Week 15: Stream of consciousness writing

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One of my most daunting challenges in life is my tendency to get distracted.  I stray from the task at hand and fail to adopt constructive routines, even when I’m fully aware that if I were to stick with them, I would benefit greatly.  It’s a strange piece of cognitive dissonance - I’m entirely conscious of my shortcoming in this area, and I even find myself thinking “I ought to be doing ___________” instead of whatever less constructive activity I’m doing at the moment.  Somehow, though, I still manage to waste a great deal of time each week on relatively pointless pursuits.  It’s time that I’ll never get back, and I honestly, life is damn short.  It sounds incredibly trite to say so, but I don’t care.  

Enjoying life is paramount.  I don’t think, though, that enjoyment can be defined as frivolous pursuits of short-term pleasure.  There’s a place for it in the overall picture, and there’s nothing like it at certain moments.  For instance, I’m writing this at 1:30 AM, having just arrived home from seeing Napalm Death play at a local club.  I never thought I would get to see them here in Victoria, seeing as how they’re from England and probably don’t get a massive amount of tour support money to come this far west.  Regardless, I was blown away by their performance.  The sound guy didn’t have a great handle on things, and the PA system was much larger than what was required for the space.  But it’s punk rock, dammit.  Grindcore, even!  Loud loud loud loud!  It was the most intense, rabid display of metal I’ve seen onstage in a long time.

The point of all that is this: I’m going to have a crappy morning at school due to lack of sleep and ringing ears from all of the chaos.  It’s worth it, though, because I got to experience first-hand the absolute aural destruction of one of the seminal bands in grind metal.  Awesome.

I can enjoy the experience because it’s a rarity, and because I get to come home and write about how killer it was to be there.  Could not enjoy it nearly as much if I was out every week seeing bands.  Taking the long view of this whole thread, the thought that ties it all together for me is that it’s not a major distraction, or an activity that’s going to cause other aspects of my life to suffer.  I’ll study a bit less tomorrow morning, but that’s alright.

The problem is that simple, less enjoyable things that are genuinely distractions instead of proper life experiences (and let’s face it, if you have yet to see Napalm Death live, you’re not experiencing the proper kind of life.)  Funny pictures on the internet, Facebook, some news articles, a documentary about wild animals, a good book from the library.  It’s all legitimate entertainment and I’d even say that it’s important to use the internet as a resource and to stay socially connected.  But it’s so ridiculously easy to get sucked in and lose hours following tangential threads of topics, discussions, articles... it gets to be too much!  Argh, too much!  Too much information!

One of my favourite albums from last year was The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Option Paralysis.”  The title refers to the loose overall concept of the album which is the paralytic effect of an overwhelming volume of sensory input.  I certainly suffer from it.  It stays my hand from study and music and even family at times, and keeps me from accomplishing what I feel that I ought to.

I think that it’s a better time than ever to listen to what artists have to say.  Music is so much more honest and telling than the news or the talking heads or the politicians and their sound bytes.  We are all incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to hear so much fantastic music every day.  There’s a wealth of brilliant music to be found within a few keystrokes of where you are right now.

The feeling that “Option Paralysis” invoked was one of recognition.  Maybe I enjoyed it for extremely narcissistic reasons, or perhaps even solipsistic reasons, if I can get philosophical for a second.  I saw a little bit of myself reflected back at me through a piece of art.  It kind of made me feel like I existed, because there was some reflection of my own struggles and thoughts that also existed in tangible form.  Some piece of me was created unintentionally, and I found it and internalized it through music.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I’m sticking with it.  It worked when I was typing it out.  The point of this whole exercise was to write for 1,000 words without stopping, then put it out there in original form.  I threw out 2 drafts this week because I felt that they were not good enough.  I wasn’t happy with my little word creations.  Consequently, I’m late posting this one.  The next Saturday deadline looms large, but I’ll do it on time this week.

