Little Boats on the Horizon

I mentioned back in January that I'd been working on a musical project that would be finished around the end of the month. Well, it's still not finished. But I'm getting there!

The project is a collection of solo recordings from the past nine years or so. I've got all these songs sitting around, and mostly they've not been heard. I used to put some on my myspace page every once in awhile for anyone who happened by, but that site has become pretty much useless. So I've finally decided it's time to release something like a proper album for public consumption. I chose thirteen songs that seem to belong together in some sense, ten of which are completely recorded and mixed already. Each of the other three still needs a bit of work, but nothing too difficult.

I've done a mastering job of sorts on the ten that are done, so that they're all similar in volume level and EQ. The remaining three keep getting put off, but I'm determined to get around to them and put the whole collection up on Bandcamp. It will be released under the name "Pale Son," and called Little Boats. I've got the artwork designed, and a friend of mine is doing a painted version of it, for extra texture. I'll let you know when it's all ready.

Meanwhile, here's a fourteenth, instrumental piece I just finished recording. It will be the last track on the album. It's called "Same Window Next Sunday."

I'm Your Man

"I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. There's a certain humor in realizing that. I can never figure out the kind of tie to put on in the morning. I don't have any strategy or plan to get through the day. It is literally a problem for me to decide which side of the bed to get out on. These are staggering problems. I remember talking to this Trappist monk in a monastery. He's been there twelve years. A pretty severe regime. I expressed my admiration for him and he said 'Leonard, I've been here twelve years and every morning, I have to decide whether I'm going to stay or not.' I knew exactly what he was talking about."

- Leonard Cohen

I interviewed last week for a new job. Not that I'm looking for a job — at all — as I'm generally quite content doing what I'm doing. Having built a decent client base, I'm now lucky enough to do work I enjoy from the comfort of my own home and get paid fairly for it. Pretty sweet business.

But this was a job I'd long dreamt of: designing for an international magazine in collaboration with its art director. The art director, whom I know, had brought the opening to my attention, which I took as a pretty solid foot in the door. It would be full time, meaning I'd have to give up my current clients to take it. A real life-changer, in other words, but it seemed too good an opportunity not to at least try for. Did I want my life changed? Maybe, maybe not. But I could put off making a decision about that until I was actually offered the job, should it come to that. And what could be a better state of mind going into a job interview than not caring whether you get it? Right?

There were, unfortunately, many hurdles before I could arrive at the real decision. I had to update my fancy, non-standard résumé; write a cover letter; put together an impressive portfolio; and spend money I didn't have on some wool pants at Club Monaco that are probably way too fancy to ever wear again. That all took a few days away from my work. And then the day before the interview I had to spend a few hours making sure I could talk about my portfolio in a way that made a story out of all the pieces, illustrating exactly how multitalented I am and why I'd be the best candidate for the job in question.

So, by the time I got to the actual interview the next day, I was well prepared, but also incredibly nervous. Weird how much I can still care what others think of me, even when I'm not sure I want what they have to offer. A friendly but very probing panel of four people had me recount my job history for them in the office of the magazine's editor-in-chief while they took notes. It turned out that they didn't want to look at my portfolio at all. Instead, they grilled me with questions about my professional and personal interests for an hour or so, often throwing things I'd said earlier back in my face if they detected inconsistencies in my alleged character. It was brutal — felt like a psychotherapy session on which I would be graded at the end.

Mostly, the questions kept coming back to why I wanted the job, what was going to excite me about it, how it fit in with my career plans. They knew I'd had some uncertainty about whether I should even apply for the position. They wanted evidence that it would keep me interested for awhile, that I wouldn't just find something new to become curious about in a couple of years.

I finally had to say, "Look, I'm not really what you'd call an ambitious person, and I don't like to think too much about what my future will be like. If I can work at a job where I like the people and the environment, and there's some degree of variety to what I do, I'm pretty good at being happy, whatever the actual job is. The only reason there's been any dilemma about this job is that I'm already happy where I am, and I'm also convinced that I'd be happy here. With no other factors pulling me one way or the other, I'm forced to turn the decision around into what I can give, rather than what I can get. I like you folks and the message of your magazine, and I think you're deserving of the services I have to offer, even if it means denying others those same service, so I'm here offering them to you if you want them."

