With Gusto

No Matter How Active It Is

"It takes a lot of love to keep your heart from freezing."
- David Gray

I read two newspapers yesterday. I have to read two newspapers a day everyday it seems for the next few months. Should get me up to speed on what's going on in the world, as well as sub-consciously amending my professional writing skills. On the plus side, I sit down and sling coffee into my mouth for a few hours while wanting to cry over international tragedies. The mother gunned down by her crazed husband while shoe-shopping with her daughter. Suicide-bombers bombing in the morning while they're prayers are fresh in their minds, without second-doubts come noon. Power Plants on MY island. Fucking Stephen Harper, "Tolerance is where we're at." -- as if not being politically correct means hating everything without a sprinkle of water over their heads.

Sixty Years since Auschwitz. Yesterday I watched "Harmonists" a German film about the Comedian Harmonists, a vocal group pre-WWII in Germany who made creative songs that made people happy, until anti-Semitism rose and with half the group being Semites, well, one thing led to another. Then it was off to the bar to write poetry with Joy and Ben and Ford. An old guy from the Hitler Youth Choir made us buy beer for him in exchange for a few stories, of which I'll compose into a poem. He did see SS officers throw truck away the Jews in Berlin, and him being 12 years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, was taken care of. At one moment he would be carrying Christmas trees up into the SS officers apartments, stolen from the rich Jews, the next he would be carting wood to a Jew in hiding. The Jew would carve toys for the German dudes mom's shop in exchange for food. A Golden Pen. The Fool Of Vancouver. I got him to write down a song he sang on the radio into my notebook. I'm thinking of photocopying it.

And now, today, I wear an orange T-Shirt and I'm fucking my own ass because I have to go and interview dorks on the street. Fucking hell. Really. Fucking Hell. I can't wait for all of this Journalism to be over. I respect it, but hate it more than anything, no matter how active it is.

Posted by matty-b at January 25, 2005 1:00 PM