First Satori of 46

What a nice birthday weekend. It was really the best one I've had in a long time. Thanks to everyone who came over and/or otherwise helped me celebrate. I feel very lucky to have so many kind and interesting friends.

The week leading up to Friday was kind of cranky in general, so birthday fun at the end was especially appreciated. I'd been feeling a little alienated and overwhelmed at work, plus wondering why I forced myself to invite people over when I generally hate parties and hadn't had time to properly prepare the house for guests.

But then, on the way to work Friday morning, I was hit with this spiritual insight out of the blue that made life seem a whole lot easier and more fun. The sun was shining on my face, the air was a little warmer than it had been recently, and out of nowhere the thought occurred to me: You are neither the inside nor the outside, but the window between the two.

Usually we think of ourselves as a soul inhabiting a body from the inside and having to deal with an outside world that limits the options of that soul but has only partial access to it. Avoiding the limits and allowing the access both take work. Plus, we know that it is morally correct to empathize with other souls, so we try to imagine ourselves as the world outside our body at the same time, which also requires a lot of will and energy. Mostly all this hard work makes us angry and resentful.

But if I'm only the window, I can suddenly drop all that. The inside and the outside will continue to do what they are designed to do, and all I have to worry about is keeping my particular window as clean as possible. This character I've created on the inside doesn't need my protection, and this world I've separated myself from doesn't need my judgment. All they really want is to see each other clearly, and that's my whole job in this life. What a huge load off if you can really feel that way, because clear perception and genuine self-expression are the most pleasant things you can do, once the striving is taken out of them.

So far, this existential stance has persisted into this week, I'm happy to report. We'll see how long it lasts before my author starts identifying too strongly with his characters again. But, for now, I'm just really enjoying the break.

Amber sent me this birthday poem tonight that happens to capture what I'm talking about poignantly and beautifully:

Soul
What am I doing inside this old man's body?

I feel like I'm the insides of a lobster,
All thought, and all digestion, and pornographic
Inquiry, and getting about, and bewilderment,
And fear, avoidance of trouble, belief in what,
God knows, vague memories of friends, and what
They said last night, and seeing, outside of myself,
From here inside myself, my waving claws
Inconsequential, wavering, and my feelers
Preternatural, trembling, with their amazing
Troubling sensitivity to threat;
And I'm aware of and embarrassed by my ways
Of getting around, and my protective shell.
Where is it that she I loved has gone to, as
This cold sea water's washing over my back?

- David Ferry

Special Message from Pippi

Made It through Another Year

Now gimme some cake!

New Dog Day Album!

Yes! It's coming out really soon! I can't wait! And Psychic Fair will be opening for their release show at the Marquee on December 7! Double yes! Here's a preview video for the album.



Also, Amber better dump that military guy on Parenthood, or she's going to wind up like every other lame-o white-bread family member on the show...

More Yoko

Wow, Yoko Ono is really everywhere right now. I've been working on a piece about her for the March issue, as I mentioned the other day, and suddenly she keeps popping up all over the place. I guess she just turned 80, is partly why. (My mom says 80 is the new 50, and it looks like she may be right.)

I've started reading a book about her by the author of the upcoming piece, Lisa Carver, called Reaching Out with No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono. Rod, one of the editors at work, loaned it to me. So far, it's just the author finding different ways to say how fabulous her heroine is, yet it's managing to hold my interest somehow.

Rod also directed me to a current Spin magazine interview with Yoko today. Pretty admirable stuff. I found this last passage especially inspirational:

Each time I create a work, I get so much energy and awareness I grow rapidly. People think it is the other way around — that I have energy and therefore things get created with that energy. No. I create, and therefore, I get the energy. I want to address this to artists who are feeling a bit low. Just start creating something, without consulting your critical eyes, ears, and brain. Keep creating even if you are laughed at. Good luck and I love you with all my heart!

And then there's this new video, mentioned by reminiscethis in the comments a few posts ago:



Hilarious and sweet. I just might have to buy her new album, though it could never be as good as this:

Hey, If You're Not Doing Anything...

All Our Blogloo readers welcome.

A Cautionary Tale

When I was visiting my family a couple of weekends ago, my sister got me into this silly game you play on your phone. It's called Candy Crush Saga. Have you heard of it?

Yeah, well, I hadn't. It's a Tetris-type game where you have to make objects disappear by maneuvering them into rows, only to have more drop down from above. "Watch out," she told me. "It's super addictive."

I tried it out and thought, "Oh yeah, that's a cute little bit of fun. Whatever." But then I made the mistake of trying it out a few more times at home during bits of downtime, and pretty soon I found out what she meant.

Once the levels started getting more complicated, I found myself obsessively needing to complete them. Failing to do so started making me more and more frustrated. I got in an argument with Amber because I hadn't been listening to her instructions while I played it over at her place and ended up ruining a pomegranate. I started looking up tricks to cheat the game into giving me more lives and watching online videos offering tips for specific levels. (The number one tip on one of the many Candy Crush Saga advice websites, by the way, is stop playing Candy Crush Saga.) Playing while eating lunch in a coffee shop one day, I accidentally yelled "No!" so loud that everyone else stopped talking and looked over.

Then, a few nights ago, I went to bed at 10:00, hoping to get a nice long sleep. I decided to try one more time to get through Level 35 before turning out the light. Level 35 is really hard. I had been trying to conquer it for a couple of days, always having between one and three "jellies" left when I ran out of moves.

I guess you can figure out what happened. At 1:30, I plugged in my dead phone and did my best to stop muttering and fuming so I could get some sleep. The next day at work I was exhausted and angry all day long.

That night, I swore I would beat Level 35 or die trying. And then quit the game for good. And that's what I did. It's now deleted from my phone, replaced with an app that determines your sleep cycles and wakes you up when you'll feel most refreshed. Thanks, Erika!

Oh Yoko!

I'm working on a piece about Yoko Ono for the March issue of the magazine. The focus is on her life and work as a visual and conceptual artist. There are lots of great images of her with her artwork I could try to get for the opening page, but most of them are either not very colourful or actually black & white.

Then I had this idea of using a bunch of her Instagram photos. She posts pictures almost every day of herself — usually from the back — in whatever surroundings she happens to be in. She's so iconic that I think readers wouldn't actually need to see her face, which might be kind of interesting. And this way I could get a bunch of colour onto the page while giving a sense of what it's like to be Yoko.

I don't know whether folks here will go for this idea or even whether I'd be able to get the rights to use these images. But right now, I'm leaning sharply in this direction:

Although, honestly, if I could do whatever I wanted, I'd totally create something like this:

Put a Bird on It

Found this old tire ad today on my favourite animal-themed image blog, Animalarium. Isn't it lovely? It's from 1923, by Polish graphic artist Tadeusz Gronowski. Do you think it was the inspiration for some of the cards in Mille Bornes, the excellent and beautiful French driving-themed card game designed by Arthur/Edmond Dujardin in 1960?

