Sunday, February 22, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Eight, Part Two)

I'm at Andrea's watching the red carpet coverage of the Academy Awards. This E! newscaster is really annoying, losing her mind over Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They're just fucking actors. And who cares what these people are wearing? All of that artifice is ridiculous. Actors are nominated for roles that on some level convey a universal and true sense of humanity, yet we're supposed to care about how superhuman they can look. Don't get it. Never will.

One of the things on my list of things to do before I turn 30 is write the introduction to my memoirs. I wanted to get a start on it this week. I've been thinking a bit about it. Memoirs are written to convey a life lived. I wonder who would read a collection of my writings after I pass on. I've wondered that for a while.

I finished off The Medium is the Massage tonight. McLuhan makes the point that people have lost interest in self-expression and individual ideas, preferring instead the expressions of a collective. One person with their own ideas is hard to take seriously.

I think I'm coming to an understanding about the way I see the world. All these bits and pieces are connected. McLuhan makes a great deal of sense to me. I wish I'd paid him more attention in school. I think I'm going to send an email off to Brian Johnson. He was my undergraduate honours thesis supervisor and he had a predilection for McLuhan. Maybe he can help me make greater sense of these ideas. I haven't talked to him in quite some time, so it would give me an excuse.

I've been thinking a little bit over this past week about going back to school one day. Mostly I'm hoping that I can keep that door open. I think there's something very important I have yet to write. I'm not through learning. I'm not through arguing. I'm not through figuring things out.

Picks: Mickey Rourke, Kate Winslet, Heath Ledger, Viola Davis, Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire.

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Eight)

Much as I hate to admit it, I'm really impressed by Lily Allen's new song, "The Fear." She slagged on Radiohead, proving that she's a dimwit, yet the song is incisive and intelligent, and her producers produced the HELL out of it. It's really the best song about popular culture I've heard in probably the last five years.

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear?
Because I'm being taken over by the fear


That's the condition of the 21st century captured in a pop song chorus. And it's catchy as hell.

Andrea called me at 5:30 this morning (2:30 California time). I haven't been able to get back to sleep. Today is my last day off.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Seven)

I like the sound of traffic at 2 AM. There isn't much of it downtown. Downtown Ottawa shuts down around midnight, after most of the buses have stopped running. Lately I've been falling asleep to the sound of snow plows, but that won't last forever.

When I go for periods without working or going to school, I tend to gravitate towards keeping late night hours. I had no daytime obligations for a few months last fall and would often stay up past 3 o'clock in the morning. If I was at Andrea's, I would watch TV, or go on the Internet.

I'm on the Internet a lot, for hours at a time each day. It's been that way for years now. And it strikes me that I spend an inordinate amount of time online checking to see if I'm being noticed. Recognition of me, as a living, breathing person, more often comes in the page view as it clicks up, or the view counter as it moves forward, or the notification of a comment, or an email in the inbox. It is beyond being noticed - it is being seen. I know I am alive when I am seen by other people, and my computer tells me when I am seen. Without it, I would be invisible.

It is an isolating experience. I often feel alone. And I'm okay with that, I think. It only gets to me when I fool myself into thinking that no one cares about me. 95% of the time, I believe I am cared for. And I think that's all anyone can hope for. Luckily, fascination is high on my list of character traits, if it could be called that. I am fascinated by the idea that I can be whoever I want to be on it. It's a new world. A new environment. I can change a person's perception of me with the click of a mouse or the clatter of a few keys in succession. And all along, I seem to carry with me the belief that I'm the only one who thinks about the Internet that way, that everyone else is simply using it as a tool to replace the post office and diaries and telephones and television. They stay who they are. I become someone else.

I can pretend to be here. I can pretend to disappear. I can make my life sound full or empty. I can proclaim to be in love or that I feel lost. I have over 300 people on my Facebook friends list. More than two-thirds of those people will never know the difference between my online identity and my real life identity. They will know that I make music and watch movies and read books and that's it. They will know the same 25 things about me that everyone else I tagged knows. It's how we get to know a person these days, perhaps because there are more people now than there's ever been (a fact that seems shocking to me at 2 AM on a deserted downtown Ottawa street).

