Where have the years gone?
they once seemed like glacial
tracks, slowly moving, through
King Street West and the now
forgotten memories,
half remembered storms
and thunder
in the mind,
too many days
now stand between me and then,
what could life have been
if I had the strength to cut my way
through the ice…
yesterday never knew
or cared.
Ian D. Hall 2016
They had demolished the Nunnery
on King Street West, death
to the practice, the calling
and the habit
moved on up the hill,
up the mountain
closer to their God.
Empty space and a hole
at least ten feet deep, rubble,
prayers now unanswered
as God hears nothing
from his sisters.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Halloween calls for the imagination to go into overdrive, a night in which revellers can mix with the weird, the wonderful and even Elmer Fudd’s Wassicly Wabbit if the call should be desired hard enough. Halloween is also the night of corporate holiday, the fast buck made, the night where perhaps some live very much in the moment of F.E.A.R.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Never confuse laidback with anything other than industrious and
forthcoming; it might mean something else in a dictionary but in the hands of one of the most admired guitarists in North America, it just spells out a musician of strength, of drive and purpose wrapped in the skin of someone who cares deeply about the world and the handcart that it is going to Hell in.
It hasn’t been all fun and games
along the way, the Progressive
Highway, the Punk Lane, Rock
Avenue, the odd Pop cul-de-sac
and runway Metal, the plane landing often
over the moped of forgotten misses
and lesser hits; it hasn’t been all fun
and games but for a thousand
nights the electricity
has kick started my heart
and made it thump
more than a kiss from
an English Rose
or Maple Leafed Lavender Girl.
It hasn’t been all fun and games
however, it has been the finest
Through the glass like Alice I fell
whilst still holding on
suspended
thousands of feet above the Earth,
tumbler ripping me apart
though no physical scratch
or open wound oozing blood;
the baseball stadium far below me,
let’s play ball, let’s play dare,
look down girl
and fall through the looking glass
high above Toronto.
Ian D. Hall 2016.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Serenity is an elusive flower, it is all around us, breathing deeply, urging us to look deep within our souls and spread the feeling onwards, like a happy virus, it seeks us out to be admired and worshiped but then like any God, hides itself away in the darkness when the going gets a little too much, a little disturbing, the shutters come down and serenity is mistaken for the pursuit of money and fame. Happiness always comes at a price, peace never should.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Too often the world ignores en masse the great sounds of yesterday, the insanely good song writing of three or four generations back. This is either out of ignorance or malice, either way to disregard, almost dispense with the richness of the past, is akin to saying that only words and actions recorded in the last decade are viable, that mean anything and all other forms of communication, of sound, are irrelevant.
We flew
like wingless, senseless birds
oppressed by need,
taken by desire,
to see our band perform
in the crowds of Danforth
and from the view
of the C.N. Tower,
we saw daylight.
We flew because we could
and the pain
and joy it cost us
was worth it
one final time.
Ian D. Hall 2016
142 seconds is all it can take to destroy hope. We may think we are masters of our destiny, the Captain who steers their own flotilla along the steam tossed rivers and seas but in reality we are the whim of other people’s decisions and the Earth’s volatile nature; we are trapped between those that care and those that have no compassion. For the people of Amatrice, compassion and help is something they desperately need and as with any humanitarian project, the world of art steps up to be counted.