Music, Mystery, and Magyck

Seems like there's been so much going on around here there hasn't even been time to blog about it. I've played a couple of shows as a bassist with Al Tuck now. The first one was pretty awful and humiliating, as I really hadn't rehearsed enough. There was one song that was in a different key from what I had written in my cheat notes and I finally had to give up playing random notes in the hopes that some would be right, and just stand on stage watching Al play the song instead. Luckily, there were no more than forty people in the audience anyway.

The second one was on Thursday and it went a lot better. We had a keyboard player with us, which really filled out the sound nicely. Too bad there were even less people at that show. But once the word gets out about this fantastic band he's got backing him...

Alison has started teaching her class again. Seems like a similar bunch of people to last time. But she's a little better organized this time around, and a little less nervous. Now if she can just figure out a way to make them do their homework.

["God" by John Lennon belongs here. I can't put it on yet because Castpost is down for maintenance. Grrr. Please hum it quietly to yourself while reading the following paragraph.]

This song has been in my head a lot lately, so I thought I'd put it on the old bloggio. It's kind of how I feel these days: a combination of Richard Dawkins' unyielding atheism and Krishnamurti's distrust of all spiritual precepts. I'm quite content right now to go around trying to find my own answers to the great and not so great mysteries, and undiscouraged if they're not forthcoming. The meaning's all in the search. (I like, by the way, how "Beatles" is the most shocking thing Lennon can think of not to believe in. I guess it probably was at the time.)

It is kind of bothering me, though, that most people seem unwilling to take their own searches very seriously. Not in an individual way, mind you: I completely sympathize with how much effort is required of a person to constantly question the nature of things in this powerful self-propagating culture we've created, even given the belief that the unquestioned life is ultimately meaningless. More in an oh-no-the-entire-world-is-screwed-unless-everybody-starts-thinking-very-differently-and-I-don't-think-it's-going-to-happen-soon-enough kind of way.

Maybe the answer is to think of the human species as a failed evolutionary experiment. Or a biological example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which states that any mathematical system powerful enough to express anything interesting will be able to express propositions about itself that prove it either internally inconsistent or incomplete (i.e. unable to express other propositions that it should be able to express, because they would render it inconsistent). The biological analogue would be that any species smart enough to communicate intelligence intergenerationally will evolve ideas that either conflict with the species' own evolution or prove that it is not really all that smart after all. It's all language's fault, I'm convinced. Maybe homo mutiens will have a better go of it.

So, what else is going on? I'm working on some tunage with a couple of guys I've played with before, and that's hopefully going to develop into a serious musical project. More bass. I'm really having a fun time playing bass, so far. Could be I've finally found my instrument. Or more likely I've finally found my instrument of this week. I've also been contributing to some collaborative recording that Rich is working on. Speaking of which, it looks like the band is going to get to play at South-by-Southwest in Austin in March! We'll be down there for three days. If the other two times we've gone down are anything to go by, that'll be a complete blast. I'm already having olfactory hallucinations of cheap and delicious Tex-Mex.

I had a performance review at my job on Friday, which went very well. Nothing really to tell there. The work continues to be suspiciously fun and Satan has had no complaints yet about the soul he's been purchasing on layaway from me. Sorry, that sounds like I'm being insultingly metaphorical. Please understand that I'm talking about the ACTUAL Satan, and not any mere mortals.


Speaking of underworld-dwellers, we went to see Pan's Labyrinth with Meg and our friends Ron and Kristina on Friday. It was pretty good, I guess. Quite violent in the "realistic" parts. I don't know, maybe I'm missing some fantasy-enjoying neuron or something, because I just can't seem to get into the genre. I have no particular bone to pick with it or anything, but the fairy tales for adults just never really do anything for me. Is it the linearity of the plots? Their heavy-handed allegorical nature? Or the fact that once magic has been introduced to a story all restrictions are effectively removed, making surprise impossible because ironically anything is possible? I can't say. But, as I said, I have no bone to pick with the infantile, unicorn-and-fairy-loving genre.

That's enough for now. Gonna go play some MYOOOOOOO-zik! Cheers.

- Andrew

I am a woman of few words.

Since Wednesday, the coldest friggin' day ever, we've been up to a lot¹, and have seen many weather changes. Today, however, the deep freeze was turned back on. Brrr!


Dana, it was great having you here - we miss you!


Jason, where are you? Not that you can read this now, but it would be nice to see you again before you leave.

I start teaching again this week at the community college. The sole fact that I'm actually blogging right now should give away how successfully I'm putting off getting ready for it! haha.

¹ Mostly the yoozh with some extra talking and beer drinking thrown in there. Not really enough to warrant a footnote, but whatev.

-Ali

Minus Thirty-Four with Windchill!

What the hell, man? We haven't had any cold weather all winter, and now suddenly this? I think my sister and her husband brought it up from Ontario. All the way to work this morning I was thinking of these lines from a song of mine:

This winter morning is a dream.
Look at the harbour: it's a bowl of steam.

