stuff to do...

this is a show i'm playing at...



this is an art show that a bunch of my friends are doing...



darryl told me they're showing a new skateboard movie they made at the arts project on dundas st. tomorrow night at 8pm, but i don't have a flyer for it...

from the top of the hill...

it's 6am and i'm sitting at the bar. i told you. my new favorite place to write. at this point i'm half asleep and should have left for home long ago, but i'm just procrastinating going out into the cold. i will go soon. i wanted to write to you...

here is an email i received a while ago from my friend jon, who lives in vancouver (for those of you have heard the OK Cobra album... jon is "jon juan," who is featured on the song "juggernauts.")...

(*my replies are in brackets...)
(**the "*****" parts are where i have censored his letter to protect his privacy...)



Hanes,

(shanahan...)

This paragraph is decidedly NOT apologizing for any period of time, whatever
length that period of time might have been, between your email and this
response. NOT apologizing, NOT saying that I have been "running around like
a maniac" or "swamped" because I am neither of those things.

(thank you. no excuses. we are beyond that. LIFE, my friend, that is all...)

But last night I had a dream about you that finally pushed me over the edge
from procrastination to procrastinACTION...

In the dream, you had made a hit record, a true album, with every track a
'piece, and everybody was bumping it all over the place, radio, etc. There
was a crew of teenage kids passing on the street (I think that they had a
ghetto blaster on, like, a radio flyer wagon) and I could hear one of your
tracks popping off...it was so completely your voice, your style, but it was
like a mega-dimensional, perfect version of your style (do you ever
freestyle in dreams and kick the most flawless shit?)...the beat was really
produced wickedly too...it was that instant classic feel that you get from
super good shit, and it was yours...I was super happy for you, and of course
a little jealous.

(ha ha, wicked dream m'man... i am HONOURED that your subsconscious would allow me the opportunity to create a song in your mind that you feel that way about. as for the jealousy, reminds of how i would often feel back in the day during our freestyle sessions... you always were the party starter...)

So, yeah, shit is pretty good here. I just got my first ever car, and love
it (even though I am still waiting to take my license test, and currently
have to have my G-friend with me whenever I drive). The snowboarding season
has started really early, and we've already been up twice, which is wicked
(gnarly!~!!!)...I was waiting hungrily for some other form of all-consuming
fun, (*******************************************) for
some time, and am so glad to have that diversion, and to be finally taking
advantage of what this area has to offer. The sight of the mountains, when
the mist clears all snowy from the upreaching pines, and the crags and
valleys advance into sight and the light, timeless and dynamic at the same
time, actually does cause my breathing to change.

(it's good to hear you're living it man. i miss the mountains. b.c. is beautiful for that. i remember a few years ago, when i lived out there briefly, and was staying at my friend kyle's condo... every morning i'd get a coffee and sit on his balcony and look at the mountains... it's a very different energy, a different way to live...)

I am doing pretty well. Still de-toxifying, and when you said that about
this (proverbial) mountain that I have decided (was forced) to climb, it
couldn't have been truer...my life is simple, and about enjoying and doing
the right thing, and it was a serious feeling of being sidelined for a
really long time. But it is beginning to reveal itself to be something else
now, and I am really grateful for this sense that I am balancing and
strenghtening myself more and more all the time...crazy. The same, but
different.

(the same difference, or a different sameness. it's good to hear man. i have much faith in you brother, and i await the good news from the messengers of the gods, announcing to the world when you have fulfilled your destiny...)

I am finally digging in with the writing, but have to be careful about
over-cerebration, because I get kind of squirly if I think too hard. Just
trusting, making copious entries in my journal, and generally trucking
upward.

(talking again about mountains... it takes 10,000 steps to climb a mountain... not a few leaps and bounds... the best part about realizing how far you have to go, is once you truly realize it, it's only then you can see how far you've really come...)

Congratulations on your breakout dream-record.

(thank you. if it never exists in reality, but only a dream you once had, that's more than enough for me...)

Love,
Jon

thank you,
love,
ryan

PS. I have always thought, and still do, that you have a fearless honesty
that is the mettle of a hero. You are a light to many of us (I know you
will shirk that...I would, and you are right to remain humble), and I think
you should know that not only for that courage but for your tireless
searching I really deeply admire you.

(ps. wow. thank you. yes, i am humbled. from somebody i always respected, and spent many years looking up to, that is a compliment that will not go unfelt. it's good to hear from you jon. i do hope we'll get to talk in person one day soon. my little brother is getting married in vancouver in august, so, if not before, i should see you then...)

(cheers...)

