laisse-moi nous détruire avant de disparaître

I suppose I've exhausted all the reserves of purpose this blog ever had. My apologies for the perpetual lack of resolution. For now though:

www.borrowedeyes.net - a work in progress

Stop.

Plumbing the depths of Tanis

I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on Saturday and I was immediately reminded of how intimately that movie is linked to my childhood. I remember being a kid and watching Harrison Ford evading poison darts, outrunning gigantic boulders and swinging over bottomless chasms with his whip, and just thinking "wow, I really want to be an archeologist." And so, from ages five to eight, archeology was to be my chosen path in life. I would one day have a sweet day job teaching Old World History to a class filled with swooning female college students, and I'd spend my week-ends pillaging and plundering forgotten tombs/temples/what-have-you, squaring off against scimitar wielding fiends and occult-obsessed Nazis (I guess it never occurred to me that I could potentially be an adventurer if I really wanted to, but certainly not an adventurer that existed in the '30s.)

When I was nine that focus inevitably shifted to the field of paleontology (this is invariably true for any other impressionable youth that happened to catch a certain movie in the summer of '93.) Yes, I was to be a paleontologist. But not the boring kind that sits on a patch of dirt all day dusting sand off of rocks with a tiny brush. No, I'd be the kind of paleontologist that would inevitably get called to an island paradise theme park, because the particularities of said theme park happened to be in sync with my field of expertise. I'm sure you can fill in what happens after.

So I guess the point I'm getting at, and the reason why watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on a Saturday evening wound up bumming the fuck out of me, is that children tend to idealize, romanticize and glorify concepts that they become enthralled with for whatever reason. While the media that planted those seeds was already presenting an overblown hyper-contextualized version of the initial idea, it is us as wildly imaginative kids filled with awe and wonder that run with that idea and make it truly all-encompassing. Now this presents a few problems. The two main ones being that a) you eventually realize that becoming that thing you so desperately want to become requires inordinate amounts of work, chance and time (you may subtract the element of chance if you're one of those 'you can do anything if you really want it' people) or b)that the actual idea (job or field of work in this case..) really isn't as great as the glorified conception of it you had in your head at some point. Now I'm certainly not elucidating any new theory on the child mind or anything of the sort, but here's the thing: I've been worrying a lot lately that I, a 25 year old guy, still hold certain vestiges of that mentality.

Ugh. It's getting late and I'm rambling again. I'll continue with this thought tomorrow or sometime soon. Right now I should get some rest. I start a new café job tomorrow morning that certainly won't be as exciting as I had initially made café jobs out to be in my head. Again, ugh.

listening : sonny rollins - saxophone colossus
reading : miles - miles davis' autobiography

(borrowed eyes, borrowed time)

ours: a sweet and vulgar torch song,
drawn out and in relief,
like the string of bones that line your back.

huddled together, bathed in ash and salt,
you:

held out my eyes so i could see
a raven's nest between the sheets.

covered my ears so i could hear
a siren blaring in the rail-yard.

cut out my tongue so i could speak
the words to sing your praise.

when old men claim that 'rust never sleeps,'
we march them down to the Calvary.

"pre-pay for gas? 'the fuck am I, a fortune teller?"

Yesterday was a rather uneventful Wedneday and I can appreciate that. My week-end was intense, to say the least, and I suppose I’m still feeling mildly exhausted from it.

