I am no stranger to waxing poetic about ethereal connection between the game of baseball and those who watch it. There's a lot of different ways that one person trying to hit a ball thrown by another person into spots where eight other people aren't standing manages to seize hold of my emotions every year and there's an equal mix of emotions that come along with that.
The one emotion that is absolutely crucial to baseball and that fans must never forget about, no matter how "out of it" things may seem is hope. Even when you're at your most sour and can only think about having to return to yet another season of sub-.500 baseball, baseball will pick you up by the hips and toss you in the air to remind exactly how fun all of this is. The greatest quote in all of sports, former Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver, summed it up better than I ever could:
"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."
With this all being said, I would like to proffer a piece by Stacey May Fowles, who is a phenomenal author from Toronto. She does the whole "my emotional state is dictated by baseball" thing much better than I do and is way better at explaining the weird emotional bond you make with men you don't know while they play baseball in Toronto than I as well.
Give this read and remember why it's much more fun to cheer the good parts than complain about the bad parts.
Stay in the fight, boys.
Friday, July 28, 2017
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Maybe I'd Rather Leave That Rotten Apple Where it Ought to Be
I spent a decent chunk of the spring of 2016 listen to Oliver Houston's EP The Dork Ages. I discovered the band through hearing their name on a podcast I liked and then found them to be one of the better "Emo Revival" bands I had heard in a while.
Once bands like The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die and Into It. Over It. started to gain a little bit of mainstream musical traction, the label "Emo Revival" got thrown around a lot and it seemed like a new band with a pedal board a meter wide formed every day. Suddenly American Football was the inspiration for every band? I'm not complaining, but I found it pretty surprising. With that rise in emo bands though, I felt like some of the minor things that made the genre cool got a little lost in translation, which is bound to happen when that many similar bands form.
That being said, I think that Oliver Houston is a cut above almost every other "twinkly" emo band right now, especially with You Blew It!'s last album being pretty boring. There's a load of cool rhythms and grooves on the album and I really appreciate that the guitar work is built around riffs instead of excessive open-tuning shredding, which is pretty common place now. Not everyone can be Algernon.
I somehow missed that Oliver Houston put out a full-length in 2017 until yesterday. It's excellent and, with The Dork Ages, makes for a very impressive start to a discography.
Great stuff!
Once bands like The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die and Into It. Over It. started to gain a little bit of mainstream musical traction, the label "Emo Revival" got thrown around a lot and it seemed like a new band with a pedal board a meter wide formed every day. Suddenly American Football was the inspiration for every band? I'm not complaining, but I found it pretty surprising. With that rise in emo bands though, I felt like some of the minor things that made the genre cool got a little lost in translation, which is bound to happen when that many similar bands form.
That being said, I think that Oliver Houston is a cut above almost every other "twinkly" emo band right now, especially with You Blew It!'s last album being pretty boring. There's a load of cool rhythms and grooves on the album and I really appreciate that the guitar work is built around riffs instead of excessive open-tuning shredding, which is pretty common place now. Not everyone can be Algernon.
I somehow missed that Oliver Houston put out a full-length in 2017 until yesterday. It's excellent and, with The Dork Ages, makes for a very impressive start to a discography.
Great stuff!
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Jacky Boy
It’s extremely strange when a day you knew would occur in the future finally arrives. Sometimes it’s an odd mix of anxiety and disbelief, like when you’re a young child and your birthday finally comes. Sometimes it’s open-faced awe because it arrives unexpectedly.
Today, June 22nd, 2017, is the day that Jack Chandler the Border Collie died. I knew that Jack would die when we picked him up, but I didn’t think about it because I was too filled with love to consider it. I didn’t have to consider it for a long time, because he was so active and healthy late into his life.
The countdown to Jack’s death began in earnest when some tumours on his leg ruptured and he hemorrhaged blood while laying on the kitchen floor. He had surgery and recovered, but now he had a clock on his life, ticking down his remaining hours. He was no longer just “Jack”; he was now “Jack, the old, sick dog.” Every time I spoke about Jack, I now had to mention how he was doing.
Now, I don’t get to talk about how he’s doing anymore.
Death brings out a complex and surprising mix of feelings. It’s kind of nice in a way, because it makes it easier to understand what those around you are going through. It’s suddenly enough to just give someone a hug to empathize with them. That’s so rare.
It makes me so angry too. I don’t know what I’m angry about. I want someone to make fun of me for crying in public so that I can hit them with my skateboard. I want to relieve the tension I feel in my chest and I want to do it in a dumb way.
I just want the anger to go somewhere because I don’t know why it exists.
While waiting for the train to my parents’ house, I saw a high school student wearing a shirt that just said “Courage,” and it immediately struck me how stupid it was to mass-produce a product like that. I hate the world.
I called my mom at work. That was when I found out. I had a meeting with my department after. They complained about the usual things. It felt silly and stupid to listen to them. Not a single thing was said that mattered. I had a thousand-mile stare at the bookcase.
When I got home, my mom came to hug my brother and I and then I saw Jack’s dead body on the couch.
He was so dead.
We had periods of on and off sadness throughout the whole day. 20 minutes of extreme sadness followed by 40 of jovial conversation.
My dad was hit the hardest. At one point when I was the only other person home, he faced Jack’s body and said, “Wake up Jack.”
It killed me.
It makes me wonder about whether I’ll divide my life into “Before Jack” and “After Jack”. Maybe I’ll only think that way today.
Walking through my home and I pick out all the small places that I used to know.
Gave my Dad a hug to comfort him. It didn’t do shit for either of us. Jack’s still dead on the couch.
Kathleen took a bus back from Ottawa right away. She immediately broke down when she got through the door. We all gathered around him to have a final moment with his body. We laid him on the patio table and wrapped him in the blanket from the couch in our kitchen. When my dad picked Jack up, his tail hung out of the side of the wrapping. It really made him look like a dead animal and I didn’t like that.
Everyone else was a lot more outward in their emotions. I got mad at myself because I didn’t feel like I was crying enough. Got mad at myself for thinking about that in the first place. Wish I could act the way everyone expects you to. Don’t be so fucking cold to the people you love, asshole.
Jack’s in the ground now, under a big groundstone in our backyard. In the afternoon, my brother, dad, and I dug a small hole for Jack to go in. We waited for my sister to arrive. We put him there.
All of us cried. Trixie wondered what was going on. She circled the hole with Jack at the bottom a few times. My dad and I covered him with dirt. I will never think of the word “buried” in the same way again.
It started raining during dinner. I mostly thought about the rain seeping down through the dirt and making Jack wet.
