Prospectus:
I grew up in Alberta. I grew up LDS in Alberta. I grew up queer in Alberta. My grandparents, and some of my great grandparents were from Alberta. I listened to country music on the rodeo, went to school with ranchers and cowboys, had tickets to the rodeo, went to school for grades 7 and 8 at a school that hiked and canoed and swam through Alberta and Saskatchewan. I have took photos of pick up trucks, made love to working men and was never a working man myself. I live in Toronto now, escaped from Alberta, and it's various complicated and wily charms.

Alberta, like most of the west, has no real narrative cohesion. It has myths that people riff on, talking points that are mentioned every so often, a solid set of values that moves when the spirit is required, a unique set of holy texts, and an innate suspicion of one way of thinking. Even in the cities, there is more land then people, and the sprawl connects psycho-geographically the unruly land to the unruly body

In the last 26 years, there has been a renewed history about work made in the west, about what it means to be western. Much of this work has been done by false populists, people living outside of the geographical area, or people who are contemptuous about the landscape and it's citizens. For the last decade, I have tried to figure out what it means to be from Alberta, from Western Canada, from the prairies. What I want the book to be is a way of creating a cohesive narrative by breaching the inside/outside divide. These essays, reviews, commentaries, interviews, conference papers, proposals, and general ephemera are collected into four loose sections, each broaching one of the central questions of this new west: Music, Landscape, Sex, and God.

These texts are an open range. They cover Gary Winogrand's photos, and going to the Rodeo, the Lutheran singer songwriter Jonathan Rundman, and what exactly is happening under Kenny Chesney's hat, the Atlantic recordings of Willie Nelson, discussions of America's agricultural queens, and a list of the 50 best liberal country songs, and secrets of boys boarding schools, Mormon housewives, what exactly happened in those Brokeback tents, some reviews of current country music, among other topics.

It will be personal, eccentric, difficult, and plain spoken, like the land I grew up in, and the land I had to leave.

Table of Contents:

Landscape:

Essays:

On the Survival of Agricultural Beauty Queens (

Red State Reader)

(3000 Words)

Originally written for Bitch Magazine, and picked up by Jesse May Shank's Red State Reader, a piece of original reportage, with interviews and commentary about American Agricultural Beauty Queens, from Maine to California, and from Minnesota to Texas, including a brief dicursion into the differences between rodeo queens and barrel races.

35 Thoughts on Grand Prairie Alberta

(Unpublished)

(2500 Words)

First person, deconstructed ramble through Northern Alberta cow country, written after spending two weeks with my friend John's farm.

Why I Love Rodeo

(1250 words)

(Unpublished)

Written for an urban Toronto audience, it was a personal defence of the spectacle and aesthetics of rodeo, especially the differences between the Working Hands and the National Final Rodeos, held every year in Edmonton.

Occasional pieces:
Assorted Reviews and Gallery Proposals for Edmonton Artists:

Branding, Language and the Works of Blair Brennan (150 words)

Dean Dreaver and Masculine Violence (75 words)

Not Another Landscape Proposal (4 Young Edmonton Photographers (200 words)

Review of Orest Semlish (70s era Edmonton Photographer (200 words)

Review of Gary Winogrand's Texas Stock Show photographs, comparing them to Livestock catalogs (Freaky Trigger) (150 words)

Sex:

Review of Willie Nelson's Cowboy's are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other

(Unpublished)

(1000 Words)

Originally written for No Depression, enjoyed by the editor, but contained langauge that was too raw for the audience, about why sodomy occurs among cowboys, and about Mr Nelson's prophetic stance in favour of love.

Oh, My God I Fucked Kenny

(2008 PCA/AA Conference Presentation)

(6000 words)

Discussion of how Chesney evades the dichotomous language that we use to discuss sexuality (Top/Bottom, Straight/Gay, Femme/Butch, etc.) and introduces a new complexity to traditionally conservative desires.

She's In Love with the Boy

(2009 PCA/AA Conference Presentation)

3000 words

A discussion of abortion and country music, formally analysing two songs that come in favour of a woman's choice (Kinky Friedman's Rapid City South Dakota and Tim McGraw's Red Rag Top) with two who work against it (Eric Church's Two Pink Lines, Heidi Newfield Knocked Up)

Straighten you out: A personally Queer History of Saint John's School of Alberta

2000 Words

Originally an impact statement about the school when it closed in 2009, and which I attended for grade 7 and 8, it becomes an oblique history of Conservative political power in Alberta, and the accidental sadism of men together.

