Divide and Conquer

A couple of years ago I did a list of my favourite TV shows to accompany my annual music list. That was a great distraction to write up at my old job, but I don't know that I have the same drive to do that now. Instead, I'll just do a list of what I thought was really good this year:

Watchmen (HBO)
Barry (HBO)
Pen15 (Hulu)
The Mandalorian (Disney+)
Dark (Netflix)
Fleabag (Amazon Prime)
The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)
True Detective (HBO)

A few years ago, I presented at an art history conference at the University of British Columbia. While spending the weekend in Vancouver, I grew to intensely dislike one of the other presenters that was around for the whole weekend. He never stopped name-dropping the people he had read and when when you mentioned anything you had worked on, he immediately asked if you had read this or that article on something tangentially related to make himself seem more well-read than you.

Example:

*Teacher from the school is asking me about my research topic. As I explain how I look at Manet, he speeds across the room and interrupts our conversation.*

"Have you read (the name of some article whose title I've forgotten)? It's the best thing I've read on Manet in years."

"Oh, is it related to his critics (my field of study and what we speaking about)."

"Oh, no."

Like, why are you coming over to do that? Fucking rude and shitty bro.

He also spent a lot of time putting down everyone else's work in snide and petty ways. He talked at length about how dumb he thought T.J. Clark was and how biography was an out of date way to look at artists. He would then not listen when I explain that I'm looking exactly at how biography can be problematic.

I was on cloud nine when, after having given a pretty empty talk delivered with sass to make it seem interesting, a woman from the crowd piped up with "I don't think your topic is as revolutionary as you think it is."

This is all to say that while reading an article for one of my classes this week, I realized that homeboy's talk was basically just this article with a couple of minor tweaks and additions.

Next time you want parade around like you're the biggest head in the room and everyone's beneath you, at least put a footnote at the end of the sentence. Fuckin' kiss my ass.

I Remember the Stones on the Beach

In December of 2016, I felt creatively unfulfilled after the end of Beat Noir and decided that I needed to fight that feeling by outlining some writing and music goals on the blog. By writing it down here, it would be more real and some people would know about it. Maybe that would make it more important? I referred to it as "the project" to myself that year.

Jesus Christ, IMU is so navel-gazey. I'll try to not be so nostalgic and talking about past things I've done so much in the future. This is a tendency in myself I don't like and try to work against.

Second note: Each IMU title is usually taken from a song I'm listening to while writing the post. Though I enjoy making references to other things I enjoy, it can sure make it hard to find the specific post I'm trying to reference.

It took a while, but most of those project actually got done. The baseball zine came out later that year and the short stories that I thought were actually good ended up on the wordpress.

By far, the hardest part for me was the songs. For whatever reason, finishing songs has never been in my DNA, which is probably why I functioned much better as Beat Noir's long-term hired gun on bass. I've (mostly) consistently tried to write my own songs since I've played bass and guitar, but I've never been able to get over the hump that comes after the initial burst of ideas that generates something new. Maybe it's because I've never made the jump of working on them with other people. Maybe it's because I am bad at writing songs. Maybe it's because I'm scared of finishing them.

I wanted to get five songs down with the hope of making a demo and eventually I did that. Then I realized that some of those ideas sucked and I moved onto new ones. Then I decided I didn't want to make a 5-song demo.

Ultimately, the songs were the ones that project that petered out the most. It was easy to just put the other stuff out into the internet and have them live there. The songs required a lot more effort and needed me to learn how to do new things, like recording at home, that were a lot of work. I looked into getting some equipment to do that, but then gave up. I downloaded Reaper to get started on some tracks, but then gave up.

I'm still working on them, albeit in the most minimal way possible. I even came up with a name, The Vice (a reference to Northrop Frye, not the website) and had a pretty solid vision of what it would be like that has mostly stuck (all songs in DAEAC#E, emo meets 80's power pop with Tony Molina aesthetic). Three-ish years later, I have 7 songs with lyrics (and two covers that are original enough that they get a mention here) and have moved onto the idea of only doing 2-song digital singles, should I ever do enough work to release them (I probably won't). I got into playing to drum loops for a while and feel like that will stick.

