I am just back from taking Midi for a slushy walk around the capital. Dozens of languages floated past us as we walked past the National Arts center and rounded the Canadian version of the White house. It is the giant sandstone house on the hill.... It stood there against a bleak gray sky with it's turquoise copper caps snagging the heavy winter clouds as they sauntered by. It was a perfect day for my winter heart. So much has happened the last few days. Not that "many" things don't unfold each and every day, because they do. It's just sometimes, there is that one thing that jars your face open and rips the breath outta your throat. Sudden death. An untimely, unknown happening that you could never in a thousand Sundays, prepare for. I heard crying in the room when I was told about my friend leaving the earth, and was surprised that it was coming out of me. A kind of wail. A kind of moan. A kind of whimpering sorrow that had no beginning and no ending.

It doesn't last,- that kind of pain. It lifts after you've wailed an hour or two. You can't hang onto it. I couldn't anyway. After a day it comes in like waves, crashing against your rib cage and winding around your eyeballs. Today it just lingered like smoke around everything I did and thought to do. I kept seeing shadows behind me, and I'd turn to see if it were he, but it was not.

Death is coming always. For each of us it waits behind trees and stars and mountains and grass and wind and thunder and sky. To not think of it there, is a fools doing. To be afraid of dying is indeed to be afraid of living.

The thing that I have come away with more than anything else from this tragedy, is the lesson about choices that we make in our lives. Choices to live well or not live well.
Choices to stand up or lay down. To try, to give up. To be ourselves.

Who would you be if there was no one around to tell you otherwise?
What would you do if no one was watching or judging you?

I am going to run a bath and sit for a moment or two before I am taken over to the hall.
I can't stop seeing those shadows dart just off to one side.
I wonder when I'll stop trying to see them. When I'll stop turning around.
I am sorry that I won't see him again. I'll just see these shadows that will eventually be replaced by the most beautiful smile.
The most beautiful big blue eyes, and cheery laugh.
All six foot five of you, pouring over every chair you ever sat in. There was just  too much of you. No door way could quite give you enough space, certainly no big old airplane could even find your legs a place to stretch out. You had a tall heart too. I always felt like you would have stood in front of anyone who would have stood in front of me.
You were as gentle as  you were tall. You were sincere and kind and easy to laugh. You loved a good glass of wine and cold beer.
You loved music like it were your own breath. You loved every note and every note loved  you back.
Jesus must have needed a piano player.....

I won't write anymore for now. I will miss you so very much.
I will think of you from time to time and perhaps someday, I won't be quite so angry with you for leaving as you did.
I will remember your "leaning down hugs".....your orange shirt....your goofy nerdy clothes...
I'll keep an eye on your girls....I'lll track them down for walks and lunches and the latest news. I'll always make the effort for them.

LIfe is for the living.
And live shall we all.

Good bye for now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjwvYI76Nlg

I have been trying to find a quiet moment to write for a month. It's been difficult to say the least. Life is swinging around my head like Tarzan on the end of a rope. It's been a wild to say the least. Tour rehearsals folded into a Documentary documenting the tour rehearsals...(I know....I know...)
I am sitting in my dressing room in Winnipeg, having just ate some Vietnamese soup. There are a few candles burning, the dog is sleeping on the couch beside me and I am trying to think about being in the bus heading back west in just a few hours. I have the day off tomorrow. I will more than likely go for a long walk and then rest. I have not been sleeping at all the past few weeks. So much information racing through the DNA in my head. My whole body throbs at night, weighted down by lyrics and chord changes and lights flashing and myriad of faces looking up at me through the mist. I can see the reflection of myself in their glasses and binoculars. I try and look at as many sets of eyes as I can. Usually people look away quickly, like I am peeking into their hearts. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I can feel what they're feeling. It's odd. Music connects people like the wires that stretch across the entire globe. All the words that go traveling madly up and down them constantly. Billions of words tangled around clouds and trees and legs. If we could see them all, it would blur all of our senses.
I love words.
I love what how they can affect the human heart. How they inspire our imaginations.

