I Swear I'll Hear the Devil Laugh

I now realize that something I took for granted when I lived in Toronto was how well-connected I was to the city's punk scene. Not that I was omnipresent at shows or anything, far from it, but that I always whenever a show was going on and how to find about future ones. Though towards the end of my time in the city I found that some of the newer music wasn't for me and that some of the things I used to listen to no longer rang as true, it was always there if I needed it.

Note: I regularly feel guilty about not having gone to a show in a while and then I scour listings, see a band I sort of like and go to a show that kind of sucks. That happened when I saw the Movielife last year. It was one of the weirder shows I've ever been to and I'll write about it sometime.

I don't have those same connections in Montreal, so it's much harder to find out about where shows happen and how to find out about them. I've made some headway, but I still wonder if there's a whole mass of good punk shows going that I don't know about. Because I don't go to enough shows. Scene guilt, man!

This is all to say that I was very excited when Montreal's Pouzza Fest announced their full 2020 lineup recently. There were a few bigger bands I would be excited to see (Millencolin and the Aggrolites) as well as a host of my favourites from Ontario (Wayfarer, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, Stuck Out Here, Brutal Youth). Even though I had be spurned by Pouzza in the past, I was caught up in excitement and couldn't wait. It would be great to see Duff and I could show new friends, who are used to going to shows in France, what it's like in North America.

I went through the list of bands, picking out the ones that looked interesting to me, and made a playlist of them all so that I could re-invest in a type of punk music that had once been so important to me. Then, as I was listening, I realized that I thought most of the bands weren't great and that there was a reason I had stopped listening in the first place.

Oh well!

Such is life. There's a reason that I didn't know 90% of the lineup, and it's because that sort of music doesn't really resonate with me anymore. And that's okay! Some of the older "orgcore" bands will always remain in rotation, some others will carry a nostalgic value, where I appreciate what they did for me at the time and how much I liked them, but can't really vibe with them anymore, and some were just actually bad. All sorts! All of life is like that. Some things don't age well and some things aren't fully appreciated at the time and there's nothing we can do to change that.

That all being said, I'm still excited to see Millencolin, all of the Ontario bands I mentioned, and fill in the rest of the schedule with ska.

Some recent enthusiams:

Recently, I've been deep into a Cloakroom phase. Time Well seems to be the perfect music for the winter in Montreal. Shoegaze doesn't always do it for me, damn does it hit when it does. So heavy and morose, but with such great, secretive melodies on top of that.

I've been coming back to a collection of 1970's Bob Dylan bootlegs from the Rolling Thunder Revue as well. The band is so on point and it's so fascinating to hear some of the earlier songs built out with a full band too. There's also a crazy sense of urgency excitement in the performances that can only come from being at a good show with a great audience. Bob Dylan: Still really great.


Baseball is back most days and I've returned to the slow hazy process of watching useless Spring Training. A guy I used to know there. Players I'll never see again. Sunshine that reminds me there's snow on the ground outside. Even though I've been steaming at sport about cheating and the way it's run, to the point that I've gotten really for real angry and upset at the sport, I can't help but feel great while I watch it. That kind of sucks, but it's also nice to have it back.

Anata Dake No Mono

Over this weekend, Rebecca's sister came with her daughter, who is kind of sort of my niece. I admit that for a long time I would get annoyed when people I knew would post pictures on social media with their nieces and nephews and act like they were their children, but now I get excited to see her and understand the whole thing. She's nice and sweet and hearing "Uncle Tim" fills me with warmth.

For two days the temperature has hovered around zero and there's been more sunshine than usual. When you look out the window and keep your eyes away from the ground, you can believe that spring is coming. February is half over and the end is in sight.

Those two things have lifted me up a little bit from the deep low that I get into during the winter. I wouldn't say that I'm completely on my feet, but my legs are working to get me to stand up. It's hard to stop and look around during this year of coursework. There's always another essay to start and another reading to do. It seems unbelievable when I stop and think that it's been seven months in Montreal now, at once like I'm only on a long trip here from Ontario and like I've lived here for five years. Strange.

It's hard to force some words out, when I don't know what I want to say. That usually means I have to, *shudders* think about my feelings. I don't that minutiae about my degree is good fodder for the IMU machine, but it does seem like that is sort of all I can focus on. The only way to succeed at PhD is to throw myself completely into it, so I guess that I just have to accept that school is dominating the other parts of my life right now. That's how I frame it to myself at least. It's okay to put songs, zines, and short stories aside while I focus on this.

A little bit of knot in my chest, but one that has started to unravel. In a couple of years I'll look back at it and think about how it's been a straight thread the entire time.

I Got Jealous, Now I'm Embarrassed

It's always a joy when something you love returns when you aren't expecting.

Today's iteration of that phenomenon is a new edition of Stacey May Fowles' Baseball Life Advice coming to my inbox. Fowles, like our mutual influence Roger Angell before her, is so adept at describing exactly how the sport of baseball works its way into the lives of its true fans. I'm always willing to admit that she is an influence on how I write about the sport and does "I love baseball and I've got feelings" much, much better than I do. As I wonder whether recent developments are making me lose faith in the sport and I feel like I'm drowning in an ocean of snow, this immediately reminds me of why baseball is one of the best things in the world.