As I mentioned last week, myself and a few friends drove to Atlanta over the week-end to attend the Scion Rock Fest. Atlanta is about 21 hours away if you factor in brief food/gas stops, so all in all we spent about 42 hours in my Honda Civic between Friday and Sunday. Needless to say, 4 dudes barrelling down the highway in a Civic doesn’t make for the most physically comfortable situation, so sleep was almost nil over those three days. Lack of sleep is a strange thing, as its effects can be wide-ranging and wildly incongruous. Having left Friday at lunch time, we drove straight to Georgia and got there at around 10:30 Saturday morning. We first felt the effects of the sleep deprivation at 6am on Saturday morning when we stopped at a Waffle House somewhere in North (South?) Carolina. Vince had been at the wheel since 2:30am or so, and he’d been looking forward to handing the torch over for some time. There was a consensus amongst the four of us that food was to be had, and Max and I were adamant that we go to an IHOP. So we pressured Vince to keep driving until he found said IHOP from 5am to 6am, at which point he lost patience and told us to shove it, because we were settling for Waffle House. This was a big mistake. The food at Waffle house was sub-par, to say the least. By the time we were done with our meals, all had been afflicted with horrible stomach aches and Vince had attained a near translucent pallor. The first signs of madness were settling in as well, with the four of us giggling non-stop at the sight of this grungy middle-aged lady in a trucker’s cap, bathrobe and crocs, that we had nicknamed ‘the skeleton witch.’ ‘She IS the skeleton witch,’ is the phrase that somehow sent our mind’s off the deep-end.

Somehow, we reached the venue intact (mentally + physically) and we managed to stand and watch nearly twelve hours of ridiculously delicious metal music. The highlights for me were Neurosis (who were so heavy it made your ribcage rattle inside your chest) and Baroness (who were just awesome to watch and are simply one of my favourite bands, period.)

At around midnight, we left the venue and boosted from Atlanta with thinned ranks (Brandon was getting on a flight back to Ottawa the next morning, as he had prior engagements on Sunday.) The rest of us soldiered on despite the emergent lunacy and we reached Ottawa at around 11pm on Sunday night. Again, we barely slept, despite the added comfort of an empty seat. By Sunday morning, our minds were totally gone. Our conversations mostly revolved around how Vince was an ‘archiver’ of things (as I berated him for buying a Jarritos grapefruit juice and not drinking it immediately), or about how hungry Vince was.

Sample dialogue:

JM: Yo Max, on va arrêter manger là, Vince a faim.
Max : Ah, c’est nice. Moi aussi j’ai faim.
JM : Ouin, moi aussi j’ai faim, mais est-ce qu’on peut s’entendre que Vince a faim?
Vince : Hey, fuck you d’essayer de faire passer ça sur mon dos, toi aussi t’as faim.
JM : Vince, calme-toi là. C’est pas parce que t’as faim que t’es obligé d’être impatient avec moi.

Other highlights :

- Vince corralling sea-gulls with the car in a Wal-Mart parking lot
- A terribly ambiguous ‘spirit canyon’ metaphor
- The ridiculous selection of junk food at U.S. corner stores
- The eventual IHOP meal, which was fantastic
- A gas station attendant in Virginia muttering the phrase ‘I seen possum three feet wide and two feet tall. What you hit was a possum.’
- In-car sing-alongs to Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday and assorted others

I know I’m forgetting/leaving out a bunch of things. Really, we just had a fantastic week-end, despite the lack of sleep and retarded amounts of driving. Good music and good times spent with the best of friends. I couldn’t really ask for anything better.

In other news, I start a new job on Monday. It’s still a government job, it’s in the same building I work in now and it’s part of the same ministry, but still, a new job is a new job. The new gig will probably keep me on my toes a lot more, and that’s a good thing.

Anyhow, I’m out for now. Here’s some music to consider:

- Buried Inside – Spoils of Failure
- Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
- Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (get the leak, it’s insanely wonderful)
- Baroness – Red Album
- The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Self-titled
- Malajube - Labyrinthes
- N.A.S.A. - The Spirit of Apollo
- Mastodon - Crack the Skye