When my overall sense of organization and routine suffers, I can tell right away because my writing suffers.  It’s largely because I spend less time doing it, but it’s also because the writing I produce is less reflective of how I want to portray myself through my writing.  The voice doesn’t come out very well.  I haven’t nurtured my creative faculties enough lately, and that’s why I’m doing this.  Time to right the apple cart, as they say.  

This is most certainly not the best or most interesting piece of work that I’ve produced for this blog.  It’s probably rambling and derivative and disorganized, and if you’ve read this far, I thank you for sticking with me through it.  I’m trying to exorcise some demons and cast them into the internet abyss.  I’ve found that I can motivate myself by creating real deadlines and making them public, so that when I miss them, like I did with my blog this week, I feel guilty and people know about it, so I get called out on it.  Gotta make a similar arrangement for school and work.  I most certainly have not studied enough or worked enough in the last couple of weeks, and I can come up with a whole bag of excuses, but none of them will hold up under scrutiny.

Thus, I pledge to you, dear friend and reader, that I will do better.  I have many shortcomings and many faults.  I sometimes lack the strength to overcome them on my own.  If I make them public enough, maybe the shame of public failure will keep me a bit more line.  The folks here at home are wonderful, but they’re too forgiving.

I’ll get up early in the morning and work to earn some money.  I’ll study more in the evening, because if my grades improve, I can qualify for scholarships, and free money is awesome.  I’ll play more music and I’ll spend more time outside with my family, and my enjoyment of life will increase as a result.

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Word count:  1,194
Written between 1:43AM and 2:02AM, Wednesday, October 26th, 2011.

Week 14: The Blazing Violets

Yep, I was listening to the band before they got big, man.  Back in the day when Paul Emme was the bassist.  You probably wouldn’t remember him, since you didn’t go to those gigs for grade 9 grad parties in tiny community halls.  I was in the band before anybody was listening to them, bro.  Scene points.  I rake ‘em in like craps winnings.

I basically installed myself as the de facto roadie of The Blazing Violets and didn’t leave until Codie McLachlan, singer and lead guitarist, relented and told me I could join the band - on rhythm guitar and keyboards, incidentally.  The fact that I was minimally talented on both of these implements was of little consequence.  I’ll never forget the first day that I crashed through the door with a huge grin and the Fender amp I’d just bought that was WAY too loud for the small basement that we spent years jamming in.  We were way too loud in general, but this was at a time that we prized volume over content in most respects.  More loud = more fun.  Simple.

My first stint in the band was great fun and lasted for the grade 12 year of high school plus the year after, until I decided that I’d move to Charlottetown for some reason.  The fact that I was in a band with big tour plans and engaged to be married didn’t really factor into my decision process.  Making sensible decisions has never been my strong suit.  I’m much better at being broke and indecisive about careers, school, and life in general.

When I moved back from Charlottetown a year later, I called Codie right away.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Dude, I’m back in town.”  
Codie: “Dude!  Come over!”
Me: “I will, we should jam ASAP!”
Codie: “Yeah man, our drummer just bailed, ever thought about playing the drums?”

I didn’t even own a pair of drum sticks, let alone a kit, but my excitement about the prospect of rejoining my friends in a musical endeavor far outweighed the obstacle of my ineptitude.  I also had the immense fortune of sharing rhythm section duties with Ty Boyd.  Some of you already know him as one of the grooviest, funkiest bass players ever.  I learned how to play drums by following his bass lines.

It turns out that playing drums is the best thing in the world.  And I was lucky enough to do it in the company of Codie, Ty, and Haley Reap, our rocking keyboard player and sometimes lead vocalist.  I never took a single moment for granted.  We weren’t exactly a super serious gonna-get-rich-and-famous type of outfit, but we made a real attempt at writing and performing great tunes.  A lot of bands fail quickly because egos and other commitments get in the way.  We were able to hold it together as the same lineup for over three years, and only missed a handful of weekly jams in that entire time.  Codie, Ty and Haley are still my best friends in the world, and it’s all thanks to the music that we made together.

