Kevin

When 21 Seemed an Impossible Dream -The Cult at Strombo’s – Bonebag

In 1984 I turned 18. For most of the year, though, I was 17. I struggled. So much stuff swirling about my head at that time. Everything a secret…everything a wound, a laceration. I needed something.

Somewhere inside that year, The Cult released Dreamtime. On that EP was a song that had an extreme impact on me. Vulnerable, whipped, tired, bone-weary and too old to live…I finally found my theme song. There was one catch…I was not yet old enough to claim it as my own. Maybe…just maybe…if I survived a couple more years, I could sing the song and own its lyrics. But the mere imagining that I would live to the ripe old age of 21 was such an impossible concept…I just could not fathom it. Never in a million years would I live to see the day when I could say I was 21 and felt like I was 99. 21 was three or four years in my future. No way I could make it that long. The pain was too explosive.

But I wanted those lyrics to be my reality. I was always looking for something to propel me forward…a future signpost to keep me going in the right direction. A part of me always knew, even amid the chaos, that life was beautiful…that it was worth holding onto.

The song was Bonebag. And its message crippled me to the core, and simultaneously made a fighter out of me. I WAS bonebag. I swear, I wore that song out. When I was down–and I was down a lot back then–the song served to lift me higher. I’d listen to Ian Astbury bemoan the exhaustion of life through those words and it would sooth me, appease something in me not quite reachable by reason.

Yep. Too old to live. Not strong enough to stop living. In the slothenly trap of the ennui that surrounds, life goes on.

The Cult became a favourite rather quickly.

From an overly (overtly) romanticized blog post I wrote after seeing the band in 2013 at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto:

Enter BONEBAG. That song grabbed me by the short ones and refused to let go. But Bonebag was just one of the fantastic songs on the EP. The Cult immediately spoke to me. They were medicine men arriving at the exact moment music was set to make an apocalyptic shift into the great shitter in the sky. Ian Astbury, Billy Duffy and the boys were mercenaries of rock. But not just rock…they were the bridge punk was desperately longing for. POSTPUNKGOTHICROCK. And Ian was some kind of mythical incarnation of the first Rimbaud in a leather jacket. He’s as much a Lizard King as his predecessor, JIM MORRISON. 1984 was a year of revival. Those of us who knew that music was about to die latched on to THE CULT with a quiet desperation and a deep blissful sigh. The Spiritwalker had come…and he gave us the Bad Medicine Waltz we were all waiting for.

The marquee outside the Danforth Music Hall, December 2013

I find it hard to speak of The Cult without going overboard. My passions run deep. There was a time when I latched on to things because I knew they were saving my life. The Cult was one of those things. I’m talking lifesaver in a turbulent storm kind of thing. They gave me a song with a future accuracy I could strive for. I was only 17/18, and I felt like 99 all the time. I wanted to achieve the right to sing the lyrics of Bonebag AS a 21 year-old. I know it sounds stupid…but there it is. Bonebag became my I-think-I-can song.

lizardking — Ian Astbury at the Danforth Music Hall – December, 2013

When you’re struggling to go forward, you grasp at all the little straws along the way. You can’t leave today… you’ll miss the next episode of Fame. You can’t leave today… you have tickets to see Alice Cooper in two weeks. You can’t leave today… you need to finish that Mark Twain novel you’re halfway through reading. Always an excuse to stay… always the wisdom to know that it gets better. Unless the wisdom vanished and you fell into another hole. During those times it was just accidental that you would survive.

I had several ports in the storm. The Cult was definitely one of them. Bonebag was one of them.

Thanks to George Stroumboulopoulos for having The Cult visit his place in Toronto last night for a quick 5-song set. And thanks to George for including myself and my daughter on the guest-list for last night’s gig. If someone had told my 17/18 year-old self that I would even live to see 21 and sing those riveting words “Only 21 but feel like 99 sometimes” I would have called them crazy. Here I am 49…feeling like 21 sometimes. And not only have I seen The Cult twice in stadium shows and once at the more intimate Danforth Music Hall…but I can now say I saw them in a house…in George Strombo’s living room.

