damage

rock, foot, stubborn

heart.

disclaimer

Shut down your rhetoric Mills. It’s coming from another place, your not usually there and it makes you sound overblown, Ithink

and besides it’s lazily translated.

just leave the bedside lamp on when the darkness comes, sleeping with Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (fallen from your hand) and digging into your ribs, The Lord knows your plight

hope the feral cat below your window doesn’t sting you awake with her lament again,

“i wasn’t jumping, for me it was a fall, it’s a long way down to nothing at all”

you can’t break out of a circle that you never knew you were in

float above the city over a pair of legs hitting fluid against the concrete and that will not tire before your stomach twists up in cramps that you can ignore.

chemicals release you the adrenaline can free you for a moment funnelling through all this space- don’t forget this grace

you wake up too early, as usual, your mind has an image, coming into focus, her soft hips and hugs, a  lilting presence that won’t leave

and the physiological dread commences as soon as the memory is organized enough to torture you awake

pulsate dull agony and everything stretches out with no relief, colouring your imagination with this loss

there’s no sleeping-in anymore these days, (is there any laughter?)

get up to the book of wisdom, tell yourself JUST ONE DAY. this one day….

And the gifts come unexpectedly

a sense of whimsy, a star through the cathedral roof, the professor with his endless books….”Dostoevky and his religion” on the floor

and Tolstoy,a portrait, staring you down from the wall with strength and luminous eyes, and you are comfortable under his glare.

But it all just serves to sharpen your senses for that pain that’s coming back (circling like a train on a small track)

then vividly you see the hours with cold company of books, of words! oh professor- do you sleep?

what small pleasures decay here alone

alone

yet the spirit shows his whimsy again , and you, you  pursuer who woke too late, find yourself being pursued irregardless of your performance

which is decidedly poor, but improving, I think

something you can trace beneath the mediation of this dying skin, fleshly weariness houses the mystical symbology in each moment, a lighter strain as time digs in, Oh what does it mean, A house…a house, a loneliness that fuzzes into your scarred brain

wake up. the devil’s on your back.

about half the stone fillings de-lodged from your heart, schrapnel at the place of your strength

and the Lord’s calling you to battle.

..it’s going to take more cereal this morning, extra almonds.

May the betrayer be proved loyal

May the coward be proved brave

May the lazy-bones run the race

May the weakling find his strength

May the bitter shout out praises!

May the selfish lay down his life

May the passive finally act

May the lonely open up

May the late arrive early

and May nothing but Christ be seen in them all.

 

Is that the bell to sound that the race is already over?

your running now anyway

Were you asleep? (how could you be asleep that long?)

You are awake now, the veins in your head are throbbing out

Running…

More than late,

too late.

what is too late?

your going to give too late a run for it’s money

your behind everyone

everyone else is on the last lap, and the crowd is laughing at you

the proverbial turtle who took a nap and thought he was a rabbit

but it doesn’t matter your pushing against it all now

the bronchial burst of your lungs and the coldness of oxygen,

upping the pace above the frenzy of your frailty (the flesh is weak!)

you look ridiculous, you are a cautionary tale, your folly obvious

Too late! the crowd mocks you, TOO LATE they laugh

but your running faster now,

somehow you know she might not, probably won’t, can’t be there,

there will be no rescue, at least not how you think now Son of Adam

it doesn’t matter, that is not the question anymore, your ears are roaring in the cold,

sweat obscures your vision

and you wonder at your script

who is writing this? If it is really “Too Late” does that make your story a tragedy?

the crowd seems to think it’s a comedy (your lopsided running)

let them laugh you think, upping the pace again, way out of your depths

Let us show “too late’ a thing or two pounds the rhythm of your feet

Too late for what? for your own self-fulfilment, certainly

the clock was up on that from the beggining…

to late for some flashy, wordly emptiness…definitely

too late for peaceful idylls of love- who knows?

these questions don’t matter

you are going to make it a story at least now,

throwing your broken body up agains the very real concrete wall of “too late”

Oh Spirit that strengthened the Legs of Elijah who ran faster than the King’s Chariot from the Darkening Sky

Strengthen this sinners legs now!

and everything is blurring (but becoming clear)

and the crowd is no longer laughing as you burst around the bend

because “too late” is a myth when your heart’s still beating

Mute Math Stall Out
Racing on a faultline
Bracing for a landslide
Conscious of every move getting harder
Has the race gone underwater?

