Week IX: One good summer

It seems difficult to write genuine and sincere expressions of gratitude. It's hard to say them out loud, too. It seems that there are too few things to say. Thank you. You're welcome. On we go. I feel as though it's difficult to really thank someone in text or in speech and be heartfelt and succinct in equal measure. I don't want to gush at people, y'know?

I came home from a lovely vacation just a couple of days ago. I spent quality time with many of my closest friends and my family. It was a love-in all around. Kind words were spoken, laughs were plentiful. There was a lot of music and good conversation. There was chess and delicious meals and bowling and long walks and homemade doughnuts. And how do I sum up my gratitude for all the time and the love? One thousand words to figure it out, go!

I'm grateful to the people in my life who like to share good ideas. One of the more poignant thoughts that's stuck in my head from a good conversation is a simple phrase - one good summer. My friend Adrian and I were talking about how steady employment can be a terrific boost to one's creative output. If one was sufficiently disciplined, one might seize the opportunity provided by steady income to invest more time and resources in augmenting one's artistic abilities.

Adrian mentioned something he'd heard another artist say - that it only takes one good summer to truly boost your proficiency. It's your big chance. You're employed, you have most evenings free, there's a myriad of inexpensive educational resources available online. There's workshops and meetings. Go tighten up your game!

I'm looking towards a good summer. I want to make my intentions public. I think that this is a good way to express my gratitude to people who inspire me. Some of my friends are entrepreneurs. Harry runs his own recording studio now. Dylan and Lain are making art, performing, and designing beautiful permaculture. Brittany is writing a curriculum for preschools that teaches curiosity and holistic learning. Codie is booking gigs regularly by treating his rocking new band as a legitimate business endeavor. These are all people who I love and respect, and I'm inspired by their pursuit of their passions.

I want to show my gratitude through actions, not just words. This is just binary, it's just ASCII and backlit LCD screens and it's The Matrix and when the power goes out I don't have to admit to any of it. There's a bit in the bible in the book of Matthew that I like: "ye shall know them by their fruits." Grow good fruit. I want to put it out there and be accountable to myself, and to other people. I have a hard time staying on track, that's one of the reasons I got "do not be disracted" tattooed on my arm. This is my statement of purpose.

One good summer. And why not? Maybe I'm tempting fate when I say that it's fixin' to be a mighty good few months. I don't believe in fate, though. I believe in the possibility of getting blindsided by the reality train every once in a while. I believe that I can guide my own words and actions, and not their consequences. I believe that I can make the good parts of the coming months last a lot longer than one summer.

Here's my situation: I'm about to start 6 months of full-time work at a good job. I have reliable, full-time child care in place for my son. I have a car for when it's necessary, and a bike for when it's not. I'm healthy and physically fit. I'll have a lot of evenings free. Whether or not I'm successful in my plans is more or less up to me at this point, the resources are all there.

Here's where I want to go: I'm studying electronics engineering because I want to understand the technology side of music. Amps, effects, microphones, studio equipment, PA systems, you name it. I want to figure it all out. I want to be the guy that people go to when they need stuff fixed or set up. I want to go all mad scientist on some frankenstein robot projects. I want to get a lot better at math and circuit hardware design.

I can do all that stuff, and I also know my weakness. It's talking a big game, then not doing it. Failure to follow through on things I've talked about doing, and even started doing, is a recurring theme throughout my adulthood, and it's a cycle I intend to break. Some people are self-disciplined enough to realize their potential and follow their passions without making a big fuss about it on the internet. I'm not one of those people. I need to get it down in print and ask my friends to text me every once in a while to ask if I'm still doing what I ought to be.

I want to thank all of my friends who are hard working, disciplined people. I know that name-dropping is weird, and I don't want to exclude anybody. If we've exchanged Facebook messages recently, thank you for writing to me. If we've talked on the phone recently, thank you for speaking with me. If we've sat down over coffee and talked about something weird, thank you for laughing with me. If you've read my blog, thank you for listening to my ramblings. I would be disconsolate if I looked back at the end of this summer, saw all that love and encouragement, and realized that I'd failed to pass it along.

