You Can’t Be Everything To Everybody (Actually You Can, But It’s Boring)
I like jazz music, even though I am not an authority on the genre. Heck, I like all genres of music. I may not have a lot of pure country & western on my shelf but without C&W a lot of the music I love (and do have on the shelf) would not exist. Period. Music, if it’s possible to talk about it in such broad terms, is a wide-spanning ecosystem where every genre and sub-genre makes an eventual impact on the whole [insert pebble/ocean analogy here].
There is a jazz radio station in Toronto that I listen to (that is, when I want to listen to jazz), named Jazz.FM91 – or, less formally, JazzFM. They have some great programming (The Big Band Show with Glen Woodcock is a fave) and some great hosts (Heather Bambrick, Walter Venafro). I even like the guy who reads the news in the morning (Tim Keele, with that old-school newsman voice). Aside from a couple of annoyances, there wasn’t much to dislike.
The problem is, similar to what plagues public broadcasters, in trying to appeal to a wide audience (and it should be noted that JazzFM is supported by donations) they end up playing a lot of crap which makes me lunge for the remote to change the channel: Joni Mitchell doing jazz, jazz musicians covering Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello doing “swing” versions of his own songs. Overall, an overdependence on middle-of-the-road lyrical jazz of the sort that elevator manufacturers would consider too ironic to use as background music.
It used to be easy to avoid the bad programming: namely, Ralph Benmurgui’s morning show (the man insists on sucking all the oxygen out of the control room…seriously, if someone mentioned that a 737 hit a dog on a runway in Mexico, Benmurgui would instantly quip: “You know, I was in this great airport in Puerto Vallarta last winter where they served this wonderful coffee! And let me just say to our Mexican listeners: ¡Le deseamos el mejor!“) and their choice of the syndicated Sunday morning program, Radio Deluxe (where hosts John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey play an assortment of jazz classics performed almost soley by – wait for it – John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey! Here’s a lesson to all you starving artists: if those royalty cheques aren’t coming in fast enough, just start a show where you can program your own work).
However, lately, outside of these distractions I’ve had to lunge for the remote more and more. JazzFM is becoming synonymous with all the clichés that keep people under the age of 55 from listening (or considering listening) to jazz: the first, that “jazz” is a never-ending series of earnestly pedantic covers of songs such as “I Can See Clearly Now” and “Aguas de Marco”. The second, that everything you need to program a jazz-based radio station is contained in the Blue Note CD box set (seriously: I pulled this out last year and began listening to all 5 CDs, and I had to stop because I realized this was practically half of JazzFM’s playlist).
In the end, I fear JazzFM is becoming just another Top-40/Oldies radio station. This is great news for Michael Bublé and Diana Krall – can anyone name an original composition either of them has written? But what of people who’ve never experienced anything but the mention of Oscar Peterson’s name? Did Miles Davis stop creating music after 1960? In case anyone from the station is reading this (or not), I’m not asking for the Jolly Roger to be flown over the JazzFM building – what I’m asking is whether the middle of the road (which is where they seem to be sitting) needs to be so damned narrow.
It Was a Dark and Mysterious Person
“You are a dark and mysterious person.” said my friend Simon.
We were chatting on Facebook and he had mentioned how closely we had rated to one another’s tastes on the movie-rating application, Flixster. That’s when I told him I’d deleted it a few months ago: the application, my ratings, my mini-reviews, my Flixster identity. I also did the same for the iLike application (also on Facebook), which rates music. And I did the same on the Internet Movie Database: I simply removed myself (the opinions, not my professional identity).
I needed to clean house, to remove clutter, and – most importantly – to get away from being an armchair critic. There are too many people playing “expert” out there and I didn’t want to be one of them because it becomes a game of oneupmanship. This isn’t even to mention the fact that all of the Facebook applications keep information on file about you, that, while you are wittily commenting on the 2nd season of MadMen, you are becoming a company’s marketing demographic.
