Still Winter, I Guess

Just when it seemed like spring had arrived...



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

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

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

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

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

Seriously, I want to know.

- Andrew

Greatthanksandyouokseeya!

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

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

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

Gotta go now. Told ya.

- Andrew

Exhausted, Excited, and Maybe a Little Crazy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Andrew

What Are You Eating Under There?

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

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

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

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

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

- Andrew

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

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

Culchah Consumah

I've been sick in bed for a few days now. Kind of all week, actually, off and on. Sore throat with an aching, hot/cold fever. Could be strep again; I find out tomorrow. I guess that means I have plenty of time to update this blog. But frankly, it feels like I don't have much to tell you and I've just been enjoying the first season of Project Runway on YouTube so much that I haven't felt like doing anything else. But I finally saw the end of it last night.

Is it just because I'm a designer that I get so sucked into that show? Probably not: it's very popular. I guess I could go on at length about what a great show it is... but that would probably be pretty boring.

I will just say that it's so entertaining to watch a contest that's judged on actual creative imagination and ability, where good character can help a competitor deal with a stressful (albeit quite artificial) work environment, instead of hindering his chances of "putting one over" on his competition. And that Tim, the mentor, is one of the most likable people on television. And that I'm in love with Heidi Klum, even though (/because?) she terrifies me.

But actually, there is some other stuff to talk about around here. For instance, I'll be flying to Montreal in a couple of weeks to do this show with spooky indie folk songwriter Laura Borealis. She's recorded an album's worth of duets with various guys, and I did one of them with her. The show will be an exact recreation of the recording, and will also be recorded, as well as filmed. The album will then come out as a double vinyl one, with the studio recordings on the first record and the live show on the second. In other words, I'm flying up on Saturday to sing one song that night, and then flying back Sunday morning. Luckily, it's not on my own dime. I may also do some songs with Al Tuck — who will, hopefully, be there too — as an opener.

Last night I'd planned to go into Halifax after work for a jam session with The Lodge, but I was sick and there was a giant snowstorm going on, and we were only going to be able to play for an hour, so it seemed like a bad idea. But Charles and I have both been working on new material, so I'm really itching to get together and jam it out into something songlike. Meanwhile, our album will be coming out digitally next month, and physically the month after that.

Another pretty interesting thing that's happening is that I've joined a reading group to read and discuss John Ralston Saul's latest book, A Fair Country. Its thesis is that Canada would be less neurotic if it admitted to itself that its main attributes have derived from Métis, and not European, culture. My friend and old etc. Press officemate Alain has started the group because the book was exciting him so much that he needed to talk to people about it. I'd been wanting to read the book anyway, being a Saul fan of quite a few years, so I jumped at the chance. Actually, come to think of it, it was another etc. Press coworker who turned me onto JRS: Matt was reading On Equilibrium and told me a little about it and I was so intrigued that I bought it and quickly devoured it. It's still my favourite. Around that time, CBC was doing its top ten Greatest Canadians thing, and I voted for Saul as the greatest. It was a tough choice between him and Wayne Gretzky. Of course Gretzky made the list and Saul was nowhere to be seen once the tallying had been done. But so anyway, it turns out that JRS will be in Halifax in April to talk at King's College [Maybe he'll come to our little university too? You know the one...], and he's heard about our reading group and wants to somehow meet up with us! And, as Alain is working that night, I'll be one of the people to chat with the author. I hope I don't get starstruck and start talking like a teenage girl on speed, or just stare into space and drool.

I've also lately read This Is Your Brain on Music and Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Both are books which I had pretty much decided in advance what they would be like and by which I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I don't know how I managed to avoid reading the Anne Frank in my youth, but it's really very good. She's so level-headed, and such a good writer for a fourteen-year-old. I can't imagine a girl of that age today writing something that thoughtful and compelling. At first it felt a bit like watching a snuff film, knowing how it would end, but then I realized that all biography shares that feature. The story then becomes not about the ending but about sharing in the experience of the middle part that leads there.

