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“Without cruelty, there is no festival.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality

I BOUGHT THIS FARMHOUSE FOR A DOLLAR. Which I actually haven’t paid yet. I shouldn’t be here. I should be headed home. But I can’t go home empty-handed, so I have decided to sit down in this empty, run-down-but-still-standing discarded house, and write a proper account of how the whole thing went down last weekend, in Calgary. I feel the need to make an accounting of myself.

Why? Because I know that a lot of people think of me as worthless. Less than worthless; a parasite, dragging other people down, a rip-off artist.

I know their nicknames for me, “Scam-Bull.” “Mr. ‘No Problem.’” I was given an Indian name once, a good one, which spoke of my bravery and rare insight. That name was later redacted by the name-giver to “Skid Mark.” They say I’m incompetent, a liar, an Alcoholic. One musician who I still think of as a friend will tell anybody who asks about me that I’m the kind of guy who’d sell his own grandmother and still not manage to make a profit. How do you like that? And in a certain light, maybe they’re right. But for the sake of Posterity, for the sake of my Love, at home in Vancouver, my Love whose regard for me I know has been ebbing away like a slow leak in an old truck tire, and for my daughter, too, maybe when she’s old enough, after she’s heard all the innuendo and bullshit talked about me, there needs to be a document that shows my light on things.

I’ve always sworn I’d never write my memoirs. I’ve always thought of the written word, unaccompanied by music, as a guaranteed lie, deliberate or otherwise. So this will not be that. It’s just an account sheet summary of this past weekend, skipping over irrelevant details, focusing on the key points, and, most importantly, explaining from my point of view what was really going on, under the surface of the events themselves, especially my intentions, my goals, the reasoning behind my actions, actions which I know, on the face of things, might look a bit questionable to some people.

The key is to keep that focus, to stick to the story, and not get distracted into digression. Above all, I have to make sure to stay solidly on track, telling the events of this past weekend. It should run no more than four or five pages, which is good because my arm is pretty badly chewed up and I’m afraid it may be starting to worsen a bit. Right arm, though, so I can still write through the pain, as I’m left-handed.

So I’m holed up here in this house that I bought for a dollar. I just own the house, not the land around the house. You can do that around here, just by finding a number on a truckstop bulletin board and meeting a guy at a diner in town. That’s ‘‘’cause this is where the big agribusinesses have bought out all the family farms to create food factories the size of Belgium. It’s not cost-efficient to bulldoze all the little grey houses that dot the Canadian prairies. You might as well just leave them standing there, an accidental warning, like the statues on Easter Island. They’re not hooked up to the electricity grid or water anymore, but it’s summer, and there’s some buckets around, and a river not too far away that I can get to in the rental minivan that I should have returned four days ago.

I stopped at the store on the way here, so I’ve got a bunch of good Alberta Beef jerky, a bag of tomatoes, a roll of bandage tape, and a bottle of whiskey, not for the purpose of getting drunk, mostly just for sterilizing the wounds in the arm, but also to use to wean myself off the booze a bit, which may be overdue, I guess. Don’t want to get the d.t.’s — you can die of that. I’ve seen it. And of course, I’ve got a bunch of speed, in powdered, snortable form, to keep the words coming efficiently. I have candles, too, so I can work through the night.