Song-writing

The first actual song I ever wrote was a song called Seeds, which I wrote with David Sarsfield and was fleshed by the other members of the band we were in called Pixie Massacre (Aleks Essex, Chris Chalmers, and Sean O'Connor.)  After that the first song I wrote on my own was The Downcycle.  With Seeds I had a chord progression, instrumental part and lyrics that I wanted sung on top of the chord progression but I didn't know anything about composing melodies over chords.  David composed the melody and also showed me how he did it as he was writing it.  I am indebted to him for teaching me this.  I went on to write the Downcycle with that new understanding.

Seeds was about the good things and the bad things coming together, with a nature theme.  The succession of the seasons.  I interpret it as being about my life up to that point as a late teen.  My earliest memories were of pristine summers on the old farmhouse in Milton, ON., of strawberries growing in the backyard, watching clouds go by.  The rest of my childhood was similar though different setting.  "It all comes crashing into chaos unseen"  is the line in the song where it starts to get dark.   It was about the start of adolescence and my illness

Downcycle was a haunting song, liked particularly by Chalmers.  It was about the darkness in my life.  At one point I didn't like playing it because I thought it was giving away my position to my demons, so to speak.  By this I mean that I never really talked directly about my problems and was afraid to.  I thought if I ever did, something terrible would happen. I felt the song was giving myself away too much.  I like playing it now out of spite to my old demons.

Before this, in grade 10, I had written an instrumental on piano entitled "Rain".   I unfortunately no longer know how to play it and I never recorded it, but it was beautiful.

I remember as a child making up a song about not being scared of ghosts one dark morning.  My parents taught us early how to make our own breakfasts and lunches, and we usually woke up before they did.  On this morning, as I said, it was unusually dark and my sister and I started singing songs to scare away anything that was lurking in the dark.  We did this partially to bolster our own courage but to also encourage our little brother to come join us for breakfast and a song.   Waking up mom was not our intention, but with he volume at which we were singing,  we could have woken up a lot of moms.

We also used to sing a song we called Toronto Rocks on our way to visit Nanny (our grandmother) who lived in Toronto.


Looking back it seems that the seeds were planted for me to express myself through writing and music.

Ad Hoc Cook

         In conversation with one of my closest friends, I referred to myself as an ad hoc cook.   By this I mean I cook fairly well but in a very suited to my tastes and without much care to how it is presented.  I cook with the ad hoc (latin: to this; for this specific purpose) being my own enjoyment.

       I have always loved food, and one of my favourite things in the world was watching my grandmother cook.  Now I watch my Dad and Uncle Des cook to get the same effect.  Of course my mom is a good cook.  My parents used to get us to help out with food preparation quite early and so we gained some skill.   My sister, Eva, is an amazing cook, and baker.  She used to make my birthday cakes when I was in my late teens.  My brother, Gordon was also a great cook.  Very experimental.  He would make himself elaborate snacks and homemade smoothies to watch movies with in his lair (aka the family room).

       I said to my friend that I want, as part of my training this summer, to develop my cooking skills with a new purpose: being able to cook for a romantic interest.  I need to broaden my repertoire.  I will need to move beyond myself and my present horizons.  I am excited for the possibilities.   

Christian Transformation

Since becoming a Christian and entering into seminary,  my world has been turned upside down and I have gone through  numerous phases of a more general and grander scale transformation of who I am.  I am not simply playing the same game in a different position.  Rather the whole complex that is me has changed.  So much of the hurt I've carried with me for so many years has been forced to the surface.  So many of lies I've believed about myself have been shown to be untruths.

 It has not been an easy year.  The stress of seminary/university life, coupled with the emotional stuff I have been forced to face after years of numbness, and suppression, has caused me to be ill more often than I've been well.  I think that the Holy Spirit is working with me to expel some of the garbage I have been holding unto, withdrawing it like poison from a snake bite.  After all the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier.  The Father has made me, Christ has saved me, the Holy Spirit works within me to enact and transform me now that I am saved

Many of the false assumptions I have held about myself have been undermined, and in some cases utterly defeated.  It has not been easy but then nothing really is.

