Feist is certainly a favourite of mine and it would seem, a favourite of this blog. When Katie showed me what she was working on for her Art for Art project the connections to Feist were already there. Katie, an interior designer, is naturally obsessed with geometric shapes (I'm not sure if that's natural but I'm trying to normalize Katie here). What is so interesting about Katie's project is that it shares obvious similarities to Feist's merchandise (think triangles) and interestingly, Katie hadn't seen any of Feist's new designs until after she completely finished her poster. In this poster project, Katie takes another track from Feist's The Reminder, "The Water", and reinterprets her listening experience through images.
Here is Feist's "The Water":
And here is Katie's interpretation:
What stands out to me when I hear "The Water" is its echoey, but almost muffled, sound mixed with Feist's piercing voice during the chorus. In the poster, the selected images reflect the beautiful and the scary: the deep wide ocean, the bubbling waves, the cliffside of a mountain, and while each have such beautiful elements, they also have their dangerous side. The triangles emphasize the sharpness and the harshness of the dangers Feist talks about, but their touching sides portray their connectivity and how we often confuse or forget about these elements.
This is Katie's second contribution to Art for Art. Her first contribution, inspired by Timber Timbre, can be found here. For more on Katie, visit the contributors page.
Samantha Savage Smith's album Tough Cookie is a total break up album and for some time (I'm talking at least two months) I poured my soul into this cd, forcing it into my parents ears at dinner, wailing it at obscene hours of the night, and driving along to it at every available moment. Ironically, I lent the cd to a subsequent boyfriend and never got it back after that break up (am I allowed to write that on a blog...too soon, perhaps).
Of the thirty days that make up a month, fifteen of those days I am overly emotional, and if there are thirty-one days in that particular month you can bet that sixteenth day is included in the "overly emotional" subheading (I'm really selling myself here). When Tara emailed me a draft of the short story you're about to read, I started to cry. Maybe it was just one of those days, but I'm going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say No! I'm stronger than that! Those tears were down to evocative writing! Tara really captures the essence of Smith's track "You Always Come to Mind" and it left me with a sense that sometimes doing what's right can even feel wrong, that there are no easy answers when it comes to matters of the heart, that the one you want is sometimes the one you can never have. Samantha Savage Smith is a local Calgary musician who was picked up by recording label Arts & Crafts at the Calgary Folk Music Festival a couple of years back (or so the rumour says). I would definitely recommend seeing her play live; she's lovely.
Before I dig myself into an even deeper grave, here's Samantha Savage Smith's track "You Always Come to Mind":
And here are Tara's thoughts on SSSmith's song and a few words on the creative process, followed by her very own short story:
"You Always Come to Mind" was the first Samantha Savage Smith song that I had ever heard. I immediately fell in love with her unique and powerful voice, and the depth and melancholy of her lyrics and sound. Even though this song is about unrequited love within an affair, I wanted to entertain the idea that she might actually have captured his heart. I was excited by the possibility of writing it from the man's perspective, truly thinking it likely that he didn't just walk away unscathed.
* * *
His fingers close around the cold knob of the door. He tugs it open and there she is. From the blond locks that curl just so as they fall down her back, to the large honest eyes that he had spent so much time trying to read, she is perfect. Her full lips are set in the smallest trace of a smile.
"Hi," she says, stepping inside his front door.
"Hi," he replies softly, brushing a rouge snowflake from the curve of her cheek. He hadn't previously realized that you could feel so much in one moment. As he watches her remove her coat and place it with her bag on his cluttered sofa, tenderness, regret, guilt, and the tiniest bit of despair start to course through his mind and force him to take a seat at the kitchen table. Even in the dim light, he can see her nervousness. She knows. Something is different this time. There's a silence, only to be broken by jarring beeps, letting them know that their coffee is done. He hands her a piping mug and asks her how she is. She's fine.