I went to a school today in Winnipeg. The students in room 202 have been working for months on a "Jann" project.
I stood in front of a few hundred young people and was reminded of what music really is, what it really does. I took in a deep breath and held it there. I am still holding it.
I may never let it out.
Art is all. You know that David. Art is all heart, and that is what you are.

I need to close my eyes for a while. I am tired beyond tired. Missing home. Missing the trees. Missing thinking quietly. Missing reflecting and pondering. I don't do that out here. Out here can be nowhere. If I didn't have the dog I swear I may go mad....or madder.....
I just heard a sigh seep out of myself that was long and exhausted.

I feel blessed every second I am here. Blessed to have these very fine people come to the shows. Blessed to be working with the beautifully talented band I have. Blessed to have the crew I have.
Blessed, truly.

There are things that pop in my head like a tiny firecracker.

bang. snap. sizzle. small. very little smoke....gone.


They are just tiny pictures of things that don't always make sense. I feel like my brain is growing into space I didn't know I had. You think you can't possibly add one more memory, one more insignificant piece of information, or the whole gray wrinkled mess, will just cave into your chest, and then, there it is. One more thing. One more image. One more sentence. It layers itself into a million different planes of existence. I think to myself, it's all so impossible, and then I think, OH MY GOD, I just added yet one...more....word.

We are remarkable things, we humans. Wicked things. Wonderful things. Kind and cruel things.
Mysterious things, obvious things, deliberate and random. We are shards of a giant broken vase that the Universe dropped when it decided to be something.

It's not easy,- really truly understanding what you believe in. I don't always have words for what or why I believe in anything. I can't explain what God is to me, or what indeed God IS. Yes...God is everything, but that's an easy out. It seems like an undertaking that requires much more than a few sentences to explain yourself and what your beliefs are. I think we're given things to believe in from the second we come through the veil. We're given little hints and ideas and reassurances from the Abyss. We just lose them as we get older. The world picks away at our faith each and every second we stay here. It's a constant battle it seems, to believe in good things. To have faith that is indeed blind and without any tangible proof. You can't see stars during the day. You can't see your breath, but you can feel it when someone is nestled against your neck. I can feel the Universe nestled against my neck. I can feel something around me all me all the time. I can feel something shoot into my chest when I am given an idea. I am certain the "ideas" are not mine, they are simply gift of knowledge. We only discover what were allowed to discover.

The leaves here in the south are still a bright green. A few have fallen to the ground, but there is still a blanket of sage covering the entire city. The breeze is always damp. It's always fragrant. It's always got enough warmth to remind you that summer is gone for now. I walk around the neighborhood I am staying in and seldom pass anyone. When I do, they're pleasant, and they say hello and I say hello. We pass each other quietly. You can't hear your feet moving with the all the crickets that crick..... I always wonder who they are, these people I pass by,-and what their names are and what they do for a living and what their houses look like. I wonder if I'll ever see them again. Was that it, we were just meant to pass by, and nothing more?

I wish there was day where everybody had to have their homes open for anybody to just wander through. You could just go door to door and look through their cupboards and their sock drawers and their refrigerators. My mom and I always thought that would be fun. And then my mom would say, "But that would mean, that everybody could come through our houses"......
She thought perhaps that that wouldn't be so good after all.

Yeah, God and the great and Mighty Universe....
Much to ponder.
The funny part of it all, is how we argue with each other over what the truth is. It's hard to watch it on a global scale. The fighting that basically comes down to , "My God, is bigger than your God"....and the guns and the sirens wail. The righteous fighting the righteous....
Oddly,  siren just went by the front door. I wonder if it's going to the house where the guy lived that I passed this morning? I think about things like that. I think about what might be wrong with him. I feel my brain compressing with all these layers upon layers of pictures and books and words and memories and feelings and ideas....
We just seem to keep finding more space, more gigs, more bytes. Computers have a lot to learn from the human head. We don't run out of storage.  We just run out of time.