I hope that my thanks feels sincere. I know that words are easy, and backing them up is more challenging. Speak less, do more. Be disciplined. I'm leaving myself a reminder. Are you really grateful? Try not, do or do not.

Word count: 986

Week VIII: Georgia on my mind

I was thinking about skipping this week. I'm on vacation right now and there's been a lot of work the last few months. Now it's time to play. I'm visiting some friends on the Sunshine Coast in BC before heading back to chilly Alberta for a quick bit of catching up. I logged on with the intention of posting: "On vacation," and calling it a day. Then I started arguing with myself and lost:

  If you can post an entry every week while you're in full-time school you can definitely take a few minutes out of your completely unscheduled day to write something.

  But I'm on vacaaaaaation!! No rules, no responsibilities!

  It's going to bother you. You won't feel good about it when you hit the publish button.

  *fingers in ears* You can't tell me what to do!

I started this blog after I listened to a great podcast on how to stay motivated when you're writing. The hosts were discussing their personal methods of sustaining high volume writing. One of them described an exercise that he and a friend used to keep themselves on point while they were working towards publishing a book. They would each write a 1,000 word essay on any topic and email it to the other by a designated time every week. I don't recall the details, but there was an embarrassing consequence for whoever missed the deadline first.

I have a hard time with self-discipline. I thought that having a real, public deadline and making myself accountable to a readership would be a great motivator, and it has proved to be motivational to a certain extent. The better motivation is the thought that I might write something better this week than I did last. I started the blog as a simple exercise in self-discipline, just to see if I could do it. Now it's part of my routine and I'm trying to challenge myself and become a better writer.

There's a chronology to this thing. It's archival, I guess. There's a stylistic and topical history that gives it a certain precedent. There are entries throughout this blog that I have mixed feelings about when I read them back. Some I'm proud of, some I find embarrassing, others feel like filler. One entry in particular is my favourite piece of writing that I've done to date. Regardless of how I feel about them in hindsight, I look forward to writing them every week.

I think about this project a lot. It guides my behaviour to a certain extent. I noticed that after certain conversations, certain experiences, I would find myself thinking "hey, that'd make for some good blog subject matter." It has me thinking about how I can enrich my days by seeking out experiences that'd be fun to write about. It's shifted my perspective on how I get to know people, even on a very casual basis. Right down to a conversation with the cashier at the grocery store - what can I say to make this person's day a little more amusing?

The day-to-day of business transactions, especially in the bureaucratic domain, is boring at best. I'm taking a car home from Alberta for the summer and I had to buy transit insurance so it would be covered while I'm driving it back to BC. The document has a notes field at the bottom where the insurer can leave comments about the nature of the insurance agreement.

Part of the fun of taking a car between jurisdictions is the paperwork. The insurance must be purchased at the destination and a driving permit at the point of origin. Horray, legal documents! The agent who helped me wrote that I had been advised of this obligation and that it was upon me to ensure the legality of my drive. I suggested that she add on "...lest my soul be consumed by demons" at the end. Apparently they don't allow that sort of thing on official insurance documents. Apparently she could have lost her job for doing such a thing. NO FUN ALLOWED AT ICBC!

I wonder, is having a caution involving soul-hungry demons on your insurance any more ridiculous than the insurance itself? Here's how nutty lawyers have gone - they're now recommending 3 million dollar liability coverage. I would ague that demons are far less absurd.

If I can encourage those of you who read this blog to share an experience with me, I suggest that we all try to spread a bit more absurdity around. Consider it a mark of success if the people you come across walk away from your interactions shaking their heads and laughing, and thinking, "what a weirdo." Try to make everyone's day a little more surreal. There's more than enough propriety and uptight formal dealings to go around, we need more silliness!