A third recently finished book is David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster. It's a collection of essays, à l'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and is of course fantastic. In particular, the review of an English usage dictionary, which becomes a long meditation on political correctness and prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, had me nailed to my chair for hours and will be photocopied for my dad as soon as I can get it back from Johanna. But I think I've been doing too much non-fiction lately, and need to get back on the fiction horse for awhile. I'll probably start Moby Dick again because it keeps coming up and I was loving it years ago but never finished it. I should also try some more recent novels, to get me out of the "what's-the-point-in-continuing-now" slump I've been in ever since finishing Infinite Jest. I thought Martin Amis's Yellow Dog might pull me out, and it was promising at first, but its unrelenting ugliness eventually bored me into dropping it. Anyone got any suggestions?

This bed is really comfortable. I'm so glad Alison has a laptop. Being sick used to be so boring, when it meant watching soap operas or talk shows about makeovers and B-list celebrities. Instead, I can now watch stressed out designers shine in all their human glory or burn out trying, for hours on end. Or really any other manner of crazy stuff I care to look for. Here are some of the more entertaining random bits that have recently been brought to what I ironically call my attention. Enjoy, while I start in on Season 2.

- Andrew

Happy Valentine's Day, Ali.

And HVD to you too!

- Love, Andrew

Some Illicit Reading

I guess this is probably an abuse of a blog, and it's definitely a violation of copyright, but I just loved this article in the last issue of Believer magazine so much that I wanted to make it available to anyone who cares to read it. It's about the current economic crisis and how it's symptomatic of a systemic problem with capitalism as we currently practise it and is therefore not going to go away anytime soon. I'd never read anyone whose views on the subject were so close to my own, so I got kind of excited. Here you go, if you feel like reading it.

(By the way, the square in the middle of the second page wherein a guy talks about biblical texts is part of an unrelated piece running sporadically through the magazine. Same with the Hamburglar.)





And if you got through that adult portion, here's some dessert: a two-page spread from a book Alison's been reading, called Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir. Much less of a downer.


- Andrew

Five Not Exactly Significant Facts from the Past Week

1. WE'RE ON TWITTER NOW.
Crazy, I know, especially since I still refuse to have anything to do with popular internet selfhood-trivializer, Facebook. Our friend Ron talked us into it. I want to feel more connected to the people I know but don't see very much, without having to get into the whole ego trap of making a profile for myself that tells everyone in the world who I am as defined by my photo-, opinion-, and "friend"-collections. That's what this blog is for (see Fact 3). If you don't know what Twitter is, and actually even if you do, it's pretty much popular internet tool of the devil, Facebook, whittled down to just the status line. You get 140 characters to say what's going on right now, and everyone who is subscribed to you gets an update. And of course you get updates from people to whom you're subscribed. I'm thinking of it as an experiment. We'll see whether it turns out to be useful for valid social connection or just another excuse to be on a lousy computer at all times.

2. I TAUGHT A CLASS OF CA. 30 ENGINEERING STUDENTS HOW TO DESIGN A POSTER.
If you're on Twitter too, you already know this. Their professor had asked me to come in and give them some fundamentals of graphic design, as they were all being asked to produce a poster, aimed at high school students, advertising the benefits of studying engineering. It's for a contest run by Engineers Nova Scotia to promote their cause during National Engineering Month ("January 28, 2009 – March 31, 2009" [sic]). The prize is $100. So, for a hundred bucks, ENS is getting to contract who knows how many designers from across the province and then choose the one poster design they like the best, based on the brief they've given to all of them. Not a bad deal! Plus now some of those would-be designers have been given an hour-long training session in poster design for free from an ACTUAL designer. But anyway, valid complaints aside, it was kind of fun, or at least preparing for it was. The teaching part, I don't know; not really my thing, I don't think. However, even though I didn't really think I'd have much to say, I ended up using the entire time allotted for the class. I'll be interested to see what the kids come up with.

3. I FIGURED OUT HOW TO PUT A PLAYLIST THINGY ON THE BLOG.
Don't know whether anyone noticed it on the right-hand side over there. It comes from iLike. It's kind of cool, I think, although it only plays snippets from each song. But I can very quickly and easily make a mix of stuff I've been enjoying lately (see Fact 5).

