stretch raze i'm still some distance off from finishing this thing, but not so far off that it doesn't make sense to start thinking about its physical representation. the clothes it's going to wear. what it's going to look like. trying to start a dialogue with artists outside of the city who claim to do freelance work wasn't going anywhere. i don't think those people are interested in talking to anyone who isn't a pretty big potato, no matter what their websites claim. and i'm a french fry at best. then i got to thinking. the whole point of doing this, or one of the points, has been to keep it specific to this city. everyone involved is here, or they were here when their contributions were captured. no long distance lullabies. no rutabaga in a slingshot. so why not keep that theme going, and concentrate on reaching out to local artists? eight people have already signed on in the space of two days. wasn't expecting that. the idea is, i give them some music, and they give me an image. maybe a representation of a specific song. maybe a response to the music as a more general thing. maybe an interpretation of the album title. maybe a drawing. maybe a painting. maybe a photograph. maybe a sculpture. maybe mixed media. they all work in different mediums. so instead of one artist pulling everything together, you get a lot of different sensibilities swimming in the same soup, a lot of disparate creative energy bouncing around with a common goal, and (i hope) an interesting, wide-ranging visual component that adds another layer to something that's already grown far beyond what i thought it could be. i'll stretch it out as far as it can go. i'm never going to have the tenacity or the energy to do anything this crazy again. might as well make it count. and no one will let me pay them anything, even knowing it's a non-profit, non-vanity project that's designed to sink like a heavy stone when it's done and won't generate any money or attention for anyone. people are nuts. 151126 ... raze ten people now. a few photographers. a few who do their work on paper or a canvas. a few who might do something with mixed media. one works with hand-stitched fabrics and textiles. another is doing a lot of work with watercolours right now. i like where this is going. and i like that i don't know where this is going. 151127 ... raze now thirteen. the bad luck number feels like a good place to rest for now. 151202 ... raze sixteen. sixteen is where i stop, because if that number gets any larger my brain is likely to blow. that's beyond anything i was hoping for. anthony tells me he's already got an idea to draw a surreal wedding scene up high in the trees. that's so perfect i can't even tell you. 151207 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Oooh, this sounds cool, if a little vague to me at the moment. (Possibly because I am sleep-deprived and such.) I'm interested to hear how it will all go. Choir concert Saturday went well, but my legs were aching the next day and the day after that and even a bit today from standing up so long at a time. Out of shape, much? (Thus why the word "stretch" stuck out even before I read this.) 151209 ... raze amy takes beautiful black_and_white pictures. she scheduled a photo shoot with a model to give me an image. got her to dance in the snow without a coat so she could capture what was in her head, the subject a little out of focus, the background moonlighting as the foreground, the face obscured by hair and motion. she did this for no money, for nothing. did it just to do it. some of these people... 160201 ... raze (and of course i didn't stop at sixteen. i stopped somewhere past twenty. but i did stop. i think.) 160201 ... raze sandra does this thing with sharpie markers and alcohol. i have no idea what her process is. whatever she does, she arrives at these colourful abstract pieces that look a little like the acid-soaked dreams of rainbows. i thought she'd make one or two for me. she gave me about fifty. each one is unique. talk about going beyond the call of duty. how do you choose in a situation like that? i guess you just do. 160310 ... raze christy is supposed to illustrate the song her husband played upright bass on, both of them a part of the same thing in different ways. that's too perfect for words. 160325 ... raze anthony painted this thing called "tear pool". and there's a song called "this roof leaks on every floor". the painting wasn't made to match the song, but it might as well have been. you don't get closer to a roof that leaks on every floor than when the roof is the ceiling of the sky, the house the world, the leak some unseen weeping dimpling ground. 160406 ... raze the one person to ask for some money wanted four hundred bucks for something i wouldn't even get to own, that they would turn around and sell to someone else for that much or more. yeah … no. that's not gonna happen. 160419 ... raze calum, unprompted, sent a black_and_white picture he snapped at a train station somewhere in the north of england. something desolate and evocative happening there. it looks too old to be something new. and there just happens to be a song that's the interior monologue of someone who's hopped a train and is bleeding to death after being gutshot at some shady underworld deal gone wrong. i never sent him that song. he never heard it. i don't know how people can seem to know things without knowing them, but they do. or they seem to. this kind of planned accidental collaboration is a funny thing. i like it. 160428 ... raze + 1 really cool abstract painting from adam. 160509 ... raze amanda drew me a tree like no tree i've ever seen. the geometry of it is fascinating. 160610 ... raze for hollow_mast, christy painted some sort of surreal gorgeousness. a woman who seems to be equal parts sea and watercraft. 