Posts tagged with "music"

Larissa — Takamine F370SS

I sup­pose I should make a for­mal intro­duc­tion.

My dad knew I was look­ing for a gui­tar so I could start teach­ing myself, and his co-work­er’s daugh­ter hap­pened to be sell­ing hers. I decid­ed not to buy it cause I had no idea what it was, not to men­tion the fact that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly picky about these kinds of things. He bought me the gui­tar any­way (using my birth­day as an excuse), and I drove to Toronto to pick it up the first chance I had when I got back from Europe.

I asked Steve to do a demo of the gui­tar because his skills can real­ly show it off.

Takamine F370SS: guitar front

Takamine F370SS sol­id wood acoustic dread­nought.

It turns out the gui­tar is absolute­ly gor­geous, with sol­id spruce on top and sol­id koa on the back and sides. And being hand­made in Japan in 1999 — the only year this mod­el was in pro­duc­tion — makes it an instru­ment that will nev­er be replaced. An heir­loom I’ll pass down to my chil­dren if I ever have any.

Continue read­ing “Larissa — Takamine F370SS”…

fourth show

It was a small open­ing set for a vernissage with a theme called Rumour Has It, fea­tur­ing forty artists in a bike store in Hintonburg.

Jesse had the set list planned around the whole rumour theme, and we start­ed learn­ing the songs when I showed up for rehearsal. But I only found out we were play­ing that night when my cal­en­dar alarm went off to say the show had start­ed. I thought we had an extra day at least to prac­tice, but due to a time zone bug in Google Calendar, the show was instead hap­pen­ing in two hours.

fourth show

Jesse’s dad with his trusty old Martin.

I was­n’t ready at all — men­tal­ly or musi­cal­ly — and if I’d have bailed if did­n’t have so much respect for Jesse, only because being under-pre­pared real­ly isn’t my style. It was worth it just to be a part of what must be the world’s first father-son cov­er of Piece of Me Britney Spears any­way, which end­ed up being a great clos­er for the set. I don’t think I’d be exag­ger­at­ing if I said the four peo­ple watch­ing us rocked their fuck­ing balls (and respec­tive tits) off.

The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist

If you’re like me, you nev­er lis­ten to the radio because you’re very par­tic­u­lar about the music you hear. Thankfully, this is the age of the iPod, when some­one can car­ry their entire music library in their pock­et, and you don’t have to wor­ry about hear­ing a song you don’t like.

However, that does­n’t mean you’re always in the mood for cer­tain songs. And if you have lots of sin­gle songs or old clas­sics in your music col­lec­tion, lis­ten­ing to them means you have to search for them. Just turn­ing on the shuf­fle option in iTunes does­n’t cut it, because it’s a lit­tle too ran­dom; a song will be cho­sen regard­less of whether you just heard it an hour ago or a year ago, and regard­less of how much you like it.

really smart iTunes playlists

The solu­tion is a smart iTunes playlist: a playlist that will not only have a mix of new music and old clas­sics, it’ll adjust accord­ing to your tastes. That means you won’t need to inter­act in select­ing or skip­ping songs, and a song won’t play over and over again, unless you want it to.

Another advan­tage of a smart playlist is that you can put on some music quick­ly, with­out hav­ing to decide what you feel like. If you tend to get focused on projects for hours at a time, it’s nice to not have to con­stant­ly be choos­ing the music to play in the back­ground. And whether you’re tak­ing a 5‑minute walk to the gro­cery store, or a 5‑hour dri­ve out of town, a smart iTunes playlist will fill the time with music per­fect­ly.

Here’s how I do it.

Continue read­ing “The Ultimate Smart iTunes Playlist”…

You were supposed to be the rest of my life.

My hap­pi­ly ever after. My crunchy peanut but­ter soul mate.

I think of you every day, but it’s nev­er a con­scious act. More of a reflex in a con­tin­u­ous stream of thoughts: the cov­er of the album that’s play­ing, this tea is get­ting cold, maybe I’ll go out tomor­row, the way you looked the first time I saw you with your glass­es on, I need to buy floss, the humid­i­fi­er needs refill­ing…

It’s nev­er some­thing I can help. There are reminders of you in the colours of every sun­rise, in the cho­rus­es of my songs, in the back of my mind when I’m left to my own devices. You became a habit I nev­er want­ed to break.

I for­got to give you this one too. It was sup­posed to be us. We were sup­posed to own the sky, to be it’s chil­dren, danc­ing under clouds you’d lat­er paint. Sharing head­phones on a bus, me in blue cardi­gan, you with fab­u­lous hair. Walking to the gro­cery store on sum­mer nights; you’d cook, I’d do the dish­es. Catching up on each oth­ers days before drift­ing off to sleep. All the every­day stuff that would nev­er feel ordi­nary again if your hand was in mine.

It was­n’t sup­posed to hap­pen like this.

stability or stagnancy

I’m liv­ing a dra­ma-free life.

____ used to tease me about my dra­ma, con­vinced that I loved it because I always seemed to be cre­at­ing it. But dra­ma is just a by-prod­uct of the strug­gle when you’re dis­cov­er­ing your­self and try­ing to become the per­son you’re meant to be. It’s nev­er an easy path; oth­er­wise, you’d already be that per­son.

I don’t have bad days any­more either, but I can’t tell if it’s because I’m han­dling things bet­ter or if I’m not chal­leng­ing myself enough.

And now that there’s no more dra­ma, it feels like I’m fin­ished. Like there’s no next step for me to take and nowhere else to go, because I’m here. All that’s left is to enjoy this exis­tence.

That’s not to say my life is with­out a touch of inner insta­bil­i­ty. I still have mem­o­ries, thoughts, lust, and love, and they’re enough to fill the mind for an entire day. But now I know every­thing’s gonna be okay.

cats in sunbeam

 

Now that I’m work­ing from home full-time, I bare­ly step out­side. Living like Foul Bachelor Frog, cause yes­ter­day’s pants are today’s pants if they have the belt in them. There’s noth­ing for me out there. It’s nev­er worth the trou­ble any­more. I’d go out if I was­n’t so con­tent in my com­fort­able home with two cats and every­thing I need to sing or write or cre­ate.

I’m just won­der­ing if I’ll ever get tired of this.