Sad

I wish that all the people who were sad, all the people who had bad things happen to them that were out of their control, or all the people who just felt sad because of goofy chemical imbalances in their brains, and felt overwhelmed and ashamed of their sadness, understood, even through their sadness, that there were still people who loved them even though they were sad, people who would listen to them and not judge them and try to help them be a little less sad.

Because when sad people become so hopeless that they take their own lives to stop the sadness, the world becomes a sadder place, and the world is sad enough already.

So it is our duty as human beings sharing this planet with other human beings to try to make it a little less sad whenever we can. Tell the people you love that you love them, even when it's hard. Don't hold grudges, because years will go by and you'll eventually realize how much you miss that person. Help those in need whenever possible, through money or time or emotional support or whatever you have to give. Forgive people their trespasses, because they're just slogging through the best way they can. And be kind to each other, because life is not always kind. Thanks.

All the world's a stage

Life is a creative act. It's a piece of performance art that we create with the people around us, saying things, doing things, responding (or not responding) to their responses. The unpredictability of the other players means that even the most mapped out of moments, the most carefully crafted of events, ends up being largely improvised based on our thoughts and emotions and words and actions, and on the thoughts and emotions and words and actions of others, which are the mixed media we use to create this art, to varying degrees of effectiveness.

Setting plays a big role, of course. The time of day or night, the season, the geographic location, the confines of a room or the expanse of the wild: all these factors dictate meaning and mood. Lighting, too, is important for the overall effect, as are the objects around us that we use as props, the cigarette lighters and bottles of beer, the books and cars and cell phones and packs of gum.

A piece that would otherwise be poignant and personal when performed for a single audience member plays differently in front of a large crowd.

Moments of regret are artistic failures. Those times you try to connect with your audience and everything falls flat. Sometimes the plot is convoluted and unclear. Sometimes the dialogue, despite your best intentions, is overwrought and clichéd. Sometimes the character you're playing doesn't suit you (blame it on bad casting). Sometimes you walk your way through the lines others have scripted for you (it's never convincing). And sometimes you find yourself at the mercy of someone else's directorial choices, wondering why on earth you accepted this role, and trying to find a way out of the contract you've agreed to by the mere act of existing in a world where we are all simultaneously the protagonists and each other's bit parts.

There are, however, also moments of uncategorical success. Those pieces that come together, either effortlessly or painstakingly (or a paradoxical combination of both), in a pure, perfect moment of brilliance, when the setting and the lighting and the props and all your thoughts and emotions and words and actions coincide so harmoniously with the thoughts and emotions and words and actions of the other members of your company that you look at each other, and you look out at the audience, and you all know with no uncertainty that this will be remembered for years to come.

And that is why we continue to wake up every day from those plays we create for ourselves alone (that are ultimately of no interest to anyone else), the dreams we dream at night that subconsciously colour our performances that day. Life is practice, and sometimes it is dull, marred by rote line readings and generic role playing. But sometimes it is unexpectedly beautiful and brilliant.

Ah well, and riot on.
   

That's life (in 1988)!

The following bit of writing appeared on page 75 of my Grade 10 English class personal journal. It was handwritten in a large cursive script in black pen. A lot of ink was wasted in this adolescent journal pining and being petty and insecure about things that time has, thankfully, largely erased from my memory, but I'm glad I dedicated at least a couple of pages to recording some positive moments from that awkward and uncharitable period of my life. Being a teenager is mostly the goddamn worst, but it can also be, even if only for the briefest of moments, the best. (If you were stumbling along with me in 1988, thank you. It's cool to see how far we've come. And thank fuck we don't have to do it again.)

As an aside, my fifteen-year-old self had already discovered what was to become my governing life philosophy by ending a fair number of entries with the phrase "C'est la vie!", the slightly more exotic version of the title of this blog. A lot of observations in this journal made me cringe, but that recognition made me smile.



This is my last gifted year. I’m really sad about it. We had such good times together. I can’t think of very many bad times. Here’s a trip down memory lane...

My fainting in English/History class in grade 9, 60th anniversary. God, remember that? My dress and the 50’s room which was the cool hangout. Cheap pop, too!

And our walk through the streets on Friday evening. Holding Jason and Markus’s hands. And Jason lent me his sweater because I was cold.