Life takes twists and life takes turns. None of them are ever foreseeable. Some are unbelievable. I’ll chalk last night up to the unbelievable and amazing variety of turns. It was an event I won’t soon forget. Standing there, face to face with Ian Astbury as he powered through the 5-song list taped to the floor between us, I seriously gave thanks. Without knowing it, he and his band threw a song out there into the wilderness some 32 years ago…and it helped save a life. It was only my life, but it was still a life. Thanks George…and thanks to The Cult…for last night and for everything.

Sometimes it’s nice to remember where it is that we have come from… and how far we have come from there.

Ashley. The Cult in Strombo’s Living Room. 2016.

Edited to add the full 5-song set at Strombo’s House…which is now live!

Goodbye to My Beautiful Camino Friend…

Sometimes people come into your life for such an incredibly short glimpse of time that it’s hard to imagine they could leave a huge lasting impression. And then they do.

Nick, Danielle, and Connie…taking a break at a stop along the way.

And then, sometimes, you get to walk the journey of the Camino de Santiago…and every path you cross is significant, every person you meet is a brother or a sister. Just like how you are called to The Way, you are called to meet and walk with those you discover along the way.

Every step of the Camino has beauty to offer. The trick is keeping yourself open to it. It is, at times, a tough journey.

My Camino journey was with a group. Sue Kenney is a friend and Camino guide who takes groups to Spain twice a year to walk a portion of the Camino together. She is a kind heart and an amazing Camino guide. When I went with her group in May, 2014, I had no idea what it would be like.

A bridge on the way out of Portomarin, Spain.

On day one, our group discovered each other…we made friends with one another. We were filled with anxiety, excitement, jet-lag, hope, longing, fear, curiosity. The electricity was palpable! We were giddy! As we set off on the journey to the church in Santiago, we found our pace and we walked together, and in smaller groups, and alone. It was constantly shifting, changing, evolving. We walked with one another and we walked with strangers from around the world.

The person I covered the most miles with, by far, was Connie. At first, perhaps, we walked together because our pace was the closest match. Though, truth be told, Connie actually had a slightly faster pace than me.

The famous church of Portomarin, Spain. It was moved from the riverside up a hill…one brick at a time. They numbered each brick so that they could re-assemble it at the top in the proper order.

Right from the onset, Connie felt like a good friend from far away. We just hit it off instantly. She was wise and giving. She came into my life at a point where it was very much in flux. She was exactly who I needed to talk to at that time. Her no nonsense approach to life was amazing. She offered life advice, relationship advice, and surprisingly, even advice on how to walk properly.

Did I mention that beauty could be found at every turn?

Connie was the group photographer. And she took incredible pictures along the way. She joked that the hundreds upon hundreds of pictures that I took were always blurry and out of focus. I joked that I was capturing my shots with an amateur eye and I didn’t have the pressure of taking the perfect shot every time because I wasn’t a professional. She took beautiful shots…breathtaking. I was lucky to find one good one in a hundred. But I was okay with that. Often, I didn’t even stop walking to take a shot.

Mountains and fields everywhere. It is the most breathtaking journey to Santiago de Compostela…

We would lose each other along the way, walk with others in and out of our group, catch up with one another for breaks…it was all utterly organic. No plans beyond WALKING TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA.

One of the beautiful signs that others have come before you is the many ribbons you’ll find in the trees. Most with messages of hope and wonder…most in different languages. The world walks the Camino.

Each night the group would meet up and break bread together and sleep together at the same albergue. Other than that, we were wayfarers walking our way across Spain.

There is a lot of graffiti along the journey to Santiago, Spain. It seems to warn you to LIVE YOUR LIFE NOW.

Connie and I had some extremely deep conversations while we walked. We divulged secrets to one another…shared wisdom, laughs, jokes, tidbits of our lives outside the journey. The connection grew quickly, as it does for all who take this magical journey.

winding road.jpg — We discovered the long and winding road of song. It’s in Spain…on the journey to Santiago…

By the time we got to Santiago, I felt such a strong bond with Connie. As a whole, the group definitely bonded. It was filled with wonderful people. But there were also smaller groups within the group. Myself and Connie being one of them. She was fearless, headstrong, a smartass, courageous, funny, serious, irrelevant, relevant. I knew I would love her forever. I hated that she lived so far away from me back home. She was in Mont Tremblant, Quebec. I’m in Toronto.

