Thankfully, I caught the ghost bus this morning. The Viva, which is Toronto/GTA's pseudo-european answer to express bus service in an area only recently cultivated for the housing boom but was previously acres of desolate farmland, is usually jam packed in the morning, especially by the time it gets to Woodbine & Hwy 7.
The ghost bus was characteristically quiet this morning. Not too many occupants, and empty seats. I stretched my legs at leisure and piled the adjacent seats with my so-heavy-could-be-carrying-a-corpse backpack. So there I sat, with bright, sharp morning sunlight streaming in and hiding the fugitive wind of a cold March morning, blaring my John Mayer.
Whether or not you mean to, it's always fun to listen to people's conversations, and hard to miss if they're talking particularly loud. There were two guys talking about...anything and everything. Aah, just my type of conversation (no sarcasm intended). I paid no attention - they were talking about the Bible & hypocrisy (man, is that a tired topic) - but then the words "Loan payback" drifted to my seat and tapped me persuasively on my shoulder. And so the volum on my ipod dropped to a hum.
I didn't care much for the particulars: the amount of his loan or anything like that. These guys were talking about being students and their plans for LIFE. It's been plaguing my own mind for a long while now so I decided to learn what I could.
They were just as green as me, of course, not really veterans in being homeless/penniless students but...their approach was different. Their outlook was what I like to adopt and stick to on good days and that I hopelessly drop and succumb to fear on bad days. Naturally, for me, there are more bad days than good; funny how that works. They figured, whatever happens, happens.
So this was the gist of the conversation:
Boy 1: ....and I've got my OSAP loan and line of credit. I figure I can at least pay off my line of credit
Boy 2: How much is your line of credit?
Boy 1: Oh...like 18, 20K? Yeah, it's not too bad...it's a mountain but it's a doable mountain, you know? Like I could work for a year straight and just pay that shit off so it's not too bad. Like, right now I make all the minimum payments...and there was a point in time where I'd make like a full payment....yeah, me and my parents were really good at that time. We'd talk and all, our relationship got better and I kept paying the full amount for like six, seven months straight. But then...man, I don't even know what happened but I stopped paying full...and I even missed a payment. So my dad got really pissed. Whatever man.
Boy 2: Hah. Shit. So what do you think?
Boy 1: Seriously, man, I don't care. My parents are all like, what the hell are you going to do with your life, you're not getting an actual degree of use, you're going to be homeless and live in a hole. And I'm like, what the hell? How do other people live? Like, there are so many kdis with Arts degrees and they're actually doing stuff with their lives, you know? They figure things out, I will too.
Boy 2: Mhmm...
Boy 1: Like, they work, pay, go to school. They travel. Okay, there's this guy I know. He's in university and this summer he's going to BC 'cuz he's writing this book. Artists and Life Art or something like that. And he's doing this project, you know? And he's like, if I'd come out and help him with research and editing, he'd pay for my flight ticket. Crazy, right? But here he is, doing something with his life. Stuff like that.
Boy 2: For sure man. Like people just get caught up in work and jobs and whatever.
Boy 1: Exactly. There's this girl I know. All she does is work for a year, saves up as much as can. Puts half toward her tuition and then save the rest for traveling. That's all she does: works and travels. And then the next year she goes to school. Like that's amazing you know? She fucking knows how to live her life.
Boy 2: Are you serious? She just...travels?
Boy 1: Yeah man, she takes like 3 or 4 jobs through the year and earns all she can. It's crazy. And so awesome. But you know what, that's the way to be! Like, I'm not worried about stuff. There's no rush for me, and people figure things out, you know? Just because you're an Arts grad, doesn't mean you're going to be broke. It annoys me when people think that way or say that to you.
-----------------------------------------------------
I found this to be...not quite an eye-opener, because I've met and talked to people like this before. But to have this to consider in the morning, when I've been thinking about this all along...to have it come from strangers was...thought-inducing.
Because it's something that is hard for me to grasp or fully apply to my own life. I'm torn between being an idealist and just being...practical. And the biggest struggle for me right now is, yes, the money, yes what the hell am I going to do in the future, but also, when the hell is it going to finally happen. There's honour...doing the right thing at the right time, finishing a degree in four years getting a job, making some money to pay back those loans. And then there's freedom where someone like the aforementioned girl works and lives her gawdamn life!
I don't know the answers to anything yet, and my head was swimming, hearing this. It wasn't a new sentiment. It's been expressed before. But in trying to apply it to my own life, I'm held back by fear. Great and immense, bottomless fear that doesn't usually tinge my behaviour or my thoughts.