Kathryn

Reason tells me we are unlikely to meet again.   And it was so long ago.  But I still think about the time we spent together, and how I would have done anything to please you, to chase away your demons so you could be happy.  I never believed in romance as one of my possible modes of being until I met you and we only knew each other for a short while.  I know you felt the same, but we were both severely damaged.  

You said you would only end up hurting me if we ever became involved.  'tis true.  Because we were involved (despite nominally only being friends) and I did get hurt.  Badly.  So badly that it is 11 years later and I still bear the scars.

I lost a lot that year: my brother, my sanity, my innocence, and you.  I have to let you go.  I have to let that year of hell exist in the past not haunt my present.  I have been in denial of Gordon's suicide.  I have been in denial that I can be loved, that I want to be be loved, that I want to love.  I want to be a good husband to a woman like you,  to be the loving nurturing father to children that I share with a woman like you.    I have to believe I can.  You have shown me how. 

 I hope and pray that wherever you are, you are happy, leaving behind the past and all its pain.  If you think of me at all, I pray that you remember me as someone who cared about you very much.

Love

What does love mean to me?  I could go on and on about CS Lewis' Four Loves but I think what love is is a living energy that binds people together.  This need not sound like something physical, metaphysical or science-fictionesque.  Real love resembles the creative force that spoke the world into being. And as such it transcends all limits.  If I truly feel love for someone, there is nothing that can tear us apart, even if we do in fact separate physically.  That is why people can still love their husband/wife after divorce.  They may have fallen out of being each other's mate but love itself has not disappeared.  

Sex and love are hard subjects for me because it has been hard to put the two together.  I either like someone for their body or their personality.  It has been hard for me to admit that because I can be quite embarrassed regarding sex, whereas I can be publicly quite romantic about love.  I have had an almost chivalrous attitude toward romantic love, like that of a courtly knight and the love that must always be unrequited.  And an adolescent uneasiness surrounding sexual relations.  Both attitudes are unhealthy to some degree.  I am learning to overcome that, though.  The truth is that sexual relations has as its place between two people who truly love one another as people who cannot be apart.  This truth cuts through the schism between desiring sex alone and being enamored only with the idea of romance.  Falling in love is with a person as he or she is.

Merlin and Morgaine

I learned much about life from my grandmother. She wasn't your average old lady. I don't think the term "old lady" could have ever even apply to her. After all she was the one who was always telling me not to get set in my ways too early in life. She taught me that life is change and life is lived in the unexpected. She was Christian yet she held a deep belief in things like ghosts and reincarnation. She was a firm believer in Christian charity. This was not lip-service. Her whole life was devoted to giving to others and providing hospitality. She could have a meal ready for anyone who came to her door in less than 10 min. She had a breadth of knowledge ranging from medicine to the occult. At one point used to read palms and often could see things before they happened. She had the gift of sight. And a she was an accomplished poet. I have inherited some of these gifts.

Western Civilization has often been uncomfortable with the role of the wise old women, even labeling such women as witches. In many representations in stories movies and shows, the evil ones are generally old powerful women and their followers. I think of Morgaine from the legend of King Arthur. My grandmother was a strong, powerful and wise woman, and I would follow her anywhere. But my feeling is that the "crone" has power for good that compliments Merlin's

Who is Merlin for me? My many mentors but most of all my uncle John. He even has the long white beard that he wears like a badge of office. Often when I need guidance I email Uncle John. Without fail the wisdom he imparts sees me through. My imagination and writing and appreciation of stories has been fostered by him most of all.

I feel truly blessed for these and other people how have enriched my life.

Mental Pilgrimage

I would like to share with you my desire to go on a pilgrimage of sorts. I want to revisit some places of significance that I have either not been to in years or have never been but have importance to my idea of who I am today.

I would like to visit my place of birth, Women's College Hospital in downtown Toronto. I once had a dream that I went there, and later on we drove past it and it was exactly as I pictured it. There are a bunch of places I'd like to visit in Toronto but the one that I have the most interest is in seeing my grandmother's old building in Rexdale, Ont. It was a place where I spent a lot of time feeling loved by my family, being spoiled by my grandmother, and where I felt peace. Every morning I'd wake up early and she'd be in kitchen making coffee or frying chapatis for breakfast. I would give her a kiss and she'd tell me how happy she was to have me there. I never liked leaving there. Part of it was that life at home didn't have that aspect of feeling protected from harm or feeling the love of one's grandmother present at all times. She was someone I could turn to with any problem. When my illness first showed up, I felt better at that apartment even with my "nothing's real" paranoia happening. I never wanted to leave because especially in this case, going home meant returning to the demons that plagued even my young self.