What I really want out of life is to be thought of while I'm alive and to be remembered when I'm no longer living. That's my ego talking. What I really want out of life is to fall in love and eventually raise a family. That's my society talking. What I really want out of life is a great job and enough money to take care of me in old age. That's my government talking. What I really want out of life is to create art. That's my heart. Art in everything and everyone, in every thought and emotion and belief. Quiet moments of grace. A trembling of the hand. The way the sun hits the faces of people during sunsets. The look of Andrea's teeth between her lips. Note changes. C to B to A to A flat. When I woke up, there seemed such promise. It seemed like nothing I did would change this. I put my hand through a running faucet and flinched to feel it: a final notice. I put my shoes on and hit the pavement. I passed a stranger and looked right at her. If I could capture this pregnant moment, I'd give birth to it and never feel alone again.

Something like that. The waiting for a loved one to return. Thinking of her. Being thought of. Remembering the sound of traffic at 2 AM.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Six, Part Two)

Some points made by Marshall McLuhan in "The Medium is the Massage":

The concept of "you" as an individual, unique being is not the same as it was 100 years ago. The concept of "you" is now much closer to the concept of "us". The individual has become the mass.

The family unit has been replaced by the world unit. Children now learn from societies instead of parents.

Electric circuitry has changed the meaning of time and space. Old groupings such as civic, state and nation no longer operate, because technology has exploded geography.

Education and schooling are archaic institutions operating against technology. The media of television contradicts the media of the classroom. Children progress into the adult world confused by the mixing of media, both of which work to communicate the message: Grow up!

"Jobs" are antithetical to both survival and sanity.

Politics, once a form of passive entertainment, has changed drastically. How the world operates politically is now far more apparent than it ever has been. The mass audience has begun to participate. "The living room has become a voting booth."

The individual has become inextricably attached to everyone else. To survive requires participation and a heretofore unseen involvement in each other's lives.

The development of print has conditioned the world to think in a linear manner and to understand physical environments in visual and spatial terms for thousands of years. Before print, hearing was the dominant sense for the means of understanding. Today, technology has brought on a regression. Due to the deluge of information now available, we learn in bits and pieces rather than in the large chunks offered by texts.

Books created the illusion of individuality by offering emotion and thought in a series of physically fixed states - pages in between covers. "Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror." So it is today, in the global village of technology. Individuality is history. Detachment is impossible.

Our perceptions of time and space have developed to the point where it feels as though they have ceased to exist. The speed of technology has forever altered our concept of the speed of natural evolution. All we have to respond to this reality are outdated modes of thinking and feeling. It is totally new.

We no longer put faith in a fixed point of view. Now, we only suspend judgement.

As information piles on information, the desire to fill in the cracks builds higher and higher. And that, my friends, is your cue to comment.

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Six)

I'm heading out to meet folks for some diner of the Elgin Street variety. It's been too long.

I wrote a film review for the Things to Do Before I'm 30 blog. I'll post it tomorrow once I've taken some screen captures.

I'm planning an update about what I've been reading in The Medium is the Massage. Next one, hopefully. For now, I dine.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Five)

It's been a busy day, and now, at the end of it, I'm sitting across the room from four televisions hooked up to a DVD player through an RF modulator and stacked on top of one another. I've unplugged them so as to not cause an electrical fire. I watched some footage on them and they create a pretty hypnotizing effect, especially when I alter the picture settings individually. Should be fun to play around with them.

Hanging out with Jim was fun, but I do get the feeling that he's disappointed that we don't see much at all of each other anymore. We're living different lives. His life is his marriage, his job, his house and car. And maybe that's not so different from what constitutes my life, but we've drifted apart. Our interests and social lives stopped overlapping a while ago. But hell, it sure was nice of him to cart me around while I looted thrift shops in the west end. That's something a true friend would do. I certainly appreciated his help. And talking with him was engaging, because I'm finding myself becoming more interested in what has interested him for years.

The President of the United States was in town today. He briefly waved to a crowd of thousands strong on Parliament Hill before sending for a BeaverTail from his limo en route to the airport, initiating the most pride this city has felt in months in the process. O'Connor Street was packed with cars today as part of Elgin and the streets closer to Parliament were shut down. I even saw a couple of cars drive the wrong way down Gilmour to some energetic honking from oncoming traffic and pedestrians. It's days like today I feel grateful that I live within walking distance of most amenities.

