Schleprock

I have some big news to report, but not quite yet. Soon, soon. Meanwhile, let me tell you about this show The Reference Desk played at Jacob's Lounge in Dartmouth on the weekend. This is not a self-congratulatory story, if that makes any difference to whether you feel like reading it. It is a bit long, though.

We were the first of three bands, and there were quite a few people there. Quite a few hip people whose opinions I actually care about, including the members of the other two bands. I always get somewhat nervous playing live shows, but this night I was extra anxious. It probably had to do with the big news I'm not telling you about yet, plus I wasn't sure whether Amber would be coming in from Musquodoboit Harbour with her aunt who has probably never attended an indie rock show in her life and already has mixed feelings about me, plus I'd heard there might be a fairly sizeable crowd according to the Facebook event page, possibly because Joel Plaskett may or may not have mentioned the show on stage a couple of nights earlier. Anyway, for whatever reason, before the show even started I felt like this:



And also a bit like this kid:



(Sorry — no good English versions of that scene available. We've all seen it though, right? Poor Lawrence...)

Unfortunately, I didn't have Jack Black there to tell me how cool I am, so I just had to tough it out feeling uncool and incredibly self-conscious. Sometimes that can work out OK, if I can just go with the shy weirdo vibe and inhabit it as an interesting persona. David Byrne taught me that trick. But there were extra problems this night, because the microphone I was singing into was a weird kind I'm not used to, and I couldn't figure out how to get the angle right while still being able to see what my guitar-playing hands were doing, if necessary. Turns out it's more often necessary than I would have thought.

Besides all that, there are no monitors at Jacob's. Usually the musicians on a stage get to hear their own special mix of what everything sounds like through small speakers that are aimed at them (monitors), because they have to be behind the speakers that are pointed out at the audience (the "PA"). If the microphones get in front of the latter speakers, they'll feed back like crazy, because those speakers are generally super loud. But even though they're loud enough for the whole audience to have its ears blasted by them, they're also directional, so that listening to what's going on from behind them gives you a weird, muddled perception with no detail. So the smaller speakers give the musicians a quiet but more accurate idea of what they sound like. Sometimes the monitors can even be given a special mix that's different from what the audience is hearing, if a musician needs to hear certain things better than others in order to perform well. That's called being a "diva." Not really — it's perfectly acceptable when available, although I always feel a bit sheepish about asking for "a little bit more of the rhythm guitar" or whatever.

Anyway, if you're a musician, sorry for the preceding paragraph. The point is that Jacob's doesn't have monitors, so it can be kind of hard to hear what you and your bandmates are doing. Last time we played there, it didn't seem to be a problem, but this time it was really throwing me. I had to be extra careful about my singing, to make sure I wasn't accidentally belting out some completely inappropriate note. That meant I couldn't just relax and let my voice do what it felt like doing to a certain extent. I also could barely make out the bass, and my guitar sounded like utter garbage to me — somehow both too loud and too quiet at the same time. It's an awful feeling when you're trying to get a song across to an audience, and you really want them to like it, but to you it sounds just terrible. Hard to fake being into it in that case, and probably just embarrassing to everyone if you try.

So I just kept playing, reminding myself that it must sound all right to the audience, because they were very appreciative after each song. But I could feel that I had a really sour look on my face the whole time, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. I thought about what it would be like to watch a performance where the singer had such a sour look on his face, and that made me feel worse and look even sourer. I think I even sighed with exhaustion at the end of one song. The set seemed to go on and on... Why did we write such a long set list? Did we have to play every song we know? And why were all the songs so energetic and aggressively catchy, when my mood was more suited to a slow number with minimal chord changes? Who wrote these stupid songs, anyway?

In desperation, a few times I looked back at my bandmates for some camaraderie. Maybe we could all laugh at what a taxing show this was turning out to be. But there seemed to be a huge physical distance between us, so that I couldn't even get their attention. Besides, they had their heads down and wore looks of extreme concentration, obviously having just as hard a time as I was...

I wish I had a hilarious surprise ending to this story, but in fact all that happened was that we continued to work really hard and eventually made it all the way through the set. People said it sounded really good out front and that we shouldn't worry about what the onstage sound was like. Ron said it was our best show ever, but he always says that. Amber turned out to be there with her aunt (they had come in a few songs into the set and slowly made their way past the front of the stage without me even seeing them), and they had both enjoyed it. But I was inconsolable. I didn't even care whether it sounded good or not. What really bothered me was that I got so invested in all the problems that I couldn't manage to have any kind of a good time or at least have an entertainingly authentic bad time. Instead, I just turned inward and "performed," in the worst sense of the word. I know you'll say it doesn't matter, and everyone has good shows and bad shows, and you'll be right. But that night, I had disrespected the spirit of rock with my inauthentic self-preserving attitude, and the whole next day I couldn't listen to any music out of utter shame.

But I feel OK about it now. Just thought you might appreciate some insight into the periodic nightmare that is caring about one's art.

Productive Despite Myself

Monday morning. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. The vast quantities of work that have to get done around here continue, preventing me from spending any time on blogging or even emailing, let alone anything that requires standing up or looking at things that are not a computer.

However, I was able to get out on Saturday to buy some very needed new pants. When it comes to clothes, I pretty much agree with Harvey Pekar that people spend way too much money on them and then look like crap anyway. And I really hate the ordeal of trying to find something you even like and/or fit into just so you can hand over your hard-earned cash. So it was nice of Alison to come with me and offer her advice. We spent most of the afternoon looking in every store we could think of. I started getting tired and very frustrated, but the "one last store" we tried had lots of decent pants that were available in my size. Sure, they were expensive. But I would've paid a couple of hundred dollars just to stop shopping at that point.

Other than that, besides nine billable hours of work, I also got a new song recorded this weekend. It was rattling around in my head and driving me crazy, so I just had to get it out, even though there really wasn't any time to spend on it. It's fairly scrappy in quality, therefore, but I finished it super fast and didn't even use any microphones. Garageband is incredible these days! It's unbelievable to me that I can sing an idea to my laptop and come away a couple of hours later with something that sounds this good.

