Happy Birthday, Duke Ellington!

A hundred and fifteen years young.

Whistle While You Work for the Weekend

I have a questionable habit of relating everything that happens in my life to some song lyric or other. Got it from my mom. Sometimes it's funny to realize that what I'm going around whistling or singing loudly is a narration of exactly what I'm doing. Other times I realize to my horror and embarrassment that I'm broadcasting an opinion that should really be kept to myself. But mostly it's just annoying as heck, for me and everybody else.

However, this weekend I ended up with some pretty great ear worms entertaining me while I took care of a few otherwise tedious chores. Maybe they'll help you if you have some tedium of your own.

First I gathered my laundry together and threw it in the wash. That didn't take much time, but long enough to think about laundromats and sing a few rounds of this.



Next, I had to run some errands around town on my bike. I could've gone forever with this tune stuck in my head.



When I got home, I finally got around to doing my income tax. I wasn't too happy in the end when it cost me $1,800 (keep up the good work, Stephen Harper!), but the phrase "tax deduction" kept this one egging me on for the full two hours it took.



Then it was time to clean the bathroom. I thought the tub and toilet would wear out my positivity for sure, but luckily there was some pink mould in the shower stall that needed taking care of. That of course brought the lovely Nick Drake to mind, who serenaded me well into the evening.



Hope your weekend's as productive and musical!

A Very Short Story

Here's a sneak preview of a story I wrote for my friend KC's monthly coffee newsletter, Concrete News. It'll show up in print in a month or two. I was given a maximum of 100 words for the "Writer's Block" section. I've cheated a little, at 101. If you see a word that can be subtracted, let me know.

Abe and Mrs. Hogg

Abraham Vigoda was nine. His teachers found his name hilarious because of some old actor or whatever. Abe’s family didn't have a TV. It wasn’t funny to him.

Once appointed superintendent of the school board, Abe closed Hemlock Elementary. The ex-teachers hated his guts.

Except one day Sobey’s cashier Mrs. Hogg called him her star pupil. Abe was surprised, then remembered her not laughing at him.

His wife didn’t understand the story's full import. How could she? They watched their kid eat the custard things Abe bought.

After she died, Abe realized Mrs. Hogg must not have had a TV either.

Vinyl Lament

Aaah! Just realized I'm going to miss Record Store Day on Saturday, as I'll be flying to Ontario to visit my family. Of course, I'll be happy to see the fam, but I do always enjoy RSD in Halifax. Seems like there's gonna be some cool stuff going on here too… Oh, well. Maybe someone will have opened a record store in Markham since I lived there in 1987. Probably not.

The Meaning of Life

Had this email exchange with an old friend last week. We hadn't talked in years, so of course there were many catching-up details to be shared, which naturally led to a general discussion about life's ultimate meaning. I swear she started it. In the middle of her last email was this paragraph:

I've realized or decided that life has no meaning. We live and we die. I have no need to make a mark or leave a legacy. We're all ephemeral, transient bags of water animated by electricity. I'm good with that. We're all part of everything, together. Why people have to fuck it up so much during the short time we're here is a sad mystery, assigning meaning where there is none feeds the ego. I assume no physicists believe in god.

That kind of stuff is like a bag of candy to me, so I jumped on the invitation to go to Philosophy Town with it. Possibly it wasn't the kind of sympathetic response she was looking for. But I felt like the process of writing it clarified some of my own "mystical atheist" thoughts on the matter. If you're interested, here's what I said. I've left it unitalicized, because it's quite long and that would be just one level of annoying too many:

As for life having no meaning... I think I know what you mean, but I think I don't exactly agree. Or, rather, there are three distinct things I think you might mean, each of which I do agree with, but maybe not in quite the same way as you:

1. Life has no intrinsic meaning, only meanings we arbitrarily assign it.

Sure. Yes. That seems obviously true to me.