I didn't get the job.

It kind of depressed me for a couple of days, I have to admit. I guess I'd gotten more excited about the prospect than I thought I had. But now I feel OK about it. My situation is exactly as it already was, and I'm glad that I don't have to give my clients — most of whom are pretty nice people — the old unjust heave-ho. I just sort of wish I'd never heard about the job in the first place, you know? I suppose it was a useful exercise to go through, although I really don't plan on applying for any other jobs, so an updated résumé and some tough interview experience are not completely useful to me. And I could've done without all that emotional drama, not to mention the wool pants.

Plus, Happy Birthday, Carol

Not sure whether she reads this...

Happy Valentine's Day

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

- Alan Watts



Instead of seeing love as something that will make you happy if you can get enough of it, consider the possibility of love as a way of being, of love as a state of consciousness. As such it is independent of any particular person or set of conditions. In other words, love is unlimited, impersonal and unchanging. It cannot be lost nor can it be hoarded. This kind of love is both a choice and surrender to something beyond your ego.

- Deborah Anapol



To the ego, loving and wanting are the same, whereas true love has no wanting in it, no desire to possess or for your partner to change. The ego singles someone out and makes them special. It uses that person to cover up the constant underlying feeling of discontent, of “not enough,” of anger and hate, which are closely related. These are facets of an underlying deep seated feeling in human beings that is inseparable from the egoic state.

- Eckhart Tolle



In this torn desert world there is no love because pleasure and desire play the greatest roles, yet without love your daily life has no meaning. And you cannot have love if there is no beauty. Beauty is not something you see — not a beautiful tree, a beautiful picture, a beautiful building or a beautiful woman. There is beauty only when your heart and mind know what love is. Without love and that sense of beauty there is no virtue, and you know very well that, do what you will, improve society, feed the poor, you will only be creating more mischief, for without love there is only ugliness and poverty in your own heart and mind. But when there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.

- J. Krishnamurti



Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.

- Carl Jung



At the heart of Buddhist philosophy is the notion of compassion for others. It should be noted that the compassion encouraged by Mahayana Buddhism is not the usual love one has for friends or family. The love being advocated here is the kind one can have even for another who has done one harm. Developing a kind heart does not always involve any of the sentimental religiosity normally associated with it. It is not just for people who believe in religions; it is for everyone who considers himself or herself to be a member of the human family, and thus sees things in accordingly large terms.

- The Dalai Lama



You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?

- Jesus Christ



One result of our freedom from neediness is that our love expands to touch all people. We love others because we and they are intimately connected to one another. There is not a separate self anywhere in sight. Compassionate love is the natural response to the human predicament of suffering and the human truth of interdependence, and it lightens the burden of finding a special someone.

- David Richo



Romance is the chief delusion, elixir, and magical potion of our popular culture. It is itself a Shadow fantasy, for in this blissful state, one's wounds are healed, one's needs met. But because the seductive power of romance is so powerful, it distracts from the accountability of consciousness. Who really wants to examine relational dynamics with a critical eye? Who wishes to look within when it is so much easier to look for rescue without? Yet without a knowledge of our history... who could really expect any current relationship to be better than its archaic paradigm?

- James Hollis

Street Art

The other day I was walking down Harvard Street toward Quinpool, on my way to buy some of the fancy cat food Buster likes, and noticed that someone had attached a tall blackboard to the front of their house. It was full of chalk handwriting. I stopped to look at it, and this is what I saw:

Lines for Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

- Mark Strand

It was quite cold and grey out, as in the poem, and I was feeling particularly miserable that day. So I was touched that someone had gone to so much trouble to inject a little bit of hope into the bleakness that is Halifax in February. "There is an infinite core to you," the poet seemed to be saying, "and it is lovable, so just remember that, no matter what else is going on in your life, and everything will be fine." Very nice.