Or do I just wish everything looked like Mille Bornes? Oh, when is Mad Men going to come back?

Another One about Religious Belief

I really enjoy working for a Buddhist publication. Everyone is so kind and thoughtful, and they all practice a certain methodical awareness that I find makes for a very healthy workplace atmosphere. Plus, they encourage genuine self-expression, which makes me feel welcome and appreciated.

But I also like my job a lot because it helps to remind me of the reasons why I'm not a Buddhist. Mostly, it seems to come down to the problem of organized religion always equating spiritual truths with belief systems. There is so much talk around the office about the beliefs espoused by different strains of Buddhism, or by the religion as a whole, that it sometimes gets, well, unbelievable.

I'm all for contemplative, meditative practice of any kind, or any other personal method people may discover for becoming more aware of their own (unconscious, culturally constructed, insane) mental processes and coming to see reality more clearly. And that direct perception can get pretty weird and even supernatural-seeming relative to our usual (unconscious, culturally constructed, insane) worldview; I'm fine with that. But regular readers will know (from many previous posts) that I also see beliefs as one subset of the problematic mental processes such practices seek to uncover — a subset that is particularly good at preventing us from the clear perception that is their aim.

To accept beliefs about the nature of reality based on someone else's spiritual experience is, to my mind, misguided. Even if the person handing them down seems to have reached a state of extraordinary perception, to take on their beliefs as a way of augmenting your own spiritual progress is to put the cart in a dangerously pre-horse position.

Of course, the party line is that there is no belief required in Buddhism, which distinguishes it from other religions. But believe me (or at least maintain a skeptical attitude toward my naysayers), there's plenty of stuff snuck in there that you're expected to take on faith first, and then find a way of perceiving directly.

Karma is a good example. It may be that seeing a complex moral cause-and-effect system at work in our universe is beneficial to one's sense of belonging and equanimity. It could even be a stage on the way to experiencing oneself as an expression of that entire universe, through which it can observe itself, i.e. a perfectly integrated, compassionate being, aware and accepting of all truth.

But believing in it because someone says it's so is not going to get you to the state where you might perceive things that way. If anything, observing the relative world of time and causation through that belief lens is going to prevent you from experiencing the timelessness that is the only reality from which such a mystical stance makes sense.

Maybe that's too abstract. Here's a better example. My boss marches into my office today and announces that he has thought about it, and there is no difference between death and enlightenment. He's not trying to describe a new way of experiencing the world he's suddenly discovered phenomenologically, mind you. He has THOUGHT ABOUT IT, and this is the conclusion he's reached.

Well, that's just crazy, on the face of it. His point is that to become enlightened, our self as we know it must be surrendered each moment, i.e. it must die. Therefore, once you have become truly enlightened, to the point that your self has been given up entirely, never to return, you are exactly the same as physically dead.

"If you become enlightened," I say by way of testing the waters, "I could still talk to you." This is a particularly important distinction right now, because a very greatly loved young woman from the Halifax Buddhist community was killed by a drunk driver last week. Many people wish they could still talk to her. There was a funeral yesterday for her, widely attended by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. But mostly by Buddhists, all of whom are still grieving their tragic loss, and some of whom work in the very offices where this ridiculous discussion was taking place.

His answer to my apparently airtight rebuttal is that I wouldn't actually be talking to him in that case, but to the forces of the universe finding a way of expressing themselves. I just stare after him as he walks smugly out the door.

If I wanted to get into a real argument with him about it, I'd point out that those universal forces were what he was all along, and that enlightenment would merely be the recognition of that fact by the forces themselves, as expressed through him. Inasmuch as you can be said to exist in the first place, you will presumably still exist after attaining enlightenment.

And I'd probably then observe that if he really believes what he's claiming to believe, he should be locked up in a nice cell where he can't hurt anybody. Because if enlightenment = death, then death = enlightenment. And anyone who thinks he'd be doing his fellow human beings a religious favour by killing them is no less dangerous than the craziest of suicide-cult leaders.

But really, the root problem here is that he just shouldn't be making any claims about enlightenment, not being enlightened himself. How could he possibly know anything about what the experience is like? From reading what enlightened people have said about it? Those writings are just attempts at describing ways of being that we have no direct access to until we are able to experience them ourselves. The descriptions may encourage us to keep observing ourselves and our own experiences as carefully and open-mindedly as we can, knowing that other angles are possible. But taken as expressions of truth, they will necessarily be misunderstood by those who are not apprehending those truths directly.

Of course, this is all just my opinion based on my own experiences. I happily preach to the choir, and all others should feel free to walk out on the sermon. Please don't quote my words to unbelievers. Amen.

Happy Birthday, Erika

I've just spent the weekend visiting my family in Ontario. It was a surprise visit for my sister Erika's 40th birthday. Her husband, Mike, flew me up. Thanks, Mike, for such a nice present. I felt like it was my birthday too.

Got to see everyone, including my grandmother, in what was a bit of a whirlwind but also just a really fun couple of days. There was a large gathering of family and friends at a pub last night and a family-only dinner tonight at a local restaurant. Here are some Instagram pictures of weekend moments. Mike looks super tired in the last one because he was. Poor guy deserves a long rest after so much planning, spending, and herding.

 

Now I'm hanging out in the Air Canada "Maple Leaf Lounge" at the Toronto airport, waiting for my flight back to Halifax. It's very nice — free coffee, food, and booze, with comfortable seating and WiFi. Best of all, there are no loud announcements every 30 seconds about planes boarding. This place is meant for the hoity toity special folks who spend a lot of money for all the first-class features, but I got in here with a guest pass, again courtesy of Mike. A million thanks, buddy!

The Joy of Performance

Psychic Fair played a Gus' show on Wednesday night, opening for an Edmonton two-piece called The Famines. I'd like to tell you they were great, but I was too tired to stick around, running home as soon as we were finished for an "early" 1 a.m. bedtime. I'm sure they actually were good, though — I checked out some of their songs online the next day, having been impressed by Raymond Biesinger, their gregarious guitarist. He's also a really great illustrator/designer, it turns out.

Anyway, the show went really well, as had the Reference Desk one the week before. Late weeknights are not a lot of laughs for an old man like me, but it almost seems worth it when I get to have such a fun time playing music for appreciative kids. At least, I'm glad my streak of dreading playing live seems to be over.

I really think having decent equipment has a lot to do with it. As bourgeois a concept as that seems, it makes a huge difference to a musician's performance if he can actually hear what he's playing. I got to use really nice amps at both these last shows. They were loud and clear, so the performance became less a matter of gauging how many mistakes were being made and more about playing around with the rich sounds I was hearing myself make. That's a much better scenario for both the band and the audience.

