Once again…..I want to stay

Good god damn what an INCREDIBLE trip this has already been. Leaving Manhattan remains one of the hardest things in the world to do.

Manhattan is an incredible place. Truly incredible. I have always believed it was one of the most impressive places on earth, and the first time I came here back in 2009, I was in awe at how at home I felt. How truly easy it was to breathe and be amazing here. By the time this afternoon hit, Lenny and I were jay-walking like locals, chatting up firemen, and even giving directions. HA! Splendid.

I urge anyone who has yet to go to New York City to go. It is all at once the most powerful, stimulating, awe-inspiring, beautiful, friendly place I have ever been. I want to go there again already. And never come back.

When we first crested the George Washington Bridge and I saw the cluster of buildings from midtown west to downtown off in the distance, I lost my marbles as only I can. “AAAH!! Its Manhattan!! We did it Lenny!! Holy shit!!”. This was a big coup for me. I have recently been faced, through circumstances I never saw coming, with the possibility of growing old alone because of my decision to not have children. It never occurred to me that the decision to go childless may cost me. And being childless, there is no one to be there and take care of you when you’re an old bitty. Kinda hit me like tonne of bricks: shit…I could conceivably end up by myself. What the fuck…

The timing of this realization couldn’t have been more perfect because this trip was RIGHT around the corner. My first voyage as a solo traveller (before you superfans get in an uproar, I of course mean ASIDE from Lenny…who was amazing in NYC and will be the subject of a fawning shout out in a paragraph or two) and a challenging one at that. The drive alone was a feat of strength. Did it on no sleep the way there and did it after hours of strolling Manhattan and drinking my weight in beer the night before on the way back. I showed myself one hell of a good time. One hell of a birthday.

That’s another thing, this was the first time I didn’t organize some kind of pageant for my birthday. The first year I didn’t require validation from my friends in the form of celebration. It was just me, my dog, and my favorite place in the whole world. And it was stellar.

Little things too, like during the drive when I could sing along to all the shit on the CDs I brought. On the way back to Montreal today, I had to do the last three hours of the drive in the dark and through a fair bit of rain. It was tiring so I turned to John and Paul to help make the time pass with some dignity and maybe even a profound moment or two. I listened to a John Lennon compilation I had fashioned together a few years ago. On it, I put a few songs that were either great covers of his stuff or songs that had been written about him. Empty Garden by Elton John FLOORED me. After just having been on John Lennon’s doorstep, this song was so moving I became emotional while belting it unashamed. My body erupted in goosebumps and when this line came:

Who lived there?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop.
Now we pray for rain, and with every drop that falls
We hear, we hear your name…..

…I bawled. Sang and bawled. It was such an honest and impossible to deny emotional moment for me. I feel as my fears shed with every victory, my body, heart, and mind feel things ten times stronger. And THAT in turn makes ME ten times stronger.

And next to me in the passenger seat, strapped in with his little doggy seatbelt, travel weary but absolutely game, my little companion. Never in the history of domesticated dogs has there been one who can take what comes at him with such a staggering lack of complaints like Lenny can. All he requires is my presence and good energy. If both those things are accounted for, he is game. He’ll sleep when he’s dead, let’s get this show on the road! Unreal. What a perfect animal for me.

Now as much as I love Manhattan, it does not begin to compare with how much Manhattan loves Lenny. Everyone from tourists to joggers to cops to firemen to construction workers to hipsters to the old immigrant women who ran the bagel shop and barely spoke english to the hotel maids to the Central Park tourists to the Handsome Cab drivers were genuinely taken with him. I lost count after 50 but I would wager there are at least 100 strangers in the Manhattan area with pictures of Lenny on their phones. No joke.The kid went viral. And posed for every one of them like a little pro. My hunch that he would be well received in NYC proved to be underestimated. I like to think that is a very very good sign of things to come.

The debacle at the Lennon memorial was especially unbelievable. It is a very popular tourist spot and I had chosen to park it with Lenny on a bench in front of the memorial, not as a marketing ploy, but because it was my birthday and the one thing I wanted to do for my birthday this year was pass some time in Strawberry Fields with Lenny. He was wearing his little red bow tie in honor of my birthday and this, coupled with what he already has going on, proved to be like a big electric shock to anyone who walked by.

In no time, we were literally surrounded by people taking pictures of him. At the absolute heat of the swarming, I counted 20 cameras. The group had to have been 50 deep at its height. It was almost overwhelming. One of the paparazzo offered me $500 for him right on the spot. Incredible. I felt like Kit Culkin.