She breaks the long silence, "I know that there was something you wanted to talk to me about. So, what is it?"
He places his mug down on the table and looks at his hands. All of the carefully planned speech that he had gone over so many times in his head had disappeared.
"I can't do this anymore," he hears himself say hoarsely. What had he done?
"I know."
"You do?"
"I knew that eventually you were going to have to make a choice. I had just hoped that the choice would be me."
Her words were enough to crumble his false exterior calm. He raked his fingers through his hair and whispered, "So did I."
"I just want to know why. Can she really make you feel more than I do?"
She was so matter-of-fact. Not cold, but not pleading. She was too strong for that. He wanted to silence her musings with a kiss, but he knew that all she would accept was answers. He felt sick to his stomach. An explanation was the one thing that he could not give.
He said her name, but couldn't get any further than that.
She stood up to go, scraping her chair ever so slightly against the run down wood floor. Not bothering to put her coat back on, she tucked it under her arm and strode resolutely toward the door. This was it. She would be gone in a moment. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe he could take it all back.
He called her again and she turned. Waiting. His heart was full of her - the scent of her laundry soap, the flush of her cheeks after a few glasses of wine, the way she crossed her arms when she was preparing for a fight.
Then she was gone.
The truth was he thought this would be easier. He thought it would be easier to face her than having to face the rest of his world. It was only now as snow and a draft swirled in through the open door that the truth formed in his mind. Coward.
Months later, he was standing in a clearing on an icy podium. Looking into the crowd of people dressed in their finest and warmest attire, he shivered. There she was. She was just as beautiful, although he wondered if she appeared more tired than she used to. She stopped fiddling with her program, and glanced his way. Suddenly, he was aware of a question that was hanging in the air, waiting for his answer. With two small words, he determined that his life would be filled with longing, regret, and wondering about what could have been. She would never know.
"I do."
* * *
Tara Abel is a young mother of two and married to her high school sweetheart. On her blog, Maybe, Matilda, Tara says she enjoys waltzing around the living room with her babies and making the acquaintance of quirky fictional characters. For more about Tara, see the contributors page.
For more on Samantha Savage Smith and her album, Tough Cookie, visit her myspace.
A while back I said that Art for Art was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about a Metric song "The Police and the Private". After our conversation, Alastair (said friend and actual genius thinker behind A4A) sent out an email to five other friends, myself included, asking if we would each write a short story that represented our interpretations of the song. It was summer and none of us did it. But then, when A4A started up mid-November I emailed the gang and asked if we could do it, this time for real. I got nothing but positive responses and I'm pleased to present to you the first of the five short stories by Marina McNeil. In coming months you will also be introduced to the interpretations of "The Police and the Private" by Alastair Pollock, Kristy Kalin, Layne Merryfield and myself.
Here it is, "The Police and the Private":
Before we jump into Marina's short story, here is what she has to say about the creative process and the inspiration she drew from the song:
I first heard Metric late one night while I was watching that old CBC program ZeD (does anyone remember this? It was awesome for a cable-less kid like me). I was 17; coming out of a punk phase, and really fucking pissed off... that kind of anger that comes with youth and just can't be replicated once you age. Throughout university I fell in love with Metric and Emily Haines' funky dance moves, writing feminist school papers, and Natalie Portman's mad acting chops. "The Police and the Private" always reminded me of V for Vendetta and the intensity of a society stretched so taut it is almost about to break. I am attracted to music that can do something unexpected, like pair a sweet low tempo melody with unnerving and tense lyrics. The musicians mess with us, making us think the tune will be a wee ditty we can jam to mindlessly and then make us stop and think about what they're actually saying. Like the first half of V for Vendetta, the song gives us a false sense of calm with something bubbling under the surface.
THE POLICE AND THE PRIVATE
Every day when I wake up I feel as though my heart is beating so fast it is going to break through my ribs, tear open my flesh and race away from my body. It takes 6.5 to 7 minutes to normalize the rapid speed of my pulse, depending on the day. Wednesday in particular requires almost 7.25 minutes for full rate reduction.
