Tag Archives: Canada

Straight away, First thing

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Good size for mug 🙂

That was my first time using the quick photo feature.  Right now I’ve got, well a decent supply of coffee and a 300 page notebook and a bass which is pretty well perfect.  I have considered bringing a coffee maker in here too but as Cece is also in here I’m not sure her feelings on me brewing in here at 6am.  I could sneak in a Bodum perhaps.

Today we have the Emma and Mandy table read which I’m very excited to get into.  With the main shoot for the demo/pilot coming up it will be great to start working one on one with the cast again.  With recent events of course things have not been easy.  Wolf was not only a great cast member and someone who got our dream and our idea straight away but he was also my Cece’s beloved cousin.  We will be doing a tribute to him in the Ollie and Emma WordPress site early next week when we have time to focus on it properly.

I’ve also been working on a new blog story idea that comes from my own background of working in Victoria and living in James Bay where all the big hotels are situated.  It’s called Closer to Heaven and it’s a romance set here in working class Victoria, BC.  Our city is perfect for that, which I know any local anywhere would say but we are set on the ocean and one of Victoria’s quirks is, thinking of my mention of James Bay, the number of little mini towns within Greater Victoria and how, as I mentioned, the very rich and others can not only live close by but even right next door.  This also leads to all kinds of exchanges and therfore story possibilities.

Cookeilidh is also starting up our festival season which is looking to be really busy!  After such a supportive crowd at The Highland Games our next show is June 7th at World Ocean Day in Sidney, right down by the water.  Moving here almost 30 years ago now from the Mainland to Saanichton it’s great to play only a few blocks away from where I got my first bass! 
If you haven’t yet, follow the band on Facebook!

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Victoria Highland Games!

Created by TomPogson.com

Show must go on

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With lucky socks and left hand shoe
string tie smell the curtain singe beneath
searing red lamps

Piled together, motley freaks clammy
in off stage nausea that’s
when I text her x’s and o’s
It’s all break a leg or not
And I switch off.

And I switch on
to that creature born
of makeup, smokes and stale coffee
pacing thin leopard

I will pull up the boards with my friends
Raising each riser and rafter
to each conceived end

With plastic stars in our eyes
and blue camera flashes

Tungsten tears and sweat
without ceasing or backing off
We rise and challenge as to battle
to fight for other sad clowns

Our pulse rising to heights of curtain falls like an angel’s blaze in flight

On with the show.

—-
Poem in memory of Wolf Rick Patterson, dear friend and passionate showman.

Created by TomPogson.com

The walk

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The first thing he heard was the scream.
It rang out cold and desperate, echoing far across the golf course and over where he knew was the shoreline.  The road ran straight through the course with home being still half an hour away.  He tried to peer into the dark to make sense of what he heard.  Nothing moved out there.  Ever direction was still.  The air itself froze until the cool sky.

Then came footsteps behind.
He could tell someone was back there.

He started walking faster, daring himself to glimpse back.  Behind him was just the road and the night which was liquid black.  Before him was the long winding road through the Oak Bay Golf Course.  He knew if he got through the course it would stop.  Nothing told him that but he knew.  Snubbed again at another house party and now this.  He walked fast.  Ashma wouldn’t let him run.  He needed his puffy as it was.  He looked into his coat for it as he walked faster.

He fell.  Something tripped him.  He hit the earth with his hands out to break his fall.  He went to rise and something shoved him hard down as he attempted to rise.

“Why?” a woman’s voice hissed in his ear on one side.

“Why?” that voice shrieked again but on the other.

He got up and ran.  Behind him he heard the sound of running.  He could barely breath.  His heart was bursting.  Tears ran down his face.  To one side he heard a shriek.

“No!  Don’t leave me damn you!”

He looked over.

The shape of a woman in tweed running was just a few feet beside him.  It ran through the brambles on the edge of the course, bursting through and then running ahead of him only to vanish and reappear on the other side.

The edge of the course neared.  He closed his eyes and ran like his lungs would burst. 

Suddenly a car sped around the corner.  He glanced in horror and dove out of the way.

Last thing he saw was the woman’s face, miserably sad as the world burst with pain, then black.

Created by TomPogson.com

What do you want to see happen?

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The universe awaits...

     
     What do you want?  You don’t have to tell me or anything but what’s out there off in the fine distant horizon?  What world do you see in your mind’s eye or in you wildest dream?  Don’t discount that. It’s something we do as adults.  We’ve learned to play down our importance and the importance of those thoughts.

