Redemption Won't Be Mine

I'm currently reading Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991. Reading a book like this, which tells the biographies of 13 bands who were (in some cases are) varying levels of punk , can feel like a copout because it's mostly an author telling me that things I already think are important are, in fact, important, but I'll be damned if I still don't get caught up in it.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started the book, but there was a part of me that hoped that the author would devote time to knocking the bands down a peg for a little bit. Even though I love the Replacements and Minor Threat, there's a weird part of me that wants to read a differing opinion and see a take other than "Minor Threat were an amazing influential band and all of their copycats struggle to replicate them". That's not exactly what I got, but my thoughts on the thing changed in the process too.

I think that that desire to see a dissenting point of view comes from my, I don't want to say disillusionment with punk, but I can't think of a better word. I'm not, and never will be, done or over punk music, but as I grow older I find that it's not as consistently inspiring to me as it was when a 13-year-old and first discovering it. The first time I heard "The Decline" by NoFX, I immediately felt like I had tell everyone I knew about and earnestly believed that if everyone heard it, they would feel like I would and we would change the world.

Now, after listening to punk for so long, and going to shows, being a part of different scenes in different cities, playing in a band, helping to put on shows, that feeling has changed. You grow up and realize that not everyone has the same experience in punk as you and most people don't care as much. A lot of bands care about drinking and playing fast, but not so many care about the politics. And I don't even mean the left-wing stuff that most good bands espouse, I mean the personal politics baked into the genre from the very beginning: doing things yourself as a collective, respecting your peers and welcoming others and weirdos, giving everyone a shot and breaking down the barrier between the stage and the audience. It's disheartening to see a rejection of those things in contemporary punk and seeing more and more bands caring more about the plastic lanyard on their waste than the message in their music. It makes it almost impossible to not become jaded about punk and wonder why you even care when everyone else seems to think that the concept of caring is lame.

I say all this though, because what I think is important is that, like many other things, punk can still be perfect in small moments, which is echoed in Our Band Could Be Your Life's introduction and throughout the stories of the bands represented. I think that, in theory, punk is perfect, but people fuck that theory up all the time because they don't understand it. It's hard to watch it happen, but then when you're watching Wayfarer open for the Sidekicks and this band you've been watching grow for ten years, but never break out of Southern Ontario, debut new material that is somehow better than their past stuff and you are instantly floating on the floor because you're reminded that punk matters.

I hate to sound like I'm unrealistically idealistic, but I notice that I gravitate towards things like this, which don't ever work out in the long run consistently, but give you a glimpse into a utopia where people work together and respect each other and good things happen as a result. Is that why most punks tend towards the left politically? Because we're all hanging onto that dream?

There are three bands in particular who drum up this feeling in me, who stayed punk for their whole existence, no matter how long it was or is, and proved that it is possible to stick to your moral and not have your art ruined by business or jaded assholes who don't care anymore. They always remind that punk does still matter and that we should always keep pushing and dreaming on making it work. Unsurprisingly, they all lean a little lefty loosey too. It's so comforting to me to know that no matter how overwhelmed with stupid scene politics, or bad bands getting big, or shitty stories about shitty band dudes, there is still that small perfect nugget of punk buried in there somewhere.

So let's all take a moment for ourselves and be inspired.






 The funny thing is that I'm not even what you would call a huge Minutemen fan. I don't know all the lyrics off by heart and, relative to other bands I like, I don't spend tonnes of time with their music, but damn if jamming econo doesn't fill me with so much joy. They're approach to punk and being in a band is so inspiring and I really do think that everyone should strive towards what they laid out during their perfect career. In my mind, that is what the general understanding of punk should be.

Episodes From a Struggle Against Capitalism in 2018

One of my biggest vices is buying T-shirts. I can't get enough of them. Even though I have two deep drawers that are overflowing with them, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a bug zapper and just keep buying them anyways. It also doesn't help that most of my main interests have turned into glorified T-shirt factories. Punk bands set up a mini-mall in the venue and the Jays have a store the size of an Olympic swimming pool designed to sell things with their logo on it.