After I have calmed my nerves I begin my morning rituals. At 0704 I rise from bed to put the sheets in order and set out my uniform. Once my clothes are prepared I program the shower to disperse 7.6 litres of water per minute at a temperature of 41 degrees Celsius for optimum cleanliness. After 6.75 minutes of showering I towel dry, perform my hygienic measures, and dress for the day. At 0718 I ingest 1200mg of medication with a pre made meal for maximum early morning sustenance. At 0728 I don my outerwear and wave my hand over the digital membrane to register my residential departure.
I used to get frequent panic attacks when I was a child. The physicians at the Edification Institute prescribed a variety of treatments but every day I would wake up sweating and shaking, not knowing where I was and shouting words I didn't understand. I felt like a thousand voices were shouting my name inside my own head by I didn't recognize any of them. The other children would stare at me and that made me even more afraid until a nurse would come and carry me off to the infirmary. This continued for approximately eight to ten more months until I finally settled into the routine of the Institute as it was supplying me with applicable preparation for my designated profession.
After a brisk walk I arrive at the Quadrant C Eastbound train station at 0747. Quadrant C is one of the Central High Density quadrants of the city and there is always an abundance of activity in the area. On the south side of the train tracks, citizen arrive and take positions on the platform, an architecturally pleasing structure with its slick and clean cement, steel beams holding up a wide and protective glass awning reflecting a glare of morning light. Each citizen stands equidistant from each other behind a yellow safety bar lining the edge of the platform, each at designated train entrance points.
On the other side of the train tracks are some old dingy cafes and little shops that sell various bits and nostalgias to shady characters that looks though they might be unregistered. Oddities crowd the unwashed windows of these junk boutiques that people slip in and out of like mirages. Peeking eyes can sometimes be glimpsed from the flats above but they quickly disappear once they think they've been spotted. I can't help but wonder about these hidden humans and what they do when they are alone in these cold, dark rooms, afraid of the creak of a door or the eyes of a stranger.
At 0750, four sharp electronic gongs in a consistent rhythm bring the platform to alertness. Each patron drops their belongings on the ground and stands spread-eagled awaiting passenger screening. But instead of security agents inspecting the platform, a stream of officials fill the sidewalk on the opposite side of the tracks, zoning in on the front door of an out of business sandwich shop. Two thick-looking agents carry a short but effective battering ram and after pounding the door three times the old wood gives way and the officials rush in. Within 1.25 minutes one of the tick agents emerges with a child in his arms thrashing and wailing and fighting to escape.
When I was in the infirmary at the Institute there was a girl who was sometimes in the cot next to me with her arms all bandaged up. One day when the nurses were out of the room she whispered to me "I know what you scream about" but would not say anything else even though I probed her for answers. Each time I saw her she would say something cryptic like, "You must get out before you are all gone" but one time a nurse overheard us and I didn't see here again until the day I saw her jump from the top of the wireless communications tower. I stopped waking up screaming after that.
The child in the officer's arms is approximately five to six years of age, although it is hard to tell children's ages with so few of them located in this quadrant. Tearing out of the broken doorway is a bedraggled woman approximately 32-36 years of age. She is shrieking as though someone has torn one of her limbs from its socket, a wail that slices into your heart. Her bony arms under her greying garments scrabble at the official holding her child and she slashes her fingernails across his eyes. Cringing from the pain the agent loosens his grip on the child enough for it to scramble away and be scooped up by its mother. She frantically clutches the child to her and tries to hurry away from the security agents but there are too many, a dozen of them coming from all angles. They snatch and grab and tear the pair apart. The child's oscillating cries hammer the air as the whole platform watches in silence. The mother makes one last grasp from her child as it is loaded onto a truck but is promptly pepper sprayed by an official and thrust down onto the concrete. The truck roars away leaving the mother outside the sandwich shop holding her face in her hands. She slowly raises her head and howls one long howl of agony into the void, crouching on the side of the train tracks, her red and swollen eyes raining tears onto the pavement, helpless and alone.
