From a skunk-scented perch along Mosquito Creek, Dave spiels about feverish dreams in a Mexican clinic, personal archeology, mirages about the Wonder Hotel, and reads verse about late trains, dammed rivers, watching ships, and men in white coats walking past.
Take your vitamins for: Post-apocalyptic Skunks and Fevers – Postcard #54 (128k mp3, 16:35, 15MB)
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Visiting the Woodshop on Steamboat Island amidst hayfever and national holidays, Dave and Wm. Lenker exchange spontaneous musical freeverse tales of Pennsylvania, Agana Harbour (Guam), Jericho Beach (Vancouver), and Lake Crescent (Washington) while wounded Samson howls along.
Weigh anchor for: Howling at Land and Sea – Postcard #53 (128k mp3, 17:51, 16MB)
From a Lougheed skyscraper comes an improvisational reading with guitars – first more ocean-inspired works from Tristan Corbière, Victor Hugo and Dave Olson into a freeform spoken word account of trip down the Pacific Coast highway to a haunted roadhouse with sequoias growing an inch a day.
Roust yerself for: Skyscraper Stories about Oceans and Forests – Postcard #52 (112k mp3, 19:46, 16MB)
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Starting at the Steamboat Island Woodshed, Dave rambles salty original freeverse with Wm. Lenker on banjo and traces personal poetic lineage winding through French impressionalist/symbolist and Brittany sea-coaster Tristan Corbière (prefaced by Victor Hugo).
Then – as sleet, slush and hail beats down on the Mosquito Creek studio skylight – rolls into the beat American 50s and 60s with John Sinclair‘s chronicle Brilliant Corners, Jack Kerouac riding trains from Atop an Underwood, and Gary Snyder arriving from sea from The Backcountry ~ fortified with jazz, joints and hot sake.
Hunker down for: Banjo Sea Shanties and Beat Train Rambles – Postcard #51 (28:10, 23MB, 112k mp3)
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An aural montage of past new years’ evenings featuring Dave O reading from Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” next to crackling cabin woodstove on Pender Island (note scratching dog and someone with a stuffy nose), followed by a latenight freeverse message to Napoleon, a languid tale recorded in a garage about a bewildering New Years Eve in Japan, and finally a poetic nugget of memory and hope for the future.
Music:
Ohbijou, Steep
Okinawan folkmusic by unknown artist
Wm. Lenker of Steamboat Island – c/o Woodshed Music
Come for a visit with the Poetic Ghosts of New Years Past – Postcards #50 (.mp3, 22:25, 18MB)
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Wrapping up the White Poppies for Remembrance series with a narrative late-night wander through Westminster, London, DaveO meanders past military monuments, victory squares, cenotaphs, palaces, royal parks, war museum, war chambers, riot fences, war protesters, churches, parliament and finishing at St. James park for a sitdown under a weeping willow to consider monarchy, individual rights and responsibilities, and the role of class division in waging war as London’s sirens, trains, and Big Ben fill the night.
Care for a stroll? Meandering Past Monuments of Remembrance – Postcards #49 (192k mp3, 34:19, 28MB)
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Back home on the North Vancouver porch, Dave reads from Clay Mcleod’s essay Why I Don’t Wear a Poppy while sending peace and resistance towards the decent lieutenant Magnum in Iraq and the Philippines along with earnest comrades at arms and peaceful strangers in war torn lands. Plus he admonishes the Canadian Legion for blocking the sale of white poppies while banjo-ist Wm. Lenker sings from the woodshed and The Grateful Dead leave this Brokedown Palace… on my hands and my knees, I will roll roll roll…
Sit for a spell with Peace to Soldiers and Strangers – Postcard #48 (.mp3, 16:58, 13MB)
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A story about Iraqi resistance fighters and their personal motivations by a young writer called Waiting in Baghdad is the crux of the next White Poppies for Remembrance episode – read from the homeporch with a Welsh mining lantern and firetrucks rolling past. Written by Chris K, a player on a dave-coached in-line hockey team in Olympia Washington in 2002.
Hunker down for: Waiting (and Resisting) in Baghdad – Postcard #47 (22:16, 21MB, .mp3)
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Taking a Remembrance Day respite to enjoy a conscious discussion with ‘Trigger’ at Vancouver’s New Amsterdam Cafe, Dave O listens to the consequences and conditions of space, in tangible and gestalt senses, and reviews the paradigm shifts of Vancouver’s downtown Eastside ‘four corners’ – once one of the grandest intersections in the British Empire.
Later, he wanders and reads Walt Whitman (When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d) and Gord Downie (from Coke Machine Glow) to bring it ’round home for this part #7 of the White Poppies for Remembrance series.
Cross the street for: (Meta)Physical Conditions of the Environment – Postcard #46 (18:47, 26MB, 128k mp3)
Music by:
Continue reading (Meta)Physical Conditions of the Environment – Postcard #46
Part 6 of the “White Poppies for Remembrance” series considers the opportunity cost of the lost human potential while at the Victory cenotaph in downtown Vancouver – along the way, troubadours sing about Providence, Joyful(ness) along with spontaneous percussion-scapes and city bus brakes.
DaveO examines the value of life with Gord Downie‘s swift deconstructions of existence from Coke Machine Glow, Henry David Thoreau‘s visionary stories of perseverance and the value of the mindfulness from Walden and a personal declaration of sovereignty and dignity from original Letters from Russia read in hospital to ole gramps.
Awake ye, awake for: “Awakening to the Dawn of Potential – Postcard #45” (17:51, 128k mp3, 25MB)
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