When I was younger I didn't care nearly so much about what the music sounded like on stage. Loud, quiet, clear, muddy… it all sounded good to me. Maybe as I've matured as a musician, my sonic judgment has become more refined, requiring extra clarity to be satisfied. Or maybe my hearing is just slowly disappearing as I get closer to the scrap heap at the end of life's conveyor belt. I'm gonna take it easy on myself and assume that it's a bit of both.

Ride Into the Sun

Been singing this VU song all day. I forgot I made this mashup of two wildly different recordings way back in 2004. I liked them both a lot, so thought they should be stuck together into one ultimate version. Possibly a misguided idea, but I also think the song is kind of unruinable. You can judge for yourself.

For Lou

OK, well, I feel a lot better this morning. Amber and I patched things up last night. I worked all day on some very Velvet-Underground-inspired song lyrics that I think turned out pretty good. The tune I have in mind already sounds like a cross between VU and Stereolab, so I kept trying to steer the lyrics away from being a pastiche of images from "The Ocean." But they kept struggling their way back in that direction, and then I found out that Lou Reed had died that morning. So I said screw it and gave him full reign over my pen. Ride into the sun, Lou. You finally got out of the city.

Some nights a dark emotion
Rolls in upon the ocean
Indomitable motion
Outside you can't be certain
No sky beyond the curtain
Don't cry it only hurts your heart

You can never stop the tide
And there's nowhere you can hide
With nothing left inside
It's over once you start
Watch the castles fall apart

Moonlight and violent motion
Turn now to blind devotion
Learn how to love the ocean
So shy and unappealing
Birds fly beyond the ceiling
Don't try to lose this feeling

You'll forever be the tide
And there's nowhere you can hide
When everything's inside
You'll hear it in your heart
Once the castles fall apart

Give your body to the sea

Someday I'll write a song that's not about drowning. But not yet.

Bring It Down

The Pop Explosion's over now. Time to clean up all this gross pop everywhere.

Friday night I had a date with Amber to have dinner and see the Husband & Knife (with The Drone) show at Gus'. H&K(wTD) were amazing. Quietly, undynamically trucking through KC's beautiful and subdued songs on guitar, cello, keyboards, and a couple of drums — it was exactly what I felt like hearing. KC has released an album of new material on Bandcamp that you can buy from him as a gorgeous booklet of black-and-white night photography that comes with a download code for the music. Here's one of the songs on it.


Unfortunately, the date itself was kind of a drag. I was really tired going into it and had a 20-minute nap beforehand to try and energize myself. That turned out to be a big mistake. I woke up in a super cranky mood and couldn't seem to shake it. I warned Amber upon arrival that I felt crabby, and I tried not to aim it in her direction. But I ended up treating her meanly. After unsuccessfully trying to cheer me up for awhile, she started treating me meanly in return, and we passed that bad mood back and forth all evening.

Dinner at our favourite sushi spot was awful. They were busy and couldn't serve us fast enough that we would make it to the Gus' show on time. We sulked, bickered, and generally embarrassed each other and ourselves in public. There were some tears.

The music and friendly atmosphere at Gus' really helped, as did a couple of beers. Or at least they seemed to. But the mood came back as soon as we went back to Amber's place. By that time we were both exhausted, so we went to sleep without resolving things. In the morning, the beers and late night came back to haunt us by turning a discussion about what had gone wrong into a full-blown argument. We both felt attacked and got defensive. All remarks and behaviour taken badly due to the bad mood became the other person's fault. She cried, and I left.

I'm sure we'll resolve this. We've had worse fights before. But the awful feeling of the original bad mood has stuck with me all weekend. I saw Moonsocket and Besnard Lakes at the Marquee last night with Alison and a couple of other friends, and both bands made some undeniably great music. Yet, even as I was enjoying it, I was still somehow not enjoying MYSELF, if that makes any sense. I again had a couple of beers to try and remedy that, which was probably the worst of all possible solutions. It didn't help, anyway. This morning is cold and rainy, and I'm glad because all I want to do is lie in bed and feel bad about myself. What a long and self-perpetuating funk!

It's like a general dissatisfaction with everything in my life and a lack of hope that anything can be done about it. My job, my bands, my friends, every song I've ever written, and every way I've ever treated or felt about another person all suck. People in general suck. All my possessions are garbage. I'm out of shape and tired all the time. My meditation practice doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. I can't trust myself or anyone else to come up with any practical suggestions, because we all have our own selfish, misguided agendas, and they all conflict with each other, as evidenced by the messed up modern world we are in the process of destroying by desperately clinging to it.

Never shoulda had that nap.

Gotta Run

Pop Explosion's on in full force now. No time to chat. Tonight I'm going to see Husband & Knife open for Jon McKiel and Ghostkeeper. Tomorrow is Wet Denim, Chad VanGaalen, Moonsocket, No Joy, and Besnard Lakes. Tuesday I played with The Reference Desk, opening for Quivers and Obits. We played well and sold a couple of records. Wednesday I watched Andy McDaniel play in an art gallery. I have a plastic Artist bracelet that gets me into everything but wakes me up at night when it scratches my face. But who needs sleep anyway when there's so much rock to be enjoyed? Fun times!

A Short Birthday Story

I found this one on an old cassette this evening. My sister, Dana, complains to me on tape (remember when people used to send each other tapes through the mail? I got this one my first year away at university. Seems impossibly quaint now...) about how our younger sister, Erika, got her in trouble the night before. Erika turned 40 today. Happy birthday, Er!



Gives you an idea of the kind of crap she has quietly put up with her whole life as the youngest sibling. Alison remarked this summer that Erika is the least complaining person she's ever met, and when I think about it, it just might be true.

I was actually looking for the tape where Eri plays a radio DJ who sings along with the entirety of Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69," not realizing that the mic is on. Funny stuff. But I don't seem to have it anywhere. Maybe someone could send me a copy?

Post-a-Day Ends Here

I guess? It seems?

Too much fun stuff happening over the weekend to have time to write. If 1 picture = 1,000 words, are three pictures worth two missed blog posts?

Obviously, I went for a hike at Blomidon with Alison. Saturday afternoon was really nice for it. We tromped around for about three and a half hours and caught the Valley's beautiful fall colours just before they disappear.

Then I tromped around all night with Amber, catching Nocturne, Halifax's version of Toronto's Nuit Blanche. Well, I tromped; Amber wheeled. We went literally all over the city, even to Dartmouth, looking for fabulous art spectacles and hidden gems. Unfortunately, I have no photos of that to show you, because we never found any. The whole event was a pretty major letdown. I remember it being really fun and mind-expanding and inspiring the first couple of years they held it, but every year it seems to get a little worse. Lots of businesses putting advertisements in their windows and installations that looked like they were done by a third-grader who ran out of time and/or interest.

