To say that last night’s show was weird would be an understatement. For the first time in my career, a fan asked me at the bus following the show, where I commonly sign autographs, if I had any “weed” to sell.

Do I look like a drug dealer? Is there a big sign on the side of the bus that reads “Matt’s rolling dope emporium”?

Perhaps the individual was confused. Perhaps he had had experiences with former members of the band and crew. I have no idea. Times have changed folks. They changed a long time ago, after the dissolution of the Matthew Good Band. I don’t employ individuals that do drugs, nor do I tolerate their use anywhere near me, as I do not do drugs. Having discovered that a few individuals close to me, some band and crew, the other “in it for the money”, had been doing drugs on the road in 2005, and keeping it from me, it’s something that I am extremely vigilant about now.

A long time ago, when sleep was something that didn’t favor me with its company all that often, I commonly turned to alternatives in an attempt to defeat insomnia. My main reason for doing so was that if I went days without sleep (or woke up too early) I tended to become quite nauseous. My savior, of course, became Gravol, the world’s foremost motion sickness drug and one of the best over the counter sleeping aids known to man.

Of course, over time Gravol can have adverse affects, but when you become so reliant on something to knock you out you tend not to concern yourself with them. There was a time when I could take up to 500mg of Gravol and still have trouble falling asleep. Sure, inanimate objects would be flying around the room, and that’s all well and good for a bit of bedtime entertainment, but when your goal is to sleep it can be frustrating.

So then I started mixing Gravol with cold medicines, which worked for a while, but wasn’t really the solution that I was looking for. I also tried every over the counter drug available, as well as some all-natural alternatives.

None of them worked.

From there the next step was into the realm of prescription drugs, and I’ve danced with them all. Zopiclone, Halcion, Valium, Ativan, Haldol, the list goes on. They all work, and stunningly well I might add. The trick, though, is not to abuse them.

Zopicolone, for example, is very effective when you first start to use it. Unfortunately, after a while it begins to leave a horrible metallic taste in your mouth when you wake up that lasts all day. There were a few times, when I was away, that my ex-wife, who had access to them, took one or more a night for weeks. Now, that could have been because she was attempting to counter the effects of another drug altogether, but I do remember her taking a great deal of them. Personally, as soon as the metallic taste showed up, I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

It wasn’t until I started using Ativan on a daily basis that I found something that I considered unequalled. I was originally prescribed Ativan to combat panic attacks, but was strictly warned that it should only be used in the most dire of circumstances. Unfortunately, after my divorce, my general practitioner upped my dosage of Effexor to 500mg a day, which, as I would later discover, amplifies mania in those that suffer from bipolarity. So while I was taking a drug I believed to be helping me, it was causing me to deal with manic episodes the likes of which I had never experienced. The solution to this problem was to simply prescribe me more Ativan, which, during the Spring 2006 acoustic tour, and the months that followed, became my nearest and dearest friend.

Wake up - take an Ativan. Make it until around 3 - take another one. Take another at dinner and then two more before bed. Five milligrams a day was pretty normal, though there were stretches when I would up it to seven. When I was admitted to hospital in Kingston after suffering a nervous breakdown, they shot me so full of it that I still can’t remember the following two days. When I finally cracked in Bristol, I took six at once just to calm myself enough to lie down. By that time, I could take up to 10mg’s a day and still function.

And then, of course, came that fateful night at my parents when I mixed a day’s worth of it with beer and then, in an attempt to fight another bout of mania, took more. That, of course, led to a state of complete euphoria in which I had no idea what I was doing. Ultimately, I would end up taking fifty or so before being found unconscious and rushed to hospital.

You know, a guy just wants to get a little sleep. How much is that to ask? Well, after that night I got plenty. Five days worth of sleep in a bed in a psyche ward. And truth be told, they may just rank as five of the best nights of rest that I’ve ever had.

How’s that for irony?

So here I am again, out on the road, flying from city to city, constantly on the move, no bus bunk to retreat to, and I can’t sleep. I’ve got Gravol, I’ve got Promethazine, I’ve got my usual dosage of clonazepam.

What to do.

I came across this story by way of Sean Orr at Beyond Robson. It is, as an individual that suffers from mental illness and is a born and bred Vancouverite, one of the most disgusting things about residents of this city that I have ever read…

“Neighbours opposed to the establishment of the Motivation, Power and Achievement Society’s mental health drop-in centre at West Seventh and Fir say they will help the city find a different location for the social services agency.

