Not a Witch

In the interest of fairness, here's a nice recent photo of Amber, who came off a bit stubborn and unreasonable a couple of posts back. She's actually very sensible and generally a good listener. The end-of-conversation snub turns out to have been unintentional, and we'll be doing some therapy together to figure out how to have major worldview differences without killing each other. After that, it's off to the U.N. to teach those guys a thing or two.

Here's a little bit more I came up with yesterday on science v. mysticism:

In mysticism's view, science is misguided in thinking there is a world independent of the self. And yet it recognizes that the self is adept at hiding from itself, so there must be non-self places (mind) for it to hide.

In science's view, mysticism is misguided in attributing intention to mere things. And yet it sees intentionality itself as ultimately comprising the unintentional actions of mere things.

They are both right. Though neither makes sense to the other, we hold the possibility of keeping them both in mind, as they are merely different levels of stances toward perception. They share nothing in common, as they occupy parallel planes and their aims and methods run in opposite directions. But we, as the creators of both stances, are able to occupy each, though not at the same time.

We can have faith that one stance makes internal sense while adopting the other, having experienced both. Thus, we, the perceivers, are the only common ground between the two stances.

Why I Am a Musician

When I was 17, my family moved from rural Nova Scotia to the wealthy suburbs of Toronto. It was 1985. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher still had a neoliberal stranglehold on the western world, and everyone was betting on how soon our species would extinguish itself with the nuclear weapons it had been stockpiling.

I was just starting to notice how messed up the adult world was that I would soon be entering and was probably at my sourest about it. Each new absurdity I discovered caused initial excitement, which was followed soon afterward by anger and sadness. It was incredible that I and my small group of friends on the isolated Eastern Shore seemed to be the only people around who saw how terrible things were, and for what stupid reasons. We were bitter and self-congratulatory. Sarcasm was our go-to mode of self-expression.

The thought of getting away from what I considered an insular and uneducated backwoods in order to experience some of the "real" culture I'd only seen hints of thrilled me, even though it meant leaving those friends behind. Finally, my curious mind and impeccable taste would get the exercise they deserved, and I would be surrounded by others who also understood how ridiculous the world was. We would laugh, pat each other on the back, and start initiating sweeping changes that would be so sensible and obvious, the whole world would gratefully follow suit.

Unfortunately, Toronto and especially its suburbs turned out to represent one of the most cynical, nihilistic, and narcissistic cultures in the world at that time. Again, it was the mid-80's. The "me" generation had won, and the economy — if you were white and privileged, which everyone who lived where I now lived was — rewarded your most outrageous decadence and greed. The kids I went to school with had no sense of history or really any world outside their limited existence, which consisted of buying the newest colour of sweatshirt at Roots in the mall, watching Miami Vice, and blasting Starship's "We Built this City" out of their expensive cars.

And their parents were even worse. They mistrusted anything at all threatening to the status quo of comfort and willful ignorance, a lifestyle they felt they'd earned through the "hard work" of successful investment. Minorities and immigrants were talked about openly as problems our country had to start doing something about. Brian Mulroney was doing a bang-up job in their eyes, and the new free trade deal he was about to sign with the U.S. was a great idea. The insularity of rich suburban life was probably even worse than that of poor rural life — just more current and smug in its style of self-preservation.

The whole place reeked of the paranoid, bland optimism of the fifties. Everywhere beautiful farmland, forests, and marshes were being destroyed in order to put up more and more of the identically ugly new houses that for some reason signified wealth, even though they were made out of cheap materials and packed close together in mazes of similarity. There were also lots of strip malls, each covered inexplicably in a hideous salmon-coloured fake stone siding and topped with a teal aluminum roof. What there wasn't was trees, sidewalks (no one walked anywhere, ever), bodies of water, breathable air, taste, creativity, or beauty. The larger world turned out to be a much eviller and uglier place than I had ever imagined, and I was plunged into a deep depression, without friends or hope.

Luckily, this move coincided with a growing interest in discovering music that was not immediately available or necessarily accessible either. And being on the outskirts of such a large metropolis, I suddenly had access to it. Faced with friendlessness also, I had the freedom to reinvent myself as whatever character appealed to me, without fear of (more) alienation.

I started collecting and listening to music that spoke directly to me, that others might not know about. I also read a lot about this music in British and alternative rock magazines, so I was aware that there were people out there who did know about and understand its appeal. But mostly it was the music itself that validated me, made me feel less alone, and proved that there was still value to human life outside the self-centered, cruel, and meaningless existence my culture had mostly made of it. Music became my best friend, and I would never lose touch with the depth and immediacy of goodness it gave my life. I would never stop being grateful to it as possibly the only thing in this world I could count on to make life worth living, no matter what my feelings about anything else were.

I listened especially to:

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else
Laurie Anderson - Home of the Brave
Aztec Camera - Live EP
The Beatles - The White Album
Billy Bragg - Life's a Riot/Between the Wars and Brewing Up with...
The Clash - S/T
Cocteau Twins - Victorialand
The Damned - Another Great Record from...
Miles Davis - Collector's Items
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold
Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless
Brian Eno - Discreet Music
Faust - Munich/Elsewhere
Philip Glass - Music in Twelve Parts, Parts 1 & 2
Robyn Hitchcock - Invisible Hitchcock
Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express (in the winter)
Kraftwerk - Autobahn (in the summer)
John Lennon - Shaved Fish
Pink Floyd - Meddle and Relics
The Ramones - Rocket to Russia
Simon and Garfunkel - Concert in the Park
The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow and The Queen Is Dead
Style Council - Long Hot Summer EP
Talk Talk - It's My Life and Colour of Spring
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Tones on Tail - The Cassette Pop
Vangelis - Albedo 0.39
Velvet Underground - Loaded
Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

I still consider every one of these albums untouchable in its perfection. I know none of them is exactly mouldering in obscurity (The Beatles?!), but in my sheltered, pre-internet youth each was something I had to find out about by myself and therefore a rare gem to be treasured. I've since found lots of other great — in some cases arguably better — music, but this weird assortment will always hold a special bittersweet place in my heart as the songs that got me to stop wringing my hands and pick up a guitar. And a really cheap Bontempi keyboard.