     No, it’s not all about you, or me, but can’t you give more to the world from a place of strength?  That strength can come from anything too.  Some of the greatest lives were not lived in opulence.

     I still set goals pretty much yearly.  Some goals have made it and some are still, shall we say, in rotation.  The reason I like them so much is the sense of direction they give.  They don’t have to be big since little reachable targets can build slowly towards the big ones but big glorious ones are lovely to have.  They give you that sense of extra drive, like how amazing it would be to get there.

     Every massive thing started small.  There is the “journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step” cliche, which is true but maybe overheard.  I like the story behind Lord of the Rings.  How did that colossus of books and films start?

     It began with a young soldier in the trenches of World War I and a notebook.  That’s it.  One young Englishman jotting down the next idea, maybe playing off of what he last thought.

      That’s the idea right there.  You get an idea of what you want to see, even from the impossibly of your trench, and each day make those steps towards it.  Anything you do counts for something here.  There’s no real pressure here either because any focus on the goal is better than nothing.  Any screw up just tells you “what isn’t the sculpture” in the rock.  Your focus sharpens.  You start getting the picture clearer.  Even if it’s going out for a catalog at the Ferrari dealership.  You have to know what your buying. 

If you want that, naturally.  What do you see?

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Created by TomPogson.com

Nostalgia

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The road to Death Mountain...

Was there something about those games back then that captured the imagination?  I have tried since the passing of my NES from being in its longrunning spotlight to get into games like back then but to no avail.  I have come back to them with purchasing old games and emulators so I don’t know if is really that I grew out if it.

I mean it was a different time and place for me definitely.  Things were definitely simpler then.  That was the age when the Internet was still just a rumor and we had a Comtex 386, which was pretty high end.  Which leads me to how gaming was.  Nintendo was better for action games and the IBM was better for R.P.G’s  Windows was very much in its infancy.  I would load games with MSDOS, the MS standing for…yeah they were already around.  Some games had sound but it was in clunky clips.  These stuck with words below the “action”

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Alexander takes a mint...

I confess I didn’t get to play as many of the Quest series as I would have liked to.  There was something about all this that was wonderfully mysterious though.  There was other players you could talk to in person but mostly you were on your own and as the game didn’t have perfect audio and video you filled in the rest somehow with your head as you worked through it.  It was also relatively simple to play with instructions being about the size of a slightly oversized pamphlet to Fable Cottage Estate that you would pick up on a BC Ferry.   That was my weirdest ever hobby as a kid.  Pamphlet collecting.  Yeah, I don’t get that one either.

If you really wanted to nerd out you could put on a Monty Python cassette and play this at the same time.  Glorious!

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I'm a lumber jack. ..

The above game was a long time favorite which I’ve yet to find a emulator of that comes close.  It was called Empire Wargame of the Century and it was essentially a risk style game with two other players, human or computer, lurking out there in the darkness that would play and explore in turns.  It was usually a slow victory even if you made your settings absurdly easy.

It was a very different time for those of us who first saw the excitement of those early computer game years, starting for me with Apple 2 games like Carmen Sandiego, Choplifter, Airheart and Cross Country Canada all the way until Final Fantasy and these four guys from the Sierra Games.

Just four guys in a game, you know…

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Leisure Suit Larry, Police, Space, and Kings Quest

Permit me to be the nostalgic old guy.   Those were the days…

😉

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Kindness is magic

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All the difference on earth

How can you make the world a better place?  Ricky Gervais had this trending as a Twitter hashtag a couple years back but it stands repeating.  World peace seems so daunting as do all of those sorts of things.  But what could you change?

I wrote this after a day of trying to think of some material and mostly getting stuff like people arguing about merging on Facebook which got me thinking about how we should find another way since they can’t run forever anyways.  But where do you start with that?  It’s that same level of massive subject that feels too much to even go into.

Thinking about this I went into the food store.  I tried to keep it simple but had even less money than I realized.  I tried asking if the lady could take some things back but it still didn’t go through.  Then a lady behind me in line paid for me.  It wasn’t just a few quarters either it was over a five.  I thanked her profusely and she said she had been there before.

It was just a little moment but I am so grateful to that person.  It gives you that feeling that as one community we can make it all work out.

It doesn’t take much.  Even just stepping forward when someone is having a hard time makes all the difference.  The feeling of things working out can spread.

Have a great day!