That sun's supposed to be going down instead of coming up, by the way (remnant of an earlier verse sequence), but I can't be bothered to go back and fix it. Now to get some more work done!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

After Black History Month, I'm glad we now get to celebrate the history of pride and suffering that is the Irish identity. It's only fitting, as they were the ones used mainly as slaves by the British until the latter stumbled on the idea that bringing shiploads of Africans in for that purpose would mean their slaves would speak a multitude of mutually incomprehensible languages, and hence couldn't organize against their owners as easily as the pesky Erinese had. Once that idea had caught on, it wasn't long before the strategy was taken up by the Americas and other colonies, freeing the Irish to live a life of peace and liberty in their abject poverty.

In solidarity with this brave and indomitable people, may I present my rendition of this traditional Irish ballad? Sorry about the sound distortion. I got a little too passionate at times.

I'll also, of course, be drinking and subsequently vomiting gallons of green beer like everyone else.

Sounds of the Human Condition

The house on Harvard Street that sometimes displays poems handwritten in chalk on a blackboard hanging on its front veranda (see here and here, e.g.) is continuing to do its very fine thing that it sometimes does. I really should just knock on that house's door one of these days and tell whoever answers how much I appreciate their efforts, because every time I stop to read one of these, I end up either laughing out loud, directing a pensive "huh" at the trees and sky, or making an uncontrollable noise somewhere between "Hey!" and "Oof!" and falling onto the sidewalk, usually just as a snooty-looking woman and her small dog happen hoity-toitily by, the latter of whom invariably sniffs at my crotch before stepping on me. Today was a laughter day:

Poem Addressing People Who Are Tired, Hungry, or Horny

These things can wait. This is a very good poem and you’d be very myopic to lose sight of this beauty simply because some of your baser needs are asserting themselves. I’ll keep this short, but you should exercise some control, okay? Stay with me here. Allow this poem to carry you beyond yourself, transcending your mortal flesh as you wed yourself with the potentially infinite.

- Peter Davis

And, hey, speaking of uncontrollable noises, lately I keep getting woken up in the middle of the night by loud, horrible screams. That's a pretty awful thing to happen, but not as awful as when I realize they're coming from me. Some kind of nightmare keeps scaring me so much that I have to wake myself up by yelling out loud, and let me tell you, the screams of an unconscious person trying to become a conscious person would be horrific enough even if both of those people were NOT myself. If only I could remember the dreams when I wake up, I might be able to get to the heart of what's bothering me. But they immediately withdraw like slippery sea creatures under a rock before my memory can grab hold of them.

Psychic Fair and The Reference Desk will both be contributing to the racket that St. Patrick's Day at Gus' Pub promises to be. This Sunday, starting at 1:00 in the afternoon, the bar is hosting 14 different bands, offering live indie rock until well past the bedtime of anyone with any kind of conventional job to get back to on Monday. I'll be there at 5:something and again sometime after 10. Stop by if you're in the mood for some loud music and ironic young people enacting borderline offensive cultural stereotypes in the name of getting drunk.

Stir Crazy

Sorry no bloggy blog. Too much worky work. Today I finally felt sort of on top of things, though, so I was able to get outside for awhile and see some other members of my species wandering around. From what I could tell, I'm still passing as human.

Still, it'll be nice to have a weekend now. I didn't really get one last time around, there was so much work to catch up on. Looks like it's going to be a nice one, too, so I'm hoping to get some nature walking in — all work and no play makes Jack pretty much unfit for social interaction.

(By the way, Jack, happy birthday. And Henry, and Hannah. And happy International Women's Day, too!)

Born Again Atheist

Crow carrying twig
flies up and down beside me
out the bus window.

Today was sunny and warm and seemed to be full of magical signs expressing a newfound freedom and joy. Many involved crows, strangely, since I usually think of them as symbols of evil and decay. But maybe they were telling me that true freedom and rebirth require acceptance and appreciation of death. Who knows?

Some were more straightforward. I had a therapy appointment downtown in the morning that went really well. I had taken the bus, but the day was so nice when I left that I decided to walk across town to get my hair cut. A poster on a telephone pole I passed said "Future Possible" in large letters over an open green field. It was advertising a series of classical concerts. The next one I saw congratulated me on my "Good Whork," in an ornate, gothic typeface. I marvelled at the relative transparency of the universe's usually quite inscrutable intentions, and patted my own back on its behalf. A block later, I saw the same goth poster again and realized this time that it was actually for an upcoming show by a metal band called "Goat Whore." But I was already in too good a mood to do anything but laugh about it.

A couple of days ago felt like:

But today was much more:

Charlotte Glencross: The Fabric of Her Life

I'm in Fredericton this weekend, checking out a retrospective of my late aunt Chooch's textile art with some of my family. The show is way more thorough and generally fabulous than I'd anticipated. Lots of batiks and weavings I had either forgotten about or never seen before. There's a beautifully designed catalogue that fits all the pieces into a comprehensive narrative of her life. And there's even a corner in which they've set up a mock studio, including her loom, books, and lots of fabric bits and notebooks from her working process, kind of like the Maud Lewis house. It's all really impressive and evocative.

Here are some photos my sister Erika took.

This is one of my favourites from the early 70s. I'd seen it at that time, but somehow it escaped my memory until I saw it again yesterday.

The studio installation.

M. Hulot was particularly interested in this one large batik.

Faith

Sometimes I am the water.
Sometimes I am a sailboat navigating the waves.
And sometimes I am a monkey trying desperately not to drown.
At those times, I remind myself
That sometimes I am the water.

New Face on Desk Duty

Our good friend Meg joined The Reference Desk last night on bass for four songs. They sounded way better than any of the other songs we'd played, so I guess that seals the deal... We're a three-piece now! Thanks to all the folks who came out to see us in Dartmouth on a rainy night. It was fun.