And I still know that no matter what kind of dark despair I may find myself in, I can always shine a little light on it immediately by listening to the austere simplicity of Satie's "Gymnopédie No. 1" or the naïve ambition of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows." Abstract, beautiful, immediate, and human, music is the best argument I know that people are good for something and continuing to live is a worthwhile proposition. I hope someday I can make something that does for someone else what so many musicians have done for me.

BS Artist

I saw a really colourful and abstract painting of a bridge today in an art book (can't remember who it was by — some French dude from the early 20th c.), and it inspired me to try making a random photo off the internet look like a super vivid painting, using Photoshop. Here's what I came up with:

Original

"Painted"

I thought that looked pretty cool, so I started messing around with other photos and got kind of carried away. Landscapes soon got too easy, and I became more interested in portraiture. I especially like the idea of making something borderline beautiful or at least interesting out of really crappy stock photography. What do you think, can I get a show in a gallery?

Re: How are you?

Thanks for asking, Carol.

In love and heartbroken. Amber and I spent Friday night and all of Saturday day together and had a really sweet time. It was sunny, and I wheeled her around the neighbourhood, stopping to sit on sun-dappled benches in a couple of parks. Then she brought up how important astrology is to her and how she didn't understand how I could be so closed-minded as to say I could never believe in it.

We stupidly got into a heated discussion about it, and she took my hatred of all superstition and pseudoscience as an insult to her, even though I said it didn't affect my feelings about her because what I love in the people I love has nothing to do with what they believe or don't believe. We parted on a sad note and both felt crappy about it for a couple of days.

I called her last night to try and straighten things out, but it just ended up being a big argument again, and she said she doesn't know how she feels about me anymore. She can't be with someone she sees as rigid and narrow-minded when it comes to magical thinking. I tried to get across that I think plenty magically myself, but that I see mysticism and science as opposite in intention and that the only way therefore to reconcile them is to see that they describe ways of viewing the world that are on two very different levels that can't be mixed.

What she loves about astrology, that it combines the mysterious connection of everything to everything else via forces beyond our understanding with the systematic categorization of down-to-earth folk psychology and prediction of worldly events, is precisely what strikes me as misguided and dangerous about it. Mysticism should be about how everything becomes the same at a deep level, and its truths can only be found within, since they can't be expressed in language. Science should be about reducing the possibilities of matter and energy on the shallower level from which we are able to talk about them, based on incontrovertible evidence and justifiable induction that is always up for reassessment. Neither one of them has anything to do with belief. And astrology is neither one nor the other.

But it's super important to her because it allowed her to figure out some things about herself that stopped her from being deeply depressed when she got out of the hospital. I got a sad goodbye in response to an I love you at the end of our long phone conversation last night, and I've felt terrible all day. I tried again tonight, in an email, to make the point that I value whatever wisdom and self-knowledge Amber has gotten out of astrology just as much as she does, but that I see them as coming from her and having nothing to do with the shaky framework that led her to them. I hope she'll listen.

Aitch Eff Dee

Hope you get to do some of this without the snow or exploding golf balls (though that would be a really cool invention). I'll give ya a call later today.

Happy to Be Stormbound

We're having a very rainy weekend here, thanks to Tropical Storm Andrea. Lots of new green foliage whipping around out there, soaking up the sky juice, and generally looking amazing. I'm taking advantage of a rare empty schedule to catch up on some reading, crossword puzzles, and window gazing.

My iPod, meanwhile, seems to understand the mood of the day intuitively. Here's an hour-long mix it came up with all on its own, I swear. Download by clicking on the title.

DJ Shuffle's Rainy Saturday
The Flaming Lips - Butterfly, How Long It Takes to Die
The Knife - Fracking Fluid Injection
Tim Hecker - In the Air III
Chelsea Light Moving - Heavenmetal
Björk - Dark Matter
Buffy Sainte-Marie - Adam
Sun Ra - Africa
Tame Impala - Elephant
Charles Bradley - How Long
Francis Bebey - The Coffee Cola Song
Harold Budd - Arabesque 3
Walls - Sunporch
Kraftwerk - Endless Endless

Happy Birthday, Ali!

Queen of Instagram.

Note to Self: Be More Useless and Stupid

Yes, no: not far apart.
Beautiful, ugly; good, evil: not unalike.
Fear the mind-killer spreads contagion to all,
but I am the wilderness, still before dawn.
Everyone else parties wild and frenetic,
while I sit here silent, a child prior to form,
a newborn who hasn't yet learned how to smile,
lost in the nebula, homeless alone.
While the many have much,
I the fool stay so simple.
All the people are certain they see things quite clearly;
I still wander in darkness,
with the waves in the waters,
with the winds playing ceaseless on oceans so deep.
Everyone has a goal.
I am useless and stupid,
lowly and lacking.
I now go on alone,
but I meet myself everywhere,
supping on, sipping, always sustained,
by our mother's Great Source.