After all this, we went to a dog friendly bar called VON in NoHo and the kid slept on my lap while I drank happy hour beer and wrote. I churned out 10 pages of handwritten shit while we were there. Haven’t written that much in a long time. Especially in one sitting. It felt really good. And really natural. I love that.

We  rounded out my birthday evening by buying a NY Pizza and taking it back to the room where I proceeded to get AH-Wasted off American beer and watch absolutely terrible movies (Vince Vaughn…please stop). It occurred to me that aside from the conversations I had during the day with people in the city about my dog, I had only communicated with Lenny for nearly two straight days. I had spent that whole time listening to good music, exploring, and occasionally telling my dog how good he was. And it felt great.

So yeah, I’m not going to have any kids to keep me company when I am silver haired…but that’s ok. I’m actually pretty neat-o all on my own. Even after Lenny has left me (knock on wood and please don’t let it be for at least another 14 years), I will still have music, the drink, and my penchant for getting up to my elbows in crazy ideas. The three of them together continue to be fruitful so I don’t have to be.

And that works for me. That will be just fine.

Call me old fashioned….

So I have this gig where I review bands when they play live.

For a long time it was a dream of mine to review concerts because I remember thinking when I was at them that it was as close as I was ever going to get to real magic. And I still feel that way. When you are at a concert, a good one, there is simply nothing more inspiring than seeing a musician or a group of musicians making music happen live. When you’re at a good show, you can actually witness someone get lost to making music happen. Its stunning. And even though I have absolutely no musical talent, I knew that music was going to be a big part of why I loved life for the entirety of it.

Here’s the rub: once I started writing about it, I started to get a little cynical. I didn’t mean to; in fact in the beginning I was even accused of being too complimentary all the time…by a world-class prick who shall remain nameless and who I unfortunately let have sex with me too many times. Like more than once. Jesus….I just shuddered. But as time went on and I attempted to break out of my comfort zone and get caught up in “hype” and “buzz” and go see bands that people were talking about, I realized that there was a HUGE thing missing from most of what is out there now. That thing: swagger. Call me old-fashioned, but what happened to the guy who can’t do ANYTHING but play music and get wasted? Seriously, what happened to that guy? Cause all I see is cocky, extroverted, hipster, image junkies who have been told one too many times that they are the “next big thing”. As soon as you tell someone with no talent that they are amazing, they will become absolutely horrible. And apparently, people will want to hear them butcher music in sell out crowds.

Now before I continue, let me tell you that whatever “way back machine” codger names you have to call me will pale in comparison with the vitriol my left brain has been torturing me with as I have attempted to stay current despite a crippling nausea at hearing the gutless and meaningless shit that has been dubbed the ever-popular and *cough* “valid” indie rock. But guys seriously…are you kidding me with this shit?

I will refrain from divulging who the band I saw tonight that inspired this post was because I want to separate my Bridget brain farts from my job that I take seriously for a site I respect. Not to mention my aforementioned lack of musical ability and how it makes me no real expert on the subject of how to make music. But I found myself numb from the waist down during the whole performance. And though I don’t think I was the only one, for the most part people seemed to be right wrapped up. What has happened to me? Why can’t I just dig on a good time where music is concerned? After all, I used to love the Spice Girls. And it sure wasn’t because of their swagger.

But here it is: when you taste the swagger, when you know it’s there and what it looks like and what it feels like, you can’t STAND sitting through something that doesn’t have it. And you can’t get behind it either. Cause really why bother? Honestly. If you know swagger exists, why would you settle for anything less? Boredom? Laziness? Too much Jager? What is it? I really want to know. What makes so many people settle for cardboard cutouts of prime rib when they could have the real thing?

I came home and shotgunned a few Old Milwaukees. And then I put on the Rolling Stones. Yeah ok, I sound old. Like Korea vet old. But fuck you guys, I know a big meaty feast when I see one. And I sure as hell ain’t interested in anything less. I want a band who has met the devil himself to write me a song about him and all he has done and call it “Sympathy”. I want tendons and bone and gristle. I want spit on the mic and sweat on the floor and blood on the guitar strings. I want my front man to be wearing the shirt that belonged to the groupie he just screwed and not an intentionally ironic Miami Vice jacket with scrunched sleeves. Don’t put me on, turn me on. THAT is rock n roll, kids.

