This morning, at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island, crowds waiting to take advantage of a pre-Christmas sale broke down the doors to the store and trampled an employee to death. According to reports, while the 34-year-old man was stepped on and around while struggling to breathe, none of those entering the store attempted to assist him. Even as emergency responders were working to save the man’s life after the store had been closed because of the incident, those that had stormed the store largely streamed passed unconcerned.

There is no side to be taken but that of the innocent, of those who pay with their lives for the corruptions of others. Hostilities between South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatists and the Georgian military didn’t suddenly begin earlier this month, they began more than a decade ago. During that time, as is always the case when fools employ guns to solve their problems, innocents have lost their lives.

I have removed every entry that I have made about the conflict, and my reason for doing so is quite simple. Because the only side that is worth taking is that of those that pay the price for the agendas of others that would rather have lived in peace.

I am tired of it. I am tired of the justifications of death. I am tired of sides, of the rhetoric spewed to criminalize the actions of some while defending the actions of others. I am tired of the altogether defensible actions of military giants and the condemnation of those that haven’t the historical mythology to excuse or glorify their behaviour. The deliverance of death is the deliverance of death, its method is of absolutely no concern to me. I could care less if it comes in the form of a suicide bomber than has been corrupted by some radicalized religious ideology or from 20,000 feet and delivered by someone that has been propagandized into believing that they are defending life by taking it.

I am tired of the deafening silence of the majority and the sensationalized wailings of the world’s minority voices that have always been able to produce the loudest of human misrepresentations. I am tired of politicians that don misleading new suits but care nothing for change and of so called activists that are so in love with ‘the struggle’ that the purpose of it no longer matters. Both are equally as revolting to me.

All of us, no matter what parts of this world we inhabit, get one kick at the can – religious promises to the contrary be damned. If we are to allow ourselves to be controlled, to be divided, to listen to those minority voices that misrepresent our true interests – of simply living our lives in peace – then we might as well commit global suicide. In truth, we are already in the throes of just that, even though confronting that reality is something that far too many people are uncomfortable admitting.

There is only one absolute in this life – death. As a species we have perfected more ways to deliver it than we have cures to combat it, which says something grotesquely significant about our inability to demand better. For the sake of our children, for the sake of our neighbour, for the sake of nature, for the sake of ourselves.

Fuck who you are, where you come from, the colour of your skin, and the God you worship. You have a greater responsibility - a responsibility to ensure that all of those things do not result in the promotion of division, willful ignorance, and suffering.

What ‘side’ am I on? I’m on a side that is considered by most an impossibility. And that is precisely why it remains one.

The most difficult aspect of my job is not to be found in the writing, production, or performance of music. It’s to be found in the stories that reach me, either after shows by individuals themselves or by email. I do not mention this to say that I think it an unfair burden, nor one that I wish I did not have to shoulder. I mention this because, in the end, we are all human and it is only right that we be remembered, even if only on the website of a musician.

This morning I received an email from Andrea Lystang of Edmonton, whose daughter Jennifer overdosed three weeks ago on medication prescribed to combat her fight against mental illness. Jennifer was 22 years old and leaves behind a 2-year-old daughter of her own, Abbey.

Despite being a single mother combating mental illness, Jennifer was, according to her mother, an impassioned and loving parent who loved Abbey with everything in her. But, as is often the case for those who cannot find a way out of the darkness no matter their attempts to do so, Jennifer was simply unable to overcome it. I realize that, to some of you, her suicide might seem deplorable given that she was a parent and had the welfare of her daughter to consider, but it is impossible for me to convey to those who have no understanding of the inner turmoil faced by those that have no sense of hope within themselves what it feels like when the cause of that blackness is something altogether overpowering.

I do not have the right to judge Jennifer, nor would I ever presume to ever possess that right. Equally, I do not believe that others, no matter their beliefs, have the right to judge her either. If there is a power greater than us, then I believe that power to be just and forgiving and overwhelmingly compassionate. Therefore, I believe that Jennifer will be welcomed by them with open arms and provided the relief that she could not find in this life.

My heart goes out to the Lystang family, and to Jennifer’s daughter Abbey, who will, I hope, in the years ahead, come to understand and be at peace with what ultimately took her mother’s life. Because while Jennifer was the instrument of her demise, she was not the cause, and that should never be overlooked nor forgotten. Like any other disease, mental illness takes lives. And while the majority of the people in this world may fail to view such deaths as the result of an illness because of their fashion, they are nonetheless the results of illness, not self-pity nor self-absorption. Any living thing trapped within a prison that endures its torture will instinctively attempt to escape. Ultimately, given that reality as it pertains to mental illness, Jennifer is free.

