Author: Nic Olson

I was an ignorant teenager once. I can remember this well, like it was only a few years ago or something. I used to dislike arts. I didn’t know much of them, so I just thought they were a sort of exhibitionism used to satiate the masses of eccentric young people that already dressed funny. I was a sports and science man. I figured that sports were like arts but exciting and science was like arts but logical. I didn’t feel like I needed to try to understand the inner workings of countless literary legendaries to know more about the world.

But as I exposed myself to new and different ideas and thought processes I slowly came to realize what the arts actually were. Not only amazing paintings and sculptures, poems or plays could be considered art. My favourite songwriters and bands are artists. The most mesmerizing and thought engaging movies are artistically founded. The photographs by my favourite photographers are part of the art scheme. The most intricate tattoo or piece of graffiti is raw and real art. Art is everything, not in a way like it is more important than everything else, but in that it can be found in anything at all. Art isn’t only for the eccentric and poorly dressed. It is for everyone that knows where to look and knows what is real.

I went to the 40th Annual Regina Folk Festival this past weekend. I saw Corb Lund, Matt Goud, Andy Shauf play a workshop together. I breathed in the talents of a handful of artists while swimming in the golden shine of the prairie sun and realized that I was experiencing the arts. Those eccentrics dancing around while I stood leaning against a Regina elm tree, arms crossed with indifference on my face, but loving it all.
The itch of creating art has been hitting me lately. Hitting me like how it hits my loins when one of those cute girl hippy singers dances,
bending her legs one at a time while flipping her hair and carressing souls with harmonies from heaven. It is similar to the “Teacher, can I go to the washroom?” dance of second grade. I’ve always wanted to play guitar but haven’t pursued it to the full. I always wished I was born into a guitar playing family. Or I wished I had the discipline and committment to finish something I started. I always wished I could explain myself or express myself in an epic acoustic ballad. But I have accepted that I may never do that. In my mind, writing literature is still art, but less revered and relevant than music. People take a struggling acoustic musician more seriously than a guy that writes repetitive blogs on his parents computer. Although I’m equally as artistically legit, right?

Night one in Montreal I experienced another important ‘art festival’, 10 bands for $10, and I watched a different kind of the eccentrics swing their arms around in fits of rage. With Poison the Well and Crime in Stereo on the bill, even the non-artsy bands are based on principles and formulas that are, in essence, art.
I may still be considered a sports man, going to experience my first professional tennis at Montreal’s Rogers Cup, but as two former number one ranked tennis players face off, I cannot say that art was not in the brilliance of the shots, or of the story the match was based on.

Now I know, from years of looking at the world through the eyes of a scientific pseudo jock, that art is what ties it all together. Art is in everything, like how atoms are the basis of all matter, or like how testosterone is the blood of all sports. Let’s do a chestpump to celebrate our revelation.

Eventually I will probably go blind. Each time I go to the Optometrist, or what I like to call the Eye Doctor, she tells me the same thing. My eyes are getting worse, and they are too far advanced in worseness that they haven’t developed proper contact lens technology to appropriately suit my eye, so i get a slightly wrong prescription, I guess, and she sends me on my way. She first ruined my life in Grade 1, when she gave me my first pair of glasses. She then re-ruined my life when she made me wear an eye patch to school. And now she just doesn’t have the balls to tell me I’m going to be blind in a matter of a few years. Yesterday it all began. It started at work, with a small sunspot in the middle of my sight. In ten minutes it was a huge sunspot, about a quarter of my entire vision, right in the middle. In another ten minutes it had shifted to the left side of my vision and blocked my entire left peripheral. I was probably 50% blind for an hour or so, when it finally subsided and gave me a monster headache. Apparently it was all a migraine caused by stress, says my friend who is not in anyway my Optometrist. Eventually I will go blind.