Stories from our time together could (and probably will eventually) fill several 1,000 word entries.  One of my favourites to recall, though, is our recording session.  We entered The Physics Laboratory with producer and all-around rad dude Terry Paholek, and emerged with a whole new view on our music and our creative process.  We spent 36 of 48 hours locked in a small room together.  We learned a great deal about our skills and our limitations, and felt pretty good about what we were able to accomplish on a shoestring budget of both time and money.  We came out better players and better friends, and our creativity and songwriting output exploded.  It taught me a lot about music and gave me a brand new perspective on the band and my role in it.

The two years that followed our recording session encompassed some of the most enjoyable moments of my entire life.  We gigged regularly and wrote another recording’s worth of songs.  I was never happier than in those beautiful instances when it would all click and our performances turned out seamless and satisfying, and we walked off stage high on music.

Some day I’ll write an extended piece about the band.  It’s second only to my own family as my greatest commitment of time, energy and love to date.  The bass drum head that I used is up on my wall and the recordings are on my hard drive, and I still love my bandmates like family.  We had more fun together than I’ve ever had with anybody else in my life, and I’ll forever be thankful for it.  Being in The Blazing Violets gave me new ways to explore and make music.  It was horizon-broadening and mind-expanding, and came with challenging and powerful experiences.  It gave me the opportunity to share something truly profound with my closest friends, and by extension, to share it with a few thousand more people over the few years we were together.

There’s no question that every future musical endeavor will be weighed against the one I had with the Violets, and I’m glad that we managed to set the bar so high.  Most long term relationships end badly, but we managed to skirt most of the silly egomania, and sitcom-family drama that frequently accompanies groups of musicians.  I can look back on it now for the rest of my life with not a shred of bitterness or regret, knowing that what I did was good, and that it brought out the best in me.

So, Ty, Haley, Codie, and of course Terry & Sabina for all the support, these words are dedicated to you.  I owe all of you a lot more than I could ever get across in a few paragraphs.  There’s no feeling quite like the feeling of hitting that big cymbal crash and everybody stopping with a nice, tight punch at the end.  Mein herz brennt.


Word count:  1,010

Week 13: A letter

Dear Friend,

I don’t know where you are, what you’re doing, or how you happened to arrive at such a place.  I don’t even know your name.  All that I know is that you and I have a lot in common, because we’re both alive at a time when our access to the whole world and its creations is almost without limits.

It’s possible that you’re much younger than I am, or much older, but that’s alright.  We’re both alive at an amazing moment in history.  Distances mean very little.  You might even be reading this from halfway across the world the same night that I post it.  We live in a time when the entire spectrum of human understanding is ours for the discovering, and I am grateful for it.

The pace of change in the world is accelerating.  It’s never been moving faster than it is right now, and it’s only going to continue, exponentially, along this trend.  So if you’re reading this in October of 2011, this might all seem current and not especially interesting.  I wrote this letter to you, dear friend, to leave it as a digital artifact.  I don’t have any neural implants that make me ridiculously intelligent.  Maybe you do, if you’re reading this in October of 2100.  Things must be very different.  You might be able to take some cues from my words and recreate my world in a completely immersive virtual environment.  

I sit at my computer most nights and go exploring.  I try to interact with the world and thereby with you in some meaningful way.  With this unfettered access, it’s easy to take and take and not to give the energy back.  I’m writing this at a moment when the ease of access to social media and online content is at unprecedented heights.  I can talk in real time to somebody on a space station from my cell phone on the bus.  Pretty amazing.  But if you’re reading this in 2100, maybe you’re on a space station.

It can be distracting.  This technology came quickly, and it’s vastly more entertaining than anything else that came before.  We haven’t really adapted to carefully regulate our access to that sort of stimulus.  It’s easy to be pulled in by the forces of the internet, especially since there’s no real need to contribute.  I can be a pure consumer in that sense.  But I find that it’s like making a lot of withdrawals from a bank and being shocked when your balance comes up low.  If I spent half as much time producing content as I did consuming it, I’d probably manage 2,000 words per week instead of 1,000.