Beyond the utilitarian aspect of having a shirt to wear each day, I like T-shirts as a sort of artifact. I think it's cool that when I wear a band's shirt it's indicative of my enjoyment of them, but is also a physical manifestation of my memory of seeing that band on that night. I love my Lifetime shirt because it reminds me of the one time that I'll have gotten to see one of my favourite bands. More than that, it's also an artifact from that specific iteration of the band. I love my Sidekicks shirt because it was from their tour right after Awkward Breeds came out and is a nice reminder of when all of my friends and I were mesmerized by what the band was doing and excited to see them play the legion in Guelph.

This all being said, I am drowning in T-shirts and I am constantly trying to consume less in my life, so I made a pledge to myself in January 2018 that I would not buy any T-shirts (or clothes, really) for the whole year. I know that it's a silly project, but I also think that its non-essentialness and stupidity is part of what makes it fun.

Episodes From a Struggle Against Capitalism in 2018

1. The 2018 Toronto Blue Jays Season

The mighty king of the sports T-shirt world is undoubtedly the "shirsey", a T-shirt with a print of the front of a sports team's uniform on the front and a player's name and number on the back. Since I'm far too poor to chase my dream of a walk-in closet filled with different jerseys to wear each day, shirseys area fun and economical secondary option. Since they are so much cheaper than an actual jersey, you don't have to put as much thought into which player's shirt you purchase, as you won't be saddled with an expensive monstrosity you hate to wear if the guy's production falls off a cliff, or worse, right after you purchase it. As such, getting obscure or silly shirseys is a fun thing to do if you like sports.

As I've already covered on IMU, the 2018 Jays were fucking awful, so names that you would be proud to wear on your back were slim. But what the team lacked in star power, they made up for in spades with "that guy?" options. Curtis Granderson? Steve Pearce? Aledmys Diaz? These all would have been elite additions to my collection of heroes past, but thanks to my extreme will power and personal sacrifice, those shirts will go to someone more in need.

2. Power Trip, w/ Sheer Mag, Fury, and Red Death

Thanks to the rise of large-scale music festivals in North America, the days of elite package tours that travel all over Canada and the United States are a thing of the past. Mid-level bands still come through Toronto regularly, but I long for my youth when it seemed like a band at the height of their powers with several other signed acts were a regular occurrence. I am by no means hating on watching local bands, but it's just not the same as when you would go to a show and see four really good bands who were all extremely tight from playing each night on tour and were diverse musically.

That longing for package tours was a huge part of why I was so excited for Power Trip coming through Toronto in May with Sheer Mag and Fury. The show was rammed inside and each band had an elite merch set up that was as diverse as their sounds. Power Trip do great pastiches of 80's thrash shirts, whereas Sheer Mag's simple logo shirts seem like a classic design from when the "band shirt" was still in its infancy in the 70's. This show was my hardest test. Both bands' shirts would instantly enter into my primary rotation and get a lot of reps during the summer, but I persevered and out-lasted my desire to get one.

Also, at this show I saw a huge hesher metalhead in a battle vest puke on a couple while they were making out.

3. Joyce Manor, w/ Vundabar, and Big Eyes

Joyce Manor has been a favourite of mine for the better part of a decade now, ever since I heard their self-titled first record. Despite my long-standing love and appreciation of their music, I somehow only managed to see them for the first time this year, touring on Million Dollars to Kill Me.

Sidenote: This long streak of missing them included a 2011 show featuring their first trip to Canada, Lemuria touring Get Better. What a show.

I would love to have a Joyce Manor shirt and proudly display my appreciation for a band who's put out 5 good records in a row, but instead they had the misfortune of scheduling this show while I was on my T-shirt exodus. It seemed like there were many good options from afar, but I opted to not put myself through torture and didn't approach the table.

4. Algernon Cadwallader annouce a reissue of their discography

One of the saddest experiences you can have as a music fan is getting heavily into an artist shortly after they break up. Me checking out Television for the first time this week certainly has an air of "I can't believe they were this good the whole time!", but it's not nearly as bitter as realizing Algernon Cadwallader were emo gods only a year or two after they broke up. To make matters worse, there were times I could have seen them, but opted not to! What an idiot I was!