I board the train when it arrives 4.5 minutes later at 0800 sharp.
* * *
Marina McNeil, also known as Marina McAwesome, is a graduate of the University of Calgary with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is currently working at Mount Royal University Admissions, The Mount Royal Conservatory, and as a private tutor. You know you want to read more of her stuff, so check out her blog. For more on Marina visit the contributors page. Woot Woot.
When David and I first started emailing back and forth about a project for Art for Art, David talked about ideas for a new photo or a composite. However, when David emailed me this week with his photograph, it wasn't so much about the final product that he emphasized but the shared experience, the relevance and the feelings that resonated with him. What Dave sent me was a photo he had taken on a flight home from China last year and as he wrote in his email, "although the photograph in my contribution was not a direct result of the song, it may not otherwise have been shared. I think that's just as powerful, or maybe even more so. It brought relevance in one fashion to a piece of art by me that already existed."
Dave chose Hello Gumption as the source of inspiration and here is a little bio of the band, taken from their MySpace page:
"Hello Gumption is the result of a collaboration between song writers David Arcus and Brendan Quinn. The pair met in the summer of 2007 and began writing compositions for television and radio. A handful of these tracks stood out above the others, and since then, have been turned into full length songs. David and Brendan continue to write together, and as their compositions grow and evolve, so does the inevitability that soon they will have a full length album of their strongest work on their hands."
Their song "Spinning As We Go":
I'm going to let Dave take it from here:
This particular song began as a short for an Excel commercial and later turned into a full-length track. I would describe their music as a bit folksy, and the sound screams "road trip" to me (as in this is the kind of upbeat music that I feel like I want to listen to on a road trip). Heck, ignore my description and form your own opinion about it. I don't feel my description does the music justice, anyway. It seems quaint on some levels (though I don't feel that to be a detractor) and extremely deep on others. To me, this song is about a number of things: romantic relationships, adventures between friends, and the journey of all of humanity as we move forward into the future on our little planet.
I chose this particular photograph because I think it does a great job of expressing the depth of each of these types of relationships as well as provide a bit of a literal basis for the lyrics.
David Latos graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a Bachelor of Music. He discovered photography well before university, but it wasn't until he was there that it really began to grow on him. Check out more of his work at his website and read more of his bio at the contributors page.
When I first asked Jess to make a contribution to Art for Art, Jess said she didn't know many Canadian musicians but she'd look into it. I'm not going to lie, I was slightly afraid Jess would email me with a link to Justin Bieber's "Baby". Don't get me wrong, I love Canada's national treasure as much as any eight year old girl (yes, I've even seen him in concert) but Justin Bieber wasn't exactly the style I was looking for.
To my sweet surprise Jess chose The Rural Alberta Advantage, who deceivingly, are from Toronto. Their 2008 release Hometown contains tracks such as: "The Dethbridge in Lethbridge"; "Frank, AB"; and "Edmonton". And if you haven't heard "In the Summertime" I suggest you youtube/google/grooveshark or do whatever it is you do right away. I did a little bit of research to find out why an Ontario based band would focus so heavily on a region of Western Canada and I found out that Nils Edenloff, guitarist and singer, was raised in Fort McMurray and draws on much of his childhood experiences in his songwriting.
This is why Jess is the perfect person to write about The RAA. Jess is an Albertan girl. She has lived here her entire life and only laughed at me when I got lost trying to find her house in Cochrane. She had little sympathy for me, but really, how can you get lost in Cochrane?
Take a listen to The RAA's song, "The Ballad of RAA":
Anyway, here's Jess (Who's that girl??? Who's that girl!!! It's Jess!)