My dad said that when he used to leave for work in the morning with Jack, he would turn to his dog and say, “You and me against the world.”
I will only have Jack once and that’s done now.
Today, June 22nd, 2017, is the day that Jack Chandler the Border Collie died. I knew that Jack would die when we picked him up, but I didn’t think about it because I was too filled with love to consider it. I didn’t have to consider it for a long time, because he was so active and healthy late into his life.
The countdown to Jack’s death began in earnest when some tumours on his leg ruptured and he hemorrhaged blood while laying on the kitchen floor. He had surgery and recovered, but now he had a clock on his life, ticking down his remaining hours. He was no longer just “Jack”; he was now “Jack, the old, sick dog.” Every time I spoke about Jack, I now had to mention how he was doing.
Now, I don’t get to talk about how he’s doing anymore.
Death brings out a complex and surprising mix of feelings. It’s kind of nice in a way, because it makes it easier to understand what those around you are going through. It’s suddenly enough to just give someone a hug to empathize with them. That’s so rare.
It makes me so angry too. I don’t know what I’m angry about. I want someone to make fun of me for crying in public so that I can hit them with my skateboard. I want to relieve the tension I feel in my chest and I want to do it in a dumb way.
I just want the anger to go somewhere because I don’t know why it exists.
While waiting for the train to my parents’ house, I saw a high school student wearing a shirt that just said “Courage,” and it immediately struck me how stupid it was to mass-produce a product like that. I hate the world.
I called my mom at work. That was when I found out. I had a meeting with my department after. They complained about the usual things. It felt silly and stupid to listen to them. Not a single thing was said that mattered. I had a thousand-mile stare at the bookcase.
When I got home, my mom came to hug my brother and I and then I saw Jack’s dead body on the couch.
He was so dead.
We had periods of on and off sadness throughout the whole day. 20 minutes of extreme sadness followed by 40 of jovial conversation.
My dad was hit the hardest. At one point when I was the only other person home, he faced Jack’s body and said, “Wake up Jack.”
It killed me.
It makes me wonder about whether I’ll divide my life into “Before Jack” and “After Jack”. Maybe I’ll only think that way today.
Walking through my home and I pick out all the small places that I used to know.
Gave my Dad a hug to comfort him. It didn’t do shit for either of us. Jack’s still dead on the couch.
Kathleen took a bus back from Ottawa right away. She immediately broke down when she got through the door. We all gathered around him to have a final moment with his body. We laid him on the patio table and wrapped him in the blanket from the couch in our kitchen. When my dad picked Jack up, his tail hung out of the side of the wrapping. It really made him look like a dead animal and I didn’t like that.
Everyone else was a lot more outward in their emotions. I got mad at myself because I didn’t feel like I was crying enough. Got mad at myself for thinking about that in the first place. Wish I could act the way everyone expects you to. Don’t be so fucking cold to the people you love, asshole.
Jack’s in the ground now, under a big groundstone in our backyard. In the afternoon, my brother, dad, and I dug a small hole for Jack to go in. We waited for my sister to arrive. We put him there.
All of us cried. Trixie wondered what was going on. She circled the hole with Jack at the bottom a few times. My dad and I covered him with dirt. I will never think of the word “buried” in the same way again.
It started raining during dinner. I mostly thought about the rain seeping down through the dirt and making Jack wet.
My dad said that when he used to leave for work in the morning with Jack, he would turn to his dog and say, “You and me against the world.”
I will only have Jack once and that’s done now.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Em, D, and C
At first, I thought that the dumbest I would see on the trip was the teenager on the boat tour who lifted up her fidget spinner in front of the Eiffel Tower for a picture. It was quite stupid, but it pales in comparison to meeting one the biggest blowhards in the world at our hostel the next night.
His greeting, "Hey, you guys speak English?... Great. Finally some nice people." should have been a dead giveaway. At first, I was ready to engage him on an informal level, but that dissipated quickly. He was obviously very stupid, evidenced by him asking us about, in order, Drake, Justin Bieber, and cold weather. He must developed an ulcer holding in questions about maple syrup.
He said that he liked the city, but found the people rude.
"You have to ask for the cheque four times."
He revealed his final douchebag form when he asked if we minded if he played some guitar. He pulled an acoustic guitar out from under a bed, told his friend that he had "written another verse" that day, and performed some "Dave"-esque bro-folk nonsense that didn't seem to be about anything in particular. He asked Rebecca and I what our favourite songs are so that he could play them, but we didn't give him an answer.
"Do you like The Strokes?"
"Do you like The Shins?"
"Do you like Vampire Weekend?"
"No"
"Oh, you don't haven't heard of them?"
(For the record, I like The Strokes)
He tried to play another song, but did a really bad job.
"I apologize, I'm a little drunk."
He was hoping that we would say "No, you're great." We didn't.
He complemented Rebecca's leg tattoo and he had one of his own.
"It's the word 'five', but we won't get into that now."
No, we won't.
His friend thought him having a tattoo was really cool. We figured that he only got it because he was 20 years old and away from his parents.
His friend could also play the song that was too hard for him to play.
"Do you like the Toronto Raptors?"
I said I did, but that I'm more of a Blue Jays fan. He said he liked hockey and it was a big part of his family.
I asked if he liked the Los Angeles Kings and he didn't know how they were. He thought the Jays were a hockey team. "They're baseball", his friend corrected him. The Maple Leafs are our hockey team, I said.
"Oh, The Maples..."
His friend asked if I liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
"I love that movie."
"What a random question to ask."
"It's set in Toronto."
"Oh. I need to see that one again."
He started to talk at his friend about their band, Five Points. They were going to "take the next step" with it.
"What's your favourite Five Points song?"
"I don't know. It's hard to choose."
"Just pick your top three."
His friend to noodle while finger-picking. He told his friend that it would be good for a verse maybe.
"You always gotta put in a hook. I always put in a hook."
"I'm going to top the Billboard 100 one day."
We said that we were going to bed.
"No problem. We'll be up another 10, 20 minutes."
"I'm pretty blitzed. Just enough to sleep."
Becks and I got into one of the bunks and tried to make two people fitting into a single be work.
He started telling his friend about "his plan", about how they were about to take the next step with their band.
They were going to move to Los Angles to make it with their band. Them and Van. If they followed his plan, they would have no problem.
He knew they were bros for life. They would be the best man at each other's wedding . That's why he got his words tatted on his chest.
He had to know if his friend wanted to be the face of the band.
"Are you going to be the face or the songwriter?"
In the long run, he knew that he would be the face and would carry them to success.