You meet SO many people on the journey. This is Connie saying hello to a horse. Its rider was from Germany. We met up with him a few times. He was a wonderful man. We struggled to communicate, because of the language barrier. But we made do. Hugs are universal. So are smiles…

Connie came into my life, and became a huge part of it for just over a week. Such a short amount of time. But such a relevant and profound time it was. It was thoroughly life-changing.

The man who owned the beautiful horse. He was showing off for me in this shot. A quick gallop as he passed me by. This was our 2nd last meeting. We were able to share a few minutes in a cafe a little later that day…

The journey changed me. Our group changed me. Connie changed me.

Walking up the hill outside of Portomarin, Spain…where our group had a beautiful picnic at the top of the world. A picnic I will cherish for as long as I shall live! Connie getting JUST THE RIGHT SHOT…while I snapped a hundred random ones on my way up the hill.

It was not long after our return from Spain that Connie contacted me and let me know that she had cancer. She was confident that she was going to kick its ass. And because I had come to know the strength and resilience she carried with her throughout her life, I had no reason to doubt her. No reason whatsoever. She was a warrior. I struggled our entire journey to keep pace with her. She was the first person I ever met who walked faster than I did. There was nothing she couldn’t do.

A great number of people pick up walking sticks along the way to Santiago de Compostela. Some decorate them. Some keep them. But most stack them into a corner outside the office where you go to receive your Compostela certificate.

I will never forget my Camino journey, nor any of the people I walked with (both inside and outside of the group I began my journey with). I hold the magic of the journey close to my heart.

I will never forget the RAIN, and how we often forgot it was even falling.

I won’t forget how grateful we were on those rare moments during our walk when we actually cast shadows and the sun brought us much needed warmth.

Claudette, Julia, Connie – Three friends walking THE WAY…

I will never forget the snow. And I will never forget seeing Claudette and Julia walking together (shown above)…and often with Connie and I. Julia with her scary blister near the beginning and her impossibly painful knees…and her trucking through come what may. I was on this journey with a group of Goddesses, truly!

Connie and Sue as we see our first glimpse of the church in Santiago. A beautiful moment captured forever in my heart. The prize at the end of a long journey!

I will never forget our group. Sue, Nick, Danielle, Tanya, Claudette, Julia, and, Connie. Camino peregrinos forever.

10530800_10153381687102021_2886807677387451733_n — Our last night together in Santiago de Compostela, before heading our separate ways back to our lives…changed forever. Myself, Connie, and Marielle (from the Netherlands)…who walked some of the journey with us (the honorary 9th member of our group!).

There are so many people I will remember from my journey. People from all over the world. None were more memorable than Connie. All were amazing!

Connie, having fun on the Juliet balcony…inside the restaurant of our hotel in Santiago. I did it first. Because I’m silly by nature. It made me feel so great when Connie did it…because she was not silly by nature. It meant more when she did it.

Connie and I both talked of one day going back and walking the entire Camino journey, all the way from France. She saw it as a part of her future. I imagined myself doing the same. But now I know I MUST walk the entire Camino sometime in the future. I wanted to walk it for myself. Now, I want to walk it for Connie.

Connie passed away on the first day of spring. I write this with tears in my eyes and a profound sense of loss.

I will remember you always, Connie. You gave me so much in our one brief week together. You were a beautiful soul and I was blessed to have walked some of your journey with you. I can’t believe you’re gone. It is a profound ache to know that you have left us. I had you for such an incredibly short time…but you have changed me forever. Rest in Peace, my beautiful Camino friend.

Look Back, Look Way Way Back…the Writer You Used to Be

I was recently sifting through my previous blog, which is now locked away in the interwebz forever. It was called A WANDERING MIND and it was almost exclusively for poetry. Circa 2007-2010. It carried hundreds of poems upon its crooked little back. The thing I notice when I occasionally pull it up to have a read is that the poems were, by and large, inauthentic. Or, if you will, fictional. Sure, I occasionally pulled out an authentic retelling or heart-truth. But everything was cloaked and shrouded…presented from a place of darkness with just the tiniest hint of a back-lit glow to the authentic. I was writing from a place of self-repression.