I write all of this because putting it down somewhere makes it feel more real, even if posting it on IMU is, for all intents and purposes, shouting into the void. To me, writing it out here is a way of me affirming to myself that it's real, even when I haven't been giving it much attention.

A tepid and, to be honest, pretty cowardly way of doing that, but a way nonetheless. Maybe one day The Vice will come to life in a more tangible way.

I Wish I Could Hear What They Say

Since I started university for the third time, something that's been at the forefront of discussions around the school has been "impostor syndrome". Impostor syndrome is the name given to the constant feelings of inadequacy that you feel when you enter a new situation in your life, like you somehow managed to weasel your way into something you feel you aren't qualified for. It's exceptionally pervasive in graduate students, as everyone thinks they aren't as smart as those around them and that the university made a mistake in accepting them.

There's been many times in my life that I've succumbed to impostor syndrome and I had it especially bad during my master's. It sucks, because it can really destroy your work habits and it makes it easy for anxiety to take a shit on your abilities, which are what you got you to where you are in the first place. Since starting my PhD, I've gotten better at trusting my instincts and skills and I haven't really had a problem with impostor syndrome this year.

This may be unique to me, but when things got hard in school, I could kind of lean on IS as a way to explain why it was so tough. Of course this is hard and overwhelming, you don't even deserve to be here you idiot!

Now, what's funny is things getting difficult when I'm confident that I do deserve to be here. I know that I was accepted to the program for a reason, but also know that I'm a little out of my depth with the courses I'm taking. How the fell will I think about what to write about? How do I write capably about a subject I'm relatively new to? How can I get these short, dark, wet, and cold days to fuck off forever?

In some ways, I guess that this is just IS with a new jacket on. Kind of stupid that I can look it square in the face and recognize it, but not do shit about it, right?

I think I'm deep into the part of winter when I can say it's officially gotten to me. Everything is so cold and wet. The sky is an even grey for the entire day and I can't tell where the sun is. I caught a reflection of myself in a car window the other day and I looked so pale and sickly. Everything about the outside is so overbearing and overwhelming and it makes me so sad. People always make light of how much I hate the winter, but it really does shake me to my core and profoundly effect how happy I can be.

I can't tell if it's worse in Montreal than it was in Toronto. People say it's colder and there's more snow, but I'm so miserable that I can't really tell the difference. Was Brandon Drury better than Richard Ureña? Why quibble over two bad things?

Editor's note: I saw Dicky Beisbol walk off the Orioles on pedestrian groundball after Biagini threw 8 innings. He is better.

I'm playing Steel Pulse and The Harder They Come soundtrack to help fight off the gloom, but it's hard. I really need some sun and weather that doesn't wear me down as soon as I'm in it. Everything feels a little off, like I'm a meal that's being prepared in a pan that's too big. 

Try to Walk Through Walls

A post about how January is a time of transition and change.

I hate this and find these sorts of statements corny as they usually accompany something about how you're going to make a giant change or commitment. Why talk about that or make that effort now, but not the rest of the year? I don't value you saying you're going to do it. I value you doing it. Talk is cheap, you know?

I guess that I've always hated huge public statements about what you're doing or planning for yourself. Though I think that's a good thing, as I enjoy the fact that I don't have a bank of unfulfilled public declarations in my social media archive and instead, they exist only in my mind and notebooks. And here too. Hypocrisy, thy name is Chandler.

It's also a drawback of mine. I'm a terrible self-promoter and that is something that, though it sucks, is incredibly important to being in a band, which is probably why Beat Noir never really took off, and also to my current profession. To some degree, being an academic depends on the public perception of your skills and research. I should better and telling people what I do right?

I guess so.

Originally, I thought that this post would be a collection of small ideas, but it really didn't turn out that way. My brain is a real foggy mess lately and the things I can normally articulate clearly aren't coming out the way I hope they do. It feels like there's a blockage in my lungs that's holding my thoughts down.