Spooky photo by KC

HVD II

Coincidentally, my horoscope had this to say today (I don't usually pay much attention to horoscopes, but if their advice seems apt, insofar as it could be good advice for anyone, I will take it into consideration):

This Valentine season, meditate on the relentlessness of your yearning for love. Recognize the fact that your eternal longing will never leave you in peace. Accept that it will forever delight you, torment you, inspire you, and bewilder you — whether you are alone [yes] or in the throes of a complicated relationship [also yes]. Understand that your desire for love will just keep coming and coming and coming, keeping you slightly off-balance and pushing you to constantly revise your ideas about who you are [yup, sounds about right]. Now read this declaration from the poet Rilke [ooh, I love Rilke] and claim it as your own: "My blood is alive with many voices that tell me I am made of longing."

So, I should just love my love of love, instead of problematizing it? Lean into the grasping in order to appreciate it, rather than treating it as an affliction to be overcome? Sounds dangerous but possibly true. I will definitely sit with this for awhile...

HVD

Some Valentine cards

seem like they want something more

than to be a gift.

Somehow, most of us have forgotten that we are pure love and so we seek it outside ourselves. This longing is very useful in that it serves to activate your quest for love. Ultimately this search for the beloved leads you to the realization that you feel love when you are being loving, not when you are being loved by another.

Deborah Anapol

The Seven Natural Laws of Love

Strumming My Own Guitar

Did I tell you that the band I'm in with Kristina Parlee, The Reference Desk, recorded some songs and put three of them out as an EP of sorts? Probably not. You can listen to and/or download it here. And hey, I just saw today that it's on the local college radio station's top 30, even though they'd told us a 3-song "EP" probably wouldn't get played. All right!

We're playing our second show ever this Saturday night at Jacob's Lounge in Dartmouth. There'll be a surprise guest. Come and see us, if you feel so inclined.

Warm Impermanence

Sidewalk slush rivers
are fun for little children
and nobody else.

We got even more snow last night, but today it's all melting. There was a beautiful thick winter fog this morning — the kind we only get in the Maritimes. I had a treacherous half-hour walk to a 9:30 client meeting along narrow sidewalks full of water with nowhere to go.

I was running late and so panicked when I found myself stuck behind a short-legged woman. But she was a determined walker, and — more importantly — wearing boots that were more sensible than
mine, so our wildly different routes ended up taking about the same amount of time. For my part, I kept

Image via Nietzsche Family Circus
— highly recommended.

imagining a dotted line trailing behind me, like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Billy or Jeffy makes some simple task into an Odyssean study in childish whimsy.

Really, though, my puddle-hopping, bank-climbing Mr. Bean jig probably would have gotten more laughs in real time (say, for instance, if the galoshed dwarf had ever turned around to see what all the huffing and puffing behind her was about) than any post-mortem diagram Bil Keane could ever draw. I realize that's not saying much...

Hey, have you been watching Girls this season? And has it been making your stomach hurt as much as mine? I'm finding the 20-somethings' emotionally cavalier escapades really anxiety-producing this time around, but maybe the story lines have just been a little too close to home. Don't get me wrong, though, I've been enjoying the hell out of it, possibly even more than the first season. I thought this last weekend's episode, "One Man's Trash," was especially beautiful and sad. You?

Nowhere to Look

We dig through the snow
for something or somebody
and fall asleep, lost.

Here in Halifax, we got an awful lot of snow dumped on us by a blizzard yesterday. I was going to take a picture of it, but it could never be anywhere near as good as this one Alison took. I don't know exactly how many inches there were. This is not a weather report. But there are piles of it everywhere, making walking difficult and fort-building easy.

I was attempting the former yesterday in the middle of some of the heaviest dumping, as I had to pick up my bass guitar from the music store where I'd left it for some neck adjustment. Psychic Fair (= The Lodge, but with Mike O'Neill replaced by frontman extraordinaire Josh Salter) had a show to play in Dartmouth last night, so it was important to get my bass back.

Unfortunately, the store was closed due to the bad weather. I kind of flipped out a little, pulling repeatedly on the locked doors as if breaking the lock would somehow turn the store's lights back on and bring its employees up from the basement, where I was sure they were hiding from me.

Didn't work. So I trudged home through the deep drifts and blowing powder, wondering how Jacob's Lounge would respond that night to a bassless Psychic Fair. The show was cancelled in the end, so I never got to find out.

But the bleak, desperate flavour of my walk through the blinding whiteness made me think a lot about the constant search outside myself for some kind of contentment or meaning that goes on in my mind. I've seen it referred to in Buddhist literature as "grasping," which strikes me as a pretty apt term for it. It's an almost universal human failing, and it always leads to suffering.

Generally, I think of myself as fairly independent and able to find my own reasons for doing things. But lately it keeps coming to my attention that this is not strictly true, and that in fact huge parts of my life's motivation, when examined thoroughly, end up being about the search for some reward beyond the enjoyment of the task at hand. Specifically, in my case, that reward seems to mostly take the form of approval and admiration from other people, real or imagined.

That's a really ugly thing to find out about yourself, but I have to admit its truth. It's probably the biggest reason why I had to get off Facebook. That world is virtually designed to encourage self-invention and -assessment based on the validation and approval of others. I guess it's arguable whether keeping a blog is any more discouraging of those tendencies, but I feel like the relative infrequency of posts and limited readership make it at least slightly less insidious. Maybe if I were really concerned about it, I would turn commenting off. I don't know. What do you think?

2012 Top Ten, Belated

Oh, hello. Looks like I'm back. Yeah, Facebook turns out to be kind of a pain in the butt. Did you know that? It's all people doing and saying and liking things, and then before you can close the window, they've gone and had another opinion/meal/baby. Exhausting!

So, is it too late for a top ten list? Because I really enjoy looking back at these, and it feels like a nice, shallow way to ease back into the long form. In fact, I'll keep my reviews to three words, if it'll make you happy. All right, then — my picks for last year were:

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man

Lush goth balladry.

Beach House - Bloom

Spare goth balladry.

Chromatics - Kill for Love

Bleak primitive disco.

Chris Cohen - Overgrown Path

Gorgeous complex pop. (Former member of Deerhoof!)

Cousins - Palm at the End of the Mind

Catchy Halifax duo.

Deerhoof - Breakup Song

ADD dance rock.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor -
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Instrumental noise anthems.
(First album in 10 years! Exclamation points!)

