My family, when they go places -- Beijing, Tokyo, etc. -- bring back beer and or coffee for me to experience. The Japanese coffee my brother brought back is quite tasty, and has the right what have yous regarding taste, etc.
The coffee comes in its own pouch, and the pouch is stitched into a disposable filter. The filter is placed over a cup and then it's all thrown away. Anyways, the best part of the whole ordeal is the Engrish on the package, which I've aligned into a found poem.
This is mild
type coffee, rich aroma and deep
flavours roasted
charcoal fire carefully
I have a show tomorrow at the SUB at the university.I also have a show on the 2nd at Logan's. Both are paying gigs!
Last night Joy and I chilled out at home, I got drunk off high percentage beer and champagne.
I'm thinking about the processes and end-sound of the recording that the country band will ideally do. I have this new guitar technique, where I strike the strings with the flat of my finger, sort of like how one strikes a drum, but I get a tone -- a chord -- out of it as well. It's not too loud, which means the process will have to be minimal for the song I want to use this technique on, which excites me. Thick in simple textures. Ben, if yer reading this, the idea is for Liquor Store.
In constant sorrow all through his days
I'm drinking a Yebisu beer right now -- brought over from Japan.
I'm almost done my degree. I have to write another essay, revise some poetry, revise a non-fiction article (I'm finally understanding non-fiction, my brain has learned a trick, and is very, very relieved). I may have to make a short movie for a film class. I have some ideas, mainly about a guy who visits his neighbour and is totally blown away by all of the small things -- the way the wood on the stairs is cut, the way the closet is shaped, etc.
It's an effort to mirror a narrative structure based on one person visiting another place, as in "Lost in Translation," except the culture gap is far less than East/West. I want to remove the good/bad, strange/not-strange, us/them, familiar/other dichotomy, and basically say that the small things are hardly things at all. "We're just a living people," as Cat Power says.
I do need to develop two other characters.
Yesterday was a long day in front of a computer -- I hammered out 3,700 words and brought it down to 2,800 words thanks to a very lovely girl. Many thanks in that regard. It's weird how someone can spend 30 minutes looking at something and offer more help than a prof.
My brother from Japan is in town, and he, his Japanese wife, my other brother, and I went to the mall. I had a raspberry julius, and we spent a lot of time in shoe and kitchen stores. I wanted a Mannergarten, and told the other guys about it while we sat around waiting. They thought it a good idea.
I put my Metallica CDs out of sight years ago, and the other day I brought them out, and I haven't been able to stop playing Reload, arguably their 2nd worst album. I don't know what it is. . . I think it's Kirk Hammett's guitar style, and Lars, for some reason. . . his drumming is very strange. Nearly really bad, but so deliberate and spot-on at the same time. The bass needs to be higher in the mix. The ego gets in the way.
Tonight -- rehearsal, tomorrow, rehearsal, the day after, a performance, a show on the first, a show on the 2nd, a tour in June spanning Victoria to Montreal. I get to write the press releases, which will be good. I get to apply my degree to my music almost instantaneously.
There's no reasonable explanation. Most people tackle large, socio-economic issues with their final essays. Me, I went to the Bottle Depot and hung out with bums on the street. I ended cutting one of the bums out of the article. One bum was funnier than the other, but the bum I went with offered me an ending I couldn't refuse. How strange it is to think that it's only now that I understand a transition!
Billy picked up a piece of wood, and later that day, he thought of the things in the back yard from yesterday. . . lol
Never believe in administrative power.
. . . reminds me of a scene in Barton Fink when Goodman's character goes to a doctor to see about an infection. The doctor tells him he has an infection -- five bucks please (this is in the 1930s).
Today it's "450 bucks you fucking shithead."
Holy shit, what the fuck is yer goddamn problem?
edit: turns out a band without a street team won. Somebody in administration lied to me. The band that actually won deserved it, no less. Good on ya, fellas!
Just got the news, re: Battle of the Bands. We lost -- to a metal band with a street team! I'm cranking the Magnetic Fields right now, "Cupid put too much poison in the dart, this is the epitaph for my heart, because it's gone, gone, gone. Life goes on and on and on, and you're not my friend."
There are some reasons and excuses I've mustered up, thrown out to the air. They've flown away, and I'm more of a straight-up fuck-head than a low-down cow-poke.
It's not as bad as that, but then again, neither is the Magnetic Fields.
sigh.
Back to the catalytic converters. . . actually, this is the most fun I've had researching a non-fiction topic. I owe it all to Barry. Be my guide, Barry!