Rather that posting an excerpt, do yourself a favour and subscribe. It's wonderful.

Baseball Life Advice

Read her book too!

Man, I'm Gettin' Too Old for This Shit

A brief addendum to today's post:




Ska: It's still good!

When I listen to music this pop-punk a voice in my head tells me that it's too immature or something and that I should put on a 50-minute shoegaze record instead. Reality is of course that I like it a lot and the lyrics have a good perspective. You've gotta get out of your own way sometimes. It's great music and I can't wait to see what else the band does!

Act Like You've Been There a Thousand Times Before

I had heard many horror stories about winters in Québec before moving here, so I braced myself for the worst before the move. I was glad that I was moving in June, since the summer would do a better job of acclimatizing me to my new home. Through December and January in Montreal, I thought that I was coping with the winter fairly well. It was colder to be sure, and we had already surpassed the amount of -20° days that we had had over the last 4 years combined in Ontario. There was more snow and the parks would often be deeper than the tops of my boots while I walked the dog. It sucked, but it was an incrementally worse version of what I was familiar with in Ontario. I could deal with that jump.

Then it snowed for two straight days this weekend. Like 45 centimeters! On top of that, it also hovered around -15° for the whole time. This combination of cold and snow was something completely foreign to me. I had never seen this much snow in my life. Cars were fully covered in the street. Most sidewalks were nonexistent. Snowbanks were up around seven feet. I was shocked. That storm was one of the craziest things I had ever seen.

THEN, it snowed even more this morning. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!

Fortunately, I don't have any engagements today, so I can work on an abstract, do some reading, and beg students to come to a meeting over email. All things considered, that isn't the worst case scenario.

Two nights ago, I watched the finale of BoJack Horseman. The whole last season was wonderful and managed to deal with heavy subjects in a smart and compassionate way. Amazing stuff.

When the show first came out, I knew it as a "new Aaron Paul thing" because my friend Mark was a huge Breaking Bad fan and introduced the show to me in that way. It was a fun stonery and clever cartoon, but it also folded in some dark material in interesting ways. For some reason or another, I was always trying to convince myself that the show was worse than it was, probably because it was popular and I wanted to be ahead of the curve when it came to recognizing that it had fallen off. But it just kept being really good and ended up sticking the landing better than any show in recent memory. Kudos to its creators and crew as they made something wonderful.

Baseball is now on the horizon and I must admit that I'm a little less enthused about it than I have been in years past. The Jays seem to be making only slow progress in developing their young talent and building around and the part of me that used to revel in bad baseball is having a harder time digging into that long trudge. Part of it is due to being increasingly upset with how the game is run and how players are treated, the Mookie Betts trade last week upset me in particular, and part of it is due to the Raptors being just so good and so fun and so well-run, that the Blue Jays' future seems so much darker in contrast.

Maybe that will change in a couple of years. Maybe my intense love of baseball will emerge along with the grass once the snow melts. Maybe me even saying all of this, while I'm freezing in three feet of snow, is proof enough that it's still there.

I feel like my self-reflection and self-criticism skills aren't as sharp as they used to be and that is starting to show itself in my schoolwork. Why could that be? How do I get them back up to par? Think about myself more? That seems silly. Here's to hoping they magically come back around when I need them most.

Just anything to get me through this winter, you know?

Losing Is Too

I listened to Orville Peck for the first time today. Pretty good! To be honest, when it comes to pastiches of old timey country, it's hard to top Daniel Romano's early records, but this is still good. One of my colleagues described him as a little Lynchian, and I guess that I agree with that. The combination of old americana with a new contemporary element is enough to get that across.

Thinking about "Lynchian" things then led me to re-visit some of the music from Lynch's Twin Peaks, since what could be more Lynchian that that? The music from the show is such an integral part of the aesthetic of the show. The combination of elements that have been cemented into the American identity, like old country music, along with extremely different contemporary elements, like all the synths, communicates exactly what the show is going for and is probably more integral to the coolness of Twin Peaks than anything else.

Also, I know that all of the shoegaze, synthpop, and dream pop from the last five years or so isn't only because of Twin Peaks, but the show has to be one of the biggest contributing factors, right?

Twin Peaks holds a special place in my heart because it was the first show that Rebecca and I watched together. Early in our relationship, there were a lot of nights that were the two of us lying down stoned and enjoying Twin Peaks. It was a special thing to share and it feels like the show is one brick in the foundation of our relationship. I can think of my life with Rebecca without thinking of Twin Peaks, but I can't do the inverse.

Listening to Orville Peck made me think of my favourite song from Twin Peaks, James performing "Just You" with Donna and Maddy.


While Rebecca and I were watching Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017, I mentioned that this was my favourite song and spoke about the memory of watching the show. I remember being extremely stoned, but also so comfortable and relaxed lying down beside them. The scene with this song resonated strongly with me and I think of it as an important episode in Rebecca and I falling in love.

Rebecca joked and asked "Is that when you caught feelings?"

Sure was.