With Five Points, he wanted to start a movement. They would headline festivals and people would know them.
"Can you imagine us walking out to a crowd of 10000 people?"
He started razzing his friend about his fashion sense, asking if, when they got famous, he would walk the red carpet in a baseball hat and hoodie.
"Like Odd Future and Tyler the Creator, say what you want, but they had a look."
I don't think that he knew that Odd Future all wore baseball caps and hoodies.
He wanted to give the band a logo and symbols, so that at festivals everyone would know them already.
They were both breaking up with their girlfriends to move to Los Angeles. It sounded like his friend did not want to break up with his, but was letting his friend force him to.
He kept bringing up that he would always speak his mind to his friend, even if he didn't like it. He wanted him to know that he still loved, but he would be honest about their music. He mostly meant that he would shit on his friend's ideas.
"You always have to have a plan. Like when we made a plan, we went on a wine tour and saw Notre Dame. When we didn't, we did nothing."
In their conversation, it came out that had not yet jammed together as a band. I found it funny that they were moving to one of the most expensive cities in the world with no jobs to make it as a band, not to mention the tattoo.
He spoke at his friend for about an hour after we went to bed. Eventually, his friend got up and said he was going to bed, but he actually just went next store and we could hear him on the next balcony talking to his roommates.
His greeting, "Hey, you guys speak English?... Great. Finally some nice people." should have been a dead giveaway. At first, I was ready to engage him on an informal level, but that dissipated quickly. He was obviously very stupid, evidenced by him asking us about, in order, Drake, Justin Bieber, and cold weather. He must developed an ulcer holding in questions about maple syrup.
He said that he liked the city, but found the people rude.
"You have to ask for the cheque four times."
He revealed his final douchebag form when he asked if we minded if he played some guitar. He pulled an acoustic guitar out from under a bed, told his friend that he had "written another verse" that day, and performed some "Dave"-esque bro-folk nonsense that didn't seem to be about anything in particular. He asked Rebecca and I what our favourite songs are so that he could play them, but we didn't give him an answer.
"Do you like The Strokes?"
"Do you like The Shins?"
"Do you like Vampire Weekend?"
"No"
"Oh, you don't haven't heard of them?"
(For the record, I like The Strokes)
He tried to play another song, but did a really bad job.
"I apologize, I'm a little drunk."
He was hoping that we would say "No, you're great." We didn't.
He complemented Rebecca's leg tattoo and he had one of his own.
"It's the word 'five', but we won't get into that now."
No, we won't.
His friend thought him having a tattoo was really cool. We figured that he only got it because he was 20 years old and away from his parents.
His friend could also play the song that was too hard for him to play.
"Do you like the Toronto Raptors?"
I said I did, but that I'm more of a Blue Jays fan. He said he liked hockey and it was a big part of his family.
I asked if he liked the Los Angeles Kings and he didn't know how they were. He thought the Jays were a hockey team. "They're baseball", his friend corrected him. The Maple Leafs are our hockey team, I said.
"Oh, The Maples..."
His friend asked if I liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
"I love that movie."
"What a random question to ask."
"It's set in Toronto."
"Oh. I need to see that one again."
He started to talk at his friend about their band, Five Points. They were going to "take the next step" with it.
"What's your favourite Five Points song?"
"I don't know. It's hard to choose."
"Just pick your top three."
His friend to noodle while finger-picking. He told his friend that it would be good for a verse maybe.
"You always gotta put in a hook. I always put in a hook."
"I'm going to top the Billboard 100 one day."
We said that we were going to bed.
"No problem. We'll be up another 10, 20 minutes."
"I'm pretty blitzed. Just enough to sleep."
Becks and I got into one of the bunks and tried to make two people fitting into a single be work.
He started telling his friend about "his plan", about how they were about to take the next step with their band.
They were going to move to Los Angles to make it with their band. Them and Van. If they followed his plan, they would have no problem.
He knew they were bros for life. They would be the best man at each other's wedding . That's why he got his words tatted on his chest.
He had to know if his friend wanted to be the face of the band.
"Are you going to be the face or the songwriter?"
In the long run, he knew that he would be the face and would carry them to success.
With Five Points, he wanted to start a movement. They would headline festivals and people would know them.
"Can you imagine us walking out to a crowd of 10000 people?"
He started razzing his friend about his fashion sense, asking if, when they got famous, he would walk the red carpet in a baseball hat and hoodie.
"Like Odd Future and Tyler the Creator, say what you want, but they had a look."
I don't think that he knew that Odd Future all wore baseball caps and hoodies.
He wanted to give the band a logo and symbols, so that at festivals everyone would know them already.
They were both breaking up with their girlfriends to move to Los Angeles. It sounded like his friend did not want to break up with his, but was letting his friend force him to.
He kept bringing up that he would always speak his mind to his friend, even if he didn't like it. He wanted him to know that he still loved, but he would be honest about their music. He mostly meant that he would shit on his friend's ideas.
"You always have to have a plan. Like when we made a plan, we went on a wine tour and saw Notre Dame. When we didn't, we did nothing."
In their conversation, it came out that had not yet jammed together as a band. I found it funny that they were moving to one of the most expensive cities in the world with no jobs to make it as a band, not to mention the tattoo.
He spoke at his friend for about an hour after we went to bed. Eventually, his friend got up and said he was going to bed, but he actually just went next store and we could hear him on the next balcony talking to his roommates.
Icemeister
For the last three years or so, I've carried around a small notebook that I use to journal and jot down stray thoughts. About month ago, I wrote, in the journal, that I thought it would be a good idea to start journaling on I, Musical Genius as a way to spur myself into a better spell of writing. It's been a long time since I've tried any sort of daily journaling, so I thought that this would be a cool new exercise for me to try out.
My plan was to force an entry out of myself every day, while also not worrying about forming a full post. If I started with short entries that were mostly a few thoughts connected by string, pieces that were more filled-out would surely follow. Coincidentally, I also got this idea about a month before the date that Becks and I will be leaving for a two-week trip to Europe, which could make for an interesting theme to the posts. I didn't want to make it a sort of "travel blog", which I've seen pop a lot among friends on social media, because I find those pretty tired and cliche. Instead, I hope that our upcoming trip, my first real international trip, would inform the subject matter indirectly and make it interesting. But a few days slipping by turned into a week and that turned into another week and I think it would be silly to start that sort of exercise just a week before I leave.
Even worse was when my laziness and writer's block took hold and this post, which was started on June 17th, was only re-visited today, on July 12th.
Bad. Very bad.