Oh well, we managed to have fun anyway, weaving a wheelchair through the hordes of philistines. Got home late and stayed in bed the entire next day with pizza, coffee, Project Runway, and The Seventh Seal. It was quite heavenly, and my legs thanked me for the rest.

Now I'm back in high-hecticity mode, trying to get January's issue of the magazine finished up at work and preparing for tomorrow night's Pop Explosion show with The Reference Desk. Meg is frighteningly ill with the flu, too sick even to practise tonight. If she can't manage it tomorrow, Kristina and I might have to go back to being a two-piece for the night — an unsavoury proposition, I don't mind telling you.

Supermarket Spleen

On the way home from work this evening, I found myself in line at the grocery store checkout in a very cranky mood. Tired, I guess, and I'm having a hard time getting all the stupid administrative work done that I have to do lately. Feels like people are constantly forcing me to do little things that there's no reason they can't do themselves except that they don't want to and don't care if that means I end up having to do them.

So, usually in this kind of social situation I would try to maintain some kind of a decent mood for the sake of my fellow shoppers, who I'm sure have enough problems of their own without having the emotional byproduct of my day inflicted on them. Or I'd at least try to experience what the mood feels like without getting drawn into acting on it, while cultivating an attitude of empathy toward the strangers around me.

But today I felt like allowing the crankiness to have its way with my mind. Just let it go on a rampage and see what happens. It seemed like it could actually be entertaining. I began looking at all the stupid and ugly people in the store and judging them super harshly, no holds barred.

One jerk totally shoved his way into line in front of another idiot who couldn't figure out which tabloid she wanted to read. Meanwhile, a yuppy asshole was making business deals on his cellphone in front of the frozen pizzas, thinking we were all impressed by how oblivious he was to the hoodied loser couple he was preventing from buying their loser dinner. I started making up really nasty nicknames for all these characters.

And you know what? It was fun. I actually had to smile at the depth of my own cruelty. It's pretty amusing how mean you can get just from a trivial bad mood, if you let yourself. By the time I got to the checkout, I was smiling and feeling pretty friendly. The clerk and I had a nice conversation, and I didn't even want to wring his neck. Maybe sometimes it's best just to let anger work its way through you until it becomes transmuted into something more socially acceptable.

So thanks for the lesson, Punched-In Baby Face, Heroin Housewife, and Wannabe Barenaked Lady. I wish you all well and hope you find what you're looking for.

Good Times in the Maritimes

Oh, man, this weekend can't come fast enough. I am so worn out from this stupid cold. The coughing keeps me awake all night and tires me out all day. Tonight I had a Reference Desk band practice and found out that loud singing is one of the best ways to turn an occasional throat clearing into an uncontrollable hack session. Sorry, Meg and Kristina. I'm hoping my voice will be recovered in time for our Pop Explosion show on Tuesday.

But I'm also looking forward to the weekend because it promises to be super fun. Tomorrow night Alison and I go to see our housemate, Claire, play oboe in a small orchestra backing up one of my favourite local singers, Gianna Lauren. Saturday morning we'll get a car-share car and go for a drive and a hike to see the Nova Scotia autumn leaves. Then it's back into the city for dinner and Nocturne with Amber. I'll wheel her around to check out all the art, then we'll have a sleepover and spend some nice time together on Sunday. Weather's supposed to be very cooperative.

Yup, it's a pretty sweet life, if you can keep from keeling over.

Possible Omen

Today I saw a squirrel spontaneously fall out of a tree. I was talking to Alison out the window when it happened. She was wearing her bike helmet, getting ready to ride over to our friend Krista's place. A man and his young daughter were also there, having stopped strolling down the sidewalk to talk to me and Dave's cat through the open window. So there were plenty of witnesses, is I guess what I'm saying.

The squirrel fell about two stories and landed with a splat on the road behind the little girl. Then it got up, looked around, shook itself off a little, and scampered back up the tree it had just fallen from. It might have fallen from one of the power lines. I'm not sure. I'd never seen anything like that before. But it definitely happened.

Another guy happened by too, right afterwards, and he was laughing and shaking his head. It was one of those weird, friendly, apocalyptic, deus-ex-machina neighbourhood moments that crop up in magic-realist novels and bad horror movies. But it really happened. I swear.

New Beck!

I heard a Beck song I'd never heard before in a coffee shop today. Of course I got all excited that he had put out a new album without my hearing about it. (The last thing resembling an album I'd heard of him putting out, since 2008's underrated Modern Guilt, was some collection of songs that existed only as sheet music. An interesting idea, but I could never be bothered to invest the time learning to play them just to find out what Beck songs might sound like if Beck had his less talented cousin record them.) Unfortunately, there turned out not to be any such new album yet.

However. The good news is that:

a) Beck has a new acoustic album in the works (maybe returning to the stripped down anti-folk of One Foot in the Grave, oh please, oh please?),

b) he has released three separate singles over the past few months that don't seem to be preview tracks from said album (seeing as they're decidedly electric in nature), the second of which was the one I heard today, and

c) they're all really good.

Did other people know about this? Why had no one alerted me? I really gotta start paying more attention.

Tunage to Taste Tom Tofurkey to

I'm sitting in Alison's kitchen right now with her and her roommate, Claire. We're waiting for our Housewide Thanksgiving dinner to be ready. I don't know why, but every year the roasted vegetables part of the meal takes way longer than we expect. You're supposed to be able to put a bunch of root veggies in the pan with the Tofurkey, covered in juice, and have them cooked and ready at the same time as the "bird." But we always forget that it never turns out that way, and then end up scrambling to think of ways to finish off the potatoes and carrots and parsnips quickly.

So now we're all sitting around the table, listening to the terrible song choices Songza comes up with while the vegetables sit in a pan under a hot broiler, giving off smoke that smells weirdly like plastic. We had been listening to a Nina Simone CD, and then some Nick Drake, but finally Claire realized we were all looking silently at the floor and generally feeling like all the life had been sapped out of us. Internet music to the rescue!

The "Dad-approved" playlist for dysfunctional family dinners started out OK with some Joni Mitchell, but it quickly devolved into Don Henley, Peter Gabriel, and the Doors. We've been taking turns hitting the "next" button. It's kind of fun, I guess, like The Gong Show.

Now if we can just get some food on the table, this dinner'll be perfect.

New Favourite Record

Yesterday after work I went to the record store to pick up a few things I'd been meaning to grab for awhile. Sebadoh's new album and Cousins' split EP with Construction & Destruction, to be precise. But while I was there, I noticed this old Ravi Shankar album and decided I needed some more of that guy in my collection. And so far, it's been the record of the long weekend over here.

My roommate, Dave, has gone camping till Sunday night, so I have the place to myself for a couple of days. I haven't spent much time at home lately, so it's a nice feeling to lounge around in the Saturday sunshine, drink some coffee, work on a crossword, and enjoy these simultaneously mellow and exciting ragas. A perfect weekend, IMHO.

