ANYTHING THAT EXISTS CAN HAPPEN

The community where I am living recycles 95 per cent of its waste. They are almost at the stage where they don't need the garbage truck to turn up. In fact there was a strike a while ago and no rubbish was collected for six weeks. It was piled up all over the city, but this community was fine.

I bump into people on the stairs and have excellent conversations about vipassana meditation or art or Vancouver before there were any high-rise buildings. People set up in the communal areas and practice their cello or guitar. Someone cooks for everyone once or twice a week. I am digging this place.

I’ve been reading a book called ‘The Geography of Hope’. It’s by a guy called Chris Turner, who stayed in this community for a few days when he was in town. Basically the guy went touring for a year and found a bunch of places where people are living sustainably, and therefore are part of the solution. The quiet revolution that might just save us all. He mapped out a vision for a post-fossil fuel world. And like he says, quoting some economist dude: ‘Anything that exists can happen’.

The book is journalism with soul. Kind of like Lester Bangs or Hunter S Thompson writing about climate change. Highly recommended.

I also read up on the Whole Earth Catalog, after stumbling on a quote that turned out to be from it: ‘We are as gods and may as well get good at it’. Too true.

Musicwise I am waiting for my stuff to arrive by sea before I can do any audio recording. Sitting in front of the computer twiddling my thumbs and checking my watch. Right now I am confined to midi. So I am programming drums and making backing tracks with soft synths and playing along in my own private karaoke. Kind of doing live demos to get my head around the direction of the next album. I think it will be vibrationally similar to the first album but I think it’s gonna have a bit more of a groove.

The working title is ‘Wild’, after the place where much of it was written. But I’m also trying to get across a sense of what the mountain and yurt life was/is about for me.

Been listening to Elliott Smith a lot recently. Anyone can write a song, but hardly anyone can write a song. Humbled as ever.

I don’t seem to have as much time here as I did in the yurt. Which is weird since it takes much less time to do anything and it’s not like I have a TV or anything. I guess cities just suck time out of the day. Surrounded by a whirlwind of busy-ness, destroying everything, just so we can get by.