I finished off "Born a Ghost", which can be heard on the Wire and Light myspace. The mixer works great. The next step is making a video, hopefully soon, with Ian's help. I just have to figure out the mechanics of staging it in the apartment.

Right now I'm watching Back to the Future with the producers' commentary track on. After this week I'm going to start eating healthier. I think I've been putting on weight and I don't give much of a damn these days about the food I've been eating. Time to change that attitude.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Four)

I've felt tired all day. I just woke up from a nap, so who knows when I'll be going to bed, but I'm up now and I suppose that's all that matters.

I picked up my paycheque from work and deposited it. It wasn't as much as I'd hoped I was going to make. Then again, I won't actually make a real, honest-to-goodness full two weeks of pay on one cheque until the end of March. The first cheque reflects the end of prorogation, and the next two will reflect this week off. Welcome to adulthood, self. Never enough money to pay for being alive. If this is just the beginning of REAL money problems, I might just disappear to a shack in the woods after all.

I'm only half-serious. It's starting to dwell on me how expensive my goals and ambitions are. I want to do a lot of things, and a lot of things take money. I'm also living alone for the first time, so I can't chop every living expense into halves or thirds like I used to. I suppose I should feel lucky to even have a job, but even to the jobless that's a somewhat hollow thing to be thankful for. I'm so THANKFUL I can be just another cog in our society's huge capitalist machine! Don't need anything more! Happy and livin' the dream!

I need something more. No matter what I ever do, it won't be enough to satisfy me. These days that fact excites me way more often than it upsets me. It makes me think I can try new things constantly. I just don't want to find myself sitting at a desk pumping out text ten years from now because I'm still waiting for life to REALLY ACTUALLY start. The only things between me and a classic, full-fledged, stereotypical adult version of me are marriage, children and a house. If I end up with any of those things, I don't want to look back at the way I am today and think, oh, what a silly ass I was. I had no idea what responsibilities really were. I do. I have a responsibility to myself to feel happy, and it may be selfish in the eyes of parents and the betrothed and the property owners but it's the most important responsibility I have. If I don't tend to myself, what's the point?

Sometimes I think that I'm just another product of the "me" generation, people of an age brought up to think that they can change the world and inherit it completely without making any mistakes. A boy fed too many compliments in grade school on his ability to do well, to answer the questions, to write the right words, play the right notes and finish all the assignments and texts. I rarely hit the honour roll in high school, typically averaging out to marks of 78 or 79 each semester - just enough to not be recognized for superior work. Enough to get by. Slightly above average, but not enough to notice. I was the only one out of 13 or so OAC honour students to go to college instead of university.

In college, it was the same thing. Although I ended up with an award for the highest marks in the program, I never felt as though I had the artistic ability to create something that merited the praise. Not like a guy like Matt, who never finished his stuff on time but produced strikingly original graphic design every time and still does to this day. That was his niche, not mine. When I decided to go back to school, it was a decision based on equal parts of wanting to avoid the real world. Average though I was in high school, I always did well in English, and that trend continued. I got passionate about writing and put on shows and wrote and helped put together a magazine. The things I cared about might have been small but I really and truly cared about them.

Why am I going through this little historical recap? Part of my ground-up nature, I guess. Start with a level field and get to the point. But I was never the kid who took stuff apart to figure out how it worked. I would just try to make a facsimile, and it never turned out as good as the thing I was trying to replicate. I do, however, recognize a truth when I see it. There's a truth there, and it means something.

I'm still trying to come up with my own original thing. Not really because it's what I think I should do, but because I won't be complete without it. There's an adage that no matter how good a person is at something, there will always be someone better. Sometimes I think that I try to be half-good at EVERYTHING rather than really great at one thing, as if it's an equation that balances out somehow. But math, once a strong point, no longer is. I cycle through strong points and let them become weaknesses. I do a thing and end up thinking it's not enough.

Like this job, I guess.