The Sebadoh's just OK, by the way. And the Cousins is on neat blue vinyl, but kind of sounds like crap.

Performance

So, remember that blog post where I complained about how awful it can feel to fake your way through a musical performance when you're just not hearing the sound right, even if you can tell the audience is enjoying it? Well, Good Old Neil just spoke to me very succinctly about that very subject, via the book of his I mentioned I'm reading. Check this out:

It is a lonely job out there performing. I have to do it because I always have. I probably always will. I love the music part. I like it when the sound is right and the audience is into it and the music is relevant. If one of those elements is missing, you are screwed. You are killing yourself slowly. You need all three elements.

I love that guy.

That's still a very germane subject to me, because I'm playing a show with Psychic Fair tomorrow night for the first time in awhile. And it's in a weird space that's a sort of half-assed art gallery in the back room of an oddball consignment store. (Plan B on Gottingen, if you're in Halifax and able to attend — opening for Scribbler.) Who knows what the sound will be like in there? Well, unfortunately, I have a feeling I do... But anyway, I don't have to sing or anything complicated like that, at least.

That will come a couple of Tuesdays from now, when The Reference Desk plays the Halifax Pop Explosion. Gotta get this cold out of my system before then. That show's at stinky old Gus' Pub, so I'll be plenty familiar with the setup and sound, but still, you always want to be on top of your game for the HPX crowds. There's a real excitement that permeates the whole festival, what with all the out-of-town musicians to check out and hobnob with and whatnot.

Plus, that will be the official on-sale date for our split seven-inch with Beached Out. Kristina put the two tracks that constitute our side of the record on our Bandcamp site today. Take a listen, if you feel so inclined.

Stuff I'm Reading

Hey, I skipped a day. So what? What are you gonna do about it? Yeah, that's what I thought... I can take days off whenever I feel like it — nothing wrong with that, he argued against no one.

For instance, I took the day off work today. I've come down with that cold I was fighting. Burning a lot of candles at a lot of ends, and it's catching up with me. E.g., I didn't have time to blog yesterday.

But so today I stayed in bed, ate some soup, worked on a new song, answered easy work emails, slept, and started reading Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young's book that came out last year. So far, it's just a rambling, conversational bunch of reminiscences from his 65-year life, plus some depictions of his daily life while he's working on the book. In other words, highly compelling stuff, if you're a big Neil Young fan. Which I am.

I'm also in the middle of Martin Amis's Lionel Asbo. It's kind of a return to form for him — preposterous and funny in the same kind of way as London Fields, for instance, rather than ugly like Yellow Dog, limp like Night Train, or morbidly sad like House of Meetings. Self-consciously clever, sure, but that's just what you've got to be in the mood for if you're going to read an Amis novel. So far I've been consistently in the mood.

Finally, The Power of Divine Eros, a new A. H. Almaas book put out by Shambhala Publications, has been blowing my mind for a couple of weeks now. I borrowed it from work, so I'd better try to finish it up, in case someone else wants a crack at it. I was going to try to describe its premise myself, but I find that the back blurb is one of those rare ones that express exactly what the book is about:

What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it.

Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path — that pursuing desire will take you more into the egoic world. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. Wanting is experienced as self-centered. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the erotic and the divine are separate. When we open to the energy, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it holy and sacred. Thus desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness.

The authors reveal how our relationships become spiritual opportunities to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, we can learn to be real and alive in all our interactions.

If it's not apparent from the description, it's not just about convincing you through reason that the two kinds of love are actually one, but about helping you find the place within yourself where you can feel that to be the case. Great stuff!

Hollywood Hot Property Ryan Gosling Predicts his Upcoming Film Will Do Well at the Box Office

Went to see The Spectacular Now tonight with Alison before a late Psychic Fair rehearsal, from which I've just returned. The movie's a nice coming-of-age story with some understated acting that keeps you guessing at the depth of the characters' emotional denial. Tension builds very slowly, till you're almost grateful when it finally explodes more than two thirds of the way through. Kind of reminiscent of The Loneliest Planet in that way, though with more dialogue and action, fewer panoramic vistas.

But what is up with that woman who narrates the entire "preshow"? Bonnie Laufer of Tribute "magazine" "reports" the most uninteresting celebrity "news" imaginable, relentlessly, for half an hour before the movie starts. (Sorry for all the scare quotes, but really, who is actually supposed to enjoy this industry self-congratulation besides the celebrities' publicity agents? The commercials for cars and cellphone carriers, when they arrive, are literally a relief.)

Maybe the preshow would be less offensive if it weren't packaged as added-value entertainment, presented as though the audience is being rewarded for showing up early. But then there's that voice... I can't even describe how unpleasant it is to listen to. Bonnie Laufer activates cringe muscles I didn't know I had. She reads copy as if it physically pains her and the only enjoyment she can wring from her job is to cause as much suffering in the listener as she herself is experiencing. If Fred Allen was said to have a face for radio, Bonnie Laufer has a voice for newspaper!

Short on Hours, Long on Intentions

Ah, forgot to blog yesterday. I just can't figure out how to fit in all the things I want to do in a day. And with the days getting shorter, I find myself wanting to spend more and more time here:

This is what it looked like when I walked home from work yesterday. Sun's almost down already!

I guess that's what happens every year. I really should be used to it by now. Anybody ever tried one of those SAD lamps? Seems like they could be a good way to keep energy levels up in the dark days around Christmas. But then maybe sitting under them becomes one more thing you have to try to squeeze into your waking hours. Maybe I should just start sleeping in a tanning bed.

Bixby Says Relax

I don't want to jinx it, but I'm going to make an early-results call that what felt like a cold yesterday is being successfully defeated. [Editor's Note: I jinxed it. See Thursday's post above.] Cold FX seems to be doing the trick (thanks, Mom). Plus plenty of R 'n R (both kinds).

I haven't had a proper night's sleep in probably three weeks, so I'm sure that has had a lot to do with my general bodily rundown and now (further) messed up lower back. But last night I got a good nine or ten hours, thanks to a sleeping pill. And today has been spent brunching, walking around in the sunshine, and generally doing a lot of nothing with Amber. Just what the doctor ordered.

Now we're going to watch a Bergman movie and eat some Amber-made gluten-free pizza before I head home to hit the hay early. Gotta stay on top of my game for the Psychic Fair show next weekend, plus finishing those Reference Desk vocals from yesterday. And then the Halifax Pop Explosion's coming up fast, starting on the 22nd. That'll be the Ref. Desk split 7" official release date. Busy times, but lots of fun.