I try to catch myself when I'm just going through the motions. Hi, how are you. Just fine, thanks. That'll be $23.50. Debit. Go ahead and insert your chip. Thanks. Thank you. Have a nice day. You too, bye. I've had that exact conversation a million times. I'm bored of it! So is the cashier! Be polite and goofy, its absolutely possible. Write your signature on a paper and ask them to forge it as accurately as possible on your credit card receipt. Ask them what their second favourite colour is. Do a dance while you wait for your transaction to go through! Life could be way more fun.

Hello, devil's advocate. What's that you say? If we let everybody write whatever kind of nonsense on their insurance forms that they want, the whole system will come undone? The language will be ambiguous? The conditions for coverage will be indeterminate? The validity of the binder might come into question in a court of law due to the apparent lack of appropriately stuffy legalese-type words?

Yeah, probably. But sometimes you just have to let the whole system collapse and re-build. ANARCHY! We'll start with imaginary creatures on the insurance forms and we won't stop until the hypnotoad is crowned Queen of England and every day at work starts with a dance party and pie!! WHO'S WITH ME?!

Word count: 2^10

Week VII: Telling stories

When I was but a wee young laddie, my father told me made-up stories at bedtime. He was often away on weeknights, but usually home on weekends to tuck me in. He must have averaged two or three stories every week for several years.

Over the years, he developed a revolving cast of fantastical characters who featured in nightly escapades. One of the more common threads involved his imaginary beasts run amok, only to be wrangled by an absurdly specialized keeper of such creatures. Good thing that dragon catcher happened to be in the neighbourhood, or things might've gone really bad for Fred. A deus ex machina, one might candidly observe, as if to bare one's sallow gums in a snaggle-toothed grimace and proceed to chew all the fun and imagination out of stories AND RUIN MY CHILDHOOD as a degree in English literature is wont to do. Stupid literary theory courses.

...but I digress. One such critter was the vaguely Seussian "gobblesnoff," It resembled a small rodent when discovered and was notable for its alarming rate of growth as it ate. The gobblesnoff's kryptonite was macaroni. A humble box of mac and cheese was the only thing that could stop it from terrorizing the populace, blob-style. The story went like this (read aloud for the full effect):

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Billy. One day, Billy was playing down by the creek when he heard a strange sound, almost like a cat's meow, coming from under a pile of rocks. "Mew! Mew!" He crept closer, and the sound got louder... "MEW! MEW!!"

There under the stones, Billy found a steel box tied shut with a rope. DO NOT FEED THE GOBBLESNOFF, advised the box. Billy just couldn't hold back his curiosity. He wrestled the knots from the box and found a strange creature inside. It was tiny and furry, and might have been mistaken for a guinea pig or a hamster if not for its giant mouth. "Mew?"

"Awwwwwwwwww, it's SO CUTE!" Billy shouted excitedly. "Would you like to come home and play with me?"

"Mew!! MEW!!" replied the gobblesnoff.

Billy scooped the furry beast from the box and ran home. He couldn't wait for his parents to come home from work so he could show them what he'd found. Billy and the gobblesnoff played in the yard all that morning. Billy was having so much fun, he didn't even realize how hungry he was until his stomach started GRRRROWLING! He carried the gobblesnoff into the kitchen. "Now you wait here, I'm going to make myself a peanut butter sandwich," he told the creature, and plopped it on the counter. Billy had only turned his back for a minute to get them jam, but when he turned back, the entire loaf of bread was gone! The gobblesnoff had a very satisfied look on its furry face. And it was bigger!

"Did you eat that whole loaf of bread?!"

"Mew..."

"Oh no! The box said not to feed you! What'll I do!?"

But it was too late. The gobblesnoff ran across the counter and, SLUPP, SLURP, SCHLOMP! He ate the toaster, the coffee maker, and the blender! And with every gulp, it grew bigger, and bigger, and BIGGER! Soon it was too big to fit on the counter! It had grown to the size of a large dog, and showed no signs of slowing as it scrambled through the kitchen, devouring everything in its path.

