EVENT BOUNDARY

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'Event Boundary'  Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away.

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DISCO SIREN

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'Twisting and turning to The Specials like a flickering flame'  The Specials are a British reggae and ska band formed in 1977.  They are best known for the tracks Ghost Town, Nite Klub and a cover version of A Message to You Ruby. 

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STEADY ON THE LEEWARD SHORE

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Aokigahara forest is known in Japanese folklore as the ‘Sea of Trees’ but more often referred to by westerners as the ‘Suicide Forest.’  While the use of this forest for the purpose of suicide is real, the Japanese dislike this term and a sore spot to refer to it as such.  The site's popularity for suicide has been attributed to Seichō Matsumoto's 1961 novel Nami no Tō (Tower of Waves).  The book centers on a young woman who is stuck in a scandalous love affair until she decides to venture into the forest to take her own life.

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'Leeward Shore'  The shore that receives wind blowing in from the sea is the leeward shore.  Alternatively, if the wind is blowing from inland out to sea, that is known as the weather shore.

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OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DIAMOND YOU HAD

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I wrote this piece in my Father's dying days. He underwent some of the most gruelling cancer treatments I'd ever read about: a Bone Marrow transplant that was supposed to save his life and so many blood transfusions, I'm not sure he had any of his original left. 

 

'Passing messages entirely through tin cans tied by fists worth of string'  His new "wife" kept us apart, we'd have to meet in secret and he'd give me updates on his health. I wasn't permitted to be with him, she thought of my Father as being part of a "new" family - one of which I was not invited to. By the time he was too frail to fight my objections to this nonsense and my desire to disobey her, he was buying time after his last rights were invoked. I walked into the hospital, a Guinness for each of us and I wish I had known that weeks before would be the last time I properly saw my Father - because this, this was not my Father.

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'When he and I locked eyes, they were on a façade lifted straight from Picasso’s Blue Period'   This is a reference to the one and only, Picasso. The paintings of Picasso's Blue Period convey a deep sense of loss and mourning. They generally have no indication of time or place, as if they represent the universal constancy of pain.

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TRAVERSE WAVES

 

‘Traverse’  to move or pass through.

 

‘We need to get back to Camden Yard’  This is actually a reference to Camden Town in North London but the word town was swapped out for the flow of the piece.

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LEAD BOOTS TO THE FLOOR

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'light up the speedometer like the California Richter scale'  The Richter scale is a scale of numbers used to tell the power of earthquakes.  California has a particularly high rate of earthquakes.

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FOUR LETTER WORD FOR "LOSS OF OXYGEN"

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After a couple weeks in a whirlwind romance, we hastily booked a holiday for the two of us together.  I worried it was too soon to be alone overseas with what was only a few degrees removed from a stranger but when we got there, I quickly realized that was the least of my worries.

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BODIES IN ORBIT

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This piece was written commuting to and from Toronto, Ontario.  Speeding alongside suburban backyards, I always wonder what happens in those houses; how the wealthy, the other half live and what they consider happiness.  The term 'bodies in orbit' arrived in a dream - pondering if in the future, we'll all be living as bodies in orbit and what a missed opportunity it would be if the class system followed us there too.

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'Vibrating all-round the house'  refers to vibrational energy, the unseen force that drives all physical matter.

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FLASHOVER

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The firefighting term, 'flashover',  is an ignition of fire spreading near-simultaneously and with great heat, engulfing an entire room.

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MANHATTAN CHRISTMAS

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This piece was written while in New York (pre-pandemic) with the idea that no matter how isolated we are, physically or mentally, every one of us are still part of something much bigger than ourselves - in an existential way, I suppose.

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A PORT IN THE STORM

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Any 'Port in a Storm'  is a proverb that loosely means that when someone is in trouble they cannot wait for the perfect solution.

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REHEARSED ARRANGEMENTS

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'Muddy Waters once again pours his emotions from the pressed vinyl'  Muddy Waters was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene.  He's often cited as the father of modern Chicago blues.

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SWEET VALLEY HIGH LIFE

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'Sweet Valley High'  was a series of young adult novels that ran from 1983 into the early millennium. They chronicled the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, who live in the fictional Sweet Valley, California.  The twins and their friends attend Sweet Valley High.