Thank god for good beer and vinyl. And songs about the Devil sung by men who have actually met him. And brown sugar and midnight ramblers and king bees. Thank goodness for you.

Sincerely,

Warm blooded women everywhere.

He takes after his mother

Its funny when you live with an animal for a while, you start to adopt each others’ strange little habits. Mostly its the dog dissolving those of the human it is sharing space with. I used to work with dogs for a living as a daycare worker at the most popular and successful dog daycare in Calgary. We would get close to 40 dogs a day and each one of them came with a fully developed personality and a set of tendencies to go with them.

What became most interesting is getting to know their owners as they became more regular customers and drawing the line between the dog and their people. There were some that just weren’t a good match; either their owner bought them for the wrong reason or, in very rare cases, were emotionally unavailable and the dog became a crumbling mess of nerves that you couldn’t dig a personality out of with a shovel. But for the most part, these were pampered pets who were nurtured like little human individuals and as such, had adopted a great deal of the mannerisms of the people they lived with. It was comical. And at times, a little ridiculous.

You would think after viewing this on a daily basis would lead me to be able to see through this practice and allow my dog to grow into whoever he was destined to be. Well, for the most part I feel I have. The little bastard trumps me in most categories involving valour, courage, instinct, and most often social prowess and sex life. I also didn’t make him gay, though I have no problem with it. I did however give him his signature look with a pair of groomers clippers left over from my days as a dog barber and this look does complement my chosen propensity towards tour t-shirts and converse. People often say we look like we belong on a Fido commercial, a comment which all at once repulses me and delights me. A perverse fetish of mine, that repulsive delight thing. I digress…

Aside from his appearance and my hippy mother indulgence of all his bad habits and overall hatred of authority, I have done little to attach my beliefs or personality onto him. I am much too weary of myself to attempt to live with two of me. But as we went on our evening walk tonight, I saw that he may have picked up more from me than I thought.

We were taking our normal walk by the sea but due to daylight savings being but weeks away, we are losing more daylight every night and are now unable to make it all the way to our beach before sundown. So now we must turn around at Denman street and walk up Davie to get home. Usually when we take this route it means we are going to the pet store to get Lenny a refill of his “little breed” kibble, a practice which always results in Lennon getting a cookie from the lady at the till. The kid is exceptionally bright, something I didn’t expect from a Pomeranian due to years of small dog bigotry while rasing black labs, and he makes permanent note of every store in the west end that he has been successful at getting cookies from. Even if it just happens once.

So here we were, walking up Davie with no need for kibble. So we got to the pet store and he beelined for the door as always. I had to tell him “not tonight, dude” and pull him along. He fought me and dug his feet in to the sidewalk. I stopped and looked back. “Not tonight kid, let’s go”, I ventured as I gave him another yank. This time he begrudgingly came with me but walked sideways as his eyes stayed locked on the pet store door. It was like pulling a kid who’s having a tantrum through the mall, he was whining, trying to plant his feet, and longingly craning his neck to look in the pet store door which kept opening as people who apparently loved their dogs more than he thought I did exited with their pets.

It didn’t take long for mania to strike him. He turned on the leash, grabbing it in his mouth and thrashing it publicly as I attempted to pull him further up the sidewalk. This is something he does every now and then when he gets a little hot under the collar and grows tired of what I assume he thinks is a charade he allows by letting me leash him when he essentially thinks he is in charge, but today it was especially violent. His voice reached this fever pitch of hysteria that I had never heard. I finally had to yank the leash out of his mouth and give him our safety word for public tantrums “ENOUGH!!”. He stopped and with ears down he began to walk in the direction I wanted him to; this compliance was short-lived. He began getting overly meticulous about marking things on the way home. He knows this frustrates me and makes it more of a precious process when the walk has not gone to his liking. This is exhausting on a good day let alone directly following a public display such as the one we had just gone through.

I tried to get him moving but he was like a granite rock. I finally had enough and picked him up. You should have seen his face, like Hannibal Lecter if Dahmer took the last kidney at the Thanksgiving table. Madness. I carried him for a bit and then put him back down as I have found a short bout of humiliation usually buys me a few blocks of good behaviour. But not today. Now it seems he felt it was time to start plain ol’ getting into shit. He ate everything he could find off the ground: half eaten hot dog buns, used tissues, cigarette butts…seriously, cigarette butts? There is no way that tastes good. This was blind revenge. And suddenly I knew why, like I was looking in some kind of simian fun house mirror; he was having an addiction fit. The kid was addicted to the pet store cookie routine and I had brazenly denied him his fix.