This month is a month of Events. Here’s a short list. Not to rub it in.
Aug 9 – Corb Lund at Regina Folk Festival
Aug 10 – Fly to Montreal
Aug 10 – 10 Bands for $10 featuring Poison the Well, Ensign, Crime in Stereo
Aug 11 – 1st and 2nd Rounds of the Rogers Cup in Montreal. In Montreal.
Aug 15 – Semi-Final Round of the Rogers Cup
Aug 16 – Finals of the Rogers Cup
Aug 17 – Have Heart show in Montreal
Aug 18 – Fly to Regina
Aug 18-25 – Friends are in Regina
Aug 22 – Have Heart show in Regina
Sept 28 – Final nose inspection
Sept 29 – The Gaslight Anthem in Regina

I hang all of my event tickets by the light switch of my room, so that every time I leave my room, I get to see the list of all the events of my next week and more.

Eventually this list may not impress me as much as it does now. However, I hope that eventually never happens. I hope I do not eventually go blind, physically or fun-ically.

I am a temporary paper boy. I am filling in for a friend. He goes to the Leader Post office daily at 5:30 and picks up the routes for those who are sick or on holidays. The fill-in-man must have a car, so he can drive anywhere in the city to cover routes, so this isn't any kids job. A valid drivers license is necessary. I'm only doing it for a week while he rides heavy steel horse down in Sturgis. I'm the fill-in for the fill-in.

A young man came into work the other day with a young girl, both hovering around twenty years of age. I greeted them and noticed he was kinda goofy and she was bigger in the stomach. He came to purchase something with his girlfriend and asked me, "Hey, did you go to Western?" Hesitating I said yes, and instantly realized who it was. It was Jimmy. He had lost a lot of weight, matured quite a bit and had a girlfriend. He asked me what I was up to, and I motioned to the till I was standing next to and told him that I sold panties and purses as I detagged his girlfriends orange and gold canvas purse and pushed the decaying buttons of the cash register. He laughed and said, "No way. I thought you would have been a CEO or something like that. Haha. You were the valedictorian."
"Nope." I said proudly. I haven't sold out yet. I then asked him what he was up to, and he motioned towards his girlfriends stomach. He's having a baby. Good to see you, Jimmy.

Although the valedictorian tag means very little to me, especially since the only reason I got it was because my best friend Seong Bin Lee got seriously ill two weeks before grad and his grades slumped slightly. I've got this a few times, the wasted potential speech, since my lifetime high of having better grades than ten students who lived in the dorms. I don't mind. It usually makes me feel better about my life after school this far. Or maybe it just makes me feel better about where I could go. Right now I'm a secondary panty salesman and fill-in for the fill-in at Leader Post.
And I'm happy, and I like that. Every day I become more impatient and antsy and cynical and confused, but at least I know I didn't really waste my youth like I did my potential. And I'm still only a few decades old. There is still years of potential to waste and a few more years of youth to invest.

Twenty year vision, a film about my life. Synopsis: a young stuggling writer makes his start as the fill-in's fill-in at a small city newspaper. Eventually the editor gives him his own editorial and a few years later is awarded a Nobel Prize as a freelance journalist for ripping the lid off of a serious Prime Ministerial scam where Harper secretly changes federal law and labels his government a dictatorship.
And I started as a fill-in's fill-in.

In case you were wondering, I am indeed still in the process of writing a book. I began this process like three years ago, and it is still weighing heavily on me. Not because people tell me that I should write a book, and not because I know that any old dink can write a book and have it be a New York Times Bestseller, but because I’ve started it and I feel like I have a duty to finish it. For myself.

I started getting comments on my writing when I was in India for the first time. So when I was there the second time, I put pressure on myself to write some magic and keep the masses content and entertained. The third time I went, I decided that I didn’t want that pressure, and titled myself as a photographer for the trip, and took, what I think, are the best photos I’ve ever taken. I wrote while I was there, the odd blog and a few songs, as I aspire to be a great musician (who can’t play music), but I didn’t pressure myself, which felt good.

Most of my writing has been for everyone else. I never ever thought that writing was even a decent way of expressing myself, or even had a bit of a clue that I may be semi-decent at it. So when I heard that people liked what I was doing I continued to write for other people, constantly trying to please and not upset people with it. It was a drag on my creativity and my overall writing morale.

