The man who took this iconic photograph:
is also the man who took this iconic photograph:
And there you have it; the devolution of civilization, right before our very eyes. As Jezebel says, Paris Hilton is the Kim Phuc of 2007. And Nick Ut is apparently the Cassandra.
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T. Paul is a legend in Vancouver, and the city is smaller, damper, darker, and far less colour-saturated without him.
Last year, when he had an aneurysm, the Shebeen Club hosted a benefit for him which raised the altogether life-altering sum of $100, but he just said thanks, it’ll buy groceries, it’s the thought that counts. He was a true gentleman and lowlife of the finest kind, and I cannot do better to honour his memory than to steal the words of his friend Napalm Dragon from T. Paul‘s own website:
On Thursday, May 31st, the Iconic T. Paul Ste Marie passed away at the age of 41.
He leaves behind a legendary struggle to make the most of life, while embracing and fostering the creative spirit of anyone who dared take themselves seriously. He was a friend to the emergent Artist, and a mentor to many. He opened doors, and he will be missed.
If you knew of him, you liked him.
If you knew him personally, it was a rare glimpse into a Man who persevered though monumental struggles, to find his place and create his own success. “I Can’t” did not exist in his vocabulary.
T. Paul Ste Marie, was best known for many things.
Among them:
• Opening the doors for many emerging and eccentric musicians and
performers
• Pioneering the contemporary Slam Poetry Scene
• Managing and Promoting some of our most beloved performers of the
Vancouver Underground and Sub-Cultural Community
• Being a slick hipster and Cigar Box Artist
• and taken anyone who dared take themselves seriously… Serious.
• He was a mentor to many.
• He gave Vancouver spice and Savoir Faire.
• and for those of us who LOVE burlesque, he was there in the
renaissance.
He lived his life on stage, struggling in private.
He will be gravely missed and remembered by anyone that met him, and
all of us he fostered.
We owe much credit to him, he lived the life of legends and made the
most of what he had.
——-
The next drink is in his name.
For those of us that want to say our peace, and share in remembering
him, there will be a tribute. (and what a party that will be)
Good bye T. Paul,
Safe journeys (where ever that is).To you I tip my hat in honor of your fine and Passionate Invocation….
INVOCATION
We need
PASSION
to put words into context
to formulate a pretext worthy
of our cut-and -paste verbalaching to be heard
thunderclap blurred
quake-shake that thundering word herd
to
play those changes
that rearrange us
rain down rhythmic rhyme-time
jazz-jazz-jazzy clime
axe teases
in the licks chaotic
brrrrap-bap-bap-0-matic
PASSION
bring on the axiomatic
round sound midnight drumroll fury-
ocity
velocity
squeeze beat angel wings
’til they sing sweet
drink the bebop sax
the wing drip wax
of them that flew too close to the sun
fillin’ holy souls and tongues
with the ever changin’
always in the now
manic minds eye milkmaid
leading the tongue tied
to the teat that paid the fare
with their jailtime press
and their pain was not in vain
they were paving the wagon train ruts with gluts
of tarry thick ideas
fresh with bloodsweat extract
doin’ that literal literary lowstick limbo
into the next generation
of word play sensation-
alists
like us
thinkin’ ’bout
what to say
and how to say it
that beat in rhyme
and time to play it
We need
PASSION
to bask in extremes
to set our wet absurdist dreams
in flight
through tarpaper night satellite kite crowded skies
where our white noise pen toys
spin spiderweb thin
sinewy monkey limbs
limberly groping at new poetical chins
our fingers licks spittle
thick with ripe hype glory
pricks the juice-blown words
tasting flying syllables
invisible chords tying them
to howling celestial forms
storm voices that are
politic / lunatic / heretic
our kinetic kites collide
in starry night skies
with leaky loud electric pens
ur ecclectic process begins
where it never left off
sound richness
rhythmic hitches
content stitches
together
pop-pop-poppinn’ a hole
in the whole of time
art serving purpose
continues expansion
in the Universe of Rhyme
We need
PASSION
to invoke the everyday
everyman
tin pan alley trashcan huckster scam
slam sing-song banter
that is simple
sinful
with those blam blam blam gunshot phrases
that glazed ham
canned heat
edge of your seat
repartee
because we learned from those who told it
who origami folded visions
selling passers by
wordy purple fishes
from their oceans of sand
We’ve got to
EXPAND
on this vocabulary
form a mental constabulary
arresting ignorance at hand
because knowledge
IS
power
the sting bee in the flower
that pollinates and seeds
with concepts overgrowing
the weeds of conformity
building bridges of wisdom
over the dull beige schism
torn by sitcom mentally
and wisdom culminates awaiting cultivation
by our visual cortex
spiritual vortex whirling
helix twirling out
the answers to our prayers
and the spoken word blares
from invocation
to creation
occurring within
the process
of lookin’ for words to say.
AND SOME DAYS THEY SPLIT ATOMS
AND SOME DAYS THEY KICK STONES
today they find our voice.
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via Daily Kos. Twain would not permit this to be published until after his death, and given the potential for blowback I think we can all understand why. It reminds me of nothing so much as William S. Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer. Watch the film on YouTube here.
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
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But you have to wonder if it hadn’t, or, if it had, who it was who got to make that call.
This song has haunted not my dreams but my waking for nearly ten years, ever since Mister Natural played it for me.
The story is this:
Gavin Bryars, an interesting fellow if ever there was one, was working on a film about the homeless people who populated the neighborhoods of Elephant & Castle and Waterloo Station, a very Hogarthian scene even if gin is not as cheap as it used to be. Not being used to starring in films, the populace enjoyed the attention and in some cases hammed it up for the cameras with appropriate ruffles and flourishes and not a few belts of song or even something stronger.