How could a creature who constantly studies the world looking for opportunities for gratification not notice the similar traits in the human he lives with? How do I know he notices? Because the pet store wasn’t the only place he tried to enter on impulse…he also instinctively made a move to walk into both liquor stores we passed. Never got cookies at either of them…but his mommy did. Plenty of them. Oh yeah….we are fiends.

I remember shortly after I moved to Vancouver, I ran out of beer on a particularly grand party weekend. I decided to walk the several blocks to the neighborhood liquor store to restock for round two. But when I got there, I learned the hard and fast lesson learned at least three times by every new BC resident formerly from Alberta: these punk ass BC Liquor Stores are closed on Sundays. Mother. Fucker. Panic struck like a leather belt to the face. I can’t be dry for the remainder of the weekend. Oh god.

I scurried home and pulled through my cupboards looking for anything I could throw down the hatch so as not to lose my momentum. People were enjoying their forethought stashes in my living room and I was feeling the ugly tinny starkness of sobriety clawing back into me like a fucking tick. This, I’m afraid to say, brought out an animal in me that I seldomly care to admit pays rent in the dingiest corner suite of my brain. Edgy and desperate, I began making a shit mix out of the 1cm drippings left in each of the liquor bottles in our cupboard. The result tasted like the inside of a badger’s ass and subsequently made my mouth taste like I had tongued one all night. Madness. Kinda like eating cigarette butts off the ground in protest. Kinda.

So yeah…I made my kid into an addict for gratification at the hands of strangers for free cookies. Losing his cool is now an option to ensure he gets this taste. Incredible. I could have snapped him out of it I suppose. I could break the cycle. I could intervene. But I believe our legacy is not only going to be about adventure, impulse, affection, and rock n roll, but also about enabling. He leads me to the wine store judgement free, and I let him delight the pet store girl into giving him milk bones. And the bank security guard, the guy who runs the video store, and the lady in the motorized cart who hangs out outside the market, none of which he will let me pass by without stopping lest I endure a public nic fit that would make one of the Gallagher brothers blush.

What can I say, the kid takes after his mother. Bless him.

For a minute there…

This shaping up thing hasn’t been without its share of lessons. You can’t discover a pretty reflection scot free, really. Life will find a way to ensure that you know exactly what you have and exactly how you got it and exactly how it feels to be on all sides of the coin.

This year has been such a doozie. So many things have happened. To me and because of me. I have tried to march forward despite more than a few times stuck in the mud. Its been a pretty cool vision of what I can do if I set my mind to it. Becoming clear about who I am and what I want has been incredibly rewarding. It has opened me up like a dam that has been busting at the seams for years. But lying about this kind of thing was WAY easier because it came at less of a price. When you concoct your truth, you are in control of it. When you acknowledge the truth as an entity you have no control over, it becomes a great deal more terrifying. And volatile. And fragile. And so do you.

It was hard for me for a long time to admit what I longed for, partially because I feared ridicule or other people’s opinions of those desires. But mostly, I feared losing myself to that longing. I saw people lose their minds after losing something they had invested in. Something they had been vulnerable enough to admit wanting. I remember thinking “why would you do that? If the chances are you’re just going to lose it anyway? What’s the point?”. In my mind, a guard let down was an accident waiting to happen. And I wanted no part of it.

This practice, needless to say, got me essentially nowhere but I never got really hurt or disappointed. So as far as I was concerned, that was a win. I saw people I got close to who I disappointed or held at an arm’s length or in most cases lied to fall apart when they realized that they were labouring on a misapprehension. And I had guilt but no real sympathy. Because, in my mind, they had brought it on themselves by laying their underbelly to the sky.

When this year began, it began with me getting the hell out of dodge. In all respects. Out of a relationship with a lunatic who made me feel like I had to fight for what I believed in, the official first time that has happened, and it made me realize that if I kept lying about what I wanted, my freedom was up for grabs to the first person who felt they could corral me into submission. And it never even OCCURRED to me that lying about what I wanted was submission at all. To me it was the definition of control. And I was fucking wrong. So once I broke free from that complete and utter maniac, after many hard-fought and won battles on my own behalf, I knew I was a changed woman. And the changes kept coming.

