The Abortion Issue

After performing a spoken word piece at church one Sunday, a lady came up to me and asked if I would be willing to perform at the Lethbridge Pregnancy Care Centre Gala. I said yes, knowing that I was pretty inexperience on the topic but willing to take on the challenge.

When I first met with the board, they asked me to write the poem from the perspective of a man whose significant other had had an abortion. I had a couple months to write the poem so I went home and did my homework. I read a couple books on abortion, watched a couple movies, and even talked to a few people who had experienced it. All of this research lead me to the overwhelming fact that I was way over my head. My heart was breaking hearing these testimonies, but I knew that they were not really my story to tell. (Not to mention that there was a lot of internal conflict going on as I was trying to write the poem that I proposed to Joy with at the same time-- abortion arguments and proposal poems do not really go hand in hand!)

So after a while I gave up on the 'boyfriend' perspective as it just sounded fake. Instead I ended up writing about why I support the LPCC and what my response really is when people ask me my view on abortion. The whole experience was just a giant affirmation as to why I support Pregnancy Care Centres-- an organization that is there to present the options to a couple in trouble, and be there with supportive counselling before and after they make their decision. What more could you ask for?

Here is my presentation of the poem at the gala:

And here is the website for the Lethbridge Pregnancy Care Centre if you want to learn more about them: www.lethbridgepregcentre.com.

Simply Remain

I'm back!

Well, not really, but I have been working on a bunch of writing, so that's really awesome. And one of the reasons I've been writing is because one of my life list goals came true today.

When I first started writing spoken word poetry I dreamt of being able to write for church. Oftentimes I would convert the Sunday sermon into a spoken word poem just for my own sake, so that I could get more out of the message and remember it better. After getting the opportunity to share my 'Apologize' video at church I was stoked, but not quit sure where I was gonna go from there.

So you could imagine how giddy I was when the worship pastor at my church came up to me and asked if I would like to contribute to the creative aspects of some of the sermons. He gave me a couple verses and told me to run with it. So with nothing but a passage of Scripture to work with (Mark 8), I went home and wrote the following poem.

The first spoken word poem I ever recorded took 5 months and was a lot of me in my basement struggling to learn new programs and invent apparatuses to make filming myself easier. The second one I recorded (and have not released yet) took three months and the help of others. For this one we had ONE WEEK to pull it together, but thankfully I had people who knew a lot more of what they were doing helping me out. So, special thanks to Chris Milani and Mike Dosso there!

This poem is the start of a series of poems, so keep checking back here or subscribe to my channel on youtube if you want to see them.

Without further ado, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md1XcDmRT34.

Holy Crap Guys I'm In My Senior Year of University That's Super Weird

I'm back!

It's been far too long but this hiatus was definitely necessary. For the first time in my university career I actually care about my classes, being in Ed and all, so the amount of effort that I have to put into them has increased exponentially. School's actually really hard when you actually do all the assignments/readings. Who knew?

My Peru journals are slowly coming along; I wanted to make sure that I had more than one finished before I started posting them. But we're not quite there yet. First, random stories of my life:

·      "No, it appears that 'Deeper in You' is not in yet, but we have two copies of 'Pleasures of the Night', five copies of 'Lustfully Ever After', and three copies of 'Hot in Handcuffs'." How I manage to keep a straight face during these conversations is far beyond me. My job is entertaining. (And yes, those are all legitimate titles.)

·      My mother is notoriously bad at segues. I always laugh at how she tries so hard to connect things that really have nothing in common. Today, I was talking with a friend and we had been joking around for a while. He was shocked that I was in Education because he’d never heard me talk about it. I replied, “Well, cat’s out of the bag! Surprise!” He laughed and then replied very sombrely, “Speaking of coming out of the bag, my cousin came out as gay today.” Apparently my mother’s not the only one who sucks at segues.

