This is how we win.

In our fight against uniformity we sought for the unique, and ended up just like everyone else. A tattoo from a book was our passionate rebellion. That dirge of a pop song, the throwaway track nine from the debut album turned out to be everyone's secret favourite. Kitschcloth shirts with an embroidered "Gord" became a game of who could out cheese who. No one wins because everyone fights.

What wars we wage over bike lanes and the price of gas. 30-second full-page sponsored content making us out to be thieves and liars. How we rail at our enemy, the pickup truck driving carnivore and his six-pack habit. We, with our solutions of grandeur and our monoculture fuels. An attack right now seems the kind that opens us wide. The thrust will hit heart, but so will the bullet. None will arrive to announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

All that remains is our mutually assured destruction. Our battle just wears us all away, our thoughts frozen into stone then eroded by our own righteous storms. Who will be left the spoils of perfect debate: the praise of the choir we so carefully trained?

Poem - Fer Gord

Here we are morning grey
Still stunned by his last day
A map of denim sky
With that look in our eye

Shoulder wrestles shoulder
You and me year older
Without one to cry on
Still gonna sing along

A flag at Gare du Nord
He says, did you know Gord?
Double take turn and look
And that was all it took

The guy brought Chanie back
From the loneliest track
From our bad way to be
So we could start to heal

Singing us nebulous
Yeah, he was there for us
Neighbor, brother, cousin
Bloor, Portage, or Robson

Rewrote our inner map
Greater than maple sap
We saw from in his eyes
A truer north untied

We were there in Golden
So consumed at the inn
That night in Toronto
Screaming fer just one more

Screaming to see that smile
Screaming to hear that style
That night was all through
That night we all cried

Short Story - Tears of Anubis

Adom strides across hot sand, a gaunt spectre of the dark Egyptian night. He is the quiet rustling chitin of the scorpion. Every step toward the tomb is lightning in his veins, an adrenal hum.

Tonight he will feed his family.

The table has become a still life to Adom. Every day the same look of hunger on his children's faces, the same pained eyes on his wife. Tonight, the same as last, there would be only day old bread, bought with the last penny. Egypt is a tomb, his house a frieze on the wall depicting the terrible dictatorship.

As Cairo burns yellow on the horizon Adom creeps toward the old temple. “I am the asp,” he thinks. “I can sting and go unseen, I can take what Haji asked for and return to my family a provider.”

“To the west there is a temple,” Haji began as he puffed on the hookah, “Americans dig there.” Adom crests the dune, a stark rectangle breaks the horizon. “They are young students and will frighten easily.” The sky is a shimmering ink stained by ancient stars. “At two A.M., they change the watch.” A flashlight sweeps and bounces around the darkness. “You should only have one archaeology student to frighten.” Adom scrambles over the dune, the shadow of a spider. “Take this sickle-sword. Wave it around. The Americans will run away and you can take whatever they have found.”

Dalilia begged him not to go. “We will wait for the riots to end. You can find more work at the museum.”

“If I get an artifact for Haji, we will eat for years. I must go.” Dalilia waited for the children to sleep before she wept.

Treasures have lain in the Egyptian sand for generations. Tonight they should be freed for the starving destitute people of the Nile. The entrance to the Temple of Anubis glows with the blue light of a television. It throws pale, spastic shadows across the valley. Adom takes a breath, and enters the tomb.

A narrow, low hallway passes under a few long strides. The glow from the TV intensifies as he passes the into the inner chamber. Shovels, brushes, and baskets are carefully ordered around the small chamber. A man in khaki shouts and knocks over a small stand. Adom stretches out his right hand, the sickle-sword an iron tendril in the night and his face a grim sneer. The man is short, stumbling, and Adom steps far enough into the room to let him leave. A rifle. The archaeologist's eyes turn cold. The television goes out, and the black of the desert night rushes in.

The sharp click of the hammer becomes a flash and roar. Adom is blind and deaf, all his heat is trickling down his chest. A gurgle, “soldiers.”

“Yes, soldiers,” the man spits, “we replaced the archaeologists tonight.”

The Oath of the Shadowblinder v0.2

Here is an update on the progress of Shadowblinder. Stay tuned for more soon!



Intro - crushed under lies

Go fucking practice!

3/4 time fresh tendrils 6/8

F# A C 2 4 7 focus on rhythm
Em F#

Transition - theme of the light

    '     '      '      '
. . . . . . |. . . . . . |


Riff theme - justice

I. am. . .luminous.
The wave, and the mote.

I hold the eye,
The fang, and the claw.

Sparks of glaring rage
The flash, and the flaw.

Stain night in glimmer
In red, in the bright!

Turn light upon the lie.
Come the Shadowblinder.

//Break

Guitar solo - theme of the light

Shadowblinder light my eyes
Save me from deceit and lies

Apparition turn your rage
Take this darkness from this age

//Falter and fade face of charm

Riff theme - apparition of lies

Theme - Justice repeats

Theme - The Oath

Render, in the glare
The shadow sightless;
In blinding everbright;
the morning nightless.

Solo 2 - dawn's justice

Refrain - theme of the light

Out on the ash of shadow.

_________________________

Below this is rejects, cuts, temporary storage
_________________________

//Shine the everlight of morning


Place upon the truth the morning stare
To render, in the glare, the shadow sightless



We are the light
Together shows the way

We are the light
That blinds this darkness

What bends crystal light?

What breaks under light? LIAR!