Math class with Mrs. Fowler. She’s a great teacher, if a little strict.

Grade 10, my birthday present. An overhead which I still have, and a truffle shaped in an Egyptian’s head. The truffle was in about a hundred boxes. It was so sweet. Ryan gave it to me.

Ryan’s “babysitting.” God was I upset!

The trip to the zoo when Ryan gave me my monkey that he so sweetly stole for me.

Going to ROM. God was that ever great!

“Yourgus, Argle L.” instead of “Yourgle, Argus L.”

Our plays. When Norwood screwed up the lights and Jason M. and I were supposed to kiss. And Tazy forgot her violin and messed up our action scene.

Shuman singing the theme from “Mr. Rogers neighbourhood.”

Jeremy’s “Stroker” game.

Win Lose or Draw in Mr. Moir’s geography room.

Mike McRoberts and my 9-er friends.

Dancing close with Ryan.

Hugging everyone good-bye on Christmas.

Passing notes in biology.

Greg Oh snapping my bra straps.

Canada’s Wonderland.

Becoming Vicki’s best friend.

Tuesday morning at the Movies.

Going out with Markus.

Jason Menard asking me out.

Norwood writing me a poem.

Seeing the dead tree.


I love these people!!!

A Pretty Lengthy Essay on Halloween Costumes

The Halloween of my childhood was a simpler time. As a trick-or-treater in the 1970s, you were a ghost or a witch or a superhero in Underoos and homemade cape. You carried an old pillowcase and sometimes an orange Unicef box, and, sure, your mom always threw away the apples due to the potential razor threat, but otherwise you gorged yourself sick on suckers and Tootsie rolls and caramels. There were no bite-sized chocolate bars or tiny bags of chips, and some people actually did hand out apples. Costumes were a secondary consideration, a means to an end: namely, the accumulation of candy.

Dressing up, playing pretend, was something we did every day as children, so Halloween was really not that different from any other day, pillowcases full of candy notwithstanding. In my imagination, I was Lucy shivering in the cold after exiting the wardrobe for the first time, I was Pippi climbing a tree and breaking all the rules a good girl usually followed. Other days I was Nancy solving a mystery, or a Jedi knight using the force, or Spiderman swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper on a silken web that I shot out of my wrist. I was all the things I would never be in real life. 

As adults, we no longer get to play pretend, or when we do, it is deemed somehow subversive (furries and drag queens and sexual role playing, for example). But for one night a year, the venerated All Hallow's Eve, we are allowed to indulge our fantasies and it is considered, in this era of ever-increasing restrictions and considerations, socially acceptable to take on the identity of something you are not. 

I am something of a Halloween purist, in the sense that I believe Halloween costumes should be scary, should be worn to ward off the dead spirits that break their supernatural bonds and walk the night, shambling, slinking, stalking, seeking their earthly prey. I do, however, understand the desire to cast aside the identities we are shackled to in our daily existence and become something greater, something dangerous or wild or provocative, something other.

There is something attractive about otherness, but there is also something inherently dangerous about it. The biological strategy of making generalizations developed as a way of helping us determine our safety (little cat-mostly safe, really big cat-dangerous). This biological tendency to differentiate and categorize works mostly to protect us. Historically it was important that I recognize someone's otherness because if he wasn't related to me, maybe he was going to beat me up and kill my offspring and steal my food. We were all just fighting to survive. 

We no longer need this sort of protection in today's global and "civilized" society, of course, but there it is, hardwired into our DNA. Perhaps the prevalence of costumes that perpetuate cultural stereotypes is not so much a reflection of an individual's inherent racism as it is the desire to become, for one night, something completely foreign, to adopt the identity of an other in order to face our fear of it. We cannot truly understand what it feels like to be in another person's skin, of course, any more than I could have shot those silken strands out of my wrists and swung through the night sky. But I'm not sure that the desire is as malicious or ignorant as some suggest.

