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Gonna Spend My Cash

August 19, 2019 No Comment

“Why do you buy organic bananas?” asked an older visitor. “They have a peel, so pesticides won’t transfer into what you eat.”

I told him that I had seen a documentary that showed pesticides being sprayed on a banana plantation while workers were picking the bananas, because the corporation that owned the plantation didn’t want to stop the harvest long enough to spray pesticides and interrupt the work. So for me, it wasn’t about the bananas, but about the workers.

“I hear that,” commented our visitor. He then went on to relate that when he was young, picking hops in the Fraser Valley, the company also sprayed pesticides while the hops were being picked.

We try to keep ethical and sustainability issues in mind when we make our purchases. Fair Trade coffee and chocolate are frequent purchases of ours. If you search “Child Labour and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry”, you will come across an article by the ‘Food Empowerment Project’ that gives some details about how the chocolate industry is involved in the worst possible labour conditions in the world in our time.

Yet, we are inconsistent in our efforts, even as far as buying chocolate. Some fair trade and organic goods are only sold in stores that are some distance away from our home, and thus we would have to spend more time, money, and fuel, to go and purchase those goods – which creates an opportunity cost and additional environmental sustainability issues in itself.

Every purchasing decision is on some level a compromise, and there are so many such decisions that have to be made. The individual consumer in our society should not have to bear this burden alone – but our society is insufficiently committed to ethical purchases, production, and environmental sustainability, and mostly just sees it all as a bother, so it seems unlikely that governments will be elected in the near future which will encourage and support change on a broader level. There are powerful corporate and political forces that benefit from the status quo, combined with a societal inertia and malaise, so this is likely to be an ongoing issue.

While I want to continue moving toward an ethical and sustainable lifestyle, I also really do enjoy getting paid. Getting a paycheque provides a bit of a sense of recognition for work accomplished, and I feel that it’s natural to want to celebrate that. There’s a cloud of guilt that lingers over progressives, because of the level of ethical compromise involved in almost every act of every day. Even sitting at this keyboard to type has environmental consequences.

So my song “Gonna Spend My Cash” relates to that internal conflict of feeling joy and wanting to celebrate my remuneration, while at the same time wanting to be a more ethical and sustainable consumer. I haven’t ever heard a song like it, so it needed to be written, in my opinion. Here are the lyrics.

Gonna Spend My Cash

Gonna spend my cash, ‘cuz I got my pay
There’s value in a dollar and that’s okay
Gonna spend my cash, but watch where it goes
Cuz I want it to be love and not blood that flows

I’d be lying if I’d say gonna give it all away
Got a family with dreams and bills to pay
I earn, so I’ll share, but I won’t throw it away
There’s a balance in the balance, and a price to pay

It would be great to get around the degradation
It would be great to get rid of financial oppression
It’s tough to fight a system that I live in
To avoid a depression, but reduce my possession

Gonna spend my cash, ‘cuz I got my pay
There’s value in a dollar and that’s okay
Gonna spend my cash, but watch where it goes
Cuz I want it to be love and not blood that flows
Cuz I want it to be love and not blood that flows

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When I See You Fly; Celebrating Youth and Their Accomplishments

December 20, 2018 No Comment

Ultimately, what my children or my students do is their accomplishment, not mine. I can encourage, model, and suggest ideas, but I can’t and shouldn’t claim their success as mine. What I can do is celebrate that success and be happy for them.

Our children, our students, our mentees, need to know and feel that what they have done is a result of their efforts. To claim or point out a parental or educator role in that success is in some way to try to take it from them, to diminish their efforts – and that detracts from and discourages young people and other students from making those efforts. We are all better off when our young people and the lifelong learners among us are celebrated and acknowledged, because that pushes our whole society forward with their innovations and energy.