However, I wouldn't then go on to say it therefore has no meaning. Because nothing has "intrinsic meaning," whatever that might be. All meaning is relative to some community that has decided upon it arbitrarily, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

The word "cookie," e.g, has been agreed to refer to a certain kind of baked good. There's nothing about the sound of the word or the way it looks written on a piece of paper that makes it inherently suitable for that purpose, but we can still use it to express hunger or generosity without necessarily feeding anyone's egos.

2. OK, but that's just a different use of the word "meaning" from what I'm saying here, which is something more like "point" or "purpose." Because we are all randomly evolved combinations of physical stuff with no designer, no one can claim knowledge of some ultimate purpose to our existence.

Again, I agree with that statement as far as it goes, but would add that the lack of an inarguable, universally valid reason for human life doesn't imply anything wrong with creating our own reasons for living.

We may be bags of water animated by electricty, but we are not JUST bags of water animated by electricity. We also happen to be the only such bags of water that have developed communicatively rich language. We're the species that makes ideas stand for things and words stand for ideas and things stand for words with next to no effort. It's in our nature to go around creating meaning and stories that make our lives make sense to us. There's no point in saying we shouldn't do that, because it's behind every decision we make, every thought we think, and every opinion we opine.

To put it another way, in order to be "good with" or "not good with" the transient and comically physical nature of human existence, you have to first believe in meaning of some kind. Otherwise, the whole judgment is a non-starter.

3. Thoughts, opinions, judgments — yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting we get away from. Our obsessive need to see meaning everywhere is precisely what makes us so neurotic, so we need to learn to cut it out when it's not appropriate. Look at this planet, for Pete's sake! We're making a giant mess of it, killing ourselves and everything else along the way, all for the sake of some stupid ideas and preferences we've dreamed up just to make our lives more interesting or sensible. Life isn't supposed to be interesting or make sense! Other species don't do that, and they seem to get along fine. Oh sure, sometimes they eat each other, and I wouldn't exactly argue that they're better artists or moralists or truth-seekers or whatever than we are. But they also don't figure out ways to short-sightedly annihilate each other and their surroundings, just so they can feel a little more comfortable and smug during their individual lifetimes. Come on!

OK, yeah, I'm pretty much with you on this one. And the whole God-as-something-you-need-to-decide-whether-you-believe-in-or-not I also can't get behind. We do need to get over ourselves and stop clinging to the beliefs and stories we identify with so strongly that we're willing to commit violence to ourselves and the beautifully balanced chaos from which we've sprung in order to protect them.

However… I feel like the letting-go and acceptance-of-reality-as-it-is that are called for here are what religion, and even the mystical concept "God," are supposed to be about. Forget about belief or disbelief in certain narratives. Those are not useful concepts. But if one can manage, at least temporarily, to take on the attitude that there are mysterious forces beyond our understanding, behind everything we think we know, including our sense of ourselves, and that those forces furthermore express themselves through each of us and in turn are witnessed by each of us in a pre-causal, atemporal kind of flow that, when we are lucky enough to tune into it, feels like nothing so much as unconditional love, well, that's a very powerful stance to be able to take.

I guess I'm saying that your "We're all part of everything, together" is not incompatible with a physicist experiencing something that she might decide to call "God." We don't need God as a concept that explains how things work — we have science for that. But science doesn't tell us anything about how to enjoy the world as given. If anything, it just makes up more and more stories about that world, till we can't look at anything directly anymore because we're too busy trying to understand and control it. What we need now to balance that perpetual discomfort is a willingness to experience complete mystery behind the complete understanding. It's not a matter of belief, but of openness to possibility.

So, if you're saying life has no meaning and therefore is pointless and therefore it doesn't matter what people do just as long as they keep their stupid stories to themselves, I respectfully disagree. But if, by "Life has no meaning," you mean to celebrate the infinity of possibilities presented to us at every moment when we can manage to let go of our stories, fears, desires, beliefs, and preconceptions and just live, I'm with ya, sister!

Interesting Sentences from Books I'm Reading

"Music… is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the way for more complex behaviors such as language, large-scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next."

