Viewing archives for May 2011   //
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la petite mort

3

I’ve been spend­ing too much time around friends and fallen heroes, stay­ing up too late, run­ning away from my thoughts, pun­ish­ing my body, killing myself one day at a time. The exhaus­tion is numb­ing — exactly what I need — but I know I can’t keep this up for­ever. I used to lose a day here and there, think it’s Wednesday on a Thursday. Now I lose entire weeks. I’ve decided that it’s all okay as long as shit gets done.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been feel­ing trapped. I’m too busy to see past things as they are right now, a vic­tim of my own self-distraction, so it feels like I’ll be here for­ever, stuck in this end­less loop of heal­ing and heartbreak.

I’m still try­ing to find that del­i­cate bal­ance between accept­ing myself (which risks com­pla­cency) and striv­ing to improve (and the con­stant dis­sat­is­fac­tion). At the very least, I’ve come to the real­iza­tion that there’s a dif­fer­ence between the things that hap­pen to us and the way we react or deal with them, and since you have no say in the for­mer, all you can do is improve the latter.

Sometimes you have to die a lit­tle inside to fig­ure that out.

Date  May 18, 2011
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Categories  Random
Me @ Twitter

I shit you not, this just came off my cat in ten min­utes. #shed­dingsea­son http://t.co/XYg6jMI

9 months, 1 week ago

the greatest chaps

2

It was totally unfair that Shane was only in town for a sin­gle night, and then off to the next show in Kingston with Krista and Jesse and Audra the next morn­ing. I was look­ing for­ward to a week­end with him at least, but his tour com­mit­ments as bassist, backup vocals, sound tech­ni­cian, and dri­ver kept us apart.

Lederhosen Lucil

 

This was the first time I’ve seen Krista per­form as Lederhosen Lucil (and the fifth time I’ve been to her shows). It was an LL album that I first fell in love with, so this meant a lot. I totally had this awk­ward kiss? hug? kiss? moment with her when she got up to greet me while man­ning the cover box; I’ve never been very good at that. In the Fall she asked if she could have the Ottawa stop of her tour in my liv­ing room for an inti­mate House Show the Third, but that plan got derailed when I adopted Leonard, as two cats was too much for her aller­gies. Things worked out for the best. The Raw Sugar Cafe is such a great venue, with dry cider and mul­ti­ple escape routes.

These are the only peo­ple who could con­vince me to have break­fast with them at a diner on the other side of the city on three hours of sleep. At a table full of musi­cians it’s impos­si­ble not to abuse the theremin set­ting on the Bebot app, Mentok the Mind-Taker style. I was going to tell Shane to save me a seat next to him, but then real­ized I’m not in grade 2 anymore.

Date  May 15, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos Video
Me @ Twitter

Fall asleep at 11pm, wake up at 7am. Fall asleep at 4:30am, wake up at 7am. Is my body really smart or really stupid?

9 months, 1 week ago

Protected: one look

0

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Date  May 14, 2011
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life
Me @ Twitter

Strategically parked so I’ll have to pass the bub­ble tea shop when I’m walk­ing back to the car. #for­ward­think­ing

9 months, 1 week ago
Me @ Twitter

Didn’t bother cut­ting a slice of cake and decided to eat out of the tray. I didn’t think this day would come for another 20 years.

9 months, 2 weeks ago
Me @ Twitter

“The Nice Guy can be found mostly in the com­pany of even num­bers. 3rd of 3, 5th of 5, and so on…”

9 months, 2 weeks ago

Silk and Steel and Steve

0

I’ve always been after a more mel­low sound than what I can cur­rently get out my gui­tar. Madeleine sug­gested I try D’Addario Silk and Steel strings, so I bought a pack a few days ago and have been play­ing them since. I asked Steve to demo the strings, as well as my lovely gui­tar Larissa, cause my abil­i­ties aren’t good enough to really show her off.

Sometimes I love them cause they’re so bright and clear, other times I hate them cause the tone comes off as thin and frail; it really depends on what kind of music I’m play­ing. When Steve plays them they’re shock­ingly bright and pierc­ing com­pared to the sound I get; I’m not sure if it’s the dif­fer­ence in our nails or tech­nique (or both).

They’re def­i­nitely meant for fin­ger­pick­ing cause they’re so light1 that even mod­er­ate strum­ming will make them buzz, which severely lim­its my pos­si­ble reper­toire. On the bright side, it’s much eas­ier to fret barre chords, and cer­tain pas­sages that were a strug­gle to play cleanly only require a light touch now.

Another advan­tage is that the tone makes me feel like I’m play­ing a dif­fer­ent gui­tar. Even though it’s not quite the dry and mel­low sound of a clas­si­cal nylon, it’s some­what staving off my desire to buy the Taylor I’ve been eying2, but who knows how long that’ll last.

Steve’s the only per­son I know who lives by the gui­tar, both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. I’ve seen such bril­liant things come out of his fin­gers. Sometimes in the mid­dle of a song I’m show­ing him, he’ll pick up the melody and go some­where com­pletely dif­fer­ent with it that’s more beau­ti­ful than the orig­i­nal. And even though he’s mainly a jazz guy (after Wes Montgomery), he can play any style from clas­si­cal to flamenco.