I originally wrote ‘When I See You Fly’ to celebrate my own kids, but I wanted it to be applicable to celebrate anyone’s accomplishments and growth. The first time I used it was for a video for our middle son’s grade 6 graduation party, along with slides featuring his classmates. That video was never made public, as a result of general privacy concerns. I made another video for my YouTube channel featuring our 3 boys, where the photos in the slides went with the lyrics of the song. This latest recording is music only. I wanted it to be available for others to use in the same way that I used it to celebrate our boys – for their personal celebration videos and occasions.

Here are the lyrics;

You’re so much more than just potential
Long ago, you burst out of your eggshell
And in the intervening hours
You were like that superhero
Learning to control the powers
Of the suit that you were building

Everyone has their moments
Of flapping, of falling, of faltering
The strongest winds may be blowing
Against you so hard, you’re not sure you can keep going

But the moments do pass
I see you take off, see you lift off
You are darting and gliding way up high

And when I see you fly, I fly
You’re soaring through the skies
My spirits also rise
As you’re free among the clouds
I want you to know
That even though I’m here below
When I see you fly, I fly

It’s not about keeping you on the ground
And not just to know that you are safe and sound
I’d love to see the treasure that you found
You stop, and then away you bound

And when I see you fly, I fly
You’re soaring through the skies
My spirits also rise
As you’re free among the clouds
I want you to know
That even though I’m here below
When I see you fly, I fly

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My Secret Life As a Songwriter

December 9, 2018 110 Comments

In recent years, I have heard “I didn’t know that you sing!â€? from people in almost every context. Back in my college years, many – including me – may have thought music was the only thing I could sort of do. So how did music become my secret life?

I remember making up a simple little song in the sandbox when I was around 5 years old, excited about the pennies I found there. I remember the tune. When I was 7, I read a story that included words for a song – something about being a ‘Tumbling Tumbleweed’. I made up the melody, drew rough manuscript paper, and painstakingly wrote out the notes while sitting at the piano.

It’s not that I really strongly pursued music. Yes, I took piano lessons, and later voice lessons. I studied music theory in secondary school and college, auditioned for and joined choirs, sang in groups, eventually learned to play guitar. The only final exam I ever got 100% on was my grade 7 music theory exam. But I had many reasons for not getting serious about music.

My voice was too low to sing any of the popular music on the radio. I have asthma, and singing in smoky bars (back in that day, they were all smoky bars) might well have killed me. The songs I wrote were unusual, and would have been considered too weird by many. There were other things I wanted to do. Recording was expensive and difficult. I didn’t think I could make a living on music.

Despite the fact that I didn’t pursue music, I still wrote at least 3 songs every year. Sometimes they would tumble out all at once; sometimes I’d have an idea for a song and I worked at it. Even when I was working full time and family life got really busy, I would find ways to introduce music into what I did, and writing songs would feel therapeutic at very intense times or at times when I was underemployed – really, at any time.

Music has been good to me too. When I was in College, I developed a liking to an imaginative, attractive, and funny young lady. I wanted to let her know, but she was usually inseparable from her group of friends. There was a piano in a sitting and games room on campus, so I sat at that piano and improvised some music, hoping it would draw her over – and it worked. Although it took several more months before she agreed to go out with me, that was the beginning of that relationship. We’ve been married for more than 2 decades now.

In the meantime, things changed around me. Bars are not all smoky now – in fact, where I live, smoking is illegal in public buildings. The cost of recording is much lower, and the process is far more efficient with today’s technology. And, I don’t have to make a living by doing my music – I can treat my music as a serious hobby. My low voice and unusual lyrical styles only mean that I have a niche. People like Leonard Cohen, Tom Jones, and Johnny Cash have blazed a trail, too. The internet has made the publication and broad distribution of music of music easy, although not especially lucrative – but that’s okay with me.

So now, with over 100 sets of lyrics in my files, some complete and others just waiting for development, I am ready to make my life as a songwriter less of a secret. It doesn’t much matter to me if my music only appeals to a few – I don’t want it to sit dormant. I’ve already started putting it out there. I’m going to keep getting better, keep practicing, and keep recording music for publication and distribution. No more secrecy about my life as a songwriter.

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