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Translated by Robert Rosenbaum

Continuing to Live

Continuing to live — that is, repeat 
A habit formed to get necessaries — 
Is nearly always losing, or going without. 
      It varies. 

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise — 
Ah, if the game were poker, yes, 
You might discard them, draw a full house! 
      But it's chess. 

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what 
You command is clear as a lading-list. 
Anything else must not, for you, be thought 
      To exist. 

And what's the profit? Only that, in time, 
We half-identify the blind impress 
All our behavings bear, may trace it home. 
      But to confess, 

On that green evening when our death begins, 
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying, 
Since it applied only to one man once, 
      And that one dying.

—Philip Larkin

Joni Day

This was totally the colour scheme around here today. The sky overcast and dreary, as it has been every day for the past week, but the grass and leaves defiantly happy in an eye-popping new green. I swear they look even brighter than if the sun were out.

Also...

Happy birthday, Mom! Something coming in the mail for you today.

Just Finally Got This One

"Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chuang Tzu. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."

—Chuang Tzu

Oh, Chuang Tzu... You were always a butterfly dreaming you were a man, and the writing you left behind proves it. Nature produces the spirit of a butterfly, and culture imprisons it in the concept of a man. But nature is more fundamental than culture, as the latter depends on the former, and not vice versa. The yearning to fly is more real than the thought that you can't.

Wake Up

Sometimes people, when they perceive other people as hopeless idealists, invite those people to wake up and join the real world, by which they usually mean the world as defined by human culture. Or, more specifically, the current Western world as conceived through our late capitalist, corporatist, consumerist monoculture. And the alleged idealists have to laugh, because this "world" is itself the height of idealism — of human ideas and values clung tightly to as if they were reality. Take a walk in the woods, the dreamers say. Swim in the ocean. Or just watch the clouds in the sky for a few minutes. The real world is infinitely more complex and beautiful than this narrow, artificial, unimaginative nightmare in which we have tacitly agreed to imprison each other.

Everything Seems Funny Today

I swear the party guests from this "commercial" were on the bus with me this morning. The level of dullness as these three guys described their jobs to each other the whole way to work was seriously criminal. How could anyone talk at such length without evoking even one image? It was like some kind of exercise from a creative antiwriting class. Normally they might have made me question the value of human existence, or at least driven me to murder/suicide fantasies. But as I had recently watched this episode of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!,  it was all I could do to pretend my irrepressible laughter was at something out the window.

I had also read this apt review of Moonrise Kingdom just before getting on the bus, which might have helped the mirth along:

"Making a film featuring the music of Benjamin Britten and a biblical flood so you will get the chance to see a 12-year-old girl dancing in her underwear is a perfect example of going the long way around the barn. And the barn is a perfect color."

—A. S. Hamrah

Midlife, Men, and More Madness

WARNING: Multiple spoilers! (I'm assuming that anyone who has any interest in Mad Men has seen the latest episode. Is that such an unfair assumption? I mean, it has been four days since it aired... We verbose fans can't wait around forever while you dilly dally with your TV watching, you know. Come on!)

What really makes Mad Men such a great show, for me, beyond the rich characters, the dark allegory, and the gorgeous art direction, is that it always seems to be mirroring whatever I happen to be reading at the time. I think that's a very clever strategy on the part of the show's writers. Keeps me thinking about each episode over the week, so that I'm always looking forward to finding out what will happen next. I have no idea how they get other people to watch it.

For instance, now that I'm deeply enjoying James Hollis's Jungian classic The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, Don Draper is having a midlife crisis. I already talked about the Buddhist/spiritual themes that kept popping up in the show as I read about them, especially the perennial dissatisfaction and wanting that are characteristic of the ego. What's interesting now is that Don's ego's usual strategies are suddenly failing him, even as he cranks up their intensity in a desperate attempt to figure out who he is.

We saw him on vacation in Hawaii as the season opened, thinking a lot about death. He came back from that vacation and tried to whip up one of his trademark slick advertising campaigns for the travel company that sent him there, only to unwittingly expose an unconscious suicide fantasy, much to the client's horror and embarrassment. Then we find out that his apparently perfect new young wife, who had finally made him happy, it seemed, is already becoming too real for Don as she develops a career that defines her as an individual apart from her marriage to him. And so, he is having yet another affair, this time with the wife of his neighbour and friend.

He realizes he's never loved his children. He continues to drink unacceptable amounts at inappropriate times of the day and seems less and less interested in his job, which is really the only thing that has ever made him a great man in the eyes of anyone. His usual cleverness starts producing lacklustre work that is suddenly not impressing anybody. He makes impulsive decisions about clients, and instead of being congratulated on his masculine will and decisiveness, he's scolded by his coworkers, who are tired of having their destinies steered by his childishness. He orchestrates a giant merger that is a huge pain in the ass to everyone and even costs many their jobs, and immediately starts sabotaging his working relationship with the other agency's creative head in a pathetic attempt to win back the admiration of his ex-protegé, Peggy. And finally, he scares his married mistress back into fidelity by contriving a psychosexual domination scenario designed to keep her as an inhuman prop for his gratification, with no life of her own.

Desperate!