With
eye to read and
Claw to rend for
Fang to ravage
What's hidden inside.

Be they
Preacher /break them!
Charmer /
Taker /







The light belongs to us all



So true that every lie falters and fades
We hold it in our hearts, this light.

The light belongs to all of us.
Such power that all life is lit
Such

The light is inside us.

Shine on in words,
The pen, and the code.

Praise this breath of sight
The wind, and the wings.

Beneath my glaring rage,
It cracks, your fault.

Background Inspiration - Shadowblinder

As promised, here is a bit of the inspiration for Shadowblinder, and a little update on the progress.

The Shadowblinder is my Ibanez Gio that I stripped and upgraded. I bought it as a project to see if I could take a shit guitar and make it something special. It wasn't an awful guitar but it was a cheap Chinese beginner model. The neck was straight and the fret wear wasn't too bad so all I needed was some new pickups, tuning machines, and a coat of paint.








Since the concept was to make a metal shit-kicking drop-tuned monster I chose Lace Sensor Drop and Gain pickups. These are made specially for way down tuned crunchy riffage and are fairly unique seeing as everyone rides Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio pickups for everything these days. The Lace pickups kill. Super tight, full frequency, and output for days.

I chose some Planet Waves auto trim tuners for the headstock. These are pretty neat. Besides the really nice 18:1 gear ratio, these tuners are a breeze to string up. There is no guessing about how much slack to put in the string, you just feed it in, lock it down, tune to pitch, and it snaps off excess string. Perfect every time. They are rock solid staying in tune as well.

In thinking up a name for this beast, I was thinking about some of the problems I was seeing all around me. In my work and in the world it seemed that too often, people were just dishonest. Hiding something, holding things back, folding the truth under layers of shade and darkness.

Being the huge fan of Robert Jordan that I am, I wanted something like what would be the name for one of the myths in his world. In The Wheel Of Time saga, the overarching fight is between the light and the dark. The dark lord has many names, one being Sightblinder. He is a taker of light. I wanted this guitar to be a bringer of light. A hero of truth, bane of darkness, the cure for the deceived. Shadowblinder was born.

Now, the song Shadowblinder has been a long time coming as is normal in my process. I think I first crossed some themes about four years ago with the line:

Shadowblinder light my eyes

A punch into a chorus. The Shadowblinder is one you can call on when facing down deception. It will help you see truth where it has been hidden and it will reveal to you the liars.

The most recent spate of inspiration was to imagine this being has sworn an oath. This piece was lingering near the surface. Originally I had wanted something like this painted on the guitar somewhere. Like Tom Morello's many guitars. A pledge to the light, to stand against lie and liar.

I will share the next iteration as it appears in my notes in its entirety and without much comment in a few days. I don't normally like to share and speak about works under construction as I feel it can purge the emotions I am feeding it.

Shadowblinder has taught me a few things. One is that in the rush to complete something, you should try to take your time or you will just barf out any stupid idea and run with it. Case in point: I was struggling to add something to the guitar like a pickguard. I found some neat grating that looks a bit like the Chaos Cross. I feel like the results are less than stellar. So it needs fixing. I've got a good idea, but my compulsion is to keep it secret until it is finished. As I mentioned above, sometimes speaking about it might feel too much like it is done to my mind and the motivation will be spent.

Often, I am reluctant to open up a project again for revision so long after I've named it complete. No longer. It may mean my process gets extended for great lengths, but if it serves the results better I should do it. I will explore this further when I present Gift Of Ravens, a short story that needs a new ending, and maybe a few small touches.

Further, this and these projects have showed me that learning is a very purpose based path for me. I learn far more when I cease practice for the sake of practice and focus on learning to clear a hurdle. For example, learning to solder so I can swap our some pickups, or learning how to use high gain clipping stacks and which amps and settings work with such effects so I can make the brutal riffs I require.

Come back soon for the aforementioned update to Shadowblinder. Follow the progress as I learn to combine several disciplines to achieve my goals.

Thanks for reading.

Paper Feathers - Poem

A breeze of disdain
Rustles paper feathers
Worn like memories
Of cash in hand
Receipts of thefts

An eddy in the river
Draws rip-rapp
Against soft scales
Little scratches pace
A cancer's death

Silver light dances
Upon forgotten graves
A story never written
More broken chain
Than empty bottle

Sit by the overlook
And hear the breeze
Speak the truth
In those feathers
That you wear

The Oath of The Shadowblinder - Poetry fragments/early draft

What follows is some early rough ideas for a song. I'd like to share these fragments today as a window into my process, a tease of a current work, and to serve as an archive for an early draft.

Come back in a couple days when I will share some of the inspiration for the Shadowblinder.

The Oath of The Shadowblinder

I. am. . . .the l.um.inous. truth,
The wave, and the mote.

In my hand I hold the eye,
The fang, and the claw.

Beneath my glaring rage,
It cracks, your fault.



Face the Shadowblinder.



Shine on in words,
The pen, and the code.



To the blinded darkness
Shine the everlight of morning

Place upon the truth the morning stare
To render, in the glare, the shadow sightless



We are the light
Together shows the way

We are the light
That blinds this darkness

What bends crystal light?

What breaks under light?

With
eye to see and
Claw to rend for
Fang to ravage
What's hidden inside.







The light belongs to us all



So true that every lie falters and fades
We hold it in our hearts, this light.

The light belongs to all of us.
Such power that all life is lit
Such

The light is inside us.