I didn't even end writing very much in Europe. Only a few things here and there. A short, choppy story, a daily journal, and a few ideas for other stories.
Things have been percolating long enough now. I've finished one story, have parts of two others, and have plans for a few more. Planning is over and I think the only thing left to do is nail my hands to the keyboard and actually make something.
I need to remember that I have the skills to do this and convince myself that "this guy fucks".
My plan was to force an entry out of myself every day, while also not worrying about forming a full post. If I started with short entries that were mostly a few thoughts connected by string, pieces that were more filled-out would surely follow. Coincidentally, I also got this idea about a month before the date that Becks and I will be leaving for a two-week trip to Europe, which could make for an interesting theme to the posts. I didn't want to make it a sort of "travel blog", which I've seen pop a lot among friends on social media, because I find those pretty tired and cliche. Instead, I hope that our upcoming trip, my first real international trip, would inform the subject matter indirectly and make it interesting. But a few days slipping by turned into a week and that turned into another week and I think it would be silly to start that sort of exercise just a week before I leave.
Even worse was when my laziness and writer's block took hold and this post, which was started on June 17th, was only re-visited today, on July 12th.
Bad. Very bad.
I didn't even end writing very much in Europe. Only a few things here and there. A short, choppy story, a daily journal, and a few ideas for other stories.
Things have been percolating long enough now. I've finished one story, have parts of two others, and have plans for a few more. Planning is over and I think the only thing left to do is nail my hands to the keyboard and actually make something.
I need to remember that I have the skills to do this and convince myself that "this guy fucks".
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Your Ugly Human Heart
Full disclosure: I actually started writing this post a week and a half ago, after thinking about writing it for a week, before promptly leaving in my "drafts" (pulling back the curtain for you a little there). Anways, I badly need to write something and finishing this seems like the best way to accomplish that. Here you go:
Something that really, for real, happens to me is that after I’ve put up a bunch of longer posts in a row, I begin to think that every post has to be that way. I convince myself that only long posts are worthwhile and that if I’m not making some profound examinations about life, then it’s not worth doing any writing at all.
The reality, of course, is that I can write whatever I want, about whatever I want and put it up here because I am the “auteur”.
I was thinking about all of this on my lunch today because I was having trouble coming up a topic that would be suitably "big" to explore for a log post. The reality is that I can really talk about any topic I want. Putting a healthy amount of pressure on myself to write things "long" and "big" is good, because that I will write better things more often and it keeps my critical thinking active, but I also need to be wary of killing my writing drive by placing my expectations too high. It's a delicate balance.
After realizing that I am in fact the author of this blog, I decided to focus on a simple topic and write about music.
Every year, for the first six months of the year, I am convinced that I am not checking out enough new music and am so behind on what's going on in punk. I worry that I am losing touch and am in the process of losing my interest in music. Do I spend too much time listening to podcasts? Is that curtailing my music intake? AM I LOSING MY IDENTITY!?
But then, every single year, a whole tonne of new music comes out in the summer and it clicks with me really well and the problem is averted.
This year, I worried about the absolutely phenomenal Yunahon Mixtape by Oso Oso (Get it! It's free!) and Nightmare Logic by Power Trip being the only two releases of the year that were really sticking with me. How could my year-end list be two releases long?! Come on!
And then I got Vision by Pet Symmetry and Modern Pressure by Daniel Romano on the same day. Everything is okay. Flashing red light and blaring horn alarm have been turned off.
I loved Pet Hounds by Pet Symmetry so much; it was one of my favourite releases of 2015; so I was eager to see how the band would follow it up. Pet Hounds was a tight and compact power-pop album that was just banger after banger. Vision changes that up by adding some more experimental elements (keyboards, noise, a lot of different effects), a few longer, softer, and slower songs, a hardcore-ish number, and a WAY different and more distorted bass tone. This may just be me speculating, but I feel like Evan Weiss wrote this album on bass, as it figures a lot more into the backbone of the songs, whereas I feel like that last album was written on guitar. Cool stuff.
I am a pretty big Daniel Romano homer. I LOVE Attack in Black. His country albums range from "I like this" to "I listen to this with the lights off while I'm sad". Mosey was a wonderful departure in his style and sound and it made me wonder what type of 60's music he was going to pastiche next. Modern Pressure follows Mosey and is, somehow, even better. Romano moves into a mix of roots rock, country, and folk that, to me, sounds a lot like Music From Big Pink filtered through Romano's musical past. The bass playing is insane, the lyrics are wonderful, and the arrangements are sublime. Also, the various artworks are wonderful. Though I don't know if anything will touch Yunahon, this is making a pretty serious run at it. Amazing album.
Something that really, for real, happens to me is that after I’ve put up a bunch of longer posts in a row, I begin to think that every post has to be that way. I convince myself that only long posts are worthwhile and that if I’m not making some profound examinations about life, then it’s not worth doing any writing at all.
The reality, of course, is that I can write whatever I want, about whatever I want and put it up here because I am the “auteur”.
I was thinking about all of this on my lunch today because I was having trouble coming up a topic that would be suitably "big" to explore for a log post. The reality is that I can really talk about any topic I want. Putting a healthy amount of pressure on myself to write things "long" and "big" is good, because that I will write better things more often and it keeps my critical thinking active, but I also need to be wary of killing my writing drive by placing my expectations too high. It's a delicate balance.
After realizing that I am in fact the author of this blog, I decided to focus on a simple topic and write about music.
Every year, for the first six months of the year, I am convinced that I am not checking out enough new music and am so behind on what's going on in punk. I worry that I am losing touch and am in the process of losing my interest in music. Do I spend too much time listening to podcasts? Is that curtailing my music intake? AM I LOSING MY IDENTITY!?
But then, every single year, a whole tonne of new music comes out in the summer and it clicks with me really well and the problem is averted.
This year, I worried about the absolutely phenomenal Yunahon Mixtape by Oso Oso (Get it! It's free!) and Nightmare Logic by Power Trip being the only two releases of the year that were really sticking with me. How could my year-end list be two releases long?! Come on!
And then I got Vision by Pet Symmetry and Modern Pressure by Daniel Romano on the same day. Everything is okay. Flashing red light and blaring horn alarm have been turned off.
I loved Pet Hounds by Pet Symmetry so much; it was one of my favourite releases of 2015; so I was eager to see how the band would follow it up. Pet Hounds was a tight and compact power-pop album that was just banger after banger. Vision changes that up by adding some more experimental elements (keyboards, noise, a lot of different effects), a few longer, softer, and slower songs, a hardcore-ish number, and a WAY different and more distorted bass tone. This may just be me speculating, but I feel like Evan Weiss wrote this album on bass, as it figures a lot more into the backbone of the songs, whereas I feel like that last album was written on guitar. Cool stuff.