But they don’t want it in their community. “We will fight the MPA going in there right to the end,” said Cheryl Clausen, a disability award officer for WorkSafeBC who has lived a block from the site for four-and-a-half years.
Clausen and her neighbours want a café or other businesses established on the lower floors of the development that would provide 70 units of social housing. They believe a drop-in centre proposed for the site would concentrate too many mentally ill people in one place. She said city-sponsored meetings in the spring about the proposed development focused on housing for seniors, single mothers and poor families. But a November city report on the development of up to 1,200 units of social housing at 12 city-owned sites stated the MPA drop-in could be established on the first two floors of the development. About 70 studios, 320 to 350 square feet in size, would be built on the upper floors, with one-third to half of the units designated for low-income people with mental illness. The remainder would be reserved for low-income singles, with priority given to Fairview and Kitsilano residents.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s gets even more outrageous…

“Janet Dennis, a business manager for Telus who’s lived at Seventh and Pine for three years, often sees shopping carts lined up outside the MPA’s drop-in on West Fourth at Pine. “At Virtu [condominiums on Seventh between Fir and Pine], they’ve spent anywhere from $750,000 to a million plus for their suites, and if I’m one of those people looking out at the shopping carts I’m disgusted. I’m thinking I’ve just lost my investment here, I’m never going to be able to recoup it, and it’s the noise of these shopping carts and it’s being harassed by them,” she said. “It’s a privilege to live here and we pay extra money to live here… Why put these homeless people here when a cup of coffee at Starbucks or whatever is four bucks.”

Although a new café could be pricey for the low-income tenants, Clausen believes a business such as a coffee shop would provide a “buffer” between the low-income and established residents.”

As we’re all aware, many of Vancouver’s mentally ill, who have been, over the last several decades, summarily removed from mental welfare facilities that have been closed because people, just like those complaining in this article, didn’t want to pony up and pay taxes to ensure that they remained open and staffed, have been left to their own devices.

I’ll tell you this, thank God Janet Dennis doesn’t know what it’s like to have to deal with the demons of mental illness and, on top of that, attempt to scratch out an existence in abject poverty at the same time. God forbid any of the people complaining about this issue actually delve into the reality of the utterly despicable state of mental welfare in this Province and how we, as a society, have betrayed and abandoned those that need our help.

It would seem, according to the article, that they are mental healthcare professionals as well, being that they told the Courier that on their three block walk to its offices they were harassed by a man pushing a shopping cart. As we’re all aware, pushing a shopping cart down a public street is an indication of mental illness. I mean; you have to be crazy to do that, don’t you? I would imagine, in the minds of those that are complaining about the security of property values, everyone that’s on the streets are bipolar, schizophrenic, psychopathic, sociopathic, and so forth.

I have lived in the downtown core of Vancouver for sixteen years. In that time I have been a resident of the West End, Coal Harbour, and the Lower Eastside. And in all of those years, do you know how many times I have been ‘hassled’ by individuals pushing shopping carts to a degree that I feared for my safety?

Not once.

In fact, beyond asking for spare change, I can’t recall an instance in all that time that an aggressive posture was taken by any street person beyond them muttering profanities under their breath because I literally had no change in my pocket to give them.

On the other hand, I can say with absolute conviction that I have been threatened by what would be deemed ‘sane’ individuals flexing their proverbial muscles and acting as if all of Vancouver were some gangland paradise. Added to that are a host of other instances in which drunken club goers have been violent and endangered others, and, when approached about their behaviour, became more violent.

And then there is this…

“Residents are concerned about safety and security and fear drug dealers would follow members of the drop-in to the new centre. “The people that live in the building would probably be a little more controlled and taken care of,” Clausen said. “That drop-in centre shouldn’t be in anyone’s neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter if it’s in an East Side area–it should not be in a residential neighbourhood of any kind.”

I always find it interesting how drug use is pinned to the lapels of the homeless and forlorn when in countless bathrooms in posh Vancouver clubs and high-end residences enough Cocaine is shoved up noses on a weekly basis as to resemble a bad episode of Miami Vice. Drugs are absolutely everywhere in this city, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the streets down here on the Lower Eastside or in Yaletown, West Vancouver, or Kits. The difference, of course, is that those that are dispossessed and suffer from mental illness often turn to the use of drugs primarily because they can’t get the help that they need. Even though Ativan is not considered a standard street drug, I myself became an addict because of my condition early last year and it almost resulted in my death – not because I loved the feeling, but because when you’re confronted with the dark disparity of rolling bouts of mania and depression, anything that will make it stop, even for just a little while, is looked upon as a savior at the time. Of course, in my case, I was lucky, and am still lucky. I can afford the medication required to deal with my illness, which is by no means inexpensive. The reality is that that cannot be said about a considerable number of others that do.

