Becephalus bouncing ball
Note: I wrote this bit last friday, but didn't have internet until today. I'll talk more about the fest itself later this week.
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The moon was like a slice of a mandarin orange as it hung low, hiding beneath wispy clouds over the Gulf of St.Lawrence. I listened to her talk about the project, why we’re here in the first place, and what to expect tomorrow. Expect cameras. Expect curious locals. Expect drunk teenagers with nothing better to do. Expect to have to boss dumb band members around (as per usual).
But I’m feeling out of my element here, like I’m not sure what’s right outside of my own…world. I’m in Charlottetown, PEI, helping Liv out on a project she and Jeremy have been working on for months called Stand East. Basically, it’s the radio show I’ve been loosely associated with over the last 6 or 7 years, CJSR’s Youth Menace. The event tomorrow kicks off a 2 day, 20-band mini-festival, spliced in with panel discussions surround the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child. I’m here in two capacities: as a stage manager, and as a delegate on said panels.
Need some context? Ok.
When I was a young and idealistic political science student, I was deeply involved in the protection and promotion of youth rights. Rewinding further, I met Liv back in high school, and she introduced me to (read: an incredibly intelligent, deeply committed, but completely crazy old man) Wallis Kendal, who ran a program called iHuman – in short, it has become a drop-in center/arts program for ‘youth at risk’, by providing art/music/dance/theatre space as a way of keeping kids off the streets, and out of trouble. When the group was founded, Wallis was interested in having us kids write a book about violence as we saw it. To me, son of hippy pacifist parents, victim of minor bullying in elementary school, violence was…unaffecting me. Then I met Regina, who was 16 and just got out of jail for beating a girl within an inch of her life with a baseball bat. I met Adam, a drug addict with a penchant for cutting himself. Barry, a FAS victim with an obsession with painting mountain scenes, despite never actually having been to the Rockies. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. We put aside our differences, and brought our experiences together and wrote the storyboard for an art/poetry/photography book working under the title of The Red Tear. Over the years I came to the iHuman studios, the book and project came together, fell apart, came together, fell apart. I left it in 2002, but not before I got involved in another aspect of this ‘youth-defense’ project, founding Youth Menace with the help of producer and youth worker Mark Cherrington.
As the founding host of Youth Menace, I interviewed over 100 youth in various stages of the child welfare or youth justice system. I talked to 12-year old hookers and 16-year old murderers, teenage mothers hooked on meth and bewildered children being charged with throwing a snowball at a passing car. The deal was that they were working off (part of or all of) a community service sentence by ‘volunteering’ to come onto the show and discuss the case (anonymously). Every show, we’d start off the same way, as it still does today. We’d play the clip from the film Network , where Peter Finch says,
“I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up, go to your window, open it, stick your head out and yell, “I’m MAD AS HELL, and I’m not going to take this anymore!””
Now, at risk of repeating myself, I’m often sent running to my blog to gripe about how my getting older is somehow paralyzing my ability to BE mad as hell about anything bigger than my own problems. I used to be such a bitter and angry young man, pissed off at how the government acts undemocratically every fucking day, about how youth are shit on by all levels of society. I went to protests, wrote letters, got involved, read up on the anarchists, the Marxists, took the hardest classes I could, delving into the deepest of political theory and thought. In retrospect, I think I was in search of an answer to the question of what made me care? WHY did I think it was important to stand up for the voiceless, when it was simply easier to ignore them? HOW did I think that reading and talking and reading and talking was going to change anything?
School didn’t give me the answers I was looking for. I think I’m here, now, still seeking out the solution. It’s 2:30 in the morning, I’m thousands of miles from home and I’m sitting up in bed after my walk to the ocean with Liv, my best pal and confidante. We talked about what’s keeping HER involved, why it matters, and where she wants to take it…but I’m still without answers of my own. It’s something I’ve been trying to reconcile this past year of being 25 years old; trying to assemble the pieces of my past into a salient and complete puzzle whereby I have a frame of reference for where I should take my passions and interests into the next 5 or 10 years of my life. Where I’ll live. Who with. Will I be working? Traveling? Writing? Doing radio? Promoting shows? The options are endless, yet I feel…limited, or something.
It reminds me of when I was a child, sitting at the dinner table across from my late dad, at the end of dinner when I still had food on my plate, he’d look at me and say “your eyes are bigger than your stomach”; it meant that my ambition had got the better of me. I fear that happening in my life SO much. I need to keep focused on the future, while never forgetting the past. I’ve learned too much and worked too hard to start fresh, which is suddenly tempting these days.