·      My other friend and I have the same type of phone which are notoriously bad for sending half messages and cut up texts. My phone has ripped my texts in half and sent half of mine and half of someone else's. This is all well and good until it starts mixing my texts with people who are speaking in French, or worse, sexting. Some awkward explaining occurred there. Anyway, my friend and I were complaining about how terrible our phones are and I, indulging my poetic self, texted: “Broken people and broken phones saying broken things with broken bones. Even in an age of technological connection, we are victims of autonomous dissection.” The text she received was “Broken people . . . broken bones MESSAGE BROKEN: (autonomous dissection).” I’ve now concluded my phone is sentient and trying to kill me.

So that’s pretty much my life right now. Well really not at all. But anyway, the reason for this post is that I want to show off some more spoken word artists. Shane Koyczan (pronounced Koyzan, not Koyksdsdfsan, as I once thought) is a Canadian spoken word artist who was born in the Yukon but moved to BC. Most of you will probably recognize him since he was the poet laureate who spoke at the Olympics (really big guy with a deep, booming voice). The poem that he did at the Olympics is probably my least favourite of his, but man alive can this guy write. Seriously, his stuff blows me away in ways that nothing ever has before. That’s not even a hyperbole—I have actually sat listening to his clips on youtube for hours with my jaw just on the floor. I won’t amp him up too much, but just know that I am driving five hours out of my city to see him live next month.

Here’s one of my favourite clips by him. Note: It does contain some adult language. Also note: don’t listen to it half-heartedly, that’s just a waste of time. Listen to it intentionally.

How this video only has 15,000 hits is beyond me. I had to listen to it every night for two weeks before I was able to start taking in everything he says.

Spoken Word - Taylor Mali

Ha! Remember that time where I said I was going to be doing a lot more writing? As in my last post? Well it turns out that I need assigned essays to procrastinate from in order to do my own writing. Whenever I'm school I dream of having all the time in the world to sit down and do my own writing, and now that I have that time, I don't do it at all. The brain is a cruel thing, my friends. I just need friends to start assigning me essays so that I can work on other stuff while feeling guilty about not doing the essays. It's a flawless concept, really.

In the meantime, I promised some other spoken words, so I ought to deliver. This one is a classic. It's by Taylor Mali, the guy I mentioned a little while back, and should be listened to by anyone who is interested in teaching, is a teacher, or has been taught. (Hint: that includes everybody.)

One of my favourite Mali lines of all time is:

"When she was in my eyes I fantasized and everything else became a blur.
I wanted to abandon my Bachelors in English for a Masters degree in her."


Classic.

Life List Update

Now that summer classes are officially over, I have a glorious amount of time on my hands. As in, I read 4 books in the last 8 days. On weeks where I don't have any assigned reading I'm like a racehorse bursting out of a starting gate. That is, if the starting gate were a book. And the race was a relaxing evening with a blanket and tea. Then it's a perfect simile. With all this time, I will be writing a bunch more blogs, which is something that I look forward to. The best advice I keep reminding myself is that "A good writer writes. A good writer writes." Simple as that. As I write more for this blog, I also organize it more. I've collected a whole handful more of experiences for my life list--my ever-growing, sentient list. Here they are: (the bolded ones are ones that I've already done--my list serves as a challenge and as a reminder.)

Work on a house with Habitat for Humanity
Learn and perform the Thriller dance
Read everything by Ralph Waldo Emerson (How am I a fourth year university student and never read anything by him before?!?)
Attend a large music festival such as Lollapalooza/Coachella/Sasquatch
Memorize USA state geography
Watch the Cirque de Soliel perform
Go around the world and find my own personal 7 wonders
Meet Sol
Memorize the flag for every country
Start a compost
Go white water rafting
Get a Eurorail pass
Ride in a hot air balloon
Get in a fight (I just finished Fight Club. Sue me.) (Do people still use the term "sue me?" Is that still a thing?)
Catch someone reading a book I wrote
Climb the Grand Canyon
Throw a surprise party for someone
Graffiti something
Start a dance in a public place
Be in a parade
Take in and appreciate a busker
Be a completely different person in a different city
Help someone cross something off their own life list
Be on tv, a magazine, the front page of a newspaper
Kill something and eat it
Make a list of everything I own
Have something/someone named after me
Pay for someone's groceries
Actually make a tangible New Year's resolution and keep it

And two more that are a little more dear to my heart:
1. Give a TED talk. The second this came into my mind my heart started racing. I have spent countless hours being inspired by different TED talks, and it would be a serious achievement if I could every cross this off. Some of the things on my list I take more seriously than others (as in, if I died before memorizing the US state geography I wouldn't need to come back as a ghost to avenge myself). Not to say that if I die before doing a TED talk I would be disappointed, it would just be really really cool, that's all.

