artist Alex Fawcett

Succession A lot has happened since my last reflection. I befriended another musician in class and we decided to work together for the creative project. Turned out he was writing a song as well, so we decided to help each other on our songs. Rob says he is primarily a pianist, but had developed tendonitis years back and since then has learned to play the guitar and harmonica. He can improvise extremely well on the harmonica; he attributes this to his piano playing skills and consequently, a well-trained ear. Anyway, very cool. So for the past three weeks or so we have been practicing each other’s songs and yesterday we played them for our class! Holy smokes, what a nerve wrecking experience! Not the place for such a thing at all. Music is best enjoyed in a room with good ambience and some speakers and mics and drums and guitars and yeah. Haha. Nonetheless, everything went awesome and we got some nice feedback. So now it looks like we might try to write some songs together. I’d like to see if we could try to put a cd together by April. We are going to start playing at the jam nights here in St. Catharines once we put a little set together. The semester is done, one more and its back in the “real world” again, hopefully this time it will be more pleasant in my new field. In the words of Mitch Hedberg “I’m sick of chasing my dreams, I think I’ll ask where they’re going and catch up with them later”. The lyrics to my new song. Hymn for the Earth – Alex Fawcett It resonates like a bell Propagating pleasure in itself That we’re above you just feels wrong to describe So lost about you all we need now is a guide For three months we’ve been watching how An innocence so revered was turned around Enough denying its time to get outspoken And force words enough endeared For you Gaia We contemplate and decide We are far better in our lives To have each other we are brought to our feet With miles before us all we see is a mess to clean up Would you think of the Earth we’d share If we could get everyone to care for life We’re still drilling up ancient sun On the tip of a loaded gun

Yesterday, My good friends Steve and Nicole came down from Toronto and we just had an old hoot. Steve and I worked on a new song for about 2 hours and we came up with some stuff to think about to say the least. In my restoration ecology class, our final project has to be something creative. It can be anything as long as it has to do with restoration. So I've been playing with a few riffs and Steve and I broke them out. The new song is going to be about the Earth as in organism I think. A mathematician named James Lovelock in 1979, published a book called Gaia. In which, he described the Earth as an organismic type entity. With the atmosphere compared to a bee's paper nest, or bird's feathers - a structure to contain an internal environment. I'm thinking that whether this is true or not, it is the way we should be looking at the Earth anyway. It is a finite space that we are exploiting, and it is wrong to think that we as a species are above other species. This is a really different direction I'm going with writing and its going to be sweet I think. The songs about relationships and love always seemed to come to me the easiest. Very easy to describe. Time for a change. Time to use music in a different way... Instead of something deeply self- centered. We'll see what comes out. Hopefully, the song will be done by the end of November.