Sure I chose to kill whatever fear-based demon blood was still in me by crawling inside a chardonnay bottle and wrecking havoc. I made some wackadoo decisions for four months there, but they were MY decisions. I was taking control. Truthfully too. It may not have been my finest hour on paper and to the untrained eye, but in reality, it was my first period of conscious decision-making. And it felt good. It got out of hand though and that when I made the conscious decision to change my direction for the better and acknowledge whole-heartedly who I wanted to be.

I remember feeling that I had gotten away with something. That I was obscenely lucky to have been able to have this epiphany unscathed after everything I had done in my past. After all the bind decisions that had hurt so many people. Wasn’t I lucky to still have the freedom to take that particular bull by the horns and become a happy, nice person when there were still people out there licking wounds I inflicted. I will say that this was not lost on me, so I had that going for me. Which is nice. But there was a feeling in the back of my mind that a reaping of comeuppance was coming. That with this new willingness to strip the armour off and leave it on the side of the road, there was to be a flip side. A bad one.

But I marched on. And things were glorious. I saw the forest for the trees. I got caught up in moments. I felt things. I could feel this new outlook changing me. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I was and am a changed woman. In every sense of the word. And I had never, NEVER, been so clear-headed about what my desires were. And I wanted nothing more than to find them and grab them and celebrate their existence.

This proved to be a beautiful courage that I had never respected before. Though it has brought with it an intense feeling of vulnerability, one that at times feels so foreign it confuses me until I’m upside down, I have been spending a great deal of energy convincing myself to forge ahead regardless of how exposed I feel. I am so not in control of my environment anymore. Things are coming into it and affecting me and I am letting them. And every time I feel like putting up bricks, my brain says “stop it. Arrows must pass through so that happiness also can”. It sounds trite, but its true.

What of this flip side you say? Well it came. I found myself feeling so uncertain all the sudden. Vulnerable and unsure of myself. I used to be able to navigate every scenario with a detachment that was often misconstrued as fearlessness and now, I felt as though I may not have all the answers. And worse yet: I was transparent. People could tell I was jazzed about things, which was terrifying. Because if they were suddenly no longer available to me, people would know I had lost something. And I never wanted people to be aware that I was out a few chips. Ever.

Suddenly I was exposed. On the ropes. Ten sheets to the wind. Unable to ensure a swift exit that no one would notice. In fact, I was poised to leave a smattering of blood that everyone would be able to see. But I kept. Going.

It has been interesting. The rewards involved in putting myself out there have outweighed the embarrassment and loss that is guaranteed. I feel as though I finally understand where all those crumbling fools I used to know were coming from. And I am slightly appalled at my gall in thinking that they were the weak ones. But at the same time, I am proud of my ability to be humble enough to admit that I had that backwards for so long.

Its ugly in the trenches. But its real. Messy and awful and wonderful and real. For a minute there, I lost myself. But this is what I get when I mess with the karma police. There are no free rides. Pain is part of it. And I really can take it. Arrows must get through. I knew there had to be a reason that song had hit me so hard lately…my brain and the universe had plans for it. Big plans.

Facebook told me today that on this day in 2009, my status was:

“too good to be true” is a sentiment of sabotage invented by people who are afraid to be happy…..I am not going to let it past my lips again

It’s funny how that comment was so astute but I really didn’t understand it or actually believe it. And now….I do.Karma doesn’t mean universal retribution, it’s the balancing of energy. Consider me leveled.

Karma police
arrest this man,
he talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge,
he’s like a detuned radio.

Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

Karma police
I’ve given all I can,
it’s not enough,
I’ve given all I can
but we’re still on the payroll.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

- Karma Police, Radiohead

Foreplay and other learned tendancies

Momentum is steady. Every clear-headed decision I make has brought me more of a sense of freedom and courage. Lennon agrees; he hasn’t slept on the bean bag chair in over two weeks.

The shift I have been noticing most is that towards my own self actualization and gratification. What emerges is a staggering and unsettling account of years spent pleasing others. Purely out of fear of being alone. My mind-set has changed entirely. If you are part of my existence these days, you can be assured that you are there because you interest me on some level. And for no other reason. If you serve to discount me, bring me down, or make a mockery of what makes me tick; I have already erased you. You just don’t know it yet.