I’ve taken up his belief in not using a pick and stick­ing with my fin­ger­nails. “Just another thing between you and the gui­tar”, he said to me once. And when I explain how I’m stuck on some­thing he’ll say, “Have you done it three-and-a-half mil­lion times?” to remind me that anything’s pos­si­ble with enough prac­tice. He’s filled with all these tiny yet cru­cial bits of infor­ma­tion that have influ­enced how I approach the instrument.

  1. 0.11–0.47, but they feel like 0.10. [↑]
  2. It just so hap­pens that Steve’s main gui­tar is the exact nylon-string Taylor hybrid I’ve been drool­ing over for months now. [↑]
Date  May 11, 2011
Tags 
Categories  Random Video

between the river and the ravens I'm fed

4

Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no store­room or barn; yet God feeds them.

—Luke 12:24

It’s start­ing to get uncom­fort­ably busy. There’s always some­one else to visit, another per­son to catch up with. Projects have a way of find­ing me too; I’ll hear a song and decide that I need to make an arrange­ment, or some­one will approach me for a web­site or video when they’re pur­su­ing dreams of their own.

dinner at the Trolley's

Me and Trolley and Steph and Aaron and not you. I win.

(I have yet to get a pic­ture of Trolley with a full glass of beer.)

It’s the same way when it comes to fig­ur­ing out what to eat lately. I open an empty fridge a half dozen times, each time think­ing I’ll find a hid­den cache of food that wasn’t there before, then some­one will call me for dinner.

I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to jam with a few peo­ple too, includ­ing Heather, who pulled out her cello for the first time in her adult­hood to give me root notes on the base­line. One draw of the bow across those strings has con­vinced me that I want one of my own; the tones are rich and meaty, some­thing you feel through the entire instru­ment, and espe­cially the ten­sion of the rib­bon (and I thought the gui­tar was tac­tile). We even con­vinced Sergey to pick up some mal­lets and strike the keys of a glock­en­spiel with us, the first time in his life he’s ever played an instrument.

I’m look­ing for­ward to the Fall, when I have noth­ing else booked. Part of me wishes I could take a year off and lock myself in a cot­tage some­where and work on my own projects with­out inter­rup­tion, but I don’t mind so much right now. Luckily, the work is always ful­fill­ing, regard­less of whether it’s for me or not, because so often I get to col­lab­o­rate with such won­der­fully cre­ative peo­ple. I just need to ride the del­i­cate line between dis­trac­tion and over-stimulation.

Date  May 9, 2011
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos
Me @ Twitter

“ELLE: If you walked into a woman’s house, what one item would con­vince you that you weren’t com­pat­i­ble?” ME: A FUCKING NICKELBACK ALBUM.

9 months, 2 weeks ago
Me @ Twitter

The third sea­son of the Sarah Silverman Program has one of the most enter­tain­ing intros of all time. It’s the only one I never, ever skip.

9 months, 2 weeks ago
Me @ Twitter

One day I will make love to Sean Rowe’s beard. #nohomo?

9 months, 2 weeks ago

the lives of songs

0

She told me she tried to find this album I used to put on when we were hud­dled in the dark­ness. The prob­lem was that she could only remem­ber the cover, and it was after we stopped talk­ing for the third time or some­thing cause oth­er­wise she would have asked.

Then she was in Chapters one day. This book of best albums of the 2000s fell down, and there it was, Ágætis byr­jun, open at the page. “What are the chances?”, she asked me.

Sigur Rós Ágætis byrjun

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I used to think of her lis­ten­ing to the songs I gave her with another guy and grow jeal­ous. But I could never say I didn’t have my own mem­o­ries asso­ci­ated with that album, lying between a wall and warm body on a bed swollen with cov­ers in New Jersey. I watched Jón Þór Birgisson sing into the pick­ups of his gui­tar, his ethe­real voice gen­tly mak­ing the strings trem­ble, in a sum­mer romance so long ago.

That was my intro­duc­tion to Sigur Rós, and in the same way I passed this album on to her. It made me feel so vul­ner­a­ble to be next to her in those moments (whether she real­ized it or not). Every time it came on was an emo­tional flash­back, a short-circuit to this part of my past about which I’ve told so few.

I used to hope she kept the songs I gave her to her­self, and that she didn’t use them to woo another guy the way I had always tried to with her. Perhaps I was a lit­tle pos­ses­sive about my music and some­what judg­men­tal on who I deemed to be deserv­ing enough to hear it. Eventually I real­ized that it’s not fair of me to feel that way. She had shared so many songs with me in turn, giv­ing me as much as I’d given to her, and I’ve since passed those songs on to others.

Now I won­der who else will even­tu­ally expe­ri­ence these songs, and what mem­o­ries of their own they’ll have when they hear them.

Date  May 7, 2011
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Categories  Random
Me @ Twitter

Ludicrous (adjec­tive): So fool­ish, unrea­son­able, or out of place as to be amus­ing. See also: Californication plot lines.

9 months, 3 weeks ago
Viewing archives for May 2011   //
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