reasons. There's the obvious one that the groups with the most money and the better connections are going to have more influence on policy, resulting in an unbalanced agenda for the government.

But he real problem is the vacuum that has been created by having no direction from a federal government. The result has been increased polarization amongst the populations of countries. With so many individual groups advocating differing policies with such conviction there is no way that a country can come to any sort of consensus on which direction it should move in.

A central government that worked properly would negate the necessity for the majority of lobbyists because they would be striving to find solutions for the problems of the country based on policy proposals put forward by the people working for them. Instead of that, we have people who are as variable as wind vanes when it comes to providing direction. Their only concern seems to be what they need to do to be re elected. It's always fun to watch them twisting in the wind when three opinion polls on the same subject give three different results.

I seem to have gone all over the place here, but reading about these recent scandals got me thinking about people's perceptions of government and how they've changed over the years. What's sad and just a little scary is how wide ranging the fall out has been, and how it has effected our means of governance to a far greater extent than most people realize

There are probably still quite a few people like the friend I mentioned earlier who see a career in public service as an important task, but she is among a minority. More and more the best and the brightest are being lured elsewhere; repulsed by the ongoing rot they see running deeper and deeper in the system.

Perhaps the age of federalism is really over, and we will become a series of single-issue fiefdoms. This might appeal to some people, especially those who will be in charge, but what of the people whose lives are complex enough that there's not just one answer to their question?

The thing about real federalism is that it allows for a pluralistic society. How much freedom of thought is there really going to be in a bunch of single-issue societies? I'm not really interested in finding out.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:36 AM | Permalink

Best known for his contributions to exporting Canadian culture abroad via his collaboration with Dave Thomas in the creation of the Mackenzie brothers. Those plainspoken chaps served as major cultural diplomats for Canada during the 1970s. We were taking our first tentative steps onto the world stage and they blazed a trail that will never be lived down or forgotten.

Like all good prophets Mr Moranis spent some years in the wilderness searching for inspiration: ten years in New York City raising his kids and listening to their music. It was revealed to him that the time was ripe for someone to strap on the spurs and mosey on down to the eight track to record and try to match the glory of The Kinky's "Asshole From El Passo"

The results of his labours can now be heard in glorious stereo in the thirteen tracks contained in his first testimonial The Agoraphobic Cowboy. Before anyone dismisses this project as a putdown or an attack on country music, let me be quick to reassure you. Mr. Moranis' love of this genre couldn't be more obvious. He may be using it for satire, but he's not making fun of the medium.

Making fun of himself for having the presumption to make a Country and Western album maybe; making fun of city dwellers, fame and paranoia: definitely. But if you have any doubts about his genuine affection for the music, they'll be dispelled when you hear the quality of the musicianship demonstrated on this recording. I don't know if I've heard finer picking and strumming since listening to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. These guys are hot.

I was hooked form the opening song; a plaintive cry for fulfillment in life, "Nine More Gallons". Who couldn't identify with the forlorn appeal of: "It's hard to pull an empty load/Even if you're stuck/Seventeen more wheels/ And I'll have me a truck" Or the awareness of self that slips through with: "Fifty one more cards,/And I'll be playing with a full deck."

The songs continue on in this slightly self-deprecating vain throughout the whole disc. Setting himself up as a sort of universal every man who sings about the foibles of the world, he is able to capture and laugh at the oddities of contemporary urban living.

"Press Pound" offers a variety of voice mail options, from pressing one if you're single to pound key for a restraining order, for your love life, "Mean Old Man" sings the blues about life in a Jewish men's club where the joys of a sauna are curtailed by the mean old man of the title who is a little enthusiastic with eucalyptus branches, and of course the theme song of our agoraphobic cowboy, "I Ain't Goin' Nowhere" itemizes all the reasons for staying home from satellite T. V. to bomb scares.

Of course no CD would be complete without a bonus track, and no country album complete without one song about trains and the The Agoraphobic Cowboy is no exception. But only Rick Moranis would think of combing the two into one song called "Bonus Track". Tacked on at the end of the album, he sings about all the trains he's travelled on and that one track that leads home to where his heart lies: "Cause I'm riding on the bonus track"

Moranis' best creations over the years have been his subtle ones. Gentle satire that peaks out from behind a deceptively ordinary character or seemingly normal circumstances has long been his trademark. His ability to never mug for the cameras but to play the character straight makes the material he presents all the more successful.

The Agoraphobic Cowboy is no exception in that musically it is played completely straight, and with a great deal of respect, and the kick lies in the lyrics alone. Rick Moranis still has an ear for the ridiculous and a satirist's knack for pointing out some of our sillier habits.

What separates him from so many of the pack is that you never get the feeling he's doing this with any malicious intent. By making himself the central figure in the songs we know he's suffering right along with us. This may be one of the funniest discs I have heard in ages, but it's also damn good music, so even if you buy it just for the humour, don't be surprised to find yourself tapping your toes right along with songs.

If you want to buy The Agoraphobic Cowboy you'll have to mosey over to Rick's web site. You can also sample the wares and read some of the lyrics while you're there.

--------

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:56 AM | Permalink

Mad Cow. Bird Flu. West Nile. AIDS. Malaria. What do all these diseases have in common? Aside from the obvious of being either fatal or potentially fatal to humans, they have all originated in the animal kingdom. Mad cow comes from sheep bits being fed to cows (so it really should be called mad sheep but I guess it doesn't have quite the same ring) Bird Flu is self explanatory, while West Nile is transmitted by birds who have been stung by mosquitoes carrying the virus. Aids is said to have originated in Monkeys and Malaria is caused by the bite by another type of mosquito.