I scoured the internet to see if any record labels or online stores still had stock of Algernon merch, but the band's staunch DIY stance, a huge part of why I love them so much, meant their post-career online presence was next to nothing. I was haunted my image of a t-shirt, long since sold out, in online stores that no longer shipped.

Then, in the fall of 2018, the band announced that they would be reissuing all of their music through Asian Man Records. Cool! On top of that, the band would be reprinting their first t-shirt design and selling that as well. WHAT. ON TOP OF THAT, they would also be printing that design on my other apparel weakness, a black pullover hoodie. It was like Algernon had reached into my mind and plucked out what I wanted most.

But this wasn't about what I wanted. It was about what I had promised myself. And that was to buy no T-shirts during the 2018 calendar year. Mody Dick ate my harpoon and swam away. The marlin decomposed while tied to the side of my boat. I lay on my couch thinking of an alternate world where I would have an Algernon Cadwallader T-shirt.

5. The Sidekicks, w/Gladie, Found Objects, and Wayfarer

Like all good dramas, my quest to buy no new T-shirts was expertly paced. After the climax of the T-shirt I had dreamed of slipping away, the plot resolved with a lesser event. Like how the big death always happens in the second last episode of a season in The Wire. I saw one of my favourite Ontario bands, Wayfarer, play with one of my favourite active bands, the Sidekicks. The Sidekicks came on strong with a white long-sleeve that said "America's Greatest Living Rock 'n Roll Band" on the front and "POWER POP" down the sleeves, but I had already won my war. No shirts would enter my closet this year.

The 2018 I, Musical Genius Musical Revue

Even though I've spent a lot of this year focusing on building up my portfolio on my Wordpress site, it's very important to me that I keep my year-end list write up on I, Musical Genius. When I first started writing here, these lists were my first forays into long-form writing and I think they were instrumental in me finding my voice as a writer. Though I may be other places, these lists will only ever belong on I, Musical Genius. Let's rip, these are in no order.

The Sidekicks - Happiness Hours

When I saw The Sidekicks touring Happiness Hours earlier this year, I was convinced that this was the best album of the year while I watching them. I'm not sure about that now, but I also have no idea what the best was anyways. This is up and is a huge return to form for them. Really great power-pop songs with huge bass parts and vocal hooks and it takes you on a wonderful journey from start to finish.

Fucked Up - Dose Your Dreams

I eagerly anticipated this album after reading a great interview with Damian in the Canadian music magazine Exclaim! It delivered on my expectations and I think that this is their best work since Hidden World and The Chemistry of Common Life.  It's a drugged out British version of David Comes to Life that, I think, gives a more interesting and nuanced interpretation of that story. Has a hardcore band ever been on Fucked Up's level? Is Fucked Up the best band to ever come out of Toronto. This album makes me believe so.

Bonus content: Here's the Exclaim! article I mentioned. Also, Fucked Up's Damian Abraham and Mike Haliechuk, who are noted for clashing creatively in the band, did an episode on Damian's podcast Turned Out a Punk and it makes for a great companion piece to the album.

Turnstile - Time & Space

On the other hand, I love that recently everyone has stopped being afraid to love breakdowns and heavy chug parts in hardcore and I think that Turnstile has been a huge part of that. Heavy and groovy, but also channelling a lot of Give-esque counter culture influence. Great stuff and I love the direction they're taking as a band. Plus they got Atiba Jefferson to shoot a video! Worlds colliding!

Fiddlehead - Springtime and Blind

The thing that interests me most about this record is how difficult it is to pigeonhole it. So often now, I find that band are purposefully working through a specific interest, or purposefully using a genre trope or sound. Fiddlehead is kind of hardcore, kind of punk, kind of post-punk, kind of poppy, but the songs never really sit in any of those categories, and I think that's what makes this record really interesting.

Culture Abuse - Bay Dream

Culture Abuse did the most difficult thing a band can do on Bay Dream, trimming off all superfluous parts in their sound and making a tight, succinct album that defines their identity as a band. Each song moves naturally through its construction and has great hooky guitars and choruses that gives the pieces character. The band sounds like their recognizing their influences and purposefully nodding to past artists, but do it in a way that seems natural and never hackneyed. On top of that, the lyrics are simple and to the point, but do a wonderful job of world building and drawing you into the life that Culture Abuse lives. As perfect an album as CA will make.