In the email that Jennifer’s mother sent me she said the following…

“Although Jennifer’s life was often a struggle, she found solace in your music. She attended many of your concerts. In fact, while cleaning her room, I found tickets to your upcoming Victoria show. She felt a connection with you through your music and your blog. She was relieved that you were sharing your struggle with bipolar disorder publicly, grateful that you were able to “normalize” mental illness.”

For my part, I am sorry that what little I have created and publicly said and advocated was not enough. Some might say that I have no reason to say such a thing, but the truth is that either we are all in this thing called life together or we aren’t. And if we are, then it must be.

In the last five days, eighteen US soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Eighteen more American families will be getting that dreaded knock on their front door by an Officer accompanied by a Chaplain. Wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, will be presented a tightly folded American flag while the deafening discharge produced from the rifles of an Honour Guard echo off of nearby graves.

Where was he? What was he thinking about in the last moments of his life? Were images of family and friends, of summers of youth and adolescence passing in front of his eyes? Was the memory of that first kiss, the feeling of her hand in his for the first time, passing through the nerves in his lips and fingers? Was the memory of rain, soft warm wind, and lazy spring sunlight hitting his skin washing over him? Was the smile, the laughter of a child, deafening the pain in the seconds before the end like the embrace of some otherworldly presence?

Was he alone?

To you I say that monuments crumble. That the world, compressed by time, has seen the names and faces of others fallen eroded away from its memory. That in fields and mountains, on beaches and in forests, human beings once complete with memories of life now lay as bones yet constructed into the upright dominance of our species within the confines of uniforms.

Was he alone? And who has been left thus? And in the counting, what cost or cause is ever left unchallenged and mightily defeated by grief?

Place a person in a traumatic environment and they will become desensitized to a great many things. The sight of human corpses, dead animals, even the value of life itself. Soldiers returning from conflicts, such as the war in Iraq, have drowned wives in fits of rage and even murdered fellow comrades that they once fought along side of. Spousal abuse is not uncommon, nor is child abuse, self inflicted physical abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide – all of it the result of post-traumatic stress disorder.

That said, I refuse to take pity on the US soldier that was recently caught on video jubilantly hurling a puppy off of a cliff (good on ABC for putting commercials before the clip too, real classy), just as I do not take pity on those soldiers that planned and carried out the rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl in Mahmudiya in 2006. They took turns raping her before they killed her, one of them then going into a bedroom and executing the girl’s family, among them her five-year-old sister.

In the case of the soldier that threw the puppy, those that were with him casually watched while he did it, one going so far as to say that “it was cold” of him - after the fact. Of course, prior to hurling the dog to its death, it’s screams clearly audible as it flies through the air, he sets the entire thing up by attempting to be humourous. He comments on how cute the puppy is before killing it, a sure sign of one of two things – either he’s a clinical sociopath or is suffering from traumatic stress.

Two things are assured by war - death and remembrance. And by mentioning the second I am not suggesting an honourable sort of remembrance that is patriotically admired. Rather, the sort that forever haunts and tortures the spirit and the soul.

My grandfather served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. When I was a child he once coolly told me how he and another man used to cut off the ears of downed German pilots and keep them in a jar. He then grabbed one of my ears and gave it a tug.

I threw up all over myself.

Two pops, to acoustic echoes, just around the corner someone was dead in a van. It’s the sixth homicide in town this year and we’re only thirty six odd days into it…

“Vancouver recorded its sixth homicide of 2008 Friday when a man was shot dead while sitting in his van at the 300 block of Carrall Street in the city’s infamous Downtown Eastside.

The Vancouver Police Department’s major crime and forensic identification teams have launched an investigation into the incident, which occurred at around 6:30 p.m. The man died at the scene.”

Gunshots, despite what they sound like in the movies or on television, sound unique in real life. The four that I heard last night, as I’m not even a half block away, were two in reality, as the two reports produced echoes off nearby buildings. They were the short, sharp, pops of a handgun.

Rumors spread last night around the neighbourhood that up to four people had been killed, but having read the news this morning, I discovered that there was only one victim.

Of course, it’s business as usual around here this morning, and nothing seemed at all different when I went to get coffee.

3:16 AM, raining again, maybe a gunshot in the distance, sirens a few blocks away. The sound of shopping-cart wheels click on the sidewalk below my window, stopping every twenty feet or so probably so that a garbage bin can be rummaged through. The ironic sound of a street cleaner hums below the din of the sirens, its brushes spinning against the concrete, new polish for the same old streets.