160712 ... unhinged i prefer the slow movements 160714 ... raze reannon painted two things. i have no idea what songs inspired the things. but they're great things. there's something unique and beautifully organic about her art. you can almost feel the canvas just by looking at it. and then maya came up with something both perfect and surprising, and it all kind of came full circle. just waiting on greg now. then i think i'll have everything i need. 161023 ... raze when you need to get a picture of a painting that's too large to scan and photographer friends leave you in the lurch even after you've offered to pay them, you get a better camera and take the pictures yourself. greg's been saying he's almost done since october. at this point i'm pretty sure he hasn't even started and nothing is ever going to happen there. should still have enough images to work with now. and there might be another surprise or two in the pipeline. you never can be too sure. 170420 ... raze actually, scratch that: greg's been saying he's almost done since november of 2015, pretty much. he's still saying he's almost done now, almost two years later. i think he's going to be almost done forever. well, you can't win 'em all. 170928 ... raze telling someone to forget about the whole thing after two years of chasing them = them finishing that day. out of guilt or spite, i'm not sure. but i didn't see that one coming. two more contributions on the way. after that, i think i can start weaving the visual poems and the words together. 171003 ... raze i don't know how leah does what she does, but she uses collage to juxtapose and repurpose and combine images in a way that makes everything look ancient and new and otherworldly all at once. she took a line about a character being faceless and made it literal in the most fascinating way, making it look as if her face is of the earth, is everything, a part of her and apart from her. one to go. 171028 ... raze all at once i have everything i hoped to get, and one thing more. took a while to get here, but i think it was worth the wait. 171029 ... e_o_i Awesome! Good luck with the proceedings. 171030 ... raze thank you! of all the times not to be a real graphic designer ... still, it should be fun. 171030 ... raze gotta get it done gotta get it done gotta get it done gotta get gotta 190317 ... raze when you spend five years building something, only to discover very late in the game that some of the people you enlisted to help you weren't in it for the reasons you thought they were, you feel a strange mixture of pride and regret. pride for the thing you've built. regret for the time you've lost and the signs you failed to see. i think it was a worthwhile experiment, but i kind of want those five years back. if i could do it all over again, i'd go it alone and save myself a lot of frustration. 190818 ... raze and now it's done. it's difficult to articulate the feeling of putting almost six years of your life into a thing only to have it end abruptly because you've done all the work there is to do. what do you do then? something else, i guess. what's funny about this specific thing is it was supposed to be a collaboration. what it became instead was an exercise in artistic loneliness. putting words in the mouths of others only works for so long before you have to face facts: all you're doing is talking to yourself. i've never felt more alone in what i do. and that's okay. but it isn't the lesson i was expecting to take away from all of this. maybe you get the lessons you need. not the lessons you want. maybe it's all random and none of it means anything. i don't even know if it's a good album. all i know right now is i'm proud i gutted it out and saw it through, and i don't ever want to do anything like it again. 200129 ... raze it's been almost two years since i finished it, and i still can't listen to the album. it hurts too much. my plan from the beginning was to put an exclamation point on the whole thing with an ambitious show at mackenzie_hall. i wanted to involve as many of the people who contributed to the album as i could. i wanted to assemble a huge band with strings and horns. i wanted to have a whole slew of "special guests" jump in at unexpected moments. i wanted to use my platform to refract the spotlight and share it with everyone, celebrating art through friendship and friendship through art. all the musicians would be paid, but the show would be free to the public. it would be a gift to the community, and a gift to myself. i booked a dress rehearsal for the day before my birthday and the actual performance for the day after. prints of all the visual art that became a part of the album would be displayed on the walls, and then those prints would be gifted to the artists who created the imagery. there would be free refreshments and snacks for everyone. there would be free copies of the album for anyone who wanted them. best of all, the whole night would be professionally recorded and filmed, and a lasting document of the show would be made available for free online viewing worldwide. everyone would be invited to be a part of it, no matter who or where they were. i put together a nine-piece band and gathered almost as many guests. i got a grant from the city's arts, culture & heritage fund so i could pay the performers without bankrupting myself. it took half a decade of trying, but i found a filmmaker willing to film the show without ripping me off. every person i asked to be a part of it on the music side of things gave me an enthusiastic yes. watching it all come together was thrilling. it felt like all the years i spent trying to connect with other people while being laughed at and misunderstood and denigrated were paying off. i'd managed to foster a real sense of community and camaraderie without once compromising my art or my ideals. i had everything in place. every role was filled. every detail was planned. and then no one showed up. we were playing existing songs at the show, but there was going to be a lot of improvisation involved. a lot of turning arrangements inside_out. none of these musicians had ever played together as a group before. we needed to share the same space so we could get comfortable communicating and listening to one another, picking up on tiny physical and musical cues. that way, when the time came, we would have the trust and musical muscles we needed to soar off into the stratosphere