Grimes - Visions

Dark Madonna wunderkind.

Liars - WIXIW

Spooky synth barbarians.

Melody's Echo Chamber - Melody's Echo Chamber
French psychedelic Broadcast-lover.
(Produced by the Tame Impala guy!)

Tame Impala - Lonerism

Australian psychedelic Lennon-lover.

Honourable mentions:

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Mature Themes

Can - The Lost Tapes

Mohn - Mohn

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock vinyl reissues

Wild Nothing - Nocturne

A Heartfelt Apology

I'm sorry, blog, that I've been ignoring you so much lately. I guess I just haven't felt much like writing at length about the details of my life recently. Everything seems either too important or too unimportant to be material for your entertainment. I wish I had some nice little pithy stories to tell you.

And, OK, if we're being completely honest here, I've also become involved with another website. I know you've probably heard the rumours, so let's just get it out in the open. Yes, it is Facebook. Does that make you feel redeemed? Is there a kernel of enjoyment now in your disappointment, because my betrayal is so predictable and pathetic that it makes you morally superior? Well, good. I'm glad that something nice can come out of this for you.

Aw geez... This is meant to be an apology, and here I am already getting defensively bitter. I'm sorry. In all sincerity, I really do want only the best for you. And I'd like to continue giving you the best of me, if you'll have it. I just might not be able to devote as much time to you as I used to.

I don't actually know how long this thing with Facebook is going to last, but it's something I have to pursue. I can have the lightest of general conversations or the most in-depth one-on-one discussions. Either way, there's a give-and-take there that I feel like I need now. And that's just not something you've ever been able to offer me. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but I think you deserve the truth.

Look, I'm not accusing you of selfishness here — I honestly value your passive nature. I know that I have a tendency to talk at you at length, while you're expected to sit there and listen politely. Believe me, I'm grateful. When I think of all the times you've gotten up in the middle of the night, never complaining, just to hear me hold forth on whatever stupid stream of consciousness has seemed important to me at the time, well...

You've been a great sounding board and guardian of my thought process. I will never forget that. And if my hope that we might even continue such a relationship on a less frequent basis strikes you as unforgivably presumptuous, please understand that it is only a testament to your unswerving generosity and goodness.

OK, gotta run for now. But we're good here, right? There are some funny cat videos I have to go and look at, but thanks, as always, for your sympathetic ear.

Much love, Andrew.

Happy Birthday, Ali!

Thumbo!

Photos courtesy of Alison & Instagram.

Good Day

I'm at my parents' place in Markham, Ontario, right now, ostensibly for my mom's 65th birthday, but also escaping the stresses of my life in Halifax for a short recharge. Yesterday I biked over to Stouffville to see my sister Erika's family and their new house.

It was such a nice day and a beautiful ride. A flat, straight road under a giant, cloudless sky. Lots of lush marsh- and farmland between the two towns, once you get past the latest ugly developments, which extend a bit farther north every year. But there were birds greeting me the whole way, and then I saw a small airplane pulling a glider ahead of me.

The two went back and forth a few times, and I wondered whether the glider would eventually be let go to continue on its own. Eventually I noticed the motored plane over to my left, and couldn't make out the glider with it. I searched the sky ahead, left, right, and behind, but couldn't find it. I'd just convinced myself that the other plane WAS the glider, when a large shadow passed over me from behind, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I looked straight up, and there it was, silently coasting right over my head. It was so slow and beautiful and free. I pulled over to the side of the road and got off my bike to watch it. The sun was also directly above, so I had to shade my eyes quite a bit to see it, but it circled around me four or five times before heading off in the direction I'd seen the other plane in. I couldn't tell whether the people in the glider were actually communicating with me or not, or even whether they could see me, but I waved to them. It was kind of a mystical experience. I felt happier than I have in a long time, and in a way that I haven't since I was a kid.

Baiku

Needed some outdoors today, so I went for a long bike ride. It was warm, but very windy. This haiku came to me.

Trees are not waving
Goodbye in the summer wind —
They are just waving.

Personification in haiku is a definite no-no, as the point is to depict what happens unadorned. That way, the reader is able to have the same experience the writer did, rather than just be told what the experience was. So pointing out the absence of personification in one's own haiku is probably a sneaky trick that's just as bad, when it comes down to it. I like it, though.

Get Out While You Still Can III

In yet another example of cynically inappropriate song repurposing by television advertisers (see Iggy Pop's ode to heroin addiction, "Lust for Life," used to sell ocean cruise vacations, and then this), tonight I saw Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" promoting a cell phone!



It's only one of the most devastatingly bleak critiques of the technological age I've ever heard. It's 1981, and humans are replaced by their answering machines. Love is replaced by justice and then force. Mom is replaced by electronics, chemicals, and the military.

In case you think the producers of the commercial spot didn't bother to listen to the lyrics — making them not actually cynical but just lazy and dumb — the ad's storyline features people jumping gleefully out of an airplane. Viewers are thereby induced to start singing, "Here come the planes."

The unsettling irony created in the song at this point by conflating images of pleasure trips with those of air warfare is here reduced to a plain old post-modern embracing of opposites. Why shouldn't parachuting be a military exercise AND a fun thing to do with a bunch of friends? Why shouldn't love be human AND technological? As long as you can afford it, why not wrap yourself tighter in those electronic arms?

Two Things

1. R.I.P., Maurice Sendak, beloved crotchety misanthrope and children's book writer/illustrator.

2. Another one of those poems appeared on a blackboard in front of the house on Harvard Street. This one's a real winner too:

The Weather in Space

Is God being or pure force? The wind
Or what commands it? When our lives slow
And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls
In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm
Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing
After all we’re certain to lose, so alive—
Faces radiant with panic.

- Tracy K. Smith

I keep stopping by to reread it, and I smile every time.

How are these two things connected? I don't know. Can't you make up your own story, for once? Or better yet, just appreciate two unconnected things WITHOUT a story around them? Geez...

