Annapolis Royal pt2 / Here Comes the End...

Gahhhh!

With only 2 days left in my Nova Scotia Wizard hunt remaining I think it's as good a time as any to call it.

Wizard heads, Wizard tales... either way it's time to call it.

I figured it wouldn't be fair to myself to cut my trip short without following all the leads I've gathered over the past 6 months, so yesterday, on the advice of all sorts of Scotians, a friend and I hit the open road and took the 3 hour drive out to the Upper Clements Park in Annapolis Royal.
This seemed to be the strongest lead, with anyone that had any sort of Wizard advice pointing me there, yet we still came up short.

For the first time since I measured in at 6'6", I'm the guy on the right.

The downside to not finding the Wizard coin seems obvious. I came out here to get something done, and absolutely did not succeed.
On the other hand, the pros of this adventure were totally unexpected, and at the end of the day completely outweighed the cons by a million-fold.
I came out here to find a Wizard, or, more so, to find something magical, and I think it's safe to say that that's exactly what happened. Though rather than finding a Wizard I instead met all sorts of amazing new people that, in turn, introduced me to all sorts of amazing new ideas and thoughts and ramblings and jokes and stories and more friends and beers and skate-parks galore and nights of debauchery and kisses with strangers and strangers that turn into people you know you'll know for the rest of your life and caffeine addictions and barbeques and incredible never ending 4am jam sessions and so so much fun and so many stories that it seems impossible that it could all fit into a single summer.

I learned so much from and about myself and others on this trip that I feel like I'm finally just beginning. Life has just begun, and I'm a new person, and I'm just now ready to take life by it's big stupid skaggy bull horns, and throw it over my head, and drag it to wherever I want it to be.
I feel so free, and so able to do anything that I could ever want to do.
I finally feel like me.

Pictured: the exact opposite of right now.

And it's true, everything is easy if you want it to be. The hardest part of doing something is believing, fully and truly, that you can actually do it. The rest is just going through the physical motions of doing what you've already planned out in your head.

If you want something, go and get it. Try as hard as you possibly can while you still can, and don't give up until you get whatever you're after, or until you've lost interest or found something more exciting to chase. Even if you never achieve your original goal it's still infinitely more satisfying to exhaust every last avenue of trying, and to be able to come to the realization that maybe it's not meant to be, than to wait around wishing and agonizingly hoping that it might one day fall in your lap. Or to look back on something that may or may not have been and think what could have been. The only thing that ever could have been is what actually was all along.

And just because I didn't find the Wizard doesn't mean that I failed in finding him, nor does it even necessarily mean that my search is over. In fact, it seems like a pretty good excuse to come back here one day. Maybe even write a song about it... "Going, going, back, back to..."

What is this 'Cali' you speak of?

As of the first of the month I'll be heading out to Woodville, Ontario to set up a studio in an old re-finished barn to start recording vocals for 1 of 2 solo CDs that my band 'Animal Nation' will be releasing in the next little bit.

I guess I never mentioned that....

Besides traveling 3800 miles through two countries in order to track down a mythical old Wizard, I also came out here to write lyrics for an album I've been working on for the last 2 years.

See, back home nearly every day of my life, for the past 8 years, had been identical to the one preceding it. Every day was the same. 'Monday morning is every day for all I care', sort of thing..
With that in mind I had, for roughly 4 years, wanted to create an album that reflected that lifestyle. I wanted to make an album that represented the 1 day that was every day of my life. I wanted to make something real.
Thus began the album "Every Day In The Life".

After having completed roughly 90% of the instrumentation and 10% of the lyrics back home I realized I was too comfortable in my current setting, and perhaps had already juiced all the inspiration I could out of a town I'd lived my entire life in, so I decided to move away from everything I knew in order to get a fresh outlook on the past near-decade.

We'll be revealing more about this album, as well as Mike's solo effort, in the upcoming months.
We'll also be touring across Canada, starting in Montreal, making our way back out West, throughout October and the start of November. Check out the Animal Nation blog to see when we'll be heading to your city...







So, to anyone that may have somehow stumbled across this page, thanks for reading.
I originally intended to make a site that would one day help the next person that found a Wizard coin understand what it was all about.
I didn't.
I didn't solve anything.
But at the end of the day I think the mystery is probably more appealing than the reality anyway, and your adventure will be a thousand times better than mine, and a million times better than if I had found the coin and explained to you where it came from in writing, thus preventing you from ever going on a Wizard Quest of your own.

So good luck. Don't ever stop. Don't ever give up.
Whatever it is, it's out there somewhere.


So I guess that's it.
I guess now is as good a time as any to call it.

Wizard tales. They're whatever and wherever you want them to be...
Call it in the air...
It's all you.