I love how the terrible things Don does in trying to hold onto his crumbling self-image are the very things that end up causing "problems" that force him to examine that image. This is exactly the kind of stuff James Hollis has been talking about in his excellent book. Here's the latest paragraph I've read:

The necessity of finding our path is obvious, but major obstacles stand in the way. Let us review for a moment the symptoms characteristic of the midlife transition. They are boredom, repeated job or partner shifts, substance abuse, self-destructive thoughts or acts, infidelity, depression, anxiety and growing compulsivity. Behind these symptoms there are two fundamental truths. The first is that there is an enormous force [of the true self trying to escape the unconscious and break through the acquired persona] pressing from below. Its urgency is felt as disruptive, causing anxiety when acknowledged and depression when suppressed. The second fundamental truth is that the old patterns which kept such inner urgency at bay are repeated with growing anxiety but decreasing efficacy. Changing one's job or relationship does not change one's sense of oneself over the long run. When increasing pressure from within becomes less and less containable by the old strategies, a crisis of selfhood erupts. We do not know who we are, really, apart from social roles and psychic reflexes. And we do not know what to do to lessen the pressure.

I hope Don is able to figure some stuff out about himself, even though he's ultimately not a very nice guy. Maybe he'll smarten up and get out of advertising altogether.

Not Much to Say

Nothing's changed much since last week's post, except that the trees have leaves now and the grass is psychedelically alive. It's a foggy Friday morning in Halifax. Psychic Fair play Gus' tomorrow night. The Public Gardens are open, and the geese are looking contemplative. Here are three new songs I can't get enough of, and one rough P. Fair track from our own upcoming release.

New Life

So... my new job is really great. I'm just finishing up week two, and I have to say I love it thoroughly. The office culture is unlike any other I've ever worked in: respectful, contemplative, compassionate... The organization's list of core values reads like a humanitarian manifesto. It's all about the inherent goodness of people and facing challenges with bravery and open hearts. And they mean it, because that's what the very product they're selling is about.

And the work is interesting, varied, challenging, and rewarding. I'm learning to do a much quieter, subtler type of design that's more about real beauty than attention-demanding, and to do it at a slower, more thoughtful pace than I'm used to. I'm expected to read the articles I'm laying out and to make educated decisions based on my expertise as a designer.

And I share a beautiful office with an admirable mentor, and I have a view of the harbour, and I get full health benefits, and there's an espresso machine as well as a normal drip coffee maker, and no one is allowed to book meetings from 1:00 to 1:20, as that time is set aside for optional meditation every day. Oh yeah, and I get to read books that are submitted for review before they're available in stores. I just brought home There Is No God... and He Is Always with You, an irreverent Zen guy's take on atheism, spirituality, and mysticism that seems completely up my alley and doesn't come out until July 1.

Yes, it's pretty much a perfect job. I'm just sorry I haven't had any time to tell you about it sooner. Still getting used to having to be downtown from nine to five, with about a 40-minute walk in either direction. I've also been finishing off clients' last bits of work when I get home, offering advice to their new designers... Plus, there have been a lot of band practices, recording sessions, and shows lately. But I'm developing a decent schedule, so I promise to be more frequent in my updates. And to stop undercutting my genuine enthusiasm with ridiculous stock photos.

Other things going on around here: The Reference Desk will be putting out a split 7" record soon with a two-piece called Beached Out, two songs per band. Psychic Fair are working on what promise to be some heavily listenable recordings. Alison and I looked at a really nice duplex last night into either side of which we're going to do everything in our power to move with a roommate each. Amber is leaving for Hawaii on Sunday, where she'll stay for a month with her mom and her mom's partner, much to my selfish sadness mixed confusingly with a great deal of happiness for her. And Gobo, the car Alison and I bought almost exactly four years ago, was just declared kaput today at what was supposed to be his routine biannual safety inspection. Apparently there's so much wrong with him, he's not worth rehabilitating. He was a great guy, and took us on many fun trips. Here's a photo Ali took.

So, there you go. Fairly mixed bag, I guess. But mostly I feel like everything in my life is starting to fall into place all at the same time, and I'm just trying to be neither too cocky nor too distrustful about it.

Go Down to the Basement, e.g.

Apropos of yesterday's post, here's a song I can't get out of my head lately, in the great tradition of songs wherein people tell you what they don't wanna do. Have you heard the new Kurt Vile album? It's maybe not quite as good as this one, but still probably the best album I've heard so far this year.



And here's a rock show you might want to know about, if you're in the area next week. Come one, come all! This time I will be into it, I swear.

Madness!

Still here, still tired. Oh, lord, this week feels like it will never end, what with all the finishing of projects that still has to get done. But it will, and very soon, and then I'll be working on completely different kinds of projects. So weird...

I've been rereading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth for I'd say realistically the ninth time at least. Somehow there's always surprising stuff in there that I need to hear, even though I feel now like I should be able to recite it verbatim. I've also been watching the new season of Mad Men. Have you? Oh boy, I thought after that double episode it was maybe getting a bit boring and overly slick, but I'm totally hooked again after this last weekend's one. Way to go, Trudy, am I right?

Anyway, there are lots of interesting parallels between the show and the book. I've definitely noticed Buddhist themes popping up on MM before, but doing Tolle and Weiner together really makes for some extra levels of enjoyment on both sides. Check out these things-said-by-Eckhart-Tolle-or-Don-Draper, e.g.:

1. The people in the advertising industry know very well that in order to sell things that people don't really need they must convince them that those things will add something to how they see themselves or are seen by others; in other words, add something to their sense of self.
2. Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.
3. Even though success is a reality, its effects are temporary.
4. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting. This is the psychological need for more, that is to say, more things to identify with. It is an addictive need, not an authentic one.
5. You're happy with fifty percent? You're on top and you don't have enough. You're happy because you're successful, for now. But what is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness. I won't settle for fifty percent of anything. I want one hundred percent. You're happy with your agency? You're not happy with anything, you don't want most of it, you want all of it. And I won't stop until you get all of it.
6. The physical needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and basic comforts could be easily met for all humans on the planet, were it not for the imbalance of resources created by the insane and rapacious need for more, the greed of the ego. It finds collective expression in the economic structures of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are egoic entities that compete with each other for more. Their only blind aim is profit. They pursue that aim with absolute ruthlessness. Nature, animals, people, even their own employees, are no more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless objects to be used, then discarded.

