My computer thinks this is hilarious.

The people I'm renting a cottage with this weekend do not.

On a Perfect Summer Evening, Even Death Seems Appropriate

Natural haiku:
the sound of wind in new leaves
means only itself.

Some More "Art"

I think I'm really hitting my stride on these things. Thank you, CS6!

Not a Witch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why I Am a Musician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I listened especially to:

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

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

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

BS Artist

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

Original

"Painted"

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

Re: How are you?

Thanks for asking, Carol.

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

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

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

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

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

Aitch Eff Dee

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

Happy to Be Stormbound

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

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

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

Happy Birthday, Ali!

Queen of Instagram.

Note to Self: Be More Useless and Stupid

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

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Translated by Robert Rosenbaum

Continuing to Live

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

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

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

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

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

—Philip Larkin

Joni Day

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

Also...

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

Just Finally Got This One

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

—Chuang Tzu

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

Wake Up

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

Everything Seems Funny Today

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

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

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

—A. S. Hamrah

Midlife, Men, and More Madness

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

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

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

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

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

Desperate!

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

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

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

Not Much to Say

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

New Life

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

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

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

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

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

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