Posts tagged with "music"

warm divinity

Music sounds so good. It’s like every­thing has a beat I can dance to.

Sometimes I start writ­ing an entry based on notes from a few weeks ago, but I end up dis­card­ing most of them cause I don’t feel the same way any­more. It’s like I’m con­stant­ly shed­ding skin in the words I delete.

I tend not to over-think things now. My deci­sions are based on what I want at any spe­cif­ic moment, instead on the future, or the con­se­quences, or what may hap­pen as a result. This regres­sion has been one of the most impor­tant (and dif­fi­cult) things I’ve learned to do. It feels like I’ve been going in the wrong direc­tion for 30 years, but at least I was able to fig­ure that out before much longer. Now I under­stand Picasso when he said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a life­time to paint like a child.”

Pat grilling

Pat on his new grill. He’s still fig­ur­ing out the hot spots.

I don’t even prac­tice gui­tar any­more, but I’ll put on a song I’m addict­ed to and pre­tend I’m play­ing with my favourite singers for hours. It’s not help­ing me improve (which is usu­al­ly what I enjoy), but by god is it fun.

The weeks lead­ing up to my trip were full-tilt cause I could­n’t stand being by myself. It was nev­er that bad before. I even bought an iPad app that lets me watch ran­dom web­cams from around the world, just so I could have some­thing hap­pen­ing live next to me, even if it was two-thir­ty in the morn­ing. Usually it was a buf­fa­lo chips restau­rant in Florida with mus­tard table­cloths, a beach resort by the sea in Italy, or an over­head cam of a sushi chef in Tokyo1.

Nowadays, I don’t mind the soli­tude or the com­pa­ny. I’m feel­ing unwound and have set­tled into old habits; not get­ting enough sleep, eat­ing at the wrong times, nev­er going out. The main dif­fer­ence is that I get so much less of ____ nowa­days, which means I feel so much more alone, but I’m strong enough to be okay with that now.

The days are bright. Like a boy, I find it hard to con­cen­trate on work when the sun fills the house with warm light.

  1. This is how I learn that sushi chefs puree wasabi using only a chef’s knife and a great deal of patience. [↩]

round my hometown memories are fresh

It’s good to be home.

By the end of my jour­ney, I start­ed long­ing for the com­fort of my house and slip­pers, as I imag­ined being splayed out on the couch, watch­ing a movie with a bowl of ice cream in my hands. It’s been more than a week since I’ve been back, and I’ve yet to do this. It’s hard to pull myself out of the old habit of being pro­duc­tive. Sometimes I need to be wait­ing at a ter­mi­nal in New York with a three-hour lay­over to be able to sit down and enjoy a film.1

large bud

It’s dan­ger­ous to go alone! Take this.

At the same time, I’ve nev­er been more indul­gent, my lat­est vice being those bags of York Peppermint Patties. I fig­ured out that life is too short and I should be enjoy­ing myself when I was sip­ping café allongé on a patio with Karin on a beau­ti­ful Paris day, and I could final­ly appre­ci­ate this fact when talk­ing to Dennis over our lager on an Edinburgh after­noon.

This is prob­a­bly why I don’t feel over­stim­u­lat­ed, even though I’ve been going full-tilt for the last two months. Darren came over as part of his sab­bat­i­cal, and we did the things I rarely find an excuse to do myself, like going shoe shop­ping or order­ing sushi. Last week I staked him $20 and watched him win $600 when he hit his num­ber at the roulette table, five min­utes after we stepped in the casi­no. He gave me back a per­cent­age of my win­nings, and he spent the night play­ing black­jack while I bet on the elec­tron­ic hors­es. We did­n’t end up win­ning much after that, but we both left up.

Lisa even took us danc­ing2, where I learned that the entire appeal of strobe lights is their abil­i­ty to make every­thing look like a Michael Bay movie filmed in 24p. It turns out this is also a great way to do some peo­ple-watch­ing, although you start to get depressed when you see a pair of kids from their respec­tive groups pick­ing a fight with each oth­er cause they’re drunk, then mak­ing up and play­ing grab-ass on the dance floor. Ironically, I end­ed up being the one sober enough to dri­ve home.

sushi platters

From left to right: Yummy roll (deep fried crab, avo­ca­do, salmon, white fish — served warm), spicy salmon piz­za, eel spe­cial roll, green drag­on roll (avo­ca­do on tem­pu­ra shrimp and cucum­ber), shrimp tem­pu­ra roll, and Philadelphia roll.

