FROM VID GAMES TO MUSIC VIDS?

WHEN HE WAS THIS...

ALL HE CARED ABOUT WAS THIS...

Caricature by Donn Coppens (aka Homo Escapeons)

My son was a video game junkie.

He'd play Zelda or Final Fantasy on his Nintendo 64, PlayStation and every other increasingly expensive new generation of game box he could persuade me to buy for him.

BUT NOW THAT HE'S OLDER...

HE WANTS TO BE THIS...

OR THIS...

Yes, my 15-year-old has decided he definitely wants to be a professional rock singer or musician when he grows up (or next week if that's possible, but I told him not likely).

Just like the band Billy Talent (below) and their lead singer (name unknown, above).

And my son came out with this final declaration of his life's calling this week after he and his buddy Alex, the lead guitarist and head of their own garage band, met and interviewed Billy Talent.

And then saw them in concert.

It's confusing, you see, but Billy Talent isn't actually one person. The whole band, the collective four pictured above, ARE Billy Talent. Yes, and my name is Within Wonderful.

Anyway, Evan and Alex take a broadcasting course at school.

They requested and obtained permission to do a five-minute TV interview with the lead singer of Billy Talent, who is not named Billy Talent, and one other band member.

They did that this week, hugged the boys in the band, probably peed their pants, went home, changed and then went and saw them perform that same night.

I have not seen the video. I have not seen the pictures that someone supposedly took.

It was only a month or more ago that Evan met and talked with another one of his idols, the lead singer of a Canadian group called Alexisonfire.

I've only had him in singing lessons for a few months, and I've promised to buy him an electric guitar and pay for his lessons if his school marks pass muster.

But you've got to admit, the kid sure has been getting himself into the right circles.

I've told him the chances of him ever performing professionally are pretty small. He knows that.

I think maybe I should start becoming very afraid...

TRAPPED

I FEEL TRAPPED.

I feel trapped by winter's cold, icy grip and the prospect that it's barely February and there's almost two more months of this to go before Mother Nature gets over her own version of PMS.

That's Pre-March Syndrome...don't get all cranky on me now.

Up here in the Great White North, March would be the equivalent to a woman's time of the month, when all this stuff is going on.

And at the end of it, miraculously, usually by April, it's spring.

By then, all is right with the world.

The cramps are gone (from the lingering, bitter cold), everything gets washed away (the snow), the robins fly back from down south, there's more daylight, more sunshine, more warmth.

But for now, I feel trapped.

And wouldn't you know it, I don't just feel physically trapped by this frigid existence. Like everyone else -- and any who read this might relate -- I feel emotionally trapped too.

I feel trapped by circumstances beyond my control, but also by choices I've made and continue to make.

In some cases, there's a way out and I've even got the key to the door, I just have to decide to use it.

But sometimes there is no key. Or it's been lost.

Or you can see it, but just like in the movies, you can't reach it no matter how long you try to stretch your arm out to grab it.

Not even a pole will do the trick.

In other circumstances, forget the key...there's no door! But you got in...how can there be no way out?

Maybe you didn't build a door because you never thought you'd need or want to exit.

But now you do.

And because there's no door, or window, or even the slightest crack...

Maybe you have to pick up your sledgehammer and make that crack or window or door so you can bust out to get some fresh air..,At least to feel what that feels like.

And maybe once on the outside, you might decide...hey, I want to go back inside again, where I had safety and warmth and security. Or maybe you might just leave that behind.

Or maybe not. Whatever.

The fact is, you still feel trapped. By whatever it might be.

A relationship that doesn't work for you, that leaves you longing or lusting, that leaves you feeling you're not getting what you could be getting...

It could feel like a cage, like a bottle, like any enclosure that cramps your space, your style, that limits who and what you feel you can be or want to be.

And what do you do with that?

There was a recent story here in Canada that detailed a study by a Calgary guy who said that, essentially, bloggers were lonely people.

People who blogged because they had nothing else to do...that was the suggestion.

I've thought quite a bit about this in the past and I agree with some of the premise and I think sometimes I spend far too much time blogging when I could or should be out living among people I can see and feel and hear.


But I've also come to the realization that some of the most intelligent people on the planet blog, and I've been privy to their ideas, at least some of them. And that is good.


Sometimes I think, keeping in this "trapped" theme, that I should be doing something else.


But I can't find anywhere else, except blogging, where a whole bunch of really intelligent people from everywhere voice their opinions because they want to in a free and open and co-operative environment.


Bloggers are beautiful.

And so, for that matter, are people who feel trapped. If the two are one and the same, then that's OK with me. But I suspect that bloggers are more free than anyone else I know.