Montreal is starting to feel like home. While Becks and I were back in Ontario over Christmas, it felt amazing to see my family and I started to miss them the second we left on Christmas night. Part of me wanted to turn around and stay longer, but another part of me couldn't wait to get back to our apartment in Hochelaga. I'm starting to identify with the area and being proud that I live in the east end, even though I have no claim to that whatsoever. More so than I ever felt about the Annex.* People are weirded out that we don't like in the Plateau and I like that. If people are weirded out by anything you do, that's a good sign. Unless it's directly affecting other people negatively. Then it's a very bad sign.

But damn, would it kill you to get a decent barbershop Hochelaga? Fuck sakes.

*One time some old loser tried to lecture Becks and I on the fact that since we lived on the south side of Bloor, we technically lived in Harbord Village and not in his precious Annex. Fuck outta here bro.

To return to the first sentence, though I hate that sort of phrase, it's undeniably true. School just started again and I already feel so at home being back at Concordia. It's nice. I didn't have any classes today, but I'm back here trying to get over the hump of bumming around the apartment and watching TV turning into schoolwork. Not quite there, but it will come.

This was all over the place and I don't have an ending, but these sorts of posts are necessary. It's winter cleaning time here at IMU folks, and you'll all have to endure it.

The 2019 I Musical Genius Music Revue

Back again for another year folks. Here is all the stuff that I really enjoyed from this year in music. An insane amount of great stuff came out this year and I think that, more so than any other year in recent memory, it was tough to narrow down what would come on and what wouldn't. It may sound insulting to say that there was a big "middle class" in music this year, stuff that was very good, but not necessarily the best, but I think that speaks to an overall jump in quality across the board, which is a great thing.

As per the last couple of years, I haven't numbered anything. Maybe oso oso would take number 1. I don't know and care and I can't imagine you would.

oso oso - baking in the glow

This was absolutely my most anticipated release this year, as their last album the yunahon mixtape, quickly became one of my all-time favourites. The more tossed-off approach on this one put me off as first, as yunahon was fussed over, but I eventually came to appreciate that as a different side of the band. Some of their very best songs on this one.

field medic - fade into the dawn

Folk music doesn't normally do it for me, as I find it difficult to not read it as incredibly pretentious. field medic gets around that by having honest lyrics about substance abuse and relationships and putting some added production, like fake drums and lo-fi guitars and bass, in just enough places around the acoustic guitar. Though not included on the album, their 2019 single "I Want You So Bad It Hurts" is also one of the best songs of the year.

The Berries - Berryland

Punks all started listening to Neil Young this year and no band did a better job of bringing all the best parts of Crazy Horse into the present than The Berries. Huge vibe on this one. Guitars, guitars, guitars.

Chastity - Home Made Satan

Beautiful shoegaze about killing cops and klansmen? Yeah bro. Most importantly, the album's a tight 10 songs in 26 minutes, getting around the useless vamping that gaze bands sometimes lean on. Tons of hooks and vocals that aren't buried under production.

Skatune Network - Pick It the Fuck Up!

I think a lot about what the future of ska will be like, as a lot of the genre has been stagnating in the sound of the 90s for a long time. This album by Jeremy Hunter, which consists of ska covers of the emo bands on Counter Intuitive Records, is hopefully a sign of interesting and valuable things to come. More genuine earnest stuff like this, less jokey shit in the future. 

Sheer Mag - A Distant Call

On their second record, Sheer Mag tightened everything up and went a little heavier. Though less hyped then the debut, this one works better as a full album. The Mag have their sound completely figured out, so it will be interesting if they continue to put out punk/hardcore/arena rock every couple of years, or decide to make a big a change in how they approach their music.

Woolworm - Awe

Like shoegaze, I think that post-punk is getting to its saturation point and most of the new releases just don't have enough substance to keep me interesting beyond a couple of listens. Woolworm is the exception, as they perfectly balance the effected vocals, big guitars, and mountains of chorus and reverb pedals to produce something that nods to its influences without being a shitty imitation of them.

Wayfarer - Reckless Spring

When I heard Wayfarer play "Fifteen" last year, I knew that this album would be good. Kyle lowered himself to write a merely "normal" album instead a concept record and the results are amazing. Another amazing Wayfarer release from a band that will continue to be slept on because everyone is stupid.

