Monthly Archives: January 2004

Music like Braces and Bruises

Whenever Trolley and I hang out togeth­er, whether it’s a car ride or a ses­sion of tow­er defense, we queue up albums that we both enjoy. Billy Talent, The Artist in the Ambulance, Sing the Sorrow, Give Up. However, there’s one song that he nev­er queues up, that he always skips with­out any­one else know­ing.

He knows that I can’t lis­ten to that one song off guard. As much as I want that song for myself, to mean noth­ing more than a frail voice and bounc­ing beats, I can’t give up the mem­o­ries that I asso­ciate with it, I can’t let go of what the song has come to mean.

And it’s only now that I real­ize that it’s bet­ter this way.

Party Over Tribute Band

I met a woman last week who had the Majesty sym­bol tat­tooed to the back of her neck, which is total­ly fuck­ing awe­some. When she found out that I rec­og­nized it as the Dream Theater logo she gave a look of sur­prise, I’m guess­ing since lis­ten­ing to Dream Theater is con­sid­er some­what eso­teric, lik­ing them can be seen as an eccen­tric­i­ty, and even some Dream Theater fans don’t know of such a sub­tle sym­bol. It turns out that she’s in a cov­er band, and even though the set list does­n’t seem to include any­thing as insane as Home or Dance of Eternity, it’s still amaz­ing that there are peo­ple who are will­ing to attempt such music. She’s play­ing a con­cert tonight at Barrymore’s, with a Dream Theater trib­ute band and a Tool trib­ute band. It promis­es to be a good night of pro­gres­sive metal/rock and I had my heart set on going, until I found out that there’s also a par­ty tonight at Sheri/Emily/Christine’s place. I’m tempt­ed to go to both, but I think I’d rather focus on one instead of spread­ing myself thin. Besides, it’s to cel­e­brate the birth­days of three good peo­ple, and I would­n’t want to miss it this year. No alco­hol tonight, I’ve decid­ed, and no chance for me in stiff­ing Tom with a bill (as I mis­tak­en­ly did last year at the Clocktower).

An In-Town Journey

The ear­ly after­noon was decid­ed­ly heavy, so I turned up the vol­ume when I stepped out­side. There was pow­der in the air, pow­der every­where, and soon I was snow­blind.

As I stepped on the bus, I looked at my watch and real­ized that I was leav­ing almost two hours ear­ly for class. How had I made such a mis­take?

I decid­ed to use the best of my time and do some brows­ing. I saw what appeared to be Nadine in the mall, and would have approached her if:

  1. I was absolute­ly sure it was her
  2. a sud­den case of shy­ness had­n’t tak­en over me

I took off to Zone to see if there was any­thing new, and alas, an open-air chime box was avail­able. I was tempt­ed to buy it, if the song was­n’t some Christmas car­ol. Afterwards, I set off for Folio, but to my dis­ap­point­ment, dis­cov­ered that it’s been replaced with a soon-to-be fur­ni­ture store.

I decid­ed to peruse the book­stores in the area, and the first one I went to had noth­ing of inter­est. Even at Chapters I did­n’t find any new trans­la­tions of A Hero of Our Time, or the audio nov­el of Lolita read by the sul­try voice of Jeremy Irons. The third book­store I went to, a sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern store with eclec­tic fin­ish­ings, had a very selec­tive col­lec­tion of books. Every wall or pil­lar had shelves set up with books of a dif­fer­ent genre, and the entire place was quite a change from the bus­tle of the street right out­side. At one cor­ner, there was a mechan­i­cal fire­place with four very dis­tinct flames warm­ing up the air. The fire would have seemed much more real­is­tic if not for the odd churn­ing sound com­ing from the chim­ney. A couch was set up in front of the fire­place for peo­ple to read, but only a beau­ti­ful, navy blue, long-haired cat was sleep­ing on it, bel­ly up, one paw lazi­ly stretched out towards the fire.

Put in a dif­fer­ent mood by the seren­i­ty of the store, I set off for class, and prompt­ly changed my playlist.

Mind Milkdrop

Black then white are all I see in my infan­cy.
Red and yel­low then came to be, reach­ing out to me,
Lets me see.

—Tool, Lateralus

Inhale.

Colours are wash­ing over you. Drifting, shift­ing, twist­ing, chang­ing. No point of focus, no sol­id shapes. You feel the con­trast and graze the answers.

And this takes you to a place you’ve nev­er been, but always dreamed of. Where you’re bathed in hap­pi­ness, and you can see the warmth of the light. When you hear noth­ing but still­ness, and feel noth­ing but con­tent­ment.

And this pic­ture in your head is as real to you as your heart­beat. You become lost to this world when your eyes roll back and your head tilts back­ward.

Let me take you there.