Tony Molina - Kill the Lights

Out of all the albums I knew would be released in 2018, Tony Molina's was the one I was most anxious to hear. I would have liked a little more stoner fuzz on it, but I also appreciate that he's pushing himself to write 60's-style folk pop and allowing his vocals to carry the melody, which seems like a strip down to bare parts, but is very hard to pull off. One of my very favourite artists producing music right now.

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

The first time I listened to Ordinary Corrupt Human Love was while skateboarding to a park to hangout with my brother on a hot night in the summer. It was the perfect soundtrack for that.

Dan P and the Bricks - When We Were Fearless

Few things disappoint me as much as the fact that I continue going to bat for ska, but so few actually good ska releases are put out anymore. Dan P bucks that trend and makes up for everyone else dropping the ball by writing big band ska songs that still rely on pop song structure.

Nothing - Dance on the Blacktop

I'm pretty over shoegaze because I feel like most bands lean to heavily on having the right gear to make their guitar sound huge and atmospheric while forgetting to write a good song first. I don't care that you have a Twin Reverb. I care about your songs. On Dance on the Blacktop Nothing write wonderful Britpop songs and and then blow them up into huge dreamy gaze numbers. That's an important distinction to make and it's also why Nothing is the only shoegaze band I still listen to.

Shook Ones - Body Feel

I was very shocked to receive a new Shook Ones album in 2018, as I was pretty certain they had broken up. But they had not! Body Feel builds on the moves the band started to make with The Unquoteable A.M.H,, establishing that they're more than a Kid Dynamite clone and have a depth to their music that most contemporary punk is sorely lacking. I always appreciated the personal/political bent of their stuff and that continues here. Happy to have you back.

Vince Staples - FM!

A downside of punk is that your mind gets used to every album being under 30 minutes and it becomes difficult to remain focused on things with longer run times. Specifically with rap, whose albums often hold 20-ish tracks, I always catch myself wondering why they don't trim the fat and sketches on longer releases. Fortunately for me, Vince Staples is here to deliver exciting and dense rap albums that don't give you time to get bored.

Oso Oso - gb/ol h/nf / subside

Yes, only a two-song single, but Oso Oso is my favourite band currently making music and these both fucking bang like a shotgun. Can't wait for the next release.

Other things I was into:

Buddy - Harlan and Alondra, Joyce Manor - Million Dollars to Kill Me, Lifted Bells - Minor Tantrums, Doe - Grow Into It, Drug Church - Cheer, Lil Wayne - The Carter V

Also, Daniel Romano released three albums this year. While none of them resonated with me the way that Modern Pressure did, you have to respect his insane drive and artistic vision. Three albums! All good! That alone mentions merit here, though it also helps that he's constantly evolving his sound and low-key turning into alternative music's equivalent of the Coen Brothers.

To Get Lost in the Romantic, What We All Want

While watching The Sidekicks play this week, I was thinking to myself about how great 'deep cuts' are. Given that I am a 29-year-old white rock music fan, I know this is not the most surprising opinion, we're divin' in anyways!



I find that there's something alluring about an artist's songs that aren't the ones that everybody likes. It makes the song feel a little more precious and a little more like it's yours. I've always found a lot of pleasure in liking things that not everybody else likes. It's not that I think that makes me more special, but it makes the thing more special to me.

Deep cuts usually have a few shared qualities. They're usually in the back half of the album (though I find track 2's are often great deep cuts) and stand out amidst longer or more experimental tracks. They're never as poppy as the album's singles, but poppier than the songs around them. I find that my favourite deep cuts are often simple love songs or creeds about personal politics that have great vocal melodies.

Deep cuts can extend to other media as well, like an obscure quote from a TV show or a movie that isn't the first check on an actor's resume. Liking 'the obscure thing' can feel stupid sometimes, like it seems like I'm trying aggressively hard to be an individual, like maybe popular things are popular because they're good, but really isn't it great to encourage people to investigate things and discover passions they don't know about yet? I think that my love of deep cuts is a byproduct of my curiosity. As soon as I find something I'm interested in, I always try to do an investigation to learn about the context it was created in and see if there was anything I was missing at first. Yes, that is why I love the song "Together".