Chaotic Forces

I seem to have adopted a cat. At least, temporarily. Her owner is a client of a friend's mother and can't take care of her for awhile, so I'll be looking after her indefinitely. I hadn't planned on getting another cat, but she needed a place to stay, and I could use some company.

Apparently her name is Cuddles, but I refuse to call her that while she stays with me. Haven't decided on a better name yet, though. So far I've just been alternating among generic nicknames like Kitty, Buddy, Monkey, Weirdo, etc. She's a cutie — very playful and a bit of a comedian. I can tell she's going to stir up some trouble around here.

Here's one Alison took on her phone while the cat spied on us from across the room.

And speaking of allowing nature's complexity into our rigidly simplistic human lives, here's a really great talk by the incomparable Alan Watts, recorded for television in 1971. I just finished reading The Wisdom of Insecurity again and discovered this yesterday. Low quality video, but highly recommended.

Hard Times

Oh, lord. What HASN'T been going on? Let's see, let's see...

1.  I gave Stephen Harper $12,000 to do with as he sees fit.


2.  I watched Lars von Trier's Melancholia (see fig. A, above). Twice. I feel like I want to tell you all about it hyperenthusiatically but can't because I'd have to give awesome surprises away. Let me just say that I was not much of a fan of Trier's before this (although I'd forgotten he also made The Idiots, which I did kind of love), so if Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark and possibly Dogville all made you angry with their brutal treatment of angelic female characters, don't let that stop you from checking out this one. You'll be thinking about it days later, in a good way, I swear. And when you do, ask yourself this bonus question: Does Melancholia, the planet, bring on melancholia, the condition, or vice versa? Hmmm?


3. Buster has apparently been ignoring his food and leaving presents on Alison's living room floor that would be better positioned in his litter box. I may have to take him back.


4. Amber is in the hospital for three weeks, having had a giant growth removed from around her knee. She probably won't be able to walk for two more months after that, during which time she'll be living with her mom on the Eastern Shore. She's not exactly happy.


5. My eye rash has finally cleared up, possibly because Buster and his weird cat litter are no longer living here (but see point 3, above).


6. A client who is months late in paying me $300 has outright refused to pay the further $1,700 he has accumulated in late fees over the past couple of years. He's also stopped giving me work or returning my calls, and I've seen posters advertising his services around town that were not done by me. I'm going to have to take him to small claims court.


7. I gave notice to my landlords that I won't be renewing my lease at the end of July as I can't afford this place by myself, not least because of point 1. Where I will be living and with whom are undetermined.


8. My lower back is giving me problems and I'm not sleeping well. It's unclear which is cause and which effect.


9. Even though I never have any money, I seem to be so overwhelmed with work that I can barely get it done. How is this possible? See points 1, 6, and 7, I guess?


10. Wah.

HowEVER...

I'm still playing and writing a lot of music, and really loving it. I've also been to some great shows recently (Bad Vibrations, Monomyth/Hymm/Air-Fire/JFM) and read or reread a few inspiring books (Black Swan Green, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Freedom Evolves). And I'll be spending a week with my parents and sisters in Ontario for my mom's birthday later in the month. So all is far from desperate.

Rock Talk

Lest I be accused of disappearing off the face of the Web, here's some footage from a Record Store Day show I played yesterday. Somebody thoughtfully recorded the whole in-store set and put it on YouTube in three installments.



That's my new bass backing up Matthew Grimson's songwriting genius there. I've just recently been enlisted in this band, and this was the first show I'd played with them. You can kind of tell. I think it generally went pretty well, though, and was a lot of fun. Taz, the record store, gave us each a $50 gift card for playing, which was a complete and welcome surprise. I picked up Thurston Moore's first solo album and the new Shins record, both on vinyl.

The Lodge played a poorly attended but well-received show the weekend before at Gus' Pub, which turned out to be our last. Mike's got too many other projects on the go to continue being a puppet/clown shouting our ridiculous lyrics while we hide behind him. Fair enough — especially since those other projects are both more lucrative and more creatively fulfilling for him. But Charles and Cliff and I will carry on in some, likely instrumental, fashion. Might just take us awhile to regroup. Meanwhile, there are some unfinished Lodge recordings that we still plan on releasing eventually.

And Guts, a.k.a. Kristina and me, continues to develop its sound weekly. We have about seven or eight songs that are slowly getting hammered into some kind of presentable shape. I want it to sound really good before we unleash it on the world. Watch for a public unveiling in, oh, I'd say a couple of months.

Celebrating Spring by Staying Inside

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Alison and I spent a nice couple of days together at her apartment, doing the crossword, eating good food, and playing arcade-style video games from circa 1983 on her laptop.



Burger Time was a running favourite for awhile, then we got hooked on Phoenix. I was starting to get the hang of dealing with those aggressive little pixelated birds and ignoring the nightmarish computer squeals that accompany them, but not really getting anywhere near as good as I remembered being at the game in my youth. I couldn't figure out what was going on, until I accidentally pushed a different button one time and suddenly realized there was a SHIELDS option I'd completely forgotten about! Total game-changer.

Alison's taken Buster the Wonder Cat to see how he likes it at her place, and he seems to be settling in OK now. At first he just curled up in one of her jackets and didn't move for about a day, but when I came over he perked up a bit and is now exploring and generally owning the place.

I was supposed to go for a hike along the coast on Sunday with some friends, but we got a big pile of wet snow in the morning, which is how I ended up spending hours dodging digital bird poop instead. But here's a photo Alison took a few weeks ago when we went for a Sunday walk on Crystal Crescent Beach.


It's a bit springier now than it looks here. But not much.

Hey, I just realized what a direct contradiction of my last entry this entire post is. Hilarious!

Coming Out

Time to bust open this cocoon I've been in all winter. It seems to really be spring now, and the weather's a lot more dependably seasonable. I've started getting out of the house more — socializing, playing music, and generally wandering around in the sunshine. I even had some windows open today.

I guess work and band practices have been keeping me indoors quite a lot this past week, but the bike has also seen its fair share of use. And yesterday I went to the park with Amber, where we spent a good part of the afternoon cloud-gazing and watching the sunlight twinkle on the water. I hadn't really done the former since I was a kid. Highly recommended, if you can make the time. We saw a giant cyclopean skull, a banana fish, and a lot of mutating water vapor.

