Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Life of a Consumer

Listen, I'm sorry to keep writing about pop cultural stuff, rather than more important things like what's actually going on in my life. I can see that it's not winning me any admirers. But I have a bit of a dilemma in that I'd like everyone to be kept regularly abreast of the fact that I continue to exist, while at the same time there is really nothing going on here worth telling about. Seriously. Alison and I are watching a lot of movies, listening to a lot of records, and reading a lot of books. Besides working at our jobs, that is, where you'll have to take my word that even more nothing is going on. It's winter; what do you want?

Last weekend, for instance, I spent a perfect Sunday with Ali which consisted of reading in bed with coffee for a couple of hours, getting up to do some yoga, having breakfast made for us by Krista upstairs and eating it with her while watching some weird and/or hilarious short films collected on the second issue of Wholphin ("Sour Death Balls" = genius), going out for a walk in the sun which led to a secondhand record store downtown where we purchased an armload of stuff including two Eno records I was missing and Closer by Joy Division, coming home to watch a documentary with Meg about a profoundly deaf female percussionist who "hears" with her whole body (and by whom Alison's parents saw an apparently astounding performance in Toronto), eating some of Ali's famous potato and carrot gumbo, and finally heading out for a band practice wherein we completely nailed two of the songs we've been working on. Boring to tell, maybe, but the actual living makes up for it tenfold.

So now I'll tell you that I'm in the middle of:

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman,
The Gift by Lewis Hyde,
Making Comics by Scott McCloud,
• the latest (50th!) issue of The Believer,
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (only a regular-sized novel's worth left to go!),
Time and Again by Jack Finney,
Ruling Your World by Sakyong Mipham, Rinpoche, and
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills,

and loving it all. I'll leave it to your imagination what that's like.

OK, OK, and I'm getting a haircut tonight. There.

- Andrew

5 comments:

Alison said...

What a day that was! Although it wasn't gumbo we ate. Just plain old potato and carrot soup that when blended with red pepper and a dash of hot sauce became thick and delicious, is all.

-Ali

Anonymous said...

mmmmm, gumbo!!! or not. :D Sounds great anyway.

What else would one want on weekends in the winter time?! You guys are doing great, and doing far more than I'm doing...

Roni

John and Sharon said...

That must have been Evelyn Glennie. She's a superstar over here. I've even seen her on Sesame Street.
Sharon

reminiscethis said...

Andrew, I don't care what you write about, as long as you write. You have my attention and interest. Jen

St. Louis Family said...

I'm so glad to hear what you're up to, even if you don't think it's much. Now I can picture your weekend!
Dana