SA4QE 2016

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It's been a year since I participated in SA4QE - the international conspiracy that celebrates the naming day of the brilliant Russell Hoban by leaving pieces of yellow paper - presenting quotes from his books - in odd places all over the world. Its also appears to have been a year since I updated this blog/site/thing. So much has changed. I may or may not get to that. In the meantime, here’s what I sent in to the excellent Russell Hoban site (where you should check out the other yellow papers) this year:

The weather here on the west coast of Canada was once again inclement on Russell Hoban's naming day. I arrived at a grey and windy White Rock Beach with my yellow paper, some tape and a pocket full of tacks. I had a location planned - at a tourist lookout above the beach and pier - but when I arrived at the beach, the first thing I saw was a silent and still man with a briefcase, standing in front of the old train station, contemplating the bay in front of him.
The bronze sculpture is called "Passenger", but I knew right away that it was the Gom Yawmcher man - and I knew also that he was considering something similar if not identical to the subject of my yellow paper; "If you could even jus see 1 thing clear ..."
As I walked toward him, the sun came out. Once I had affixed the paper to his briefcase, it went back behind the clouds.
"If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you never wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the middl of it living it or moving thru it."
~ Riddley Walker (p. 186)

SA4QE 2015

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As I have done for several years now, I participated today in an international conspiracy - called, mysteriously, SA4QE - to celebrate the naming day of the brilliant author, Russell Hoban. All around the world, pieces of yellow paper, bearing quotes from Hoban books, have been left in public places – cafe tables, bookshops, park benches, telephone booths, train stations or anywhere my fellow participants deemed appropriate. Russell Hoban remains one of the most original writers of the twentieth century and one of my very favourites.

Here’s this year's submission:

Russell Hoban's naming day was cold and rainy here in White Rock BC, Canada. The pier was mostly deserted. I walked to the very end and attached this year's quote to the railing that looks out to the American San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands.
As I walked back, a small smile of a rare kind took over my cold and wet face.
Happy Birthday Russ, and thank you.
  "Perhaps this world that's in us, this world that we're in, was never meant to be fixed and permanent; perhaps it's only one of a continuous succession of world-ideas passing through the world-mind. And we are, all of us, the passing and impermanent perceivers of it." 
Russell Hoban ~ From the Novel ‘Fremder'

  You can check out other submissions as they come in, and learn more about Russell Hoban and SA4QE here.

Trubba not.

All Ways In the Middl Of It

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I was looking through some collected Russell Hoban quotes, getting ready for SA4QE on Wednesday, and this one hit me - only, for some reason, not for a yellow paper on the pier. So this must be where it was supposed to go.

"If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you never wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the middl of it living it or moving thru it."
Russell Hoban ~ From the Novel ‘Ridley Walker'

Norma Grace McGuire - May 9 1923 - Jan 8 2015

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My mom, Norma Grace McGuire, passed away on January 8th 2015. She was 91. Her endless curiosity and intelligence, relentless tenacity, unwavering loyalty and unconditional love were an inspiration to me, her family, and everyone she met. She taught me and my two brothers to dream fearlessly, to question unflinchingly, and to always try to do the right thing - and to fight for that right thing when necessary.

As well as being an inspirational parent, she was an artist, genealogist, author, blogger, craftsperson, seamstress, activist, photographer, computer enthusiast, scrap-booker, knitter, and quilter. Despite those many activities, the majority of her life was devoted to serving and caring for her family. And despite all of her accomplishments, there was nothing she was more proud of than her husband and her three boys and their families. For all of her tenacity, curiosity, and sense of justice there was nothing that motivated her more than love.

I will continue to love her. She has left behind an empty space that can't be filled.

The Mayor's Ball

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All of our shows are dramatically different these days. This is a rough account of a random show - random only in the sense that it was the one for which I found myself with the requisite coincidence of time and inclination to write about. • It was grey and raining. For the first time in what seemed like months. It had been and endless summer in White Rock.

I was waiting a few more minutes before heading out for the Surrey Sheraton where I’d park my bags and then meet my Trooper brothers in the lobby for a 2:10 lobby call - to be then driven from there to the venue to sound check.

We were playing the Mayor's Charity Ball. I googled the show and there was no mention of it online at all. Which lead me to think that ours might be a surprise appearance. Maybe it's because I don't like surprises, but I prefer people to know we're coming and to be ready for us when we walk out onto the stage. It's a whole different animal when you're trying to put the party together from scratch.