One of those singers, a teetotaller in fact, came out with this.
I’ve heard it in both the unadorned and orchestral versions, and I must say I prefer the starker one. Adding Tom Waits to the mix is gilding the lily: surely Tom Waits is nothing but an haut-Boho imitation of something the old man was a true original of.
With nothing but this creaky old voice rattling out a single-line message of faith and hope for twenty solid minutes, one can’t help but meditate on it.
This man’s whole life is there, in the tension between his circumstances and his message. He, at least, believes he has never been failed by Jesus (and who are we to say he HAS?) and yet there he is; why, he wouldn’t have been recorded at all if he had not been the very embodiment of society’s lowest castoffs. And so, his cruel circumstances are themselves what enable his inspiring voice to be heard in the first place, yet his moving faith seems so wildly unjustified.
Somewhere between the impossibility of the truth and the impossibility of anything else lies the human condition.
When I copied the loop onto the continuous reel in Leicester, I left the door of the recording studio open (it opened onto one of the large painting studios) while I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual, and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping. I was puzzled until I realized that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man’s unaccompanied singing.
This demonstrated to me the emotional power of the music, but also alerted me to the need to approach very carefully anything I did to the tape. I had already thought about a gradually added orchestral accompaniment and I realized that this needed to be simple, to gradually evolve, yet at the same time respect the tramp’s humanity and simple faith.
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If I were a novelist (and currently I am not, I am an unfinished-manuscriptist) I would be incredibly proud of creating this document. Unfortunately for Jill Rockcastle and the man she killed, it is not fiction.
Jill and Bill, her husband, were highly respected in their community, and even loved. Acquaintances and neighbors described them as “the nicest people, fun to be around, always up,” which is why the death of Bill and Jill‘s subsequent 10-page confession and suicide came as such a shock.
But not, I think, nearly as much of a shock as the contents of the note.
Apparently, Jill and her husband had been systematically embezzling and ripping off the very people who loved them so dearly. Consumed by cocaine, criminality, and an unquenchable gambling addiction, tied to grandiose and relentless ambitions and an absolute lack of talent, they were headed for a massive fall.
Jill, shaking off the emotional paralysis that had held her for years, finally took action and, in doing so, turned this tawdry tale into epic tragedy.
This is my final statement done to help all the people affected by my actions, Bill‘s actions, the actions and the results of whatever does happen to them in our aftermath. I’m writing this so that each person that receives it will identify with the time period in which your experience occurred with him and I and can have some of the why, how, why me, how could they, what happened etc. answered. I am not trying in anyway to justify a single thing in here. I am not looking to clear my name or actions. I have already done the most final things possible to stop us from hurting anyone else.
“When Bill and I met, we discovered that we both had the ability to get pretty much anything we wanted out of people. I did what I did out of my need to survive. Bill did what he did out of the need to conquer. To be superior to the people around him. To look like the most successful person in the room. He lived his life feeding his narcissism.
“He did all kinds of performance and look enhancing drugs. He was very physically aware and fit. He felt superior in his profession as a Chiropractor. He was earning a large amount of money but I was constantly listening to conversations on the phone about lies and schemes against people and agencies to maximize what he was paid.
“I was working in the mortgage business and as anyone knows that has owned a home and gone through the finance process, it usually involves being bullshitted all the way to signing documents that never exactly match what you thought you were getting. Both of us lied, manipulated, cheated, conned and hustled people to make the most money for us…
[to the ex-wife] —Joanne
“This letter is to help you and xxxxx. I want you to know that the way you felt about Bill and why he was so horrible to you was not for any other reason than Bill preferred fighting with you over just being happy with xxxxx. I don’t know why but I do know that his hatred for you must have been more than that. What you thought and portrayed to the world about him governed every move he made. He wanted everyone to view him as the best Dad I think because he didn’t even know how to be one. He loved xxxxx inside but did not for whatever reason, know how to take care of her emotionally. He did not have a caring nurturing bone in his body. He felt love but didn’t feel the need nor have the ability to be weak in it. He felt he always had to be “Top Gamer.”“Two years ago, he did plan to have you and your Mom killed. He paid a guy to do it while we had xxxxx in Las Vegas for our Christmas time. It was the scariest few days…
Possible Exculpatory Evident. In addition to what may be revealed during the post, there is a yellow box in Bill‘s office, setting under the day bed, which should contain cocaine residue. Also in the office, setting on the day bed, is a box and flex file containing the various evaluation materials. This includes a 4-5″ green folder containing the vicious and threatening emails between Bill, Joann and others. The divorce papers are located in a black file cabinet to the right of Bill‘s desk.
I know that everything I have disclosed here does not excuse this. It does not explain it and it does not help me in anyway. I am not sending this for that purpose. I fully intend at this time to end this entire tragic string of events by ending my life as well. I know my children will have to learn to accept that but no one else should accept me being allowed to live whether it be in jail for the rest of my life or anywhere or how. I had to stop us. Everyone that was part of this I hope you recover. I hope you can take your disgust and anger with us and put it on us. Find console in the fact we are gone and cannot hurt you anymore.
If for some reason I fail in this, at least this will guarantee my conviction and I will have to pay everyday for my disgusting life.
Not that it could mean anything but I am truly sorry. To the people who loved me, I apologize for this shame. I hope you can walk away physically and emotionally from us. I hope you can forgive only enough to insure your own future happiness.
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raincoaster 