I am a pretty big Daniel Romano homer. I LOVE Attack in Black. His country albums range from "I like this" to "I listen to this with the lights off while I'm sad". Mosey was a wonderful departure in his style and sound and it made me wonder what type of 60's music he was going to pastiche next. Modern Pressure follows Mosey and is, somehow, even better. Romano moves into a mix of roots rock, country, and folk that, to me, sounds a lot like Music From Big Pink filtered through Romano's musical past. The bass playing is insane, the lyrics are wonderful, and the arrangements are sublime. Also, the various artworks are wonderful. Though I don't know if anything will touch Yunahon, this is making a pretty serious run at it. Amazing album.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
So It's Come to This: A Baseball Post
I haven’t written a baseball post in what seems like forever. I can discern two reasons for this:
1. I have been pretty busy at work during MLB’s off-season. Whereas I would obsess over rosters and trades and prospects and lineups in years past, I do that to a lesser extent now. School had a lot of downtime. Fitting your whole life into the eight waking hours you aren’t chained to a desk does not.
2. The Jays resembled a very large, very hot dog turd at the start of the 2017 season.
But regardless of how much work I have to do, baseball is still never very far away from my attention, so I still have some thoughts which only feel at home on the warm, lime green confines of IMU, so here we go.
The Blue Jays started this season extremely badly. Almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. Josh, Troy, Russ, Sanch, and Happ all got hurt and Jose started looking a lot more like Josh Phelps than Jose Bautista. When a team loses all of its good players in the first two weeks, it typically does not follow that by winning games.
Note: When I was a kid, I LOVED Josh Phelps and was convinced he would be around forever.
It’s funny how quick baseball fans’ expectations and temperaments can change. From 1994-2014, the Jays ranged from “yep, they’re bad” to “two or three pieces away” with nothing to show for it. Then I was spoiled with a magical 2015 season in which everything went right and was the most fun baseball could be, and a 2016 season where the Jays substituted magic with “just playing well the whole year”. I had waited my whole life to see the Toronto Blue Jays in the playoffs and both of those years absolutely met the unreasonably high expectations that I had set.
I, along with many others, had mixed feelings about 2017 though. It seemed like the team was increasingly leaning on the “if this, this, and this work out, we’ll be good” crutch which is always the sign of a middling baseball team. Then, in the space of two weeks at the start of April, the beautiful “playoff team” image of the Jays had been shattered. Josh Donaldson was hurt and Chris Caughlan was playing third base. Aaron Sanchez was hurt and Mat Latos was starting. Edwin Encarnacion was playing for the Cleveland Indians. Jose Bautista was swinging through letter-high fastballs.
Baseball is unlike any other sport because of how long its season is. Playing 162 games over the course of 6 months means that you have to be patient during bad stretches because they always come and are something every team (and more importantly fans) must endure. But the Jays started 1-9 and it got pretty hard to imagine them playing the first place team for the rest of the season. But because it was only the second week of April, you had to say "it's early", instead of "burn it to the ground".
The team’s recent success brought in loads of new fans, which is to be expected when a traditionally bad team suddenly wins a lot in a huge city (see: Raptors, 2013-14 season). However, those fans also don’t know what it’s like to suffer through a bad baseball season (they also *shudders* do the wave), because not only do you have to watch a shitty version of something you love, but you have to watch it every day for six months.
But even though watching Ryan Goins take everyday at-bats for a whole month can be tiring, it is much better than the alternative, which is no baseball at all. The fact that every MLB team plays almost every day (there are 21 days during the season in which I am not blessed with Blue Jays baseball) is a huge part of what makes me love baseball so much. Once you get into the habit of watching the team every night, the team takes a special significance and becomes an integral part of your routine. They are always there. If I have a shitty day at work, the game becomes a nice thing to unwind to when I get home. It’s something I do friends and it’s something I do alone. It’s there when I feel good and when I feel bad. Baseball never stops and I love that so much. Once you are sucked in, watching your favourite team becomes a very meditative experience. It becomes an automatic process in the best way. It’s at once something you can have on behind on you while you cook dinner and something that keeps you on the edge of your seat with your friends. Few things in the universe can exist with a duality like that, but baseball can because it is unique and it is the best.
Sidebar: The fact that the long games and season drive away people who would otherwise be casual fans makes me love it even more. Get the fuck out of here.
Baseball’s meditative nature has turned it into something essential to me: A time to reflect on my thoughts, feelings, and life. Baseball has space, which lets your mind breathe during the game and consider other things. I could conjure up hundreds of examples of this happening in my life, but I will choose the following:
One summer, I lived alone in Guelph after I had finished my undergraduate degree at the city's university. At 23, it was my first time ever living alone and I was very sad and unsuccessful in lots of ways for the entire summer. I spent most of my time alone and it was a very trying time for me. One thing that I had was no-name stereo receiver that I bought at a weird odds and ends store downtown to use with my record player, which also had a radio built-in. Every night that summer, I listened to the Blue Jays game on radio with Jerry Howarth and Alan Ashby doing the call. I had a few friends in the city that summer, but I like to think that Jerry and Alan were my best friends. Listening to the Blue Jays on the radio gave me at least one thing that I loved every day. I would feel pretty bad most days, but that would subside when Jerry's calming voices would proclaim "the Blue Jays are in flight" after an Edwin Encarnacion home run. The team was terrible (4 out 5 starters got hurt in a week and a half in June), but the season was punctuated with small victories that felt like everything when they happened, like Edwin's great coming-out season or Colby Rasmus going 5-5 after moving to the 2-hole.
Another sidebar: Listening to a whole season on the radio was a significant moment in me being a shitty baseball hipster, as baseball on the radio was the main medium by which the sport was consumed for about 50 years. This is unique to baseball because of how old the professional leagues are.
Baseball is so important to me for all of these reasons. It does the amazing task of distracting me just enough to not focus solely on things that are bad while still allowing me to process them.
But this post isn't just a lengthy diatribe on why baseball is just the best. It just mostly is.