I wrote this poem within the context of listening to the song "The Ballad of RAA". As I listened to it I came to realize that this song is totally about the friendship I have with the amazing person who first introduced it to me. This poem is about heart break, crisis, environment, distance and friendship. It is a reflection on an event, within a time, within a setting, within a life.
A Prairie in Three Parts
1
I lost my heart in the shadow of a mountain
a cut and then the drip drip
flowing
out with my pulse
flowing
through the foothills, past the rose and wheat.
pulling
stopping
shedding
unravel ling
until
it had gone
now/it has gone
2
fall and tear and break and die
and no and what not yours inside
have you been here before?
Wild rose of the Rockies, you'd know.
you'd know.
and now and wait and know and
no and yes but I can't hide
in the x-ray grass.
Tell me what the future brings.
two more hours
of time.
It will pass.
It will pass.
With our hands held across the nation
more than we knew
before.
3
These things will pass. It's the good ones that will last
* * *
For more on The Rural Alberta Advantage, visit their website.
In the past week I have received five new creative projects for A4A. One of my worries concerning Art for Art is its dependence on contributors (somewhat like the unease that comes with group projects...you know, like having to gauge who's going to put in the work and if anyone is actually interested and living in fear of a poor grade from then on). Turns out that plenty of people are interested and even during the nauseating month of November, when it's really crunch time, people are willing to put some time aside for art. When Kaitlin emailed me Thursday night (I believe she had an essay due Friday morning too) she expressed that willingness to create: "Once I got the ball rolling on this, I just couldn't stop." To everyone who has taken that time out of their hectic lives or has corresponded with me with ideas and excitement for a potential project, thank you. Anyway...
Kaitlin decided to write a short story based on Beast's track "Devil". I'll let Kaitlin take it from here:
Beast, a band from Montreal, offers a different kind of music to the songs previously worked with in Art for Art; it's a mix of indie and electronic (you may recognize "Mr. Hurricane", one of Beast's songs from 2008). Betty Bonifassi, the vocalist, has previously worked with DJ Champion, providing the lyrics to his song "No Heaven".
When I started listening to Beast again with this project in mind so many different ideas developed with her assortment of songs! It was hard to narrow it down to one, but I finally picked "Devil". When I first got their CD, the title of the track completely threw me off, but I listened anyway and like it immensely. The song gives me this sense that the world is ending but no one is doing anything differently.
I have a fond like of dystopian novels. The paradox of society continuing in the same manner while it should be falling apart because something is wrong excited me. It's that tone that I carried into my own piece, which I'm having trouble titling.
Here is Beast's track "Devil":
Here's Kaitlin's short story:
The city rose out of the horizon; great towers of steel and glass, shimmering in the desert sun. It was a spectacular sight to behold, but nothing that Erys hadn't seen before. The highway, that black snake that ran, never ending, into the distance, was waiting for her. The last piece of her journey was right in front of her. She gave her bike a small nudge with her foot and revved the engine. She might as well get this over with.
The man-made masterpiece that sat on the barren ground of the desert was a world unto itself. To its inhabitants, the outside that didn't exist. Nothing existed outside the slummy edges. They believed the world was contained to their precious city and to other cities like it. Their logic washingly flawed, but they didn't care.
On occasion, Erys unhappily found a need to enter one of the cities, whichever one happened to be closest to her at the time. While she loved the outlands and made her home there, she needed supplies that the outlands couldn't provide. Food. Medicine. And most importantly, water. For these, she would make the trip into a city. This occasion was no different.
The device at her hip buzzed before an image came up the visor of her helmet.
"Shit, Amiya!" Erys exclaimed, quickly stopping her bike on the side of the road again. "I'm driving!"
"Oh, I'm sorry Erys! I was just checking to see if you were here yet, but I can't see the city behind you," Amiya replied.