4. ALISON CAME DOWN WITH A COLD.
She was out whooping it up till all hours on Wednesday night, then had to work on Thursday, and on Thursday night, while I was preparing for my lecture (see Fact 2), her punishment came a-calling. I'd had some fun plans for us this weekend, so that was kind of a bummer — she's spent most of the weekend in bed drinking grapefruit juice and echinacea tea. We did go for a nice walk in the woods yesterday, then we went immediately to the video store to stock up on laptop-in-bed-watchable movies before coming home. Which leads me to Fact 5:

5. WE WATCHED A MOVIE CALLED WENDY AND LUCY.
It was really good, albeit kind of a bummer. It's directed by the same woman who did Old Joy, which we liked a lot, and again has Will Oldham in it, but just in a minor role. Michelle Williams, of Dawson's Creek fame, plays the former title character, a young vagabond on her way to Alaska. Lucy is her dog. Wendy makes some bad decisions, loses Lucy, and spends the rest of the film trying to find her. It's very slow, quiet, and touching, just like Old Joy. My current playlist is I guess kind of inspired by the mood of the movie, or at least my mood after watching it.

- Andrew

Five Significant Moments from the Past Two Weeks

1. IN A BOLD CHANGE OF RECENT CHARACTER,
the people known as Americans have elected a new leader whom both they and others seem to actually like. Evangelist and vocal homophobe Rick Warren tries to ruin an otherwise stirring and yes I'll admit even sometimes a little tear-inducing inaugural ceremony by delivering a long and vacuous Christian prayer. I'm watching at home during my lunch hour on CNN.com live and they're running a constantly updating feed of comments from people who subscribe to popular internet time-waster Facebook. I wait for the barrage of comments regarding the mixing of personal religion with public government, a definite no-no if we are to believe the words of this country's founders. But it doesn't come. Oh, one guy types, "what evr hapend 2 teh separ8ion of church & st8?" but everyone else pretty much ignores him. Just as my bonhomie begins to fade, the entire country redeems itself when another of its Facebooker asks, "Why does he keep mentioning that Obama's black? Does he think God hasn't noticed?"

2. ONSTAGE AT THE REBECCA COHN AUDITORIUM,
Al Tuck is celebrating the release of his latest CD by playing to an intent and decent-sized audience. The show is being taped for later broadcast on CBC radio. Al is backed by a band of eight musicians, twice as many as usual, and I am the bassist. We are a few songs into the set.

The day has been stressful. I haven't confirmed a ride from Halifax back to Acadia for the next morning, at which latter place I'll be expected at 8:30 am to resume tackling the inhuman amount of work that is waiting on my desk. The sound check earlier this day seemed to go well, but Al was in a sour mood afterward, and none of the band members can say what his thoughts are about the set we have practised, nor predict how faithfully he will stick to it. In fact, it was left undetermined what the first song would be as we all took the stage (ca. 15 minutes ago?), and Al then set the paranoid mood by first fumbling around excruciatingly with his guitar and amp, mostly with his back to the silent audience, and then asking the band to start without him. Playing with Al is always a little chaotic and keeps one on one's musical toes, but that's part of the appeal, at least in theory. However, many of these musicians now under the scrutiny of

a) some very professional, i.e. bright, lighting and
b) a soft-seated crowd comprising an approximately even mix of peers and pre-format-change-CBC-listeners, plus
c) an as yet only imagined and therefore necessarily hostile future audience of post-format-change-CBC-listeners spanning the world's largest country

are not used to this element of chaos and are understandably uneasy.

We have started the next song, and it seems to be settling itself into something resembling a groove, but things could easily go horribly wrong at any moment and everyone in the auditorium is aware of it. Then a strange sound none of us has ever heard before begins to make its presence felt. It's not clear at first what it is, but it is definitely musical. There is a violin involved, and some harmonizing female vocals. It is sad and lonesome, but also urgent and beautiful. It has now gotten a foothold in this psychic and acoustical space, and compels all who hear it to give themselves over entirely and willingly to it. One can feel the swell of hearts, smell the smoke of synapses firing. It is the sound of a swoon. It is a sound transmitted directly from heaven, and I am only dimly aware that part of it is coming through an instrument I hold in my hands. This is what making music is about.

3. WALKING BACK TO KRISTA'S APARTMENT,
where we're spending the night after the above-mentioned Al Tuck show, six of us are being pelted by wind-blown freezing rain that has at some point turned into just plain rain. Our feet are wet and our pants are frozen to our legs as we negotiate the slush-covered skating rink of the Halifax Commons.

