It may be that the most eloquent words I can summon, in the wake of businessman and Punjab, Pakistan Governor Salman Taseer’s assassination, are these: “the death was received with shock in India.” Here I am quoting a Times of India article which is accurately headlined, “Taseer’s killing a warning to Pak’s liberal politicians.” It has been, or should I say, ought to have been, received with shock anywhere that people care about the advancement of good governance and peaceful coexistence, not only in Pakistan but all across our fractured and bloodied world. Continue reading The Killing of Salman Taseer
All posts by Wayne K. Spear
An Apology for the Constitutional
A thing I very much enjoy, and of which I am an advocate, is what the British perceptively call the constitutional — that shortish but brisk daily neighbourhood perambulation which sets the foundation of one’s well-being. Continue reading An Apology for the Constitutional
A Shame Indeed: The Persecution of Christians Considered
The predictable and vile business of the Christmas attack has produced a renewal of concern with worldwide persecution of Christians. An idea now tendered is that these acts are outcomes of the Iraq war. Accept at your own risk this counterfeit of history, which requires you to believe nothing like this could have occurred eight years ago. Religious persecution is an old habit of our species, a primal barbarism which establishes the enduring threat and generalized impediment to our evolution. Continue reading A Shame Indeed: The Persecution of Christians Considered
The King’s Speech and The Revenge of Metaphor
it is difficult to go on believing in the essentially conservative idea of nobility when you have regarded the dripping underpants of the Prince hanging upon the line
✎ WAYNE K. SPEAR | DECEMBER 29, 2010 • Film
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HERE WAS A remarkable showing of blue in the theatre this week when I saw The King’s Speech, which is why I begin with remarking it. It indicates that most of this audience would have been alive in 1936, when Albert Frederick Arthur George Windsor assumed the throne of the United Kingdom, just abdicated by his brother, thereby becoming King George VI. Continue reading The King’s Speech and The Revenge of Metaphor
Flecton Big Sky, “Homage”
Liner notes for the album Homage, by Flecton Big Sky
Like you and me, like everyone, making it up as we go along, Flecton Big Sky has turned out a few … let us say, debatable … decisions in life along the way. Life by necessity is material for improvisation: when the results are harmonious, it’s out of sight — and when it’s a fuckup, it’s a case for hindsight. Well, friends, that’s life. But then there’s music, and in music Flecton Big Sky has made excellent decisions. In his choices of songs and collaborators, he’s demonstrated over the years a knack for creating, to borrow from Pablo Neruda, “a generous, vast wholeness / a crepitant fragrance.” Harmonious, out of sight, sound — all without a plan, without a thought of road’s end. It happens that I’ve been around when some of the improvisation was going down, and I could never figure out how he does it, how he makes music without ever thinking about making music. Without ever preconceiving. Here is a man who goes into the studio tabula rasa, a blank slate. A few days later, out he comes, improbably, with these sounds of his. What’s the deal? I puzzled over that one for a good long time. The problem was that I was looking at it from the music point of view, not the life point of view. Sure, Flecton the man is also Flecton the musician. They’re both just making it up as they go along. It comes down to decisions, but not of the musical variety. Flecton is a man with a great, sensitive soul. He trusts his instincts, and his instincts serve him well. He trusts his friends, and his friends trust him — as well they should, because there’s no one more trustworthy than Flecton. This is the secret to his music, this trust. Flecton connects to certain music and musicians through gut instinct and sensitivity. And once he’s connected, he stays connected. He’s never forgotten his roots. They continue to nourish him. He’s loyal to a fault. Respect, loyalty, due acknowledgment of one’s indebtedness, and music as a soulful connection: these are the meanings of homage, a word derived simply from the word “man.” In this case, the man who is Flecton Big Sky.