I said all of this to give context to the fact that the Blue Jays 2017 season felt a little bit weird to me for the first month. It felt very different. After two years of amazing success, this was such a quick, crushing return to the reality that your favourite baseball team is kind of bad for most of its existence. Unless, you are this guy. The last few years, I've grown a lot more skeptical about the state of the world and find myself continually angered by some of the things that happen and the rationale behind them. It's nice to be able to escape that by watching Brett Cecil's curveball at night. Now they are not doing so hot, but the funny thing is that they can still be that escape,
It's strange because when the team rattled off seven losses in a row, it almost felt like I was returning to a comfortable world I had been away from. I had watched the Blue Jays lose forever. This was just more of what I loved! But it also felt shitty because it was definitely the end of the murderer's row Jay's lineup that had led them to the ALCS the two years prior. It was nice and bad at the same time.
It's an ethereal thing, but the 2017 Jays team feels a lot more like the teams of the 00's than the phenomenal ones of the last two years. Things like Chris Caughlin diving over Yadier Molina are the sorts of small victories that I would pull out the ticker tape for in 2014. The infield tonight, which is currently losing to the Braves, is Smoak-Travis-Goins-Barney. Maybe they'll turn it around. Maybe they'll turn it around in two years. Maybe it will be another two decades. There's no way that I can know.
But thinking about all of these differences, I forgot the most crucial fact of all:
Baseball is always there, every day. They played yesterday, they played today, and they'll play tomorrow.
1. I have been pretty busy at work during MLB’s off-season. Whereas I would obsess over rosters and trades and prospects and lineups in years past, I do that to a lesser extent now. School had a lot of downtime. Fitting your whole life into the eight waking hours you aren’t chained to a desk does not.
2. The Jays resembled a very large, very hot dog turd at the start of the 2017 season.
But regardless of how much work I have to do, baseball is still never very far away from my attention, so I still have some thoughts which only feel at home on the warm, lime green confines of IMU, so here we go.
The Blue Jays started this season extremely badly. Almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. Josh, Troy, Russ, Sanch, and Happ all got hurt and Jose started looking a lot more like Josh Phelps than Jose Bautista. When a team loses all of its good players in the first two weeks, it typically does not follow that by winning games.
Note: When I was a kid, I LOVED Josh Phelps and was convinced he would be around forever.
It’s funny how quick baseball fans’ expectations and temperaments can change. From 1994-2014, the Jays ranged from “yep, they’re bad” to “two or three pieces away” with nothing to show for it. Then I was spoiled with a magical 2015 season in which everything went right and was the most fun baseball could be, and a 2016 season where the Jays substituted magic with “just playing well the whole year”. I had waited my whole life to see the Toronto Blue Jays in the playoffs and both of those years absolutely met the unreasonably high expectations that I had set.
I, along with many others, had mixed feelings about 2017 though. It seemed like the team was increasingly leaning on the “if this, this, and this work out, we’ll be good” crutch which is always the sign of a middling baseball team. Then, in the space of two weeks at the start of April, the beautiful “playoff team” image of the Jays had been shattered. Josh Donaldson was hurt and Chris Caughlan was playing third base. Aaron Sanchez was hurt and Mat Latos was starting. Edwin Encarnacion was playing for the Cleveland Indians. Jose Bautista was swinging through letter-high fastballs.
Baseball is unlike any other sport because of how long its season is. Playing 162 games over the course of 6 months means that you have to be patient during bad stretches because they always come and are something every team (and more importantly fans) must endure. But the Jays started 1-9 and it got pretty hard to imagine them playing the first place team for the rest of the season. But because it was only the second week of April, you had to say "it's early", instead of "burn it to the ground".
The team’s recent success brought in loads of new fans, which is to be expected when a traditionally bad team suddenly wins a lot in a huge city (see: Raptors, 2013-14 season). However, those fans also don’t know what it’s like to suffer through a bad baseball season (they also *shudders* do the wave), because not only do you have to watch a shitty version of something you love, but you have to watch it every day for six months.
But even though watching Ryan Goins take everyday at-bats for a whole month can be tiring, it is much better than the alternative, which is no baseball at all. The fact that every MLB team plays almost every day (there are 21 days during the season in which I am not blessed with Blue Jays baseball) is a huge part of what makes me love baseball so much. Once you get into the habit of watching the team every night, the team takes a special significance and becomes an integral part of your routine. They are always there. If I have a shitty day at work, the game becomes a nice thing to unwind to when I get home. It’s something I do friends and it’s something I do alone. It’s there when I feel good and when I feel bad. Baseball never stops and I love that so much. Once you are sucked in, watching your favourite team becomes a very meditative experience. It becomes an automatic process in the best way. It’s at once something you can have on behind on you while you cook dinner and something that keeps you on the edge of your seat with your friends. Few things in the universe can exist with a duality like that, but baseball can because it is unique and it is the best.
Sidebar: The fact that the long games and season drive away people who would otherwise be casual fans makes me love it even more. Get the fuck out of here.
Baseball’s meditative nature has turned it into something essential to me: A time to reflect on my thoughts, feelings, and life. Baseball has space, which lets your mind breathe during the game and consider other things. I could conjure up hundreds of examples of this happening in my life, but I will choose the following:
One summer, I lived alone in Guelph after I had finished my undergraduate degree at the city's university. At 23, it was my first time ever living alone and I was very sad and unsuccessful in lots of ways for the entire summer. I spent most of my time alone and it was a very trying time for me. One thing that I had was no-name stereo receiver that I bought at a weird odds and ends store downtown to use with my record player, which also had a radio built-in. Every night that summer, I listened to the Blue Jays game on radio with Jerry Howarth and Alan Ashby doing the call. I had a few friends in the city that summer, but I like to think that Jerry and Alan were my best friends. Listening to the Blue Jays on the radio gave me at least one thing that I loved every day. I would feel pretty bad most days, but that would subside when Jerry's calming voices would proclaim "the Blue Jays are in flight" after an Edwin Encarnacion home run. The team was terrible (4 out 5 starters got hurt in a week and a half in June), but the season was punctuated with small victories that felt like everything when they happened, like Edwin's great coming-out season or Colby Rasmus going 5-5 after moving to the 2-hole.
Another sidebar: Listening to a whole season on the radio was a significant moment in me being a shitty baseball hipster, as baseball on the radio was the main medium by which the sport was consumed for about 50 years. This is unique to baseball because of how old the professional leagues are.
Baseball is so important to me for all of these reasons. It does the amazing task of distracting me just enough to not focus solely on things that are bad while still allowing me to process them.
But this post isn't just a lengthy diatribe on why baseball is just the best. It just mostly is.