2. Perform a spoken word poem in front of a large audience. The reason why this is dear to my heart is because a) it achieves my childhood dream of making poetry cool again and b) I'm crossing it off today! Well sort of. I showed my pastor my video from the last post and he said that he wanted to include it in a Sunday service. A part of me really wanted to do it live, but I'm still really jazzed about getting the to opportunity to show it for all 3 services this Sunday. While I'm not sure whether I can technically cross this one off as I'm not performing it live, it's still right up there. I hope that this is a day that I can look back on as the first of many opportunities like this.

(Fun fact: I didn't realize it at the time, but my last blog post was my 150th post, as well as my 10,000th view. Considering how long I waited to post it, it's cool that it just worked out like that. Coincidences are fun! Also side note, if you have a blog/tumblr/whatever they've come out with now, could you link to my video? I'm still working on getting it out there and the more links there are to it, the higher up it goes on Google search-- this is the one thing that I learnt in Computer Science 1000.)

Day 5 - I Feel the Need to Apologize

So today's an exciting day for me. Instead of talking more about creativity, I want to finally reveal a project I've been working on for a while.

When I did 5 Days for the Homeless, I had planned on getting insane amounts of reading and writing done. Turns out, boxes are not conducive to comfortable reading times, mostly they're for curling up in a ball and attempting to sleep. BUT I did manage to scratch out a page or two of my thoughts. I've had a lot going on over the past couple of months and it was nice to spew out all my ideas in one sitting.

Once I finished 5 Days I immediately went home and turned those pages into some spoken word poetry. I have been really interested in spoken word for a long time now and have only just begun to realize how truly passionate I am about it. I will be posting some of my favourite poets in the future. (Side note: At one point I even became Facebook friends with Taylor Mali--a fairly well-known spoken word poet--but then I realized that he didn't have very many friends, so I just felt kind of creepy and de-friended him. It was awkward.)

Soon after I wrote the poem, my friend Amara told me that she had access to a recording studio at Lethbridge College. Sweet! It turns out that recording yourself speaking for 3 straight hours is an enlightening and unnerving experience. I have spent many hours during the editing of this project debating over whether or not I have a speech impediment. :/

THEN I went home and spent the next week working on a combination of sound editing, accompaniment editing, video recording, splicing, and more editing. I used a very, um, MacGyver-esque tripod (piano stool, bar stool, books, mirror, camera, and lamp)

and then spent a whole lot of time staring at this:

I used many different programs and even spent an entire day attempting to learn the whole of Adobe After Effects in one day, but it turns out it's just a ridiculously complicated program.

Then, fear hit. Confession time: I finished this project in totality back in March--and I was so excited and immediately wanted to put it up--but then I started thinking about how many hits it would get. Then I started thinking about what would happen if people don't like it. Then I started thinking about how it has to be absolutely perfect and I can't release it unless I am 100% satisfied with it. Well, turns out, I need to get over myself.

1. I am not 100% satisfied with it. Am I proud of it? Yes. Will I ever be completely satisfied with it? No. Over the course of working on it I have learnt that perfectionism is just a disguise for fear.

2. It's not about me. It's not about whether my voice sounds funny or the graphics aren't perfect. It's not about whether each rhyme is perfect. There's a lot of truth in this project and I want to share it with people because I wholeheartedly believe in everything that is said. As anyone who works in ministry can tell you, it's not about how many people you reach, it's about making an impact on the ones that you do.

So without further ado, I present: "I Feel the Need to Apologize": (If it's too small you can get a better size with the link below the video.)

I would really love if you could share this video with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever because, like I said, there's a lot of truth in it. Here is the youtube link to just copy and paste: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOUocB4Jvm4.