My Wikipedia Entry

The missing pieces in their logo says something about Wikipedia's missing pieces.

I tried to change my Wikipedia account name to my name but was told that for my protection (it's okay, Wikipedia, I'm a big boy), they would not let me do that, even though I have entered the public arena.

Then they rejected and deleted the entry I wrote.  Why?  Because I have no citations and web references to substantiate the details of my own life and they don't let their anonymized accounts post details about other individuals without references.  Quite a Catch-22.

So until Wikipedia lets me report the details of my very own life, you can read my rejected entry, below.

WIKIPEDIA entry — DENNY HALL (musician, artist, poet, writer)

Dennis Wayne Hall (born 22 October 1960), known as Denny Hall, is Canadian and works mostly in music.  He is a singer/song-composer of eclectic songs, writing in various genres, including new hybrids and formulations.  Inspired by the 19th-century creation, the art song, his works are pop song forms of the art song, a perfect fusion of text and music.

Early life and work

Denny Hall was born and grew up in Toronto, Canada, the offspring of working-class parents from the Canadian Maritimes.  

Although he excelled in scholastics and was a French Horn prodigy, he had a painful family life and upbringing, particularly from a decade of abuse at the hands of bullies, and sought solace in music and beauty, teaching himself how to play the piano after learning the bass clef on a brief stint playing the Baritone Horn, and then playing any pianos he was able to access such as at schools, community centres, churches and et al.

His family left home and moved out of province just as he was starting his critical last year of highschool, and since he was planning to study engineering, he was financially abandoned to live on student welfare in a dismal, foul basement room of a neighbour to complete 8 Grade 13 subjects (physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, calculus, functions and relations, music and French), learning skills that would be critical in allowing him to self-learn singing, songwriting, poetry, fine art and writing and many other sundry skills necessary to self-production.  Although he had been not living with family in his last year of school, the income of his father in another province, of which he received nothing during that school year, disallowed his getting student grants and so was unable to attend university, leaving him to pursue music, learning informally on a zero-dollar budget, taking decades to master all necessary elements.

He came out of the closet in dangerous times in Toronto in 1980 and was involved in social justice groups and causes.  

Besides doing a variety of dayjobs, he mostly worked as a health care aide for the physically disabled and as a certified court reporter.  Over the decades, unsupported by family or friends or the music business, he badly struggled for decades, finding ever-dwindling opportunities in music.  He tried working in musical theatre work but after being unable to break into the clique in power, abandoned this arena but not a love for theatrical music.  In his forties, during a multi-year music block, he starting making fine art and tried to launch an art career but found that field as hermetic as that of musical theatre, as well as lacking in the ability to art-speak nonsensically.

After decades of poverty, making half a grand from music, spending $30K and a million in lost wages, he finally burnt out in a big way; his life imploded and he became terribly ill, diagnosed with full-blown A.I.D.S. in 2009 and later developing pronounced fibromyalgia as well among other serious problems, leaving him to rely on a very small disability pension.  Not long after his diagnosis, he found himself with only fair-weather friends, the others having died earlier of A.I.D.S., and became estranged from his unsupportive family.  Although he had struggled with multiple addictions and mental health problems since being on his own since the age of 17, he overcame these by 2021, although is still badly affected by remaining physical health problems.

Works

In 1983, he worked on the reader-written magazine, R.F.D.,  submitting several articles under the pen name "D'ni" (a contraction of his birth name spoken in French) including one with a musical round he wrote.

Most of his creative time and work over the decades related to music but he worked on his writing skills, as well, and wrote letters to the editors of newspapers (sometimes under pen names) as well as one article for the magazine Xtra in the 1990s outlining the unfairness of affirmative action on minority groups not covered.

He is the uncredited poetry editor of the book, God, Sex & Poetry, by John Grube, 2002, as the author purposely hid this fact, wishing all credit to be bestowed upon him, only, which ended their friendship.

He self-produced an art exhibition of his works in Toronto at Luc Sculpture Gallery in 2010 entitled "Genres" which consisted of mixed media paintings on paper, highlighting the sgraffito technique.

In December 2023, at the age of 63, he self-produced his first album, "Songs for the Eclectic" (an "eclectic album" is one in which which all the songs are varied rather than of the same musical genre), not using auto-tune or pitch-correction, showing his ability to perform, live, with just a piano.

Although he can take upwards of 100 hours just to finish writing a song, he has completed 58 songs and has a dozen more in development.  He is working on a book of poetry and hopes to do more gallery showings of his artworks.