This desire also explains the preponderance of so-called "slutty" costumes. (This works both gender ways: men aren't generally encouraged to walk around in loincloths, but Tarzan remains a popular costume.) Who among us does not want to feel sexy and desired? But how many of us are allowed to explore that aspect of our human animal in public? Undergarments should be hidden and our sexual urges should be restrained, or at least relegated to the bedroom, preferably with one monogamous partner. The French maid, the sexy nurse: there is nothing sexy about dusting or changing bedpans. The sexy comes in the subservience. Halloween gives us the opportunity to appear (and possibly behave) in a sexual manner that is typically frowned upon in public settings.    

At its historical base, Halloween is about faking an identity to trick the ghouls who want to steal our souls and drag us with them into the underworld. As adults, the concept of mortality becomes less than abstract, so this taking on of new identities, of playing pretend, becomes an important annual escape from the scary things in life: the darkness of the other, the darkness of sex, the darkness of death. 

Obviously, not every costume needs to be fraught with deeper meaning. Some costumes are crafty or witty or topical or cute. Halloween is also an escape from the solemnity of life. It is an inversion of the natural order of things. It is a time when entry-level retail workers can become dominatrixes, when boys can become girls and girls can become boys, when middle-aged men and women can become superheroes and middle-class girls (and boys) can become princesses. 

Happy Halloween!   

Today is my birthday.

Today is my birthday.

I have reached the seemingly impossible age of 42, which is the age my parents will always be in my head. It's weird as fuck.

Having been an adult for quite a few years now, I think it's safe to say that no one ever really feels like a grown-up. Even those friends of mine with children, people I've known since we were ourselves little more than children, seem fundamentally unchanged by the passing of time.

We pay hydro bills and mortgages, mow the lawn and tip the waiter, make dinner and vacation plans, fill the car up with gas when gas prices are low, file our taxes and do the dishes, help our moms with their computers, watch election debates and the evening news, bring a bottle of wine: all the stuff that responsible adults do.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, however, that rebellious youth still exists in there, beneath the extra weight and the thinning hair and the sensible shoes. Except that now a hangover lasts for two days, and we can't always get time off work, and we need to find a babysitter, and we pack kleenex in our purses, and we buy reading glasses, and we develop fibroids in our uteruses and arthritis in our knees, and we search desperately for a moisturizer with both anti-aging and anti-acne properties, and we start sort of paying attention to Depends undergarments commercials because you never know.

I find myself seeing old people in a new light, when I pass them on the street or sit next to them in restaurants. They are no longer the Other of my youth. Rather, they are themselves youths, but youths caught by Father Time and forced against their will into these withered, sagging, greying bodies, peering out at the world through cataracts, wondering what the fuck happened. What must they think when they look in the mirror?

Looking at the framed photographs of myself around the house, I notice subtle changes. A softening, maybe. It's hard to explain. I still look like me, but, well, older. One cannot defeat the indefatigable progress of aged decrepitude. (Or at least not without surgically altering one's appearance, and I have no desire to turn myself into a botoxed mannequin. At least not yet.)

I don't actively fear death, but I am aware of its existence in a more-than-abstract way. Sometimes I regret not doing something greater with my 40+ years. I wish I had more ambition. I wish I'd been brave enough to be a punk in high school.

But mostly I'm pretty thankful to be the individual that I am today, the girl/woman who still embarks on rock and roll road trips, and goes drinking and dancing on Sundays, and paints her fingernails blue.

I'm thankful for the ability to read and write.

I'm thankful for music and dancing.

I'm thankful for the financial security that means I can leave this two-bit town from time to time and see the world.

I'm thankful for the genes that mean I still get carded every now and then.

I'm thankful for the family that reminds me of the child I was.

I'm thankful for the people in my life who make me think and laugh and learn and love.      

I'm thankful for the wisdom I have accrued thus far, and I look forward to becoming a wizened and wrinkled old woman, with that weird old lady voice that seems inevitable, because it sure as hell won't make a difference if I fight it.

Aging sucks and Death is waiting patiently around some unknown corner to snatch me off to who-knows-where, but I'm alive now. And so are you, if you're reading this. So let's give old Father Time a hearty fuck-you and riot on together until our joints seize up and our blood pressure rises and our hearts weaken and we have to buy motorized wheelchairs with portable oxygen tanks, and then let's riot on some more, because that's fucking life, man. And isn't it amazing?

Harbingers of the death of rock and roll, fear not.

