Like millions of Canadians, I spent last Saturday evening hunkered down in front of the television. It wasn’t to take in the athletic efforts of our better-than-expected Olympians, though it was a national celebration.

We were all watching the final performance of The Tragically Hip, a band that has turned out to be more than an institution. Over three decades, The Hip has become a part of our cumulative national identity.

More than 11 million of us (a third of the population) took in the live concert broadcast on television, radio, and across all social media channels. The numbers don’t include the crowds gathered at listening parties in bars, concert halls, and outdoor venues (at least 25,000 people outside the arena at the center of it all) to see it unfold on the big screens.

That’s a lot of Canadians. The Hip meant that much to all those people.

If you live outside of Canada, you’ve probably never heard of The Tragically Hip. Despite putting out 14 albums, and garnering significant radio airplay, sales, and all the big awards here, The Hip never made a dent in markets outside our borders. That’s sad.

But we sure loved them. The Hip were often referred to as Canada’s house band, and from the early days they toured from coast-to-coast. The early music was a lot of the same bluesy sort of beverage room rock & roll many of us grew up with. The sound evolved with the band, both in structure and atmospherics, and always featured the up-front vocal style, and lyrics, of front man Gord Downie.

Downie himself was truly front and center on this tour. Last spring it was announced the singer had terminal brain cancer. A short summer tour was offered, and tickets sold out quickly.

In the weeks leading up to the tour, even more so during the days prefacing the final show, media was full of stories and memories about the band, and the impact it had on the country and its people.

Everyone seemed to have a favorite song, or lyrics that spoke loudly, or took them back to a where and when. Downie’s lyrics were layered with Canadian landmarks and landscapes. The references were not always obvious, but you could taste a nationality.

Good art always takes on the tone of the times, and, often, the culture it is produced in.

What impressed me most over the past weeks and months, was the continual reference to Downie’s lyrics as pure poetry, and the man himself more as a poet than a singer. I’m sure it had little to do with the fact the band’s latest recording was titled Man Machine Poem.

The singer is a wordsmith, true and whole. He took what surrounded him, captured the essence of the environment, and turned out daring (occasionally oblique) lyrics with a twisted and torrential rhyme and reason.

Yes, without the music, it read well as poetry. There was some beautiful stuff.

So in all the hype over the tour, and the certain tragic end of a heartfelt and creative soul, admirers and supporters of the band not only referred to the songs as important, but as poetry.

Everyday fans of an everyman’s band were talking poetry. They weren’t talking about lyrics and anthems and just words that rhyme. They were talking about poetry, like it was what they believed in, and like it was something you could. Like it was something hip.

Poetry, these days, rarely gets that sort of respect. That’s sad.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again; poetry is the life force that can break down barriers and unite. It should be spoken more.

“It should bring people together.
Lovers, warriors, politicians and their prey

might better understand themselves and each other
if they thought more in poetry, than in whatever else

they might be thinking.”

We all learn about poetry, and learn it early on with nursery rhymes and latter music on record or the radio. It’s wrapped up in melody and often hidden in the music, but it is poetry. But nobody really talks about it that way. Poetry is just not as cool, or not spoken about like there is even the potential for cool, like music. Music is cool, but it’s just songs and discs or downloads (or vinyl).

The country united last Saturday, to say farewell to a band that has given them something to remember. Music can indeed unite a nation, but I’d like to think poetry had something to do with it as well.

“I am not sure if most people talk
poetry
enough.

Doesn’t it have to rhyme?
Not all of the time . . .
not for everyone.

If not a poem, then
a poet
is mainly misunderstood.

But how? The language is so direct,
it cuts out the crap, rarely are there ums and awes,
and

any hesitation is purposeful.
Poets do not stumble on words. Poets respect words, poets

breathe words.
Words are currency, for a poet. Why not for everybody?” 

   Why Only April
   © 2014 j.g.lewis

 

                                              Scant silken stream
                                                                        dividing line
                                                                  between reality
                                                                 and sensuality
                                                                                     softly
                                                                    floating upwards
                                                                        filling space
                                                                   between the ribs
                                                                                        inhale
                                                                              sandalwood
                                                                  lavender or patchouli
                                                                                 jasmine
                                                                               at night
                                                                   ease the mind
                                                                           wipe away
                                                                 remains of the day
                                                                             you can’t stop
                                                                                     time
                                                                              but you can
                                                                                 make it
                                                                                    bearable
                                                                                  scent
                                                                    the swiftest route
                                                                              to memory
                                                                               or comfort
                                                                               as you retreat
                                                                                       from
                                                                                  negative forces
                                                                   the essence of the moment
                                                                                        returns
                                                                                         a gentle
                                                                                    equilibrium
                                                                                    meditation
                                                                                   moments
                                                                                  for the self
                                                                                     marginalize
                                                                            negative influences
                                                                                           neutralize
                                                                       behaviours and patterns
                                                                                            creating
                                                                                   an environment
                                                                                              of hope
                                                                                       and awareness
                                                                                strengthen the senses
                                                                                                    soften
                                                                                             your world

                                              ©2016 j.g. lewis

There are opinions, thoughts, and people beyond this simple screen.

