An extended weekend of amazing live music and wonderful weather; well, musical performances so great that you forget about the rainy Saturday sandwiched between Friday and Sunday.

The Toronto Urban Roots Festival — in the middle of the city at the tail end of a long hot summer — welcomed performers from across the planet with enthusiastic crowds. With four stages stretched out at Fort York Garrison Commons, the diversity of the line-up meant there was something for every mood, every age and style. There was not a single disappointment to the weekend, not even the rain.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just let the photographs tell the story.

Pictured below: The Hives, James Bay, Explosions in the Sky, Whitehorse, Lake Street Drive,  The Sheepdogs, Matt Mays, The Sadies, Matthew Good, The New Pornographers.

All images © 2016 j.g. lewis

What more can a phone do?

Every year consumers, and the industry, wait for Apple to provide an answer to the burning question and tell us exactly how far it has pushed the boundaries of wireless communication.

Last week, as it has done each September, the company released its latest products, including the iPhone 7. And the announcement was met, initially, with lukewarm response. News reports that night almost ho-hummed the whole affair, speculating a certain drop in stock prices the next day, as if the company had nothing new to offer.

It didn’t seem to matter that a new camera system was added to the now-dual camera device, or that screen size was increased slightly and the power and capacity nearly doubled. New colors were added to the sleeker aesthetic, and an improved operating system is to be included. Headphones will go wireless.

But it didn’t seem to matter to the media, as if it was boring, as if they were planning on it. Like they were expecting more.

Again, what more can a phone do, and more importantly, what should a phone do?

Right now an iPhone, or most cellular devices for that matter, can do more than what could be predicated in the comic strips and cartoons of yesteryear. George Jetson or Dick Tracy would certainly be impressed. Mobile devices can transfer data, text, images, and voice, with greater speed and more efficiently than our desktop computers from a decade ago. The new iPhone 7 will do more.

But, apparently, that wasn’t new enough, according to the media.

We all want something new.

New is, many times, the prime reason for packaging and promoting any consumer product, whether food, fashion or footwear. Or even consumer electronics. The automobile industry may well have been the original merchants of ‘new’ as it began the custom of releasing annual models of the same car.

The same could also be said of vacuum cleaners, televisions, or even the “new and improved” baked beans or tinned soup that have been pictured in media advertisements for years.

If you can’t boast of anything else, you can always talk up the new. Fashion trends, and styles, in any season, are always caught up in the much hyped new.

We are sold new. We welcome new. We expect new; so much so that we quickly tire of the old. We now replace the old, with new, almost on whim. It is society’s way.

We eat at the newest restaurant, because it is new, and for no other reason. We guzzle the new beer. We may even ditch an old favorite because we are told the new is better, or different (there’s a combustive combination: new and different).

At one time — it wasn’t that long ago — even in my lifetime, there was this thing about quality. Things were built to last. As long as it lasted, you didn’t need new. And things lasted longer. They were built that way.

Technology has changed that. We all know there has been greater technological advancement over the past 10 years than there has been in the balance of our lives (and it doesn’t matter if you are 20 or 60, for that change has been that fast, and that remarkable).

In the process of all that change, there has been an incredible amount of stuff that has been produced which becomes obsolete quicker than ever. Think Junk 1.0, then Junk 1.10, or Junk 2.0, and so on. The new stuff becomes the same old junk. Perhaps brighter colors, or faster features, but after it has served its short space, it is all headed to the landfill.

We always seem to want new; a new job perhaps, or we get tired or grow indifferent to a partner or lover. We want something new. That new always seems to be waiting in the wings, but after a while doesn’t it always become the same old, same old?

Some of us don’t want new, not always, or not as often as it is available.

I’m still pleased with my iPhone 6; it’s a Plus (that was new; a larger version). It took me a while to fully change over, or become accustomed to the changes from an iPhone 5, but it was welcome. Just as I’m sure the 7 will be appreciated, but I’m also sure I’m going to wait for the 8 (my contract says I have to).

The iPhone 8 will be released next year, on the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone (then so new it didn’t even need a number). By then, I’ll be ready for something new.

The highway may have many lanes, but you can only travel in one direction. I choose forward. There are things to see, things to accomplish, there is only a future.
My past, the parts that hurt, is behind me. What’s ahead is unknown.
There will be times, there always is, where you feel you are running on empty. You are not. If you keep your heart full of love and your mind full of gratitude, you can move forward through anything.

I wrote this passage in a journal about two years ago, as I was preparing to drive to what is now my home. I was leaving behind a city, one with many solid memories, but was departing at the end of a September full of grief.

There is something about September that gets you thinking. It could be that flipping the page on a calendar alerts you to what is about to come. At any time, summer’s heat will succumb to frost, and the leaves will turn and then fall. Autumn is close, winter arriving soon thereafter.

It is the life cycle we have become accustomed to. It is organic, and true.

It might also be that the most influential years of our lives are marked by this month. The return to school was as natural as the killing frosts. Even as parents, our clock is more set to the ninth month, and the return to school, than the other 11.

September spells change.

Almost two years ago I made a major change. After shedding material possessions that were simply weighing me down, I packed my car with what would fit: my art, a few books, clothing, a computer, stereo, and some of my records. These were the things that would sustain me, but not all that mattered.

As I wrote in my journal “All I really need doesn’t require space in the car; only space in your heart and your head.”