Days on Tape

The Reference Desk spent all day at Charles's recording studio today, cranking through five songs. Well, one of them still needs the vocals finished on it, because I couldn't reach the high notes by the end of the day. (Think I might be getting a cold, actually. Meg seems to have one.) But otherwise, we got everything tracked. I'm convinced it sounds better than our last set of recordings.

It was a really nice way to spend the day. Charles is such a great guy to hang out with and really good at his job. He always gets the best possible performances out of people by making the whole process relaxing and fun.

I guess we'll probably put the songs up on Bandcamp or something when they're all mixed and stuff. So, yeah, watch for that.

Fear-Go-Round

OK, well, I found out today that my job description won't be having as much added onto it as had been initially threatened. I still have to take on all the ad tracking for two magazines, plus place all the ads in one magazine's layout, plus design the classified-style directory for that magazine, all of which used to be the advertising department's responsibilities. But at least the powers that be are going to buy an expensive piece of software that forces advertising clients to preflight their own ads, meaning that they won't get through to me unless everything is hunky dory for printing, meaning I won't be having to troubleshoot and contact the clients whenever something is wrong.

Still... All these new roles are going to take up about a quarter of my working hours. That's a pretty significant redefinition of my job, a mere five months after I accepted it. I really wish someone had acknowledged that these are not exactly kosher demands, either asking my permission or at least apologizing about it. The whole thing was handed to me very straightforwardly and out of the blue, with a sort of defensive attitude that I should be expected to do all the production work, since the word 'production' is in my job title (having been added in after I took the job), and, besides, another person who once did my job used to do all this stuff (it drove her crazy and caused an incredibly expensive error to happen).

But what I wish most is that I had the courage to express these bad feelings to the people who have saddled me with them, instead of just saying OK and quietly moping around. Why does someone else's cowardice bring out my own? Why can't I see the angry look in someone's eye defying me to bring up the subject they really, really don't want me to bring up, and bring it up regardless? Being a chicken about emotional expression is very frustrating. And exhausting!

Why Cats Rule the Internet

1. Cute.
2. Unpredictable.
3. Seem to express some recognizably human emotions.
4. Never post rude comments or photos of their children/meals.
5. Never blog when they have nothing to say.
6. Clever hashtaggers.

News & Entertainment

I am so tired tonight, and really without a theme to write about. My work situation is still ongoing. I'm hoping to find out more tomorrow or Friday about exactly what extra work I'm going to have to take on permanently. It may be doable, but I really don't like the way this whole thing has played out.

Last night I went to see Don Jon with Amber. It was not bad. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a trashy New Jersey normal joe sex addict who objectifies a new woman every night until he meets Scarlett Johansson and thinks he's in love. It's surprisingly coarse and digs deeper than you'd think a mainstream movie would into the intertwined problems of gender roles, sex, pop culture, porn, and the romantic ideal. But not really that deep, in the end... Still, lots of fun. JoGo has no limits to his range, it seems.

Finally, the October issue of KC Spidle's new hip coffee-shop read, Concrete News, will be hitting the counters very soon. I've got a record review in this one, and there's a very short horror story for Hallowe'en. I'm just about to proof Meg's excellent layout so it can go to press tomorrow. Can't wait to read the new "Yeah Right" comic!

Unfortunate Opinions Delivered Unfortunately

Yesterday I got an email from a woman who hasn't talked to me for six months. She's been nursing a grudge. We had a falling out when I told her I didn't want to sleep with her anymore.

She had always claimed to value the unromantic nature of our relationship and to be my friend above all else, but that turned out not to be the case when it became all I wanted. I was angry and hurt when she cut off all communication, but I decided to just give her all the time she needed to process her own hurt feelings. Maybe she would eventually see that there was no need to feel wronged by me and attempt some kind of reconnection, which I would gladly accept.

I thought that was what was happening when I got an email from her yesterday, titled "Useful Information." But instead, it was just a link to this feminist rant about how men need to behave if they are to call themselves feminists. I guess it's been making the rounds on Facebook. It's actually not a bad article, though a bit preachy and second-wavy. "Guys, if you say you're a feminist, you'd better stop following The Rules and follow these rules I just made up instead." That sort of thing.

Anyway, whatever the article's merits, the question of whether anyone thinks I do or do not deserve any particular label is of zero interest to me. And given that this woman knows that about me, I can't understand why she would break half a year's willful silence just to tell me that not wanting to have sex with her means I can't call myself a feminist.

For the record, though, here's what I think about this sort of I'm-a-woman-so-I-get-to-say-what-feminism-is-and-you-have-to-listen-because-you're-a-dude polemic:

If your brand of feminism, or any other social cause, includes the doctrine, "People of my group are born into a position of victimhood by the nature of the culture we live in, so people of your group must learn to be aware that you control my feelings and adjust your actions accordingly," you're not doing anyone any good. You will never change anything. Only an adult who has a nuanced understanding of what it means to be a human being and to love without need — who, therefore, claims responsibility for her own emotional state — can claim to be working towards greater equality and understanding among all people.

10/02 Addendum: I realized later (/was made to realize) that the above paragraph sounds like typical white privileged male, what-is-wrong-with-feminism, blinkered thinking. While I stand firm on all these points, I also understand that some talk about the realities of almost universal female oppression and the dire need for deeper male self- and cultural exploration would have given my points about fatalism vs. individual psychological freedom a more balanced context. 

It's also probably true that my criticisms are 100% about the reasons I received that article and 0% about it's content. I.e. I don't necessarily disagree with any of the author's points about how men's behaviour can be problematic; I just don't think I've done any of those things.

Finally, I get that this whole post comes off as bitter and petty. Please feel free to apply its title to the post itself, as well as the story related therein. Thanks.

Split Singles are Done!

These beauties came in last week, and Kristina and I put a bunch of them together over the weekend. 50 are being shipped out in various promotional directions, and the rest will be on sale as of October 22, just in time for our Halifax Pop Explosion show.

Gong Bath!

Last night I went to a very weird "show" with Amber, called a "gong bath." It was presented by an Australian couple. They stood on a stage in front of about 75 adults sitting or lying on yoga mats and spouted a lot of new age kookiness about water having memory, objects in the universe each possessing their own unique vibration, and cell membranes opening to let toxins out and good vibrations in. The presentation was meant to be some kind of healing ceremony, although most of the people in the audience looked perfectly healthy already.

The first half of the presentation consisted of "toning," where everyone was asked to close their eyes, imagine blue light, and send healing intentions toward people they love as they allowed vocal tones to escape them on their relaxed out-breath. A kind of unguided chanting, in other words. Some of that was starting to sound pretty cool before a few women began singing actual melodies with foreign words they had learned. I'm not sure why they did that — the Australians had told us beforehand that the idea was definitely not to sing — but it really ruined the chaotic power of the drone, at least to my ears.