Occasional pieces

Various comments on Toby Keith's Big Bad Daddy, Josh Turner's voice, Joe Nichol's Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off, and Trace Adkin's Honky Tonk Badonkadonk for the annual Pazz and Jop/Nashville Scene polls. (300 words)

On the erotic loneliness of I Never Liked Planes by Robbie Fulks (Poptimist) (150 words)

a gendered analysis of Reba McEntire and Bobbi Gentry's Fancy (Freaky Trigger)(150 words)
Edmonton Erotica Proposal (11 Edmonton Artists (200 Words)

Production Notes for Exposure (Edmonton's First Annual Queer Arts Festival) (150 words)

God:

Essays:
An Interview with Lutheran Singer/Songwriter Jonathan Rundman ]

(3000 words)

(Killing the Buddha)

A long interview about the personal and social history of Lutherans in Minnesota, indie music, populist desire, and ministry.

William Kurelek: Prarie Visionary

(2500 words)

Originally for Raw Visions magazine, an introductory essay about the aesthetic and personal history of this famous Prairie populist, his apocalyptic Catholicism, his ethnic history, and his mental illness.

14 Thoughts on Queer Catholic Bodies (1000 words)

(Queer and Catholic

(Routledge)

Published by Routledge as part of the book Queer and Catholic, a personal history about growing up LDS, converting to Catholicism, and what that meant in a local context.

Picnic, Pro Life, and Pilgrimage

(Diary)

(1000 words)

First person, semi-gonzo piece about going to an annual pro family mass and rally at the first nations pilgrimage site of Lac St Anne, with a catholic theologian, his wife, and his child. It is intended to put a human face on, and complicate the argument in favour and against abortion, without taking a side.

Brokeback, Wisconsin, Alberta, and Sacred Loneliness

(unpublished)

(1000 Words)

This piece uses LDS theologian Todd Compton's discussion of Sacred Loneliness, to discuss how sexuality created in isolation for comfort can develop aspects of grace and mercy, especially sexuality that is considered outside traditional morality.

Occasional pieces:

Dolly Parton's Stairway to Heaven, Brad Paisley's When I Get To Heaven, Chely Wright's The River, No Depression in Heaven, Iris Dement's God Might Forgive You (But I Don't) for Freaky Trigger, ILX, Pazz and Jop, plus Nashville Scene. (1500 words)

Discussions of the LDS temple in Cardston, the aesthetic plainness of LDS Chapels, the work of Millerite prophetess Henrietta Black and the social politics of LDS church dances. (Sally Mckay)

Music

Album Reviews (5000 words):

Brad Paisley Play (Left Hip)
Brad Paisley Time Well Wasted (Stylus)
Kenny Chesney Road and the Radio (Stylus)
Tim McGraw Let It Go (Left Hip)
Jeremey Fisher Let It Shine (Stylus)
Lee Ann Womack—There Is More Where That Came From (Stylus)

Criticism:

On The Aesthetics of Dead Babies

(Poptimist)
500 Words

Comparing John Michael Cameron's Alyssa Lies, to Victorian Melodrama, as an example of the visual and narrative potential of infant death.

Country Music Tells The Red States What to Feel

(Stylus)

1250 Words:

A discussion of moral ambiguity and sex with women other then wives, in songs by Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney.

Book Proposal for 33 1/3rds Book on Red Headed Stranger

(1250)

This works as a mini essay about how the aesthetics of Nelson's Atlantic recordings worked in a specific, singer songwriter 70s context and made him as a performer, adding to his legend and his longevity.

50 Liberal Country Songs

(Red State Reader)
2500 words.

A response to a New Republic list of 50 conservative Rock and Roll songs, this was a fun attempt at upsetting conventional wisdom about the history of country music.

Things Griel Marcus Got Wrong About I Wish I Was A Mole In the Ground

(Poptimist)
400 Words.

This song has been incredibly important to me, as has Marcus's history of punk Lipstick traces. This piece talks about the musicological and historical importance of this song, and Marcus's analysis of it, and then veers into the personal.