Billy chased the creature from the house, screaming and waving a broom in its face, "STOP! STOP!" But it was no use. The gobblesnoff ate the broom and started in on the lawn chairs. Then, Billy had an idea. He ran back to the house as fast as his legs would carry him and dialed 9-1-1.

"9-1-1 emergency?"

"You have to help me! I fed a gobblesnoff and it's eating my entire house!"

"Fed a gobblesnoff!? Didn't you read the box?? We'll send someone right away!"

Billy ran back outside just in time to see the gobblesnoff tearing through the garage, sucking down power tools and cans of oil. Just then, a little black car with a blue siren on the hood came screeching to a halt in front of the house, and out popped a short little man with a huge moustache and a small steel box under one arm.

"You fed the gobblesnoff, didn't you?"

"Yes sir," Billy replied, ashamed.

"Well, only one thing left to do now," replied the man. He gathered up an armload of macaroni and chased after the creature who was now the size of an elephant and shoving rakes and spades down its throat. Just as it opened its enormous mouth to swallow the lawn mower, the man hurled an armload of macaroni down its throat. 

The gobblesnoff stopped. It coughed. Then it started to shake and wheeze, and then, PHUT! PHUTPHUTPHUT! Out came the rakes and spades, the saws and oil cans, the lawn chairs, the furniture, the blender, the coffee maker, the toaster, and finally, the entire loaf of bread. The man quickly gathered the gobblesnoff into his arms and shoved it in the box, wrapped it in chains, attached a padlock, and glared at poor Billy.

"I'll be you'll think twice about taking strange creatures home next time," he said as he tossed the box into the back of his car and sped away.

And that's the end of the story.

My dad told me made-up stories until I got old enough to start pointing out the discontinuity errors between successive versions of his creatures. It's got to be hard to keep track such a diverse cast of characters. It's amusing to wonder how much growing up on stories about gobblesnoffs, snicklegooks (which I'd never thought of as being subtly racist until just now when I typed it out) and wicked wood crones influenced my thinking. Every time that I have to go to the bank or talk to my insurance agent, I find myself wishing I could run down to Fred's shed and sic his dragon on them. That'll learn 'em a thing or two about making me listen to Carrie Underwood when I'm on hold.

Word count: 1,014

Week VI: Words

When I publish this week's writing, I'll have committed about 26,000 words to this blog. Seems like a lot. Perhaps it is. It's about a third of a novel. I gather up a thousand words weekly and cast them into the internet. They were mine, now they're yours. They're read by friends and family and the odd stranger. People are mostly complimentary, or mum. The words are there, and sometimes not.

What does a word say? When I say 'love' what do I intend? What does it mean? Something unique to each of you, most likely. When I type the word 'mortality,' how does it translate when you read it back? What of 'music' and 'government' and 'jabberwocky?' Our words and our relationships with them are idiosyncratic. Our histories have complex roots - some real, some imaginary.

What are all these words? They seem to shift shapes with context - when it's applied and when it's lifted away. I can say one thing and mean quite another. Will my intention reach you? It's tricky through a textual medium. I sprinkled heavy metal lyrics all over an earlier post and secretly hoped someone would send me an excited message - Dude! I totally loved your judicious application of Napalm Death lyrics, bro. That reference to "You Suffer" was totally was sick bro, like grindcore scholarly. We should jam some time. Nobody sent me that message. I still thought it was funny.

If I apply metaphors or similes or allusions most tasteful to seem cleverer, am I? I'm inviting you to a mental screening. A reel full of imagery and analogues to things. But you're not allowed to watch my copy, it's mine! Mine! Not yours! You have to read the subtitles and fill in the rest yourself. Will our mental pictures and neural pathways to these things be identical? Such verification is presently impossible. Seems unlikely. Things are tough to catch without a net. You have to be shrewd.