🙂

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

The Open Stage

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You're up.

It’s you’re turn at the mic.  Every possibility is there to do anything and the room is about half full.  You haven’t had much more than a glass so far.  That was just to calm your nerves.  As the last guy finished his last song you went over your little set list about ten times.  Maybe there’s a bit your forgetting that’s really good.  Maybe you should lead with a cover.  Or finish with one.

All over this little town of ours there is a open stage on just about every day and what is interesting about these is just about everything.  You get every kind of performer from jazz singers (not in a smarmy way) to world musicians to guys with a background in hard rock and every other style you could name.  Naturally you see every level of player but what’s interesting is the fact that little communities of musicians start up here and sometimes even groups.  This makes it really interesting if you want to get out there and try.  I mean, yes there is that chance you will get together with others to play but at the root of it is guys who play the open stage circuit regularly and so there is a sort of fellowship there.  One basic rule of the stage is if you show up, your there until you absolutely have to go.  I might seem a bit extreme by saying that but it’s about being part of the community.   If you have work that night or your girlfriend is texting you or its last bus then fair enough.  But you don’t want to get known as the guy who gets signed up and is just there to do his 3 songs and then is out the door.  Listen to the other sets.  Pick out what you like in the material.  Talk to the others during the switch overs.  If you’re a real pro you can offer to sit in or even be there to help with any sound problems.  Everyone there wants to give the audience there best show so if you can help a little with that without suddenly coming down like God from mountain everyone will appreciate it.  However I leave one story with you.  I have lots of experience with playing live shows.  In Cookeilidh I have played different stages with different equipment and my own for eight years now.  At an open stage I cohosted just for fun I needed to quickly tune so I turned my bass down on the board, pushed the signal cut on my cable and pulled out.  I did that at the Highland Games yesterday with not a blip.  But with that piece of equipment, on that stage, with the other guy playing I set of a screaming roar of signal insanity that went from a discreet tune to an embarrassing crash of a set.  I apologized my ass off for that.  So much as you may be a ninja with pro audio there are surprises no one wants.  So if you want to help it’s best you give the open stage host (starts show, runs gear, usually has last song…that guy) your idea and he or she will try it out.

The open stage circuit is just one of the little communities in town.  Like wheels within wheels there are groups centered around these different arts like the Jazz community, the filmmakers community and with Cookeilidh the community of celtic and bluegrass players who we met over the weekend.  Community is your best way to view working in town with other artists.  They are not the competition.  It’s not like Coke and Pepsi out there.  Show your respect and enthusiasm for what’s already there and people will respond the same.  All you need are three songs.  It’s your fifteen minutes up there.

What are you gonna do?

For a list of stages in Victoria click
here!

Google open stages available in your area! See you out there!

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

If you could not fail…

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Everest

What would you do if you absolutely could not fail?  Would you climb to the heighest high and stand on the top of the world?  Take it further with the international space station?  Do stand up comedy at the Met?  Heavy weight champ?

And does it have to be so grand?  I had this question put to me and really what it questions is goals and dreams.  I don’t personally follow the “you can do it all” thought due to the hurtful nature contained within.  Something tells me that if I try my hardest I’m not going to make the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition for 2016.  Even if I switch my latte to nonfat I’m pretty sure it’s outta my reach.  This is an obvious example but it’s best to stay in those goals, the reachable ones of what you want to do or feel you could if you put in that little extra time.  Mine is full time writer and musician.  I work on top of that but otherwise I’m already doing it. 

As to the failing side, what’s wrong with that?  We want to have experience and we like to receive experience but what is that?  Isn’t experience just the result of making mistakes and learning from that.  If you worked in a place where no one came in, yeah you’d be amazing at it and your work would be failure – proof but it would be 1) extremely boring and 2) over in less than a month. 

Some of the biggest failures have been the gateway to success as well.  Post its came from someone trying to create a superglue that totally failed.  New Order’s bassist just grabbed a bass and joined the band with no idea how to play the correct way so he created a style that became their signature sound.  The list of this goes on and on.

So get out there and try it.  Try it, suck at it and try it again.  Just keep hammering at it 🙂

Cheers,
Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

What really changes?

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About to practice. As always.

    Morrissey is someone that even if you don’t like his music you should at least check out his interviews.  It’s the straight sometimes brutally funny honestly that I admire.  His songs actually make me happy despite their somber nature.  Maybe it’s because of that nature.  It doesn’t push me to smile.  It slaps me on the back and I smile at life’s built in absurdity.