As a distraction from this potential misery, I ask Kasia whether she was a fan of the sci-fi television series Space: 1999. Alison and I have recently been watching episodes of it because I remember it from my childhood as much more sophisticated and thought-provoking and somehow religio-philosophically oriented than its cornier sibling, Star Trek (the Shatner one) — which aired in reruns contemporaneously and possibly even on the same day of the week, i.e. Sunday afternoon — even though it, S:1999, turns out in retrospect to be very silly and corny in its own right, plus weirdly static and monochromatic (white) and also kind of unintelligible in its plotlines, which may help to explain, Emperor's-New-Clothes-style, its apparent sophistication, and yet we have still found it to possess an oddly compelling quality that is hard to explain.

Kasia WAS a fan, it turns out, and immediately remembers the episode where there were evil, slimy creatures on Moonbase Alpha that looked kind of like giant versions of the McDonald's "Fry Guys," or at least WOULD have looked like them if anyone could actually have seen them, which they couldn't. The aliens may have squelched their way over people and turned them into puddles of organic goo. Shapeshifter Maya becomes one of the creatures in order to communicate with them, but then finds that she can't change back into her own form. This is pretty much the only episode I remember too. It must have been a particularly scary one.

By the way, has anyone else noticed the dramatic if not measurably exponential increase in complexity and specificity of science fiction television show premises over the years? Viz.

Battlestar Galactica: Robots have turned against their human creators and tried to destroy the entire species, causing the surviving humans to search the universe for the legendary planet Earth, where they will (they hope) finally be left alone to multiply and evolve. In the "re-imagined" later series, further complications are introduced, such as the robots looking exactly like humans and having developed their own culture, including a monotheistic religion.

Space: 1999: An accidental explosion on the moon, Earth's de facto nuclear waste dump in the futuristic year of 1999, sends it and the few humans who had been working on it hurtling aimlessly through space, where they meet with random adventure.

Star Trek: Some humans have decided to explore space, where they meet with random adventure.

Just kind of interesting, is all I'm saying.

4. CANADIAN ROCK HEROES THE SUPER FRIENDZ
are onstage at the bar Tribeca, again in Halifax, playing a reunion show. They are blowing Haligonian minds both young and old, exactly the way they used to in their mid-nineties heyday, mine included. As excited as I have been and am at this moment about the show's rock element, the reunion aspect of it suprises me with its uplifting force. I am REALLY enjoying being surrounded by people I know and love, and this, I realize, is a rarity in Wolfville. Without warning, I find myself briefly but seriously considering the positive benefits of being on Facebook. This thought scares me more than a little, but also forces me to admit that immersion in a tribe of one's choosing is maybe more important than I'd previously noticed.

5. BACK IN WOLFVILLE,
I take a walk in the snowy woods. Two pheasants are scared out of a pine as I approach, and I am subsequently scared by them. Anyone who says the world keeps getting more complicated hasn't looked carefully at the branches of a pine tree. Maybe the real problem (and most seem to agree that there is at least some kind of problem here) is that human culture — which is not subject to the low speed limit on biological evolution, as it can be both transmitted and transmuted within one organism's lifetime — is now approaching the complexity of the natural world from which it has emerged. I'm not sure yet why this would in itself be a problem, as emergent properties generally ARE more complex than their constituent components, but I feel like there is something there. Something to do with nature not being able to keep up with a culture that affects it faster and more systematically than what it has developed responses for, even as that culture is ultimately dependent on the natural system upon which it is wreaking havoc. Anyone got any clever intuitions?

- Andrew

More Pop Culture Recommendations, Because I Don't Actually Have a Life

I just realized that it's been a long time since I put any photos on here. Too bad I don't have any to show you. Alison's got her good camera with her in Halifax tonight, and all that's on the point-and-shoot is a blizzard out the back window. It looks kind of cool because I used a flash to freeze some snowflakes, but I can't find the little USB cord to even be able to show you that one. And come to think of it, Alison probably doesn't have anything of us either, since she's generally not home when I'm here.

She was in Toronto last week for her dad's 75th birthday celebration. Then when she finally got home a bunch of work came in, so she's off for a few days again. She'll be back this weekend, but then I have to go into Halifax for a band practice. This crossing paths periodically is for the birds. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," they say, but I find it's more likely to make the brain grow crazier.

I think I'm forgetting how to relate to people properly, for instance. I was introduced to a very likable member of the Acadia staff today whom I had already met once before. I pointed out that we'd already met, and he excused himself by saying that he meets a lot of people in his job, and for some reason I said, "Don't you remember I'm the guy who called you an asshole to your face?"! I thought it would be funny. I don't really know why. It wasn't.

