Posts tagged with "Darren"

life being what it is

Darren came up from Toronto for a vis­it over the long week­end.

These ses­sions always ful­fill my quo­ta of rela­tion­ship talk. When one admits to not want­i­ng to be in a rela­tion­ship, this is fol­lowed nat­u­ral­ly by the ques­tion, “Would you go for it if you found the per­fect one right now?” from the oth­er. Then in return, “If she came back to you and said she want­ed to try again, but you only had a 50–50 per­cent chance of suc­cess, would you go for it?”

In our lit­tle duet, our philo­soph­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion, love is always a theme. No one else chal­lenges our psy­ches in this regard.

Trivial Pursuit night

 

Continue read­ing “life being what it is”…

Oh my fuck

Remember how I was all like I can’t stop lis­ten­ing to Love and Greed, and it’s not even the best song on the album? But I nev­er men­tioned the best song on the album, which is Violet’s Constellations, here:

So Darren sent me this e‑mail today:

from: Darren
to: Jeff
sub­ject: i don’t real­ly know

he says whereeeeee where are you­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­uu he says where are you goooooo-annnnnn!!!!!!!!!!

sheet

I’m gonna go see Magneta Lane with Jeff on Feb. 12 ion toron­to
COME COME COME!!

CF a lit­tle lat­er? I’m wait­ing for some guy to release some shares online

And the sub­ject + first line are the lyrics in the best part of Violet’s Constellations in the last verse, when Lexi is singing as the key­board kicks in again.

This is how in tune I am with Darren.

And then news of them IN CONCERT, when I had to miss the Blonde Redhead con­cert in Toronto last time to take part in Pat and Jen’s wed­ding rehearsal. I’ll def­i­nite­ly be tak­ing the day off to join them this time around. Maybe vis­it my dad too, since that’s his birth­day.

(Isn’t it insane that out of 2384 posts I have right now, I can remem­ber the entries for these spe­cif­ic events?)

Magneta Lane and my Cousin Darren

There’s been a smat­ter­ing of good music late­ly, but this is the song that haunts me; Love and Greed by Magneta Lane. I added it to my col­lec­tion on the 12th of October, and it’s already in my Top 20 Most Played. By no means is it the best song on the album; it’s just the one that hit me the hard­est.

To hear it as a track by itself is a lit­tle out of con­text. It comes as 7 of 10 off Gambling With God, their lat­est album, and the songs lead­ing up to it charge at a much faster pace. The dra­mat­ic change of tone between the vers­es and the cho­rus are effec­tive in sub­tly draw­ing you in, against lyrics that should be screamed more than any­thing else.

My favourite part is when Lexi says, “I don’t want recy­cled love / if I did I’d pour wine in a cup / and get all liquored up / and fuck­ing crawl in front of you” when the gui­tar and bass stop, and it’s just Nadia doing the bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum under­neath on her toms.

With the way she says fuck­ing with such sac­cha­rine soft­ness, one can’t help but won­der what intense sor­row could have caused this sullen, hon­eyed voice to spit such pro­fan­i­ty.

It’s stuff like this that makes rather plain look­ing Lexi Valentine so god­dam attrac­tive, very much in a Karen O kind of way. I guess you could say I have a fas­ci­na­tion with Lexi swear­ing, because she does it so infre­quent­ly.

So...

I gave this song to Darren, and he sent me back this reply:

shit this song is on auto-repeat right now.… ahh­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­hh

Darren’s the only per­son in the world who sees love the way I do. ____ knows me in every oth­er way — log­ic, mind­set, emo­tion, per­son­al­i­ty, habits, taste — but he does­n’t under­stand my love, which is a big part of me. The only one who under­stands is Darren1 because we share the same quixot­ic ideas about it. It’s as if we devel­oped this roman­tic atti­tude as a back­lash to how our fathers (broth­ers, who also look the same) raised us with such aloof­ness. This ide­al is how we bond.

One time he told me he can’t wait for the day when we’re at his house with our girl­friends, and we’re play­ing Cranium, and we’re just…happy.

This is how I know he’s the only per­son who hears this song the same way too.

  1. Not even my girl­friends have come close to under­stand­ing, aside from Bronwen. [↩]

Home Free

Thumbnail: Darren outside
Thumbnail: Tazo Berryblossom white tea
Thumbnail: Sausages, egg, and toast
Thumbnail: Dexter
Thumbnail: Bubble tea parlour
Thumbnail: Bubble tea
Thumbnail: Cigars
Thumbnail: Korean soup
Thumbnail: Dexter the cat in window
Thumbnail: Mall people
Thumbnail: Tempura roll
Thumbnail: Teriyaki beef
Thumbnail: Sliced orange
 

I left when the sun was set­ting. Along the way, the road stretched out infi­nite­ly before me, as if to say that I can always get away, and there is always more to go. The tree line danced and waved across the hori­zon, even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing with the sun. Then the lines of red and white in each direc­tion guid­ed me all the way to Darren’s house.

In it are lit­tle things from the house I grew up in — some can­dles here, some cab­i­nets there — that my par­ents did­n’t want after the divorce. So strange to see innocu­ous objects from my child­hood in a dif­fer­ent set­ting.

It was the first time we’ve been com­plete­ly sober togeth­er since we were kids. No alco­hol, no weed.

I found out a cou­ple things I would­n’t have known oth­er­wise:

  • My dad start­ed dat­ing some­one. He is cur­rent­ly sin­gle again.
  • He has a dance floor at his house and a nice car. This is typ­i­cal of my dad, who loves his toys.
  • My moth­er is still inse­cure.
  • My par­ents still see each oth­er, but not alone. The cur­rent social rule among the group of par­ents, is that you can’t invite one to a par­ty with­out invit­ing the oth­er.

A week­end of sweet indul­gence, late nights, and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. No one under­stands my rela­tion­ships the way Darren does, because we both share these quixot­ic ideas about love. It was so com­fort­ing to be able to express myself on these things with­out hav­ing to explain my under­ly­ing feel­ings, as if some­one could tru­ly under­stand me, espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this cur­rent phase of my life.

It made me real­ize that home isn’t where the par­ents are, some­thing I used to believe1. It’s an idea.

A com­fort­ing place you can go to get away, where you’re com­plete­ly accept­ed for who you are.

  1. I’m not sure exact­ly when I stopped believ­ing this, but it was prob­a­bly some­where between the time my par­ents got divorced and I stopped talk­ing to my mom. [↩]