—Daniel J. Levitin, The World in Six Songs:

How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

"Unless I can combine poetry with recorded noise, have I any right to be?"

—Morissey, Autobiography

"[T]hough we may tell ourselves that we are royally pushing analogies around from the heights of our conscious thrones, the truth is otherwise: we are really at the mercy of our own seething myriads of unconscious analogies, much as a powerful ruler is really responding to the collective will of their people, because if they were regularly going against their people, they would soon be dethroned."

—Douglas Hofstadter & Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences:

Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking

"Science can always explain, qua mathematical eccentricities, that and how a strange thing happens, but can it explain anything about the why?"

—Erik Fosnes Hansen, Tales of Protection (Nadia Christensen, transl.)

"Lionel was there, a great white shape, leaning on the open door with his brow pressed to his raised wrist, panting huskily, and giving off a faint grey steam in his purple singlet (the lift was misbehaving, and the flat was on the thirty-third floor—but then again Lionel could give off steam while dozing in bed on a quiet afternoon)."

—Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo

"And anyway I show up at that party they had for homecoming week in first year and I start making out with the poster of Van Morrison, like I've pinned poor Van against the wall and am sexually assaulting him, and you guys are like Oh my god that's the guy from the freshman mixer who chugged all the purple Jesus right out of the barrel and then vomited into the barrel and then started chugging that, who in Christ's name let him in?"

—Lynn Coady, The Antagonist

"Then they leave the area, a little sick at what they have done, especially the orange, who several times becomes so distraught it stops rolling altogether, and must be picked up and hurled down the path by Jim the penisless man, who, turns out, has a very good arm."

—George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation

His world had vanished long before he entered it.

I went to see the latest Wes Anderson movie a couple of times in the last week. If you haven't seen it, you'll be happy to learn that it's the good kind of Wes Anderson movie — the kind where real adult concerns lie behind the whimsical little episodes in a whimsical little world, provoking some genuine and well-earned emotion. As in The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, and as not so much in The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, the quirky art direction and fast-paced witticisms in The Grand Budapest Hotel serve deeper, darker themes.

The majority of the film's action takes place between the wars in a fictional eastern European country whose historic culture is threatened by a new cynical barbarism, as represented by barely fictional Nazis called the "Zig Zag Division." Monsieur Gustave, the protagonist, is a tragicomic dandy struggling to preserve an already lost world of foppish etiquette and aristocratic kindness, à la Grand Illusion. Though it's fast-paced and zany, the story manages to feel like a Sebaldian meditation on cruelty and decay. Time marches ruthlessly, destructively forward, and if we want to imagine a better world, our best bet is to listen to the tragic stories of our elders.

Nostalgia is a theme that comes up a lot for Wes Anderson. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that most of his movies are about neurotically nostalgic people in meticulously controlled environments. They dislike the world as it is, so they create their own little worlds and maintain them according to the values of bygone days.

The feeling created is somewhere between cozy and claustrophobic, like when children make a closet into a "fort" and bring all their belongings into it. Max Fischer makes the insular life of private school bearable by starting up old-fashioned clubs that modern high school students are no longer interested in. The adult Tenenbaum children dress in their childhood clothes and each have their own room where they surround themselves with the achievements of their youth. Steve Zissou lives on (or rather, in) a Jacques-Cousteau-like exploratory ship where everything is branded in a seventies style. The Whitman brothers try to rekindle their family bonds in a train compartment. Mr. Fox lives in a tunnel under a tree and refuses to grow up. Sam Shakusky is a boy scout camping on an island.

One gets the sense that this is Anderson's own M.O. The films themselves revel in obsessive detail and old-fashioned techniques, presenting themselves as children's stories for adults. In the lighter ones, the director allows his nostalgia free reign, and we get a comforting, sentimental adventure. The characters may lose their control to outside forces temporarily, but it is regained and order restored with no major change in outlook.