Life is death. She goes in for surgery tomorrow to see if they can remove it. If something is amiss she’ll have to get chemotherapy in the new-year. I can’t see her without that long, flowing hair framing her face. I’m not sure I’ll sleep tonight, even though I’ve been lying in bed trying for hours now. But life is death. As unique as we all might be, as uncommon as we all might be, in the end we all find ourselves in the ground, our ashes discarded at some place of sentimental significance, or simply lost or discarded because circumstances wouldn’t allow for such dignities. Live in a mansion, drive an expensive car, live in a shack in the woods, drive a rusted out pickup truck – everyone punches the same ticket. It doesn’t matter if you go to the gym seven days a week, consume the strictest of diets, down vitamins on a daily basis, or spend hours baking in some yoga studio – everyone goes. There’s nothing for it, only the reality that what you do in this life, the impression that you ultimately leave, is all that will remain. And even then, in most cases, it will be fleeting. That has been the way of the world since man straightened himself and took those first awkward, upright steps.

Will God be waiting for you? Will some imperious demon? Does what you fear in this life regarding the next limit your understanding of life itself? Even more, does it interfere with the universal acceptance of human finality?

My eyes opened, the lights were bright. I sucked in some air and fought the urge to laugh. I still don’t know why. I was pretty drugged up, nothing came out, but I still thought it amusing. Was that it, I thought? Like a film hyped to be something more than it actually is, that is how I found nothingness - all hype.

I used to have nightmares about getting hit by a car and being thrown across the pavement, my skin ripped away to the bone. But after that night I don’t dream about it anymore. In fact, the thought of it happening doesn’t bother me. Life is death, and that being the case; there are no secrets to it. It remains the one unalterable in a world of alterations, in a world gripped by the fear of the one thing that can never be avoided or overcome. How there is not comfort in that I don’t know.

Fear it if you must, and in doing so fear life. They are one in the same in the end. For to be born is to die, that’s the deal.

The Insititute For War And Peace Reporting brings to light the reality of the child mortality rate in Iraq…

“According to a report released in May 2007 by aid agency Save the Children, “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other country.”

The report, entitled State of the World’s Mothers 2007, said that some 122,000 Iraqi children - the equivalent of one in eight - died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first month of life.

“Even before the latest war, Iraqi mothers and children were facing a grave humanitarian crisis caused by years of repression, conflict and external sanctions,” said the report.

“Since 2003, electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and soaring inflation have worsened already difficult living conditions.”

The study listed pneumonia and diarrhea as major killers of children in Iraq, together accounting for over 30 per cent of child deaths.”

Can you fathom a child in our society dying of diarrhea, let alone it being a major cause of death for children under the age of five? Not only that, can you imagine the utter state of emergency that would exist in any Western society if children under the age of five had a one in eight chance of survival?

As some of you might already be aware, RCMP officers killed a Polish man, Robert Dziekanski, during a recent altercation at Vancouver International Airport. The RCMP are currently stating that they Tasered Dziekanski twice, though an eyewitness has claimed that she heard up to four Taser shots fired. Having watched the video of the incident captured by bystander Paul Pritchard, I have to admit that I only heard two discernable shots, though there could have been a third that was muted. There is also a moment when one of the officers seems to thrust something down at Dziekanski, though it’s imposible to tell if it struck him or simply the floor.

After the incident, the RCMP confiscated the video footage shot by Pritchard, promising to return it to him within 48 hours. They then told Pritchard that they would not be returning it to him, prompting him to retain a lawyer to seek the return of the footage to ensure that there was no cover-up on the part of the police.

The thing about this incident that is unbelievable to me is – why did four RCMP officers Taser a single man? True, Dziekanski seems disturbed in the video, he may have even suffered from a mental illness given his behaviour, but does that warrant the use of force within seconds of arriving on the scene? He had come off of a flight, so there was no chance that he had a weapon – he was in a security-controlled section of the airport. During the incident he also did not threaten anyone physically, even responding in a detracted manner to a woman that stepped forward to talk to him. Yes, his behaviour was erratic, there’s no question, but again, did it warrant being Tasered twice by police before they even tried to attempt to calm the situation in some way, let alone subdue him physically?

The RCMP claim that they could not have employed pepper spray because there were too many people in the area – but all of the bystanders watching the incident were on the other side of a pane of glass and would not have been affected by it.

Subsequently, a man is dead for absolutely no reason.