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding these diseases and the possible reasons for their outbreak. Some have linked ones like AIDS to a sort of divine retribution for doing something against the dictates of word of God. Mad Cow is a sign that man shouldn't be screwing with animals by feeding vegetarian cows meat by-products like sheep brains.

Other people have theorized that our overuse of antibiotics has actually caused the generation of a wide variety of super bugs (not the mosquitoes, the viruses). The reasoning is that by using antibiotics needlessly it has enabled the viruses to develop new and stronger mutations that are resistant to our medicines.

Enabled is the wrong word of course because it makes it sound like the viruses had a choice in the matter and planned the whole thing. It's probably more along the lines of natural selection where the ones who had the right abilities survived and became dominant.

Now of course fanatical eco warriors and warm-hearted care bear types have been going around saying all of these things are caused by our (humans that is) irresponsible relationship with nature. Listen to them bleat about how we need to find a balance between our needs and the needs of nature.

We have to learn how to share the planet or else this degradation of existence will continue to get worse and worse as the years go by. Share! Share the planet with a bunch of disease ridden, flea bitten varmints. I don't think I want to share the planet with those idiots let alone a cow whose foaming at the mouth and should be tied up in a straight jacket. (I know that's not what it means, what sort of yahoo do you think I am)

Look I'm a reasonable man and am willing to listen to any sort of reasonable solution to this problem, but I'm not prepared to sacrifice any of my family members to molly coddle some critters. These green people seem to think that nature is cute and cuddly. Do they know what happens in nature when an animal gets sick? It dies.

Look at a herd of deer for example. One of their member get sick none of the others are going to get all sentimental about it and try to nurse it back to health. Hell no, they're going to stick it at the back of the pack so it can get picked off by the next passing wolf or coyote, thus preserving the well being of the rest of the herd.

No one has been able to come up with a solution to the problem of all these outbreaks of viruses and illnesses. They keep talking about coming up with new vaccines and antibiotics to either prevent you from catching it or to help you fight it off. But how effective is that going to be?

Those viruses have already proven they can fight back and mutate faster than we can create a new serum to defend against them. With that in mind, I'd like to offer what I consider a reasonable solution; one that's sure to solve the problem, and not leave us any worries about new stronger bugs coming back to latter: Kill all the problem species.

I know that sounds like a lot of work but think of the benefits aside from eliminating disease. Look at all the third world people we can give jobs to, by having them hunt down all the monkeys. That's going to be a real boost to those economies with people having money to spend for at least one generation.

The Brits have already proved that it no big deal to eliminate domestic cattle, so that won't be a problem. The same goes for the sheep; they're so dumb anyway they won't even notice the difference.

Now I know what you're going to say, what about the birds and the mosquitoes, isn't that going to be kind of difficult to round them up and kill them all? Well I've thought that out too: mass spraying with DDT. We used to use it all the time until some weenies chickened out because it was causing birds to become extinct. Something about the shell on their eggs getting too thin and so news ones weren’t getting born.

So you see the beauty of it now don't you? Not only do we get rid of the mosquitoes that cause diseases, we get rid of the birds at the same time, without having to actually go out and hunt them down. I know it's not a perfect solution; it may take a couple of generations to actually eliminate all of the birds, but I haven't heard anyone offer another one yet.

Oh sure some folk will bitch and complain, but some folk aren't happy unless they got shit to whine about. Be reasonable, what's more important; the health of your loved ones or the lives of some animals and insects? I for one have no trouble answering that question.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:49 AM | Permalink

He reached into his pocket and brought out a much-creased piece of paper. He opened it with one hand, while the other vainly tried to smooth it out to make it more legible. Wordlessly he handed it over to his son, nodding his head to show that he should read it while he continued.

"Anyway he began to read from a sheet of paper, and I guess it was just to make it all official, because it was all down in that letter there that came those couple of months back." He closed his eyes, and began to recite from memory: "Under the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1988 by the governments of Canada, The United States of America, and The Republic of Mexico, under the provisos restricting and controlling the sale and transport of fresh water from one country to the next, it is stated that once an initial sale or transaction of fresh water occurs, precedent is considered established to allow for any subsequent and future transactions to proceed without hindrance, interference, or infringement by any parties no matter what their association with said water."

The younger man looked over at his father and tried to decide if he had ever seen tears in his eyes before. Nope, not even when mom had died.

Under the rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement, once Canadian companies begin to export fresh water to any other country, foreign investors are than allowed the same privilege. If the government moves to prevent them, those companies will than be allowed to sue for lost business.

In other words once it starts it won't stop. Anybody form anywhere with the money and resources could come in and siphon off Canada's supply of fresh water to be used anywhere for any purpose. No one knows what the environmental impact would be of diverting, let alone removing the thousands or millions of litres of water this could entail.

I live in South Eastern Ontario, in what is considered a temperate climate. Three bodies of water surround my city: Lake Ontario, The St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Cataroqui River. For the past four years draught conditions have come earlier and earlier in the in the summer, which have resulted in the depletion of the water table. People's wells routinely run dry, the water levels in all local bodies of water drops at an alarming rate (and never recovers) and restrictions are placed on water usage.

Does it sound like we can spare any of our water?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:10 AM | Permalink