Sunday, November 30, 2008

Heart of Gold

I assume that anyone who ever reads this blog is also a friend of mine and therefore probably knows that I'm no Neil Young fan. I recognize this as being kind of quirky. I sometimes go so far as to identify my indifference towards Neil Young as a character flaw. Because, like, everyone whose musical taste I respect is into Neil Young. It's not just his voice that irked me, though his voice was definitely a part of it. No, it was his actual songs. I thought they were boring; that they didn't - to steal Sean's preferred description - "swing." Admittedly, I never delved too deep, but I've also been exposed to more than just the hits. I'd listened to "On the Beach" and "Tonight's the Night" and "Harvest" in their entirety, in someones vain attempt to convert me. And I didn't hate Neil Young's music. I wouldn't get up and leave like I would with The Doors or Soundgarden or Joan frickin' Baez. I just felt pretty meh about the guy. I did like the songs "The Needle and the Damage Done" and "Thrasher," though. That's as much as I would give.

I nevertheless spent $75 to see Neil Young play at the Halifax Metro Centre last night. I went for the opening band, Wilco, really, but I did indeed stay for Neil Young, and a lot of his set was pretty boring, but a lot of it was pretty magical, too. I don't really want to write a concert review here; I just want to talk about my reception of "Heart of Gold."

I bet I've heard "Heart of Gold" like five hundred times. On car stereos, in shopping malls, at friend's houses, in pubs, at open mic. nights. It's one of the first songs I ever learned how to play on the guitar. But last night, watching Neil Young play this song on stage, it was like I had never heard it before. I was blown away. I was reminded of hearing Johnny Cash's version, on the last of the American Recordings, of Ian and Sylvia Tyson's "Four Strong Winds." I couldn't shut up about what an amazing song that was. Like it was something new. For some reason, "Heart of Gold" finally hit me last night, in its simple message and phrasing, in the way Neil Young sang over the chords he played on his acoustic guitar. I even got his voice. What an earnest, simple, beautiful song. I love it.


Heart of Gold - Neil Young
I want to live,I want to give
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
I've been to Hollywood, I've been to Redwood,
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind, its such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And Im getting old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
You keep me searching for a heart of gold
And Im getting old.
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

Friday, November 28, 2008

The Emperor's New Clothes

Sinead O'Connor's incredibly moving, enduringly affecting album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was released in 1990, during my first year of high school. Most of the songs on this album are about relationships, and while I had no real idea about relationships then, I was certainly obsessed with having one, and with the boys I dreamed about having ones with. Crushes in high school seemed to hit harder than any that I've experienced since. I guess because even friendships were shallower then - or more innocent, to be kinder. I didn't have any experience with real intimacy, and I didn't have the weight of a large and confusing and multifaceted history or world view that I needed empathetic ears and honest dialogue for. I was just fourteen. By the time I started to recognize the difference between actual friendships and people I had fun hanging out with I'd learned to make these distinctions because I'd been let down, misled, or just plain wrong about the people I imagined I knew. So crushes these days, while fun and I think necessary, are also comparatively very fleeting. They never carry that kind of investment, because that kind of investment just doesn't make any sense. First crushes, first hurts; there was no barometer.

I honestly didn't understand the song "The Emperor's New Clothes." It was the line "How could I possibly know what I want when I was only 21?" that I ran into like a brick wall. I didn't understand what she meant, because 21 seemed so impossibly old, and I figured that I already knew what I wanted, at fourteen.

In my canvas World Famous backpack, along with my NoteTote and my Beaver Canoe pencil case, I carried years and years of ridicule into Martingrove Collegiate. In middle school, my classmates would spread my germs and cross their fingers as I walked down the hall. On most afternoons as I walked home from school, the houses on Anglesey boulevard looked blurry through tears that I could never hold back, no matter how hard I tried. I went to Martingrove because nobody I knew from middle school was going there, and I started going by my full name, Amelia, shedding the shortened "Amy" I had been called up until that point. I bought bright purple Converse sneakers and I joined the drama club and the choir and I went to dances and I talked loudly, and people thought that I was fun and open.

It strikes me now that I was incredibly lucky to have been received as I was. I could have been devastated. It seems insane that I tried so hard to be known, to meet people, when all of the people I used to know just called me cruel names and left me to eat lunch alone. I took everyone at face value. I didn't even recognize that people lied about stuff. I was so blissfully innocent in grade nine.

I guess high school is probably like that for a lot of people, if not most people - a training ground for dealing with other human beings. I thought I had a best friend. I thought I was in love. I thought I knew what I wanted.

It makes all kinds of sense that I was moved, along with my peers, by Sinead O'Connor's cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," sitting on the bleachers in the gymnasium at 8 o'clock on a Friday night, watching the boy I wanted to be dancing with as he danced with someone else.

