Time to bust open this cocoon I've been in all winter. It seems to really be spring now, and the weather's a lot more dependably seasonable. I've started getting out of the house more — socializing, playing music, and generally wandering around in the sunshine. I even had some windows open today.
I guess work and band practices have been keeping me indoors quite a lot this past week, but the bike has also seen its fair share of use. And yesterday I went to the park with Amber, where we spent a good part of the afternoon cloud-gazing and watching the sunlight twinkle on the water. I hadn't really done the former since I was a kid. Highly recommended, if you can make the time. We saw a giant cyclopean skull, a banana fish, and a lot of mutating water vapor.
This week will see me doing my income tax, but even that can't put a damper on this vernal spirit. I'm a fresh-air-breathing, lyric-writing, instrument-playing, friend-greeting machine!
See? I'm back again already. Here's a new song I wrote for Guts. It'll be a lot more aggressive-Neil-Young-meets-Sebadoh in that format, but this is the prettier acoustic version. It's called "Been Away."
I've also been spending a lot of time with my new bass, mostly figuring out and practising this song, which has probably my favourite bass line of all time.
It's actually the Hatful of Hollow version I've been learning — a bit more subtle and soulful. I can play it OK with a pick, but it really requires finger style plucking to be done right. It's about time I learned how to do that, so maybe this is a good excuse.
I got to see The Smiths in the summer of 1986 on their The Queen Is Dead tour with my sister. Remember that, Dana? Still the best rock show I've ever seen. It was outdoors at Canada's Wonderland in Ontario, and it rained gently until the band came onstage. Morrissey said, "Sorry about the rain. We blame The Queen!" and they launched right into the thumping title track of the album. Very exciting. The rain let up in the middle of the song, and stayed away for the remainder of the show.
The big finale was "How Soon Is Now?" where maybe 50 people got up on the stage, swayed back and forth, and sang along with Morrissey. Johnny Marr's tremolo guitar seemed to be everywhere at once, pulsing through all our chests in a wave of love and misery and solidarity that felt like it would never end. It was completely transcendent. When they walked off the stage in triumph, the rain immediately started up again in big, plopping drops.
Somewhere at my parents' house I have a tape of that show, recorded on a Sony recording Walkman that I'd spent a lot of babysitting money on and smuggled in, in a backpack. It probably sounds terrible, but I sure would like to dig that tape up sometime, as I think of that show as one of the defining moments of my adolescence. Then again, maybe it's best to leave those kinds of memories intact in their erroneous perfection.
Just so you know, I'm not dead or anything. I HAVE been sick again, I'm embarrassed to say. Week-long cold, eye rash, stye, the whole chimichanga. I even grew a beard, of sorts, while I was spending so much time indoors alone. It wasn't a pretty sight.
But now spring is here, things are happening, the weather's fine... It's 26 degrees out there right now! What am I doing in here, sitting in front of a computer? Should be out on the bike.
Yesterday was equally nice, and I biked over to Dartmouth in the evening for a band practice with my friend Kristina. We've been jamming mostly weekly, putting together a scrappy little project called Guts. Me on guitar, Kristina on drums. There was a third guy temporarily involved, but we're back to a two-piece now, and loving it.
I'm theoretically in five bands right now, if you can believe it. I bought myself a new (to me) Fender Jazz bass yesterday with some money that finally came in for a big project I'd done. I really needed a bass for some of these bands, plus I wanted to get myself something nice with the money before it all disappeared into various debts.
Anyway, gotta get some work done now so I can get outside and enjoy the sunshine a bit. I just didn't want any undue worrying. I'll be back soon — promise.
I've been reading this book, The Fall, recently, in which Steve Taylor presents a convincing case that the insanity behind our current culture started with a giant "ego explosion" 6,000 years ago and is not, as usually supposed, due to "human nature." According to him, societies were cooperative and egalitarian before this event. It was only when the ego developed — mostly in men — as the result of a radical environmental change in a large geographic area that the world began to see the ugliness of war, social inequality, patriarchy, materialistic greed, alienation from nature, lack of empathy, and a general dissatisfaction with human life. The book really could have used a good copy editor, but the thesis is so fascinating that I almost don't mind the many, many syntax errors throughout it.
I like the idea that all these terrible problems have the same root cause. And I especially like the idea that they're not an inevitable feature of human beings. I was beginning to think that there's just something biologically wrong with men, causing them to orchestrate the destruction of their own species. Like maybe that Y chromosome is a malignant mutation that we might want to start categorizing as a dangerous virus. But if the problem is just a cultural one, albeit one that's been around for six millennia, it means there's still hope for us, and the feminist project is more than just a frustrating waste of time.
Here are some songs I like lately by women I would consider not only "female positive," but musically worth your time as well. I.e., no Indigo Girls in the bunch. Enjoy!
Time to bust open this cocoon I've been in all winter. It seems to really be spring now, and the weather's a lot more dependably seasonable. I've started getting out of the house more — socializing, playing music, and generally wandering around in the sunshine. I even had some windows open today.
