Progressively Louder Laughter

About 5 years ago I moved into my own apartment. It was a particular moment in time where having a little bit of space to myself contributed greatly to working a few things out.

A couple months into my solitary living, I went out and bought myself a record player – yep – this is where it all began. From my office in Yorkville, I would walk through the slush and straight to the front of Kops where I would flip through the dollar bins.

What am I? 70 years old? I swear this happened 5 years ago and that the current year is 2018.

Starting a new record collection is pretty exciting – especially if you are okay with digging through endless copies of Venus vs Mars by Wings. You have so much to buy and explore, and if you are okay with a few coffee stained covers and squatting like a back-catcher for hours on end (uff no euphemisms please) you start to build this incredible collection for almost nothing.

It’s pretty great.

But, back to that old place.

If there is anything that I miss about that solitary place (besides never having say you are sorry and never having to close the washroom door- except maybe reverse those two) – it was my big sun-filled kitchen. It had wainscotting that I painted a perfect cream and above that an icy barely-there grey. I replaced the hardware on the cabinets and made a bench for my kitchen table- cushion and all. The main fixture- HOWEVER – was my record player, and my slowly growing collection of records.

On Sunday mornings I would put on a record, make myself breakfast, drink some coffee, wash the dishes and experience resplendent perfection. I would listen to Johnny Cash, Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin. It was my church. Cash would sing about war, and being a sinner and touch my goddamn soul every time. Dusty crushed me with her heartbreak and voice that sounds like melting butter. Aretha – holy fuck – Aretha. She would take me through the range of it ALL and then some.

And if one more person tries to convince me that Ed Sheeran is sooooo talented.

Exhale

I instantly relax a little thinking about that kitchen and my records and the simplicity of washing a coffee cup and listening to ‘I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You’.

That song, that album, that talent – they don’t make ’em like they used to.

To the very best – this one is for Aretha Franklin.

30 Minute Playlist –  Love in a void / Spirit in the dark

 

 

 

 

 

After a whirlwind of a week- or has it been a month? Has it been two months? Three? I’ve stopped keeping track (in my head). After a purposely unknown amount of time, I finally have two beautiful days (in a row) off.

Most recently at work, I’ve felt most like a triage nurse- jumping from one critical situation to another. It appears that somehow mixed in with the urgency and adrenaline and complete communication overload, things have shifted. People I love and care about are shifting, moving, evolving in meaningful ways. Because of that, and after taking a deep breath, I find myself on the other side of a mountain of work and the view is completely different. So much can change in one week and so I am taking this moment to put my hand up and say I am a bit disoriented.

 

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This week I went to see the documentary: Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda. Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, producer, performer. The documentary is essentially about a portrait of an artist with a terminal illness (throat cancer) and his struggle to create meaningful work with the limited amount of time he has left. Sakamoto is an explorer of found sounds, he takes a violin bow to a drum symbol, plays a ravaged tsunami-weathered piano and literally fishes for the pure sound of water trickling through a glacier. Watching him discover sounds is like watching a child see a magic trick for the first time. Pure joy. At one point in the film, he is scoring a quote he loves from the film The Sheltering Sky (he actually did the score for this film originally). His eyes light up as he listens to his creation, but just for a moment. Is it that he has become compelled to switch tracks and listen critically to his own work or is it the grim reality of the very quote he is so fond of? The movie is quite heavy, but his music is beautiful and it is a pleasure to see someone get so excited about sound.

This is the quote from The Sheltering Sky:

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” 

I have started reading Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus. Man, what an education! I have to read it with headphones on and with the album on trial being played in tandem. These old music critics really have such a unique voice. What a treat.

I like this excerpt from an interview with Dylan:

I think I felt some need to balance out the lack of culture I was ingesting. I went out and bought so many records. I have no regrets. I am listening to my live Spiritualized* album and I am congratulating myself. I have great taste.

*terrible band name

^record treasures

^pug; new shoes

30 Minute Playlist – These Days

 

Today I am wearing a summer dress that drapes loosely down to my toes. It gently grazes my skin as I walk from my room to my preferred writing spot: the hammock.

This dress is an act of protest. It is protesting work. It is protesting constrictive clothing. It is protesting the pings. It is protesting what a person should/would wear while working from home. This dress is a vacation dress. It is long and mildly sophisticated and does not evoke the feeling of work or lounge. It is decidedly grown-up. It’s a dress that should be paired with giant sunglasses and a giant sun hat and a cigarette. A counter-balance to so many days that have led to today.

It is the first morning in a while that I have not woken up with a deep sense of dread. No pings. No fires to extinguish. Only a manageable amount of work to be done, and that added buffer of a morning coffee, book, and a hammock.

I happen to find myself reading about a Brazilian Artist, Beatriz Milhazes. In a way it makes me miss the time I spent in Brazil, the sunsets, mountains, the hammock in Itacaré. But most of all I feel proud of my trip there. It all goes into this pile of perspective- the concentrated work verses the concentrated moments of freedom and exploration. And fuck, I have worked.

There is no way to soften this- it has been the weekend from hell. I took a very short break on Saturday to try to see David Byrne. I saw him for 20 minutes and then had to leave to go to work. It was amazing and as I left he started playing Everybody’s Coming To My House. Pings were flooding my phone. All kinds of disappointments were pinging away as I walked away from one of my heroes. This was not the night to disappoint me.

And so the night did not all together disappoint me.

But the next morning…

Uff.

Today though, I have found a sweet spot between the work and freedom. I am wearing a long flowing dress in protest. It represents more. It represents the fact that I will be more than the work that I do today. I have made the ultimate sacrifice for work (David Byrne) and my patience is depleting. I am demanding more. More exploration, more stimulation. More fucking freedom.

Less god-damn idiots pinging away on my fucking phone.

30 Minute Playlist – And She Was

 

^David Byrne watches over us tonight