On the other hand, when the protagonists' backward-looking need for control is shown not to be a workable characteristic, some real depth is achieved. When, as in The Grand Budapest Hotel, the fastidious world-making of a character is no match for the chaotic forces of nature (either human nature or nature nature), we feel that something real has been lost, and something learned in exchange. The director turns out not to be such a naïf after all, and we leave the theatre a little wiser.

Classic Sesame Street Musical Moments

I've been unsuccessfully scouring YouTube for years now in search of a half-remembered Sesame Street segment where a kooky jazz woman teaches a bunch of kids to sing a really dissonant "Scoobity Dooby Doo" song. I feel like it was Betty Carter, just from the style of her singing, but I could be way off base on that. Anyway, had another try tonight, and came up with all these gems instead. The girl in the Paul Simon video is a particular highlight.

Fashion Patrol

Today I saw a twenty-something, otherwise fashionable young woman walking down Barrington Street in a pair of jeans that were loose enough to conceal the shape of her legs. She seemed remarkably bold in her modesty. I've been noticing wider pant legs on Project Runway: Under the Gunn too. Can the American Apparel backlash finally be upon us?

Universal Language

The fascinating principle underlying Zen stories with all their seemingly irrelevant remarks is quite simple. It is all explained in the Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, when Hui-neng says, "If somebody asks you a question about matters sacred, always answer in terms of matters profane. If they ask you about ultimate reality, answer in terms of everyday life. If they ask you about everyday life, answer in terms of ultimate reality.

—Alan Watts, What Is Zen?

I haven't written for awhile because there have been so many things going on in my poor little brain that I didn't even know where to begin. I guess I've been going through a bit of a psychospiritual crisis. Meditation has not been working for me lately as well as it used to. I'm having a hard time being in the world in a non-anxious, accepting way. Disassociating with my ego is not helping me tame it, and navigating its demands is not bringing me the spiritual freedom I crave.

I read a book recently by Thomas Moore called A Religion of One's Own that made a distinction between the spirit (transcendent, mysterious universal forces expressing themselves through and being perceived by an individual being) and the soul (contingent, idiosyncratic personality with earthly desires and fears), and argued that the point of a personal religion is to help one integrate these sometimes conflicting aspects of oneself. I decided that it would be good for me to become part of some spiritual community. Not that I want to join a group of people who believe all the same things as me, but that I could use some regular conversation about my spiritual practices, experiences, and conceptualizations thereof.

So I went to the Unitarian Universalist church last Sunday. Thought it might be a good idea, since I'd gone there as a kid. My grandparents on my mother's side were both Unitarians, and I generally have a certain respect for the UU premise that all religions have kernels of truth it behooves us to explore with open minds.

But alas, there was nothing spiritual going on in that place. It was all soul stuff: personal stories about recent joys and sorrows, reminders about upcoming lectures and debates, and a plea from a woman representing Dying with Dignity for Unitarians to come to the aid of her cause. OK, there was some singing too, which can be a spiritual exercise, but it was half-hearted and frankly pretty awful.

And no mention of God or anything mystical whatsoever. Just a bunch of really old people reminding themselves that they are nice and thoughtful when it comes to moral decisions. I thought there might be some deeper discussion to be had over coffee and cake after the service. But the couple I ended up talking to just kept telling me about their worry that the church's minister might be a "closet Christian."

I guess he showed up at some recent public panel discussion wearing a minister's collar. The others on the panel were apparently all clergymen of one sort or another, so that made sense to me. I reminded Brian and Theresa, the concerned couple, that Unitarianism is technically a Christian religion and that the minister is definitely entitled to wear the uniform of his profession. "I know," said Brian, "but the thing is, I'm not convinced it was a joke."

I'm not sure what I expected. Maybe that the unconventional parish would have discovered a new way to pray that doesn't bring problematic concepts of God into it. Or that they would have figured out a way to discuss the undiscussability of the mystical communion and revealed truths that all religions represent a yearning for.