I said all of this to give context to the fact that the Blue Jays 2017 season felt a little bit weird to me for the first month. It felt very different. After two years of amazing success, this was such a quick, crushing return to the reality that your favourite baseball team is kind of bad for most of its existence. Unless, you are this guy. The last few years, I've grown a lot more skeptical about the state of the world and find myself continually angered by some of the things that happen and the rationale behind them. It's nice to be able to escape that by watching Brett Cecil's curveball at night. Now they are not doing so hot, but the funny thing is that they can still be that escape,
It's strange because when the team rattled off seven losses in a row, it almost felt like I was returning to a comfortable world I had been away from. I had watched the Blue Jays lose forever. This was just more of what I loved! But it also felt shitty because it was definitely the end of the murderer's row Jay's lineup that had led them to the ALCS the two years prior. It was nice and bad at the same time.
It's an ethereal thing, but the 2017 Jays team feels a lot more like the teams of the 00's than the phenomenal ones of the last two years. Things like Chris Caughlin diving over Yadier Molina are the sorts of small victories that I would pull out the ticker tape for in 2014. The infield tonight, which is currently losing to the Braves, is Smoak-Travis-Goins-Barney. Maybe they'll turn it around. Maybe they'll turn it around in two years. Maybe it will be another two decades. There's no way that I can know.
But thinking about all of these differences, I forgot the most crucial fact of all:
Baseball is always there, every day. They played yesterday, they played today, and they'll play tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Knowing I Don't Think About You, Even Though I Said I Do
After that last post, I thought that something I would like to add is the soundtrack to that time in my life.
These three albums always remind me of the early days volunteering at KWAG:
Those sure are three sad albums about being alone!
Also these two songs, oddly enough, were just constantly repeated:
These three albums always remind me of the early days volunteering at KWAG:
Those sure are three sad albums about being alone!
Also these two songs, oddly enough, were just constantly repeated:
Monday, May 8, 2017
Out of Order Signs on Things That Work
In May 2013 I was very confused about what I was going to do with my life going forward. There were many different things going on in my life and almost all of them seemed like they weren’t long-term things. I had the worst job I had ever had and was looking for the fastest possible way out of it. I seeing a girl mostly out of convenience and was planning to break it off with her at any moment. My future was pretty hazy and I had no idea at all about what I would be doing even in 6 months.
Amidst all of this, there were three constants in my life. One was my wonderful friends and family, who have steadfastly supported me, even when I was kind of stupid and not concretely aiming at anything. Another was Beat Noir, which was always important to me and always something that I valued being a part of. The last was my involvement at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG).
Up to this point in my life, I had been volunteering at KWAG as much as possible. Of particular importance was a week I had spent working with their March Break Camp earlier in the year. I think the gallery was kind of taken aback that I volunteered every single day of the camp, as most people wouldn’t come in for that much time, but I had nothing else going on at the time, so I really threw myself into. As cliché as it is to say this about working with kids, that week profoundly touched me and was something that I really needed in my life at that point. A 10 year-old kid doesn’t care that you work overnight shifts stocking grocery shelves and can barely afford to take the bus to the art gallery; they just think you’re cool and funny. The great part about being adored like that is that it makes you try harder to become the person that those people see you as.
I took literally every volunteer shift available at the gallery and told the people there that I was going to keep volunteering that much until they gave me a job. I came to everything. Family Sunday, Open Houses before concerts, an art show put on by all of the elementary schools in the area, I did it all.
The next opportunity coming up was KWAG’s Annual General Meeting, in which the board of directors would discuss the gallery funding, how much they made, attendance, the shows, etc. In order to keep up my routine of giving them as much facetime with me as possible and to learn about some of the inner workings of the gallery, I decided that I would attend the meeting.
In the week prior to the meeting, I received an email from someone with whom I worked with at the gallery saying that they had a few positions open at the gallery for the upcoming summer, with the one caveat being that they must be a student returning to school in the fall. Upon reading the email, I knew that this was something I absolutely had to pursue, regardless of how much work it was.
Sometimes it can be easy to quickly dismiss something because you don’t think that you will qualify for it or deserve, but that is also what the bastards want you to think. My parents had asked me about grad school, but I always quickly dismissed it, thinking that I was far too stupid to ever continue my education.
My thoughts process went as follows:
“Okay, so it is only open to returning students. I am not one of those.”
“Yes, but how can I become one?”
“By applying to grad school?”
“Maybe I will qualify for this job if I tell them that I have applied to Master’s programs.”
“Okay, then let’s email Sally. She’s always had your back and even sent you that really nice email after that presentation.”
Then I did all of that, which was a small start down the path towards me applying for my master’s program. It was a sunny afternoon and I was sitting on my bed in my bedroom at the Shanley house.
My new plan was to attend the Annual General Meeting, which I figured would surprise the people at the gallery in a good way. They would be very impressed. Then I would run into Nicole and tell her that I applied to the position and ask if it was okay that I had my applications out (there was only one application, in reality), but hadn’t heard back yet. This would put me in a good position to get the job, which would help me out a lot in my life.
The Annual General Meeting was on a hot night in late-May. I went through my clothes and tried to pick out something to wear. I ended up picking my pair of “nice shorts” and a short-sleeved button-down plaid shirt because I am very stupid sometimes. I thought I looked pretty good though.
When I got to the meeting, I quickly realized that most people there from a different tax bracket, as they were in nice suits and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t even have socks on for Christ’s sake.
I sat through the whole meeting, despite none of the material pertaining to me even slightly. Upon entry, I received a copy of KWAG’s Annual Report, which was sort of a published version of the meeting. Most galleries make them because they’re an easy way to present everything that the gallery does over the course of a year to potential business partners. I scoured the report throughout the entire meeting, flipping through all of the pages many times over while suits talked about the need for more funding.
It was thrilling and new for me to experience all of this. At the time, KWAG was a paragon of achievement to me and it seemed like everything would be okay if I could work my way into the place somehow. If volunteering at the camp did that much for me, how much would working there do? I still wasn’t part of the gallery, but I was now more than a visitor and that was exciting.
After the meeting, my plan went off without a hitch. I talked to Nicole, mentioned the job and my plans for grad school and she responded enthusiastically that that would be fine. It was all very exciting. I still didn’t know what was going to happen in the near future, but now there were some very positive possible outcomes for the first time in a long time and that felt really good.
This night has been one of those times that sticks to your memory since it happened. For a few different reasons, that I’m sure I could parse through if I took the time, it has taken on a certain significance and I still think about it often.