Of course, 3 and 5 are Draper, the rest Tolle. But I love how completely conscious Don is of the power of egoic grasping and how to manipulate it, even while he has no idea what to do about his own.

WRT the last quote, by the way, I went to see Revolution in the theatre tonight with Alison. It's a really powerful documentary by the guy who did Sharkwater, this time about the larger issues involved in saving life on this planet, especially our own. It's awful and frightening, and everyone should see it, because we're all going to be extinct in about 50 years if we don't start getting frightened really fast. Especially Canadians — we really suck. I noticed that no one in the audience could look each other in the eye when it was over, even though it ends on a note of hope. And even though I'm quite sure none of us voted for Harper.

Now It Can Be Told

But I'm too tired to tell it properly. OK, I'll just come out with it: I have a new job! It's as associate art director for the Shambhala Sun magazine. I went for an interview last Monday, and there was a message waiting for me when I got home that I'd gotten it!

It's not quite the same job I applied for last year, but very similar. My friend Meg got that one, which was doing double duty for the Sun and their new, more broadly aimed offshoot, Mindful. Now it has turned into a position working just for Mindful, so the Sun part of the job became a new opening. That works out great for me, because I am actually much more interested in the content of the Sun than in Mindful. And plus, now Meg works there too!

I got to be a lot clearer this time around about why I wanted to work there, having had a year to kick myself over my unpreparedness in the previous interview. And I also got some hipper pants and shoes, the latter of which I'm convinced are what really got me the job.

So now I'm in the process of dismantling my freelance business. It's sad but also really exciting. I'm looking forward to getting out of the house every day and seeing real people. And it will be nice to have a regular paycheque, with health benefits and paid vacations. But mostly I'll be happy to be working on a publication that I actually enjoy reading, putting stuff into the world that I think lots of folks need and want to hear.

I start working there on the 22nd, and until then I'm working long hours trying to get all outstanding work done before other designers take over my clients' business. The clients are all super understanding about my leaving for my dream job, but they also suddenly need everything done that's been sitting dormant until now. Late nights and early mornings...

Tomorrow I'll be meeting Meg downtown for lunch, though, and afterwards she's going to show me some of the processes I'll need to know about. That will be my first real tour of the magazine's offices.

They occupy a floor of the Centennial building, which is coincidentally the same building my dad worked in when I was a kid in the seventies, on the top floor. It kind of looks like a smaller version of the building Bob Hartley's office was presumably in, as indicated by the camera panning up it before we saw Bob sitting at his desk on the old Bob Newhart Show. I used to go in with my dad sometimes when he had to get work done on the weekends. I would lean my head against the window and try not to freak out about how incredibly high up we were (probably about 12 stories, I think).

Or else I'd type hilarious messages about poop and my friends and my friends' poop into the keypunch machine and print them on cards full of numbers and rectangular holes, while my dad puttered around in a room full of wall-sized boxes and reel-to-reel tapes that he called a "computer." I have no idea what he was doing in there, but it involved giant paper constantly coming out of a very loud dot matrix printer.

Anyway, the elevators in that building still smell the same as they did then, I'm happy to report, and they even have the same square buttons with the Futura numbers like a Wes Anderson film. So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to calling the place home from nine to five very soon.

Schleprock

I have some big news to report, but not quite yet. Soon, soon. Meanwhile, let me tell you about this show The Reference Desk played at Jacob's Lounge in Dartmouth on the weekend. This is not a self-congratulatory story, if that makes any difference to whether you feel like reading it. It is a bit long, though.

We were the first of three bands, and there were quite a few people there. Quite a few hip people whose opinions I actually care about, including the members of the other two bands. I always get somewhat nervous playing live shows, but this night I was extra anxious. It probably had to do with the big news I'm not telling you about yet, plus I wasn't sure whether Amber would be coming in from Musquodoboit Harbour with her aunt who has probably never attended an indie rock show in her life and already has mixed feelings about me, plus I'd heard there might be a fairly sizeable crowd according to the Facebook event page, possibly because Joel Plaskett may or may not have mentioned the show on stage a couple of nights earlier. Anyway, for whatever reason, before the show even started I felt like this:



And also a bit like this kid:



(Sorry — no good English versions of that scene available. We've all seen it though, right? Poor Lawrence...)

Unfortunately, I didn't have Jack Black there to tell me how cool I am, so I just had to tough it out feeling uncool and incredibly self-conscious. Sometimes that can work out OK, if I can just go with the shy weirdo vibe and inhabit it as an interesting persona. David Byrne taught me that trick. But there were extra problems this night, because the microphone I was singing into was a weird kind I'm not used to, and I couldn't figure out how to get the angle right while still being able to see what my guitar-playing hands were doing, if necessary. Turns out it's more often necessary than I would have thought.

Besides all that, there are no monitors at Jacob's. Usually the musicians on a stage get to hear their own special mix of what everything sounds like through small speakers that are aimed at them (monitors), because they have to be behind the speakers that are pointed out at the audience (the "PA"). If the microphones get in front of the latter speakers, they'll feed back like crazy, because those speakers are generally super loud. But even though they're loud enough for the whole audience to have its ears blasted by them, they're also directional, so that listening to what's going on from behind them gives you a weird, muddled perception with no detail. So the smaller speakers give the musicians a quiet but more accurate idea of what they sound like. Sometimes the monitors can even be given a special mix that's different from what the audience is hearing, if a musician needs to hear certain things better than others in order to perform well. That's called being a "diva." Not really — it's perfectly acceptable when available, although I always feel a bit sheepish about asking for "a little bit more of the rhythm guitar" or whatever.