Property prices? Investment? What ever happened to compassion? Is it represented by trying to find a location that’s conveniently tucked away in some industrial park where no one has to be confronted with this city’s problems? Is that how utterly low we have sunk? Is that how uncaring and rigid we have become?

We’re not talking about the affordability of Starbucks coffee, nor are we talking about real estate. We’re talking about human beings, many of which are in desperate need of help. If we, as a society, are not willing to act in a manner that is reflective of the values that we so casually like to claim we possess, then one of two things needs to happen.

Either we willingly admit that we’re hypocrites and liars, or we get off our high horses and become human beings ourselves.

It’s raining, dark; the streets empty and the doorways filled. On the streets you have to wait it out, try to stay dry, try to find somewhere sheltered from it so that maybe you can catch a few hours of sleep in the hopes that it will have stopped.

I needed laundry detergent yesterday. I went around corner to the store. In Blood Alley something was happening; three squad cars, two officers pulling shot guns out of their trunks. No idea what it was about, but there was a huge construction crane in the alley so maybe something had transpired between the alley’s usual inhabitants and the construction crew. Could have been a drug bust, there could have been an assault; it could have been about a few of the ill-tempered dogs that have been roaming around back there recently.

Things are obviously calmer down here in the winter. No summer tourists to be herded away from, to be pushed by security companies into back alleys so as to protect the illusion of old-world charm. It’s been unseasonably warm though, so at least that’s something. Even with the rain, it’s not as biting as it usually is this time of year. If there’s an upside to global warming in this neck of the woods it’s that if you live outdoors things aren’t as condemnable. At least that’s something.

Drugs and booze. Two steadfast allies of the dispossessed. They make you forget, time machines that offer unconscious passage into the future so that you can lose a day, or three, not having to deal with the reality of where you’ve ended up. Ten blocks uptown the city’s well-to-do scoff at it all while they hit the bars on the weekends and drink themselves silly, press lips to bongs, snort cocaine in the bathrooms of the city’s finer nightspots. The difference is that they have beds to break their falls at the end of the night. The difference is that they do it because it’s a socially accepted ritualistic endeavor. Escape is escape though, and ultimately everyone’s trying to escape something in the end. Admit it or not.

At the very least, if you’re waiting for the rain to stop, you’ve got something truly pressing to escape - the reality that when it does, very little will have changed besides the weather.

Irony For Friday, January 4th, 2008

Chinatown is two blocks over. It’s been there since the 1880’s. It’s filled with countless restaurants. None of them deliver.

I’m not kidding.

Toasters

When I was a kid we used to make toast on an electric heater in the basement. It was one of those long floor heaters, the sort with the metal grill on the front. We would put pieces of bread on it and wait a while, turn them over, and then butter them.

We used to not lock our doors at night as well though. Things change.

Covered In Blood

I was thinking last night on the career of William Tecumseh Sherman, his complexities and hypocrisies, his characterizations of warfare in its purest form, especially those penned during his campaign to take Atlanta and later his march to Savannah, and something that he wrote in his memoirs that I have always found extremely telling…

“I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”

For some reason that always reminds me of the words of Vassilis Epaminondou…

“If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.”

Never think that we do not suffer the whims of the United States, especially when it comes to the War On Terror and the War On Drugs – in short, the influence of US foreign policies and how they apply domestically to US security interests. In the case of the War On Drugs, Mark Emery is proof positive that the DEA holds sway in this country and that the government of Canada bends to their will when the need arises. In Emery’s case, the Vancouver City Police had no intention of confronting him until pressure was placed on them, and the RCMP, by the DEA – all for selling seeds through the mail, which, while technically a felony in Canada, is so low on the list of anti-narcotics priorities in Vancouver that it’s basically overlooked. But because Emery sold them through the mail to US customers he was targeted by the DEA, which then led to the police suddenly taking a very real interest in him. Interestingly, rather than trying him for the crime here, our government cooperated with US requests that he be extradited. I mean, you can openly smoke pot in a few café’s in Vancouver, not to mention get caught with up to 30 grams of it without being charged anymore – or at least that was my understanding the last time someone ‘in the know’ brought it up.