Discipline isn’t widely enforced anymore and regimental behaviour is somewhat of a thing of the past.  I live in a time and place of immense privilege, but I worry that many people - even me, sometimes -  seem to take it for granted.  I suppose that’s because a lot of our parents got an education and worked hard.  We didn’t have to work especially hard to sustain the momentum.  We just lucked out.  Lucky us, we say.  How grateful we are to live in this amazing place.  Gratitude seems to be expressed verbally in most cases, rather than actually.

What I’m most grateful for is the relative stability of my lifestyle.  I might let my guard down a bit too much.  I might be forgetting to stay well prepared for unexpected circumstances.  But it gives me the time and the resources to ponder the sorts of questions that someone who’s worried about where their next meal might come from would never have the chance to ponder.

I might just be hallucinating all of this, you see.  I’ve read a lot about the impeding singularity in which our biological bodies become fully integrated with technology - perfect integrated software/hardware human systems.  Who’s to say that it hasn’t already happened?  I might just be a line of code that’s been written to have a certain degree - or a certain perceived degree - of mental autonomy.  How could I possibly know if what I’m experiencing in this life is real?  Despite this - real or not - it sure seems real.  I can take in the world through my senses.  Am I deluding myself if I chose to believe that this is reality?  Can I be happy - blissfully ignorant, even - if I believe that I have the freedom to choose even if I do not?  Am I a slave in my own mind?

It’s tough to ponder those sorts of things while keeping a regular life well up on the rails and chugging along.  I suppose that’s where striking a careful balance between accepting my perception and questioning it is important.  Maybe by 2100, we will have worked out the bugs in our brain programs and we’ll simply be able to design reality however we chose.  Maybe we can already?  I hope I’m there for it.

I live at a time, dear friend, where the world is running in a billion directions at once at breakneck speed.  It seems that revolution is pending.  The old guard can’t hold on for much longer; they’re too few, and the masses of dissenters are too many.  People are up and out and engaged and active.  And here I am, in my kitchen with a computer, casually making commentary as people far more passionate than I are taking to the streets.

Despite my relative inaction on the political front, I would like to think that I have something worthwhile to contribute to my small pocket of the known universe.  I never expect to have a long reach, but I certainly have the chance to affect my own little circle.  I have a beautiful family, and we get by alright, with a little help from our friends.  In case you missed the reference, that’s a lyric from a Beatles song - one of the greatest bands of all time.  You should check them out if you haven’t heard them before.  I hope that in 2100, one of the default applications in the human brain 2.0 will be access to the entire catalogue of human music on demand.  If that’s the case, flip back about 150 years and feel it for yourself.  I hope that I’m alive when that one gets booted up.

Dear friend, I’ve exceeded my self-imposed word limit, but it’s hard not to be excited about all of the interesting things that are going on all over the world.  Occam once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that the best solution is the simplest.  Maybe by the time you’re reading this, we will have tamed the chaos, simplified our ways of interaction, and life will be much more peaceful.  But maybe that would mean that it would be much less interesting, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.


Sincerely yours,

John


Word count:  1,158

Week 12: The parade

Early in the morning, before the crowds, Paul gets ready for the parade.  The city glows pink with sunlight and neon.  Headlights replace starlight, and Paul leaves his apartment and walks into the city.  He and the streets await the coming people.

His vantage point is a small ticket booth in the metro station at St Clair.  He stays in his chair and travels the world every day.  Paul wipes a fingerprint from the bulletproof glass and settles in to his chair - exclusive box seating in a cocoon of security monitors.  He will see them, even if they do not see him.  Paul sits alone, but he has the best seat in the house.