Watching the video it’s clear that Dziekanski did not place the four RCMP officers in an immediate life-threatening situation or one that required the use of such overt force. In truth, the incident may very well constitute manslaughter.

One has to wonder, given the state of heightened fear that we currently find ourselves living in, if this situation would have played out some other way were it to have occurred pre-9/11.

I’ve been asked in countless interviews if it catches up with me every night, singing these songs, having to relive their meaning. I commonly answer that they don’t impact me in a negative way, and that’s true for the most part. Consciously, anyway. Subconsciously I’m not so sure.

I have Daniel Johnston’s Funeral Home stuck in my head. I woke up this morning, as I often do, having had a night terror. All of them are about the same thing, though the setting in each is usually different. Obviously they have to do with my personal life – the past, basically – and every time I have one I am haunted by it for hours after I awake, if not the whole day. I tell myself that when I get some free time I have to talk to someone, to clear my head so that they might stop, but free time’s been hard to find.

After Ray’s death, Rod told me that divorce and death are considered very similar with regards to overcoming their impact. Prior to Ray’s death he had done a lot of online research and joined a few support groups for people with loved ones suffering from cancer. During that time he told me that divorce is often harder to deal with because in the case of death, those involved at least have closure in the sense that the permanence of death is involved. When it comes to divorce, especially if you weren’t the one that initiated it, and were placed in the position of never being afforded answers, it’s actually much worse because there is no sense of finality. When death occurs we find ourselves struggling to understand why, to make sense of the loss, but are ultimately confronted by the fact that death, in the end, provides closure because of the intrinsic nature of mortality. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of divorce because that sense of closure is entirely elusive. One party goes on with their lives entirely untroubled by the event because it was what they desired. The other is left attempting to make sense of it, to place it in some sort of rational perspective, to come to terms with the fact that they have no recourse with regards to controlling it or how it impacts them. It is something that stays with you, no matter how little you actually think about it in your waking hours, no matter how ultimately positive it seems after gaining some perspective. By it occurring a great deal of things that were hidden from my sight were revealed, things that had I woken up ten years from now to discover would have been far more catastrophic. It is a horrible thing to have to come to terms with, that as a person you completely surrendered yourself only to discover that what was given in return was based on something entirely premeditated, entirely selfish, and, worst of all, entirely devoid of the most important of elements – the unconditional sense of reliance, trust, and love that must exist between two people when they enter into something of that magnitude. In the immense and confusing wake left, no matter how hard one tries to come to terms with it, it is something that leaves a scar within you for the rest of your life.

I believe in love. Not the sort based on conditions but the sort that is steeped in the unexplainable; the near magic that floats between people and strangely binds them together. In my life I have, I fear, been far too anxious to believe in its existence rather than question whether it is being truly reciprocated. That has always been my greatest fault. I find myself now suspicious of it rather than open to its full measure, something I hope to see dissolve as time passes, something that I pray will occur more than anything else.

In my dreams I am routinely forced to confront the cold reality of a person I believed to be someone else. In each, the situation is different, but the theme is always the same. It is, I have learned, a universal theme, one that applies to more than just myself. It is one that applies to the world in general; that despite our belief in decency, decency is something that is actually extremely hard to come by. Perhaps that has always been the way of things; greed, ambition, desire, selfishness – all of them rooted in the personal and from the personal cast into the machinery of the world. Perhaps our wars within simply manifest themselves in our wars without, the translation lost in our inability to decipher the hidden meaning behind the origin itself - us, individually, too terrified to surrender.

One Month, 21 Days, And This Morning

I woke up in Cobalt, Ontario this morning. Most of you have probably never heard of it. I hadn’t until I was asked if I would like to add it to the tour schedule, which I agreed to because I think it’s important to play small towns like this whenever the opportunity arises. The theatre here is small, just under 300 seats, but it’s sold out and just has that feeling about it - that it will be a really fun show. The people here in town are fantastic, excited, and unbelievably hospitable. Dale and I couldn’t get web access, so a local store a few doors down, The Silver Moccasin, allowed us to jump on their network. The chap from the shop even came on the bus and helped us troubleshoot getting access. You just don’t find that sort of hospitable manner in big cities, but in places like this the people are brimming over with it.

Lance was telling me that he was told that a lot of the people coming to tonight’s show don’t actually believe that it’s really me performing, but rather a ‘Matthew Good tribute’ act. It seems they’re surprised that I would bother coming here in the first place, so I can’t wait to take the stage tonight. Dale’s off taking pictures of the town, so we’ll get some of those up later tonight I’d imagine.