So I took a break from my book. First I just thought I’d forget about it, like it was some stupid teenaged pipe dream (the term pipe dream comes refers to the dreams that are experienced while smoking opium from a pipe…). But recently I went back to what I’ve written. I read over everything, less than 100 pages. I deleted probably one third of it, and am still in that process. A major overhaul. I’m in a position where I feel somewhat confident and comfortable editing what I already have, but I am not in the position where I feel like I can write new material and feel good about it.

I am in an editing phase. Which is why you may see my blog layout change every week. I am editing everything I have got, until I find what feels good. What feels right.
A serious overhaul. I’m in the edit suite. Stay tuned..

I went for Thai food yesterday at Thai Garden in Regina. I ordered Pad Thai. It was good. They gave free orange slices at the end of the meal. It changed my life. They also gave fortune cookies. I always question the cultural authenticity of this kind of cookie, but I love them, and their advice is always perfect. I dont remember what mine said, something written perfectly so it would work for anyone that read it, but written in a way that tells me exactly what I need to hear. I read the back of the one that wasn’t mine. It had a bunch of numbers of them, just like every other time. But these numbers were oddly familiar. The TV show Lost, which I don’t love but coincidentally talk about a lot, has some episodes where it tells stories about a set of 6 numbers that are cursed and/or good luck. Hurley, an overweight Hispanic character used these numbers and won the lottery, a substantial amount. From memory I was sure that these numbers on the fortune
cookie slip were the same. It changed my life.. Then I later googled it to find that only one of the six numbers was different. Still, changed my life.

I have found myself saying that a lot. How something has the power to, or the lack of ability to change lives/my life. A person’s vocabulary changes based on who, where, what, and I don’t know where I picked this up. Cody P maybe. But I like the hyperbolic ability of the phrase. Like finding something life changing is in the bottom of a Pad Thai, the middle of a curved cookie, or a toonie movie at the Rainbow.

I may have seen a few things that have actually changed my life. Things that I usually don’t talk about or sometimes even think about, but placed my mind and body into where I am now. A mind is always in need of a Pad Thai to motivate and move it into a new mindset, where it is not just sitting and waiting. But acting.
I am assured that this blog is life changing for you.

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high.“
-John Denver

Summertime rules! Who needs the marijuana when the sunshine does the same thing?

Quote of the Month:
Harry: I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.
Lloyd: I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver’s full of shit, man.
-Dumb and Dumber

It is 1:15am. I went to a show tonight. I didn’t know any of the bands playing. I didn’t know if anyone of my friends were going. I went anyways. It was alright. None of the bands were anything I loved. But I crave live music, crappy or not. Eight dollars, big friggin’ deal. One less burrito in my pants pocket.
There was a band that played from Massachusetts somewhere. Boston perhaps. They were alright. They were called ‘Glue‘. Nothing special, but not terrible. That doesn’t matter. The lead singer turned out to be a super nice fellow. We talked briefly, and I offered his band a place to stay. They had a few leads for homes to stay, but they fell through. This guy called me just before I headed to bed, before midnight, saying they were headed this way. They haven’t arrived. So I’ve spent the past hour and a half surfing the web harder than I ever have. Ever. And I’m none the smarter.

They maybe are planning on looting all the goods from my house, now that they have me on their GPS. But either way, I went to a show tonight. And it was at the Buffalo Lounge. This is another place that rules. Although the types of shows have changed over the past ten years, they are still positive attitude shows, run by decent people, with good ideas.
A supporter of music. A supporter of youth. A supporter of buffalo related murders.

Thanks Tim Furry, Kris, that guy with glasses, and Jimmy.
Unreal times.

I watched UFC 100 last night. I don’t love this organized sport, but everyone I know was there watching it, so I joined. There is nothing that brings friends closer together quite like two men from different backgrounds punching, kneeing, elbowing and submitting each other into pools of blood. There is also nothing that shows human kind’s gentle nature quite like this either.
Afterwards a few friends and I went to a midnight movie. X-Men. I haven’t seen all of the previous X-Men movies, but I figured that since it was a prequel, I’d be alright. I was.

I notice small details from movies. The hair colour of the extras. The make and model of the main character’s vehicle. Yesterday I noticed this sticker, that was on the window of the old farming couple that took care of Wolverine for a few days.
It said,

“All who wander are not lost.”