The parade begins, gradually at first.  The marchers don their costumes and leave their homes.  The front-runners warn of a mass of humanity behind.  There is no whistle, no count-off, no unique indication to alert the participants, but they still arrive in unison.  And they make music with their feet and their voices that is chaotic and lively.  Paul listens as the tune echoes off the stern tiled walls, standing in achromatic contrast to the variegated by-passers.

The patterns of the parade feet overlap in Paul’s ears.  He closes his eyes for a moment and tunes in to a heavy foot - a thudding bass drum guiding the tempo.  The other paraders seem to match his step, following its cadence through the hallways and down the stairs.  Soon the bass drum is out of earshot and a sharp heel provides rim-clicks with staccato accents at each step.

The costumes and hairstyles are as bright and colourful as the light from a stained-glass window.  There are acrobats and clowns, straight-men and villains, leaders and followers.  There are representatives of every cause.  There are nobodies.  Some hurry down the stairs, wild-eyed and desperate.  Others pause for a moment at Paul’s ticket booth to buy their parade pass before they march back into the fray.  The city parades on, oblivious to Paul’s watchful eyes.

An extravagant parader stops to change a ticket.  She passes Paul a crumpled five dollar bill.  He pauses for a moment to consider the other parades it must have seen.  If only, Lincoln, he thinks to himself before passing the bill to the drawer to await an uncertain future.  Paul smiles and considers the price of admission to be quite reasonable for such consistent entertainment.  The woman walks away with a flourish of her cape and a drift of lavender perfume.

Paul rarely marches in the parade.  His grey ticket booth and grey uniform are equally unremarkable.  He is happy to be an observer, and has been in the chair for  17 years.  He likes to watch the young men and women dance past his post, and to imagine where they will land when the parade spits them back out.  He wonders how many of them, like him, will find themselves sinking deeper into their chairs each year until they shrink out of sight.  As he follows the marchers with his eyes and his ears, he follows them into imagined futures where the parades are joyous and the music is all-encompassing.

When he was a young child, Paul would sit on the edge of the tub and count the tiles in the bathroom mosaic.  There were 5,206 of them.  Now he counts faces in a new mosaic with chameleon colours and infinite shapes.  He a gift for patient observation, and an amazing memory for things.  Paul doesn’t mind the ticket booth.  He goes home at night and re-creates the whole world in his mind, playing out the parts of the people he has seen.  He follows them through their lives until their time runs out and their universes end in instant collapse.  And he dreams of their movement through the city.

Paul likes to imagine the station breathing like metropolitan lungs.  Each morning, it inhales the paraders deep into its chest, where they energize its heart and march out its rhythm.  Then at the end of each day the station exhales them.  The heartbeat slows to match the tempo of the marchers.  Paul watches from the airway that ejects them back into the atmosphere.

The evening parade is different.  The march home - subdued, but pleased.  Perhaps impatient.  Paraders hold each other in slightly lesser regard, and there is a palpable sense of longing.  Paul shifts impatiently.  The show is ending.  Many of the colours are shielded by long coats and the spikes have been replaced with flat black slip-ons.  The steel-toes lift and fall at a slower pace.  The tone of the march is lower, and the key has changed.  Shoulders and chests are slumped and withdrawn.  The sharp snare rolls of high-heeled shoes have given way to brushes, and they drag gently across the taut drum of the station floor.

Paul’s eyelids are heavy.  He feels the vibration each time a train blasts through the tunnel beneath his feet, and his knees are beginning to stiffen.  He manages a friendly smile for a mother in green who patiently watches her tumblers perform their routine.  He stands to stretch and his hips ache.  He wipes his brow and hangs up his hat.  His pace has slowed to match the paraders, and he will soon straggle behind them, punctuating their daily sentence with a prolonged ellipsis.

The city’s fading glow recedes from orange to pink to deep purple.  Headlights point away from the parade, flashing a red tail of warning.  The colour disperses and dims.  And late at night, after the crowds, Paul meets with the street again to bid farewell for a very short while.

Word count: 943