Anyway, if you're a musician, sorry for the preceding paragraph. The point is that Jacob's doesn't have monitors, so it can be kind of hard to hear what you and your bandmates are doing. Last time we played there, it didn't seem to be a problem, but this time it was really throwing me. I had to be extra careful about my singing, to make sure I wasn't accidentally belting out some completely inappropriate note. That meant I couldn't just relax and let my voice do what it felt like doing to a certain extent. I also could barely make out the bass, and my guitar sounded like utter garbage to me — somehow both too loud and too quiet at the same time. It's an awful feeling when you're trying to get a song across to an audience, and you really want them to like it, but to you it sounds just terrible. Hard to fake being into it in that case, and probably just embarrassing to everyone if you try.

So I just kept playing, reminding myself that it must sound all right to the audience, because they were very appreciative after each song. But I could feel that I had a really sour look on my face the whole time, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. I thought about what it would be like to watch a performance where the singer had such a sour look on his face, and that made me feel worse and look even sourer. I think I even sighed with exhaustion at the end of one song. The set seemed to go on and on... Why did we write such a long set list? Did we have to play every song we know? And why were all the songs so energetic and aggressively catchy, when my mood was more suited to a slow number with minimal chord changes? Who wrote these stupid songs, anyway?

In desperation, a few times I looked back at my bandmates for some camaraderie. Maybe we could all laugh at what a taxing show this was turning out to be. But there seemed to be a huge physical distance between us, so that I couldn't even get their attention. Besides, they had their heads down and wore looks of extreme concentration, obviously having just as hard a time as I was...

I wish I had a hilarious surprise ending to this story, but in fact all that happened was that we continued to work really hard and eventually made it all the way through the set. People said it sounded really good out front and that we shouldn't worry about what the onstage sound was like. Ron said it was our best show ever, but he always says that. Amber turned out to be there with her aunt (they had come in a few songs into the set and slowly made their way past the front of the stage without me even seeing them), and they had both enjoyed it. But I was inconsolable. I didn't even care whether it sounded good or not. What really bothered me was that I got so invested in all the problems that I couldn't manage to have any kind of a good time or at least have an entertainingly authentic bad time. Instead, I just turned inward and "performed," in the worst sense of the word. I know you'll say it doesn't matter, and everyone has good shows and bad shows, and you'll be right. But that night, I had disrespected the spirit of rock with my inauthentic self-preserving attitude, and the whole next day I couldn't listen to any music out of utter shame.

But I feel OK about it now. Just thought you might appreciate some insight into the periodic nightmare that is caring about one's art.

Productive Despite Myself

Monday morning. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. The vast quantities of work that have to get done around here continue, preventing me from spending any time on blogging or even emailing, let alone anything that requires standing up or looking at things that are not a computer.

However, I was able to get out on Saturday to buy some very needed new pants. When it comes to clothes, I pretty much agree with Harvey Pekar that people spend way too much money on them and then look like crap anyway. And I really hate the ordeal of trying to find something you even like and/or fit into just so you can hand over your hard-earned cash. So it was nice of Alison to come with me and offer her advice. We spent most of the afternoon looking in every store we could think of. I started getting tired and very frustrated, but the "one last store" we tried had lots of decent pants that were available in my size. Sure, they were expensive. But I would've paid a couple of hundred dollars just to stop shopping at that point.

Other than that, besides nine billable hours of work, I also got a new song recorded this weekend. It was rattling around in my head and driving me crazy, so I just had to get it out, even though there really wasn't any time to spend on it. It's fairly scrappy in quality, therefore, but I finished it super fast and didn't even use any microphones. Garageband is incredible these days! It's unbelievable to me that I can sing an idea to my laptop and come away a couple of hours later with something that sounds this good.

That sun's supposed to be going down instead of coming up, by the way (remnant of an earlier verse sequence), but I can't be bothered to go back and fix it. Now to get some more work done!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

After Black History Month, I'm glad we now get to celebrate the history of pride and suffering that is the Irish identity. It's only fitting, as they were the ones used mainly as slaves by the British until the latter stumbled on the idea that bringing shiploads of Africans in for that purpose would mean their slaves would speak a multitude of mutually incomprehensible languages, and hence couldn't organize against their owners as easily as the pesky Erinese had. Once that idea had caught on, it wasn't long before the strategy was taken up by the Americas and other colonies, freeing the Irish to live a life of peace and liberty in their abject poverty.

In solidarity with this brave and indomitable people, may I present my rendition of this traditional Irish ballad? Sorry about the sound distortion. I got a little too passionate at times.

I'll also, of course, be drinking and subsequently vomiting gallons of green beer like everyone else.

Sounds of the Human Condition

The house on Harvard Street that sometimes displays poems handwritten in chalk on a blackboard hanging on its front veranda (see here and here, e.g.) is continuing to do its very fine thing that it sometimes does. I really should just knock on that house's door one of these days and tell whoever answers how much I appreciate their efforts, because every time I stop to read one of these, I end up either laughing out loud, directing a pensive "huh" at the trees and sky, or making an uncontrollable noise somewhere between "Hey!" and "Oof!" and falling onto the sidewalk, usually just as a snooty-looking woman and her small dog happen hoity-toitily by, the latter of whom invariably sniffs at my crotch before stepping on me. Today was a laughter day:

Poem Addressing People Who Are Tired, Hungry, or Horny

These things can wait. This is a very good poem and you’d be very myopic to lose sight of this beauty simply because some of your baser needs are asserting themselves. I’ll keep this short, but you should exercise some control, okay? Stay with me here. Allow this poem to carry you beyond yourself, transcending your mortal flesh as you wed yourself with the potentially infinite.