It’s been especially present in my mind lately because preparing the Annual Report for the gallery I currently work at has been one of the main tasks in my employment here. Last week while I was editing the text for it, that hot night in May popped into my mind and I had a moment where I had to stop and collect myself. I never would have thought that a glossy magazine would be such a crucial link to the past for me, but here we are. What was once this interesting key to my future is now something that I actually make. It seemed so exotic and important to me at the time, but now it’s a bullet point on my weekly “To Do” list. When I was at KWAG’s meeting, I really wanted to know how a gallery works on the inside and insert myself into that. It used to be this ideal situation that I could maybe one day attain, but now it’s just work.
The purpose of this post is not for me to draw attention to any successes I have had or for me to smile encouragingly upon my past self while he was going through a hard time, but to draw attention to how much I have changed over the four years since that night. I think it’s important to reflect upon who you used to be, who you are, and the space that exists between those two people. If you look back to the things you used to make and the person you were and think “Yes, that was awesome”, I think it’s more than likely that you are ignoring a few flaws and are probably doomed to make the same mistakes you always do. If you can look back and separate the good from the bad and appreciate both, then it can give you good grounding to continue growing as a person and be somebody that people like to talk to.
And hell, maybe I do need to draw upon a little more of the doe-eyed optimism that I had towards the art world back then, because I’m sure it would help.
Amidst all of this, there were three constants in my life. One was my wonderful friends and family, who have steadfastly supported me, even when I was kind of stupid and not concretely aiming at anything. Another was Beat Noir, which was always important to me and always something that I valued being a part of. The last was my involvement at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG).
Up to this point in my life, I had been volunteering at KWAG as much as possible. Of particular importance was a week I had spent working with their March Break Camp earlier in the year. I think the gallery was kind of taken aback that I volunteered every single day of the camp, as most people wouldn’t come in for that much time, but I had nothing else going on at the time, so I really threw myself into. As cliché as it is to say this about working with kids, that week profoundly touched me and was something that I really needed in my life at that point. A 10 year-old kid doesn’t care that you work overnight shifts stocking grocery shelves and can barely afford to take the bus to the art gallery; they just think you’re cool and funny. The great part about being adored like that is that it makes you try harder to become the person that those people see you as.
I took literally every volunteer shift available at the gallery and told the people there that I was going to keep volunteering that much until they gave me a job. I came to everything. Family Sunday, Open Houses before concerts, an art show put on by all of the elementary schools in the area, I did it all.
The next opportunity coming up was KWAG’s Annual General Meeting, in which the board of directors would discuss the gallery funding, how much they made, attendance, the shows, etc. In order to keep up my routine of giving them as much facetime with me as possible and to learn about some of the inner workings of the gallery, I decided that I would attend the meeting.
In the week prior to the meeting, I received an email from someone with whom I worked with at the gallery saying that they had a few positions open at the gallery for the upcoming summer, with the one caveat being that they must be a student returning to school in the fall. Upon reading the email, I knew that this was something I absolutely had to pursue, regardless of how much work it was.
Sometimes it can be easy to quickly dismiss something because you don’t think that you will qualify for it or deserve, but that is also what the bastards want you to think. My parents had asked me about grad school, but I always quickly dismissed it, thinking that I was far too stupid to ever continue my education.
My thoughts process went as follows:
“Okay, so it is only open to returning students. I am not one of those.”
“Yes, but how can I become one?”
“By applying to grad school?”
“Maybe I will qualify for this job if I tell them that I have applied to Master’s programs.”
“Okay, then let’s email Sally. She’s always had your back and even sent you that really nice email after that presentation.”
Then I did all of that, which was a small start down the path towards me applying for my master’s program. It was a sunny afternoon and I was sitting on my bed in my bedroom at the Shanley house.
My new plan was to attend the Annual General Meeting, which I figured would surprise the people at the gallery in a good way. They would be very impressed. Then I would run into Nicole and tell her that I applied to the position and ask if it was okay that I had my applications out (there was only one application, in reality), but hadn’t heard back yet. This would put me in a good position to get the job, which would help me out a lot in my life.
The Annual General Meeting was on a hot night in late-May. I went through my clothes and tried to pick out something to wear. I ended up picking my pair of “nice shorts” and a short-sleeved button-down plaid shirt because I am very stupid sometimes. I thought I looked pretty good though.
When I got to the meeting, I quickly realized that most people there from a different tax bracket, as they were in nice suits and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t even have socks on for Christ’s sake.
I sat through the whole meeting, despite none of the material pertaining to me even slightly. Upon entry, I received a copy of KWAG’s Annual Report, which was sort of a published version of the meeting. Most galleries make them because they’re an easy way to present everything that the gallery does over the course of a year to potential business partners. I scoured the report throughout the entire meeting, flipping through all of the pages many times over while suits talked about the need for more funding.
It was thrilling and new for me to experience all of this. At the time, KWAG was a paragon of achievement to me and it seemed like everything would be okay if I could work my way into the place somehow. If volunteering at the camp did that much for me, how much would working there do? I still wasn’t part of the gallery, but I was now more than a visitor and that was exciting.
After the meeting, my plan went off without a hitch. I talked to Nicole, mentioned the job and my plans for grad school and she responded enthusiastically that that would be fine. It was all very exciting. I still didn’t know what was going to happen in the near future, but now there were some very positive possible outcomes for the first time in a long time and that felt really good.
This night has been one of those times that sticks to your memory since it happened. For a few different reasons, that I’m sure I could parse through if I took the time, it has taken on a certain significance and I still think about it often.
It’s been especially present in my mind lately because preparing the Annual Report for the gallery I currently work at has been one of the main tasks in my employment here. Last week while I was editing the text for it, that hot night in May popped into my mind and I had a moment where I had to stop and collect myself. I never would have thought that a glossy magazine would be such a crucial link to the past for me, but here we are. What was once this interesting key to my future is now something that I actually make. It seemed so exotic and important to me at the time, but now it’s a bullet point on my weekly “To Do” list. When I was at KWAG’s meeting, I really wanted to know how a gallery works on the inside and insert myself into that. It used to be this ideal situation that I could maybe one day attain, but now it’s just work.
The purpose of this post is not for me to draw attention to any successes I have had or for me to smile encouragingly upon my past self while he was going through a hard time, but to draw attention to how much I have changed over the four years since that night. I think it’s important to reflect upon who you used to be, who you are, and the space that exists between those two people. If you look back to the things you used to make and the person you were and think “Yes, that was awesome”, I think it’s more than likely that you are ignoring a few flaws and are probably doomed to make the same mistakes you always do. If you can look back and separate the good from the bad and appreciate both, then it can give you good grounding to continue growing as a person and be somebody that people like to talk to.
And hell, maybe I do need to draw upon a little more of the doe-eyed optimism that I had towards the art world back then, because I’m sure it would help.
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