My plan was to sleep over at the Sheraton despite the fact that it's only an hour, if that, from home. It's a luxury, I suppose, but the room was mine for 24 hours and I was considering stopping by a nearby bike shop in the morning to check out e-bikes - a notion that overtook me after reading my friend Peter Cheney's story in the Globe and Mail about riding one in downtown Toronto.

We are like a band of brothers in most senses. We hug when we meet and catch up quickly in bursts of abbreviated prose and sentence-finishing. Nods and winks and eye-rolls. We pile into the bus or van still talking and laughing. Our driver was Rick. He drove us to Whistler when we played there a few years ago with Loverboy. Smitty remembered him and he seemed pleased. We bonded. Rick told us an unflattering story about a band he wouldn't name.

Backstage Paul showed us our nice dressing room and our not nice dressing room. The nice dressing room was lit dramatically and contained white retro sofas and sparkly highlights. The other room had unfinished walls and broom closet decor. It was also much smaller. There is a plan in place to use the nice one before the show and the drywalled one after - at which point the good one will be used for our meet-and-greet.

Paul took me aside. The organizer had asked if we could sing a song called Diane, to "surprise" Mayor Diane Watts - who will be celebrating her last Charity Ball as Mayor of Surrey. He told the organizer that we wouldn't know the song she requested but would probably know the similarly named Ryan Adams song. I told Paul I didn't know it. He said I must have heard it, and in any case it was easy; Steve had figured it out on guitar in just a few minutes. So I had to say no. I was not going to learn and sing a song I'd never heard to surprise someone. Even if it was a Mayor. Sometimes I hate being that guy.

Out on the stage we faced a purple-tinged, overwrought Marie-Antoinette themed ballroom with flowers and cut glass and flowing fabric hanging from delicately decorated trusses - all balanced precariously at the iffy edge of good taste. Black and white clad staff hustled from table to table tweaking or adding to the already crowded displays. Sound check was just a loud interference for most of them. There were some printed lyrics - probably to a song called Diane - on Smitty’s Marshall.

I eat delivered Beef and Broccoli ( and Beef and Guy Lon if they have it) for dinner just about every night I’m on the road. Sonny’s Noodle House had Guy Lon. I watched the first half of the movie Poetry on my laptop while I ate.

The Mayor’s Ball was a charity event. Our pre-show dressing room - the purple one - was separated from the wealthy Surrey-ites in attendance by only black drapery, so the repetitive drone of the auctioneer couldn’t be ignored. The auction went on and on - well past our starting time. We were dressed for stage, wired up with our in-ear monitors and waiting. It’s a credit to our team that the vibe remained chill and good humoured in the purple room.

The show was a private event, so I’ll limit details of that part of my day to avoid intruding on the partier’s privacy. I will say that her worship the Mayor - and a large coterie of her friends and family - joined us onstage for rousing and crowded versions of Raise a Little Hell and We’re Here For a Good Time. The entire stage, ball gown-clad women and Trooper men, posed for photos, onstage, at the end - rather than our usual bow. After changing clothes and unwiring our in-ears in the dressing room we joined the wealthy and famous VIP guests in the purple room for photos and small talk. All of the people there were very nice and we enjoyed the meet and greet more than we usually might.

On the ride back to the Sheraton we discussed the show. It turns out that, during Raise a Little Hell some of the onstage ladies were attempting conversations with the guys in the band - while they played.

“I’m British you know” “I can tell by your accent” “No, really, I’m British”

And my favourite one, from Gogo;

“Will you teach me how to play piano?”

He said it’s the strangest thing anyone has ever said to him on stage.

20140704 - Tisdale SK

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I'm back at the hotel with my heartburn medicine and my bug juice. I didn't know I needed the bug juice until I was on my walk to get the Gaviscon. The heartburn is a longer story.

We arrived in Tisdale Saskatchewan Last night around nine. I called the only Chinese food place in town to order my traditional beef and brocolli - but they'd already been closed for an hour. The nice lady there told me all the restaurants in town closed at the same time. I called the front desk to confirm that and Crystal told me there was one place still open. A hotel that made pizzas. So I called.

"Hi, I'd like to order for delivery" "Sorry, the taxi driver's not answering his phone" " ... "

I was hungry so I thought I could walk into town to pick up - so I asked:

"I'm at the Canalta Hotel can you tell me where you are from here?" "We're just down past the Subway" " ..."

The girl I was talking to seemed to be losing patience with our call. I could hear how busy the bar was. I thanked her and called back down to the front desk in a now desperate bid for some eleventh hour local restaurant knowledge.