- Peter Davis

And, hey, speaking of uncontrollable noises, lately I keep getting woken up in the middle of the night by loud, horrible screams. That's a pretty awful thing to happen, but not as awful as when I realize they're coming from me. Some kind of nightmare keeps scaring me so much that I have to wake myself up by yelling out loud, and let me tell you, the screams of an unconscious person trying to become a conscious person would be horrific enough even if both of those people were NOT myself. If only I could remember the dreams when I wake up, I might be able to get to the heart of what's bothering me. But they immediately withdraw like slippery sea creatures under a rock before my memory can grab hold of them.

Psychic Fair and The Reference Desk will both be contributing to the racket that St. Patrick's Day at Gus' Pub promises to be. This Sunday, starting at 1:00 in the afternoon, the bar is hosting 14 different bands, offering live indie rock until well past the bedtime of anyone with any kind of conventional job to get back to on Monday. I'll be there at 5:something and again sometime after 10. Stop by if you're in the mood for some loud music and ironic young people enacting borderline offensive cultural stereotypes in the name of getting drunk.

Stir Crazy

Sorry no bloggy blog. Too much worky work. Today I finally felt sort of on top of things, though, so I was able to get outside for awhile and see some other members of my species wandering around. From what I could tell, I'm still passing as human.

Still, it'll be nice to have a weekend now. I didn't really get one last time around, there was so much work to catch up on. Looks like it's going to be a nice one, too, so I'm hoping to get some nature walking in — all work and no play makes Jack pretty much unfit for social interaction.

(By the way, Jack, happy birthday. And Henry, and Hannah. And happy International Women's Day, too!)

Born Again Atheist

Crow carrying twig
flies up and down beside me
out the bus window.

Today was sunny and warm and seemed to be full of magical signs expressing a newfound freedom and joy. Many involved crows, strangely, since I usually think of them as symbols of evil and decay. But maybe they were telling me that true freedom and rebirth require acceptance and appreciation of death. Who knows?

Some were more straightforward. I had a therapy appointment downtown in the morning that went really well. I had taken the bus, but the day was so nice when I left that I decided to walk across town to get my hair cut. A poster on a telephone pole I passed said "Future Possible" in large letters over an open green field. It was advertising a series of classical concerts. The next one I saw congratulated me on my "Good Whork," in an ornate, gothic typeface. I marvelled at the relative transparency of the universe's usually quite inscrutable intentions, and patted my own back on its behalf. A block later, I saw the same goth poster again and realized this time that it was actually for an upcoming show by a metal band called "Goat Whore." But I was already in too good a mood to do anything but laugh about it.

A couple of days ago felt like:

But today was much more:

Charlotte Glencross: The Fabric of Her Life

I'm in Fredericton this weekend, checking out a retrospective of my late aunt Chooch's textile art with some of my family. The show is way more thorough and generally fabulous than I'd anticipated. Lots of batiks and weavings I had either forgotten about or never seen before. There's a beautifully designed catalogue that fits all the pieces into a comprehensive narrative of her life. And there's even a corner in which they've set up a mock studio, including her loom, books, and lots of fabric bits and notebooks from her working process, kind of like the Maud Lewis house. It's all really impressive and evocative.

Here are some photos my sister Erika took.

This is one of my favourites from the early 70s. I'd seen it at that time, but somehow it escaped my memory until I saw it again yesterday.

The studio installation.

M. Hulot was particularly interested in this one large batik.

Faith

Sometimes I am the water.
Sometimes I am a sailboat navigating the waves.
And sometimes I am a monkey trying desperately not to drown.
At those times, I remind myself
That sometimes I am the water.

New Face on Desk Duty

Our good friend Meg joined The Reference Desk last night on bass for four songs. They sounded way better than any of the other songs we'd played, so I guess that seals the deal... We're a three-piece now! Thanks to all the folks who came out to see us in Dartmouth on a rainy night. It was fun.

Spooky photo by KC

HVD II

Coincidentally, my horoscope had this to say today (I don't usually pay much attention to horoscopes, but if their advice seems apt, insofar as it could be good advice for anyone, I will take it into consideration):

This Valentine season, meditate on the relentlessness of your yearning for love. Recognize the fact that your eternal longing will never leave you in peace. Accept that it will forever delight you, torment you, inspire you, and bewilder you — whether you are alone [yes] or in the throes of a complicated relationship [also yes]. Understand that your desire for love will just keep coming and coming and coming, keeping you slightly off-balance and pushing you to constantly revise your ideas about who you are [yup, sounds about right]. Now read this declaration from the poet Rilke [ooh, I love Rilke] and claim it as your own: "My blood is alive with many voices that tell me I am made of longing."

So, I should just love my love of love, instead of problematizing it? Lean into the grasping in order to appreciate it, rather than treating it as an affliction to be overcome? Sounds dangerous but possibly true. I will definitely sit with this for awhile...

HVD

Some Valentine cards

seem like they want something more

than to be a gift.

Somehow, most of us have forgotten that we are pure love and so we seek it outside ourselves. This longing is very useful in that it serves to activate your quest for love. Ultimately this search for the beloved leads you to the realization that you feel love when you are being loving, not when you are being loved by another.