Now, I don’t smoke marijuana, but its legalization is something that I don’t think would be a terribly bad thing. Like alcohol, it could be taxed to high heaven by the government. Of course, there is the risk that its legalization could lead to an increase in harder drugs flooding the streets, that can’t be discounted by pro-cannabis advocates. The reality is that it’s a staple of organized crime, and were they to lose it their gains would have to be made up in other ways. Thus, the availability and promotion of harder drugs would certainly increase. The question is; would those smoking marijuana necessarily make that leap? Personally, I don’t think it’s any different a comparison than applying the same question to those that drink. Then again, there is something to be said about targeting youth, whose penchant for acquiring that which is taboo is utterly engrained in our societal make.

Omar Kadr

Frightening new information has arisen in the case of Omar Khadr, the only Canadian being held at Guantanamo, who was a mere 15 years of age when he was interned there. US authorities charged Khadr with being complicit in the death of a US medic in Afghanistan, conspiracy and spying, and supporting terrorism. Yet it has just come to light that US authorities withheld information about a witness that could clear Khadr of the charges. From the CBC…

“The U.S. government has withheld information about a witness who could help clear Canadian Omar Khadr as an “unlawful enemy combatant,” Khadr’s military defence lawyer at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday.

“It’s an eyewitness the government has always known about,” Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler told reporters. “This is something that was buried because nobody ever looked.”

Kuebler’s comments came after a pre-trial hearing was adjourned at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where the 21-year-old Khadr has been held for the past five years following his capture by American forces in Afghanistan.

The trial is taking place without one of Khadr’s Canadian lawyers present. Dennis Edney told CBC News on Thursday that the U.S. defence lawyer, Kuebler, barred him from the proceedings because of his criticism of the process, as well as Kuebler’s own preparedness and qualifications.

The defence has not interviewed a single prosecution witness, Edney said, while the prosecution has been preparing for the trial for the past two years.

“We have said the military defence lawyers are not ready for trial,” Edney said from Edmonton. “We put that in writing to them time and time again.

“My guess? They don’t like to be criticized.”

Khadr is the only prisoner from a Western country left at Guantanamo.

Now, as a Canadian, and given this new information, I have to ask the obvious – is our government going to intervene on this young man’s behalf? Will Mr. Harper’s government make an official inquiry regarding Kahdr, or will they remain silent? And if they choose to do nothing, what does that say with regards to US influence over us? In the past, the British government has intervened when it became clear that British nationals that had been interned there were wrongfully detained. One can only hope, when all of the facts are in, that our government has the same sense of obligation to one of its citizens.

I came across something interesting in the Globe & Mail today. It seems Dan Rather was in my neighbourhood doing a piece about it recently. The author had this to say about it…

“Nor for this story is he the first on the scene, which is something he always likes to be. In fact, he might be the one zillionth television reporter to stand at the apocalyptic vortex of the Downtown Eastside – the corner of Main and Hastings – to chronicle the miserable history of one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere.”

The true hypocrisy of Vancouver is that not ten minutes away are the city’s two trendiest and most expensive neighbourhoods – Yaletown and Coal Harbour. In truth, even the area that Mr. Rather was covering is being transformed into a mirror image of Yaletown in many ways, though there are no signs of its beleaguered inhabitants reaping any of the benefits. Either the gentrification of the area will fail or they’ll be forced further east down the Hastings corridor – out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps just in time for the Winter Olympics.

After all, we can’t have ‘one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere’ within spitting distance of both GM Place and Yaletown in 2010. Hell, spitting distance from anywhere in the downtown core. That, and it’s important to remember that property values are so high that the neighbourhood itself is far too lucrative to be considered for low income, subsidized housing. City council isn’t stupid, there’s a reason why they defer the issue - because the longer they do, the more the neighbourhood can be developed and gentrified, attracting a class of people that are deemed far more ‘acceptable’ than those that currently call it home.

If anything, it’s the shame of Vancouver. It’s the shame of those that drive through it with their windows rolled up, or that act as if those they pass on the street are going to beat them to death without provocation. It’s as if most of those that venture into the neighbourhood to go to new restaurants and nightspots think that the people down there have the plague. Hell, even the local business association hires rent-a-cops to keep them off of Water Street so as not to offend the tourists pouring off the cruise ships. That is, of course, in direct violation of their Charter rights, but it happens nonetheless, and no one says a thing.