"Oh, I can get Debbie to run over and get that Pizza for ya"

As it turned out, Debbie picked up three pizzas and a 24 of beer for us. You gotta love a small town.

The pizza was delicious, but I should have stopped eating when the heartburn started. My restless night in Tisdale was my own fault. This morning though, I headed out on foot to the Pharmasave on the main drag there. Just down past the Subway.

To My Three or Four Forgiving and Open-minded Friends

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Trying to find a good book to read is annoying me. And, for reasons unknown to me, that annoyance makes me want to write. I can't figure it out. I'm not going to try. But I am writing. Something.

Encapsulating the months that have passed since last I wrote is the impossibility that has impeded me. There is no way. I've considered sneaking up on an account of it from several different directions - maybe a general metaphoric discussion of the over-riding emotional landscape, for instance. Bullshit and who cares. Maybe some short illuminating scenes that might suggest the general story - No. No one thing, or two things or three is the nub of it. It can neither be distilled nor generalized, and too many people I love are prominent characters in the story arc and I have no right to share their parts, and I won't.

And I haven't been unhappy, or sad in a daily way - I've had some great times - a lot of them - but I've been overwhelmed. There's just been too much. There's been too much and it's come too fast and much of it is part of a new paradigm that I haven't had the time or energy to get on top of. I badly want (and need) an attitude that covers this new reality, but all my efforts to engineer one have so far failed. Which is, well, a failure ... and I'm not fond of those.

So rather than chronicle that inability to make peace with the difficult parts of what I just now realize has been the first four years of "my sixties", I've clammed up. And although I tell myself it's the recent subscribers to ramcguire.com - people requesting an alert in the unlikely event that something new happens here - that have embarrassed me into stepping up, the truth is I miss it.

So in the spirit of my original blog, I'll try once again to overcome the inertia of myself while imagining the three or four of you as forgiving and open-minded friends who don't give a shit what I write but are still encouraging me to do so.

Why I Write

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I spent some time this morning considering buying a book called "Why We Write" that collects the answers to that question from some well-respected authors. The big idea was to find an answer there that might apply to me - since I've realized I don't have a good one myself. The only reasons I can dredge up seem a little unsavoury. I'd love to truly state that writing is like breathing to me (as one of the authors in the book's preview claims) but it isn't. I'm always happy to have completed something, but the drive to begin is more based on the belief that I should write, not that I couldn't help myself.

And why should I write? I don't know. That's why I was going to download the book - rather than writing this.

Once when I was very young, my uncle brought a woman to our house that he claimed was a gypsy. With her black hair and flashing eyes she looked the part. My uncle convinced her to read my palms. I clearly remember telling her that one day my palms would be impossible to read because they would be covered in ink. I thought I was being clever making that "veiled" reference to the career path I had chosen.

I enjoyed writing as a child, although I often wonder now if I was simply enjoying the accolades and attention I received when I wrote. Of course I was - but did I continue writing for more of that attention or because I enjoyed the process? Who knows for sure. Not me. I do know that, like now, the question often stops me in my tracks and, like a snake eating it's own tail, progress towards a solution grinds to a halt when the resulting circle reaches it's smallest possible diameter.

I've kept a journal for years. The writing I do there is uninspiring and pedestrian but I believe there's value in keeping track of your days. It's a struggle for me to keep up-to-date, but I do because I receive good value from the entries that accumulate. There is a clear and useful reason for that writing. Sadly, I've become increasingly unsure about my reasons for writing in public.

I'm sharing this conflict here because, for whatever reason - suspicious or otherwise - I'd like to return to public writing with more frequency - and sincerity - and I'm unsure where to resume the story. Or what it is I want to share. Or why ...

Correction to "The Politics of Songwriting - Part Five"

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Rolling Stone Magazine has run an online version of a Kurt Cobain interview from their January 27 1994 issue. In it, Cobain breaks down Nirvana's songwriting shares. I was wrong about him receiving all the royalties. If my math is correct, it appears he took a total of 87.5% while the other two band members shared the remaining 12.5%, for a total of 6.25% each. Here's how he put it:

Haven't there been any issues where there was at least heated discussion? Yeah, the songwriting royalties. I get all the lyrics. The music, I get 75 percent, and they get the rest. I think that's fair. But at the time, I was on drugs when that came up. And so they thought that I might start asking for more things. They were afraid that I was going to go out of my mind and start putting them on salary, stuff like that. But even then we didn't yell at each other. And we split everything else evenly.

