Bruce Cockburn

           On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the third verse of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Martin acoustic guitar for the second day of four. After three days of cloudy sunrises there was light this morning so probably the video will look better. When I skimmed through the audio playback none of the songs sounded too bad so maybe I'll find a few things worth uploading to YouTube down the road. This was the beginning of the second half of this rebooted recording project and there are now twenty days left. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in a week.

            I started listening to Bruce Cockburn's discography. I've already had two of his albums, "Night Vision" and "Salt Sand Wind and Time", but had never fully listened to his 1970 debut album. He really is a great guitarist and not a bad poet. I'd forgotten that he wrote the song "Musical Friends". I first heard it on an Anne Murray album and the reference to wine in bottles or pipes was changed to in bottles or pints, which makes no sense whatsoever. I guess her handlers didn't want her to be associated with a reference to pot smoking. I've never seen Cockburn play his guitar live but I did see him ride his bicycle live once about twenty five years ago. 

 

            Around midday I went down to No Frills where I bought four bags of cherries, a basket of peaches, a pack of blueberries, a bunch of bananas, a bag of potatoes, a pack of two T-bone steaks, a bag of Miss Vickie's kettle chips, and a jug of orange juice. 

            I had planned on going to Vina Pharmacy before the supermarket to renew a prescription but I forgot. So on the way back I came up Dunn and turned left at Queen to ride to Vina. The pharmacist said the Betaderm was on back order because they couldn't find it anyplace but then he found a big container of it on the shelf. I told him I'd pick my order up next Saturday. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch. I had the last of my Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On the way up O'Hara I found a box of books. It had Things Fall Apart by Achiba and a big Webster's Dictionary among other books, but I only took two coffee table books, one on Salvador Dali and the other on Bob Dylan. 

            I chiseled some more black quartz free of a piece of the rock I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:30. That's the least I've weighed in the evening in a week. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:25. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. I think there might have been a chord or two off on Megaphor and Sixteen Tons of Dogma but my translated French songs seemed okay. I made it all the way into "How to Say Goodbye to You" before the camera timed out. I would have made it to the end if the Sysko delivery truck hadn't arrived in front of Popeyes downstairs to make noise and cause me to wait and start again. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song Sleep in the Snow I combined clips from The Wizard of Oz snow scene with the sleeping in the igloo scene from Nanook of the North. I put the good witch first conjuring the snow, then the storm from Nanook, then the witch again, then Nanook sleeping, then Dorothy sleeping and then Nanook again. The two videos combined take about twenty four seconds while I only need about fifteen to fill up the time of the second half of the instrumental. I need to cut out some more of Nanook. 

            I finished scanning the last dated sleeve of negatives from March of 1987. There are shots of my ex-girlfriend Diane and of fireworks. I started an unmarked set of black and whites from around the same time. These are of a concert by Alta Moda starring Molly Johnson, but the light was not right for the film I had. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, sliced loin of pork and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episodes 4 and 5 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Betty Joe and Steve come through a storm on Steve's plane and after they land safely he kisses her. The story treats it as their first kiss even though they kissed in the previous episode. Betty tells her mother that she's in love with Steve. Kate tells her to cool it until she's sure. Steve tells Kate he's in love with Betty and Kate says she doesn't want Billie Joe to be hurt. But again, on two previous episodes, one near the end of the third season, Billie made it clear that she's no longer serious about Steve. She tells Kate again and she's relieved but she still has to tell Bobbie Joe who has also expressed romantic interest in Steve. But Bobbie says she wants to marry a writer, so now Kate is fully relieved and goes to tell Steve but finds that he's moved out. He leaves a note saying he doesn't want anyone in the family to be hurt. But then Steve returns because he couldn't get off the ground. It seems the distributor cap came loose during the storm. Everyone goes in the kitchen and then Betty comes down the stairs. She puts the distributor cap in the dog's mouth and tells him to return it to the plane. 

            In the second story Steve tries to ask Kate for her blessing so he can ask Betty Joe to marry him. She evades the question and then does some soul searching and after a day or so she gives him her blessing, But now Steve wants to find the right place and time to pop the question but every time he gets a chance something happens to spoil the mood. But meanwhile Joe has spread the rumour and Sam even makes it a newspaper headline and so Steve has to ask Betty while they are fixing the plane together so she'll know she's engaged before she knows everybody else does. She says yes.