"That's because I'm still in the out lands --"
"Mother was getting worried because you're late," Amiya cut her off, refusing to talk about the nightmarish places that her sister called home. "Try and be here before the sun sets, okay? I need your help picking out the baby's eye colour."
The call ended abruptly, leaving Erys fuming. She hated visiting her family. They were blind, like the rest of the city dwellers and her mother highly disapproved of her lifestyle choice. Erys took a deep breath and put her bike back on the road and continued her doomed journey into the city.
The sun was just clipping the mountain range in the distance when she pulled up at the gate outside of the western slums of the city. The entry control guards scanned her passcard and glanced disapprovingly at the bike that was rumbling under her. She saw their eyes flick reflexively towards their own bikes parked beside their gate house. Shiny silver bullets that needed no wheels and nothing but the charge of the sun's rays. She preferred her bike.
The slums were what remained of the old way of life. In some ways, they resembled Erys' own house deep in the clefts of the mountains. They were short, only one or two floors at the most. Many of them had been abandoned. The city was completely different. The road ran right into it, as if it dove into a narrow canyon where the sky was so far above it didn't appear to exist anymore.
Erys compared the experience of living in the city to one of living in a brightly lit, colourful cave; but a cave nonetheless. Everywhere there were light standards, radiating false sunlight for the people who milled about in the artificial gardens of plants painted in shades of green, blue and yellow that were too obnoxious for Erys to stand. Happy images of advertisings sprawled across most flat surfaces an sometimes they even took over the curved surfaces also.
It was so fake. Nothing in the city was real. Sure, the people were real in the sense that they were alive, but everything form their hair to their smiles were fake. That was the way of the city. Erys vowed to make this visit as short as she could.
Her sister's apartment building looked exactly like all the other ones in the sector of the city that Amiya lived in; one hundred floors high, covered in shiny glass windows. Eight hundred families live in this building alone. Erys parked her bike right outside the door of the building, under a large, metal number '247' before walking through the doors that sighed as they automatically opened.
Amiya gave her an enormous hug as Erys walked through the door into her sister's apartment on the 57th floor.
"I'm so happy you could come Erys!" she said cheerfully. "I'm stuck on choosing blue, like our mother's or going for a deep purple. What do you think?"
"You know exactly what I think Amiya."
"Erys! This is a time of joy for your sister; you should put aside your silly little beliefs and be happy with her!"
"Hello mother, it's good to see you too."
Erys dropped herself on Amiya's synthetic leather couch and shoved one of the pieces of food from the plate on the table in her mouth. She wasn't sure what it was, but it tasted a little bit like chalk. She suspected it had been made out of some chemical. She washed it down with a swallow of water from the jug beside the plate.
"Erys."
Her mother's voice had dropped an octave and her eyes narrowed as she watched Erys ignore her. A small growl grew in the back of her throat.
"Here we go again," Amiya sighed.
"Erys, I don't understand why you won't give up this wandering of yours and live in the city sensibly, like your sister. I looked at the advertising boards in the lobby and there's a nice apartment on the 42nd floor that you could move into right away."
"I can't live here mom. I don't get how you can. I've been asking you for years to stop pestering me about it. I like living in the outlands, where I get to actually see the sun. It's still there in the sky you know, it hasn't disappeared. But then you wouldn't know that, would you? All you get is artificial sunlight--"
"Which doesn't give you cancer like the real sun does!" her mother rebutted. "Honestly, Erys, that thing that you call living is just so primitive..." Erys was back up on her feet.
"And your life is blind! Look at you! You're more plastic than you are flesh and Amiya is buying a child from a genetics lab! Can't you see how wrong this is? How terribly backwards this way of living is? It isn't natural! Nothing here is!"
"Erys--"
"No, mother. These cities, these havens of blindness that you praise, they are killing everything. It hasn't rained in over two years because of the resources that the cities suck out of the environment!"