together. i was clear with everyone about what i felt was necessary. they all told me they were ready, willing, and able to dedicate the time and effort required. not one musician showed up for a single rehearsal. some fed me vague excuses. others ignored me altogether so they wouldn't have to excuse anything. the singer i entrusted to be my co-vocalist through the whole show decided she didn't want that role after all, when she'd committed and recommitted to it a dozen times over. she told me i could only choose three songs for her to sing. that was all the work she was willing to do. my drummer ended up in rehab, out of commission and unreachable until after the show. he was the only person with a valid excuse. at least i thought he was. then i found out he had his cell phone with him the whole time, and he had wifi access. he was still emailing and calling all his friends all the time. he just didn't feel like telling me what was going on. he got someone else to do it for him. i expected some hiccups. but i never thought every single one of these people would refuse to honour the commitments they'd made to me once it got down to crunch time. it was bewildering. i couldn't get anyone in the media to acknowledge me or cover my event. even the people who'd written about my music in the past wouldn't talk to me. the artist i commissioned to make me a poster never gave me anything. the filmmaker i snagged decided he didn't feel like editing the raw footage. i was going to have to do that myself. even the sound guy i hired wouldn't talk to me. and i was still trying to finish the album in time for the show. i found myself pouring water from a sinking ship, armed with nothing but a shot glass that had a big hairy dick painted on the side. i thought about firing everyone and putting on a solo show to make a statement. the other option was marching into a public humiliation with a completely unprepared ghost band. my body made the decision for me. the stress caught up with me. my immune system broke down. i couldn't speak without hacking up a lung, never mind sing. there was no way to get my voice back in shape in time for the show. i had to cancel the whole thing. i gave the grant money back. in all the time this arts & culture fund has existed, i'm the only person who's ever refunded what they've been given. it wasn't the way i wanted to make history, but at least i can say i was honest and i didn't try to cheat the system the way everyone else does around here. maybe that counts for something. the show was going to be the summation of my life's work. it was a way of saying, "this is who i am. this is what i do. i want to share it with you. i want to bring you into it and destroy the barrier that usually divides a performer from their audience." and the overwhelming message i got back from the people who said they were my friends, who told me i could count on them, who claimed to have mountains of respect for me and what i do, was, "fuck you, and fuck your life's work." no one even had the decency to apologize when i told them i had to cancel the show and explained why it wasn't happening anymore. they said nothing. they didn't care. it was just one less thing they had to do. in the hollywood version of this story, they all would have rebooked the hall at their own expense. they would have rehearsed without my knowledge and pitched in to patch the detritus of the show back together as a way of making up for what they did to me. this ain't hollywood. then i had to watch as someone else got wind of what i tried to do and sucked the fat off the bones of my dead show. the same journalists who ignored me gobbled his half-assed opportunism right up. some of the same people who couldn't be bothered to show up for me showed up to be a part of what he was doing. it happened at the same venue i booked for my show. one of the filmmakers who ignored me made a teaser video to promote the event. the posters featured the same insect that was on the handbills i was going to give to people as individual invitations to my show. even the website he made was just a sexier, slicker variation on the one i put together as part of my pitch to the achf jury. he sold tickets for his show. he sold merch. he didn't film it for anyone to see. he saw an opportunity to make some money and get some attention, and he ran with it. everyone celebrated it as one of the best things to ever happen in windsor. there was a lot of talk about the greatness of the artists involved, what a visionary idea the show was, and all the communal warmth it inspired. no one said anything about what i tried to do, or how these musicians threw me under the bus when i asked them to honour the commitments they made to me. it wasn't art. it was a soulless circle jerk. i had to eat that and find a way to be okay with it. i've been doing the best i can. but a lot of the joy has gone out of making music for me, when music has always defined who i am. that experience killed something inside of me. until i rediscovered my voice and started writing here again, and until all of you jumpstarted my heart with the beauty of your words and your friendship, i wasn't sure if that thing even existed anymore. i was listening to cjam this morning when a dj played a song off of the album i haven't listened to since i finished it. i was able to enjoy hearing the song out of context. it features a few guests playing a bit of sax and violin, but i'm doing all the heavy lifting, and it begins and ends with me on my own, talking to myself. a pretty neat accidental metaphor for the whole thing, i think. the next song in the set was by the guy who stripped my dead dream for parts and soaked up all the accolades. the best fiction in the world couldn't have invented that. it didn't make me angry. it made me smile. i listened to him sing a bunch of words that didn't mean anything to him, and i said out loud, "i'm going to write the best songs of my life. and if you ever hear them, pal, they're going to fucking disintegrate that gnarled hunk of nothing you call a heart." 211207 what's it to you? who go blather from