Last time I checked, there were over 5000 unread items in my feed read­er, and tweets from over a week ago in my Twitter time­line. It’s strange to be so dis­con­nect­ed from life as I knew it. I haven’t writ­ten any­thing in as long either, which is a very long time for me. I con­sid­ered delet­ing this blog, then tak­ing a month off instead, then decid­ed I’d write when I felt like it. The thing is, I always feel like writ­ing, but late­ly this urge has giv­en way to being pro­duc­tive in oth­er ways or hav­ing fun. It’s like I’m final­ly on the Taoist path, dis­cov­er­ing that my trip has changed me more than I first thought.

  1. I end­ed up watch­ing sev­en on my trav­els, which is prob­a­bly more than all of last year):
    • Sunshine — good as long as you can get over one real­ly big, real­ly stu­pid plot ele­ment. Which I could­n’t, so on the whole this movie sucked, even though it had some of the best direct­ing I’ve ever seen in my life.
    • Network — Unbelievably ahead of it’s time in terms of media com­men­tary
    • The Last Picture Show — a great com­ing-of-age movie direct­ed by that guy who played Dr. Melfi’s psy­chi­a­trist on the Sopranos, and Cybill Shepherd in her debut role
    • Ladder 49 — I don’t trust Pat’s taste in movies any­more
    • Kung Fu Panda — they were pret­ty good at the Chinese details
    • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — a fun movie over­all, the best part being that it’s set in Toronto. Also, very dis­ap­point­ed at how much of a sell­out Bryan Lee O’Malley is for chang­ing the end­ing based on audi­ence reac­tions at test screen­ings
    • To Kill a Mockingbird — I want­ed to be a lawyer after see­ing this

    [↩]

  2. Which for me is pret­ty much just sway­ing back and forth while being mes­mer­ized by the gui­tar play­ers. [↩]

Spanish Romance

To be hon­est, I’d nev­er heard of Spanish Romance until this year. Once I found out it was a clas­si­cal stan­dard, I start­ed see­ing it on all these CDs by respect­ed gui­tarists and com­pi­la­tion albums of “clas­si­cal greats”. It seems like any­one learn­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar will try to tack­le it at some point, seduced by such an ele­gant melody. I have no clas­si­cal aspi­ra­tions, and even I fell for it.

I fig­ure I’d record this before I cut off my nails cause I’ve been grow­ing them for about two months1 and I’m com­plete­ly sick of them. They clack on my key­board and iPad, and I always have to be annoy­ing­ly care­ful about not break­ing them. Unfortunately, this song also sounds way bet­ter with some bright­ness to it when it’s not played with actu­al nylon strings; I’m still using a set of Silk and Steel, and there’s a cer­tain fat­ness to the sound when you real­ly dig into them.

I’ve only had Larissa for six months now, but it feels more like six years. There’s so much famil­iar­i­ty in the wood and glossy curves. Even when I’m try­ing out a gui­tar sev­er­al times the price of what she would cost, it nev­er feels as nice.

  1. Although halfway through I cut them down to 1/4 length and lost a lot of growth cause I thought they were inter­fer­ing with my rest-stroke. Turns out the prob­lem was actu­al­ly in my tech­nique. Oops. [↩]

Humble & Brilliant

Jesse’s Dangerously’s lat­est knock­out album, Humble & Brilliant1, has been released as a dig­i­tal down­load only with no phys­i­cal media. However, you can also pur­chase a chap­book for those of us who enjoy the tac­tile feel­ing of lin­er notes, lyrics, and kick-ass illus­tra­tions. Included in the dig­i­tal down­load is this top­less pic­ture of Jesse I took to pro­mote the album.