Instead, I just found a little club where ancient atheists can pat each other on the back once a week and assert that they don't need God to be good. I suppose that's nice for them and probably has some value.

But later that night, I went to the basement of another church to hear Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1919 version). It was being played by a small amateur orchestra in which Alison's roommate, Claire, plays oboe. I didn't have high expectations, and there were definitely inexpert moments. But there were also times when the group seemed to find some magical power beyond what their collective inexperience should be capable of, and the transcendent finale moved my heart, mind, and spirit in a way that no religious service ever has. I left feeling like I had been part of a holy congregation after all that Sunday.

Come On

You know what's not really a very funny thing to say to a stranger on an elevator when you've both just come out of the cold wind and are waiting for your respective floors to arrive? "Where's that global warming we're supposed to be getting?"

I'm sorry, random government lady on the fifth floor, if this makes me a humourless sourpuss, but global warming is not a curious little bit of local weather you and I can make funny small talk about until it has come and gone. It's a worldwide catastrophe that's going to wipe out our entire species if we don't fix it very soon.

Where is it? It's everywhere! Hence, the "global" part. And we're not "supposed to be getting" it; it has already started. We're in the middle of it. The reason it's such a problem is that people in positions of authority aren't taking it seriously enough to do something about it.

Where's that mass extinction we're supposed to be getting? Because this lady is bothering me. How's that for a conversation starter?

In Dreams

Lately I've been having a lot of dreams. I can tell I've been having them, even though it seems I remember about 10% of them. The details I do remember are so vivid, complex, and horrible that I realize they are only the loose ends of a great tangle of yarn now washed away irrevocably by the tide of consciousness.

There was a town full of strange people, for instance, all of whom had secrets from each other and themselves, and it was hard to keep track of who knew what, because they were all related in complicated ways. One woman, who had fond memories of riding her horse as a child, suddenly remembered that the horse had in fact been killed by her father, and that he had made her tie up its dead body with rope and stuff it into his station wagon so he could drive it to the dump. But it hadn't fit, so she had been forced to break its legs and neck by slamming the car's gate on them repeatedly.

Another night, I started screaming in my sleep until I woke myself up with the noise. Then I continued screaming as loud as I could, not even knowing why anymore. I only stopped when my roommate, Dave, screamed back at me from his own bedroom. In the morning, I couldn't remember anything of the dream that had been making me scream in the first place. I apologized to Dave about the crazy behaviour, and he told me nothing of the sort had happened. I'm still not sure whether the screaming was itself the dream.

I was talking with Amber about dreams and the unconscious yesterday after watching Rosemary's Baby. We were wondering what purpose dreams serve in our lives and going over some of the answers science has hypothesized over the history of psychology: bringing unconscious feelings to light, problem-solving, solidifying neural pathways, sorting memories and emotions for later retrieval, relating the events of our lives to archetypal stories for easier understanding…

Then it occurred to me that the reason no one has ever come up with a solid, satisfying answer is that the question is misguided. Dreams are just our unconscious minds doing what they always do — trying out various story lines that needn't be rational or really have any recognizable cause except that they bubble up from who knows what murky depths. Those stories become hidden when we're awake, because the job of our conscious minds is to order that raw material into a nice sensible plot and cover the alien world of unconscious thought with it.

It's only when the conscious mind is turned off for a rest that we experience the uncensored creativity that has been going on underneath the whole time. Dreams are to consciousness as skeletons to bodies — horrible monsters that we mostly manage to forget are there, underneath everything, moving us around like puppets. To ask their purpose when we sleep is to ask why the stars come out at night.

Fo Yo Info

There's a certain style of abbreviated slang that has recently become very trendy, especially in the related worlds of marketing and celebrity name-dropping. I'm sure you've seen these catchy abbreviations slowly multiply in gossip magazines, talk show monologues, and teenagers' tweets. First Hollywood brought us JLo, then along came LiLo and ScarJo. Meanwhile, department stores started having BOGO sales, and then FroYo shops suddenly popped up from SoHo to Togo. It's enough to make one a little loco.

