Still Winter, I Guess

Just when it seemed like spring had arrived...



I refuse to shovel the driveway this time. There've been robins in our backyard for a month, for jeepers sake!

Last week Alison was in Halifax Tuesday through Thursday, and then we both went in for the weekend on Friday. That's a bit too much time away from home, methinks, but it was well spent. I had a band practice Friday night, and then we went with Johanna to see Garrett Mason (son of Dutch, the Prime Minister of the Blues) play at Bearly's, winner of the World's Worst Website award. I'm not usually much of a blues fan, but he and his band are such good musicians it was impossible not to have a good time. Then Saturday night was a birthday party for Charles. Lots of familiar faces were there, and plenty of booze, so again, good time guaranteed. We both slept well Sunday night, though.

Not too much else going on around here. The Lodge album went on sale on zunior today. I found out we only have half as many CDs as we'd thought for selling at shows, which means no free copies for anyone. Sorry. We're working on songs for a new EP, and so far they're shaping up pretty great, I have to say.

Other than that, the only things that have been keeping me occupied are working on a new design for The University's currently-giving-Bearly's-a-run-for-its-money website (very exciting) and reading my new book, Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. I got it in the mail last week — thanks, Mom. I've been wanting to read it ever since Nick Hornby raved about it in his monthly Believer column, which has since been cancelled, tragically. The novel's about an obituarist in the Ukraine whose poetic eulogies may be leading to the deaths of their subjects. And he has a pet penguin. He and the penguin are both kind of bummed out all the time. It's quite funny and charming; reminds me a little of Gogol.

For some reason, I continue to think about the movie The Reader. Here's what I keep wondering: were we supposed to be surprised by the law student's realization, even though they'd been telegraphing it all the way through? And is Kate Winslet's "character" supposed to be somewhat heroic for taking the guilt of others upon herself, which she only does after seeing that there is no way they will accept it, or is she just more ashamed of her much less serious failing, which basically makes her into an incomprehensible monster? Either way, what is supposed to be the point of the story?

Seriously, I want to know.

- Andrew

Greatthanksandyouokseeya!

Keeping this short because there's not much to tell and things are busy around here. My mom's in Halifax visiting her friend Linda, so we went into the city on Friday night and got some visiting time in with her over the weekend. On Sunday we all, Linda included, went to see The Reader. I say don't bother, but my mom and Linda both really liked it.

We also got to see a lot of friends we don't see too much. There were some very pleasant meals and a movie watched on DVD. Synecdoche, New York. It's pretty crazy. Even for Charlie Kaufman. It gets so insane and yet so monotonous in the second half that I'm not even sure you could call it enjoyable anymore. But I'm glad I saw it because I can't stop thinking about it. Just make sure you've had a couple of coffees before you rent it, and you'll be all right.

The Lodge have been working on some new songs. Six of them, in fact. About time, too. We'll be playing a show at good ol' Gus' on the 27th, and then sometime in April we'll have to have a CD release show. The album is all done and we've received CDs of it. They look and sound great, if I may say so myself. But I don't even have to, because this guy gave it such a fantastic review I'm almost embarrassed to show it to you. Almost. I'm not sure how or when we'll be selling the discs. Scott Grimbleby, owner of Gooseberry Records, gave us a deal where he makes the CDs and gives us half to sell however we want. But meanwhile, he's releasing the record online on March 24th, and physically in stores on April 21st, so I guess we have to figure out how we can sell our copies without competing unfairly. Maybe just at shows for awhile.

Gotta go now. Told ya.

- Andrew

Exhausted, Excited, and Maybe a Little Crazy

I'm writing this in Montreal, where I'm singing a song in a show tonight before heading home again tomorrow morning. I'm about to take a nap, having gotten up at 3:30 in the morning to catch an early flight to TO and then fly to MTL from there. Before I do, though — nap, that it — I just have to tell you about this weird, possibly religious experience I had.

On the first plane I start finding Varieties of Religious Experience (already the coincidences begin) a little heavy for travel purposes. So I buy a New Yorker in the MTL airport because all the other magazines are terrible and/or French, and because it has an article about my ex-favourite-living-author's, David Foster Wallace's, life, work, depression, suicide, and soon-to-be-published unfinished novel. Reading it on the plane as we leave MTL, I begin noticing that the parallels between his life and mine are numerous and alarming.

In university, for instance, he majored in philosophy and mathematics (my double major until I figured out that I'm too dumb for the math part), and experienced a personal crisis when philosophy turned out not to answer all the questions he wanted it to. The haunting way he put it to a friend later was, "I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty, which probably doesn't auger well for my longevity."

"Hmm... that happened to me at twenty-five," I'm thinking, "and he lasted till 47, so that gives me..."