I arrived in a new city with hope, plans and dreams. It was time for a change, and I knew it. I knew I needed it

Two years isn’t a lot of time, but in that period I have accomplished goals, or found many of the things I believed I needed, or was looking for. There are still a few wants, or desires, but I am more patient now than I was even then.

It’s not that a made a list (I probably should have) but I’ve managed to check off a few boxes. I am comfortable with a new city, but becoming even more comfortable with my self.

I have learned to approach things differently, and while shedding many of the patterns that may have held me back, I have managed to continue (if not further) the practices that keep me growing artistically and, above that, personally.

No longer do I place the same limitations on what I can and cannot do, and perhaps I have discovered why I am driven to certain extremes. These extremes are no longer uncomfortable. These extremes are where I live.

It’s funny how September forces you to reflect. I did today, and I did so with love and with gratitude. That’s not a bad way to either end a season, or begin another.

Crisp white shirt and a coffee stain,
to my chagrin, or much disdain.
I tried not to dribble, but I did.
Again. The sun shines brightly, on
a beautiful day, and I now carry
a souvenir to remind me of
my errant ways. I tried to slow down,
attempted to change, and now must
move about wearing the residue of
my mistake. Mishaps, careless errors,
or unforeseen disruptions, don’t we all
carry around with us a shadow of
what was. Not always is it this obvious,
rarely this Instant, the stains of the past
remain, as do the costs. Only some of it
will come out in the wash.

Like millions of Canadians, I spent last Saturday evening hunkered down in front of the television. It wasn’t to take in the athletic efforts of our better-than-expected Olympians, though it was a national celebration.

We were all watching the final performance of The Tragically Hip, a band that has turned out to be more than an institution. Over three decades, The Hip has become a part of our cumulative national identity.

More than 11 million of us (a third of the population) took in the live concert broadcast on television, radio, and across all social media channels. The numbers don’t include the crowds gathered at listening parties in bars, concert halls, and outdoor venues (at least 25,000 people outside the arena at the center of it all) to see it unfold on the big screens.

That’s a lot of Canadians. The Hip meant that much to all those people.

If you live outside of Canada, you’ve probably never heard of The Tragically Hip. Despite putting out 14 albums, and garnering significant radio airplay, sales, and all the big awards here, The Hip never made a dent in markets outside our borders. That’s sad.

But we sure loved them. The Hip were often referred to as Canada’s house band, and from the early days they toured from coast-to-coast. The early music was a lot of the same bluesy sort of beverage room rock & roll many of us grew up with. The sound evolved with the band, both in structure and atmospherics, and always featured the up-front vocal style, and lyrics, of front man Gord Downie.

Downie himself was truly front and center on this tour. Last spring it was announced the singer had terminal brain cancer. A short summer tour was offered, and tickets sold out quickly.

In the weeks leading up to the tour, even more so during the days prefacing the final show, media was full of stories and memories about the band, and the impact it had on the country and its people.

Everyone seemed to have a favorite song, or lyrics that spoke loudly, or took them back to a where and when. Downie’s lyrics were layered with Canadian landmarks and landscapes. The references were not always obvious, but you could taste a nationality.

Good art always takes on the tone of the times, and, often, the culture it is produced in.

What impressed me most over the past weeks and months, was the continual reference to Downie’s lyrics as pure poetry, and the man himself more as a poet than a singer. I’m sure it had little to do with the fact the band’s latest recording was titled Man Machine Poem.

The singer is a wordsmith, true and whole. He took what surrounded him, captured the essence of the environment, and turned out daring (occasionally oblique) lyrics with a twisted and torrential rhyme and reason.

Yes, without the music, it read well as poetry. There was some beautiful stuff.

So in all the hype over the tour, and the certain tragic end of a heartfelt and creative soul, admirers and supporters of the band not only referred to the songs as important, but as poetry.

Everyday fans of an everyman’s band were talking poetry. They weren’t talking about lyrics and anthems and just words that rhyme. They were talking about poetry, like it was what they believed in, and like it was something you could. Like it was something hip.

Poetry, these days, rarely gets that sort of respect. That’s sad.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again; poetry is the life force that can break down barriers and unite. It should be spoken more.

“It should bring people together.
Lovers, warriors, politicians and their prey

might better understand themselves and each other
if they thought more in poetry, than in whatever else

they might be thinking.”

We all learn about poetry, and learn it early on with nursery rhymes and latter music on record or the radio. It’s wrapped up in melody and often hidden in the music, but it is poetry. But nobody really talks about it that way. Poetry is just not as cool, or not spoken about like there is even the potential for cool, like music. Music is cool, but it’s just songs and discs or downloads (or vinyl).

The country united last Saturday, to say farewell to a band that has given them something to remember. Music can indeed unite a nation, but I’d like to think poetry had something to do with it as well.

“I am not sure if most people talk
poetry
enough.

Doesn’t it have to rhyme?
Not all of the time . . .
not for everyone.

If not a poem, then
a poet
is mainly misunderstood.

But how? The language is so direct,
it cuts out the crap, rarely are there ums and awes,
and

any hesitation is purposeful.
Poets do not stumble on words. Poets respect words, poets

breathe words.
Words are currency, for a poet. Why not for everybody?” 

   Why Only April
   © 2014 j.g.lewis