So, yo, as a public service, here's a helpful guide to the most prevalent, useful, or "with it" examples of this new vernacular. Now you too can be a pro in the know.

JoGo: Actor Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Coco: Comedian Conan O'Brien.
HoJo: a Howard Johnson's restaurant or pop icon Howard Jones, depending on whether it is 1986.
CoHo: Halifax lesbian bar the Company House.
GoFo: Halifax hipster dive the Good Food Emporium.
gofoyo: either "good for you" or "go perform a technically impossible sex act," depending on context.
dobro: a kind of steel guitar invented by the Dopyera brothers.
doughbro: the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Pono: a new recording format invented by ex-member of Buffalo Springfield Neil Young.
Poco: a country rock band comprising ex-members of Buffalo Springfield who are not Neil Young. Also, a mime on Canadian children's show Mr. Dressup.
PoMo: (arch.) post-modern (a mostly meaningless adjective used to sound hip in 1986).
YoRo: Halifax graphic design team Yo Rodeo.
SloBlo: a brand of electrical fuse.
BroRo: men's rowing team.
YOLO: "you only live once" (popular excuse for reckless behaviour).
YODO: "you only die once" (less popular rebuttal).
spocoHoCo: sports commentator Howard Cosell.
dojo: a martial arts training centre.
DoJo: tan 1986 celebrity Don Johnson.
JoTo: Trailer Park Boy Jonathan Torrens.
mofo: a nasty person.
mofo (as adapted by Miles Davis): a person.
fauxmo: a man who pretends to be gay to lend credibility to his questionable style.
boho: bohemian.
hobo: bohemian to a fault.
NoHo: area of Manhattan north of Houston Street.
no ho: a reputable woman.
zoso: a nonsense word unpopular male high school students carve into their desks in lieu of sexual relations.
Wojo: Detective Stan Wojciehowicz of TV sitcom Barney Miller.

Happy Birthdays, Kids

Well, it's that time of year when my sister's three kids all have birthdays within two days of each other. I know, it's crazy. But they are all awesome kids and I love them so much. So I've made them each a music mix of songs that came out in the year they were born.

I've tried to include stuff that's relevant to the kind of pop they like to listen to now, as well as stuff I liked that I think they might like, based on the little I know about what they're listening to. Some years are easier to do this for than others. 2001, for instance, was a real rock wasteland beyond the oasis of Amnesiac. Sorry, Jack.

Anyway, click on each mix's artwork to download the songs.

Steal My Sunshine - Len

Genie in a Bottle - Christina Aguilera

Caught Out There - Kelis

Race for the Prize - The Flaming Lips

Believe - Cher

Windowlicker - Aphex Twin

Beau Mot Plage - Isolée

If You Had My Love - Jennifer Lopez

Bills Bills Bills - Destiny's Child

...Baby One More Time - Britney Spears

I Want It That Way - Backstreet Boys

The Book of Love - The Magnetic Fields

Cold Blooded Old Times - Smog

Via Chicago - Wilco

No Scrubs - TLC

Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega

I Still Believe - Mariah-Carey

Echo's Answer - Broadcast

Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground - The White Stripes
The Modern Age - The Strokes
Stroke of Genius - Freelance Hellraiser
Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
Squares - The Beta Band
Stan - Eminem
Ms. Jackson - Outkast
Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
The Step - !!!
Digital Love - Daft Punk
Strangelight - Fugazi
Scarlette - Unwound
Chasing Heather Crazy - Guided by Voices
Biomusicology - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
New Slang - The Shins
I'm Waking Up to Us - Belle & Sebastian
Joy - Circulatory System
Pyramid Song - Radiohead
Beautiful Day - U2

Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
Slow Hands - Interpol
Hey Ya! - Outkast
Yeah (Crass Version) - LCD Soundsystem
Galang - M.I.A.
Milk Shake - Kelis
Naughty Girl - Beyoncé
It's My Life - No Doubt
I Believe In You (Mylo Vocal Mix) - Kylie Minogue
Everything Is Everything - Phoenix
The Rat - The Walkmen
Float On - Modest Mouse
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
Move Ya Body (Clean) - Nina Sky Ft. Jabba
You Don't Know My Name (Reggae Mix) - Alicia Keys
Heartbeat - Annie
Yeah! - Usher featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris
Dry Your Eyes - The Streets

Help!