Ancient Shapes - A Flower That Wouldn't Bloom

Re: the question I asked about Sheer Mag. Ancient Shapes bucked the trend of their earlier '77 style punk pastiches by leaning heavier into power pop and glam influences and the result was my favourite record by them. The songs are exactly what they need to be and there's no wasted space or effort. Romano's best work since Modern Pressure.

Blood Orange - Angel's Pulse

I admit that I was much later to the Blood Orange train than others, but this album won me over. Wonderful mix of poppy R&B with occasional forays into other genres. "Gold Teeth" was the song I listened to the most this summer. I'm sucker for Triple 6 features.

White Reaper - You Deserve Love

You Deserve Love doesn't have the same sort of ironic sense of humour that White Reaper's last album did, like piped-in crowd noise to start the album. Instead the album is a cross-section of early 80's rock radio and it works in the best ways. This band's amazing.

Young Thug - So Much Fun

So Much Fun came out while it was still summer in Montreal and it was everything I wanted from a rap record. Perfect to listen to while BBQing on my back deck with a joint.

Fury - Failed Entertainment

The thing that makes this record great is that it balances the newer influences working their way into most rock music (grunge and somehow nu metal) with the exact type of hardcore I love (Snapcase). Fury knows when to hold back with all of that to not make anything corny and then allows it to hit huge when it needs to.

Caught Amongst Ourselves

A quick to post to plug Threadpuller's new EP Negative One.

 

This thing is mostly the work of Tyler Savage, formerly of the excellent bands The Decay and Mold Maker. Tyler is one of my favourite songwriters and I am really excited to see output from him in a new band. Plus, playing in a noisey post-punk thing is great excuse to throw 20 years of gear into one rig!

Think of the Fine Times, Pushing Down the Better Few

Once upon a time I used to think that this song was a lot of corny fun. Damien and I were far enough away from the early 90s when we were 14 that we thought that the video full of 90s fashions and sideways hats was an amazing piece of retro pop culture.

When Brian, Konrad, Pat (and Mark), and I moved into our first house in our second year of university it was a period of transition for all of us. We knew we were being thrust into adulthood and weren't kids anymore, but we also didn't realize that we were still behaving like teenagers for the whole year. Actual responsibilities were still a ways off from us, so we were free to fuck around a lot and (mostly) not worry about it.

Brian and I were attached at the hip that year and did everything together. He had brought his mom's old Ford Windstar, affectionately called "Mama Link" by all of us because of its "LA LINK" license plate, and we drove all over Guelph in it. We were usually pretty high while doing so. Using Brian's ancient iTrip to hook our ipods up to the stereo, we would try to put on the most ridiculous music we could to make each other laugh. I have many memories of us listening to "Unbelievable" while driving at night in a big minivan.

Now I'm able to recognize that "Unbelievable" is really great song and I like it unabashedly. Maybe I always did on some level. It's also nice to think of how good it is now, while remembering the life it used to have with us in 2008.

I Tell Myself

Somewhere in an alternate universe, this post would be about how Greetings and Salutations is the last good Less Than Jake release because it seems to me like the last time that Vinnie was really driving the creative direction of the band.



Instead, it's about how this song has been sticking the side of my head while I think about finishing a giant pile of work. In the past I would have been anxious and stressed about whether or not I would finish everything, and what that would that would mean for my future, but I have better work habits and a better perspective on school now. I know I'll get everything done and I know it will turn out okay at minimum. I'm still stressed and anxious, but I start working earlier and have better ideas about how to organize myself. Only took me like 10 years!

Even though every line of the lyrics doesn't necessary hit perfectly, the whole thing encapsulates me slumming around my office in Zubaz pants and trying to work through some ideas.

Let's Keep It That Way

A strange thing that I often do is try to convince myself that I'm starting to care less about baseball, my favourite sport, which I talk about constantly. This usually happens when I'm feeling burnt out at the end of a disappointing Jays season and, understandably, do follow each game with the same zeal that I do in April. Maybe I feel guilty about not watching every game? On some level, I definitely do think that it is my duty as a fan to give each Teoscar Hernandez at-bat my full attention, which is ludicrous.