I keep stalling out
I just can’t keep up
There’s alarming doubt
Am I good enough?
But you keep coming around
To convince me
It’s still far from over, oh

We are still far
We are still far
We are still far from over

It seems I’m in the horrifying middle, the nucleus, of the paradox. Younger and more ancient then I have ever been. I felt the dread note of frailty and intuitively expanded it (imagining it’s roots thickening) little splinters now widen into cracks. (Please Lord let the light get in before the dark returns). No wonder our spirit sight is dimmed by our bodies humming in youth, our true strength sapped in the desire to be strong.

A city in the middle. So ghostly and full of salt, a refuge in between Toronto and Fredericton: No man’s land. I walk home alone past midnight. These streetlights screaming at me like I am accursed.

It’s just a room. a little balcony. Always too hot in here. I leave the door open to get all those molecules of temperature moving in the middle realm.

Who is this man from another land with his stories? He doesn’t trust me. He is ageless and mad and we learn to laugh together. He never sleeps and works 4 jobs. I don’t feel like a student anymore.

A child of 2 years walking by. Stares at me with such intensity that I am shaken at the bus stop. He marches on, holding his mother’s hand.  His look wrenches water from my eyes. I stand incomprehensiby struck dumb at the worlds mad spinning beauty and the mad spinning folly of all appearances.

This damnation of love,

a microcosm, a medicine against the only separation we should fear. (And let not your spirit depart from me…)

What pain ceases to be mercy when it comes from your hand Lord?

Let me learn. Every morning I carve these things into my hand with ink.

Sitting in the patch of sun, cross legged with the book of wisdom “It pays to take life seriously my son…”

“now let love and loyalty never leave you”…..

My confused betrayal is with me everyday, a betrayal in words, confused meanings, not in my heart. Haunted by the question of whether the wound is fatal? Should I fight for that love which is being buried under snows of time even now

Ahh a little fire.

Am I a lunatic amnesiac remembering your love in patches of grace amidst the torpid clamour of my self indulgence or a confused saint blown by winds, disciplined by loving, stern hands?

I do not know, and these winter winds stir up sand, blowing me both ways, removing skin from spirit.

The doubt first strikes you when your walking alone. “what you thought was freedom was just greed”. You scuff your feet on the sidewalk, stopping in your tracks. And everything you always knew, but you couldn’t see (because it was too close), appears, as open as the sky. And you know that you love her (or was that just the potential to love) Regret is the cathedral bell that rings the death knell on your false self.

You’ve changed now. The aloneness, a great enveloping strength (or disease in as much as pride spreads through it), leaving you exhausted, die again to shed it, feel the smarting of the open air. The courage to choose.

Running and sweating toward salvation (don’t recourse to self) through diabetic dizziness and blustering strengths, the fear and trembling and the wind roaring in your ears.

You will be taught paradox from confusion now, my son. The anesthetic, itself a mercy, wears off. You know now why you retreated to numbness, but you will never go back.

But If in this confinement, this purgatorio, lady wisdom walks with me through lowly paths (if it is she!) then let my heart be glad.

Let my lips be seared with the holy stone.

speaking nothing, or the truth, as we scrape up the mountain.

Is there a Beatrice who lights these mortal, icy heights?

Is it her, now only distantly visible, in physical space but  The light of her faith become a secret fire in my marrow for now

sustaining me even across great distances and nurturing me through pathways I have to walk to wholeness…

(and there’s another poem for you surfacing now that it is too late, it’s seeds buried in my brain under the satanic snow of confusion, and sprouts now, and I hope it’s not too late)

My son, remember that pain is not a virtue in itself.

