Summer Blues

Surviving the winter and spring mold with no problem this year, summer has been filled with down times. Is there such a thing as August Blues--a symptom or damage done from at least twelve years of structured seasons? The extreme cold replaced by heat waves, always one end of the spectrum. Festivals have taken over every weekend, with everyone at Folk this weekend and Heritage last, a festival city mentality, which someone recently aligned to our boom and bust reality. All or nothing. Concentrated good times to off balance hard living? I found it hilarious when recent artists summed up their week long residence at a brand new downtown housing complex as comparable to a women's prison. Institutional in its uniformity, bare walls, oppression of imagination with no regard for aesthetics, there's not much pretty to view, but you get a lot of work done.


View from 102nd St parkade, one of the best viewing spots in the city. Any higher and you just see flat, from WEM to the concrete and chemical refineries, small lumps jutting from a flat line all so far, far away.