I’m literally sitting on my bed about to practice as I write this.  I have the Victoria Highland Games coming up with my band Cookeilidh and as such I’ll keep it short.  But the question is, do we really change over the years?  Morrissey stated that who we are at age twelve is pretty much who we are.  Comedian Dylan Moran states “you’re not an adult…you’re just a tall child holding a beer” and Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl sings how “The Heart remains a Child”.  Here’s me sitting on my bed, which is a rumpled mess of course, surrounded by the writing and other stuff I’m working on and have big, big crazy dreams about.  Someone else is all about serving people and making people smile.  Want to bet that person had a little tea set growing up?  Someone’s working on cars.  Definitely grew up around their dad in the garage (or a variation thereof) and had a love of Hot Wheels.

What do you simply do the grown up version of now?  I do think we fine tune our distinctions over the years and I’m with Jax Teller that “what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger…” since these things that don’t supposedly “kill you” just make you seek inwards from the world that can be hurtful.  I am so at the risk of the inner child discussion here, and I do laugh at some of the thoughts I had back in my early years.  Why even last week…yeah, yeah…

But embrace it.  Reminice.  I still have my old 8 bit Nintendo games.  Nothings more fun that walking around town listening to a remix of the Legend of Zelda theme song.

Zelda remix.  So worth it.

Cheers,
Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Unconventional love

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It took me a bit to come up with an unconventional love for today’s prompt after going through the discussion about love a few days back.  Love for people and pets is considered understandable fair game that no one would question you for and so anything outside that box is naturally going to seem strange.  There was the runner up of the characters I create but as someone who is putting them self out there as a writer that seemed a bit cheesy.  But at the same time so does this as a musician.  I can only suppose that cheese is inherant within this subject.  As a barista a love of coffee…same.  As a man love of women…I probably should just leave that one alone.  You get the idea.

So I chose headphones.  It’s not naughty by any stretch of the imagination.   And no, I’ve never walked around listening to naughty noises.  Though I could see the surreal quality of listening to amore secretly while taking public transport to return bottles.  I think it would get old fast and I would probably prefer podcasts or music in its place.

But with that extreme concept aside it does show the reason I enjoy them so much.  Within those speakers you have total freedom to create a world of enjoyment that is tailored to what you want.  It’s a wonderful chance to explore something new while you are already in transit, feel the comfort of something heard before, or stay dialed in with local radio.  I know when I use to do Janitorial my connection to local talk radio made every bit of difference as I didn’t feel quite as disconnected to the rest of the world.  These recent ones are Bluetooth so I can also make phone calls from them, though this isn’t always best as you do get to look a bit strange talking like that, but people can suppose it is Bluetooth.  I have also used my headphones as I mentioned before to “test drive” music I have created, taking it out of the home studio context and setting it against the world outside.  As a cleaner I have also spent loads of time with, well, what use to be books on tape but is now podcasts, downloads and things that end with “this is Audible.”

You can use them before work like audio caffeine to get you going. You can switch to a soft playlist to slow things down again.  Another unconventional love I nearly used was that of public transport actually because when you get a decent spot (which is what failed this title as it is not always possible) you can use headphones to create a insular world of quiet ambience and with another honorable mention, my 300 page notebooks, you can use this world to create while you are already on the go.  I created not only ideas this way but entire characters have come from these moments in the back of a low floor double decker passing Uptown on the way to Craigflower and Tillicum where I use to live.  Longer the ride the better.  With headphones on and my Memo app (yet another) I planned my entire last move while supposedly “stuck” on a BC Ferry returning from Christmas holidays.

If you listen to music this way it actually spurs you to discover more music as you naturally want to expand the range of what you hear.  It is where I discovered Karl Pilkington and the Ricky Gervais Show, headphones on, cleaning my way through a newly renovated office.  I also listened in that same place to Sol Stein on writing, which I can’t praise highly enough.  Between those two gentleman’s work was quite possibly my drive to create comedy because a year later I was on the set of my first film shoot.  That film didn’t work out, but my present project with Cheri Jacobs continues to build towards completion.  It’s called Ollie and Emma and if you haven’t seen that yet, please check us out on one of our social media platforms.

Our WordPress blog
Ollie and Emma on Twitter! 
Ollie and Emma on Facebook!
And Instagram too! 🙂

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Cheri Jacobs and I


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Ollie and Emma - The Series

Created by TomPogson.com