Traffic signals blink yellow because there is no traffic to regulate. Darkened church doorways shelter homeless men in ragged socks. Construction vehicles rust in the abandoned roadwork. The library and the Red Cross building are boarded up and vandalized. Vampires roam the streets (probably).  

Detroit is dying. Or so it would appear.

To get to The Loving Touch, you must drive south on Woodward, past the Fox Theatre and Comerica Park, past the now-defunct Magic Stick, past empty buildings and weeded lots and broken glass and graffiti, until you pass, fittingly, a large cemetery. And then you are in Ferndale, which, while not technically Detroit, is close enough.

The ghost town aura of downtown Detroit, however, has vanished. The Mediterranean restaurant we go to is positively bustling, and the bars near The Loving Touch (itself a former massage parlour) are renovated and graffiti-free. Gentrification is in full effect.    

The show is sold out, and more than half of the patrons in the bar sport black Magic-Markered Xs on the backs of their hands. (Many of them wear Hawaiian shirts like the lead singer is sometimes wont to do.) The other patrons drink tall cans of PBR, the cheapest beer they have. (I drive vodka and water, because I am a grown-up who is concerned about her caloric intake.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXTc3Choroo

Australian band Dune Rats warmed up the enthusiastic underaged crowd with their hyper garage/pop/rock and roll, including a cover of Blister in the Sun with half the lyrics omitted in favour of indiscernible mumbling.

And then the stage went dark and the lightbulb eyes lit up in the giant papier-maché-head replicas of the band members and FIDLAR came on and the place went fucking mental. I had seen the band twice before in Toronto, so I knew what to expect, but I did not expect such chaos from a bunch of kids whose illegal pre-show buzz must surely have worn off by that point. They jumped around like wild things, they shouted and sang, they surfed the crowd, they took their sweat-soaked t-shirts off and lost their cell phones in the frenzy.

There is something about attending a live rock show that no shaky iPhone video or post-show review can ever capture, which is why it's important to just GO, man. You can never truly know what you've missed: the jostling that will result in bruises the next day, the smell of furtive joint-smoking, the shared smiles when the band plays that song that you love that they never play, the feel of other people's sweat on your own bare skin (okay, I can probably do without that last one).  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DBBI-eKH7U

I have never believed in the dire predictions of the death of rock and roll. Rock and roll will never die. Its power might ebb and flow, but as long as there are teenagers, there will be angst. And as long as there is angst, there will be the need for rock and roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2srovkhf0w&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DD2srovkhf0w&has_verified=1

Last night at the FIDLAR show, the youth of America gave me hope for the future. For the future of kids raised on technology who showed me that it IS possible for them to put their phones down and live in the moment, for the future of Detroit, that dying city with the possibility of revival in its embers, and for the future of rock and roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUzYISKKAI

Riot on.

Static Mind

You know that theory about it being important to interact with people with worldviews and philosophies that oppose your own because it will somehow enrich your life and open your mind to new ideas? Fuck that. From now on, I choose to only interact with people who share my core views and values, because you know what? We're goddamn RIGHT, and nothing you can say can ever convince me otherwise. So here are 9 things I will never change my mind about: 

1. White cisgendered males are not the enemy. They are human beings with thoughts and feelings and experiences, just like every other human being. No two individuals will think about and feel and experience life in the same way. 


2. The environment is more important than the economy. The economy can adapt; the environment cannot. 


3. Artists can say and do whatever they want in their art, even (especially) if some people consider it offensive. 


4. Public figures do not automatically have the responsibility of being role models. They are people, and should be allowed to fuck up. Fucking up is how we learn and grow.


5. This new trend of identifying "triggers" is more damaging than protective. Learning to deal with your own personal trauma involves actively confronting those triggers, not running away from them because they make you uncomfortable. 


6. Spelling and grammar and punctuation are important because communication is important. You don't always have to follow the rules (sometimes breaking the rules is more effective than following them), but the devolution of language into cartoon symbols is an intellectual step backward.


7. Relying on technology instead of your own brain will have devastating effects in the future. Technology should be used as a tool, not a brain substitute.


8. Laugh tracks are for people who are too stupid to decide for themselves what's funny and what isn't.


9. All spiders want to kill me. Riot on.