Tag Archives: life

Ollie and Emma is now online!!

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What makes this webseries different than all the other indie films and romantic comedies?  Is it just because she’s First Nations and he is a white suburban guy like myself? 

Well, there’s that.

But to me as one of the writers on the show, Ollie and Emma is something that needs to happen.  We need to see cultures coming together and making connections.  We need to see First Nations characters played by First Nations actors in day to day life.  And while there is certainly very serious and sobering realities about Native culture that everyone should research, there is also laughter, love and friendship.

My working partnership with Saulteaux comedian Cheri Jacobs is an example of this.  We started work together almost four years ago now on a previous project and the subject of her being of Indigenous heritage never really came up until we started the first initial sketches of Ollie and Emma.  I didn’t inquire before that or think “How do I work with this person?  Do I have to be careful how I talk here?”  It was more like “let’s write something funny!”

Since Ollie and Emma, and with some of the other First Nations projects we started (some more serious in tone, some set in earlier times) I have been asking more, reading more and listening to Elders speak about culture and holy cow…I have been just overwhelmed by the diversity of history, language, complex social structure, traditions and folklore.  It is such a steep learning curve that for anyone to think “I’m going to learn about Native culture”, I like to say it’s a little like saying “I’m going to learn everything there is to know about Europe, Africa or Asia.”  Dude, they’re all huge!  You’re going to need an absurd amount of Red Bull, and even then you won’t get through it in one lifetime! 

So yeah, I’m mostly focused on Coast Salish culture now.  And even then, I have stacks of books to plow through (and being mostly an oral history, books are more of a tip-of-the-iceberg starting place!)…(whew!)

Returning to my point thought, Cheri and I are an example of where we are right now and how we all could one day be, all over the world.  We can all make connections like this.  I grew up on shows like Robotech where the whole world pulled together to make the impossible possible.

But don’t get scared after my little(ish) rant!  Ollie and Emma is fun.  It’s non-political, get’s a bit meta and plays with stereotype.  I am so lucky to have worked with not only such a kickass co-writer/co-producer but also such a hardworking and talented cast and crew and of course our production team of Less Bland Productions and Telus Optik.  I still stand in wonder how they took us on (not that we’re not good, but wow!)

To me, I’m still Jim and Joan Pogson’s kid whose somewhere in the rumpus room, sitting crosslegged somewhere amongst the storage boxes in the old house we had in Langley, BC, reading books and making up random stuff.

Enjoy the show!

Just click the link below!

http://www.ollieandemma.ca

Cheers,

Tom  

 

Discovering Georgia’s Eden

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georgia-signagui

This is something that I have always meant to blog about since it first captured my imagination.  From simply doing research for a book project I was working on, I have always wanted to travel to the country of Georgia.  To venture into the Caucasus Mountains that form its northern border and roam the streets of it’s capital city Tbilisi.

Set between the Black and Caspian Seas, Georgia first caught my attention in a series of videos called Vintage : A History of Wine which are narrated by the author of the original book by Hugh Johnson.  It is in this small, beautiful country that the story of wine begins.

In his film, Hugh explains that not only is Georgian Wine still made by the same ancient process of aging in gourds underground but that the history of winemaking there goes back to 10,000 B.C.

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I could almost finish my blog there and just let your imagination take things from that point.  This country on the border of Europe and Asia was making wine, something that requires patience and planning (and most importantly, civilisation) before most of the great empires of history took their first steps.  As an example they were making wine long before the construction of the first of the Egyptian pyramids with the earliest being the Pyramid of Djoser between 2630 and 2611 B.C.

The vineyard owners that Hugh Johnson interviewed were very humble and friendly which is exactly what I experienced myself when I made contact with people from this country myself.  Long before the Internet was what it is today I emailed some folks for more information on Georgia.  I was sent not only the phrasebook I sent for but a sheet of Georgian recipes and another sheet that contained facts about the country.  I still have my copy of this wonderful book by Patricia Hall and Tatyana Bukia which goes over everything from basic survival phrases to what to say at a Georgian Dinner.