I dream of this place often. Some nights I dream that I live in that apartment looking after it like a shrine to my ancestors. Sometimes my grandmother and grandfather are there in my dream giving me the kind of love that I received from them as a child.

I would like to place flowers on the graves of my grandmother, Hilda Dias, grandfather Matthew Dias, great grandmother and great uncle and aunt. They are all in the same place which is good because the cemetery is very large and easy for someone like me to get lost. Now that I know how to get to my grandfather's place on my own, I would have tea with my Step-grandmother and then I would place a poppy on the grave of my grandfather Lt Col. Harold March Steckley.

I want to go to Milton, the town I lived in for the first years of my life before moving to London. I would just like to walk around town and see what's still there. See the old house. The house was an old farmhouse and the backyard was like a kind of heaven to my childhood mind. There was a Strawberry bush there and in the summer I would pick them and lay on my back watching the clouds float by. I can still remember the smell of bonfires and mowed lawn. I remember walking up the hill toward the escarpment with my dad. I remember climbing the apple tree in our backyard, picking an apple and giving it to my grandfather who cut it up with his knife and gave me pieces. It is a fond memory of a strong man I never really got to know as he died when I was 7.

I think one of the reasons I hold on to memories has a lot to do with how important the past is to my understanding of myself. Genealogy is almost spiritual for me. Knowing where I've come from helps me to figure out who I am and where I am going.

A place that I feel an attraction to is Bobcaygeon. The song by the Tragically Hip epitomizes the Canadian summer of camping and cottaging. But Bobcaygeon has significance to my connection with the grandmother I never knew. She and my step-grandfather had a cottage there. I feel like I've been there. I feel like I knew her. My other grandmother told me that she must have been present with me when I was young or that she is a kind of guardian angel to me. I'm inclined to believe her


Eventually I want to go to Goa where my ancestors are from. My dad nearly put me off with his reasons for not going (hygiene, corruption, and poverty mostly) but I still one day want to see it.

Even though I probably won't actually go on this pilgrimage it was worth writing about it

Moodness, Genius, and God

I remember very clearly as a seven or eight year old riding in the car with my dad and grandmother from Toronto wondering what the future would hold, when I would have to say final farewells to members of my family, who I would grow up to be. I felt something that day...a premonition but of the vaguest kind as if I was calling out to the future and getting clouded, dreamy response. I felt something similar, and in varying degrees of clarity and strength at other points in my life before major events in my life took place. The strongest and most clear was the day grandmother passed away.

I remember in grade 9 when I was surrounded by a dark cloud of fear confusion and psychosis musing over what it would mean for it to be too late to be saved. Like Padme pleading to Anakin to come back while there's still time and realizing that they've passed the point of no return. I remember the feeling of exile that building a wall around myself brought when the psychosis was at its worst in high school. This was before I let anyone know even a glimpse of what was going on inside me. No could understand, I thought.

What is the point of talking about these dark memories? It is to understand that mood can make you attuned to things beyond yourself but also closed to them. This is a very Heideggarian idea which lends to mysticism but I personally feel that my "disorder" is nothing more than a corruption of my natural sensitivity and attunement. I am not claiming to have supernatural abilities. But I am suggesting that those like me who are keenly sensitive tend to be seen as madmen and/or geniuses. I'm no Mozart, nor am I DaVinci. I simply experience the world differently, and that's what I think genius is.

The corruption of a good thing is what we Christians call sin. It is the failing to hit the mark of perfection. It is not a simple matter of breaking rules but rather a fundamental deviation. I am a fallen man and I look to my Saviour Christ and surrender to Him and use the powers God has given me to do His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.

This will sound like craziness to those who have not been in close contact with me as I've gone through my spiritual journey. I am looking to become a pastor and I would like to use my story to invite whomever will listen with me along my path to God