I wanted no part in it. I also began to feel that, the more I expressed my opinions – witty or not, bitter or not, funny or not – the smaller I felt. This is not to criticize self-expression, but rather to say that I became sensitive to the format I chose.
I’d rather bitch about things here, on my doorstep, or on Twitter, than simply be another anonymous puppy yelping on yet another movie/music/placenamehere database.
It’s also healthy to eliminate your identity from time to time, not unlike the transformational qualities of a forest fire: clearing the brush and the remnants of what is dead but still lingering.
(disclosure: I’m a Scorpio and this sort of thing comes naturally to me, and no, I have no problem saying something like “I’m a Scorpio.”)
Photo: The Other Oxford Street
Photo: Antwerp – Church Reflected #3
Impetus
Since the beginning of 2010 (I still can’t adjust to typing that without staring out the window to see if there are flying cars in the sky) I’ve felt change is imminent for me. Whereas last year seemed to be a boat load of life coming straight at me, the inverse seems to be conjuring its way into this year – I feel more connected to surroundings, and better able to manipulate (if I may use the word manipulate in the best possible way) the outside world, the not I (to quote Krishnamurti).
This is not to say that I’ve got all of the problems with life, the world, or myself sorted out (ha!), but rather I feel a greater impetus to direct energy outward to affect change; to raise my own hurdles rather than wait for life to throw me hers.
I just don’t know the details of how this energy will manifest yet – I’m listening intently. Perhaps small steps: publishing my short fiction to this here blog, and/or showcasing others’? Alternately, putting a cap in this blog entirely and moving on to something different. Shifting to work more with my own media rather than with others’. Sparks. You see: the light of change. Inarticulate still, but pulsing with activity, from the inside out.
Photo: Millennium Bridge Self-Portrait
Photo: Nassau Street
Tripping
So we went on a trip, an idea first posited by Ingrid which we polished (oh who am I kidding, she polished – I was just a witness) into an eleven-day, three-city, three-country vacation at the end of 2009.
London was the primary location seeing as our friend Shannon (member of the Z-Rays and now a music teacher) had moved there a couple of years ago – it’s always easier when you have a friend in a strange town, especially when it’s a massive place like London. Ingrid had gone there for a visit in late-Spring (it was during this time that we bought our first house…without her ever having walked into it). In the summer, Shannon came over and stayed with us while we renovated and had the electrical pulled out. It only seemed natural that she be the person we see to end the year (and decade) and since I’d never been to London, it was the perfect choice.
Thing is, it was also an opportunity for me to visit relatives in Holland – and when I say “relatives”, I specifically mean my second cousin who lives outside the city of Leiden (notable, aside from its aged beauty, for its university – the second oldest in Europe).
Seeing as how the Eurostar train made its way from England to the continent via Brussels, Belgium, it occurred to me that it would be an excellent reason to check out a city I’d always wanted to investigate: Antwerp. Why Antwerp? Well…it’s between London and Leiden and neither Ingrid nor I had ever been there, with the exception of a couple of instances in past visits when I had to switch trains at Antwerpen Centraal station. The city always looked like a gothic gem from the station, which is quite a complement seeing as Antwerpen Centraal is one of the most beautiful train stations in the world – seriously, it’s dubbed “The Railway Cathedral” and worth the trip, if only just as a stopover.
The plan was set. And, regardless of the various chaotic things happening around (thankfully not to) us (the halted airline terrorist attack on Christmas, the stranded Eurostar trains just before then, a snowstorm in the UK just as we were leaving) it all went remarkably well, save for one missed train to The Hague.
Antwerp is a wonderful place to visit, with a mind-blowing mix of architectural styles, including some stunning Art Deco neighbourhoods. We stayed at the Mabuhay Lodgings, a conveniently located and very comfortable B&B with two very gracious hosts (and their two very cute cats). It’s a gorgeous city with much to offer and I look forward to spending more time there. I tried speaking Dutch, but between my elementary knowledge of the language and the dialect spoken in Antwerp, it was easier just speaking English.