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What is also interesting has been the increase of archeological discoveries in the countryside.  They have found the existence of dinosaurs in the area, ancient caves and more importantly, the evidence of human activity.  Near the town of Dmanisi, sixty kilometers south of Tbilisi that go back 1.7 million years.  For those who believe in the accounts of the Bible, Mount Ararat of the story of Noah’s Ark is a stone’s throw away.

What ever one believes I am personally enchanted by the wonder of Georgia as one of Europe’s most fascinating treasures.  Due to its military position as the border between two continents, its truth may be locked away under centuries of soldiers, horses and the endless scouring of time. 

If you are a Victoria, BC based reader you can find Georgian Wine as I have at the BC Liquor Store at the corner of Fort and Foul Bay.

Thank you for reading!   

Tom

Home

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This is my refuge but it’s also my study, my factory.  Here I build for better things to come.

Dreams are dreamed, coffee gets shared and things are at their softest and least diffused.

I work here with music on, seeking the truth, elusive as clouds and you can find me writing, playing, rewriting, waking up, cooking.

Memories find tin boxes, plastic containers with dusty lids and new ones get their little births.

Everything I’ve ever done sprouted from the walls of home.  Sitting on the floor with a guitar and an old Panasonic tape deck.  Silly thoughts pass here like fish in a stream.  Some sparkle so bright you can reach out with your hands.

Houston, we’ve left normal

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My long time co-writer and friend Cheri Jacobs

     It’s really early.  It’s early enough to still be considered late.  Making coffee now because I know I won’t be going back to sleep for quite some time.  That’s the perfectly normal thing right about now.  I have never slept well, due to a large part that I never liked to do that.  My schedule has little power naps and as I type this on the tablet Cece is sleeping.  I give full points to a girlfriend who sticks by her creative man.  We’re the most difficult breed there is if we’re good and likely worse if were not.

      In now less than two weeks I voyage out into the waters that I have always wanted to sail.  Thanks to a mixture of my work with Cookeilidh, my work with Cheri Jacobs and our partnership with Less Bland Productions I have made the leap to being a writer and musician full time.  I do feel ready for these waters but naturally it is a place that I sort of half thought I wouldn’t be sailing.  The choice to make the leap is one that does scare me since it’s not as though I have made it in the conventional sense.  The work I do is exhilarating in both fields (two sides of my expression  that have always been there relentlessly since I could make baby noises most likely) but the work is still very much in the day to day grind of a local craftsman.  That is something that doesn’t bother me that much.  If you want superstardom you don’t really pick the fields of bass player and screenwriter.  I’ve certainly stepped out of those less lit parts of the stage to do things like acting (in little bits with Cheri on the Tom and Cheri Show) and singing (open stages and backup for Cookeilidh) but with those the need to do that came from the fact that there is this material and its simpler just to do it.  I swear its not false modesty.  I have, when a singer has been I’ll in the past, tried to fake that role for the evening.  Didn’t like it.  Much more relaxed to stand on my side of the stage and focus on making the best work I can.  Its similar to writing.  I want your imagination or the actors to take my ideas and make them soar.  I far prefer to get up early, make coffee and get an idea that makes my toes wiggle in the carpet.

But I won’t say that the ides of venturing out into doing this full time isn’t scary too.  Part of me does feel like “who do I think I am?”. I have routines down so I am always busy, which can include blogging at 4:30 a.m.

Still less than two weeks to go before I officially sail.  With all the making preperations for the journey I still wonder how I’ll feel when the anchor rises.

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

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So much time spent…

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Life long joy.

     This favorite little thing in life goes back so far that I’ve forgotten when.  Somewhere in the 80’s, back before I noticed girls or had my first 8-bit Nintendo game I found this in the house.  There was no planning or plan with borrowing it from dad’s office and using a blank tape.  I remember using the q – tip to try and clean the tape heads with alcohol.  I remember my fascination with its mechanism and the fact that I could record myself doing little skits and singing songs.  Like any child with a favorite toy it was me, cross-legged in front of the recorder, holding down play and reverse to make that screeching sound that everyone hates while I scanned for the intro.  Eventually there was a second machine which had the high speed feature.  Novelty of making myself into one of the Chipmunks lasted for a bit.