The Lower Eastside is Vancouver’s shame because Vancouverites continue to allow it to be. The city is so arrogant, so full of itself, so in love with its own new reflection that it can’t be bothered to confront one of the most serious issues that has plagued it for years.

When the world comes in 2010, let them see it. Let them walk the streets and see the dispossessed that call them home. Let them look upon the disheveled bodies in the doorways and the huddled figures clinging to wet blankets on the freezing concrete. Let them see us for what we are, because Yaletown, Coal Harbour, and the rest of it, is not what we are.

We may convince ourselves that that isn’t the case, but just venture down to the Lower Eastside and your perspective will change in a heartbeat. That is, if you bother to get out of your car.

What separates someone in Yaletown snorting coke in a bathroom and someone smoking crack in a back alley in Gastown? One is a fucking moron. The other has probably been shuffled out of our mental welfare system and has nowhere to go and no other way to fight their demons. You spend some time and try and figure out which is which.

This morning I had a telephone conversation in which I was made to feel that I was crazy. After it concluded I was left with a very empty feeling inside, even though the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t really known me anymore. There is a disconnect in our society between the perception of maturity and actual maturity, one that, as I get older, I begin to recognize more and more. Rod and I were talking last night about people’s character and how, for some strange reason, many have allowed themselves to become so thin and flexible. The truth is that I am somewhat crazy, I don’t think there’s any questioning that at all. But in saying that, I would rather be crazy than pacified by whatever it is that passes for personal ethics these days. I recall a time in which talk was straight and people said what they meant. Of late, I have struggled to understand the new language employed by many that relies on diversion and the alteration of character on the fly to suit different scenarios. Maybe, in the end, the truth is that with a crazy person you always know where you stand. Simply because they haven’t the time for bullshit.

I don’t know how they run the corner shop across the street. They must be saints. Crack is peddled at their front door (and from every door for a block east of them), drunk idiots from the burbs leaving local clubs stumble in and out verbally attacking the homeless people inside using nickels and dimes to buy bags of cheap peanuts and chips, and yet the shops proprietors still have the decency to display manners to those that commonly fill the doorways of this slowly gentrifying neighbourhood on a nightly basis.

You have to live in Vancouver’s Lower East Side to truly understand how completely disconnected it is from the rest of the city, even though it’s literally no more than a five minute drive from the city’s most illustrious and pompous neighbourhood. Once more, that the only reason that trendy eateries and shops are now surfacing around here is because the price of Vancouver real estate is so extreme that transforming hovels into posh eateries has become the pastime of venture capitalists that, for the most part, could care less about what transpires down here on a daily basis or where the inhabitants of this part of town are ultimately pushed out to. It is impossible to describe the juxtaposition of the poverty and wealth that now exists simultaneously in this neighbourhood, and one wonders how long it will be before these streets are completely transformed into something totally unrecognizable.

At a recent City Council meeting, members voted to look into the issue of low income housing. They then voted themselves a pay raise. It’s about as shocking as the BC legislature’s pizza delivery bill, which is in the tens of thousands, and that’s not even taking into account things like spa treatments. Meanwhile, the doorways in this part of town are still routinely filled every nigh by the dispossessed, Canadian citizens that are ushered off of Water Street by a private security firm hired by the local business association to ensure that tourists coming off of the cruise ships at Canada Place don’t have to be confronted by the sight of them, let alone being asked for spare change. I was under the impression that the rights of every citizen of this country were the same, and that they could not be shuffled out of certain areas to protect the interests of tourist shops that sell Maple Syrup and freeze dried smoked salmon to foreigners who have ventured into Gastown to have their picture taken next to a steam clock that was erected in the 1970’s, not the 1800’s.

Drugs, and drug users, are prevalent in this part of town, there’s no denying that, just as there is no denying that many of those that find themselves on the streets down here are victims of a severely under funded mental welfare system. Looking to dispel their demons, many of them unfortunately turn to the only alternative left them – drugs. Because in comparison to the monthly cost of proper medication, which is, in truth, considerable (I can attest to that first hand), the price of street drugs is significantly less. And while not everyone that suffers from substance abuse problems in this neighbourhood is mentally ill, it doesn’t alter the fact that they are, in the end, human beings that, for whatever tragic reason, have found themselves here, lost in this perplexing maze of slum lorded hovels. It is also from here that women have disappeared on a routine basis for decades, their names and faces forgotten, their stories never told, their fates commonly never discovered. Yet were the same thing to happen in some quaint suburb or in Yaletown, it would be front page news.