now i'm lost in oblivion

I witnessed the most peculiar thing yesterday afternoon walking home from work. Nearing my apartment in Saint-Henri, I began to notice a lot of crows flying around. This was at about 5:00pm, maybe an hour before dusk. When I reached the corner of Saint-Antoine and du Collège, which is pretty much right where I live, the sky had become nearly blackened by circling crows, their collective calls almost deafening. They sat on every inch of tree branch, every roof top, and every lamp post in a five block radius. There must’ve been at least a few thousand of them. The whole scene was slightly unnerving, partly because of the mythology associated with the animal: I mean, crows are generally creepy. It was a strange sight to see a variety of the neighbourhood’s residents gawking at the skies and rooftops, everyone looking up at the curiosity unfolding before them. It’s also funny that in a situation like this, people seem to lose their inhibitions about talking to other people they cross on the streets. People were gathering to discuss what they were seeing and trading theories as to what it could all mean. The stoner clerk from the seedy corner store seemed convinced that the flock (murder?) of crows was an ill-omen. ‘Les animaux le savent quand quelque chose de fucké s’en vient.’ Sure. There was this one woman who preferred to try and attach some religious connotation to the slew of swirling birds, it being Ash Wednesday and all. While I’m a sucker for a good supernatural story, my sceptical side usually trumps whatever impulse I might have to let my imagination run wild. A bit of research has revealed that crows have been known to flock to communal roosts at dusk in the fall and winter. What I (and the other residents of my ‘hood) witnessed last night was the gathering of crows at (what the article I read referred to as) ‘staging areas.’ These are usually located near the roost, and allow the birds to gather en masse before dusk. This pre-gathering appears to have some sort of socializing function among the birds, yet there exists no particular behavioural explanation for it, nor is it known how the social population dynamics function within the event. That’s all well and good, but the timeframe from the explanation doesn’t quite line up with late February (if the winter theory were to be believed, I would’ve seen this happen more frequently over the last few months, yet this has been an isolated occurrence.) I’m curious to see whether or not similar avian shenanigans will be afoot tonight.

Speaking of public gatherings and strange Wednesdays, I encountered a similar situation last week at pretty much the exact same spot. It was lightly snowing that evening and as I was coming home a bit after sundown, I could see that a crowd had gathered on the corner of Saint-Antoine. A fire was raging a few blocks down the street and the sight of it affected me in a rather strange way. Maybe it was an odd combination of the residual dusk light, the slight snowfall, my emotionally fragile state of mind (last Wednesday was a bad day) and the particularly potent blaze, but the whole scene was particularly surreal in quality. It’ rare that something will make me stop in my tracks (and I was in quite the rush to get home) and just affect me on that alien emotional level. To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever seen a fire like that right in front of me. I’d seen smoky buildings before and so on, but here there was an entire structure completely consumed by fire, flames licking wildly at the sky. It just looked downright dangerous, yet also carried this air of untamed elemental beauty (cheesy, but fuck, it was impressive.) Again, it’s odd that it’s been two weeks in a row that particularly odd phenomena have occurred right in the same spot, on the same day and at the same time. Whatever, there’s no need to read too much into this.

I’m pretty excited for tomorrow. I’m taking the day off from work to drive down to Atlanta, Georgia. A couple of friends and I are going to be attending the Scion Rock Fest on Saturday, which has pretty much the greatest line-up ever if you’re into the groovier, stonier end of the Metal spectrum. The full line-up includes about 30 acts, but I’m particularly excited to see Mastodon, Neurosis, High on Fire, Boris, Converge, Torche and Baroness. I don’t listen to that much ‘metal’ anymore, but all of those bands are near the top of my favourite lists for any genre. I mean, fucking Neurosis! Come on! Needless to say, I am beyond stoked. I’d been itching for a good road trip for a while, so to be sharing a car with my band mates for nearly 40 hours over three days should be more than satisfactory. It’ll be like touring, minus the playing shows bit.

Oh and on a semi-related note, for those who might be interested, City of a Hundred Spires will be playing with Malajube in Ottawa at Babylon on March 13th. The show is 15$. Malajube’s new album is pretty good, so we’re pretty excited to be sharing the stage with them.

Ok that’s quite enough. I need to get a bit of work done. Hugs.

the space between words

I think this might be the longest I’ve ever gone without writing a blog post, and we all know that I am certainly not a beacon of regularity when it comes to such things… or anything for that matter.