(ryan...)

the best song ever...

band: the classics iv
song: spooky

download it. it's found easily on limewire. it's the best song ever...

love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you...

runner up...

band: the 7a3
song: coolin' in cali

these are the two best songs ever made. i'm not kidding.

so it's almost 4am, i'm at the bar, everyone is gone, i'm alone and i love it.

stanley "tookie" williams was executed in california early this morning. last night i watched a bit of the pre-death coverage on cnn and some other bullshit news channel. larry king did his whole let's-have-100-guests-on-the-show-all-at-once-so-it's-total-chaos-and-nobody-can-get-their-point-across-random-soundbite thing. some chick anchor on the other channel just spent the whole time cutting off the people she was interviewing, sighing and sulking and acting like an ignorant pre-teen. how do these people get on television? who's agenda are they pushing? they don't seem intelligent enough to have their own. on larry king, the only person worth listening to was the guy who used to play alan alda's buddy on m.a.s.h., who's now an anti-death-penalty activist, and the only guest on the show with any readily identifiable intelligence.

so tookie is dead. does everybody feel better now? hey, this guy killed people, let's kill him back, but let's take 25 years to do it... makes zero sense to me. thou shalt not kill, or something to that effect...

on another note, my band is falling apart. more on that later. i think we all hate eachother, or at least we do this week.

i hate everything right now. i'm tired, coming down with a cold, have an ear infection (in the land of the def, the man with one ear is king...), and took a stupid spill in the kitchen at the bar today, completely fucking up my left arm and knee, limping my way through the rest of the night.

on a positive note, i think i've got a show soon, which is cool, as it's been a while. i don't know, i was walking to the bar tonight and saw a poster in a store window with my name on it for a show next week here in town. so yeah, i guess i'm playing. would have been cool if somebody told me, but i ain't mad, i just want people to hear my words.

oh yeah, more stuff to listen to... binger the voyager. check it out. find it. it's good.

i guess i should go home and sleep. i took on this magazine assignment that i really need to finish tomorrow morning. it's been a minute since your boy's been writing for any mags, so it feels a bit strange, but what, you thought i was going to leave the game forever? forever ever? forever ever? forever seems too long...

i could have been an overnight success but i slept in,
kept secrets from myself, including my weapons,
didn't know i had them, i kept them hidden,
in the basements of bad men, cemented prisons...

random lyrics i wrote today for a rap song nobody will ever hear.

okay, one more smoke and a beer and i'm out...

ryan

tookie...

Crips gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams was executed early Tuesday for the 1979 murders of four people in two separate robberies. The U.S. Supreme Court late Monday rejected the convicted killer's last-ditch appeal, hours after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also denied clemency. Williams' supporters argued that he was a changed man. But the stepmother of one of his victims said justice was being done...

eat cake...

if you live in toronto, go to my friend irene's party. she's trying to raise money for a film she's making. i've sort of known irene for a long time, and she's a strange, strange girl. i read her script and it's out there. i auditioned for her film, and i might be in it. it was the weekend of halloween and she was dressing up like mary-kate olsen, who she looks remarkably like, even though she's asian. she submitted a story for my magazine years ago which i never got to publish because we went out of business. that's how we met. also, stop die and don cash are both playing at this party, i've told you enough about them already... if you don't know by now...

silver surfer...

for those that don't know, i used to publish an underground hip-hop magazine, called "insearchof... divine styler."

this was the cover of the last issue...



i told you already, i'm working on a book about the story behind the 'zine. for the cover, we decided to recreate the cover of the last issue, only this time, with me instead of moka only...

my brother's brother matt lee volunteered to take the photos with his friend jesse. yesterday was the day. the boys showed up at my house with a black screen for a background, some lighting gear, and a wicked ass camera. we took about 300 photos i think. you will see some of them soon. it took me a little while to get comfortable being butt ass naked, but the pabst blue ribbon light helped. after 6 or so of those i was rock and roll. we used some silver costume hairspray i bought at this sex shop downtown. it worked well. took three bottles of the stuff to cover my cracker ass. it got everywhere. i'm still washing it out of the floors, off the walls, and off all the doorknobs, cupboard handles, and anything else i accidentally touched while playing tinman. my skin has this sickish blue tint to it today. here are a couple of the photos of the preparation process. i'll put some good ones up soon...







talk soon,
ryan

my silver stench...

i'm sitting at my desk, butt naked, painted from head to toe in silver paint, drinking a pabst blue ribbon light, waiting for the photographer to get back from the beer store, listening to kinnie starr with moka only...

and there's a reason for all this...

life is weird...

profound, i know...

so yeah, for the last few weeks i've had some serious writer's block... just coming up with... nothing. been trying to work on songs, write lyrics, got studio sessions booked, music ready to go... but me, i got nothing to say. nothing at all. absolutely fuck all. it's the scariest thing when you write, when you rely on the gods to whisper in your ear... when they're silent, you feel so completely alone, and you have no idea if they'll ever come back... i find myself praying to hear their voices... begging them to tell me things... nothing... silence... for days... nothing... weeks... nothing...

and then, they all start yelling at me at once. in the last 24 hours i've written three songs. all came out of nowhere. it's such a fucked up thing to try to explain to somebody you're hanging out with. "hey, it's great to see you, i haven't seen you in a while... but uh, i can't really talk right now... the gods are whispering in my ears and i have to write down the things they're saying... i know, i know, i'm being rude buried in my notepad scribbling like a madman... i know i invited you over and everything... but, here's the thing, i made a deal with them a long time ago, that if they keep talking to me, i'll keep writing down all the things they say... but part of the deal is, i don't get to choose when we communicate... they do... and if i ignore them, they might stop speaking to me... so uh, yeah, sorry... you can leave if you want, i understand, or just hang out, wait it out, they won't talk forever... they usually just say a few things and then they're quiet again..."