This week will see me doing my income tax, but even that can't put a damper on this vernal spirit. I'm a fresh-air-breathing, lyric-writing, instrument-playing, friend-greeting machine!

Grooving in the Music Room

See? I'm back again already. Here's a new song I wrote for Guts. It'll be a lot more aggressive-Neil-Young-meets-Sebadoh in that format, but this is the prettier acoustic version. It's called "Been Away."



I've also been spending a lot of time with my new bass, mostly figuring out and practising this song, which has probably my favourite bass line of all time.



It's actually the Hatful of Hollow version I've been learning — a bit more subtle and soulful. I can play it OK with a pick, but it really requires finger style plucking to be done right. It's about time I learned how to do that, so maybe this is a good excuse.

I got to see The Smiths in the summer of 1986 on their The Queen Is Dead tour with my sister. Remember that, Dana? Still the best rock show I've ever seen. It was outdoors at Canada's Wonderland in Ontario, and it rained gently until the band came onstage. Morrissey said, "Sorry about the rain. We blame The Queen!" and they launched right into the thumping title track of the album. Very exciting. The rain let up in the middle of the song, and stayed away for the remainder of the show.

The big finale was "How Soon Is Now?" where maybe 50 people got up on the stage, swayed back and forth, and sang along with Morrissey. Johnny Marr's tremolo guitar seemed to be everywhere at once, pulsing through all our chests in a wave of love and misery and solidarity that felt like it would never end. It was completely transcendent. When they walked off the stage in triumph, the rain immediately started up again in big, plopping drops.

Somewhere at my parents' house I have a tape of that show, recorded on a Sony recording Walkman that I'd spent a lot of babysitting money on and smuggled in, in a backpack. It probably sounds terrible, but I sure would like to dig that tape up sometime, as I think of that show as one of the defining moments of my adolescence. Then again, maybe it's best to leave those kinds of memories intact in their erroneous perfection.

Still Breathing

Just so you know, I'm not dead or anything. I HAVE been sick again, I'm embarrassed to say. Week-long cold, eye rash, stye, the whole chimichanga. I even grew a beard, of sorts, while I was spending so much time indoors alone. It wasn't a pretty sight.


But now spring is here, things are happening, the weather's fine... It's 26 degrees out there right now! What am I doing in here, sitting in front of a computer? Should be out on the bike.

Yesterday was equally nice, and I biked over to Dartmouth in the evening for a band practice with my friend Kristina. We've been jamming mostly weekly, putting together a scrappy little project called Guts. Me on guitar, Kristina on drums. There was a third guy temporarily involved, but we're back to a two-piece now, and loving it.

I'm theoretically in five bands right now, if you can believe it. I bought myself a new (to me) Fender Jazz bass yesterday with some money that finally came in for a big project I'd done. I really needed a bass for some of these bands, plus I wanted to get myself something nice with the money before it all disappeared into various debts.

Anyway, gotta get some work done now so I can get outside and enjoy the sunshine a bit. I just didn't want any undue worrying. I'll be back soon — promise.

Happy Women's Day!

I've been reading this book, The Fall, recently, in which Steve Taylor presents a convincing case that the insanity behind our current culture started with a giant "ego explosion" 6,000 years ago and is not, as usually supposed, due to "human nature." According to him, societies were cooperative and egalitarian before this event. It was only when the ego developed — mostly in men — as the result of a radical environmental change in a large geographic area that the world began to see the ugliness of war, social inequality, patriarchy, materialistic greed, alienation from nature, lack of empathy, and a general dissatisfaction with human life. The book really could have used a good copy editor, but the thesis is so fascinating that I almost don't mind the many, many syntax errors throughout it.

I like the idea that all these terrible problems have the same root cause. And I especially like the idea that they're not an inevitable feature of human beings. I was beginning to think that there's just something biologically wrong with men, causing them to orchestrate the destruction of their own species. Like maybe that Y chromosome is a malignant mutation that we might want to start categorizing as a dangerous virus. But if the problem is just a cultural one, albeit one that's been around for six millennia, it means there's still hope for us, and the feminist project is more than just a frustrating waste of time.

Here are some songs I like lately by women I would consider not only "female positive," but musically worth your time as well. I.e., no Indigo Girls in the bunch. Enjoy!

Little Boats on the Horizon

I mentioned back in January that I'd been working on a musical project that would be finished around the end of the month. Well, it's still not finished. But I'm getting there!

The project is a collection of solo recordings from the past nine years or so. I've got all these songs sitting around, and mostly they've not been heard. I used to put some on my myspace page every once in awhile for anyone who happened by, but that site has become pretty much useless. So I've finally decided it's time to release something like a proper album for public consumption. I chose thirteen songs that seem to belong together in some sense, ten of which are completely recorded and mixed already. Each of the other three still needs a bit of work, but nothing too difficult.

I've done a mastering job of sorts on the ten that are done, so that they're all similar in volume level and EQ. The remaining three keep getting put off, but I'm determined to get around to them and put the whole collection up on Bandcamp. It will be released under the name "Pale Son," and called Little Boats. I've got the artwork designed, and a friend of mine is doing a painted version of it, for extra texture. I'll let you know when it's all ready.

Meanwhile, here's a fourteenth, instrumental piece I just finished recording. It will be the last track on the album. It's called "Same Window Next Sunday."

I'm Your Man

"I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. There's a certain humor in realizing that. I can never figure out the kind of tie to put on in the morning. I don't have any strategy or plan to get through the day. It is literally a problem for me to decide which side of the bed to get out on. These are staggering problems. I remember talking to this Trappist monk in a monastery. He's been there twelve years. A pretty severe regime. I expressed my admiration for him and he said 'Leonard, I've been here twelve years and every morning, I have to decide whether I'm going to stay or not.' I knew exactly what he was talking about."

- Leonard Cohen

I interviewed last week for a new job. Not that I'm looking for a job — at all — as I'm generally quite content doing what I'm doing. Having built a decent client base, I'm now lucky enough to do work I enjoy from the comfort of my own home and get paid fairly for it. Pretty sweet business.