The ultimate joy related to deep cuts is when you see a band play them live. In fact, I think there are few things more exciting than when a band plays a song you weren't expecting. It immediately forces you to be present because you know it's something you won't see regularly and the duration of the performance of the song is its own tiny existence while it's happening. You immediately start to anticipate your favourite parts of the song and that light anxiety makes watching the song even better. As a music fan, you invest a lot of time and energy into absorbing someone else's art, so when a band plays a deep cut live, it shows you that they are thinking of that too. They wouldn't play it if they didn't think that some people wanted to hear it.

This was spurred by The Sidekicks playing "Incandescent Days" from their album Awkward Breeds. I put the song on the first mix I made for Rebecca when we first started dating and it makes me remember her apartment in Guelph. That's what I thought of when they played it.

Never Move Your Back Row

In addition to feeling guilty about not writing on IMU enough lately, I've also felt guilty that I've barely written about baseball lately. While I was moving the posts I'm most proud of over to my very professional Wordpress site, I noticed that a lot of them were older and I hadn't written  much about the Jays during the 2017 and 18 seasons. Was my love baseball starting to peter out? Was my zeal tied to the team's success in 2015 and 16?

No, of course not.

But it's harder to write about the team now because not nearly as much is happening and the games don't even approach the same level of excitement. There's still small moments that capture your imagination and remind you why you love baseball, like Steve Pearce hitting two walk off grand slams within a week of each other, or Justin Smoak capping off a 7-run comeback win in the bottom of the 9th inning, but for the most part the games are ugly and, worse, in consequential.

The Blue Jays are currently stuck between two eras and can't really commit to either one. On one hand, they regularly look back on and celebrate the two playoff runs because that is probably the best way to engage with the sizable number of casual fans. On the other, the team is biding its time until a crop of younger talented players emerge to hopefully carry the team to success again. As a fan, you're stuck looking only backwards or forwards because there's not a tonne going on in the present.

So if there's not a lot going in the present, what do I write about?

It's hard to write about players because most of the exciting ones are gone. Price signed with the fuckin' Red Sox. Edwin went to Cleveland. We fêted José for a whole year to distract ourselves from how quickly his age caught up with him. Josh got hurt, disappeared for a whole season and then got traded for spare parts. Russ got bad. Strochez broke up and then both got hurt. Tulo turned into something you have to chuckle about to keep yourself from crying. The core that was the most exciting team in baseball evaporated in record time and were replaced with, well, replacements.

Anyone could tell that the team wasn't supposed to contend the last two years. "Raising the floor" was our "trust the process", and that's fine! The team was old and a reboot was absolutely necessary, so that's what happened. Rebuilding the team doesn't mean you all of a sudden have young players who will be superstars in two years. It means you sign serviceable veterans, trade them for young players, eventually package those young players for something, and hope to God it works out okay. It's an ugly process and people often forget that the Cubs and Astros were buried in decades of mostly mediocre baseball before things clicked, to say nothing of perpetual rebuilders like the Reds and Padres.

Those replacements could be exciting at times, as I mentioned above, and you also got to have a taste of great personalities like Curtis Granderson* as they finish their careers, but I can't write out a whole post on them like I could about Josh, José, or Edwin. It's just not the same.

*While watching the Jays play at Comerica Park in Detroit this past summer, a very drunk Tigers fan sighed to himself and said "Granderson has an amazing ass." It's all I can think about whenever his name comes up. Even more so than Slammiversary 2018.

2018 was different than past "bad Jays seasons" because there wasn't one player who stood out as a beacon while everyone sucked. 2018 didn't have Carlos Delgado, or Roy Halladay. In fact, you'd have to go back to the early 80s to find a Jays team as devoid of impactful players as the 2018 version. The team started out bad, with bad players, and wound up bad. Who would've thought?

It's also hard to write about these replacement players when it's a foregone conclusion that they'll be traded before the season's over. The front office signed veterans to short deals so they could trade them and improve the team in the long run and that's exactly what happened. Granderson, Pearce, Happ, Axford, Oh, Loup, and Diaz are all gone now. In times of flux like this, it's hard to get attached to a player to the degree that you can write about them.