i'm writing this at 5am, sitting in the bar i work at. i have so much i have to do right now, and so little time. really, lots of time, but so little time to myself. but i've found the bar to be the most perfect place to work. everybody's out by 3am, i'm done working by 3:30am at the latest. and then the place is mine. i've got beer. i can smoke (i can't smoke at home... so it's hard to write there). it's silent. or i can play music. it's dark. and there's beer. did i mention there's beer here? did i mention i can smoke? so this is my new home. 5am, sitting in a bar by myself, listening to music, drinking beer out of a coffee mug (in case the cops roll by and look in the window...), smoking a cigarette and trying to figure out what to make of all this...

i need to sleep soon.

i've been thinking a lot about turning 30 soon.

it really hasn't been that big a deal to me, until the last week or so, when it seems like all of a sudden everybody around me is making a big deal about it...

(i'm listening to pm dawn right now, not really on purpose, my itunes is on shuffle, but still, i've always had a bit of a soft spot for them... and i don't care who knows it.)

so yeah, 30. 30. 30. 30. 30. the thing is, i feel like i'm only now, at 30, doing the things i wanted to do when i was 20 but was too scared... (but at the same time, i did everything i wanted to do then, it's just that it wasn't until recently that i realized that the things i wanted to do then, weren't the things i REALLY wanted to do... if that makes any sense... i don't know if it does...)

but yeah, fuck... so much to do...

trying to get this ep finished with the band...

got this book i have to finish this month, so it can come out in the spring...

got the ok cobra album getting an official release in the new year, with a few bonus remixes (more on that later...)

got the new ok cobra to get to work on (tim's new beats are disgusting... i'm trying to write man!! i'm doing my best!!)

a few other rap songs in the works, got a few beats from some cats...

me and rich gotta get this movie done...

and tim's in town for the holidays, so i'm thinking we gotta shoot a video or two while he's in town...

so much to plan for, so much to set in motion... but i wouldn't have it any other way...

and i got this thing i want to tell you all about, but i really don't know if i can talk about it yet...

such is life.

how are you? tell me things. i need inspiration. i need words. i need feeling. i need love and pain and beauty and terror. tell me all of it. write me. fuck computers, write me letters. pens, paper, envelopes, stamps... (i have a mailing address if you want it...)

strange things. a long time ago, drunk, when i first got on myspace, me and a friend one night decided to create a page for devin the dude. it went something like this...

"why doesn't devin have a page?"
"i don't know."
"he probably doesn't have a computer."
"or if he does, he probably is either too busy or doesn't give a shit."
"why doesn't his label make him a page?"
"fuck, i don't know."
"so let's make one for him!"
"okay..."

stupid things you do when you're wasted.

so anyway, we made this devin the dude page on myspace, and then my homie matt sonzala in houston saw it, and he emailed me like "yo, devin knows about the page and was wondering who made it..." and i'm like "uh, yeah, it's me, drunk, doing stupid shit..." and so he told devin and now whatever, the dude knows it's there, and me and matt will keep the page going and keep it updated with new info, and shows, and music, and it's dope. kinda cool. peep it.

okay, fuck yeah, i gotta go get some sleep now...

ryan



ps. i can't remember if i told you all i finallly got the fatlip album, but holy jesus, album of the year. fuck all of you who burn the shit and don't buy it. if there's one thing you need to spend $20 on this year it's the loneliest punk...

white people...

i've got so much stuff to do and i got up early today to do it all and then it was cold and i felt tired so i spent the whole day half-asleep on the couch watching long way round...



hey rich, let's finish our movie, okay?

my man eddie meeks has a new one coming out. check it.



Socio-political group X-Clan is mounting a comeback. The act, hugely popular in the 90's, is slated to release a new album called Return from Mecca in 2006. According to a press statement, the opus will express the "tradition of displaying ancestral wisdom, culture, and signature lyrical style." In addition to a new
album, the Brother J-helmed group has been included on the Damian Marley Jamrock Tour, which ends on Dec. 6 in Norfolk, VA. X-Clan broke up in the mid 90's after releasing a pair of heralded albums, To the East Blackwards and Xodus .



jacky jasper.



tookie has a few days left until he's executed. i'm curious how you all feel about it...



i don't know, i really want to write to you, but i just dont' feel anything right now... i just want to go to sleep and wake up in the spring time, i've never been good at winter, and the onset is terrible for me every year... i feel the cold hands inching towards the back of my neck, my eyes are heavy, the darkness frightens me... i hate being alone in this darkness, i'm so scared of what i might find there...

and then i have to throw on a happy face and go to the bar and forget how heavy my feet are...

i need a good laugh...



that helped.

a little.

g'night.

ryan...

no guff...

oh yeah, on tuesday night it was the wrap party for this film i was in. the party was at the bar i work at. cats got crunkered. here are a couple of photos from the film...





i play this switchblade carrying idiot named thom who likes to fight people and is the leader of a bocce ball team...