Anyway, all this solitary time is good for getting stuff done, I guess. Last night I did the front cover artwork for the The Lodge CD that'll be coming out in April. And in sorting through old files, I found this gem that I'd forgotten I designed many months ago, which I planned on making into a T-shirt. Think I'll still do that; it'd be a great one.

I've also been listening to a lot of music, probably because my end-of-the-year list felt so ill-informed. I realized that there are a couple of albums that probably should have made it on there, or if not they were very close. One is the new David Byrne and Brian Eno collaboration, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. It's a collection of pieces Eno had been working on that he then handed over to Byrne to write lyrics and sing over. The songs are harmonically simpler than what David Byrne usually writes himself, and the melodies are catchy and stirring. The words are typical DB fare, i.e. really great, and he sings them as well as he's ever sung, i.e. you'll love it if he doesn't bug the hell out of you.

The other CD that I somehow completely forgot about is Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head. Sounds like a joke, I know. What am I gonna recommend next, the new Hannah Montana klezmer experiment? I think I only checked it out in the first place to hear how much of a trainwreck it was. But it's surprisingly good. She sings in a deep voice with a limited range, somewhat like Nico. A guy named David Sitek produced the album and seems to have done most of the arranging, which is spare and quiet in a spooky, dreamy indie rock kind of way. Sort of like Beach House or something. Maybe I wouldn't have included this in the top ten even if I'd remembered it, and some songs are definitely better than others, but it actually is quite enjoyable, even if, like me, you're a big Tom Waits fan who doesn't relish the idea of someone else trying to interpret such style-dependent music.

Speaking of which, I played some more gamelan music at Ken and Heidi's last night. It's going to be a regular weekly get-together for a small group of devotees. I'm the newest member and still don't know the names of all the funny instruments or the weird rules for deriving parts from the spare score that is given out, but I sure am having fun learning. We would probably sound terrible to a Javanese person, or even anyone with some knowledge of the music, but it sounds fantastic to my exhilarated ears. All bing-bongy and cling-clangy, with lots of counterpoint and weird unresolved heptatonic phrases.

I'll be playing a show with Al Tuck at the Rebecca Cohn on January 28. Have I already mentioned that elsewhere? There'll be an extra large band backing him up and it's all being recorded for CBC radio. Plus, Little Orton Hoggett and the Ten Cent Wings will be opening. I can't wait!

Finally Mad Men: everyone needs to watch this show. You've probably heard about it. People working in advertising in the early sixties? Set aside a few days, because there are two seasons of it, and you won't be able to stop once you start. It's subtle and ambiguous, with lots of great characters and weird unresolved gin-and-tonic tension. I usually am not a fan of the "lovable jerk" archetype, because he is typically either not actually that lovable or not actually that much of a jerk. But these guys all manage to be both sympathetic and completely evil. Cool!

- Andrew

Weird One This Year

Hope everyone had a nice New Year's Eve. We came back to Halifax that day after getting to see some old friends in Toronto, which was really nice but left me a little melancholy. We went to Gus', as planned, to hear The Memories Attack, but unfortunately they weren't headlining as I'd thought, and were in the middle of their penultimate song as we walked in the door. And I don't know why I thought The Maynards were playing that show, but I was wrong about that too. There was a bit of a weird vibe in good ol' Gus', as one of the bartenders there, Peter, had just died a few days earlier, apparently from being hit in the head by a mic stand while breaking up a fight a few days before that. We left early and hung out at Krista's for awhile, wished New Year's Baby Keith a happy birthday before he went to bed, watched the Dick-Clarkless (and therefore lifeless) Times Square countdown, and then trudged through 100 mph whipping snowflakes across the Commons to Johanna's, where I stayed up until six in the morning talking with her about the complexities of human relations.

New Year's Day was spent in our pyjamas watching the entire season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada on MuchMusic. I woke up to Alison and Johanna watching it, complained about it for half an hour, made fun of it for another half an hour, and then got to know all the competitors so well that I had to keep watching to see the outcome. Unfortunately, they didn't show the final episode because the cast of Twilight were coming to "the Much environment" to be interviewed live. Nico won, right?