Leiden, in the province of South Holland, is a spiritual home-away-from-home for me. 15 years ago I had stayed with my cousin and her husband, just outside of Leiden (in the village of Zoeterwoude), after I’d graduated from college. Like Antwerp, we were a little rushed for time (the aim was to celebrate New Year’s with our friend in London), but it was great to see the city again and spend time with my cousin (not to mention introducing Ingrid to her and her friends in the neighbourhood). We both look forward to returning, particularly when it’s warmer. If there was one drawback to our trip, it’s that it was unseasonably cold at times (and one can only flex one’s Canadian-ness in the cold so often before you just want to wimp out and stay inside all day).
London surprised me. It was the one place I had no ideas or preconceptions about – I never had anything against it, but alternately never had much of an understanding about it beyond the clichés. It’s a big, bustling, maze-like place which still somehow retains a convivial vibe; facing colder-than-normal temperatures while we navigated from place to place, I never felt the “silent sneer” you get from people in Toronto. I loved the pubs, I loved the beer, I loved Brick Lane (which reminds me of Kensington Market), I loved (again) the architecture, and was happy to have visited the Tate Modern (which had – coincidentally – curated a retrospective of artist Theo van Doesburg at the Stedelijk Museum in Leiden while we were there) as well as other sites and sights of interest. And yes, we even managed to hop onto one of the few remaining Routemaster buses in operation. We also met some of Shannon’s friends and enjoyed a lovely Sunday roast with them at the Carpenter’s Arms (a pub the notorious Kray brothers had bought for their mother). So much more to say, but that’s it in a nutshell.
Not bad for eleven days (mind you, at least one full day was spent travelling). Photos to follow…
2009: This is Naught a Love Song
It wasn’t even close to New Year’s Eve before Ingrid and I were swearing that 2009 could not end fast enough, like a vampire-queen freshly staked that we wished would stop spitting blood and just fucking die already.
It’s not that it was such a *bad* year, so much as it was filled with such a dense and dramatic amount of events that by early December I simply had no room left in my head; my brain’s capacity was supersaturated with fragments of information without the ability to reflect anymore (reflection, I feel, being the way we digest information, the same way our stomach digests food in order to allow more food to come later). I tell you: such a state of mind is not healthy.
Among the highlights of 2009, this last year of the naughts: I completed work on two feature films, one MoW (movie-of-the-week), bought a house (without Ingrid being in the same country at the time!), moved into said house, started teaching post-graduate studies in film post production, and completed a major revision on my novel (which I’m becoming very happy with). Lastly, we managed to insert a three-country whirlwind vacation after Christmas. I must say, there was some cruel justice in having abandoned the country while the decade died. And what a decade it was…
Our friend, Shannon, who we met in London, upon hearing how things had gone for us in 2009, showed no surprise. “It’s the Year of the Ox.” she said “I can’t wait for it to end!”. According to Shannon, Years of the Ox are denoted by their eschewing of joy and relaxation for the throes of head-down labour and development. I’m not exactly sure how accurate this is – was it this bad twelve years ago, the last time there was an Oxen year? I ask myself – but one thing I do know: I certainly don’t want to go through another Year of the Ox for another twelve years.
And so, to my readers, and to those just visiting, when I say “Happy 2010” I really mean it. The Oxen year is not quite over yet – the Chinese New Year is not until February 14th (at which point, 2010 will be the Year of the Tiger). I wish you all the best for the coming year, and offer the following synopsis, taken from a website who took it from a website, who took it from another website (so it must be true):
Drama, intensity, change and travel will be the keywords for 2010. Unfortunately, world conflicts and disasters tend to feature during Tiger years also, so it won’t be a dull 12 months for anyone. The Year of the Tiger will bring far reaching changes for everyone. New inventions and incredible technological advances have a good chance of occurring. For all of the Chinese horoscope signs, this year is one to be active – seizing opportunities and making the most of our personal and very individual talents. Everything happens quickly and dramatically in a Tiger year – blink and you could miss an important chance of a lifetime!