Except that something rang false about the whole thing for me. For instance, what if I don't want to hear the same tune no matter where I find myself? What's so comforting about that? Sounds kind of like a nightmare. And why should I have to "tell myself" these things, if they're true? Shouldn't I just be able to perceive them somehow? Am I supposed to lie to myself as a small consolation while I keep trudging along pointlessly, pretending that I know about some deeper meaning that in actual fact eludes me completely? I decided that this poet, and by extension the owner of the house, was well-intentioned but ultimately misguided.

I started walking again and tried to think of another poem about winter that would be a quick and devastating rebuttal to this one. I had the idea that I would write it on a piece of paper and attach it to the blackboard the next time I walked by it. Something about how winter is gloomy and discouraging, but you might as well just face it, because it's going to kill you in the end anyway. (I told you I was in a miserable mood.)

Well, I never did come up with just the right poem, but something interesting happened when I looked up the Mark Strand one in order to write this post. On reading it a few more times, I began to think that my reaction to it was not actually an argument against it, but the one intended by the poet.

Check it out: "Tell yourself" is a very interesting way to begin an instruction. It brings to mind well-meaning friends and self-help books, but does also suggest that what follows is not necessarily the truth. Since it's repeated twice more, the author must mean for us to consider such possibilities. Right?

And then there's that "same tune" that you'll keep hearing as you continue on. Later on, the tune turns out to be what your bones play, which is all that you know, which is... nothing! Definitely some irony involved in comforting yourself with that bit of permanence, then. And when you realize that, you get to stop your forward striving in order to lie in the snow and enjoy the warmth of the stars, i.e. no warmth whatsoever.

So now I see the whole thing as a kind of sarcastic argument against will and self-deception as antidotes for suffering and death. In other words, the poem is the perfect refutation of itself I was looking for! Except that there's still some hope at the end, because if life beats all the delusion out of you until at death's door you realize that you are nothing, then you can tell yourself — not through an act of will this time, but through pure experiencing of the "flow of cold through your limbs" — that you love that nothing. And really mean it. Pretty neat trick!

So thanks very much, anonymous Harvard Street resident, for introducing me to what may now become one of my favourite poems.

Sick of Being Sick

So, after I got over that 2-day flu, I caught a cold almost immediately. It's taking its time to get lost, too, sneaking around into different locations every day so I can't get a good shot at it. Today it was my right eye, and it's not pretty, I tell ya. I am literally a sight for sore eyes. No, wait, that's supposed to be a good thing, isn't it?

Anyway, I guess maybe I've been a little too busy working and meeting with folks and attending birthdays... Why do I know so many Aquarii, anyway? There are some exciting projects and possibilities in the works, including still the musical one I was telling you about a few posts ago, but mostly I can't really talk about them here. So if you could just be ready to be excited at any given moment, that'd be great. Thanks.

There hasn't even been much time for reading or movie-watching. Last Tuesday I did go to see A Dangerous Method with Alison. It's a really boring period piece about the relationship between Jung and Freud, in which the two never say anything that anyone with the most cursory knowledge of their theories wouldn't expect. Keira Knightly hams it up as Sabina Spielrein, an unfortunately hilarious mental patient of Jung's. Otherwise, there's nothing to see. David Cronenberg directed it, but nobody's head blows up, and nothing turns into a bug. Not even in a dream sequence. In fact, there are no dream sequences — just dry descriptions of dreams and long-winded guesses about what they could "mean." Come on!

I also saw Shame last night with Amber. Another psychological drama with only one female and two male characters, but this one was miles better. It's a study of individual sex addiction in a sexually addictive culture, as well as a compassionate portrait of a brother and sister with an unspoken incestuous relationship. Heavy stuff, in other words, and at times it teeters towards heavy-handed, but mostly it's quiet and suggestive and compelling. Check it out, but maybe not on a first date.