It Comes Down to Me in the End

One morning, I got on the southbound subway at Spadina Station, as I do every morning on my way to work.. I got on the car at about 8:40 AM, the peak of rush hour. The subway was crowded, with no seats available and many people standing. A thin older black man in a fedora was walking down the middle of the car in my direction and speaking loudly to everyone around me. Having lived in a big city for most of my life, I am used to meeting people like this on public transit regularly.

As me got closer, I realized that the man was preaching to anybody near him. A few of the commuters were visibly uncomfortable, but the man wasn't getting particularly close to any person. He was loud, to be sure, but he also wasn't stopping to talk to anyone in particular. In situations like these, I recognize that nothing I do or say can stop this person from doing what they are doing, so I try to take them in as passively as I can. Around this time, the subway stalled in the tunnel.

As the preacher passed by me spreading the word of God, a young man spoke up and said "Nobody here wants to hear this." The man looked like a caricature of internet-obsessed nerd atheists. The preacher took the man's criticisms in stride and was more than game to engage in a debate, retorting with things like "It's okay my brother, I will pray for you." The young man didn't want to give it up though, saying "Nobody wants to hear this, especially from a shlep like you."

That last response almost made me laugh out loud. A man is confident and shame-free enough to walk through a crowded, confined space speaking to strangers and your gameplan is to come at him with "shlep"? Bro, you gotta rethink your strategy.

The young man was visibly upset with the preacher and they got into a brief argument with each other. The preacher was steadfast in his position that he would pray for the man and would keep spreading his beliefs, while the young man wouldn't budge on telling the guy to shut up. It never got to the point where I thought there would be a confrontation, but it was a little awkward.

The next point is entirely speculation, so please do not take it as fact,but I got the vibe that the young man's attitude was racially motivated. Would he have approached the situation the same if it was an elderly white guy doing this? Given that the rise of the alt-right has been explicitly linked to men just like this guy, I was wagering the answer would be no.

At the height of the argument, the man said that faith would find the young man eventually. A Jamaican woman spoke up saying "Born again! Wash in the blood of Jesus!"

The subway pulled in St. George Station and the young man stormed off to change lines while the old man continued down the car.

Shortly after leaving St. George, the car stopped again and the voice over the P.A. informed riders that there had been a trespasser at track level.

This news made me wonder which of the two people in that argument would care that a person committed suicide that morning. Neckbeard, from my brief impression of him, was probably more concerned about his commute being interrupted. I'm sure the preacher said a prayer for the person. Both actions are empty, but at least one is considerate.

That being said, we're not required to feel empathy when a person we don't know dies. It's nice if we do, but it doesn't solve anything. Really, it makes us feel better about ourselves more than anything else. Is putting yourself first in that scenario selfish? I don't know.

This whole situation was brief, but it's stuck with me since then. It kind of reminds me of the Party Down episode where they cater a Young Republicans party. The other person may be an asshole in some ways, but it's also easy to turn yourself into an even bigger asshole pretty quickly. Just try hard to understand people and context, I guess. That's not easy, but I think it's important.

Sometimes It's Just You and Me, Getting High in Your Car

Allow to begin this post by saying that it's been a year and a half since this album was released and the whole thing (but especially this song) (but also especially all of the songs) manages to transform into a floating smile for as long as it's on. No matter what.





More importantly (SIREN EMOJI, SIREN EMOJI), The Yunahon Mixtape is being re-released by Oso Oso''s new label Triple Crown Records soon and to commemorate the release, the band put out a new single. It's been a while since a band has captured my interest like this, where every move they make induces pure joy and it's nice to return to that state of excitement. Let me tell ya folks, THE SONG BANGS. LORD DOES IT BANG!




That's all! Just really excited about this band and the big stupid smile that spreads across my face as soon as I press play.

Give Everybody Eat!

Last night was the Ontario general election. Much more so than in recent years, the provincial election was given a significant amount of attention in the press due to Doug Ford representing the closest that Canadian politics has come to Trumpism since the latter's election in the United States (this ignores Doug's moran brother's mayoral term). People my age were very scared of a possible Progressive Conservative government, especially with the Liberal party wilting in the dying days of Kathleen Wynne's time as Premier. Young people turned their support in mass to the traditionally tertiary New Democratic Party hoping that a dramatic shift towards a more left wing platform would be enough to strike down the Ford family's latest power grad.