Do my chosen images anchor my words or buoy them? Do they hold water? How about the metaphor I just used? Am I allowed to use 'anchor' and 'buoy' as verbs? Something to think about, anyways. I'm sure I've violated some grammatical rules here. How many of you would point to a word or a dash or an absentee comma that seemed glaringly obviously missing?

I'm trying to ignore the finger-wagging grammar disciplinarian who moved in while I was bullshitting my way through half an English degree. I was so preoccupied twisting words into clever rebuttals to post-modernist scholars that her Oxfords clapping on the steps barely registered. She has a stern glare and the bun she wears is tight like a facelift. Her eyes are lead grey. She scolds me when I misuse the semi-colon and throws sharpened #2HBs when I have subject-verb disagreements. It's hard to say no to her. I might be a sucker for punishment.

I know how it feels to write. How does it feel when you read what I've written? I publish on Sundays most weeks, then spend most of Monday and some of Tuesday dissecting every sentence one-by-one. I wonder what stuck and what missed. I miss ten minutes of lecture because I'm thinking about whether I should've said 'discombobulated' instead of 'confused.' Might have seemed a bit pretentious.

I haven't quite decided how to feel about all this ambiguity. I love it, mostly. And then words come up short or I use them incorrectly, and I can tell. But I don't have time to examine every syllable. And still when I read it back something doesn't feel right. Words are frustrating. Ergh.

I'm releasing a bit of myself into the public. It feels narcissistic. I'm trying to find my voice before it's stolen by witches. Sometimes I sound like myself, other times not at all. It's challenging for me to translate my ideas into text every time, because words are just symbols for things. They're the basis of such a massive part of our understanding, but do we give them more privilege than they deserve?

I've heard some writers call themselves servants of words. I climb that mountain, they say. I bear that weight. I am but a vessel to carry language, to transmit text, to disseminate syllables amongst the public. Never the master, ever the student. Mad at the pen and sweating the deadline. Words ask of me, and I give.

My pile of blog leftovers could feed a lot of hungry people. Dozens of stories I didn't write, essays I didn't finish, and musings I didn't publish fill notebooks and wait in Google's cloud. Words failed. I failed them. They were wrong in time and wrong in space or too verbose or too hippie or too sad. I'm sorry... they're not gonna make it. I did everything I could.

I wonder how many ideas I've offered in words could have been explained better with music. Or interpretive dance. A painting? Maybe just a simple pencil drawing. What if the rhythm of accents and consonants was played on percussion while you read the text? How many would resonate longer and deeper and richer in song and texture and colour?

I love to word. I just finished reading the biography of my hero, Dr. Seuss. I love his words. The biographers quoted Anna Quindlen, who called him "a man who took words and juggled them, twirled them, bounced them off the page." I'd like to do that too. I like words that twirl. I don't understand all of this.

Word count: 918

Week V: Punk's not dead

Turn your speakers up! If it's too loud, you're too old!!

Nomeansno - Rags & Bones

It's like going to church, but more punk rock. We're disciples congregating at the feet of the masters, except there are no masters and no disciples, just a bunch of people who love to throw down. Them performing, us watching. But there is no us and them, we're all just a big flailing spectacle. We've come to be edified, showered with absurdist punk poetry and baptized in beer and sweat. It's a dreadlocked and tattooed mass and we're all drinking in the sermon like the sacramental wine we stole.

Nomeansno - Mary

This past Wednesday I saw Nomeansno, my favourite live band in the world. They're the greatest ever. The brothers Wright, John on drums and Rob on bass, and Tom Hollison on guitar. These are three gentlemen in their late fifties who rip stages apart better than men half their age. This particular occasion marks the fourth time I've seen them play and they haven't slowed down yet. They've been rolling since 1979, quietly (unbelievably noisily) releasing peerless music that pulls from punk, hardcore, jazz, electronica, and the trippiest proggy noise you can imagine. Their music sounds like a plane full of drums crashing into a house full of guitars.