Here's my top ten album picks for 2008. It's been a terrible year for music. I could barely find ten CDs in my collection that I bought this year. Seven of these ten were purchased in the past month, and three of those in the past week, so this is nowhere near as stellar a list as last year. I know everyone's sick of year-end lists, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

Beck - Modern Guilt
Underrated. It's full of memorable songs that will get not unpleasantly stuck in your head.

Deerhoof - Offend Maggie
A few stinkers on this one, but it's still a good Deerhoof album, which makes it better than most of the other crap out there.

Deerhunter - Microcastles
I didn't want to pay any attention to this band because I already liked Deerhoof (see above) and thought it might just confuse me. But Charles made me buy this album, and I'm glad he did. There are no time signature changes or childlike female vocals, just some beautiful psychedelic shoegaze that sometimes sounds kind of like the Flaming Lips. It's not confusing at all.

Dungen - IV
Maybe a little less hard rock than his previous work. Goes down easy.

Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna
Weird. In a really, really great way. Except for the song where the guy raps. Just skip that one.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth
This guy's always been pretty '80's influenced, but he really took it over the edge on this album. Clean, brittle synths and tragi-romantic themes for your inner miserable teen.

The Memories Attack - S/T 2
Heavy and catchy. A perfect combination. I hear they're great live, too. Sigh.

She & Him - Volume One
I have a crush on Zooey Deschanel's voice, although none of these songs sound as good as her singing in Elf. Maybe because she's not naked in the shower. I hear she just got engaged to the guy from Deathcab for Cutie. I wouldn't get into any black cars if I were her.

Tape - Luminarium
The second Swedish act on this list, but it sounds nothing like Dungen. Mellllloooooowwwww post-rock instrumentals in the vein of Talk Talk or maybe Another Green World-era Eno.

Neil Young - Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968
The latest live album from Neil's vault of archives. Every one in this series is great. Keep 'em coming!

Special mention — most disappointing album of 2008:
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
Blecch.

- Andrew

What Day Is It?

Christmas in Ontario. Despite the terrible weather, Ali and I each got here (on separate days) because we were both on sketchy little turbo-prop Porter airplanes and therefore not subject to the sociopathic whims of the bloated corporate bully that is Air Canada. We've had three separate Christmas dinners and are now looking somewhat bloated ourselves. There's been plenty of time with parents and siblings and kids, and plenty of late nights doing goofy family hangout stuff. Last night we watched School of Rock. Fourth time for me and I still cried. The night before that was a marathon Wii Rock Band session. I "sang" the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage". Frustrating and fun. Now the days are starting to melt together into one big candy-coated, egg-nog-drenched blur.

Tomorrow we're hoping to leave the suburbs and head back into Toronto to visit with some old friends. Then it's back to Halifax for New Year's Eve (whenever that is) at Gus' with The Memories Attack and The Maynards, both of whom have new albums out. Which reminds me, I'd better get to work on the ol' 2008 Top Ten Albums list. Hmm... could be tricky this year. There doesn't seem to be anything from 2008 on my iPod. Not a good sign.

- Andrew

Cookies courtesy of Alison.

Happy Birthday, Jenny!

Holy crap, I forgot to post this two days ago! I totally meant to. I hope it was a nice one. Wish we could see you over Christmas.

- Andrew

Hitting the Road

I finally finished my track for the upcoming Super Friendz tribute compilation! Check it out, for a limited time. First bit of recording I've done in a long while, and almost the last of the loose ends needing to be tied up around here.

Alison's off to Toronto for Christmas tomorrow, and I'll be following the next day. Hope to see some regular Our Blogloo readers while we're there. To everyone else, Merry God-incarnate-mas, and Joyful Solstice!

- Andrew

(Thanks to Peacay at Bibliodyssey.)

Yaw Unbelievabow!

I went to another doctor last night to get a second opinion about my throat, which still hadn't stopped hurting and was now on day eleven. He took one look at it and cheerfully declared it to be strep. I.e. I have to take penicillin or it won't go away. I.EEEEEE..... "Ignore it," is about the worst medical advice anyone could give, and therefore wins its speaker the EMF prize for this month. But now I know what it is and what to do about it, so I'm realtively happy.