Happy St. Patty's Day. I have no idea what he did, or why he did it. Google it? Nah. I'll buy a six-pack and smile all night. But I don't want to get over this. . . I could listen to a therapist and pretend loss doesn't exist, or I could make a career of being blue. I could dress in black and read Camus, smoke clove cigarettes and drink Vermouth. . .
Really, this update isn't so much about me as it is the Magnetic Fields.
A fucking street team?
I'm going to be selling my stuff soon. I got books, half a TV, an accordian, a keyboard, a saxophone, more books, a really nice desk perfect for writing on.
The show last night went off with a few hitches, but nothing major. By the time we went on (12am) I realized I hadn't had anything to eat since the early afternoon. I almost had no energy (literally) and my drumsticks almost fell out of my hands during some rather important fills. I just told my body to do it, and then I went into that place where I go and let the body do the rest. This allows me to exist in that moment inside music. Very strange. . . when writing, Marquez compares it to levitation. . . this isn't so much levitation as it is a suspension, where the act and the thought are at the same time, and the thought can be elsewhere.
So yeah. Good fun. I worked for eight hours, which will go to the tour fund. I have a tour fund! The nation wants to split me across its geography. This is what we call dilemma, where circumstances outside control swing into town and fuck things up. It reminds me of my friend's brother's group of friends who created a gang of goblins on Everquest and then just went around interfering with everything else.
I just realized that convocation also falls in the pit of a planned tour, where the band needs to be in Ontario for -- June 9th, so as to play a giant music festival.
My convocation date: June 9th. So right now it's either skip for grad and go on tour, or skip tour and go to convocation.
The thing is, is that we don't know if we're playing the music festival yet.
My parents have funded a large part of my degree and probably want to see me graduate. I have responsibilities to music. My life has many prongs. I want to go on tour and go to grad, which ought to be feasible.
I have the live recording from the concert I played a few weeks ago. "Together at Last Playing Country Delights" is the name of the band, and it's a mix between country, blues, folk, and punkabilly. I've only had the CD for less than a day, but I've listened to it far too many times.
I've cut the recording of the performance into sections. The CD has only one track for two performances, but now, thanks to me, I've gone and deleted the opening band, and now all of our songs are their own seperate tracks.
We're playing the final round of Felicita's "Battle of the Bands" on Monday -- c'mon down. You'll have a good time whether you want to or not.
Up at 7 am, off for breakfast, off to the beach, errands, sunny. Jay came by, and I'm thinking of checking out his concert tonight. Country Delights may open up a show for him in May, if everything works out. Now I'm just shitting around.
And for smattering the city with your trash, you feel as though the righteousness of kings and lords dead belongs in your hand!
Cans, bottles. Do YOU know their stories, their mysterical journey across the globe may take you to places you’ve probably never been before in your entire current life! If you like a good mystery, he sure does, then you will absolutely love to hear what Bottlers do to make a living~ they take their poo and then sell it to Santa Claus Impersonators Club of Mass. B.C. in the south of main, in the south of main, the bottles feed their veins.
These men live tragic lives, and they don’t care. They probably would hate you if they met you in real life, which is where they operate. You feel sympathy, and they, filled with an impoverished contempt to those who walk the streets, ride buses, take the ferry, or water-ski to work, look to the ground and scavenge for bottles and cans. They depend on the people they hate: drunks smuggling out bottles from closing nite-clubs then abandoning the bottle on the walk home, the juice carton fresh from a child’s hand, the water bottles from a picnic. You will find your salvation, your independence from these feelings through hard will and a secure path to enlightenment; that is, if you harbour enough negative capability to handle your current problems without cause for change. If that is the case, then I suggest you take a bath, and forget about things for awhile. It'll all blow over, then you can come out and we'll pour you a glass of your favourite fucking wine!
Brain Young reflects on his impoverished life: alcoholic, separated from a wife in Chilliwack, homeless, first in Nanaimo and now Victoria, a bottler, a vague life lived in small pollution shrouded suburbs. Eyes blinking awake, the cement wall beside him, patchy-grass underneath him, he sees cherry blossoms, each petal the size of an infant’s fingernail floating in the tree above him. Clothed in a plaid shirt and brown pants, he wriggles his body, waking it up. His foot skims the black garbage bag beside him, and it clanks with bottles. The wine bottle from last night lies in a small patch of grass amidst the gravel lot in which he slept. He runs his hand through his thick goatee and moustache, along his grizzled cheeks, and through his hair. He licks his hand and rubs it along his lips and chin, washing off any possible trace of wine. This is the closest he’ll come to cleaning. The sound of traffic makes itself apparent as if it has always been there. The breeze, the city air, the smooth escape of the nite before all at once in his head. He’ll spend the day working towards escape. Victoria is a good city, he feels, although he only moved a week ago.