Every morning at 4 or 5am, expensive SUV’s and cars piloted by members of Vancouver’s predominant organized crime regime pull up to re-supply the dealers across the street and collect their take. Meanwhile, Vancouver City Police headquarters is a block away, and it all transpires without so much as a peep.

I realize that there are going to be those of you out there that, because of your current comfort, might find it easy to condemn such people, to suggest that they simply get jobs and become productive members of society, or that they have brought it all on themselves and don’t deserve pity. I suppose I could attempt to run through the gamut of reasons why people end up down here, from sexual and physical abuse in their past to the ghettoization of Aboriginals and the impact of more than a century of disregard, but what would it ultimately matter? Many people choose to see the dispossessed in a singular light rather than those that, when extended a helping hand, or even afforded a smile in passing and the chance to pet some dogs, light up as if they have won the lottery simply because someone has bothered to afford them a little respect as a human being rather than the representation of a problem.

Standing at the corner of Main and Hastings at rush hour you’ll commonly see frightened commuters with their windows rolled up and car doors locked when they’re at the stop light as if they fear they will be set upon by groups of ravenous, drug-crazed, wolves. Such behaviour speaks directly to why the problems down here rarely get addressed, and why those that live in other parts of the city often complain when their tax dollars are used in an attempt to fund programs for such people. And yet we can spend billions of dollars hosting the Winter Games in 2010, an event that will line the pockets of the already wealthy while, just as it did during Expo 86, see the inhabitants of this neighbourhood pushed east down the Hastings corridor so as to keep them out of sight, allowing those that now own and run some of Vancouver’s most notorious slum hotels to slap on new coats of paint and buy cheap linens at Army & Navy so as to transform their establishments into something altogether unrecognizable to those that have traveled here from countries all over the world.

The hypocrisy of Vancouver society is enough to make the likes of Tommy Douglas spin in their graves. And yet, as long as it continues to grow upwards, those glass and steel monoliths dominating its skyline in ever increasing numbers, the plight of those that live down here will continue to be disregarded. In the end, this is a city that has come to represent the bottom line, and is replete with individuals that view it as little more than an urban playground. To them, what remains out of sight remains out of mind. And when they are faced with the realities of parts of the city that disagree with them, they take comfort in the fact that they can retreat to those areas that have come to exemplify what Vancouver is, to them, supposed to be about.

The building in which I live was built in 1908 and was recently transformed into lofts. When I first moved in they weren’t completed and a myriad of problems presented themselves that spoke directly to the sort of opportunism that this neighbourhood now provides those with a desire to hurriedly cash in on the urban-living boom. In truth, this building should have been condemned until the asbestos in the rafters was properly taken care of, but it wasn’t until well after tenets had moved in that the problem was addressed. And even then, it was secured primarily by using ordinary caulking to seal it in. But just like other buildings in the area that have been transformed, this is one that is secured like Fort Knox to ensure that ‘undesirables’ don’t get too close to those that have moved here looking to secure their own little piece of Vancouver’s urban utopia. My main reason for choosing this place was because it’s located directly across the street from where I recorded my last album, and because it’s zoned as a split commercial/residential building that would allow me to demo at home in a capacity that I was not able to enjoy in previous locations. But to be perfectly honest with you, it has been an experience that has caused me a great deal of humiliation. Because every time I walk out of the front gate the realities of this neighbourhood, and the disregard for its inhabitants, is so overwhelmingly prevalent that it makes me sick to my stomach with guilt.

When my lease is up I will, no doubt, move. For while there have been conversations had with other residents and local business owners about ensuring that the gentrification of the neighbourhood does not result in the further disregard of those that have, for decades, been down here, the reality is that it’s just that – talk. In the end, everyone simply wants a piece of the new Vancouver lifestyle pie.

Looking out my window, the only difference between me and some of those that are currently sitting bewildered on the pavement below is that I have the luxury of affording medication to deal with my illness. Were that not the case, I could very well be right there with them. That is something that is not lost on me on a daily basis, and certainly something that significantly alters my willingness to interact with those that many would otherwise ignore.

‘Crazy’ does that to you from time to time.