Posts in category "Daily Life"

go on

I had a fever dream one night. When I woke up, every­thing was clear. I final­ly snapped back to real­i­ty. Thank fuck.

Hitting rock bot­tom was the only way for me to gain some per­spec­tive. When you’re at the edge, you tend to get a bet­ter look at your­self. Now my recov­ery is as mete­oric as my fall. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I’m any stronger or bet­ter for it. If I ever end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again one day, will I be able to han­dle it bet­ter? For some rea­son, I don’t think so. All I know is that I held on, I’m strong enough to go on, and I had to fig­ure it out by myself.

Ryan at two

cheese

My music has been a mix of stuff late­ly, gen­er­al­ly warm and chill, and most of it being too per­son­al for me to post here. Or maybe I’m just being greedy. By a stroke of luck, I found this song after two years of scour­ing every pos­si­ble music venue (I even had my card out, ready to buy it on iTunes, but they aren’t pop­u­lar enough to be on there). I almost cried when I heard it for the first time at 320kbps.

I’m lean­ing towards the pur­chase of a clas­si­cal gui­tar (as opposed to a steel-string one). I’m sure it’s because Cohen always used a nylon-stringed gui­tar in his ear­ly albums, and this has influ­enced my palate to pre­fer a rounder, mel­low sound. Even though this deci­sion will be in the far future, I can’t help but lis­ten to as many clas­si­cal gui­tarists as pos­si­ble to see what kind of tone they can muster from their strings. Unfortunately, it’s real­ly rare to find con­tem­po­rary music (the only genre I’m inter­est­ed in play­ing) being per­formed on a clas­si­cal gui­tar, unless it’s a gim­mick tune like the theme for Super Mario Bros.

The weath­er is turn­ing love­ly the only way Autumn can, as crisp as it is fleet­ing.

I have so many ideas going through my head, and I wish I could fol­low through on all of them. Or give up writing/photography/cinematography/web design/music and focus on one at a time. But I always get bored of a medi­um, or feel the need express myself with a par­tic­u­lar one because it may bet­ter lend itself to being a voice in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion.

bokeh

Went for a walk in the mar­ket today.

Saw a yel­low-haired home­less man almost get run over as he absent-mind­ed­ly tried to cross the street against traf­fic. When the dri­ver gave him an extend­ed honk, he took a slow drag from his cig­a­rette as he saun­tered back to the side­walk. There was no shame on his face, no embar­rass­ment, no wor­ry. He could­n’t have cared less. It was as if you could take noth­ing more from him.

bokeh

 

I’ve always loved peo­ple-watch­ing, and today was no excep­tion. A lit­tle game I play with myself to fig­ure out some­one’s tastes and habits through their man­ner­isms. There were peo­ple on every cor­ner, and so much won­der held in the mys­tery of every one of them. It’s impos­si­ble not to feel hope at this real­iza­tion.

I’m always after that moment, when I’m caught between the focus and the enig­mat­ic blur, lost to the colours and the wind on my skin, and try­ing to make it last a life­time.

House Show II: Invitation

Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invit­ed both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cup­cakes host­ed in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day par­ty.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­mak­er), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time real­ly freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this fly­er, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-jus­ti­fied col­umn of infor­ma­tion.

fall and falling

Darren and I crashed at the same time. It’s like we’re going through this togeth­er. I wish I was back in T.O. with him and Chris, cause some of the best con­ver­sa­tions of the year hap­pened in that car. We’re all in the same place, all young men on the mend.

I’m very pleased to say that Darren’s now the own­er of a wild cher­ry sun­burst Seagull Entourage Mini Jumbo (but with a pick-guard and cut­away). And I’m total­ly jeal­ous, as I’ve been drool­ing over pic­tures of gui­tar bind­ings and rosettes myself late­ly. I had bor­rowed Jesse’s ginor­mous1 gui­tar for a bit, and I felt like I was pinned under a piece of fur­ni­ture every time I tried play­ing it. It total­ly turned me off gui­tars in gen­er­al, but as I was walk­ing through the Ottawa Folklore Centre today, I saw a series of much small­er acoustics. I had to keep walk­ing. The last thing I can afford is anoth­er hob­by and anoth­er toy.

moon

Got this shot through the lens of my tele­scope, which is why you can see the cir­cu­lar out­line of the eye­piece. Big enough to make out the geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures like the Mare Insularum splotch on the top left. Taken when still bright out, but the moon shone bright through the day­light.

I had a decent night of sleep for the first time in far too long, maybe because I’ve writ­ten more in the last week than in the three months before that. Strange how clear and calm­ing and inspir­ing it is to be rest­ed. I still don’t know what I’m feel­ing though. It’s like I just don’t know what to think any­more.

A ridicu­lous amount of Starcraft II has been played. ____ and I have even been play­ing against each oth­er, which is strange for us because nei­ther per­son wants to beat the oth­er (out of sports­man­ship), but nei­ther wants to lose either (out of fool­ish pride). I was far more dom­i­nant in Warcraft 3 because it’s micro dri­ven so we nev­er did 1v1, but Starcraft is macro dri­ven, which ____ is much bet­ter at. He’s proven him­self to be a very wor­thy oppo­nent with sev­er­al good games on me. I’m so glad Blizzard does­n’t record the num­ber of hours played in a per­son­’s pro­file now.

I want to be in France in this sea­son. My neigh­bours just came back from Paris and told me it was real­ly fog­gy. I would­n’t mind. Really. I’d love to walk down the stony path of rue Saint Vincent — the set­ting of one of my favourite Yves Montand songs — when it’s cov­ered by a hazy mist and I’m sport­ing a cozy sweater.

I spend 21 hours of the day in my room, and I’m nev­er bored. I don’t go out of the house for days at at time. I have nei­ther the rea­son nor the desire to. I think I han­dle being alone too well.

  1. This word total­ly did­n’t get picked up by spell-check, which means the Firefox dic­tio­nary is pret­ty decent. [↩]

Meeting Sikander and Lunato

I’ve known Sikander for a few years now, but the extent of our inter­ac­tion only hap­pened online. We knew each oth­er through the Ottawa blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty, but at this point, nei­ther of us can remem­ber who found who first.

Now he lives in Toronto with Lunato, which I did­n’t know was­n’t her real name, and whom is now his wife (I think they were just room­mates when Sikander and I first start­ed talk­ing). I’d see lit­tle glimpses of their lives through their pic­tures, along with their per­pet­u­al smiles, kawaii details, and mot­ley assort­ment of friends. It was inter­est­ing to see how two peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures could get along so well; as Sikander said to me, he used to be a good Muslim boy before he met her.

Sikander and Lunato

Coolest cou­ple ever.

They hap­pened to be in town for a wed­ding, and it was the per­fect chance to final­ly meet in per­son. We set­tled on some gela­to over which to talk; I always mar­vel at how small the cup sizes look, and then how full I am after a medi­um.

Love by Oka

 

We’d send music back and forth over the years, though usu­al­ly it usu­al­ly stays in the ambi­ent, elec­tron­ic genre between us. Funny sto­ry: Lunato told me she liked my video of Hong Kong mar­kets, and it was actu­al­ly Sikander who gave me that music from the Code 49 sound­track (which I slowed down about 50%). He said it sound­ed famil­iar but nev­er real­ized where it came from.

Before part­ing ways, Sikander gave me an album by Oka, an Australian elec­tron­ic reggae/dub out­fit. He once saw them per­form at a busker fes­ti­val in Toronto (though they’re not buskers), and it was the first hard-copy piece of music we shared. A music rec­om­men­da­tion is always gift, and an actu­al phys­i­cal album feels all the more spe­cial.