I look up at the list of songs on the massive piece of card pinned to the wall above my computer and sigh. Of those that comprise the 16 songs on that list I have demoed three. I can play the entire list acoustically front to back, but must now look to the labour of producing microscopes and Bunsen burners and test tubes. Concerned that it will slow down my ability to continue to write new material, I find myself wasting more time procrastinating than doing either.

It’s an eclectic mix. Some of the selections are purely acoustic, some aren’t. For some I have bizarre positions to attempt, for others self denial to practice. There has been a lot of talk over the years about change but little real change. Time to buy a new coat.

They’re charging close to three dollars for a one liter bottle of water in my neighborhood, which is one in which most of the inhabitants can’t afford to spend three dollars on most things, let alone water. Even the discount stores are taking advantage of the situation and are driving up their usually low prices. It’s sad to see.

Stacey keeps sending me Sylvia Plath poems. I read them and look out the window and all the wires in them fit into my receptors; the yellow, the white, the red.

“…I hold my breath until you creak to life,
Balled hedgehog,
Small and cross.
The yellow knife
Grows tall.
You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent as best he can…�

Somewhere along the line this world got boring and vaccinated with homogenized drones. In death there is a question, and it remains the greatest of all expressions because it is a question that cannot be answered. And though absconded by science, remains a purely artistic matter. Sylvia: depression, romanticism. Think what you will, but it’s the same deck of cards in the end. And still we smile and swim like beleaguered salmon against the current, hopeful of a never ending spring. Winter, solitude’s bedfellow, is the smartest of all the seasons, simply because it knows that it doesn’t have to produce any heat.