Connor McGuire

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Social media doesn’t usually work that well for Connor McGuire. He’s tried. If you look around online, you can find him on the obligatory Facebook and Twitter, and he has a Tumbler website - but there’s not much there. Social media is clearly low on his list of priorities. His focus has been elsewhere.

His friends report that he seems to disappear for large blocks of time, only to emerge sporadically with some new version of himself and his art. They imagine a cave - which is not too far from the mark. They imagine screens glowing in the dark late at night, knobs and buttons, piles of instruments, piles of unwashed dishes and empty bottles. They can hear this in his music.

When they hear it, they can also tell right away why he’s doing it. It’s clear he’s searching for something great but different. Different but not weird. OK, maybe even weird sometimes, but not stupid or abrasive - or weird for weird’s sake. The words sound like thoughts we’ve had, the tunes haunt from a place not easy to reach and the emotions revealed are tempered with a welcome intelligence.

A song is a fragile construction, with each piece dependent on the other and, initially, only supported in the air by the artist's sheer force of will. Some of Connor's songs don't get finished, but I sure love the ones that do ...

Today I'm doing some social media for him, since he's been mostly preoccupied with making music (and, in his spare time, his Boba Fett armour).

•

Here's a live recording of Connor's new song "Hand it Over":

Steve

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"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
~ Steve Jobs - From his 2005 commencement address at Stanford

SA4QE - 2011

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Here's the email and attached photos I sent tonight to The Slickman Building (4th floor), somewhere in Britain. It documents my participation, again this year, in the SA4Q event, celebrating the 86th naming day of Russell Hoban. All around the world, pieces of yellow paper with quotes from Hoban books were left in public places – cafe tables, bookshops, park benches, telephone booths, train stations or anywhere the birthday celebrants deemed appropriate. The SA4QE (Slickman A4 Quotation Event) website lists 350 quotes that have been left, on previous birthdays, in big cities and small towns in 14 countries since 2002. Russell Hoban remains one of the most original writers of the twentieth century and one of my very favourites. Here's what I sent:

Good evening,
Thanks again for this opportunity to participate!
Russell Hoban’s birthday began, in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, with a menacing darkness squatted defiantly over Semiahmoo Bay. My yellow paper had been wrapped in plastic, as always, to protect it from an inevitable rain coast pelting - and subsequent melting - of Mr. Hoban’s words, but the particularly unwelcoming weather kept me inside until early afternoon …
At 2:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, on Russell Hoban’s naming day when he come 86, the dark clouds parted and the sun shone down. I headed down to the beach with my lovely wife, yellow paper in hand.
It was left on the best bench. Close to the water but distant from the action. A peaceful yet powerful spot. The wind was still whipping up the water. The gulls like that.
I am proud to once again represent for White Rock. I hear that, as of this year, I’m no longer the only Canadian contributor to SA4QE. This makes me proud as well. Here’s what’s written on my paper:
Reality is ungraspable. For convenience we use a limited-reality consensus in which work can be done, transport arranged, and essential services provided. The real reality is something else--only the strangeness of it can be taken in...
Russell Hoban The Moment Under The Moment, Foreword
My best to all members of the Kraken Community ...
And Thank you again, Russ, for the joyous mystery and the mysterious joy
Happy Birthday!
All best
Ra McGuire

Richard Feynman on Uncertainty and Not Knowing

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Quantum physicist Richard Feynmanis one of my heroes. This is from an interview I re-watched last night. I transcribed this bit so I wouldn't forget it:

“You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt, and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything - and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here - and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit but if I can’t figure it out then I go into something else. But I don’t have to know an answer.
I don’t have to … I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things - by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose - which is the way it really is as far as I can tell … possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”
~ Richard Feynman
From an interview with the BBC Horizon program; “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” 1981

Richard was also a helluva conga drum player.

The Greatest Time to Be Alive

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"I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive."
— Patton Oswalt (via The Office of Frank Chimero)

Rogers Canada iPad Data Charges

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When you buy gas for your car, you purchase as much as you need and use it till it runs out. The same is true of electricity, in the sense that you pay for what you use. When I buy data for my iPhone, though, I pay $30.00 for access to 6 gigabytes of data per month. Although I generally use only a third of that, Rogers Canada denies me the use of the remaining 4GB, despite the fact that I've paid them for access to it. When the next month begins, I'm billed again for 6GB. This is not Rogers' only iPhone data plan, but it was, regrettably, the best option for me.