So if the team is bad and will continue being bad, and the players aren't engaging, who do I write about? The front office? Though I'm beginning to falter in my faith, I'm not enough of a zombie to do that. The ballpark? Fuck, I don't know man.

All that's left is the Blue Jays and baseball still being a "thing" in my life, so that'll have to play until May and that's alright.

You're Dreaming if You Think That I Care

I had the initial idea for this blog post waiting for the subway to go to work one morning, but then the St. Mike's news broke and that became my main talking point for a couple of weeks. I'm the one person that all my friends know that went to St. Mike's, so for many people, I was the one person they asked about it. From my end, that meant one new person asking me about it each day. It weighed on me a lot to have a group sexual assault, and the problematic institutional attitudes that led to it, on my mind each day. The issue has slowly begun to be resolved and many of the important developments, like arrests of the perpetrators and authority figures stepping down, have already happened. I hope that steps to right the issues at the school continue and work, but a big part of me believes that won't be the case. I still hope it happens though.

What I was going to say before this happened, is that I've felt mostly comfortable in my life lately. I'm diligently working towards school applications and work isn't so overbearing. Something about taking a quiet Sunday morning subway ride from Bathurst Station to a job I wasn't dreading made me feel something resembling inner peace. I wanted to commemorate that with a post here for posterity. I like that I can return to this blog and look at the posts like they're moments in time. I can usually remember who I was when I wrote them and what inspired them. It feels good to access those things inside of me.

I wanted this post to fall into a specific type of IMU post that's hard for me to describe. They usually are about a lot of things, but nothing in particular, which leaves me writing about my life and existence, I guess, and I feel like that's when my real and worthwhile observations come out. I feel like in between retrospectives of bands and moments associated with them and things I'm interested in at the moment, there's these medium length posts that are just me conveying a calm state of mind. I have a "life in general" label that roughly translates to this, but it's not universal. They're my favourite ones.

I was listening to The Decay while trying to get work done today, and took a little look back into IMU to see if I could find a post I remember when I discovered the band. I couldn't, but looking through the blog is what reminded me of the types of posts I described above. Also, going forward "Empty Frames" should be considered the urtext on Kitchener. I don't think anything describes living in the city like that song does.



It's nice to look back at the blog and see that I'm still mostly the same person, at least personality-wise, but have also grown up in important ways. There's things I find embarrassing on here, but that's okay. No middle-class white kid born with a perfect conscience. Growth means that I'm trying at least.

I also find comfort in the couple of things that haven't changed. Still put off writing by writing. Still am embarrassed to tell people how I feel. Still find a lust for life in punk.

Great, but That's Not Me

In lieu of Liberties this week, I've made a playlist to accompany my most recent zine I, Musical Genius, Vol 11: Toronto Ska, 2004-2007. It has songs from all of the bands I talk about in the zine. Fun!

Liberties, Vol 11

"Orgcore" is a name for a niche type of punk music that rose in popularity in the mid-00's and is now starting dwindle in popularity. It's name comes from the website where it's popularity originated, Punknews.org. It's a term that only means something for a small group of people online, but it's been omnipresent in my life as a music fan so far.

I used to use my first period spare in high school to read Punknews and learn about as many different bands as I could. At first, anything that wasn't ska and NoFX seemed daunting to me, but eventually I started find myself gravitating the punk bands I was reading about, which is a process I think made me more open to new types of music later on in my life.

Like many music genres, orgcore is hard to pin down and more of a "know it when you see it" type of deal. Punknews beat the Propagandhi drum harder than anyone else, but they are not orgcore. Banner Pilot are a common example of orgcore's tropes being commodified and "jumping the shark". I would describe it as mid-up tempo poppy punk music with gruff vocals and lyrical themes of depression, self-doubt, drinking, and uncertainty.

Eventually, I started to care less and less about the genre because I found that too few bands were finding new and exciting ways to play it. I still look back upon it fondly because of how invested I was in it during my youth. It felt like there was a whole sea of exciting bands at my fingertips, but it also carried an exotic feel of secrecy.

My theme for Liberties this week is orgcore that has stuck with me and still stirs things inside me. A playlist to carry me through this dark, wet, dead, and cold time during the winter known as the baseball off-season.

Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes

I went into this blog post planning to do the "IMU Special" in which I write a post about nothing to try and get my creative juices flowing again, but instead I was sent this news by my older brother:

CP24 reports students pinned another student down and sexually assaulted him with a broom handle as part of a hazing ritual at Toronto's St. Michael's College in one incident. The school has since issued a statement saying expulsions have occurred. pic.twitter.com/OHbbdIdiZk

— Lucas Meyer (@meyer_lucas) November 14, 2018

My response to my brother, who also went to the school, was "I wish I could say I was surprised".

I have a complicated relationship with my high school and always feel awkward talking about it. I feel like every time that I mention it, I immediately get labelled as an extremely privileged upper class private school kid, which isn't the case and far from the truth. But if I went to the school, I am clearly privileged to have gone and I don't want to come off like I'm pretending to be lower class, which would be despicable. My mother was a high school history teacher and my father owned his own small landscaping company. Both made extreme sacrifices and went into a lot of debt to send me to one of Toronto's oldest private schools because they both placed an immense amount of importance on education and wanted me to receive the best one they thought that I could. My parents are also both Catholic (my mother brought up this way and my father as an adult convert) and this also undoubtedly played a role in their openness to me attending St. Mike's. Not everyone in Toronto is afforded the opportunity to go to a private school and I am immensely fortunate that I got to.

But I was also far from the average St. Mike's boy. Even though my parents were *gasp!* middle class, I was near the bottom of the St. Mike's economic scale. Other students often poked fun at "how poor" I was or how I couldn't afford things. I was reminded several times that I was the "poor kid" in my grade. When I entered the school, Father Daniel Zorzi was the school's president, and though I have nothing to base this off of other than hearsay from the time, I understood that he was behind a major push for St. Mike's to expand into richer suburbs around Toronto, especially the wealthier parts of Mississauga and Vaughn, to bring more money into the school. That worked, I guess, as the school had loads of new facilities while I was there, but it also brought in wave upon wave of entitled, asshole kids.

With entitlement comes mistreatment of others. Though the school loves to act as though its students' academics and values are what it places the most emphasis on, that's a sham and athletics are really all they care about. Look at their Wikipedia entry and pay attention to how much of it focuses on hockey. Football was a close second while I was there. How many intelligent, low-income students have been turned down in favour of meathead hockey players over the school's history? I can't tell you how many truly moronic people I was in classes with during my time there. If students have to write an entrance exam to get in and academics are so important to the school, how did these students get there?

Easy answer.

The rich, entitled, macho jock attitude was readily encouraged by most of the school's faculty. Teachers would reprimand Filipino students and tell them to tighten their ties and then playfully slap white hockey players with no uniform on a moment later. Loud, braggadocios jocks could do whatever they wanted and never faced repercussions. The school often tried to encourage its students to be a "St. Michael's Man", someone who studied hard, stayed Catholic, and participated in extra curriculars, but I feel like the true "St. Michael's Man" was a dickhead who thought he was better than everyone and rarely stopped dropping casual racism and homophobia. The school constantly turned a blind eye to this behaviour.

I didn't fit in well at the school and hard time there. My bullying experiences weren't nearly as bad as some of the other students there, but they were still there. If you didn't conform to some strange crossover between Wooderson and Tie Domi, you were, of course, "a pussy". Being quiet and skinny made me feel out of place at all times. I made a few friends while there, but didn't continue talking to anyone from the school after I graduated.

For what it's worth, I found the students at my local high school much friendlier and hung with them instead. Even the jocks there were welcoming. Crazy what class entitlement does to a person.

The problem with the school's treatment of its students is that they have ignored it for so long. This type of assault is, unfortunately, the logical endpoint of the toxic masculinity that is allowed to fester in the institution. Again, I wish I could say I'm surprised. Things similar to this assault have almost certainly already happened, but been either ignored or swept under the rug. I don't even know what to say other than that I hope this school dies the swift death it should have a long time ago.

Liberties, Vol 10

You know how you can tell that both Liberties and IMU are in a sad state? I've had this edition of the plyalist cued up for more than a week, but have only just gotten around to posting it. More music, playlists and writing coming soon, I promise.