I got some great mail this week: yesterday a letter from my friend Jenny (we're deliberately reviving the ancient communication format; turns out Canada Post will still deliver these things) and today a pile of CDs that I ordered from an awesome record store in San Francisco. I'm listening to one now by a Swedish band called Tape, and it's just as good as I'd hoped it would be. There's no record store in Wolfville, but it's pretty satisfying to walk home from the post office with a package of brand new weird music.

This evening I went to see a movie called Young At Heart. I had bought six movie tickets in advance at the local rep theatre, not realizing that they were only valid for a season, and tonight's selection was my last chance to use my remaining ticket. I knew the film was a documentary about a choir of old people singing rock tunes, and wasn't expecting too much. Well, of course it turned out to be just great. An honest and heartwarming look at some real interesting, very old people, being taught rock music by a nice, much younger guy, in a sort of reverse-School-of-Rock scenario. You should see it. But be warned that you will cry multiple time. Seriously.

- Andrew

Disease, the Devil, and Rock 'n Roll: An Unholy Trinity

I've fallen ill again! There's definitely something weird in the Wolfville air. Besides the "Christmas spirit". This week I missed two days of work because my throat was all swollen up and covered in icky looking bumpy things and I felt unable to raise the energy necessary to put on a pair of pants. I went to see a doctor after the fourth day of these symptoms, and she told me that there was nothing she could give me, so I "might as well ignore it." I said I was concerned that I keep getting sick since moving here, as it rarely happened when we lived in Halifax. But she assured me, "That's not something to worry about." After such expert medical advice, I felt better already.

Anyway, it gave me time to read large chunks of Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Just in time for Christmas. And Chanukkah, and Eid al Adha, Bodhi Day, Zarathosht Diso, Scientology Freedom Day... Krista gave it to me for my birthday. In some ways it's kind of more relevant than Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, in that Dawkins can easily be written off as a poor old reductionist scientist, incapable of understanding the higher human virtues that lie outside of his Spocklike domain. Hitchins, by contrast, is a literary scholar with a keen taste for such unscientific values as beauty, dignity, love, and justice. He's also actively participated in many different religions over his life, so when he comes down hard against all organized belief in a supernatural power it holds maybe a little more weight.

In between being sick, rallying for Satan, and making plans for Christmas, I've been doing some recording for an upcoming Super Friendz tribute album. I think it's going OK, but I've picked a weird song and it could easily turn sour at the drop of a hi-hat. I feel like I'm playing with fire, and have to be very careful. Or else I need to just throw caution to the wind and let the notes fall where they may. I can't decide. I guess I know what Neil would do.

This weekend I'm going into Halifax again (Alison's already there. Did she ever come back? I seem to remember a day or two in there somewhere...) to see Dog Day at the Marquee and Matt Reid at Ginger's. The Lodge were supposed to be playing at both those shows, but we had to bail when Mike got called away on business. I'll also be visiting with my old friend Alain and doing some shopping for you-know-what. Everyone likes Acadia t-shirts, right? Then on Monday we're going over to Ken and Heidi's for dinner. I tell ya, the calendar's filling up awfully fast. If you want to see either of us before January, you might have to miss out on some of that blinking you had planned.

- Andrew

What a Weekend!

I know it's pretty much the weekend again already, but I haven't had time to get on here since the last one, which is the one I'm referring to. In the title.

Ali and I took the bus from Acadia into Halifax last Friday evening after work. It ran late because too many people wanted to get on in Falmouth (aka Foulmouth) and we had to wait for cabs called by the bus driver to come and pick them up and drive them into Halifax. Lucky cab drivers! But that wasn't what made it what a weekend.

In Halifax, we went out for a dinner of Chinese food at the King Wah, my favourite Chinese restaurant in Halifax. Meg, KC, Krista, and Johanna all joined us and brought belated birthday presents for me! As if that wasn't sweet enough, we ordered a huge table full of food, all of which was fantastic. Then we went back to Johanna's (minus Krista, who had to work in the morning) and listened to OOOOLD mixtapes of her brother's, made from the radio on a really crappy tape recorder through a condenser mic. Pretty funny stuff: Air Supply, Rush, Chris DeBurgh, Blondie... a real grab bag of goodness. But there's more.