Deborah Anapol

The Seven Natural Laws of Love

Strumming My Own Guitar

Did I tell you that the band I'm in with Kristina Parlee, The Reference Desk, recorded some songs and put three of them out as an EP of sorts? Probably not. You can listen to and/or download it here. And hey, I just saw today that it's on the local college radio station's top 30, even though they'd told us a 3-song "EP" probably wouldn't get played. All right!

We're playing our second show ever this Saturday night at Jacob's Lounge in Dartmouth. There'll be a surprise guest. Come and see us, if you feel so inclined.

Warm Impermanence

Sidewalk slush rivers
are fun for little children
and nobody else.

We got even more snow last night, but today it's all melting. There was a beautiful thick winter fog this morning — the kind we only get in the Maritimes. I had a treacherous half-hour walk to a 9:30 client meeting along narrow sidewalks full of water with nowhere to go.

I was running late and so panicked when I found myself stuck behind a short-legged woman. But she was a determined walker, and — more importantly — wearing boots that were more sensible than
mine, so our wildly different routes ended up taking about the same amount of time. For my part, I kept

Image via Nietzsche Family Circus
— highly recommended.

imagining a dotted line trailing behind me, like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Billy or Jeffy makes some simple task into an Odyssean study in childish whimsy.

Really, though, my puddle-hopping, bank-climbing Mr. Bean jig probably would have gotten more laughs in real time (say, for instance, if the galoshed dwarf had ever turned around to see what all the huffing and puffing behind her was about) than any post-mortem diagram Bil Keane could ever draw. I realize that's not saying much...

Hey, have you been watching Girls this season? And has it been making your stomach hurt as much as mine? I'm finding the 20-somethings' emotionally cavalier escapades really anxiety-producing this time around, but maybe the story lines have just been a little too close to home. Don't get me wrong, though, I've been enjoying the hell out of it, possibly even more than the first season. I thought this last weekend's episode, "One Man's Trash," was especially beautiful and sad. You?

Nowhere to Look

We dig through the snow
for something or somebody
and fall asleep, lost.

Here in Halifax, we got an awful lot of snow dumped on us by a blizzard yesterday. I was going to take a picture of it, but it could never be anywhere near as good as this one Alison took. I don't know exactly how many inches there were. This is not a weather report. But there are piles of it everywhere, making walking difficult and fort-building easy.

I was attempting the former yesterday in the middle of some of the heaviest dumping, as I had to pick up my bass guitar from the music store where I'd left it for some neck adjustment. Psychic Fair (= The Lodge, but with Mike O'Neill replaced by frontman extraordinaire Josh Salter) had a show to play in Dartmouth last night, so it was important to get my bass back.

Unfortunately, the store was closed due to the bad weather. I kind of flipped out a little, pulling repeatedly on the locked doors as if breaking the lock would somehow turn the store's lights back on and bring its employees up from the basement, where I was sure they were hiding from me.

Didn't work. So I trudged home through the deep drifts and blowing powder, wondering how Jacob's Lounge would respond that night to a bassless Psychic Fair. The show was cancelled in the end, so I never got to find out.

But the bleak, desperate flavour of my walk through the blinding whiteness made me think a lot about the constant search outside myself for some kind of contentment or meaning that goes on in my mind. I've seen it referred to in Buddhist literature as "grasping," which strikes me as a pretty apt term for it. It's an almost universal human failing, and it always leads to suffering.

Generally, I think of myself as fairly independent and able to find my own reasons for doing things. But lately it keeps coming to my attention that this is not strictly true, and that in fact huge parts of my life's motivation, when examined thoroughly, end up being about the search for some reward beyond the enjoyment of the task at hand. Specifically, in my case, that reward seems to mostly take the form of approval and admiration from other people, real or imagined.

That's a really ugly thing to find out about yourself, but I have to admit its truth. It's probably the biggest reason why I had to get off Facebook. That world is virtually designed to encourage self-invention and -assessment based on the validation and approval of others. I guess it's arguable whether keeping a blog is any more discouraging of those tendencies, but I feel like the relative infrequency of posts and limited readership make it at least slightly less insidious. Maybe if I were really concerned about it, I would turn commenting off. I don't know. What do you think?

2012 Top Ten, Belated

Oh, hello. Looks like I'm back. Yeah, Facebook turns out to be kind of a pain in the butt. Did you know that? It's all people doing and saying and liking things, and then before you can close the window, they've gone and had another opinion/meal/baby. Exhausting!

So, is it too late for a top ten list? Because I really enjoy looking back at these, and it feels like a nice, shallow way to ease back into the long form. In fact, I'll keep my reviews to three words, if it'll make you happy. All right, then — my picks for last year were:

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man

Lush goth balladry.

Beach House - Bloom

Spare goth balladry.

Chromatics - Kill for Love

Bleak primitive disco.

Chris Cohen - Overgrown Path

Gorgeous complex pop. (Former member of Deerhoof!)

Cousins - Palm at the End of the Mind

Catchy Halifax duo.

Deerhoof - Breakup Song

ADD dance rock.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor -
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Instrumental noise anthems.
(First album in 10 years! Exclamation points!)

Grimes - Visions

Dark Madonna wunderkind.

Liars - WIXIW

Spooky synth barbarians.

Melody's Echo Chamber - Melody's Echo Chamber
French psychedelic Broadcast-lover.
(Produced by the Tame Impala guy!)

Tame Impala - Lonerism

Australian psychedelic Lennon-lover.

Honourable mentions:

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Mature Themes

Can - The Lost Tapes

Mohn - Mohn

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock vinyl reissues

Wild Nothing - Nocturne