Friday, June 28, 2013




In many of the Art Bergmann concerts and those of others in the Vancouver alternative scene there was a young man I used to loathe. He had this purse-of-the-lips surly expression of a little boy who had just slid, slowly, his finger on the icing of your birthday cake just about when you were ready to blow out the candles.

This young man liked to play air guitar. I particularly disliked him because he was the drug dealer for many of those on stage. With his profits he took vacations in Mexico.

But the real reason I disliked this young man is that I could almost imagine seeing how energy from Art Bergmann’s insides, through his guitar was being sucked by this man as a sort of space psychic vampire of Colin Wilson fame.

I never did dare do what I really wanted to do which was to sock him in the mouth while telling him, “Learn to play the guitar.”

In some respects I note this sort of activity in social media.