My exile from the internet world has been paralleled by a general exile from most other things in my life. Back in October, having recently graduated from University, I quit my then government job and tried my hand at aimless wandering/traveling. I quickly came to realize that I wasn’t in the right mindset to undertake something like that by myself and I shortly found refuge back home. I spent a few disillusioned/depressed weeks on the couch playing my new playstation (the result of a depression-fuelled compulsive purchasing spree), eventually (partly) coming to my senses and getting a new apartment in Montreal’s St-Henri neighbourhood. Things since then have been neither good nor bad, though I can’t say I’ve been working on removing myself from whatever quarter-life crisis hole I dug myself into. I’d very much like to pull myself together, yet I’m quite aware that there exists no miracle cure for such things, just small steps. This is a small step.

Over the last few months I’ve isolated myself from a great deal of people and burnt an inordinate number of bridges. I’ve lost touch with many good friends and strained many of my most important relationships. I am difficult, inconsistent and often impenetrable. This is an admittedly limited attempt at opening up (as well as a chance to write more, and I certainly need to write more.)

I am still working a (semi-)miserable civil servant job, but I suppose the lax work environment will allow me to write on a more regular basis. I’m doing this until I come across something more suitable to my tastes and aspirations, as a journalism degree definitely DOES NOT guarantee a journalism job.

I’ll also try to update this page with a weekly picture, seeing as writing isn’t the only one of my hobbies that I’ve been neglecting on my path to mediocrity. I just picked up Tom Ang’s newish book Fundamentals of Photography last week, and I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. I would recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in photography. The book’s approach is particularly interesting in that it attempts to reconcile film and digital photography. It examines methods of blending both mediums for the most effective and artistic practice. The book’s layout is also particularly lovely.

I came across this Adbusters article today that I found fairly interesting. It expressed a lot of the observations I've come to make over the years about so-called 'hipster' culture, yet goes further to posit that "The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new. " The writer's primary argument centers around the assertion that 'hipster' is a counterculture stripped of its subversive element, devoid of radical agenda and therefore wholly unoriginal, self-indulgent and self-perpetuating. I'd argue that 'hipster' was never intended to be a counterculture, and that since its inception it has been merely one of the many subcultures jutting out from the mainstream consumer infrastructure. It operates and thrives on product. It is a peculiar permutation of the same consumerism that drives the upper middle-class; and what's more, it is wholly conscious of this reality. 'Hipster' is not borne from a reactionary spark, it does not operate against an established structure, it is merely a hyper-modern, youth targetting stem of mass-market culture that is actualized by its own sense of self-awareness. To label it a counterculture is to give it too much credit. 'Hipster' culture is not subversive and it never claimed to be. Really, I suppose a similar point is made in that article, but the writer's rhetoric is just jumbled and pointless. Its melodrama and overimportant rambling are actually characteristic of the subculture it attempts to lampoon. But I suppose that might be exactly the type of pretentious post-modern statement the writers at Adbusters are attempting to make. Whatever.

I guess I'm done here for now. Evenin'.

congratulations on the mess you made of things

It's nearly 6am and I am in Boston. I spent the day here yesterday, though it was an odd one. Walked around the Harvard and MIT campuses, saw a movie, chased train tracks. I barely slept. It was warm enough for me to forego the sleeping bag, but I never could find a comfortable position. This is something I must somehow remedy, and sooner rather than later. I think I'm a bit hungry.

People here make me feel dumb for using the Courier font and for knowing very little about AIDS in sub-saharan African. At least I don't wear purple dress shirts with navy blue ties. Fucker.

I'm debating whether to recline it out until the sun rises or simply hit the road right now. Boston is nice but I feel like I should keep going. Why is that? What is it that's dragging me along? What am I chasing? What do I expect/hope to find?

I did find a cheap pair of checkered Airwalk slip-ons at Payless here yesterday, but I didn't get them. Maybe I should wait til the store opens and go buy them. These Eras are falling apart. I should also invest in some wool socks.

Things I learnt today/yesterday:

- F1 grade car wax makes my car look shiny again

- everybody in this city is smarter than I am

- everybody in this city has more ambition, drive and potential than i will ever have

- rachel getting married is a really good movie

- in my memories, cities are sparsely populated, the roads are devoid of cars/traffic and every street is a narrow one

- i have very little will to purchase things when i can't immediately use them

word of the day: 

ah fuck it, my battery is nearly dead.. no time for word of the day.

peace.