There was such a toxic mindset within me that has seemingly vanished. I remember sitting at parties, ten sheets to the wind, immersed in how amazing it was that I could go from socially enriched to diabolically lonely in less time than it took to have a good sneeze. I had poison in my veins. Poison and an unsettling amount of vengeance. I had the nasty habit of mixing something as obvious as joy and something as corruptible as faith and calling it Love. It was a volatile cocktail and it almost broke me.

I think I felt like it would be more impressive that way. More interesting. I have, since I was born female, tried to find a way to be more interesting with my estrogen. Cause it really costs nothing to be obvious. So I short cut things. A lot of things. And as a result, my instincts have become less human and more like C-3PO; eloquent but gutless.

The truth is, I think I have it in me to be amazingly unique in a way that won’t scare the shit out of every guy I come across.  Or at least will be inspiring to the world in some way. Or at the very least will be inspiring to me. I think that’s enough fine print to be covered against certain disappointment, right?

We’ll see how it goes. At the very least I’m having fun not taking things so seriously for once. Letting the space between my legs have a bit of a say. There’s something to be said for foreplay. That slow burn that leads to certain pleasure. Where you aren’t just waiting to hear the other person explode, where you can feel the growing fire and can appreciate every single thing that is leading you there. It isn’t so useless, this smelling the roses thing. Its kinda ok. Smells good. Real good.

And now: and incredibly indulgent Paul McCartney album review.

I wrote this two years ago. Unearthed it last night. Like it.

