March 14, 2009: A few weeks back I thought that the new Violence and the Sacred CD, ‘You are Planning to Enjoy the Apocalypse’, was complete, but after several listens, advice from Ted, several conversations, and a bit of introspection (because the answers are obvious, why introspect on obvious things where there are so many unobvious introspection topics?) I’ve decided I need to rework several pieces and reorder the tracks.

Yapteta Cover

Hopefully this will take 3 or 4 days, but getting those days might be a challenge with all the other non-musical requirements that seem to exist. Yesterday when driving home, I saw a large flock of Canada geese flying north, a common site this time of year. Beautiful, but it reminded me that they will be here, still flying north long after I am gone … I should find the continuation of the natural world to be encouraging, trying as best it can to ignore us pained humans. But it was my irrelevance to the geese that bothered me. Twenty years ago I revelled in our irrelevance and randomness; now it bothers me.

On the bright side, work on a video release is days away from completion. My colleague, Gordon Belray has done a wonderful job in preparing a DVD of a Violence and the Sacred concert at the Music Gallery in Toronto from March 1991. I’ll make about 20 copies to mail around and try to sell. The concert was a particularly abrasive outing and would likely only interest fanatics, if such exist, but the video of it looks very nice. More such concerts will follow.

VATS at the Music gallery