“It’s impossible to starve,” he says.
With his bag in hand, he stands up and walks towards the bottle depot where he can cash in for the morning, and probably rummage up a shopping cart from an alleyway.
He pushes his jangly cart towards the bottle depot. He will buy a jug of wine and get wasted in the park, maybe explore the city.
When he hits the streets, he does so as a venomous lecher who would probably bugger a child, given the chance! He can’t spend all his money on wine!
Open your arms, and speak with peace. There is a humility which follows the lives of the meek without trial or trepidation; it is merely as a squirrel, or as a river otter in a dried up stream. When bottlers collect bottle, they do so for the command of us all, where we obey each other not through orders, but through adaptation, a fierceness expressed with negative gestures, rather than thoughts. The gestures then get passed on as if it were a driving school, or better yet, bratwurst.
Brain Young will most likely not eat a bratwurst for a very long time. He’s too poor. He’s too much of a drunkard wandering the streets, another bum without a job, another half-wit walking the good sidewalks, diverting our attention from those who deserve it. It’s about time the tenured profession of paramount said a few things in regards to bottles. On behalf of the Bottle Return, we have with us today Fergusun, who manages the Bottle Return.
So tell me Fergusun, do u shit yerself?
Ergh. While all of my friends get to go out or stay in doing creative things, passionate things, I'm stumbling around phoning people who I really don't care to talk to for interviews.
Though there is one possibility that blows my mind. I can potentially have five albums by the end of the summer. If this battle of the bands thing works out, and if Semmy-Lemmy records in the summer, it would be two on top of my other three - MSR, JD and the R, and Semmy-Lemmy's first album, which was recorded in the SUMMER and probably won't be out for five more months, because that's the way lazyness works. Ugh (don't think about this). I was thinking about five albums though. That's pretty sweet. Two E.P.s and three full length. I'm going to have to tally up everything by the end of graduation.
In other music news related to my life. Tomorrow, and I believe this to be the case: I have two music videos being screened, I'm acting in one of them, and I'm performing with another band later that night. I'm going from hip-hop, to rock, to country-folk. Hah! I love it. From something totally electronic, to something mostly electronic, to something hardly electronic. Indeed. Indeed indeed indeed.
I tucked into couple of small glasses of red wine last night. I can be the middle of the ghetto, but with a few reds in my face, I'm like, yes!
Really though, interviews?
To do: (I'm going in code here)
Phone ICEE BEECEE
rewrite CNF (a major rewrite. There's no stopping.)
. . .as well as some other numbers.
but fuck! CREATIVE Non-Fiction? The only thing creative is that the language can be a bit elevated, but other than that, there's hardly anything creative about it. Unless maybe I get into creative synthesis, in which case I'm being a post-modern university jerk. What would Woody Allen do?
Yawn. It's okay to be bored.
It's one of those days where I could potentially have the whole day off. There's clouds outside, and they look like they'll let up. Look like. So who knows. It could be spent wandering the town alone, or it could spent inside all day alone.
Tonight Joy and I are going for cheap take-out sushi before heading off to the Roxy Cinegog, where movies are a religion.
I slept for 13 hours! I went to bed at six pm and woke up at seven am. Shit, that's a lot of sleep. The day before I had been up until three am, then woke up at eight am before going to class then I walked the streets for three hours. Sleep came very naturally.
This is the night where I write my feature. . . . shit! I forgot about handing in my query to my journalism prof. . . I'll have to whip that up tonight as well. At least, after a shite load of fretting, I have an extremely cheezy plot on how to write my 3000 words. . . I'm aiming for 2500 tops, cuz I want to keep it succinct and short, with a few tangents worth going off on.
Moving on. . . there's a few months left until the demise of my tenure. No more student loans, no more slacking like no tomorrow. It's all business, from here on in.
Collecting Bottles with Theodolf of Hvine
:::::Bottles and cans, clap your hands:::::
:::::- Beck Hansen:::::
Next to the front door of a large
government building, Theodolf
drops a limp hand into a garbage can
and swishes a few plastic bags
filled with air. He pushes his jangly cart
along the streets. No king will hear him.
(The strophe was killed a long time ago.
This poem has no inclination to sing
an allitereated spine in honour
for those who quote essays.)
You be quiet, says Theodolf, ye'r being rude to an old master.
The poem doesn’t see him strophing
for his song is a cart that rattles
to the bottle depot.
A staff cut with runes
ordered by a dying skald
made no difference
to Theodolf of Hvine.