But this was a job I'd long dreamt of: designing for an international magazine in collaboration with its art director. The art director, whom I know, had brought the opening to my attention, which I took as a pretty solid foot in the door. It would be full time, meaning I'd have to give up my current clients to take it. A real life-changer, in other words, but it seemed too good an opportunity not to at least try for. Did I want my life changed? Maybe, maybe not. But I could put off making a decision about that until I was actually offered the job, should it come to that. And what could be a better state of mind going into a job interview than not caring whether you get it? Right?

There were, unfortunately, many hurdles before I could arrive at the real decision. I had to update my fancy, non-standard résumé; write a cover letter; put together an impressive portfolio; and spend money I didn't have on some wool pants at Club Monaco that are probably way too fancy to ever wear again. That all took a few days away from my work. And then the day before the interview I had to spend a few hours making sure I could talk about my portfolio in a way that made a story out of all the pieces, illustrating exactly how multitalented I am and why I'd be the best candidate for the job in question.

So, by the time I got to the actual interview the next day, I was well prepared, but also incredibly nervous. Weird how much I can still care what others think of me, even when I'm not sure I want what they have to offer. A friendly but very probing panel of four people had me recount my job history for them in the office of the magazine's editor-in-chief while they took notes. It turned out that they didn't want to look at my portfolio at all. Instead, they grilled me with questions about my professional and personal interests for an hour or so, often throwing things I'd said earlier back in my face if they detected inconsistencies in my alleged character. It was brutal — felt like a psychotherapy session on which I would be graded at the end.

Mostly, the questions kept coming back to why I wanted the job, what was going to excite me about it, how it fit in with my career plans. They knew I'd had some uncertainty about whether I should even apply for the position. They wanted evidence that it would keep me interested for awhile, that I wouldn't just find something new to become curious about in a couple of years.

I finally had to say, "Look, I'm not really what you'd call an ambitious person, and I don't like to think too much about what my future will be like. If I can work at a job where I like the people and the environment, and there's some degree of variety to what I do, I'm pretty good at being happy, whatever the actual job is. The only reason there's been any dilemma about this job is that I'm already happy where I am, and I'm also convinced that I'd be happy here. With no other factors pulling me one way or the other, I'm forced to turn the decision around into what I can give, rather than what I can get. I like you folks and the message of your magazine, and I think you're deserving of the services I have to offer, even if it means denying others those same service, so I'm here offering them to you if you want them."

I didn't get the job.

It kind of depressed me for a couple of days, I have to admit. I guess I'd gotten more excited about the prospect than I thought I had. But now I feel OK about it. My situation is exactly as it already was, and I'm glad that I don't have to give my clients — most of whom are pretty nice people — the old unjust heave-ho. I just sort of wish I'd never heard about the job in the first place, you know? I suppose it was a useful exercise to go through, although I really don't plan on applying for any other jobs, so an updated résumé and some tough interview experience are not completely useful to me. And I could've done without all that emotional drama, not to mention the wool pants.

Plus, Happy Birthday, Carol

Not sure whether she reads this...

Happy Valentine's Day

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

- Alan Watts



Instead of seeing love as something that will make you happy if you can get enough of it, consider the possibility of love as a way of being, of love as a state of consciousness. As such it is independent of any particular person or set of conditions. In other words, love is unlimited, impersonal and unchanging. It cannot be lost nor can it be hoarded. This kind of love is both a choice and surrender to something beyond your ego.

- Deborah Anapol



To the ego, loving and wanting are the same, whereas true love has no wanting in it, no desire to possess or for your partner to change. The ego singles someone out and makes them special. It uses that person to cover up the constant underlying feeling of discontent, of “not enough,” of anger and hate, which are closely related. These are facets of an underlying deep seated feeling in human beings that is inseparable from the egoic state.

- Eckhart Tolle



In this torn desert world there is no love because pleasure and desire play the greatest roles, yet without love your daily life has no meaning. And you cannot have love if there is no beauty. Beauty is not something you see — not a beautiful tree, a beautiful picture, a beautiful building or a beautiful woman. There is beauty only when your heart and mind know what love is. Without love and that sense of beauty there is no virtue, and you know very well that, do what you will, improve society, feed the poor, you will only be creating more mischief, for without love there is only ugliness and poverty in your own heart and mind. But when there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.

- J. Krishnamurti



Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.

- Carl Jung



At the heart of Buddhist philosophy is the notion of compassion for others. It should be noted that the compassion encouraged by Mahayana Buddhism is not the usual love one has for friends or family. The love being advocated here is the kind one can have even for another who has done one harm. Developing a kind heart does not always involve any of the sentimental religiosity normally associated with it. It is not just for people who believe in religions; it is for everyone who considers himself or herself to be a member of the human family, and thus sees things in accordingly large terms.

- The Dalai Lama



You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?

- Jesus Christ



One result of our freedom from neediness is that our love expands to touch all people. We love others because we and they are intimately connected to one another. There is not a separate self anywhere in sight. Compassionate love is the natural response to the human predicament of suffering and the human truth of interdependence, and it lightens the burden of finding a special someone.

- David Richo



Romance is the chief delusion, elixir, and magical potion of our popular culture. It is itself a Shadow fantasy, for in this blissful state, one's wounds are healed, one's needs met. But because the seductive power of romance is so powerful, it distracts from the accountability of consciousness. Who really wants to examine relational dynamics with a critical eye? Who wishes to look within when it is so much easier to look for rescue without? Yet without a knowledge of our history... who could really expect any current relationship to be better than its archaic paradigm?

- James Hollis

Street Art

The other day I was walking down Harvard Street toward Quinpool, on my way to buy some of the fancy cat food Buster likes, and noticed that someone had attached a tall blackboard to the front of their house. It was full of chalk handwriting. I stopped to look at it, and this is what I saw:

Lines for Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

- Mark Strand

It was quite cold and grey out, as in the poem, and I was feeling particularly miserable that day. So I was touched that someone had gone to so much trouble to inject a little bit of hope into the bleakness that is Halifax in February. "There is an infinite core to you," the poet seemed to be saying, "and it is lovable, so just remember that, no matter what else is going on in your life, and everything will be fine." Very nice.

