Yearly Archives: 2012

Sometimes I hate the word love

cause you speak of it like it’s the answer, when you define your­self by your sin­gle­dom. It’s a sta­tus you try to wear proud­ly, but how much you talk about your ide­al mate only reveals how much you hate being alone.

What you’re look­ing for is hard to find. That’s your excuse. But your “high stan­dards” are defined by the most pet­ty things, and all those pet­ty things keep hold­ing you back, a hypocrisy that makes you the vic­tim. That’s why your life is filled with part 1s and nev­er any part 2s. Then you talk as if we should be shocked that you’re sin­gle, vul­ner­a­ble, and lone­ly.

You think love is some­thing one does, instead of some­thing one means. You can see the beau­ty in a gift, but not the thought behind it. Then you pass off your ideas on love as wis­dom and advice, when they’re sim­ply the things you want, cause you don’t have the wis­dom to know what you actu­al­ly need to be in a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship.

It’s the most shal­low form of love pos­si­ble. That’s why I hate the word. Not cause of the way you define it — I don’t judge any­one by their def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness — but because you think it means the same thing I do every time you use it.

And I want to tear it from your throat.

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.

wrapped in chords

Context. It’s 19°C in the house. I keep an elec­tric heat­ing pad under my hood­ie, the gui­tar is slung around my body, and my head­phones are con­nect­ed to the com­put­er. I’m wrapped in chords, with a win­ter scene per­pet­u­al­ly out­side my win­dow.

I know this won’t last for­ev­er, so I’m indulging in these lit­tle rit­u­als. Trying to enjoy all the lit­tle things I start­ed tak­ing for grant­ed, like car rides at night when the roads are clear and the car is warm. I’ve lost myself in the shuf­fle. I know I need to recen­tre myself, but I’m wait­ing for things to set­tle down first.

There’s so much I don’t say to my friends. Not because I don’t trust them, but because my news nev­er feels impor­tant enough to bring up. It’s stuff they stopped talk­ing about years ago, cause they’ve moved on from this part of their lives. Well I’m still here, hop­ing every­thing’s going to work out in the end.

Magic: The Gathering prize

Martial Coup: Put X 1/1 white Soldier crea­ture tokens onto the bat­tle­field. If X is 5 or more, destroy all oth­er crea­tures, and win a box, a boost­er, a pack of nice lands.

I real­ized that I don’t spend that much time with my core group any­more, but I do hang out with a revolv­ing group of friends. It seems like there’s always anoth­er per­son to catch up with, anoth­er meal to share, anoth­er night of gam­ing with the guys. It’s keep­ing me occu­pied, for which I’m thank­ful late­ly.

Otherwise, I’ve been think­ing a lit­tle bit about the past and a lot about the future. Trying to pic­ture where I’m going to end up, but it’s nev­er some­thing I can fig­ure out.

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. [↩]