Since deciding that the rest of his life would be determined by the roll of a dice — a risky behaviour, to be sure — saxophonist Serge Paul has had a lot of time to think, to ruminate. Primarily, although not necessarily, because, in the course of sending himself down the dice tower of life, he became, unfortunately so, paralyzed. Not because of any traumatic accident — he did not get hit by a car or fall awkwardly down the stairs at night requiring hours of surgery and post-op rehabilitation and physical therapy — no, his paralyzation, which, granted, is a severe full-body paralyzation, came to him in a somewhat unique way: He met a girl.
She was no ordinary girl. Her psionic abilities were, and still are, exceptional, and it was this that lured (re: attracted) Serge into his current predicament. Not only did she cast a mesmerizing and hypnotizing trance upon Serge, when Serge was in such a condition (in which he failed his saving throw), she also lunged at him, casting as she did so, with a paralyzing touch. (This, too, Serge failed his saving throw. Alas, the dice that Serge had bet his life on had not served him well.)
Still now, thinking back to his first encounter with her, in which she lived in a cave in the middle of a forgotten and forbidden forest, and which should have been a red flag for Serge, he fantasizes on what, if anything, he could have done differently. Whether such fantasizing still has the tendrils of her thought control woven within them, he can’t know, but when a beautiful, half-naked girl tells you a story, especially after weeks and weeks of seeing no other human (which, looking back, is, too, because of her; she is the reason the forest is both forgotten and forbidden), you tend to listen. And Serge, to his eventual punishment, rolled his dice, and, listening to its guidance, listened, too, to her. To her sultry, welcoming voice. Entranced by shape of her lips and the way the upper kissed the lower as she talked.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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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.
