Memories float like puffy pixelated clouds across the sky of Ultraviolet‘s Kioku. Though her memories haunt singer Punkie, they are not haunting. They are lovely. Idyllic. Like a spring breeze gently bending the first few flowers that poke their coloured heads out of the damp deadness of winter. A touch. A caress. Eyelashes lightly batted. The sun’s rays angle through the tree’s bare boughs. No leaves yet, but they will come. Even the insects have started to emerge: a butterfly, little leafhoppers dancing on downed twigs and —
SLAP!!!!
What was that? Odd… It just came out of nowhere… Anyways, as I was saying. Memories leap and bound through fields of velvet grass. There is an understanding in it, a hopefulness, an assurance that goodness will prevail, triumphantly. As if agreeing, birds sing as they fly overhead; their song says ‘Yes, you, too, will have wings and fly as we do’, and a joyousness — the feeling that all is well in the world — brushes against my skin with soft feathers, and —
SLAP!!!!
My God, there it is again! It happened so fast, I didn’t see — did you? Is my face red? Shake it off — OK, here we go, let’s try that again… Memories collect on the peaceful shores of my mind. True, they are not all happy ones, some are dark and like vines that twist around ankles and cause one to fall — but is it not always dark before the light? is it not the rain that brings forth the rainbow? are we not stronger after adversity? Of course it is so, and has always been so. And so the flotsam and jetsam that washes ashore, that dirties the warm beach upon which I’ve stretched myself, is something one must not ignore, but simply accept as part of the scenery that provides life with its intricate, and sometimes poignant, details. Dig through the flotsam, sort through the jetsam, and one will often find treasures that —
SLAP!!!!
• • •
To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