– December 2010
The Haudenosaunee | Part Two, Ohentonkariwatehkwen
I suggested in the previous instalment of this series that the improbable unity of the Rotinonsion:ni (Iroquois) arrived as a matter of extraordinary good fortune, in combination with great effort and practical necessity. One is well advised not to take such a thing for granted, and so we arrive at the Ohentonkariwatehkwen, or “the words which come before all others,” also known as the Thanksgiving Address. Continue reading The Haudenosaunee | Part Two, Ohentonkariwatehkwen
The Haudenosaunee | Part One, Origins
The image above represents the story of the five founding nations of the Haudenosaunee (pronounced ho-din-oh-show-nay and meaning “the people who are building a longhouse”), in English the “League of Nations.” This graphic is a stylized digital version of the original Peacemaker belt, a wampum belt made of the purple and white quahog shell, strung onto thread of sinew or plant fibre. There is an enormous amount of information stored in this belt, so let’s begin the story. Continue reading The Haudenosaunee | Part One, Origins
The Flanagan Slip
Arriving at precisely the moment the quite probable hand of Mossad has been discerned murdering Iranian scientists in, as they say, broad daylight on the streets of Tehran, Tom Flanagan’s call for the assassination of Julian Assange is remarkable only for the lathered and laboured shock with which it has been received. If you doubt there is already an ad-hoc CIA cell at some point between prophase and telophase, just in case, you haven’t been paying much attention to real-world geopolitics. Julian Assange is a wanted man, and the people by whom he is wanted have much more than Mr. Flanagan’s meagre ounces to put behind the shove. Continue reading The Flanagan Slip
Chief Shirley Clarke, brought to you by the Indian Act
You may not be aware, so allow me to begin this discourse by mentioning that Glooscap is the name of a Trickster figure, that curious mythical creature who is part fool, part teacher, and in composition an improbable union of the human and supernatural realms. One is well advised to pay close attention to the Trickster, even if only for the reason that something is certain to be revealed. Continue reading Chief Shirley Clarke, brought to you by the Indian Act
The Haudenosaunee
Over the coming weeks, I shall be writing a series of articles concerning the Haudenosaunee, known also by the English renderings, “People of the Longhouse” or the “Six Nations Confederacy,” and by the derogatory Huron term rendered in French as “the Iroquois.” As I am myself a citizen of the Haudenosaunee, I will begin the series with some historical considerations written from my personal point-of-view. Along the way I will present something approaching a narrative of the Haudenosaunee, the intentions of which will be: Continue reading The Haudenosaunee
The Compulsion to Write (pt. 3)
ALTHOUGH I KNEW at a young age that I should be a writer, little else would be sorted out until many years later, and then often by accident. When I was a child, say, ten to thirteen years old, I had only vague ideas about what a writer even was. I suppose I imagined a cold and dark room and a gaunt person at a desk, producing poems and novels, posting them to publishers who would promptly send back letters which read Thank-you, but no thank-you. In time I would have a more informed picture of a writer’s existence, having learned that publishers in fact do not send these letters, or any other, promptly.
The Compulsion to Write (pt. 2)
In his essay, “Why I Write,” George Orwell identifies the following: 1. Sheer Egoism (“desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc”), 2. Aesthetic enthusiasm (“perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their arrangement”) 3. Historical impulse (“desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity”), and 4. Political purpose (“desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after”). Knowing that I would be writing this essay, I tried to improve upon this list, but to no success. There is only one conceivable addition, approaching the matter as a male heterosexual writer: 5. To bed women. Continue reading The Compulsion to Write (pt. 2)
The Compulsion to Write (pt. 1)
Illustration by Anthony Russo
I was eight years old and urinating in the bathroom of my parents’ Central Avenue house when the precise words manifesting a desire to fill my life with writing first came into my conscious mind. Why this thought occurred to me at so late a date, I am unable to say. Continue reading The Compulsion to Write (pt. 1)
The Name Is A Vestige (a play)
The Name Is A Vestige
A dramatic urban vision quest / monologue
in the ancient Greek manner, roughly speaking
by Wayne K. Spear
1992
For My Grandmother, 1911-1991 Continue reading The Name Is A Vestige (a play)
Whither The Book?
I now have a “Kindle,” which is, for those who do not know this, a device for the purchase and reading of electronic books, or ebooks. In the course of familiarizing myself with the functions and uses of this contraption, I’ve had occasion to make the following observations. Continue reading Whither The Book?
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 
