Happy birthday Mark Hundevad!

 At midnight on Saturday all of the bars on Yonge are still open, including the one I am in. The moon is full, the tide is high, texts a friend, they inquiring whether I am still collapsing in on myself or interested in seeking out some special moments in the clubs downtown. When I feel the pain of loss, I tend to clamp it down, wearing either incapacitated  sorrow and nihilism, or raging panicked spite. Who is this guy? I walk around an historical site beside the lake, looking for a new apartment and finding only cool breezes and new faces to make up to. I write a blues song about domestic violence and I enjoy the company of a lovely bank teller as she takes time to process my paycheck. I tell myself everyday that there will be a place and a time to let the full sense of loss and insecurity roll through my body. I remind myself to appreciate the rising tides of sensuality, the quickening pulse of justice and rage. I play these parts on stage, sing grunge tunes about my personal pain. I counsel established composers on interpersonal complications. I long to solve this greatest riddle, to live and balance, to lighten my load and be leaned on hard by a lively lover. What better motivation than the love of one's life, what clearer goal than to mend what's been rent?

> Controlled Damage is gearing up for their sets tonight and I catch my breath; from the dizzying sights of late night commerce along the neighborhood stretch. It's been a couple years. There are so many new bars, restaurants, and even more  beautiful people vying to have a good time on their own terms than there were when this intersection first blew up. The street was closed off or something, the incline more fully appreciable, angling into its diverse parks, dancing down the railways, into the gorges, foraging for both sustenance and meaning, supplementing style for memory's substances, calling out for one more round and have-a-good-time. I need some dancing now, and this real-life jazz band is nothing but jams. It's actually closer to Marks brother Jim(on flute and sax)'s bday, but who's counting? Fifty is nifty, and Mark is a powerhouse in a loose blue tie and mustard yellow shirt, on both vibraphone and kit drums, keeping dozens of dedicated drinkers and dancers rapt for hours.  Jim's son Sam can't stop playing through the set breaks on the congas and vibes, blowing off his own steam between supporting the affair on drum kit and synth bass. I need to smoke. Give thanks to all corners. Sam keeps dancing and shaking some kind of tiny percussive frying pan while ladies enjoy the undulating, unending grooves of a classic playlist. In a place where the only rule is civilised behaviour. The guitarist is about to tell me his  definition of the good times here  when the bday boy interrupts to offer instructions on the cowbell parts for the next set...
The downbeat is more important....
The key is f sharp....
Atlantis....

Even my counselor says the world is undergoing healing from intergenerational violence and trauma. Underneath the thin veneer of civil society is the scientific proof of genetic damage. If you want to know why people don't sing to each other like birds anymore, what's really going through our hearts and minds and guts and good- bits are the deep-held tremors of everything-is-not-alright, of us-or- them, and of there-is- not-enough. In this day and age, where do all the songs go? Instead of  serenading Yonge Street, I text my cousin, freshly fallen into a breakup. I set my course west, another buried lead. Oh garden of leafs. You're a grocer's, now. O beautiful women of College and Carlton, you're as open as you can be. I sense your fields, read your t-shirts, doff my hat, chat with co-workers, counsel and am counseled by the many manifestations of the after-life. I read on a crosstown train. The pulsing tempo of my heart resists all of the six million influences around me. I wish to see beyond. I long for nothing but work, home,  and friendship. I am travelling  with nineteen other pilgrims. I  have pushed you and struck your face. I have destroyed wooden objects and laid siege to doors. I am sorry, and I am the sadness of our family's loss. All the other joy stays lit. Nothing is diminished in this new world I propose. Like an air-conditioned room when the roar of cooled cold ceases, I  suggest only that there will be  more room for love and songs, more room for us all, both cheated by destruction. I see no contradiction, insincerity, or malice in you. I see only precious trust and needs. I know you'd do the same for me.