Except that something rang false about the whole thing for me. For instance, what if I don't want to hear the same tune no matter where I find myself? What's so comforting about that? Sounds kind of like a nightmare. And why should I have to "tell myself" these things, if they're true? Shouldn't I just be able to perceive them somehow? Am I supposed to lie to myself as a small consolation while I keep trudging along pointlessly, pretending that I know about some deeper meaning that in actual fact eludes me completely? I decided that this poet, and by extension the owner of the house, was well-intentioned but ultimately misguided.

I started walking again and tried to think of another poem about winter that would be a quick and devastating rebuttal to this one. I had the idea that I would write it on a piece of paper and attach it to the blackboard the next time I walked by it. Something about how winter is gloomy and discouraging, but you might as well just face it, because it's going to kill you in the end anyway. (I told you I was in a miserable mood.)

Well, I never did come up with just the right poem, but something interesting happened when I looked up the Mark Strand one in order to write this post. On reading it a few more times, I began to think that my reaction to it was not actually an argument against it, but the one intended by the poet.

Check it out: "Tell yourself" is a very interesting way to begin an instruction. It brings to mind well-meaning friends and self-help books, but does also suggest that what follows is not necessarily the truth. Since it's repeated twice more, the author must mean for us to consider such possibilities. Right?

And then there's that "same tune" that you'll keep hearing as you continue on. Later on, the tune turns out to be what your bones play, which is all that you know, which is... nothing! Definitely some irony involved in comforting yourself with that bit of permanence, then. And when you realize that, you get to stop your forward striving in order to lie in the snow and enjoy the warmth of the stars, i.e. no warmth whatsoever.

So now I see the whole thing as a kind of sarcastic argument against will and self-deception as antidotes for suffering and death. In other words, the poem is the perfect refutation of itself I was looking for! Except that there's still some hope at the end, because if life beats all the delusion out of you until at death's door you realize that you are nothing, then you can tell yourself — not through an act of will this time, but through pure experiencing of the "flow of cold through your limbs" — that you love that nothing. And really mean it. Pretty neat trick!

So thanks very much, anonymous Harvard Street resident, for introducing me to what may now become one of my favourite poems.

Sick of Being Sick

So, after I got over that 2-day flu, I caught a cold almost immediately. It's taking its time to get lost, too, sneaking around into different locations every day so I can't get a good shot at it. Today it was my right eye, and it's not pretty, I tell ya. I am literally a sight for sore eyes. No, wait, that's supposed to be a good thing, isn't it?

Anyway, I guess maybe I've been a little too busy working and meeting with folks and attending birthdays... Why do I know so many Aquarii, anyway? There are some exciting projects and possibilities in the works, including still the musical one I was telling you about a few posts ago, but mostly I can't really talk about them here. So if you could just be ready to be excited at any given moment, that'd be great. Thanks.

There hasn't even been much time for reading or movie-watching. Last Tuesday I did go to see A Dangerous Method with Alison. It's a really boring period piece about the relationship between Jung and Freud, in which the two never say anything that anyone with the most cursory knowledge of their theories wouldn't expect. Keira Knightly hams it up as Sabina Spielrein, an unfortunately hilarious mental patient of Jung's. Otherwise, there's nothing to see. David Cronenberg directed it, but nobody's head blows up, and nothing turns into a bug. Not even in a dream sequence. In fact, there are no dream sequences — just dry descriptions of dreams and long-winded guesses about what they could "mean." Come on!

I also saw Shame last night with Amber. Another psychological drama with only one female and two male characters, but this one was miles better. It's a study of individual sex addiction in a sexually addictive culture, as well as a compassionate portrait of a brother and sister with an unspoken incestuous relationship. Heavy stuff, in other words, and at times it teeters towards heavy-handed, but mostly it's quiet and suggestive and compelling. Check it out, but maybe not on a first date.

A Fun Little Puzzle

I just read this intuition confounder from Ludwig Wittgenstein, via Brian Eno, and it's really messing with my head:

You want to tie a ribbon around the Earth (which we assume to be a perfect sphere for the sake of this hypothetical story), but you accidentally cut the ribbon a bit too long — you're off by a metre. If you distribute the excess ribbon evenly around the circumference of the Earth, how far above the surface will it hover?

Math nerds, resist the urge to work it out, and just take a guess. It's meant to test your intuition. The actual answer, which I've verified with basic geometry and put in the comments section, will astound you.

This bit of mind-blowery is brought to you by Edge.org's list of interesting thinkers' favourite "deep, elegant, or beautiful explanations," Eno's of which is "The Limits of Intuition." Thanks, Jenny, for the endlessly fascinating link.

The Nature of Desire

Lately I've been feeling like I sort of actually get what J. Krishnamurti's always talking about. I mean, he's always had something valuable for me, philosophically, whenever in my life I've picked up any of his collected writings. But these days it's like I go for a walk and I can totally catch my mind doing exactly what he says it does, like deep in there at a fundamental level, and then the catching itself puts a stop to it and everything is just as it is for a few moments. It's very exciting, which of course sends my mind back into webs of desire and memories and hope and all the rest of it...

This short commentary in particular, which I read on a bus to Dartmouth the other day, really opened up some important spot for me. I don't know whether it'll do the same for you, but I thought I'd share it, just in case. It's from 1958.



My flu is completely gone now, by the way.

Sicko

Got the flu over here. Yuck. I'm cranking the heat in the apartment and spending a lot of time under the covers. Unfortunately, I'm also quite busy with work, so not as much rest as I'd like to get. But that means income, which means I get to eat, so hooray, I guess.

I'm also working on a couple of musical projects, one of which should see the light of day around the end of the month. The final stages are a little boring and time-consuming, but I think it's going to be worth it in the end. Stay tuned.

And, by the way, if anyone ever gets the chance to see a local musician named Gianna Lauren perform, they should jump on it. Caught her last weekend and it was just jaw-dropping. Here's a vidya.



Now back to the blankets...