However, that power was brought back tenfold in the second half of the evening's performance. This was the gong bath proper. The Australians faced six different-sized gongs out toward the audience. We were told that the gongs were "tuned to the planets." I don't know what that meant. This time we were all instructed to lie down and close our eyes, imagining a purple light bathing us and everything else in its glow. At least, I think that's what they said. I was having a hard time hearing them from the back of the auditorium, which was probably a good thing.

After some more mumbo jumbo in which they quoted Albert Einstein to bolster their spurious understanding of quantum physics (even though Einstein notoriously rejected quantum theory right up to his death), they started to play the gongs. And they were really good at it. The different sizes were hit at different times with different intensities, their semichaotic sound waves allowed to interact with each other in surprising and often overpowering ways. Sometimes the gongs were rubbed for an extra eerie effect. The whole thing sounded something like this.



I don't mind telling you, I saw that purple light and had a lot of strange visions besides. I also became very aware of my entire body, then my mind, then dissociated from either of them, then aware of everyone in the room, then identical to everyone in the room, and finally identical to the sound itself. It was incredibly psychedelic and mystical. Plus, it was just an intensely enjoyable experience on a musical level. Well worth the ticket price and the baloney-tolerating.

OK, One More Story...

... and maybe this can count as Saturday's post, as it's well after midnight now. I was just turning out the light and getting into bed after finishing the previous post, when I heard someone outside calling my name. But they sounded kind of far away, so I decided it must be a coincidence and ignored it.

Then it continued, much closer now. It was either a woman or a man with a high-pitched voice. They kept calling, "Andrew! Andrew!" over and over. I turned on the light again. The shouting continued. It was kind of creeping me out, because I didn't recognize the woman's (or possibly man's) frantic voice. But I was also starting to think they really must be calling up to me from the street, so I forced myself to go to the window.

When I opened the curtain, at first I couldn't see anything because it was dark outside. But then I noticed some movement on the sidewalk under my window. It looked like someone crouching or maybe crawling around. The voice continued to call my name. Now I was really getting seriously creeped out.

Suddenly, I realized that what I was looking at was a large dog. The disembodied voice said, "Andrew! Get over here right now!" And the dog trotted obediently up the sidewalk and out of sight.

Good night.

Making Language Strange

Alison and I went to see a really great dance performance tonight by a group called Liquid Loft. The piece was titled "Running Sushi," and was "about" manga and the Superflat movement in Japanese art. A lot of the short scenes that made it up relied on the two dancers syncing their movements incredibly precisely with recorded sound effects and spoken word bits. Very impressive and hilarious and evocative. Go and see it, if you have a chance. Here's what some of it was like:



But anyway, so then we watched the latest episodes of Project Runway and New Girl, and now it's too late for any kind of substantial wordiness. My fallback position when I don't have much to say is to post some kind of Smiths video, and luckily Amber just sent me this perfect one, so enjoy.

The Wheel Giveth...

I got some bad news at work today. It looks like my dream job may not be such a dream anymore, as it's about to have half of another person's job added onto it indefinitely. I'm quite bummed about it. The new role is really not the kind of work I like doing, it's going to significantly eat into the amount of time I can spend on the work I was hired for, the relaxed mental space I've been enjoying will become overtaxed, and the way the whole handoff went down seems surprisingly opaque and deceptive. Maybe it's some kind of Buddhist lesson in karma. I get that everything is impermanent and that pain and pleasure come and go in cycles. I guess I just expected the pleasure to last a little longer than this.

Same Time Tomorrow

I have full dental coverage at work now, so I finally went to get my teeth cleaned today for the first time in about six years. Ironically, dental coverage is the reason why it needed to be done in the first place. Ha. But seriously...

I have a new dentist, and she seems really sensible and sensitive. She filled a cavity at the top of my left front tooth on Monday, and the only painful part of the entire procedure was at the beginning, when she poked around, asking, "Does this hurt?"

The hygienist who did the cleaning today was a little more on the rough, scoldy side, but she was generally nice too. There was a bit of passive aggressive reiteration early on that my mouth's condition could be a lot worse, given how long I had let things go. And I got a lesson in flossing that was slightly humbling. But two thirds of my teeth are now spotless, the other third being finished tomorrow. I guess they don't like to have you in the chair for more than an hour at a time. I know I certainly wouldn't want to scrape away at someone else's disgusting fangs for longer than that.

There was a local CBC radio show on the whole time I was in there. I was trying not to listen to it, but the subject matter was just too inflammatory to ignore. It was one of those call-in shows where people are encouraged to indulge their knee-jerk reactions to ethical matters that are usually complex enough to be ill-served by such treatment, and, moreover, already settled.

Today's topic was the recent firing of three Toronto firefighters over some incredibly violent expressions of sexism they posted on social media sites. The posts were in response to Toronto Fire Services' attempts to recruit more women. There was a lawyer sitting in with the host, explaining how these were perfectly reasonable and legal dismissals, given the public nature of both the firemen's service role and their chosen forum for flouting their employers' socially responsible policy.

But most of the calls were from people saying things like, "It's none of my employer's business what I do in my spare time. That's my private life." The lawyer would point out that the hateful statements in question were not in fact private, but public, and therefore a legitimate concern to the Fire Services with respect to their estimation in the eyes of a public that needs to feel protected by them. Then, the next caller would say, "For my employer to go out of his way to look at what I'm doing in my own private time and then fire me for it is going too far. It's an abuse of technology and power."

Some people also made a case that Facebook sucks.

Because I had sharp poky things wedged into the crevices of my mouth, I mostly had to satisfy myself with a lot of eye rolling. But I couldn't help letting out a "Guh!" or a "B'cark!" every once in awhile. At first, the hygienist was alarmed and wondered how she had hurt me. But we quickly worked out a code where I would point to the radio with my thumb. Then she would nod and say, "These same people say the same dumb things every day." Then I would say, "Ee ull," and we'd roll our eyes together. It was kind of a nice way to spend my lunch hour.

The Sound of One Fan Clapping

Psychic Fair have started having weekly jam sessions on Tuesday nights. I just got home from one, and it's super late, so no trip to Wordland for you tonight. But here's an iPhone recording of one of the proto-songs we worked on.

Signs of a Healthier Culture to Come

We have a new advice columnist at what passes for a newspaper in this city, The Chronicle Herald. She's surprisingly readable. I've been noticing her sensible wit for a few weeks now, impressed with the way she eschews popular etiquette for a more thoughtful ethics. Then, this weekend, she won me over completely with her response to a woman looking for confirmation that it was about time her boyfriend asked her to marry him. Check it out — and see if you can refrain from cheering as Angela Mombourquette puts Put a Ring on It in her place.

That piece tied in really nicely with this book I've been reading lately, Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships, by Meg Barker. It's a general appeal to anyone who's ever had a meaningful other to try and see what's best for ourselves and our relationships in any given situation, rather than falling back on the clichéd and often terrible scripts our culture would have us stick to. Split into chapters on attraction, love, sex, gender, monogamy, conflict, break-up, commitment, and oneself, it manages to question a large pile of received wisdom without either preaching new rules or leaving the reader adrift.