Beck's new album, Morning Phase, is so beautiful I can't stop listening to it. Every time I put it on I have to stop everything to hear it in its entirety. And I always feel like putting it on.

I got it last Wednesday, the day after it came out, expecting greatness. It had been compared everywhere to Sea Change, my (previously) favourite album of Beck's. The New Yorker reviewer said he'd listened to it fifty times and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Beck hadn't released a solo record in about six years, but everything he'd touched as a producer in the interim had been gorgeous and mind-expanding.

However, having waited excitedly for months to hear this record, I guess I figured there'd also be some disappointment I should be prepared for. Well, there hasn't been. Instead, I just keep getting carried away (like in the lyrics to "Wave," the album's midpoint atmospheric shiver-inducer) by a reverie of lush emotion. It's sad. It's triumphant. It's ultimately very, very wise about being oneself in a complex world. Your rational mind will be knocked out by the simplicity of Beck's lyrics while the music overwhelms your heart, convincing it of their import. I can only compare the feeling to the first time I ever heard a Nick Drake record and realized music held possibilities more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.

I recommend listening to Morning Phase on headphones two or three times in a row for the full effect. Maybe not at work, though, as you won't be getting much done while the ecstatic trance lasts. On the other hand, once you've allowed yourself to be taken over by it, you might feel more aware that your work is something worth doing.

"We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

"When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

"It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable."

—Mark Nepo

Words & Music

Just finished a record review for my friend KC's free monthly coffee shop read, Concrete News. This is the second one I've done for him. The idea is that he gets local musicians to write short reviews of classic albums. They're a lot of fun.

But when I say, short, I mean SHORT. He asks you to keep them to around 100 words. I always think I have nothing to say, and then in the end there's not nearly enough space. The first one I did was for Wire's Chairs Missing, and this one is for the Pogues' If I Should Fall from Grace with God. It'll come out in the March issue, just in time for St. Patrick's Day:

In 1988, the Pogues find the sweet spot where Britpunk and Celtic rollick cohabit in beautiful misery. The connections turn out to run deeper than a shared love of beer and the eff word, though there's room still for plenty of each. 

In the wrong hands, a mashup of traditional Irish romanticism and postmodern London irony could fail miserably. The word "fusion" comes to mind, and a couple of these songs actually flirt with "exotic" motifs.

But Shane MacGowan careens boldly between the cornfields. Banjos and penny whistles somehow rock. Sneering sentimentality becomes lyrical, transcendent poetry. You'll be weepin' into yer green pint ere this one's o'er.

See what I mean? I could've gone on for 1,000 more words just about "Fairytale of New York" alone. Didn't even get to say anything about the lovely Kirsty MacColl…

Nor did I get to talk about seeing the band when they toured this album. They played in the Masonic Hall in Toronto, where there was an ingenious setup: the stage was on the main floor, and the bar was downstairs by the washrooms. So the extreme hubbub from the constant line of celtophiles buying beer in plastic cups and then getting rid of it in one way or another didn't distract from the music at all.

Not that there was any way anyone could have drowned out that band. They were LOUD. And very drunk, as was everyone in the audience, this reporter not excluded.

In fact, I got so drunk I didn't even trust myself to get home to the suburbs on public transit. I ended up calling my sister Dana to pick me up. Somehow I knew she was out that night in our parents' car. She obliged, and I entertained her all the way home with my uncharacteristic enthusiasm and barely coherent speech. We had to stop halfway home so I could get out to urinate in someone's freshly ploughed field along the side of the highway. I remember that being hilarious to both of us, for some reason.