I know I should calm down and try to gain some perspective. I can live a full life doing many things as long as I remember to take pleasure in them and try not to beat myself up too much over things I'll never be or be good at. There are an almost infinite number of those things. I will never operate the super hadron collider, or travel into outer space, or swim across Lake Ontario, or build a farm house with my bare hands. But maybe I can write some songs. I may not ever play the piano as well as Mozart, but maybe I can push the keys in a certain way at a given time and give one, two, three people chills. I may not ever own a publishing firm or accept a Giller prize, but maybe I can write a few poems, or a short story that someone reads and feels good about because it's a truth they couldn't understand before. And maybe I can put enough money away, not to do everything I want, but a few of the things that would mean a lot to me. There are things I want to see and do. There are things I want to feel, when I'm ready to feel them. If I can't see or do or feel them right now, that's okay. But I will find ways to have the experiences I want to have.

It amazes me that life doesn't drive more people fully mad, rather than simply mad in little, individualistic ways. There is no greater pressure to undertake. There are many definitions in place for what a life should and should not look like. The rest is a separation by desire and circumstance, and a fulfillment by means and ambition.

Today I bought a mixer.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Three)

Yesterday I got a Facebook message from my friend Mindi in Toronto, a girl I met online a few years ago and have only ever met once. She's hosting this show called Lit Kick on Ryerson's radio station once a month, from 6-7 AM. She was wondering if she could read some of my stuff, so I sent her a bunch of poems. I set my alarm and listened to the show in bed. She played some great material and read some great stuff. Listening to it felt good. There's something about college radio stations sending out signals at a certain time of morning or late night that clicks with something inside me. Hearing my stuff read was just icing. I was even inspired enough to download some music and write a poem before falling back to sleep.

I'm heading over to Ian's today to act in a web series he's written and directing called The Horror in the Eidolon Apartmnets, which can so far be seen online at http://www.pulp-horror.com/index.html. He's also asked me to read for a role in a project he wants to do afterward. It's kind of dark stuff to come from such a clean cut young guy.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day Two)

I took the bus out to Value Village this morning with the intent to browse around, but the store was closed because it's Family Day. Thanks, Dalton. That holiday is still fresh, but I wager I'll remember it next year. All the same, it was interesting being on a bus for the first time in quite a while. Fares are half price. I'm meeting up with Jim on Thursday and he's going to drive me around to some thrift stores.

I finally get paid on Wednesday and it's going to indicate the kind of money I'll be bringing in over the next little while. Andrea and I have been planning a Europe trip this summer for a few months. By the looks of ticket prices, I'm going to have to start saving a shitload of cash. I currently have three debts to pay off and bills to pay every month. The new job pays well, but we'll see how well. I really want to make it work, though. I haven't spent nearly enough time overseas.

I'm probably going to lay low today, but I'd like to try and plan something for every day of the week. Tuesday through Thursday are pretty well covered. A bit of partying this weekend would be a nice way to end things off. I'd certainly like to see and do things with people this week. I'd also like to contact some people I haven't talked to in ages.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day One, Part Two)

I've been working on a song lately. I've about finished the computer work. I'm going to call it "Born a Ghost," a reference to a conversation I had recently. My intent this week is to finish it, as well as collect a few things for the music video I want to make. It's going to require visits to a few thrift shops. Basically, I'm looking for used televisions. Small ones that no one wants any more.

It seems that over the last little while I've become fascinated with technology in a whole new way. I still don't know the basics of how electronics work, but I find it interesting how technology becomes obsolete. Especially on my radar right now is the fact that analog television will soon be completely a thing of the past. June 12th is the cut-off date for people to switch to digital. Analog transmissions will no longer be sent by stations. There are small rural communities all across the country that don't have digital service in their areas. Signals will cease hurling through the air.

What will happen to the snow on televisions? Fun fact: when an analog television is not receiving a signal, the snow that appears on the screen is a combination of internal thermal noise caused by agitated electrons in the television itself, electromagnetic fields generated by nearby electronic devices, and microwaves from the cosmic microwave background radiation that runs throughout the universe. That last one, CMB, was discovered in the 1960's by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, winning them the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978. The only model of universal operation that effectively explains CMB is the Big Bang theory.