I picked up the latest project from Paul McCartney’s solo act The Fireman a couple of months ago, but it was tonight, under stars and cherry blossoms, that I truly realized how brilliant it really is. Allow me to painstakingly review it for you. The album is called “Electric Arguments”. Go buy it. Right now.
So here is the D.L. on The Fireman: it is an instrumental project that Paul has been doing with electronic producer Youth. They put out their first album in 1993 and another one in 2000. The latest one came out in November of 2008 and was the first one where Paul put his name on it and featured lyrics and vocals. The title of the album comes from the Alan Ginsberg poem “Kansas City to St. Louis”. Such a multi-faceted exploration of all art forms on this album (the album art is paintings done by Paul himself. Whimsical yet daunting paintings that are really quite good) the man is an appreciator of all forms of expression. Something I don’t think many people give him credit for.
The album is fucking brilliant. I believe it to be the loosest and most virile of Paul’s solo projects to date. A lot of this comes from the fact that it isn’t put together with the same standard pop production as his other albums. This is produced like a true electronic album, though it does not by any means sound like electronica. It is kind of mixed like a Bjork album as far as its dimensions and layers are concerned. Gives him MUCH more to play with and the results are overwhelming in their sensory impact.
It starts with a very dirty and Zeppelin-esque blues number entitled “Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight”. Paul’s vocals are their Helter Skelter scratchy self in this track. He seems to have a range that defies age and use. There are some vocal effects on them, but for the most part it is a performance worthy of Mr. Robert Plant himself. There is some unused angst in this performance that has been waiting for such a track to come out. The lyrics speak of a scorn we know all too well from his recent dealings with the fairer sex. It tweaks my pleasure zone to see Paul exploring passion in this way. The man has such an intense love of music; it is nice to see him put his balls on the line for it.
The next track is Two Magpies, a song that is folky in the same way Jenny Wren was on the wonderful Paul solo pop album “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard”. But the poetry of the lyrics is very profound and stirring. An example:
I saw two magpies
There was a girl and a boy
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Content to cry
No more to lie
I move away
And lie in truce
Such an admission of surrender from a man who has spent a lifetime trying to control and create his environment without taking the truth into account. The rhythm of this album moves at that kind of pace. A man who is finally learning to allow life to move him instead of trying to move life himself.
The next song is the overwhelmingly euphoric “Sing the Changes”. This is a song that with music AND lyrics forces you to be overtaken by your senses. A sample:
Sing the changes
Oh as you’re sleeping
Feel the choir
In the thunder
Sing the changes
Calling over
Feel the choir
In the thunder
Sing your praises
As you’re sleeping
Feel the choir
In the thunder
Sing the changes
Calling over
Everybody has a sense of
Childlike wonder
As I listened to this album tonight, I walked down Trinity Street; the road one block south of mine that runs parallel to it for several blocks. It is a rare treasure of a street as it is lined from end to end with cherry trees. From Nanaimo to Renfrew. Now as the trees are blossoming, the scent in the air and the sight of the blossoms are completely incredible. I walked down this street long after sunset with Lenny tonight, breathing the cleanest air I have ever breathed (I live three blocks from the ocean). As I turned to walk back down the street, I was downwind and the scent of the blossoms overtook me. I pulled a small branch with five blossoms on it off a nearby tree and every time Paul said “childlike wonder” in this track, I lifted the branch to my nose and inhaled. It was beautiful euphoria because it embraced all my senses at once. Truly a beautiful experience. And I know Paul must’ve felt it wherever he is (probably Palm Springs getting ready for his Coachella opening….damn it). This is a beautiful song. One of the most intensely beautiful songs he has ever written. One of them…..
The next tune, which Sing the Changes melts into perfectly, is Traveling Light. This starts out with an almost Leonard Cohen vocal intro. This is a song about someone who is traveling with the energy of the world. Trying to get to the person he loves. He speaks of the white wind, the green leaf, the blue sea. It is a nice accompaniment to Sing The Changes and carries a sense of a journey within ones self to find where your energy plugs into the planet and contributes to love as it does. Amazing.
The next song “Highway” is a departure in style from the bulk of the album, it has an almost Tom Petty sound to it. Like something you may have heard on The Last DJ. Similar to Petty’s Saving Grace, actually. The lyrics are complimentary to the rest of the album though. This has the same feel of searching and frustration as the rest of the album. Learning. This man is learning. One gets the feeling he may have written this while feeling alone, maybe while on tour and dealing with yes men and/or regret.
Somebody can move me
Oh I’m feeling naked
Words are getting higher
Everybody fire
Lord the sun is rising again
This leads into the gospel inspired song entitled “Light from your Lighthouse”. This is definitely a song about someone trying to find his way out of dark times. His vocals are once again full of staggering range. He sounds like Tom Morello on his Nightwatchman album. Great guitar solos and mixing here. You can pinpoint where Paul decides to see a better view from his own two eyes:
And when the light is filled up
With storms and heavy rain
And trouble comes sliding
Across my mind
It’s hard for me to see
Which road I’ve got to take
I know I need to find a way
To leave it all behind
It really is gospel in its attempt to bolster spirit. And it succeeds. A perfect precursor to the lovely Sun Is Shining.
Sun is Shining is like the song that plays after a terrible storm. When the clouds finally part and the damage begins to dry up. It has a wonderful McCartney style optimism to it, something I have always appreciated about Paul’s music. Vintage “Follow the Sun” style optimism and perseverance. This is, I believe, why Paul has weathered storms that have sidelined his co-stars, even John Lennon. His lack of cynicism makes even the darkest times seem hopeful. And I love when he says the word “curtains” in this tune: “ceh-tins”. Still embracing his Liverpool accent after all these years. The man values his roots as well as his future. A true revolutionary. Who knew?
This is followed by the old rock/hippy-dippy Dance Till We’re High. I can sum it up with these lyrics:
We can do it
Gonna do it tonight
Sing till we fly together
Dance till we’re high together
Gonna do it right now
Light up the sky
With your message fly
With your message
Bells will ring out for our love
It reeks of peace. It gets a little melodramatic at times but who the hell cares? The melodrama is occurring on the good side. I am tired of people calling these kinds of songs syrupy: get your sticks out of the mud, bastards. Lets sing till we fly together. For once.
This is where the album approaches Paul’s sensory nirvana. Beginning with the ambient and incredible “Lifelong Passion”. Excellent percussion and production in this song. It is all around you when you listen to it, even if you are squeezing it out of shitty iPod headphones. It hit me hard while I took in the cherry blossoms. This song puts what Paul has been looking for his whole life right on the table:
Step into the misty mountains
With your hair like amber honey
To feeling warming breezes

Let me hear your sweet, sweet laughter
And your loving conversation
And your innocent solution

Give me love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love
Be my lifelong passion
Give me love, love, love
Make my lifelong passion
Sail away
And I don’t think this is simply about love with a woman; I think this is about love and passion in general. The peace that comes with finding it and embracing it and understanding how simple it really is. Further investigated by the next song on the album; the profound and incredibly moving Is this Love?
Is This Love? is an amazing song. It starts out with the ever-mystifying pan flute and you are instantly struck with the same kind of purity given to you by the stunning soundtrack of the Lord of the Rings movies, which are based on what is perhaps the most epic, astute, and pure depiction of the quest for courage through understanding, strength and love that has ever been created. And Paul captures that with this amazing song. SUCH a departure from anything he has ever written before, this song is a spiritual feast for the senses and soul:
Is this love?
Is this love we must discover
Perfect love between each other

Flow like water
Through my veins
Flow to me
Home to me
Home to me now
Home to me

Like the swallow
In my veins
Flow to me
Home to me
Home to me

Help me find my sister brother
Help me find my father mother
Is this love?
Help me help me help me help me

Is this love?