And all my friends who I have left (oh I will not take you for granted now!) What light you shine on the tiny saplings of my spiritual life. Tender green shoots in the light of your countenances, how healthful your presence is to me (even when, especially when you are difficult, annoying or antagonize me) Let’s put our fingers in the soil (though the shit stinks heavy)and crack and die like seeds to grow.

I just wanted a little Time…now Time wants a little of me

Who wrote those trite words about self-improvement-mixtapes and forgot to delete the post?

Who sat out in the sun until skin and heart were sore and burnt, but didn’t move to pick up the phone?

Who waited and watched while “We” became more and more real, enlarging in his sight, but couldn’t yet grasp the picture.

Who loosely talked of sanctification knowing not what it really meant.

Who cried a thousand tears, ignoring the knocks on the door, turning the music up and waited, and waited for himself and for his breath to be less ragged?

Who felt the speed gaining downhill through the city on a bike through the rain and thought of you?

Who lost himself under the weight of a thousand existential panics and needed to throw off his heart for a while to find it again but couldn’t find it for the maze of contradictions and then sobbed the outlines of the missing organ?

Who’se choices appeared so terrifying to himself that paradoxically made all the hardest ones in a show of courageous, and ill informed, machochismo?

Who thought he could purge and save himself, through the will of brave decisions and intentions, to escape the damnation and the existential vacuum of modern society?
Who feared aloneness so much, and felt the challenge so heavily, to face it, maybe unnecessarily.

Who needs what your hands brought, who feels your light growing, peripherally everyday, without any words left to say.

I didn’t know that I wouldn’t have the time…

“Coping with this loss has broken me
And I’m just hoping things are all as they should be
I pictured you and…”

the requisite strangeness

City of spirits. The whole plane starts roaring, people lean back, hearts palpitating, white man medicine is machinery of anti-gravity. Oil, black blood of the earth is the sacrament of flight and pristine miracle of science.  Cutting through the atmosphere in a quaking aluminum hull at 1000 kilometres an hour and still unable to catch the plot. Landing in ghost-ruins. City of warped perception and half finished construction sites.

Canadiana.  The cracks where the dark gets in. spiritual scare tactics. light a candle and chase off the ghouls.

Rewire. coffee breaks every 20 minutes. adrenaline insomnia. threats of prairie thunder. Rain breaks oppression of heat. Slip in the grass. dostoevskian fever talk about learning russian to avoid stilted academic translations. parodies of joy disintegrating to the real thing in spite of ourselves.

Righteous indignation of the ’social justice’ crowd just tires me out now.

When will the revolution start migrating from ‘the streets’ to our hearts where it will also do some good?

They win me over with their kindness though. At least as long as I have a beard and bad haircut I am ‘part of the movement’.

Thinking about compassionate language as self-delusion- the middle child syndrome- accomplishment driven. Doesn’t bother me anymore- the wonderful neurotic people trying to fix something with whatever. God will change our hearts.

“I have often been staggered by the forces of the ordinary that cajole the human experience into cowardice. Relentless mass-mediated daydreams croon lullabies to nightmare; meat hook economic rackets hijack freedom with student loans, predatory credit, and eternal mortgages; narratives of responsibility harass the mind with financial planning, time-management, highly-effective habits; and illusions of security, insurance, and retirement prod us into proper place. Lurching through life in the midst of such clamor, is it any wonder that so many trade the tremendous for the trivial, that the ecstatic fantastic wow of existence dims into murk and shadow, flickering into fluorescence like some stepped-on plastic geranium?”

-Tony Vigorito

Wired: But “real” for you is so … unreal. You set The Strain in New York. In the past, your depictions of the city, from Mimic to Blade II to Hellboy, have had a fabulous aspect.

Del Toro: “It comes from my first trip to New York as a child. I was walking around Central Park, and I saw one of these expensive apartment buildings. At the top was a Gothic tower, and I said to my mother, “A vampire lives there.” I wasn’t being metaphorical. Then we went into the subway and—wow! For a guy from Guadalajara, the subway is mythical. The underground of the city is like what’s underground in people. Beneath the surface, it’s boiling with monsters.”

Chai Guevara

An idea came to me for a future coffee shop venture.

Chai Guevara: serving the revolution a cup at a time.