Nomeansno - In Her Eyes

And somewhere amidst the wreckage, you and a hundred of your new best friends are dancing harder than you thought possible. There's no need for coaxing from the band, it just happens. It's music that demands a physical response. How could you stand still in the face of it? If you're not screaming and throwing your fists in the air, you'd better be dead or getting evicted by the bouncers for being too drunk.

Nomeansno - I've Got a Gun

Sometimes I think that they choose a terrible opening band on purpose to make the headliners look that much better by contrast. My friend and I arrived at the show late, but somehow too early as we managed to catch a handful of songs from the openers, which we endured from the back wall, as far from the stage as possible. Shortly thereafter, we closed the distance by 100 feet and installed ourselves in the middle of a quivering drunken blob of anticipation. Holy shit I can't wait.

Nomeansno - The Fall

Picture this: I'm standing between a 300 pound middle-aged man with a giant beard, a girl who probably got in with a fake ID, a couple of mohawk-and-safety-pin type charaters, and some moms on a rare night out. That's the thing about seeing a band that's existed for 35 years - they draw a pretty diverse crowd. Then they dim the lights and we're all just fans, jumping up and down hooting like maniacs as a 58 year-old man screams punk philosophy into the microphone and attacks his bass. It's a noise assault, and we're all begging for more.

Nomeansno - The River

There's two sides of the coin when it comes to seeing a band that's recorded 12 full-lengths and dozens of EPs, singles, live albums, bootlegs, and splits. On the one hand, they can draw from a huge back catalogue of material and play a different set of hits every night. On the other hand, chances that you'll hear all of your favourites are slim. But on the other hand you'll be reminded of a handful of songs you'd forgotten, and you'll probably hear a few that you'd never listened to before. I've been listening to the band's back catalogue over again since the show and trying to figure out how I can follow them on tour through Europe in the summer. But what about your job? Fuck a job, jobs are not punk rock.

Nomeansno - It's Catching Up

As a drummer, I need to spend a few words talking about John Wright's playing. I'd like to grow up to be just like John Wright. Anyone who Dave Grohl cites as a primary influence merits special mention. He's a rare breed as far as heavy drummers go - he's rarely seen onstage without a Hawaiian shirt (this particular occasion, he wore boxer shorts emblazoned with beer mugs) and plays traditional grip, which is decidedly more punk rock than then 99% of punk and metal drummers who think that matched grip is the only way to manhandle a kit. He's responsible for blasting out some of the most fantastic punk rock songwriting of all time. The man has no equals.

Nomeansno - I'm Dreaming and I Can't Wake Up

Mr. Wright will tell you how they've continued to write brilliant music and stay relevant for 35 years: “Bands that take themselves too seriously get boring really quickly. We’re all pretty goofy guys — we just try to be ourselves.” It's the type of humour that keeps their music firmly tongue-in-cheek and their fan-base eternally loyal. For instance, when they were recording their last album, they announced the band “has decided to record entirely without electricity, using solely the acoustical effects of the planet’s sphere to resonate the music worldwide. Touring will be done in a carbon-neutral carriage pulled by eco-friendly mules named Steven, Fred, and Marge. Venues are being asked to refrain from advertising by any other method than word of mouth and bicycle messenger.” 

Nomeansno - The World Wasn't Built in a Day 

 

I can't hide my love of this band. I've seen hundreds of shows, and with the possible exception of Rammstein for the sheer scale and spectacle of their performance (PYRO!!!), there's no other band on earth I'd rather see live. I walked out of the venue elated and uplifted, feeling like a million bucks. I spent the next two days re-living the gig song-by-song, dancing around the halls and headbanging in class. The playlist doesn't do the live show justice. If you've never seen Nomeansno, go see them. You haven't lived until you've moshed with a bunch of grandpas.

Word count: 985