….Fucking beautiful.
This is followed by the very electronic and haunting Lovers in a Dream. This song is very experimental for Paul and has an incredible Pink Floyd vibe to it. One can picture the incredible options for visuals that this could have. It has an intense pulse and is crawling with ghosts; that is really the best way I can describe it. It is a song you cannot take your attention off of. And it leaves fingerprints all over you when it is over.
This song segues into Universal Here, Everlasting Now with a reverb laden solo piano bit and then very Floydian dogs barking. The rest is an experimental feast for the senses. The only instrumental song on Electronic Arguments, this is an extraordinary denouement for the final track Don’t Stop Running, which is my favorite track on the album. Though this has Pink Floyd written all over it, it does not seem like Paul is reaching or trying too hard. It is very organic and by the time the dance beat infused big finish comes along, you can see Paul in the studio letting this electronic story come out of him. Especially the piano outro, which I can see him playing while bathed in light….but I guess that is my own melodrama coming out. I believe this is Paul letting go and seeing what happens. And I LOVE the outcome.
This brings us to the inspired and earth shattering Don’t Stop Running. This song is as close to perfect as you can get in this special genre The Fireman creates. Paul’s vocals stop you in your tracks; the man has an exquisite voice. The multitude of stringed instruments is also completely staggering; the harp and the relentless bass especially. This is a percussive masterpiece as well, speaking to a natural rhythm I didn’t even know I had. This song has a million different voices and they all push the same words into your head “Don’t Stop Running. Don’t Stop Running”. With all my being, in a time when my resolve is tested every day and the last shreds of energy I have are stolen from me by systems and circumstance, I know this song will move me when nothing else will. It is fucking stunning. I think it is the best work he has done in decades.
There is a hidden song at the end of Don’t Stop Running which has a reversed message spoken in a whisper. It chills you to the bone. Paul’s last words, whispered with the intense urgency of a soul that has escaped purgatory to tell the tale: “warmer than the sun, colder than the air”.
I love this album. I think it is a triumph of spirit and creativity. I have always had a spot in my heart for Paul, I believe he was the reason most of the latter years Beatles music that I love so much saw the light of day, but I always knew he was capable of more. His range was always evident but never reached the surface. His armor is gone. He is naked. And when there is nothing blocking his raw artistic talent from breathing the cold air and feeling the warm sun, the result is nothing short of brilliance. I hope he continues to embrace the fire inside him, because I find it inspiring and truly visionary.
Well done Paul. I adore you. And please, don’t stop running.

Oh holy jesus….

This just happened. No word of a lie:

So I am writing tonight. Drinking chardonnay. Watched a bit of Face/Off because I felt like manly fun. But John Travolta’s face started to piss me off. His over-acting in that is an insult to not only Nicolas Cage (which is hard to achieve) but also to my sensitive subconscious. If I dream about his piss poor Castor Troy impression tonight, I will burn that VHS. Which would be a shame because Nicolas Cage was just delightful in that scene on the airport tarmac. The gold guns…that was hey day Cage for ya’.

Anyway, I shifted gears to something that would be better background noise. Less distracting. I did intend to keep my word about this night of writing; it was on Facebook after all; that means it’s true. So I put in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Why the fuck not; its been a whole two months since I saw it last.

I cannot explain my fascination with this movie. I really can’t. I’m not enough of a twit to entirely identify with this silly character. So what is it? I don’t want to know…don’t answer that. Anyway…

First scene, she says “if something didn’t change soon I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine” and as she says this, she is watching FUCKING FRASIER. OH MY GOD!!! Have I become a mid range, rom-com, cautionary tale? Capable of being played by RENEE ZELLWEGER??? OH GOD!!! She then pledged to not spend next New Years shit faced and listening to sad FM…..just as I was worshipping Piano Man in the background. Christ…my nickname is now no longer a witty tongue in cheek statement of Lenny’s natural rebellion-based disrespect, it was now kind of fucked up and sadly stereotypically accurate…which is a description I would rather die than wear on my resume. I’m less ashamed of “receptionist”.

So that’s it….no more Frasier.

Tomorrow is another day…