The next day, Alison and I went to Angie's yoga class for old time's sake, and because we've been missing a lot of the classes in Wolfville, and also just to see Angie and Cliff. It was of course a great class, and turned out to be good timing because Angie announced that she'd be giving up her Saturday afternoon class after Christmas. We had exactly two punches left on our punch card, with which we paid, and that was that. THEN, Cliff and Angie took us out for a late lunch (another birthday treat) at The Carleton. It's a pretty fancy place, but Cliff's been doing a bunch of web work for them in exchange for credit there, so we had another huge feast of hors d'oeuvres and entrées. But there's even more.

That night was the elsewhere mentioned Neil Young show. We went with Johanna and also Krista and her dad, the latter two of whom sat in a different section from us. I wish we'd gotten to sit with them, in part because Krista's dad was really hoping they'd play "Welfare Mothers," which I just found so funny that I found myself hoping it too. They didn't. But it was a sold out show and Neil did not disappoint.

But before he even came on, Wilco opened with a medium-length set and blew everyone's minds. They just sounded so great from the get-go — we were way up in the nosebleed seats, and you could hear every instrument perfectly. Plus, our sidestage vantage turned out to be a good one as you could see what everyone was doing. So they were rocking along and everyone was into it, and then I think it was during "Handshake Drugs" the lead guitarist (Nels Cline, I guess) pulled out this unbelievably long and continuously riveting solo that started out like Mark Knopfler at his most tasteful but then got more jagged and somehow evolved into Richard Lloyd of Television and by the end was just a complete freakout meltdown. People could barely contain themselves, but they did because they kept wanting to hear what he would do the next moment.

Then Neil Young took the stage with a full band that included his wife, Peggy, on backup vocals and various tonal percussion, and multi-instrumental genius Ben Keith, who's been collaborating with Young since Harvest and who features prominently on On the Beach, possibly my favourite Neil album. I'd been worried that we might get nothing but the folky side of Neil, but that was far from the case. Probably over 50 percent of the set was Crazy Horse material, played as hard and gritty and driving as those guys could ever have played it. Well, OK, maybe the drummer wasn't as "good" as Ralph Molina... (Why the scarequotes? Screw that: he just wasn't as good, that's all.) But It didn't matter because Neil really brought it and sat with it and let it wind around him like that hypnotizing snake in The Jungle Book, just as zoned in as if Crazy Horse at their best were backing him up. He was generous both in musicianship and stamina.

The only song from my unrealistic wishlist that they played was "Cortez the Killer." But it was enough because it was the highlight of the whole night. Neil got the band immediately into a very spooky groove, which they maintained throughout the song, and then bent over Old Black to solo over that groove as excitingly and spontaneously as he ever has over anything. His tone was from another planet and his fingers were receiving interstellar signals about what to do with it. You could seriously hear 10,000 people breathing through their mouths because their jaws had dropped to their chests.

Of course he did all the hits that everyone wanted to hear, including three songs off Harvest, and they were all great because they're all undeniably great songs. I thought the guy a few seats down from us trying to force everyone to stand up and clap during "Heart of Gold" was a little incongruous — it's just not that kind of a song — but he quickly got over our contrariness, and I quickly got over him. I mean, it's Neil! The set was very long and so the encore was just one song: a cover of "A Day in the Life". Maybe they'd meant to do more than one song, but during the climbing freakout coda Neil broke every string on his guitar. He left it shrieking beside his amp as the band walked off, and that was the end of the show. Halifax sighed with satisfaction.

But that's still not all.

Mind you, that is most of it. But we stayed over at Krista's and went out for a lovely brunch with her Sunday morning, after which she drove me to the bus station and went shopping with Alison, who was staying over again that night. I said goodbye to them and went to The Trident bookshop for a relaxing read and a contemplative coffee (decaf). Then I got on the bus.

I rode home through the city streets. There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building, that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There, I was buying a suit with my father. There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. And when I finally came in, Debbie was home from work, and I told her everything about my dinner with Andre.

- Andrew

Goin' to See Neil

Tomorrow night! Wilco's opening. Gonna be quite a show. Neil's one of my big heroes. Lately this is one of my favourites. Apparently it's about his car. What a lovable kook.

This version's from the Unplugged album. I prefer the white noise of Crazy Horse, but it's still a great song. The original's from American Stars 'n Bars, a highly underrated album. Worth the price just for a lesson in song sequencing. And "Will to Love" is guaranteed to floor you. Couldn't find it for free internet play, though. Bah. Just take my word for it and spend the 99 cents or whatever.

- Andrew

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

This one goes out to the ladies at work.

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