I'm planning to read a bit of Marshall McLuhan this week. I've had a copy of "The Medium is the Massage" for years now, which is the book he produced in collaboration with graphic artist Quentin Fiore. While it looks very neat I've never actually sat down and read the thing. I did leaf through it last night and read McLuhan's observations on how the human being finds technological extensions into his/her natural environment. The wheel is an extension of the foot, the book an extension of the eye and so on. Most notable, however, is McLuhan's observation that the circuit is an extension of the central nervous system. The other week I was reading a Wired article about these students at MIT who have created what they call a "sixth human sense":



McLuhan was writing about this more than forty years ago. It is quite literally coming to fruition. I'm always interested in seeing how technology will develop in my lifetime. When I was a kid, I was always excited to see the arrival of the year 2000. It felt so significant to be alive at the turn of a millennium, as though we would immediately see a change. And there have been pretty drastic changes to how the world works, even in my own lifetime. I think it's the speed with which we handle information nowadays that makes it feel as though technology is dragging. When will we be wearing computers? When will life not be what we encounter but what we construct? And would that be better?

I'm pondering these ideas in front of a computer screen. In three years time I will have spent half my life with ready access to a wide internal world at my disposal. Without it, I would have been entirely different. With it, I will continue to change, hopefully into someone that won't go obsolete anytime soon.

Gloucester Street Spring Break Journals (Day One)

For the past few years I've had, in effect, "spring break" periods of about a week or so over which I have consistently had experiences that I will probably recall for years to come. Despite being out of school this year, I have a reading week, of sorts, because the House of Commons is taking the week off debating. What has been largely characteristic about these weeks is that I have been pretty well left to my own devices. In 2006, I stayed at Kat's place for a week in March while she took a trip to Spain. In 2007, Andrea and Holly were both out of town, so I had an apartment to myself. Last year was an exception to the general rule as I spent a week NOT being alone and visited Andrea in her hometown for the first time. This year, I'm flying solo again. Andrea left for California for a week. As I'm writing these words, her plane is taking off from the Ottawa airport.

I haven't been able to sleep since she left. I went online and had a look at old journal entries covering weeks like this. 2006 was most notable, because I made a concerted effort to update everyday. The entries turned into brief treatises on what I thought about love. I quite admire some of the observations I made and find others unnecessarily heavy-handed and overly dramatic. Ultimately, though, I find myself glad that they were made. And I'd like to make more.

Maybe I will this week. I would certainly like to get a fair bit of writing done, just a housecleaning of the soul. I find myself sitting with another cat, in another girl's apartment, three years after experiencing what it was like to live completely alone for the first time. Lately I've been finding myself increasingly reliant on Andrea's love to feel happy. She went out of town last weekend and I felt almost powerless in her absence. I couldn't leave the house last Saturday without her. I felt anxious and strange, in a way I rarely do any longer. I miss Andrea. She's the most important thing in the world to me. But I want to feel good about being alone, and I think the only way that's going to happen this week is if I take the opportunity to write.

I'd like to take hold of life this week. Lately, being back at work, I've felt like I've only been fulfilling a function. I've been feeling a bit down because I spend so much time working and I'm very rarely told that I'm doing a good job. I seem to have a complex about such things. If I'm not told that I'm doing well, I assume I'm doing poorly. I think that's part of the reason why school appealed to me so much. I could work and work and finally receive guaranteed feedback about my performance in the form of a grade. I need that bottom line or my mind starts hurling all sorts of negativity at me. And a little bit of that is okay, because I like a challenge, and I like to feel that I can improve and think around barriers and change. But I don't want to be a robot. I want to feel like what I do matters, of course.

The first step is to maybe nail down what matters, to figure out what's important to me and put it into words. That way I can start making better decisions and prioritizing and feeling better about how I'm alive. Last night I was brushing my teeth and I was suddenly and momentarily overwhelmed by how much of a gift life is. That feeling still hits me in waves, three years later, in a girl's apartment with a cat searching for affection. This week, I want to show my appreciation.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Over the past couple of years or so, whenever I've felt insecure, or unwanted, or unappreciated, or unloved, I think about the fact that Andrea Wrobel is in love with me.

And then I wonder what the fuck anyone else ever did with THEIR lives.