Jesse Dangerously — shirtless

 

I have so many amaz­ing mem­o­ries of these songs, back before the album was released and I was doing back­up ukulele parts for a few of his acoustic sets. That was when I was just start­ing to get into play­ing an instru­ment again, except this time it was in my adult­hood and it was for reals. He gave me a draft of the album last year when all the ideas were there but he had yet to decide on how some of them were going to be exe­cut­ed, so it’s very sat­is­fy­ing to hear how pol­ished and com­plete it is now.

There were a bunch of shots we did but did­n’t end using, and they were all real­ly fun to do.

Pictures more bril­liant than hum­ble

  1. Proper pro­nun­ci­a­tion has the empha­sis on the last syl­la­ble of “Brilliant”. [↩]

short exile on a long weekend

When you no longer work in an office, some­times you don’t find out it’s a long week­end until the Friday of. My friends have also replaced their rit­u­al bar­be­cues with babies and play dates, so no invi­ta­tions were sent out that may have noti­fied me of the hol­i­day.

Toronto Lake Shore

A qui­et moment among vol­ley­ball tour­na­ments and beach goers in a calm area of the Lake Shore.

I want­ed to get away cause I’ve been dread­ing any time alone. Loneliness hits me hard­est when I’m sit­ting at home won­der­ing what every­one else is doing. A road trip to Toronto was the best way I could avoid that. Unfortunately, the only peo­ple I can drop in on with such short notice hap­pen to be five hun­dred kilo­me­tres away.

The truth is I nev­er watch sun­sets any­more. I’m usu­al­ly too caught up in my projects cause I’m wor­ried about being left with noth­ing but the thoughts I’ve try­ing to put in the back of my head. That’s why I don’t mind the five-hour dri­ve at this time of year; it gives me an excuse to see what I nev­er make time to do. When I leave at a quar­ter to sev­en, I hit the rich­est1 part of the sun­set halfway through the 401. For a glo­ri­ous stretch, there’s noth­ing con­crete curves and crim­son colours bleed­ing through the trees.

CN Tower sushi

The “CN Tower” sushi plat­ter, with tem­pu­ra obser­va­tion deck.

All I want­ed was a quite time with the right com­pa­ny, no heavy plans or per­son­al­i­ties. I’d be kick­ing myself for all the shots I missed cause I was too com­fort­able to pull out my cam­era, but I know that’s what those moments are about.

To lose your­self in the haze and sum­mer heat final­ly upon us is to live like a child again with­out a wor­ry or thought of any­thing beyond the next five min­utes. Regression is embrac­ing the itchy sweat break­ing out on your face, as your fin­ger­tips mash the ice into slush in a white cream soda freezie.

grocery store

Feeling lit, feel­ing light,
2 a.m., sum­mer night.

I’m always fight­ing exhaus­tion on these trips cause I don’t get enough sleep. There’s too much to do. It’s a test of con­sti­tu­tion to be dri­ving in the dark­ness and city lights, won­der­ing if I’m too tired to be dri­ving, let alone nav­i­gat­ing the infu­ri­at­ing con­struc­tion and traf­fic of down­town Toronto. When I sur­vive anoth­er day, it’s a reminder that not every­thing has to be per­fect, that the world still turns no mat­ter the state of my heart or mind.

Over a par­tic­u­lar­ly heavy blend, I was asked what it would take for me to go all out, to say fuck it and lose con­trol. It made me real­ize I’m already there, sid­ing with indul­gence over mod­er­a­tion, try­ing to break myself down so I can rebuild myself again. That’s why I always lose myself on those warm sum­mer nights, when I tell myself I’ll be in bed by 10 every night, but the com­pa­ny keeps me up till 3.

cat and human

Dexter is now too fat and lazy to fight off my cud­dly advances.

I have such a mixed past with Toronto. It was such a chaot­ic time in my life when I lived there. I was crip­pling­ly unde­vel­oped, but that also meant I still had the inno­cence none of us ever return to once we hit adult­hood. Much like those mem­o­ries, this city will always be a part of me.

Now I’m back in Ottawa, returned to the lit­tle things that make it home like a famil­iar pil­low and a cat’s par­tic­u­lar purr. In my case, the exile is always self-imposed, a con­trolled escape, and I always won­der if any­one would care or miss me if I nev­er came back.

  1. The time when it just starts to get dark, a bal­ance between the rich colours and bril­liance of light, since they both com­pose. [↩]