Voices travel through the gravity-defying glass and steel skyscrapers, and swiftly across the streets of sweet suburbia built over farmlands and ancient burial grounds serviced by the multi-lane highways butting up against old-growth forests.

Lessons are found on the sidewalks amongst the gypsies, punk rockers, tattooed love children and well-heeled pensioners, as much as they are in education’s hallowed halls or the food courts and washrooms of cash-strapped shopping malls.

Like a breath, wisdom is found in the breeze — most times gentle — and travels through us all, picking up the scent of humanity and carrying the emotions we live with day after day. These words are honest, and forthright; pollen for poets, snack food for thinkers, and dreams for disenchanted youth.

There is an attitude that cannot be denied, and there is a new place to find these thoughts.

The Urban Howl will capture the mood of the moment, expressing ideas and desire of those who, like us, want something more than what is dealt out by politicians, franchised into mediocrity, and allocated by a society that has lost its way.

Are we dreaming? Hell yeah, but isn’t that what this life is all about?

So much is happening in this vast virtual world. For months now we’ve been waiting for the stars to align, the right phase of the moon, and for the clock to stop ticking. We’ve been transforming as we wait, while the world changes, as it does, and as it always will be.

We want to capture that change, acknowledge not only what is happening, but also what can happen. It can happen right here.

http://theurbanhowl.com

The Urban Howl offers a platform for hope, for knowledge, and for curiosity. It is as open-minded as it is open to interpretation. There are no boundaries to this community, and writers and readers from across this big blue planet are welcome to participate. Come and join us on the frontline of a new magical paradigm.

The screen has edges; our world does not.
© 2016 j.g. lewis

http://theurbanhowl.com/2016/08/09/iwant-j-g-lewis/

Brightening sky, the questioning why,
each day.     World not awake, not yet,
and neither are you.     Off to work, or
off to where?               The road ahead,
you only stare.
This is not living, but coping. Existing,
at this hour.          We do
what we must, as we can, in the space
stretching between silence and
satisfaction.                          Biding time,
tempted by what we know
and what we need.     Questioning why.
Another try, day for day,
find your way.                   Another wait.
Familiar road.    Days the same, no one
to blame, but your self.     If you choose,
if you see,
if you try, if you feel.
The bills arrive, of that we know.
Is this the only way to go?             Live,
  as you can, and must, amid the truth,
 without the trust.        Questioning sky,
common day, recognizable road,
is there another way?
   It is as much about how you navigate
                     your way through daylight,
                 as it is through the darkness.
Take the time, know what is right,
sustain yourself through the light.

© 2016 j.g. lewis

 

It is too easy to buy into the trash talk liberally sprinkled about this planet.

With access to an abundance of online platforms, all those thoughts, ideals, posts and propaganda discounting or documenting the evil ways of one faction or another are far too available on social or mainstream media.

It has become acceptable.

We are force-fed ideologies, dogma, practices and policies from politicians and posers (generally one in the same) preaching not just a better way, but the only way; their way; the right way (and it is oh-so-wrong). It is a world of scintillating sound bites and malicious headlines that don’t make sense.

It’s too easy to accept the bullshit that continues to pile up on the shiny floors of government or along the protester-lined main streets. It’s difficult to determine what really matters once caught up in this foolish chatter.

It has become too easy for politicians to stray from the business of guiding the country and getting caught up in the highly publicized displays of arrogance and shameless self-promotion. In their need to offer rhetoric instead of real truth, our leaders (no longer a meaningful term) slough off their intended roles.

A politician’s tradition role is to tend to the affairs of our nations, managing economies, propping up currency markets, and sorting through developing social issues, health care concerns, protection of the citizenry, and legislating the laws of the land.

It is their job, and they are paid to do it. Yet they don’t.

Shame on them!

No: shame on us. We allowed all of this to happen.

We bought into it, and continue to do so. It is served to us on silver platters, or sucked up from silver spoons. We have become trained to accept the politics of negativity. Instead of being allowed to embrace the principles of democracy offered and allowed in developed nations, we let those elected officials waste our precious time and resources on this damned one-upmanship we have allowed to prosper.

It is an abuse of power. Politics is no longer about party representation, or reinforcing and advancing the rights of the people. It is now, only and solely, a blood sport. We have just witnessed the conventions of the two major U.S. parties in an election year. Neither party has emerged from the respective gatherings as unified.

Unity, it seems, is no longer a platform for either party. Unity has become less of a concern for anybody.

We allowed it to happen. No, it hasn’t been an immediate thing. It has taken decades, and it began long before one American president began talking about a kinder, gentler nation. Over time, this top-down propensity for greed and power has accelerated to the point where it has forcibly entered our own very lives.

We have come to accept that this unabashed ignorance is a socially acceptable way of behaving. We are led by example. Too many of us are too quick to point out what is wrong with the way somebody lives or loves, instead of accepting the diversity of color, faith, sexual orientation or gender identity now openly available to us.

We have allowed video-game violence to become ethos instead of entertainment. It has become me against you, or them. Right now it is easier to say, “what the fuck is this whack-a-do talking about” than it is to consider that I may have a point.

It is more convenient to criticize a concept or lambaste an original idea than it is to find fault in questionable authority.

It has become easier to say ‘oh well’ than it is to ask ‘why’.