New-Old Music?

Being older, there are things which happen that surprise me because it's so at odds with the attitudes I grew up with. Like listening to old music. When I was a kid, that meant Frank Sinatra, and no kid of my age would've been caught dead listening to him.

So imagine my surprise when I heard in a Tim Horton shop two post-nineteen nineties born kids talking about their favorite band. Who was the band? The Beatles!

How did this music survive for fifty years to speak to these kids?

I wondered about it for a while and thought of all the influences that younger people have grown up with. Mostly bad-guy TV shows like Sopranos or Hip-Hop and Rap, all the negative gangster influences that have had kids walking around with their pants waist down around their knees, the prison-chic style so many seem to like. Or the cholo-fashion of t-shirt and baggy pants with crotch lower than the knees.

But most of all, the take-whatever-you-won't-get-caught taking that a lot of youngsters have. It seems that the younger people are finding that kicking someone's ass is not a solution, just an impulse and as they find that gangsta creed does not work in a civilized society, they want to find something that will.

So instead of the violence and people hating negativity of hip-hop, they've found the simple message of the Beatles, live for love, keep love, get love anyway you can, to be what they want to hear now.

I guess it means that people, though they may be led astray, always know what they need deep inside, they need to be people and to be seen as human and to love.

So I guess it's a good thing those people recorded all those songs, so that later generations can find something to open their hearts.

Good Weather

Well, I'm going out more, especially now, at Easter. There's next to no one downtown. It's so quiet and peaceful, just right for walking around. It's nice and warmish, one still needs a small jacket but there's no discomfort.

I do find it hard to work when it's so peaceful. I think for hours of how I should be writing but it just never happens when all is quiet, I need the noise of the city to focus me, I guess. I find that strange in a way but it's always been how I am. When I was younger, I would take off to the woods in the north for a month or so just to escape. I was so happy to come back, though, when I was ready.

My knees are too decrepit now for me to go walking in the woods but I do go out to my friend who lives in a small town outside Ottawa. It's a quiet place and I enjoy being there for something different. One place I'd like to go is the Iles-des-Madeleines an island group in the province of Quebec but closer to PEI. Here's a poem I wrote about one of the islands. It takes place it the nineteenth century.

Devil's Island

I'll tell you a tale

of our own Devil's Island

and the demonic crash

of the waves in a swell,

the smell and the taste

of the ball-breaking weather

the ghosts that deliver

poor sailors to Hell.

We were out in the water

amongst our Magdalens

the wind plucked the ropes

of our rigging at sea

we looked for a port

and saw many lights flashing

“that's old Devil's Island,”

said the skipper to me.

Ghosts began hurling

their fierce imprecations

to “come to the Island

safe landfall to thee”

but the skipper turned round

the ship with a vengeance

“that old Devil's Island

will never catch me.”

I thought he was mad

to be scared of a legend

it was my first time

in a storm on the sea

and two men washed over

to Davey Jone's Locker

“God bless 'em, they'll rest now”

the skip said to me.

Protesting the treatment

of two forlorn sailors

I said to the skipper

“It's not good to tell”
“It's better,” he said,

“that they're resting in Heaven

than entering into the portals of Hell.”

Winds lasted the night

then the voices did falter

the lights blinkered out

and I saw very well

so many rocks jagged

just waiting to smash us

The Devil's Isle gateways

await in the swell

If you're on a ship

and the voices of demons

come tell you it's safe

in their harbor alee

remember the shoreline

at old Devil's Island

then turn the ship seaward

and gracelessly flee.

I fully intend to get there someday. It's got so many beaches and nice, little hotels. I can hardly wait. I plan to travel when I'm older so I'm getting my list ready. Cheers