PUBLISHER'S NOTE

There are forty-three public parks of noteworthy size in Amsterdam that collectively receive nine million visitors each year. Designed in 1891, Oosterpark (East Park) was laid out in the style of a traditional English garden by Dutch landscape architect Leonard Anthony Springer, and like the other forty-two public parks of noteworthy size in Amsterdam, it is now home to invasive and prospering communities of Ring-Necked Parakeets.

One winter evening about sixteen years ago, I found myself in Oosterpark. Six months before that, I left UBC after two meandering and largely unhappy years of “study.” A week before I boarded the plane, I performed original music for the first time on a plywood stage that my father and I built in our backyard.

As you can likely tell, I’m not sure where to begin.

My research for this publisher’s note (a single web search of the terms “green,” “birds” and “Amsterdam”) yielded several theories as to the birds’ origin ranging from the mundane (intentional release of breeding pair,) the sensational (parakeet-filled truck accident,) to the conspiratorial (it was the American government.) However it began, today the birds thrive, finding themselves among the lucky few who enjoy an untroubled existence in urban Anthropocene life.

I spent most of that evening sitting on the ground, cold and happy, with a friend who was as lost as I was. The green birds were magical and seemed unreal, but there was other magic afoot; such as the magic of being twenty years old and ostensibly free, that made the birds’ company fitting for that moment.

There, on the ground and before the birds, I announced (yes, loudly) that I would not return to school, and that I was going to be an artist.

Some argue there’s no way of knowing when something starts — chicken, egg, etc. — but they are wrong. There are events which separate your life into before and after. You know it when it happens, and it happened to me that night. Twelve years later I was hired at CiTR 101.9 FM and Discorder Magazine to serve as the Music Department Manager, and my life was cleaved again. That was four years ago, and now, I am humbled to be entrusted with the role of Station Manager.

I love this place because it separates peoples’ lives into before and after in unexpected ways. There is magic here that makes almost anything feel possible.

Hope to see you, Jasper