But so anyway, the necessarily short version of the review will be in the newsletter, as will this ad for my own album:

Maybe if they're on the same page and if I can maybe get onto the local college radio chart that gets printed every week in The Coast, then maybe I'll force myself into the public consciousness and maybe sell some virtual records. This is my carefully considered marketing and publicity strategy.

Sail Away, Little Boats!

Well, I felt quite a bit better today. Who can say what brings on these periods of anguish? They seem to come and go with zero predictability or connection to any real circumstances. But I got plenty of sleep last night and exercised this morning, which apparently warded off the feistier demons.

And guess what? I kicked my own ass this evening and finally put an album of solo material on Bandcamp, as I've been threatening to do for a couple of years now. Geez, some of these songs are over ten years old!

Anyway, my children are free at last. It's like a giant weight I've been lugging around has been uploaded from my shoulders. There were two more songs I'd planned on finishing and adding to the collection, but it just never seemed to happen. I guess those ones will have to wait for the next album.

Maybe I'll Write a Blog Post or Whatever

Can't believe it's been over a week since my last post. And also that I forgot to wish my good friend Carol a happy birthday on the 14th. Where has my head been?

I guess I'm just not feeling it these days. You know, the whole do-something-valuable-with-your-time-'cause-life-is-short-and-death-is-long thing. Lately I'm just putting in my hours at work to be able to come home and distract myself for a couple more hours till it's time to go to sleep. It all seems so pointless and exhausting. Winter blahs, I suppose.

There's definitely nothing situationally wrong. Apartment's great, friends are great, music's fun, job is or at least should be rewarding. Writing first thing in the morning is rewarding when I actually do it. Girls is back on weekly, and there's a third season of Borgen. I've got money, health, records, and snacks. Why does all that only make me feel worse about feeling bad?

Amber had some minor surgery on Monday, about which I'd been worrying quite a lot, so that's at least something potentially negative. But it went as well as it possibly could. They stuck a tube with a balloon on it into her leg's major artery, then blew up the balloon to make more space for blood to get through. Now her leg is warmer and more alive-feeling than it's been in almost two years. It's kind of a miracle.

So maybe I'm just bored or something. How's that for a first-world problem? Somebody throw some tragedy my way, so I can enjoy the adrenaline boost. Guess I'll get to bed early and see if the morning brings some fresh motivation.

Happy birthday, Carol.

I'm starting to think this guy was onto something.

"In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis."

 - George Ivanovich Gurdjieff

This amazing surrealist film by Alejandro Jodorowsky is said to have been based on a couple of books by one of Gurdjieff's students. I bought a copy of it a couple of weeks ago because it's one of my favourite movies and somewhat hard to find. Haven't cracked it open yet, though. I'll need a couple of hours of free time and some wide open headspace to get the full benefits of another viewing. Soundtrack by the Don Cherry, by the way. The gifted collaborator of Ornette Coleman, not the loudmouthed hockey idiot.

The Blind Impress*

I found this astonishing short documentary today. It comes from the New York Times website, where you can also read all about its genesis. The concise description they give of the film tells you everything you need to know:

In 1983, after years of deteriorating vision, the writer and theologian John Hull lost the last traces of light sensation. For the next three years, he kept a diary on audio-cassette of his interior world of blindness. This film is a dramatization that uses his original recordings.

Watching it at work this morning, I found myself more moved than I generally like to be in a shared office space. I guess that's my version of an "NSFW" warning. The quiet depth and beauty of Hull's observations haunted me for the rest of the day.

One of the filmmakers' inspirations was apparently Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley's documentary comprising interviews with her family members. I've come very close to renting that one a few times now, so next trip to the video store should be a quick one.

*This phrase is from "Continuing to Live," a poem by Philip Larkin that is far too excellent to have a silly pun made out of it. Richard Rorty got a lot of good mileage out of it in his equally compelling Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.