"It rained yesterday..." Amiya interjected, trying to change the subject. "It was forecasted. And they're saying that we're going to get snow next month! Can you believe it?" Erys ignored her.
"You are both chained to this way of life!" Erys exclaimed in frustration. "If the sun didn't rise tomorrow, no one in this damned city would even notice. You'd just keep on going, like everything was perfect, just like yesterday, just like the day before that! I don't know when you would finally stop, if you ever did."
Erys was seething. She stormed toward the door and impatiently prodded the 'open' button.
"Amiya, maybe you should pick bling eyes for your child so she doesn't have to see the dying world that she is being born into. You could save her the pain of watching the world become more and more fake until nothing real is left."
The door finally opened and Erys was quick to put herself through it as Amiya was responding.
"Actually, I'm getting a boy..."
* * *
Kaitlin Vanderveen was born in Calgary and is currently taking a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at Ambrose University College. She enjoys leaving projects until the last minute and tends to work best between the hours of 11pm and 2am. More on Kaitlin and her writing on the contributors page.
I encourage you all to check out the band Beast and their self-titled album from 2008. Betty has one of the most powerful and evocative voices I've ever heard. You'll be seeing more of them in years to come.
When Dominique first approached me about a poem she had written inspired by Calgary's pride and joy The Dudes, I was excited. When Dominique first told me she had used "Love is Dangerous" as her song of choice, I was thrilled. The Dudes are Calgary's most loved band. They are the veteran rock 'n' rollers of Calgary, AB. They are the city's heart and soul. The combination of Danny Vacon's dreamy voice matched with honest lyrics and a rock anthem (courtesy of Bob and Scott) could persuade anyone to do almost anything.
Dominique was hesitant about her poem: "it's going to make me sound like a terrible person." But that's what makes this an incredible contribution to Art for Art and I forced her to let me use it (I'm so so sorry Dom!). I read Dom's poem. I listened to "Love is Dangerous". And then I read and listened simultaneously. Dom's poem "My Fickle Heart" is a companion piece. The wonderful thing about writing is that if you're good, you can take on a voice entirely different to you own and surprise us all (trust me when I say, Dominique is a lovely person and not the playa you're about to encounter). Dom takes on Dan's attitude and gives it to you straight. I love it! Here's what Dom has to say:
In The Dudes' song "Love is Dangerous," I find it interesting that one can be so absorbed in another person, but can then "fall right out of love, just like that!" The 'love' that Danny Vacon claims as dangerous isn't actually love, rather it's obsession or a desire for another's attention. I wrote this poem to illustrate that if one has invested in this type of immature, obsessive "love", then the love they think they feel does become dangerous.
"Love is Dangerous" by Calgary's own The Dudes:
Dominique is a psychology student at the University of Calgary. She is music crazy, being a member in two bands and plays piano, violin and guitar while also possessing a stellar voice. She's constantly laughing and making others do the same. She loves her family, her friends and isn't embarrassed to say she sings cheesy pop songs (occasionally). She is not a playa. Here is "My Fickle Heart":
Passion awakens
The urge devours me
I'm left powerless.
A mind enveloped
Indecisive thoughts
The world must know
I search for counsel
Formulate plans.
I crave resolution
But expect none
To catch his eye,
and become the pursued.
My heart throbs
It won't be refused.
Awkward freezes
Modest successes
Smiles, blushes
Dress to impress
All is Vanity
Lay on the charm.
Act relaxed
Welcome distractions
I've lost all focus.
Search for signs
Lack of sleep
Emotions untamed
I pray for help
and hope till it hurts.
Then unexpected My hopes actualize I catch his eye, I become the pursued.
Without explanation
I wake up one day
Entirely indifferent,
And filled with guilt.
But look, a new fancy
To enslave me
Another victim
Of my fickle Heart.
* * *
For more on Dominique Ma, check out the contributors page.
For more on The Dudes, check out their myspace. I highly recommend seeing them live!!!