These fits of self-inflicted paranoia about my devotion to the sport are always brief and I feel a huge wave of relief once I realize I'm not a piece of shit or, worse, a bad fan.

During the off-season, I try to fill the void left by the World Series ending by consuming baseball in different ways. In general, this means either playing as a fictional shortstop named Tony Balony in MLB The Show 14, which I haven't done much lately, or reading books about baseball.

My love of baseball literature is something I inherited from my dad, who gave me his copy of The Summer Game by Roger Angell to read as a preteen. This then developed into a fascinated with Jim Bouton's Ball Four, Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, and, doing his nationalistic duty, W.P. Kinsella.

Recently I've had a hard time reading for pleasure since reading for school takes up basically all of my time. After struggling through a D.H. Lawrence book, I decided to read something about baseball to get my reading habits back on track and picked The Iowa Baseball Confederacy off of my shelf. In high school, I did a project on Shoeless Joe well before I saw Field of Dreams, and then read the short story collection The Thrill of the Grass (one of the all-time best book titles) a little later, so I was well-acquainted with the Kinsella oeuvre. I was surprised then to find this book appealing to me much more than his previous work. Already, I'm getting that deep feeling and can tell that this will be my favourite of his and that rush of relief that I am in fact still very invested in baseball washed over me.

"I saw my grandparents only once. When I was about eight my father and I drove to spring training in Florida. I saw Curt Simmons, Robin Roberts, Allie Reynolds, Vinegar Bend Mizell, Yogi Berra, and my grandparents.

They lived in a very small house on a side street in Miami. There was an orange tree in the backyard. The house and my grandparents smelled of Listerine, peppermint, and Absorbine, Jr.

They left Iowa irrevocably behind them when they retired. They never returned for a visit, never invited anyone from Onamata to visit them, including us, I suspect, although my father never said so.

What he did say, on the drive back, as if he was trying to explain something to me but was not exactly sure what, was, "We are haunted by our past, which clings to us like strange, mystical lint. Of the past, the mystery of family is the most beautiful, the saddest, the most inescapable of all. Those to whom we are joined by the ethereal ties of blood are often those about whom we know the least." I think he was talking about much more than my grandparents.

I listened to my father's tales with half an ear. I knew he was obsessed with something no one else cared about. He wrote letters, articles, talked of a book, which he eventually wrote. Complained. I didn't pay half the attention I should have. Children, thinking themselves immortal, assume everyone else is too. He died when I was a few months short of seventeen."

W.P. Kinsella. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Don Mills: Totem Books, 1987: 25-26.

Flat on My Face, I See What It Takes

I'm now entering the heavy part of my first semester as a PhD student. So far the semester has been a lot f work, but relatively smooth sailing. There have been stressful periods, but my work habits have improved significantly since I was an undergrad student and I've gotten better at planning out my work and (mostly) getting going on things ahead of time.

Now that the major work is starting to come to a head though, it feels like I'm running up against the limits of that. It always feels like there's more work to do than there is time to do it. I know that's not the case, because it will get done one way or another, but it does feel that way. There's some huge dark spectre of yet-to-be-completed academic standing behind me and I'm always looking out at nothing in front of me, trying to acknowledge it without turning around.

It's hard to talk about how much work I have to do without sounding like an entitled shit. "Oh, a PhD student has stressful deadlines? Not shit." I know that, but it feels like there's a stress valve on the side of my neck that needs to be released, or else my hair will start falling out.

The school tells us all to not be too hard on ourselves, to think of mental health strategies, and to take breaks from work so we don't overwork ourselves. But when you take a break, all the work you weren't doing still is sitting there? How do finish all the work that's assigned and take breaks to stay sane when there's already more work assigned than you can finish?

It's starting to feel like old times again, where I'm laughing at the insurmountable mountain of writing and research I have to do and getting pissed at myself for not being able to climb it. When I look back to writing all morning in the Guelph library to finish something due that afternoon, or staying up all night in my office, I think about them fondly, but boy did they ever feel like shit at the time. Maybe I'm subconsciously addicted to this feeling, and that's why I keep doing it.

Trying hard to remember that I always find a way to get things done and they'll turn out okay. Hard to think that way now though.