The Menaces of Suburbia

Around 10pm last night I was having a run down the street, which I always run on, parrallel to the train tracks. Directly to my right is the steep incline that descends to the tracks which I have affectionately christened “Gollum Ravine” (because I thought a Gollum was following me from the gnarled bushes one night, but that is the stuff of another story).

It was a warm night and enjoyably still. I was listening to some Matthew Good, in a serious trance, when something in my mind rattled. I do not know how else to explain it. A rattling premonition interrupted my thoughts and caused me to take off my headphones.

My senses sharpened and I instinctively peered down the steep, dark incline of the “Gollum Ravine” wondering when some desperate creature would spring out of the darkness and grab at my ankles.

Suddenly, before I could turn my head around, all the passengers in a passing SUV were loosing bloodcurling screams at me! A hellish symphony of female, male and goblin-esque  voices punctured the stillness of the evening. During the fraction of a second before their screams turned to laughter and they drove past,  my mind flashed through a hundred horrifying images and my heart gave a single bursting pulse. I had been the victim of a drive by screaming, and I was angry.

I briefly considered running until I found where the SUV was parked then employing my own scare tactics, but, I reasoned, I would probably lose a court battle against the yacht-riding frat boys.

I continued my run, thoroughly shaken, and with a new awareness of the menaces of suburbia. The barren branches of dark tree’s curled into the night sky, casting twisted shadows in the sickened yellow of a flickering streetlight.  I noticed a hooded figure further up the street, shrouded in shadows, waiting, as it seemed to my mind.

I crossed the road to get away from Gollum Ravine. Running past a hedge of tall bushes I saw, or imagined I saw, the dark silhouette of a dog following me from behind the hedge and emitting a low and steady growl. The night had filled with all the wrong possibilities- a single transformative moment had flicked the fear switch in my brain to on and opened my imagination up to sinister wavelengths.

When I was finnally out of earshot of any lurking Gollum’s I began to reflect on how dramatically the perceptions of my surroundings had changed. In these days of economic turmoil and institutional collapse many people are constantly tuning their mind radio’s into fear FM. This is a surefire way to limit your awareness, and by extension your responses, to only the wrong possibilities.

²²“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. ²³But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Matthew 6:22-23 (New International Version)

Why U2 remains great. (a totally uncool and lengthy diatribe)

No Line On the Horizon is a real album.

It seems our favourite Irish lads have managed to resist entropy once again. With three years in the crucible of the studio they have still have found something to prove. U2 is opening up new ground in the world of rock myth, where, as the story goes (at least historically) you are supposed to die or peak by the age of 27.

Like all of U2’s best albums No Line on The Horizon contains an inner logic all it’s own. Lyric’s are cross referenced and symbols are echoed across the album’s eleven tracks, each adding a richer interpretative colour to the the theme of  “freedom from self”.

U2 will probably never again reach the heights of “All that You Can’t Leave Behind” (which is my favourite album-period.) but this is hardly a criticism.

So embarassingly earnest...and still awesome.

John Frusciante once described writing music as “building 5th dimensional homes for people to live in”. If you understand what that means, then like me, you will be very happy to have a sonic headspace to move into. This album is a compelling “5th dimensional creation” that has 3 movements, a clever thematic schema and an consistent atmospheric colour.

I like this album for the same reason I like the cover : restraint.

Moment of Surrender feels like mature U2. I didn’t care for it the first time I heard it, which, when we are dealing with slow burners (like most of U2’s best work), signals that it has potential to become a lasting favourite. It doesn’t hurt that Bono sings the hell out of this zen-like hymn, voice cracking like a ravaged soul over the triple meaning of the lyrics.

The goal, with this record, was to create Futuristic hymns- contemporary soul music or space blues grounded in gospel with grit. In this spirit all the instruments, including Bono’s ‘vox’ (which is, excepting ‘Boots’, more raw and soulful then he’s allowed himself to be this decade), are distilled to their bare essences.