It wasn't. Shit sucks. Here are a few disjointed thoughts:

Do not blame voter turn out for the result of this election. A small amount of radicals does not change the fact that the Conservatives won the popular vote and marched through every riding outside of Toronto and Northern Ontario. A platform such as Ford's should not have nearly this much appeal. That people are either ignorant enough to not recognize the problems in their agenda or bad enough to agree with them is the real problem. Instead of turning around and blaming the people agreeing with you, unite in the face of this move towards your values. More people voting in Toronto does not change the fact that so many ridings in the rest of the province flopped.

The real problem in Canada is liberals. Mid-to-upper class white people outside of the urban core are separated enough from what is affected most by the PCs (social program funding, transit funding, arts funding) that it is of no consequence to them. They infatuated with the idea of Trudeau/Chrétien Liberalism and when the option of going red is taken away from them, the majority would rather vote PC than NDP. This is who is fucking Canada on the whole and who is impeding any progress. Socialism is the logical next step from a capitalist democracy to ensure that not all of society is being dominated by a small upper class which controls all wealth. They are opportunists who jump at any chance to seem progressive when it is presented by an affable white guy with a majority government, but shrink away from responsibility when it actually falls to them. It is disgusting.

Sounding off on social media doesn't do anything. Posting on any of the platforms does not equate to activism. It's an echo chamber where you often releasing your opinions to people that already agree with you. I understand that it is fulfilling to hear others agree with you and the immediate release of typing and posting is tempting (the irony, I know) is hard to resist. Don't allow your posts on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to occupy all of your political discussion. Do not regurgitate information you read on someone else's status. Read and think critically.

Getting news like last night is defeating. Incorporate resistance into your life is easier ways. Read critical books, even if they aren't political theory. Listen to critical records. Linger on those thoughts, discuss them with those you care about and work them into your life in a regular way. Here a couple of works I've enjoyed recently and find comforting today. Don't get scared by ideas, good or bad. Process them and be logical and critical about them. Then you can come back stronger.

 

 

In a very "Timmy" move, Becks and I were at the Jays game last night. Oddly enough, getting the election news coincided with John Axford turning into a pitching machine. Unlike the Ontario electoral body, The Toronto Blue Jays surged back, scoring 3 in the 9th and 1 in the 10th to win. A come-from-behind, walk-off win does wonders to raise your spirits. Staying at home and brooding over a live ticker doesn't do shit to the results. Go out and do something.

At My Teenage Worst

IMU often helps me stretch my brain a little bit and improve my ability to write other things. But if I focus on those other things instead of IMU, does the quality taper off? What about if I focus on another project, ostensibly because it is tangible and "more important", but that leads to me putting this, my main writing output, to the side? Am I still producing if I have nothing to show for it here? What if work through things in a notebook instead of a computer screen?

This is all very confusing to me (and you, I'm sure), so the only sensible thing to do is a short post about some new music I'm into.

As always, around April I was worried that I wasn't putting enough effort into finding new music and was entering the dreaded first stage of "becoming out of touch". Nothing terrifies white males more than potentially not knowing things about pop music. As always, once the warm weather started, releases I like slowly started to creep in. It's almost as if record labels release things during the summer on purpose.




I'm really into the new Sidekicks album Happiness Hours. I absolutely adored Weight of Air and Awkward Breeds, but was underwhelmed by Runners in the Nerved World. I was ready to write the band off and exclusively celebrate their early material, but then they pulled the ultimate feat and came back with a huge return to form. It's way different from the albums I loved, but heavy on melody, choruses, and riffs that are great without being technical. I tried to think of other times that bands have come back with a big bounce-back after something I didn't like and the first example I thought of was the Swellers album Good For Me. The two bands couldn't be more different, but they are the same in this way. That's neat.




After the sublime full length Tired of Tomorrow, Nothing just released the lead single for their next album Dance on the Blacktop. I'm mostly over the shoegaze trend in punk and find that most bands just end up putting out boring album that lack hooks, but Nothing bucks that the hardest a band can. They manage to find the overlap between gaze, hardcore, grunge, and britpop that most bands think they do. Excited for this one.




Guys, you had me at "New Heart Crew, Midwest Straight Edge".