Then I bought a 3G iPad.

I signed up for the less expensive of Rogers' two iPad data plans: $15 for 250MB. This, incidentally, is 1/24th the amount of data that comes with my iPhone plan for 1/2 the price. I used all 250MB in a day or two.

Rogers has only one other option for iPad data access advertised on their web site: $35 a month for 5GB.

Seeing this iPad data price of five dollars more for 1GB less data than my iPhone plan got me thinking. I realized that not only was their iPad data pricing higher for access to the same data, they also appeared, in my case, to be selling access to that data twice, just because I owned two devices that could access it.

I navigated to their customer support page and wrote a quick email:

"I have a 6GB data plan for my iPhone. I recently purchased a 3G iPad and added your $15 data package for a month. Using the iPad less than my phone I ran that out in a few days. I have not used any 3G data on my iPad since.
I usually use no more than 2GB of data on my phone, despite the fact that I pay for 6GB. I think it's usurious of Rogers to not allow me to access the data that I'm already paying for on a second device - and instead insist that I pay AGAIN for that data.
Think about this. I'm somewhere with my iPad and my iPhone. If I need to access the web I have to go from my iPad to my phone to use the data I pay for. What's the difference?? It's *my account* logging in to use the product I purchased from you. It's like an electric company saying I can plug in a toaster, but if I want to plug in a microwave I have to pay them again for access to the electricity I buy from them.
Please pass this complaint on to the appropriate department."

Rogers' customer service responded. After assuring me they take my concerns very seriously and appreciate the feedback, they informed me that for an additional sum (less than the advertised $35/5GB), my iPhone and iPad could share the 6GB of data on my account. The offer they made me is not advertised anywhere on their web site (and in fact, they state here (2nd page) that "Currently, there are no sharing plans for iPad available to Rogers customers"). The specific details of their offer might be covered under the "any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or any of its content is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful" boilerplate included at the bottom of their email, so I can't include them here.

Since this plan offered me the ability to share data between two devices through my single account, they had confirmed that there is no technical or administrative problem with doing so. Nonetheless, for simply turning on that ability, they wanted me to pay hundreds of dollars per year. I wrote back:

"Thanks for your response,
Could you ask someone closer to the issue to please break down for me what exactly that additional [amount] is purchasing? I can see how there might be an initial set-up charge to acknowledge the existence of a second device using the account, but after that point it's the same 6GB of data and the same account.
Although the [amount] you mention is less than the $35 you charge for iPad access without a smartphone, it seems to me you're still charging your smartphone data customers twice to access, on their iPad, *the same 6 GB of data* they have already purchased from you.
Please pass this on to someone who can address the concerns expressed in this, and my original, email …"

Sometimes I get this picture of myself as a small dog that has bit into someone's pant leg and will not let go. Sometimes that small dog is rabid.

On the one hand ... in our not too distant future, digital data could become as important as gasoline and electricity. The companies that currently control that data are now testing the waters to see what the market can bear. Unfortunately, we are their real-time test-market, and our responses to the policies and pricing they propose today will shape those of the future.

On the other, I'm just curious to see if someone has a justification for this policy - other than the fact that they seem to be getting away with it.

My Rogers story gets a little silly from this point. I'll try to encapsulate the subsequent email runaround in an upcoming post. In the meantime I am still waiting for a response that confirms that someone at Rogers takes my question seriously.

My Summer

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I haven't written here much this summer. I did manage to contribute a bit to the Twittersphere, but anything more that 140 characters seemed to be beyond me. I was pretty busy. Luckily, for the first time ever, Gogo took photographs at every show this summer from his place at the keyboards - so you can get an idea of what my life's been like for the past few months. Many of these shots necessarily involve the back of my head, but all of them show the party in front of us. Short of standing up there yourself and feeling the palpable love that overwhelms us every night - it's a stage-side look at what we did this summer. Three of the shows (Parksville, Olds and Cochrane) have two pictures each (Cochrane, so that the collection wouldn't end on an odd number) but the rest are individual shows and roughly in the order we played them. Every show we've done since Canada Day is represented here except for the private one we played for our multimillionaire buddy in Muskoka.

Gogo's full set of pictures from the tour, including autographed body parts and tour bus exposés are here and I encourage you to check them all out. I thank my rock and roll brother for documenting our experience every night. It's the first time anyone's ever done it, and seeing all of them together like this is quite moving for me. Hopefully you enjoy it too.