I give you exhibit A. In way of preamble, I wrote it on March 30th, 2008. I never burlapped a thing in my life. Hydrangeas? The word must have sounded pretty to me at the time. The bloody things do not have winter limbs…if you do it right. I don’t recall EVER being in Penetanguishene. Or on a train heading north, for that matter. My father was never dying. What’s a Plymouth? I couldn’t pick one out of a line-up.

Things to Do Today

Remove the snow
from the burlap shrouds
encasing the hydrangeas,
ready their limbs for rebirth.

Take the train north
to Penetanguishene,
where screams of ennui
will be muffled, go unheard.

Call my dying father,
speak of ’72 Plymouths
getting air on railroad tracks
long since removed.

Light the candles
on the sky white mantle,
watch the flames flicker
and later disappear.

post-amble? Come to think of it, I did own something in that poem. I remember the weightlessness of going over railroad tracks while climbing a steep hill in a car. It’s a glorious feeling to get air. Especially if there’s music on the radio at the time. It’s all Dukes of Hazzard and what not.

The more I scour the old poetry, the more I think I should rewrite it with my freer post self-repression mind. When you live with a secret like childhood sexual abuse, you shift everything to fit into little boxes. Even all the things you want and need to be authentic are slightly askew. Simply because you’re not the you you were supposed to be (and you never will be–you are a changed version of what you would have could have been). Your walls and barriers and safe places BLOCK OUT just as much as they RESCUE AND SAVE. So, really, until you face the demons…there is no winning.

That poem had almost nothing to do with me. And just like the hundreds of other poems that came from that period of my writing life, I had no recollection of having written it. It is as separate from my psyche as War and Peace is. I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but I did not write War and Peace. It can also be said that I didn’t write any of the poems that came from the dark era. But I did. It’s a conundrum. How can you own something that is not connected in some way to who you are?

On the same day that I wrote the above poem, I wrote one that perhaps I can still feel a bit of connection to. My go-to novel to use as a template for the perfect novel has always been The Great Gatsby, so the admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those things that is constant in my life…it was there in the darkness and it is here in the light. I suppose a vestige of who we are is always there, whether or not we choose or try to access it.

Ode to F. Scott Fitzgerald

And I will dig up his grave,
and wonder at the box
in which he is kept.
And I will adorn
myself with his bones,
wear them like a coat
enshrouding
my fragile body.
And if he be but dust
I will swallow
in handfuls
to have him inside me.
And all for the sake
of an image
he wrote,
will I suffer
the height
of my madness.
“and the curtains
and the rugs
and the two young women
ballooned
slowly
to the floor”.
And for that
I will adorn myself
with his bones,
wear them like a coat,
Wrap myself in wonder
and partake of his dust.

Perhaps it need stay in the darkness. From what I can gather, I dug up the old sport and ate his dust. These are things of darkness, I’m sure. But thus is the extent of my hero worship of his writerly abilities. So, I’ll own it still. It gets to stay.

I’m not sure what this blog post is about. I just feel the need every now and again to revisit the writer I used to be. I don’t try to judge him or weigh the texts of my past with the texts of my now. I don’t need to know that I improved, and I certainly don’t need to know that I haven’t. I just feel that–whatever it is that I find–I accept it for what it is. Something I wrote while on my journey. As with life and each step we take to get us to the step we’re about to take and the place in which we find ourselves, our past writing is what has brought us to who we are now. Just own it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t discard it. Like the bad memory that made you who you are, the bad poem also had a hand in shaping the writer you have become.

Acceptance of self. It’s a good thing.

On the same day I wrote the two above poems, I wrote this one on apologies. I have no idea where my mind was at…but I won’t apologize to myself for having written it. I am writer, hear me roar.

Prelude to an Apology

We’ll let the devil
Tongue our eyes,
Tantalize
And drink our light
In gulps divine.
We’ll let the saints
In numbers,
Stomp our dreams
And teem inside,
With lust,
The dust divine.
And shout,
We will,
The awkward silence,
Awake the night
We walk in vengeance,
And just a slight of hand
Away from wonder,
We’ll construct
Our own mythology,
but never will we offer
Those elusive
Things we straddle
And preen to pretty,
The often considered
But never whispered
Hushed and hidden apology.

Be your writing. And remember to look back on the journey every now and again…