Posts tagged with "music"

I filled the void you left with the rest of my life

And that’s why I spend so much time with peo­ple now, why it’s a lit­tle eas­i­er to bend each pitch, and why I don’t mind hazy night dri­ves through pur­ple sky and deer warn­ings as long as Mogwai is on. Everything I do is an attempt to be whole again, cause I still think of you with me at every din­ner, movie, episode, nap, ride, gath­er­ing, and con­cert.

But sure­ly you can’t be the same per­son I see in these pho­tos tak­en so long ago. You’d be a lit­tle wis­er from the years, a lit­tle stronger from the expe­ri­ences, almost cer­tain­ly sport­ing a new hair­cut, but I bet your heart would always be the same. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let go. I real­ized that no mat­ter what hap­pens, regard­less of how peo­ple grow and change, I’d always love that heart. That’s the only rea­son I under­stand what you meant by always have a weak­ness.

I filled the void you left with the rest of my life, but it’s still hard to be whole with­out you.

he was never the same

I have a feel­ing this day will be the new divid­ing line in my life, some­thing that was pre­vi­ous­ly pre and post-kiss, and now also a sep­a­ra­tion between who I reached out to and who I did­n’t call. And, odd­ly enough, this song will for­ev­er remind me of what hap­pened, some Canadian indie-rock hit from ’94 I had on repeat the whole day.

Things are going to be dif­fer­ent now, even though noth­ing’s changed. I just wish I knew what that meant.

The Little Man Must Go On

Live accord­ing to the sea­sons
In the town where I was born
Things have got­ta have a rea­son
The sun don’t come before the dawn

(Thanks again, Antje.)

How did I lose anoth­er week? Another week of that snow smell and gui­tar lessons and Nordique red­heads I nev­er asked out again. Lost to the trap­pings of life. So much has hap­pened, and yet noth­ing has changed, though things will be dif­fer­ent soon enough. And while I wish I could say that I had more to say about it all, I don’t.

teas in spoons
tea-table
tea served

Over some ancient moon­light white tea, Heather G asked how my belief in Taoism was going. It made me real­ize I had­n’t thought about it in a while, which is exact­ly the point. I’ve been try­ing not to try to act, and just been act­ing. Doing my best not to over-think things. Taking it one call, one con­ver­sa­tion, one day, one week at a time.

moments between cities

The dri­ve home is always eas­i­er. Not because I’m leav­ing, but because it’s when I can catch my breath after some relent­less debauch­ery I excuse as being for a spe­cial occa­sion.

I’m at an age where my body will feel this over the next two days, spent recov­er­ing phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. Luckily, exhaus­tion numbs the sens­es, and makes the time pass quick­er on those long stretch­es where dis­tance is mea­sured in hours.

driving at night sepia

Cousins, British humour, heart­break, shots, glut­tony, rum­ble strips, but nev­er enough time.

The 401 is the kind of high­way that Springsteen used to write about on his heart­land folk albums, the only ones I ever liked. The songs were nev­er about a road itself, but about all the lust and hate and change that hap­pened between two peo­ple when they trav­elled along that road.

In the same way, dri­ving the 401 has always been when I have a chance to find myself. It often leaves me feel­ing like a dif­fer­ent per­son when I get to where I’m going.

deconstructing songs

I’ve been decon­struct­ing songs, try­ing to fig­ure out what mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of pitch­es and tim­bres and rhythms can cre­ate such an intense response in my body. Every song is a puz­zle when you try to fit the com­po­si­tion into what a per­son can do with­out stu­dio edit­ing or a band.

On my quest to unlock such a puz­zle, I dis­cov­ered Final Fantasy per­form­ing a Bloc Party cov­er of This Modern Love, what is now my favourite song of all time1, hav­ing dethroned Blonde Redhead’s Elephant Woman of the hon­our it held for many years. It strips me bare by lay­ers and lay­ers, and even though the lyrics found rel­e­vance in my life before I decid­ed that dis­tance would keep me sane, it’s only in recent months that it’s gone from being a song I nev­er skip to a song I always play.

To be able to see how Owen Pallett repro­duces it with only a vio­lin, a loop ped­al, and his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly frail voice is a par­tic­u­lar treat. Not only because he can draw the same inten­si­ty in me as in the orig­i­nal ver­sion, but because you can see how it’s done; what part he keeps to present the lis­ten­er with the essence of the song, what he’s changed to fit the tools he uses, and even where he takes his breaths. It’s like find­ing an ele­gant solu­tion for a puz­zle that has per­plexed you for years.

But I’ve yet to sit down and attempt any seri­ous cov­ers of my own cause I’m still wait­ing for my musi­cal knowl­edge and gui­tar abil­i­ty to catch up with what I want to accom­plish. I’ve been learn­ing clas­si­cal pieces for a bet­ter foun­da­tion, and in that pur­suit I came across this par­tic­u­lar ver­sion of La Catedral.

I enjoy clas­si­cal music (though I’m real­ly picky) cause it can evoke a spe­cif­ic emo­tion in me, but most pieces cater to only one emo­tion at a time, or there’s a lot of devel­op­ment before the part I real­ly like. La Catedral, on the oth­er hand, has it all, from sor­row to ela­tion, and every bit of it is bliss. I’m con­vinced that this is how the old Paraguayan gui­tarists rocked out with their cocks out, and it amazes me how some­one could write such heavy emo­tion when there were no met­al idols, no amp dis­tor­tion, no scream­ing back then.

I’d say that for any­one to ful­ly under­stand me, they’d have to under­stand this song too. It rep­re­sents every­thing I love about music and emo­tion and sex, cause it’s all in this song, and only Denis Azabagić plays it the way it was meant to be played2. When watch­ing this for the first time, I remem­ber think­ing that I would make love to this man, this man who looks like some guy’s uncle, because he plays like he’s touch­ing every nerve of my heart.

I love the way he moves with his gui­tar, the way he cra­dles the body, the way he purs­es his lips or widens his eyes with every swelling of pas­sion. To be able to play like him is is exact­ly why I start­ed tak­ing up gui­tar; I want to feel as good as those who lose them­selves to the music, and learn­ing this piece has become anoth­er thing I hope to do before I die.

  1. As a per­son who lis­tens to almost any genre but is still obses­sive­ly selec­tive with music, say­ing that I have a sin­gle favourite song is a big deal. []
  2. I nev­er liked this song until I heard him per­form it, the last 45 sec­onds in par­tic­u­lar, with his orgas­mic fin­ish. Every oth­er clas­si­cal gui­tarist uses paus­es that break up the flow of what are sup­posed to be relent­less six­teenth notes, to the point where it feels like the entire song is ruined. []