I guess it didn't seem as enchanting on the way home tonight, because all I could think about then was this poem by Alden Nowlan:

Canadian January Night

Ice storm: the hill
a pyramid of black crystal
down which the cars
slide like phosphorescent beetles
while I, walking backwards in obedience
to the wind, am possessed
of the fearful knowledge
my compatriots share
but almost never utter:
this is a country
where a man can die
simply from being
caught outside.

- Andrew

What's New:

I'm playing music with real people again, twice a week.

My sister's coming to town for a visit in three days.

There is snow here.

The jeans I'm wearing.

I read a passage in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that got me re-motivated about keeping up my daily yoga and meditation practice, which from infrequency had started seeming like just work:
"If, from the meditative perspective, everything you are seeking is already here, even if it is difficult to wrap your thinking mind around that concept, if there really is no need to acquire anything or attain anything or improve yourself, if you are already whole and complete and by that same virtue so is the world, then why on earth bother meditating? Why would we want to cultivate mindfulness in the first place? ... [O]ne reason we might want to practice mindfulness is that most of the time we are unwittingly praciticing its opposite. Every time we get angry we get better at being angry and reinforce the anger habit. ... Every time we become self-absorbed, we get better at becoming self-absorbed and going unconscious. ... Practice does make perfect. Without awareness of anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state that can take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks within the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all."

The video to the Shins single Phantom Limb, from their third album, which comes out January 23. I can't wait! Well, I can and I am in the sense that I refuse to download the record and listen to it before it arrives in stores, but it's a serious struggle.

The sweater I'm wearing.

We saw this display in a basement window of the house beside the vacant lot that used to hold the house that Paul Gailiunas and Helen Hill used to live in, before they moved away and it subsequently burned down. I'm assuming it's in tribute to her. The black figure is a stuffed crow.


My favourite internet radio station: KUSF from San Francisco.

- Andrew

Bad Start to Oh Seven

Before I start ranting at you, here's a couple of pictures of us with Jeff in Toronto, like I promised ya.


This arms-length self-portrait was taken as the streetcar was opening it's door and the driver (conductor?) was waiting for me and Ali to get on. Hence the quickly formed, ill-conceived facial expressions and composition. I think I look kind of like Harpo Marx.

And by the way, we're both feeling a lot better now. Turned out to be just a cold, but what a roller coaster of a one! Every time I thought it was over, there was some new symptom ready to show itself. Now that we're healthy again, it's time to get back into shape. We had our first yoga class of the season tonight, and it felt pretty great. Made me realize how quickly I can lose flexibility, though.

So, right now this whole city is very bummed out, as its favourite ex-patriates, Paul Gailiunas and Helen Hill were victims of a random shooting at the front door of their home in New Orleans. Paul is OK and Helen is dead. It's really one of the most tragic things you can think of, as they were known by everyone as the friendliest, nicest, most socially-conscious and giving people imaginable. Many have remarked that if the gunman was looking for money, all he had to do was ask and they would have gladly handed over everything they own. They were a huge inspiration that was immediately missed when they left Halifax for New Orleans a few years ago. I hardly knew them at all, but I feel like they still managed to inspire even me immensely, just by their positive presence in the city. I think most people who had any contact with them at all when they lived here feel the same way. I guess there's going to be some sort of memorial type activity for Helen this weekend.

In other random violence news, more and more people keep getting attacked on The Commons at night. It's happened to a couple of people I know now. A group of junior high school-aged boys waits for someone to come along when no one else is around, and then beats them up. The boys usually don't take anything, either, satisfied with just getting some aggression out. It's quite sickening.

And finally, drivers' contemptuous, if cognizant at all, attitude toward cyclists and pedestrians continues to escalate. No one stops at crosswalks anymore, for instance, unless you actually step out in front of them, and then they act like you are a maniac for stepping out in front of a moving car. Usually they will actually speed up if they see you waiting. Corners are supposed to be the same as a crosswalk, pedestrian-wise, but you can forget about that unless you actually do have a deathwish. And I just heard about a friend of a friend whose leg was broken by a woman starting into an intersection, without looking, after stopping at a stop sign. The woman asked the manglee whether she was all right, and then drove off when an answer was not immediately forthcoming.

It's a difficult time for theists, that's all I can say.

- Andrew

Sickos!

Ali and I both seem to have come down with some kind of cold or flu. It's pretty bad, and has been keeping us home from work. Blah. Some people who've had it say it lasts 3 weeks! Others are saying it could be strep throat or mono. Jeez, man, I hope not.

Not much has happened since the last post. We got to see Jeff for a few hours. That was a good time. I'll put some pictures up next post. He told me about this MySpace-for-books site, to which I'm now completely addicted. I bought The God Delusion and ate it up in a couple of days. It's a highly entertaining and persuasive read, but don't pick it up unless you're prepared to start proudly wearing an "Atheist" badge around town.

New Year's Eve was a bit non-existent as we were in the initial stages of this illness. We did visit Krista and some of her friends upstairs for awhile, though. Then on New Year's Day we went to see Almodovar's latest, Volver with Johanna and Meg. Not so great, really. The story was pretty boring, and relied heavily on Penelope Cruz's bosom to maintain interest.

Now it's back to work and the usual routine, which is actually kind of nice. Or will be, once we actually go into work. And now, back to bed for the twentieth time today.

- Andrew [cough, cough]