Shots Rang Out

I guess that it's important to strike a balance between "not feeling like I need to be the most productive I've ever been in my life" and "not writing at all during quarantine".

This week it has felt like we've settled into the new normal of quarantine. Everyone has stopped making jokes about how they can finally just hang out and do nothing, myself included. After two weeks of being sort of forced into this new weird life, I'm starting to get a feel for it and it's sinking in that this is just how things are now and it's not a break from life.

I'm typically a pretty self-motivated person, but it's been hard to move from full-time classes and a TAship to writing only on my own and an online TAship. As a student, I'm fortunate in that I'm just writing papers for the rest of the semester, so the disruptions to my education were pretty minimal. The opposite has been true of teaching, as moving a year-long art history survey course online after 7 months is proving to be difficult. Kids are confused and anxious and it's so much hard to stay in contact and help them out. I can't imagine how tough it must be to teach to fully online courses as a professor.

I also find it interesting that this situation is also bringing Rebecca closer to people who we never get to see in Ontario. Neither of us have ever been big on video calls with friends and family, but we've been doing that consistently with all of our friends since this started. Maybe it's because everyone has nothing to do and never sees anyone. I like to think that it's also a result of just knowing that the person will be there and pick up when you call, but maybe that's a little on the optimistic side. As someone who can be withdrawn, and often doesn't reach out or communicate nearly enough, it's nice and important to be reminded that it's crucial to do those things.

I've been listening to so much Bob Dylan lately, something I really didn't see coming. I went through a phase of listening to his folk material when I was younger, but I'm having a great time digging into his stuff from the late 1960s and 70s now. My appetite is insatiable and it's convenient that there's hundreds of records at my disposal to chew on. Finding a huge discography, or bibliography, whose general form deeply satisfies you, like Dylan's music or an author that has a distinctive style, is such a fulfilling thing. It's nice to know exactly what you want to listen to and also that there is so much of it to look at.

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.