A very big part of me is still stuck in that room in Waterloo, worrying about honour and freedom and the cost of pursuing your dreams and the tradeoffs, the sacrifices, the depression, the idealism, the follow-through and the potential for failure. A big part of me is still that timid girl crying over the phone, is still battling with my father, is still lacking coherency and stability. Is still missing in action in a very big way.
And as though my ipod could read my mind (and I swear it does this often), their conversation prophetically ended to the beginning of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. Life is so uncannily stylish, sometimes, it's scary. Take Five indeed.
Showing posts with label john mayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john mayer. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
(Au)Oral 808s
One of the reasons that I love lofts is their ability for excessive echo. To me, nothing is more sexier than an expensive set of best-that-money-can-buy speakers filling an entire space - every nook and cranny, every converging corner of a space - with beats. With music. Those 808s, the lovesounds, the aural manifesto.
It don't matter whether I'm bleeding Jazz or seeping Soul, if I'm in the mood to dance to pseudo-rave or dance to house. Sometimes it is undefinable and guilty of genre tripping. Every gram of music that hits me, I fall in love with. I would be absolutely no where without it. This is one love affair that will possibly never end - I'm in too deep.
Music puts me in a whole other world; it is an alternate universe where everything is logical and flows so well all at the same time. Some people use music to set a mood. I say allow it to respond to your mood. When everything is quiet in my mind, like a gas within a test tube, my mind fills with an orchestra of my most cherished sounds. I crave better headphones to be able to track and feel every single twist and turn, every shot of instrument. It flows in my veins and fills even my breath with a beat. It challenges my pulse, sedates me and prods me at the same time. I've never met such a flighty temptress as music, nor ever had the pleasure to play second fiddle to a more commanding mistress.
My awareness of music started at a very young age, on the merits of the 90s and a very strange relationship with my father. The double advantage of having two mother tongues, two identities made me open my eyes, to a quality of music that transcended mere words or regions. It began in Bahrain, every Wednesday night Hollywood musicals and Bollywood singsong. It manifested into a fondness that solidfied in Queens, New York. It returned to London, just off of Kilburn and trickled through the streets of Hounslow and Southhall in a garishly obvious manner. Then, it was silent for quite a while, awakening every year in the summer of Manhattan. I do not know when music became about textures, flowing in ribbon-like rivers; when it became about a defining stance, or when it transformed into a heady drug.
When I arrvived in Canada, I became very self-conscious about my music. I began to brand and classify. I began to hide it all away from others. I didn't expect many to understand. At first, I didn't understand the true spectrum of the essential listening. There was so much standard music that I hadn't even heard of.
Aural tradition and I slowly picked up the pieces. I understood the great fashioners of rock, the Kurt Cobain, the Stairways, the Doors. My curiosity piqued at trips to the then-Soho with The Ramones playing out of lofts and that's when I knew. It didn't matter if I was listening to A.R. Rehman or AC/DC. It was all just one in the same language, utterly beautiful in its creation.
I'm very close to my music. I love my iPod not because of its quality or its feature (well maybe a little because of that) but just its sheer ability to set my scene anywhere I go. For me, it is like a piece of me. That sounds conceited but when I lost my first iPod to the wiles of this world, I grieved like I would grieve for a friend. I was so lost without it. I had to have my music. It was my only comfort in a world so forgone. I still believe that the thread of music spells out my life.
So where did this all come from? Well, I was sitting on the bus one too-early morning and amidst all the mediocre music I had put on for the sake of it and out of the blue came 3 by 5. I don't know how, but a day that was doomed spun and turned on its head. And I partially attribute that to music for its strength (though Don Miguel Ruiz may have had something to do with the other part).
Because music is so important to me, like anything that loves too deeply, I let it blind me. I couldn't stay open to music because I had such a severe definition of what music should be and do. I became an elitist and expected music to have and be and do something for me other than just being itself. Without even realizing it, I cast out music that I didn't understand (like Rap) and my extreme dislike for the obvious slaying this genre of music was doing to the very definition of music turned into a gavel for my judgement.
But eventually I realized. Music frees all borders. It brings you closer. It's beauty is that it can fit in a genre and then yet completely not conform. It is malleable and undefinable in its definity and possibly the only definite thing about any sort of music one listens to is that it is all subjective. What I like is a direct reflection of me. What someone else likes is a direct reflection of them. It is a characteristic, a consequence but it should not be used as a judgement.