The use of the machine lasted to today.  There is something about the solid reliability of tape that digital can’t match.  I’ve used multitrack digital but it always feels like I get lost in the engineering role.   I’ve used tape 4 track of course, and had so many Type 2 tapes for this but what I remember is doing a really lofi song recording with two machines recording over and over until the first track was like a distant echo.  Every detail of that magic machine was a curiosity.  The smell of its speaker, the buttons I never understood to use.  Something about the recording process was so interesting as well, which I still find in the recording process.  When it’s recorded it’s like the songs enter their own universe with strange phantom sounds and foibles.  Mix tapes of songs are like a musical diary. 

Oh and with the band…yeah I’ve got a couple tapes of them (switched to digital more recently out of convenience but am considering returning)

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The library.

And as a kid who also liked things like Robotech and Tron there was this idea when creating any kind of battle.  It’s supposed to be a gun thing from Star Wars.  It just looks like…well…two pencils and a tape.

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You may fire when ready...

Those days are past but the use of my tape recorder still remains as the primary songwriting platform to this day.  The tapes of songs are great as they can’t get lost somewhere in the bowls of a hard drive, just somewhere in my desk.  I still have the Walkman that after recording a multitrack song would take it for a “test drive” walking through Cook Street Village with headphones to see if the song felt right outside of the home recording environment and see what I could change or add.  And of course, for anyone who knows about my band Cookeilidh or the blog post on being a celtic bassist, yes…i still have where it all started…with an extra whimsical ” o ” 🙂

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Still plays

Cheers,
Tom

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Created by TomPogson.com

Welcome to Adhd

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Full speed ahead

This is the sort of post I usually wouldn’t make. I guess that means I should in a way. It is, I promise, not about complaining. It is also, I equally promise, not a new-fangled thing that I was diagnosed with recently as I was diagnosed back in the early 80’s.

My Adhd is very real and has been my entire experience of life as lack of sight is to a blind person or confusion of events is to someone with schizophrenia.

It is naturally not as debilitating as these previous ailments as unlike them it has its positive and negative attributes. Adhd people would have been the best watchmen (or watch persons) as we are always switched on
There is no down time. There is no relaxing. We won’t do it later and we are always hyper-aware of the…ooh what’s that? Just kidding but funny enough I’m getting what I call “the shakes” as I write this. Or maybe I just need another smoke. It makes smoking really hard to quit, well for me anyways, as it is perfectly meditative.

Coffee which I’ve talked about before has different effects and I know for some of us Adhders (it’s a word…well…ah, smile and nod) coffee can actually work wonders in strangely balancing the rush. And I think the reason is like I’ve experienced. Coffee slows us down. You didn’t misread that. I’ve had a double espresso and passed out shortly after. And no, you didn’t…well…you get the idea.

Because we are so much in our high gear coffee is a paradox that speeds things up even more which, unlike the Seinfeld episode with Kramer and the multiple espressos, it goes into an overdrive that’s exhausting. Down we go. Moderated we can use it to just slow it down gently instead of a sugar-like crash.

This brings me to the downsides. Not only is reading something that is hard to focus on, as is a formal lecture situation (we’re great strangely at self directed study) where information is being fired at us but in the same way that coffee can overwhelm so can over stimulation. Much as we are great at seeing lots a high speed situation can go all the way over and like with my espresso crash things go into overwhelm. When that happens I swear I couldn’t spell the short version of my name.

It’s Tom. Now that’s pretty easy. But seriously those situations are like a Japanese train being derailed. Our being fast only makes it worse. I’ve learned to breath when I feel those jitters that spell the overwhelm sign. You can pause and stop because much as the situation may ask you not to its going to be lots worse if you don’t.

I don’t know if these experiences resonate with others. I know Ritalin and such have never worked and only made me feel dopey but then I’m looking through my camera view of the world. Please share your views on this if you like.

Cheers,
Tom
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