INTENSE CITY

Hi, my name is Luke Storms

I was born in the northern wilderness of Canada. In my early days, I use to think I could fly and I practiced for hours by jumping off the picnic table in the backyard. I also use to build spaceships out of wood and scrap metal that my Dad had lying around and I would sit in them for hours thinking that if I only believed hard enough they would fly. To this day I still haven’t fully given up the idea that if you believe in something hard enough, it may open a door to the miraculous.

When I was a little older, I use to go public ice skating at the Memorial Arena in Belleville. It was so cold you could see everyone’s breath and the place smelled of stale sweat and hot chocolate. I fell down a lot because I never learned how to stop on skates and one time someone skated over my face. I have a scar on my chin to prove it.

I also remember as a child, I use to draw always and everywhere. On napkins, matchbooks, school textbooks. Now I can’t draw for shit. In fact, I never figured out why someone would feel compelled to draw, for shit. I’m also am one of those people who write in the margins, highlight sentences in bright yellows and folds the corners of books. I also have the tendency to collect and get inspired by cool looking notebooks, but I hardly ever write in them.

I listen to a great deal of music. The first record that I ever bought (with my hard-earned paper boy money) was, The Who’s “Who’s Next,” for the song, “Baba O’Riley.” I still have a place in my heart for that particular song. It’s way in there (pointing to chest). I love music. Everything from Albinoni to Zappa and yes, even Air Supply and I also play really bad guitar, especially when I’m drunk, and can fool myself into thinking that I’m awesome. I also love the sounds of, let’s say 3am or thereabouts, when the streets are quiet, without the daytime crash of cars and crowds. Just about everything sounds so much better at that hour.

I read like a house on fire, searching for something that contains an energy that could possibly create a little a shock, a moment of hesitation, or a soft space in which I remark aloud, “holy shit,” or where I just can’t seem to find any words at all. I enjoy revel in being cracked wide open by a song, a poem, or a person who stretches my perceived notions, fixed ideas and limitations

I also investigate and engage in spiritual practices, like the practice of awareness, so that I may be more present to the unfolding of the mystery of life both in and around me. I try to start from, “I don’t know.” – To become empty and allow an answer to appear. I have a wish to inhabit my life more fully, through all of its savage beauty and to not take anything that is given for granted. Occasionally, I write about my personal search on this blog under the category, “A Journal of a Work in Progress.”

In spite of my spiritual leanings, sometimes I allow myself to be engulfed in the blackest of moods, moods that are blacker than black, like a thousand midnights sewn together.  I find that I can love so passionately and so desperately, and then at other times, I often find less space in my soul than there is on a Toronto subway car at rush hour. Sometimes I can carry the burden like picking up a tired old donkey that I’ve been riding on and sling it over my shoulder and walk the rest of the way.

I try to accept this.

There’s also a tendency in me to think ridiculously random things like the benefits of crunchy peanut butter over smooth peanut butter. How lame is that?

I try to accept this too.

I often wonder what this little gift of life I’ve been given. What is it all about, really? I may have learned quite a bit this far in my life, but I’ve understood so much less.

Presently, I live and work within the incessant background hum of Toronto, with my lovely wife Alex and our little furry anti-Christ, appropriately named after the surrealist poet (Frederico Garcia) Lorca.

Thank you for reading and forgive me for all my mistakes, misunderstandings and meanderings.

I can be reached by email.

Thanks for visiting.