Today, I absolutely revel in its undefinity. Every track that I have, that I have the privilege of being able to to listen to, is a spiritual journey for me. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes healing, sometimes funky. But always it is music.
Other people fall out of love as they grow older. It becomes a collection of the greatest hits or current UK Top 40s for them. It is a trend. Their lives take over. I don't feel that happen yet, with me. Music matters to much for me not to want to explore and hear more than the Singles chart. I wouldn't have it any other way.
May the era of Aural 808s live on.
It don't matter whether I'm bleeding Jazz or seeping Soul, if I'm in the mood to dance to pseudo-rave or dance to house. Sometimes it is undefinable and guilty of genre tripping. Every gram of music that hits me, I fall in love with. I would be absolutely no where without it. This is one love affair that will possibly never end - I'm in too deep.
Music puts me in a whole other world; it is an alternate universe where everything is logical and flows so well all at the same time. Some people use music to set a mood. I say allow it to respond to your mood. When everything is quiet in my mind, like a gas within a test tube, my mind fills with an orchestra of my most cherished sounds. I crave better headphones to be able to track and feel every single twist and turn, every shot of instrument. It flows in my veins and fills even my breath with a beat. It challenges my pulse, sedates me and prods me at the same time. I've never met such a flighty temptress as music, nor ever had the pleasure to play second fiddle to a more commanding mistress.
My awareness of music started at a very young age, on the merits of the 90s and a very strange relationship with my father. The double advantage of having two mother tongues, two identities made me open my eyes, to a quality of music that transcended mere words or regions. It began in Bahrain, every Wednesday night Hollywood musicals and Bollywood singsong. It manifested into a fondness that solidfied in Queens, New York. It returned to London, just off of Kilburn and trickled through the streets of Hounslow and Southhall in a garishly obvious manner. Then, it was silent for quite a while, awakening every year in the summer of Manhattan. I do not know when music became about textures, flowing in ribbon-like rivers; when it became about a defining stance, or when it transformed into a heady drug.
When I arrvived in Canada, I became very self-conscious about my music. I began to brand and classify. I began to hide it all away from others. I didn't expect many to understand. At first, I didn't understand the true spectrum of the essential listening. There was so much standard music that I hadn't even heard of.
Aural tradition and I slowly picked up the pieces. I understood the great fashioners of rock, the Kurt Cobain, the Stairways, the Doors. My curiosity piqued at trips to the then-Soho with The Ramones playing out of lofts and that's when I knew. It didn't matter if I was listening to A.R. Rehman or AC/DC. It was all just one in the same language, utterly beautiful in its creation.
I'm very close to my music. I love my iPod not because of its quality or its feature (well maybe a little because of that) but just its sheer ability to set my scene anywhere I go. For me, it is like a piece of me. That sounds conceited but when I lost my first iPod to the wiles of this world, I grieved like I would grieve for a friend. I was so lost without it. I had to have my music. It was my only comfort in a world so forgone. I still believe that the thread of music spells out my life.
So where did this all come from? Well, I was sitting on the bus one too-early morning and amidst all the mediocre music I had put on for the sake of it and out of the blue came 3 by 5. I don't know how, but a day that was doomed spun and turned on its head. And I partially attribute that to music for its strength (though Don Miguel Ruiz may have had something to do with the other part).
Because music is so important to me, like anything that loves too deeply, I let it blind me. I couldn't stay open to music because I had such a severe definition of what music should be and do. I became an elitist and expected music to have and be and do something for me other than just being itself. Without even realizing it, I cast out music that I didn't understand (like Rap) and my extreme dislike for the obvious slaying this genre of music was doing to the very definition of music turned into a gavel for my judgement.
But eventually I realized. Music frees all borders. It brings you closer. It's beauty is that it can fit in a genre and then yet completely not conform. It is malleable and undefinable in its definity and possibly the only definite thing about any sort of music one listens to is that it is all subjective. What I like is a direct reflection of me. What someone else likes is a direct reflection of them. It is a characteristic, a consequence but it should not be used as a judgement.
Today, I absolutely revel in its undefinity. Every track that I have, that I have the privilege of being able to to listen to, is a spiritual journey for me. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes healing, sometimes funky. But always it is music.
Other people fall out of love as they grow older. It becomes a collection of the greatest hits or current UK Top 40s for them. It is a trend. Their lives take over. I don't feel that happen yet, with me. Music matters to much for me not to want to explore and hear more than the Singles chart. I wouldn't have it any other way.
May the era of Aural 808s live on.
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