I was thinking a lot about these issues last night when Alison and I watched a fairly new rom-com called Celeste and Jessie Forever. It's about a married couple who separate but maintain an intimate friendship, and the challenges that precarious position presents. Often the challenges have to do with the perceptions of well-meaning friends or coworkers who can't understand the relationship, because it doesn't fit into any of their prefab boxes.

One couple of friends goes so far as to "break up" with the eponymous pair, because they can't stand watching them delude themselves and each other by not moving on with their lives. We paused the movie at that point to talk about what jerks those "friends" were, and compare the situation to experiences we'd had where acquaintances seemed to feel the need to choose between us after we started seeing other people and stopped living together. And there were even some cases where we were pretty sure folks just started avoiding both of us, because the whole situation just seemed too weird or maybe potentially volatile for their comfort.

Then this morning, as I waited at the dentist's office to get a cavity filled, I read this passage in the chapter on break-ups. Funny how these things can suddenly align themselves:

"[W]hen there is only one way of seeing things available to us then, however much we want to do things otherwise, we can feel forced into a corner. For example, when things become difficult in a relationship, we might try to think and talk about how we could shift it into a form which would work better. However, if all that surrounds us are the mainstream rules, we will feel pressure to read such conversations as break-ups. Other people in our lives will assume that, for example, moving out of shared accommodation, spending less time together, or deciding not to be sexual any more, equates to having broken up, even if other aspects of the relationship (such as emotional closeness or shared goals) have remained the same. Despite our best intentions, others may then feel that they have to take sides, deciding which of us to support and which of us to blame, and that puts further pressure on us to feel that we are breaking up."

Well, That Was a Nice One

As well as being the first day of fall, today was also the last day of softball. Very symbolic. Here's Dave "Snowy" striking out and Matt "McMuscle" getting ready to pound one. Our team's position looked good this morning going into the playoffs, as we only had to beat two teams we had beaten earlier in the season to make it into the final game.

But we narrowly lost our 11:30 game, which put us straight into the consolation round for fifth place at 4:30. At least that second game was a lot of fun, since we got to play our favourite team, and neither of us cared at all who won. In fact, I showed up to find that about 90% of my team had just finished ingesting some special cookies that Gerry "Medical Marijuana" had brought. Good times.

After ball, I went to the Atlantic Superstore for some groceries, and something very unnerving was going on in there. Over the ceiling speakers that usually broadcast terrible dance pop hits or eighties' power ballads, this weird triptych of my youth's touchstones played, in order. Did Gerry get there before me and hand out some of his treats to the staff?

Unconscious Fun

I just found out today about this kind of awesome record from 1964. It's a spoken-word recording of a guy talking in his sleep. It reminded me that my sister Dana — who shared a room with my other sister, Erika, when we were kids — used to force Erika to talk to her as she was drifting off to sleep, with sometimes weird and hilarious results. A normal conversation would suddenly veer into surreal or nonsensical territory, while Erika's tone always remained perfectly reasonable (if a little irritated at being kept partially awake).

You can hear one of the shorter tracks from this album here. Sort of sounds like a lost Captain Beefheart track.

And here's a description of the album's origin, taken from the blog where I downloaded it:

"Dion McGregor was a homeless gay bohemian from NY. He wanted to be a songwriter for Broadway musicals, and while waiting for his big break in show business, he couch-surfed with his friends, lovers, and acquaintances. One of his hosts was fascinated with Dion's habit of talking in his sleep and attempted to document it. This LP compiles several recordings of Dion McGregor narrating his dreams. This isn't just mumblemumble, though — these are clearly articulated stories with dialog and all. A few of them border on nightmares and often end with the speaker waking up with a muffled scream. You can hear New York street noises in the background, as he slept by an open window.

"This record came out in 1964, and was accompanied by a book of transcriptions with illustrations by Edward Gorey (who also did the cover art for the record). Two more recordings came out recently, containing the stories which were deemed inappropriate for publication in 1960s."

Backpat

Hey, the November issue of the Shambhala Sun is available online now. You can check it out here, although it costs money to actually download the whole thing. But I think it turned out really great. The cover's metallic gold, I got some beautiful and shocking feminist art in there, and I got to design one of the long features — on modern comedy and its similarities to Buddhist principles.

That article discusses the work of a lot of contemporary comedians, including Louis C.K. Coincidentally, I just saw this clip of him on Conan, in which he says some pretty explicitly Buddhist stuff about cellphones and his kids. Thanks for the cross-promotion, Louis! On newsstands October 1.

Post-a-Day Starts Here

OK, I'm figuring out that I'm just not going to keep this blog going at all unless I make some kind of commitment to it I can actually keep. So, I'm just going to write something every day for awhile and see how that goes. Seems potentially easier than saving stories up and then trying to find the time to express them properly.

Here's today's news, then.

I left for work early this morning so I could put air in the back tire of my bike. Earlier in the week, I'd taken it over to Amber's new place in the city (hooray!), and when I rode it home in the morning, the tire was really soft (boo!). Like, there was basically no air in it at all. That meant I had to take the number 80 bus with the super cranky driver — who never returns my greetings and has the most unkempt beard I've ever seen on an employed person and smells like a sponge — every morning this week till I finally had a chance to refill the tire, which chance happened to be today.

The thing is, I expected the air to just leak out again pretty quickly, as it obviously had a puncture somewhere. I figured I might at least get downtown on it OK and then have to refill it at the end of the day. But weirdly, when I rode the bike home eight hours later, the tire was still as solid as when I'd filled it up.

Did one of Amber's neighbours let the air out of my tire? And, if so, why? It was locked in her garage, so it's really just the three other people living in her building who would have access to it. Amber thinks I'm being paranoid, but how else could this have happened? I'll see how the tire feels tomorrow morning, and if it's rideably firm, I'm going to be checking out her new housemates very carefully.

I guess if this story were to be mapped onto the lyrics of a Smiths song (and, really, why shouldn't it be?), we'd have to cast the hirsute number 80 bus driver as This Charming Man. Is it possible that his crankiness and general lack of charm are just a cover for the fact that he's in love with me and can't figure out, when I wish him a good morning, how to say something smooth like, "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care" without stammering? Could he actually be one of the tenants in Amber's building, and did he get so frustrated by his lovesick speech impediment and angered by my continuing relationship with her that he vandalized my only means of transport in order to get me into/onto his charming car/turf/bus, where we could finally have a proper chat about rings and smooth leather? And, if all that is the case, why did he angrily pull away from the curb yesterday when I tried to get on, disappearing into morning traffic while I continued to hold out my unused ticket?

The whole thing is a real mystery...