Random Update

Hey, wow, this non-blogging phase has really gone on long enough, eh? I guess I got a bit overwhelmed, first by profound disappointments and then by all the various doings required by life. Anyway, let's have a little summary of the past month and a bit, shall we?

Let's see... Oh yeah, I got really sick in there after Buster died, a couple of weeks before I had to move into my new place. Did I tell you I was moving? Probably not. Well, we'll get to that. Anyway, I had a fever and a terrible headache for four or five days that kept me in bed wishing I was dead.

When the fever finally broke and the headache left a few days later, it was time to get down to some serious packing and throwing things away. Over the next week, I made the seemingly endless preparations to move everything I own across town. I talked about the new place in an earlier post, but you've probably forgotten. It's a duplex on a nice quiet little street just off the Commons on the Robie side. Very central. I've moved into it with a friend of mine, Dave, who's turning out to be a great roommate and all around good guy. The other side will be occupied, once the landlord has finished renovating it, by Alison and her new roommate, Claire. We'll share a backyard and each get three floors of comfort and excellence.

Anyway, the move was nightmarish enough that I'd rather not even get into a description of it. It was two weeks ago now, and I'm mostly settled in. Still some shelves to put up and art to put on the walls, but almost all of the many, many boxes have been unpacked and broken down. How do I have so much stuff? Why do I lug all these books around with me, for example, when the chances that I'll ever read any of them again are vanishingly slim? Do I need to be able to look at their spines regularly to remember how they've each affected my current identity? Something like that is probably not far from the truth.

The day after the brutal move, I drove to Moncton with Meg and Kristina to play a The Reference Desk show. Probably a crazy idea, but it was a nice break from all the stress of planning, packing, lugging, and cleaning. It ended up being a lot of fun, as a matter of fact. A couple of very nice guys planned the show for us and put us up. We didn't know the Moncton bands we shared the bill with, but the openers were a bunch of nice young kids who insisted we keep their take of the door, being from out of town. They also let us use all their gear, which was very nice gear. They were ironically called Young Savages.

Anyway, back to my new apartment. It comes with an internet connection from a different provider than the one I'd been using, which means I had to change my email address. And, since my internet and landline were in a "bundle" from the same company, I had to change phone service too. So, I finally broke down and got a cellphone.

I skipped the toe-dipping phase entirely and decided to go straight to the iPhone. It's been a pretty radical change in my life, but I'm kind of loving it. Now, wherever I go, I can listen to music, play chess, read magazines, play games with my friends, and — best of all — take pictures. I've always enjoyed taking photos, but somehow never think to bring a camera with me. Now that's all changed. Everything I see is a potential photograph. I joined Instagram right away, and am having a blast documenting my life through its dreamy filters. Here's some of my recent "work."

That last one is of Amber on the Musquodoboit Trailway bridge. I had a memorable four-day weekend with her last week on the Eastern Shore, soaking up sunshine and scenery. It was downright idyllic. There's a new shuttle service out there called the MusGo Rider that allowed us to spend most of Saturday at Clam Harbour Beach. Sunday was devoted to this trail, which used to be railroad tracks. It's very scenic, and also very wide and flat, so I was able to push Amber's wheelchair along it with no problem. We ended up doing a little over 10 km!

That brings us pretty much up to date. Played some softball today for the first time in four weeks, and now my legs are all rubbery and useless. Next weekend I drive to Maine with Alison to hang out with my parents and sisters and their families for a week by the sea. The November issue of the Shambhala Sun is close enough to ready that a week off so near the end of the cycle is not a concern. Hard work's paying off, and good times are here!

RIP, Lappy

And now my Macbook laptop is officially dead. I had brought it to the cottage on the weekend for music and movies, and when I brought it back I packed in the same knapsack the remainder of a jar of pickles we'd bought. Really stupid idea. The pickles opened on the way home and the computer soaked up all the juice.

It wouldn't turn on when I got home, so I let it dry for four days, to no avail. Today I brought it into the shop, where they opened it up and found more corrosion than I've ever seen on any electronics. My files can be salvaged from the hard drive, but I'm out 1,200 bucks as far as a usable computer is concerned.

Most expensive pickles ever.

RIP, Buster

Buster was acting very old and tired lately, and getting really skinny. This morning I found him sleeping in his litter box, very unresponsive. I called Alison, and we took him to the vet. He turned out to have severe kidney failure going on. On the vet's recommendation, we had him put down this evening, after Alison spent the day saying goodbye to him. We're both mighty sad about it.

He was a good pal for 18 years, and a real champ. We'll sure miss you, little buddy.

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