He continued to battle depression with anti-depressants, but found that they stifled him emotionally and creatively. Not that I've ever had anything near his level of clinical depression, but I have definitely had a miniature version of that experience. Then he hit upon mindfulness, especially in states that would usually be called boredom, as a way past one's distractable and negative inner voice and out the other side to happiness. "I have reached a state where I enjoy boredom," I remember telling people a couple of winters ago. "I actually prefer it to excitement." This apparently worked well for him for awhile. I don't know whether he actually ever meditated, but all these details are eerily familiar to me as a narrative arc of adult life, and are beginning to freak me out.

At this point, the flight attendant interrupts my reading to say, "For your information, there are two washrooms on this aircraft," which immediately makes me think, "I've never heard the euphemism 'information' before," which I then just as immediately realize is a DFW joke if ever there was one. I look sadly out the window on the right side of the plane, where I see the most incredible display of reflected sunlight and mattressy clouds, white silt swirls and the constantly changing tinfoil crinkles of waves on Lake Ontario. All four elements are beautifully represented, each in its own dimension à la Escher's Three Worlds, and together they all look gorgeous.

I decide then that this article and possibly the ghost of DFW must in fact be trying to tell me something wonderful, and not that I am doomed to a death by my own hand before the age of 50. The article continues on with the idea of boredom as the possible solution to our cultural and personal addictions, a set of problems laid out quite well in Infinite Jest. Turns out that's what DFW's unfinished novel is about. It's set in an IRS office, and the main character is a tax accountant who spends the novel trying to figure out how to deal with the almost indescribable (except we know DFW will give it his best shot) boredom of possibly the most boring job in the world. Presumably, by the end he would achieve some kind of breakthrough which DFW himself had not yet achieved and now never will. I take this to mean that it's time for me to sit down and do my taxes.

- Andrew

What Are You Eating Under There?

There hasn't been much going on this week. Alison was in Halifax many days in a row, which bummed me out somewhat. But she came back Thursday night and we went out for dinner with some of my coworkers Friday night. That was nice. Then yesterday morning we went to the farmers' market for the first time in awhile. Bought some mealy apples and soggy potatoes and hung out with the wealthy hippies. We also stopped in at the Harvest Gallery, where they're having a small but inspiring printmaking show.

I'm still on popular internet not-quite-as-much-time-as-Facebook-but-still-a-lot-of-time-waster Twitter. The idea of it is to entertain and inform people who are interested enough to subscribe to your updates, by answering the question, "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or fewer. As a joke, I thought it would be funny to start an account for Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now. He is all for detaching from the unimportant distractions of one's constantly changing "life story," in order to tune into and reidentify with the stillness which underlies all change, thereby trivializing its details. This is somewhat paradoxically achieved by focusing in on one's experiences in the present moment, to the exclusion of judgments about those experiences, which would be based on comparisons with an imagined future or a remembered past, neither of which actually exists at this moment.

I admire his ideas very much, but thought I'd poke a little fun at him and simultaneously at Twitter and its distracting ilk by having him do updates from time to time that said things like, "Typing." Or, "Looking at a computer." I figured if anyone started "following" him, they'd soon see that it was a joke, have a chuckle, and move on. Well, he now has over 100 followers (as opposed to the 16 who follow real, non-joke me), some of whom have been expressing joy to have found him on there and to be reminded daily of his teachings. It's making me feel a little guilty. How can I tell them it's supposed to be a joke? Some of them don't even appear to speak English!

The only other possibly significant thing I can think of to tell you about is that I've been reading and loving William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. It's the kind of book that I feel may very well change my life. I wonder how it's taken me till now to read it, but at the same time now seems to be the perfect moment for it. Forgive the presumption that you might be unfamiliar with such a modern classic (it was written in 1902), and let me just say that it's the first book to treat religion as a subject that might be studied scientifically, without thereby discrediting the validity of the phenomenon. And he is reconciling so many concepts I feel like I've spent my whole life trying to reconcile — science vs. religion; objective truth vs. subjective revelation; happiness vs. the necessity of hardship; transcendence of rational thought vs. the obligation to reason in morality — that I get all worked up and have to start reading out loud every time I pick it up, much to Alison's annoyance.

What about fiction, you ask? Good point. I still haven't had any contemporary novels recommended to me that might fill the need opened up by David Foster Wallace's suicide. I saw a collection of short stories in a bookstore yesterday that looked like it might be good: A Circle Is a Balloon and a Compass Both by Ben Greenman. Anyone read it or heard anything about it? Jeff, I guess I'm looking at you here. How about novels? Anyone?

- Andrew

P.S. Oh yeah, of course I'm still working away at promoting you-know-what university for prospective students. We've got a big new campaign rolling out soon. It won't be as exciting as this, but I think it's still pretty compelling.

P.P.S. Retraction: I also wanted to mention, apropos of nothing, that I really regret putting that She & Him record on my top ten list for 2008. I don't know what I was thinking. I had to take it off my iPod because it's frankly kind of irritating. Hope no one bought it on my account. The David Byrne and Brian Eno, on the other hand, is still getting plenty of play around here.