Is anyone else feeling all tumultuous inside?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
-Shakespeare, The Tempest
----------
The moon was like a slice of a mandarin orange as it hung low, hiding beneath wispy clouds over the Gulf of St.Lawrence. I listened to her talk about the project, why we’re here in the first place, and what to expect tomorrow. Expect cameras. Expect curious locals. Expect drunk teenagers with nothing better to do. Expect to have to boss dumb band members around (as per usual).
But I’m feeling out of my element here, like I’m not sure what’s right outside of my own…world. I’m in Charlottetown, PEI, helping Liv out on a project she and Jeremy have been working on for months called Stand East. Basically, it’s the radio show I’ve been loosely associated with over the last 6 or 7 years, CJSR’s Youth Menace. The event tomorrow kicks off a 2 day, 20-band mini-festival, spliced in with panel discussions surround the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child. I’m here in two capacities: as a stage manager, and as a delegate on said panels.
Need some context? Ok.
When I was a young and idealistic political science student, I was deeply involved in the protection and promotion of youth rights. Rewinding further, I met Liv back in high school, and she introduced me to (read: an incredibly intelligent, deeply committed, but completely crazy old man) Wallis Kendal, who ran a program called iHuman – in short, it has become a drop-in center/arts program for ‘youth at risk’, by providing art/music/dance/theatre space as a way of keeping kids off the streets, and out of trouble. When the group was founded, Wallis was interested in having us kids write a book about violence as we saw it. To me, son of hippy pacifist parents, victim of minor bullying in elementary school, violence was…unaffecting me. Then I met Regina, who was 16 and just got out of jail for beating a girl within an inch of her life with a baseball bat. I met Adam, a drug addict with a penchant for cutting himself. Barry, a FAS victim with an obsession with painting mountain scenes, despite never actually having been to the Rockies. It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. We put aside our differences, and brought our experiences together and wrote the storyboard for an art/poetry/photography book working under the title of The Red Tear. Over the years I came to the iHuman studios, the book and project came together, fell apart, came together, fell apart. I left it in 2002, but not before I got involved in another aspect of this ‘youth-defense’ project, founding Youth Menace with the help of producer and youth worker Mark Cherrington.
As the founding host of Youth Menace, I interviewed over 100 youth in various stages of the child welfare or youth justice system. I talked to 12-year old hookers and 16-year old murderers, teenage mothers hooked on meth and bewildered children being charged with throwing a snowball at a passing car. The deal was that they were working off (part of or all of) a community service sentence by ‘volunteering’ to come onto the show and discuss the case (anonymously). Every show, we’d start off the same way, as it still does today. We’d play the clip from the film Network , where Peter Finch says,
“I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up, go to your window, open it, stick your head out and yell, “I’m MAD AS HELL, and I’m not going to take this anymore!””
Now, at risk of repeating myself, I’m often sent running to my blog to gripe about how my getting older is somehow paralyzing my ability to BE mad as hell about anything bigger than my own problems. I used to be such a bitter and angry young man, pissed off at how the government acts undemocratically every fucking day, about how youth are shit on by all levels of society. I went to protests, wrote letters, got involved, read up on the anarchists, the Marxists, took the hardest classes I could, delving into the deepest of political theory and thought. In retrospect, I think I was in search of an answer to the question of what made me care? WHY did I think it was important to stand up for the voiceless, when it was simply easier to ignore them? HOW did I think that reading and talking and reading and talking was going to change anything?
School didn’t give me the answers I was looking for. I think I’m here, now, still seeking out the solution. It’s 2:30 in the morning, I’m thousands of miles from home and I’m sitting up in bed after my walk to the ocean with Liv, my best pal and confidante. We talked about what’s keeping HER involved, why it matters, and where she wants to take it…but I’m still without answers of my own. It’s something I’ve been trying to reconcile this past year of being 25 years old; trying to assemble the pieces of my past into a salient and complete puzzle whereby I have a frame of reference for where I should take my passions and interests into the next 5 or 10 years of my life. Where I’ll live. Who with. Will I be working? Traveling? Writing? Doing radio? Promoting shows? The options are endless, yet I feel…limited, or something.
It reminds me of when I was a child, sitting at the dinner table across from my late dad, at the end of dinner when I still had food on my plate, he’d look at me and say “your eyes are bigger than your stomach”; it meant that my ambition had got the better of me. I fear that happening in my life SO much. I need to keep focused on the future, while never forgetting the past. I’ve learned too much and worked too hard to start fresh, which is suddenly tempting these days.
Is anyone else feeling all tumultuous inside?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
-Shakespeare, The Tempest
posted by Eli at 10:53 AM
3 Comments:
word
*raises hand*
also, thanks for this eli. it was well written and insightful. i had forgotten about all that work you did with youth menace/ihuman/etc. lots to think about. xo.
i always feel quite tumultuous inside, if that's a comfort at all.
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