I liked it.

I’m not sure I have ever touched a buoy until this past weekend. And by the way, I do indeed pronounce it BOO-EE, because there doesn’t need to be any confusion when you are talking about touching them. I went camping at the glamourous Echo Lake, and took a quick dip while I was there.

I waded in the water, probably out about fifty yards or so, still on my tippy toes. I looked back and the beach was far away, about fifty yards or so, but it felt like half of a football field… I looked back out towards the water. The hills of the Qu’Appelle valley climbing up at the edges of the lake, and the buoy bobbed out another twenty feet. I never thought I’d be able to touch one of them looking from the beach, but when I got to that twenty feet or so, I said, ‘Screw it, I’m touching the buoy’

I swam. I touched the buoy. I swam back. The buoy had tonnes (metric) of algae on it, as well as tons (not metric) of creamy white bird leavings on it. But I touched it.

I see something in the distance, but I don’t know what it is. (The palm of my hand has a strong destiny line in it, I think I was told, so that means I have one solid destiny. But that’s witchcraft anyways.) When I see this thing in the distance, it looks clean, it looks sharp, it looks inviting, although I don’t know what it is. The first few steps are uncomfortable, cold, with rocks on the bottom of the feet. The next few steps are warmer, but distracting with the green seaweed hair tickling the legs. The middle steps are comfortable: the water isn’t too high or cold, and the whole body is immersed, so you look like you are right into it. The next few steps are more difficult, tippy toes and waves hitting the mouth. You are somewhat committed, but you haven’t taken the full plunge, and you haven’t reached it yet. The last neck of the journey is where it gets hard. Swimming to the buoy, achieving your destiny, and swimming back. Sounds easy, but it ain’t. And the buoy is gonna be covered in crap.

This is my life. I see that I need to be somewhere, but don’t know where it is. That is why I’m doing nothing with my life, I’m buying time until I can clearly see my buoy. And take those steps to reach it. Kick that buoy in the ass. Kick my destiny in the ass.

F trees, I climb buoys. I’m on a boat.

No one has the same friends for life. I was reminded of this when Bob Gainey didn’t invite all of my best friends back for another season with the Montreal Canadiens. No Komisarek. No Higgins. No Kovalev. Not even the captain, Koivu. That is the entire captaincy of my team. And that is not even nearly a complete list. My best friends. The guys I’ve spent hundreds of games with, wrenching my gut and shouting. Gone, because Bob didn’t send the invites. Last week I had a dream that Price got traded. That seems like nothing in comparison. I trust Bob more than I trust myself, so I’m planning on this working out next year. But I do hate Hal Gill.

Last week I lost my iPod, whom I recently named Louis (pronounced Lew-iss, but Lew-ee is cool too). I had a bonfire in my brother’s backyard, with Louis on my lap. He was swallowed by the couch without me noticing. Yeah, a couch by the fire. It is the only way to do it. I have looked at some of my old blogs. I often update the status of my past iPod’s whereabouts and health. Louis has been my other best friend for the past year. I ripped apart the backyard at 10pm for over an hour, grooming the dirt piles, pulling out the four foot grass, and manhandling the couch. Dan 2e helped me search for a while. We talked, but all I could think about is the loss of my friend Louis, and how I might have to replace him with younger, sexier iPhone. Luckily for me, I found Louis in the sunlit morning, hugging closely to the cleavage of the couch. I still have him.

I always think about old friends. Daily. I often have dreams about my friends from elementary school; us meeting up and hanging out like we still know each other. I sometimes think about old friends from highschool, ones I haven’t seen in a while, and wonder where they are, what they’re doing and wishing we could share in some time together. Then I realize that my groups of friends change every 5 years or so. Not by choice, but by growth or life changes. I will obviously hold on to all old friends, especially those friends that have always been there, but the group I am with now has even changed considerably from two years ago, and I understand that it might not last much longer. They will always be friends, but the way we hang out now, won’t be the same way we hang out in years to come.

Nic: Cherish it. Love it. Your team of friends won’t get re-signed forever. But at least keep them on the alumni, and invite them back for memories of the Hall of Fame.