None of this, though, get’s us past the embarassing fact that “Get On Your Boots” is just a steaming pile of awful. The lead single is the worst track on the album, not a bad bait and switch gimmick, but still unfortunate. The song suffers because of Bono’s weak attempt, throughout the verses, at a shitty vertigo-esque falsetto. “Let me in the sound” he pines annoyingly over the otherwise cool drum-driven bridge. Larry’s moment wrecked by Bono’s eagerness to fill every second with the sound of his voice. “Boots” is the sound of U2 grasping for relevance- and it is not pretty.

Still we are ready to forgive him, especially when the following track is the excellent “Stand Up Comedy”. “Comedy” is a tune which finds the Edge finally playing a Zeppelin-esque rock riff, laying down some funk for the verses and Bono delivering the sweet line “Stop helping God across the street like a little old lady!”.

Recently, the ubiquitous frontman has stated “In U2 we have a sense that music is a sacrament, that it is holy”. Some people catch a glimpse of U2 on an itunes advert and think “great- more aging sellouts”. So when Bono confesses, in reverence, to God “I was born to sing for you” in Magnificent, the line is maligned by critics, as a smarmy boast to U2’s audience.

If your not ‘in the know’ about U2’s primary operative mode, which is worship, then you will misinterpret the vertical direction of the lyrics.

What people don’t get about the wee Irish lad, is that his egomania is mostly an act, and besides, is readily diffused by a gutsy vulnerability and inherent uncool vibe. He is well aware of these facts, even stating on the album that  “the right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear”.  Once you get past the media saturation you might see what Bob Dylan saw when he said “Bono has got the soul of an ancient poet and you have to be careful around him”.

"More Relevance!!!"

Universal intimacy, an ambitious oxymoron, has always been U2’s highest aspiration. They practically pioneered the emotional territory that has allowed the likes of Coldplay, Kings of Leon and Radiohead to exist. Many people are fond of saying ” I prefer the old U2, you know, Sunday Bloody Sunday”. This seems to be the popular consensus or at least the most ‘indie-credible’ answer.

If you ask me,  U2 is at the pinnacle of their career right now. Their last three albums have each made a real case for “best work yet”.

For those who distrust either massive popularity or earnest idealism- I feel your pain. Really, I hate the masses too, it is a huge blow to my *credibility* to admit that the world’s biggest band is my probably my favourite band (somehow I know this keeps me human).

The final song of the album is “Cedars of Lebanon” and the closing lines read:

“Choose your enemies carefully/ because they will define you/keep them interesting/because in some way’s they will mind you/Their not there in the beginning/ but when your story ends/ gonna last longer with you than your friends”

It’s politically charged statement from a song situated in war torn Lebanon but there’s more to it.  Most rock bands have by default, picked the “Establishment” (the Man, the System) as their enemy. Larry Mullen once said in an interview “We never saw the establishment as much of a threat, U2’s real enemies have always been internal. Things like complacency, hatred… things we all experience.”

And again with the touching Tony....

Guillermo Del Toro insisted that, in art,  “simplicity is the hardest and most admirable thing to pull off”. Creating recognizable universal archetypes, that do not descend into cliche, is indeed, the most difficult of accomplishments in music, film or story. What so often happens, when your not paying attention, that the same expert universal simplicity that no line on the horizon pulls off, can come across as trite-sentimental hash.

If there’s one thing U2 does better than almost any other band it’s this:  Non-Resolution. The Edge’s guitar playing is unique, in that, instead of satisfying or resolving the melodic expectations, his chord progressions only conjure up a sense of longing- creating these aching non-choruses.

“Breathe” does this wonderfully. It is a song about being free from consumerism, the self and gravity. “You’ve got nothing that I need…I can Breathe” raves Bono while The Edge stirs up that ethereal, painfully expectant sound.

(Larry and Adam are great on this album too but this is already far too long)

Penultimate Lyrics:

“I found Grace inside of sound/I found Grace and it’s all that I’ve found”

The Bruce Coburn-esque “Scream into the darkness/squeeze out sparks of light”

“I’ve been in every black hole/at the altar of a dark star/my bodies now a begging bowl/begging to get back to the rhythm of my heart/to the rhythm of my consciousness”