It took a few more years before I connected to "Emperor's New Clothes." I eventually required more reasons for wanting things and people in my life, and for wanting things and people out of it. Of course this song is explicitly about the speaker's experience of enduring other people's reactions to her pregnancy. It's also one of the most empowering songs I can think of. It's so bold and bare and honest and despite the assertive declarations there is, too, the "I would return to nothing without you." Everything is there, and no, at fourteen, despite my purple sneakers and my brand new school I couldn't for the life of me understand how someone so old just couldn't have it together. And when I hear this song, I can remember that confused reception. I know exactly how that felt. Two decades ago.


The Emperor's New Clothes - Sinead O'Connor

It seems like years since you held the baby
While I wrecked the bedroom
You said it was dangerous after Sunday
And I knew you loved me
He thinks I just became famous
And that's what messed me up
But he's wrong
How could I possibly know what I want
When I was only twenty-one?
And there's millions of people
To offer advice and say how I should be
But they're twisted
And they will never be any influence on me
But you will always be
You will always be
If I treated you mean
I really didn't mean to
But you know how it is
And how a pregnancy can change you
I see plenty of clothes that I like
But I won't go anywhere nice for a while
All I want to do is just sit here
And write it all down and rest for a while
I can't bear to be in another city
One where you are not
I would return to nothing without you
If I'm your girlfriend or not
Maybe I was mean
But I really don't think so
You asked if I'm scared
And I said so
Everyone can see what's going on
They laugh `cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don't think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed
They've got a severe case of
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Get in the Car


The first time I went to Whitehorse I went on a whim. It's probably the coolest thing I've ever done.

I'd been living in Toronto for over a year and I'd ended up there accidentally in the first place. I had taken a plane from Halifax to Toronto with a friend of mine, and we were planning to hang out there for a couple of weeks before hitchhiking across North America, but stuff happened, and that trip never did.

There's a thing I notice that happens to me when I spend too much time in Toronto. I start to think about myself like I did when I was a Torontonian, and I receive the things that my family and friends say to me in a different way than I do through telephone wires. I start to think that things like hitchhiking through the United States just to see it and with no real destination in mind, or much money to speak of, are kind of crazy. So I did an equally but oppositely stupid thing: I stayed in Toronto and I got a well-paying job at a call centre.

I did, however, meet a pretty great guy while I was in Toronto, and though he promised to move back to Halifax with me, I got impatient with the waiting and with the crappy customer service job, and so I spent a couple of months traveling across Canada on a Greyhound bus. In stupid Vancouver I made the decision to travel further north before heading back east. I didn't know anyone in the Yukon or have any idea what it was like out there, but I figured I had nothing to lose, and all kinds of time, and so I went. I took the Alaska highway north to Whitehorse.

Being on a Greyhound bus in Canada was not so whimsical; it was something I'd been planning for several months. I had friends in Sudbury and Regina and Vancouver and Victoria and Kamloops and Montreal and Sydney, and I wanted to see them all and the places they had come from or come to before I settled back down in Halifax.

I have never been able to sleep well on buses, but I love them anyway. I love four o'clock in the morning at the side of the highway outside of an Irving or an Esso. Stars and the moon and the sting and smell of winter. My fellow, non-smoking, less anxiety-ridden passengers sleeping soundly in their uncomfortable seats. I move in slow motion, half asleep, exhausted, but invigorated by the cold and empowered like a secret by the blanket of night and the nothing else in sight. What an enormous country I live in. It's twenty hours from Whitehorse to Edmonton.

"Get In the Car" is a song that Kim Barlow wrote for her album Luckyburden, a concept album in which she tells stories about the fictionalized residents of Keno City, Yukon, a town just outside of Whitehorse that boomed briefly and his since become a virtual ghost town.

I don't seem to have much in common with the girl who is the subject of the song. I especially don't know what it's like to live in a town as small or as rough as Keno City, and to spend my teenage years desperately wanting to see something bigger. But I sure do know what it's like to want to get the hell out of a place where I feel stuck and uninspired. And I sure do know what it's like to be young and hopeful and excited by adventure. And I sure do know what it's like to miss Mom.

I promise to actually write about Whitehorse here one of these days.


Get in the Car - Kim Barlow

"Get in the car," Chrissi said, "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."
Steve jumped in fast with a few things stuffed in his backpack.
And they fish tailed down the dusty road, eight o'clock on Saturday morning,
Fresh out of high school and leaving.

"Where are we going?" Steve said, "Are we going to Whitehorse?"
Chrissi laughed, "Hell no, Whitehorse is the biggest town I've ever seen."
Warm sand, rock stars and bookstores, food that doesn't come in a can.
We're going to LA, follow our stupid dreams.

Nothing left to stay for everyone we know is crazy,
They just drink and work and fight,
Let's change our names it's time we're moving on.

When they got to Liard he asked her, "Where'd you get the car?"
And he studied the fading bruise on her cheek and she said,
"My dad won it at poker last week."
And they floated with the hippies and the tourists who had
Flower vans and RV's, romantic notions pointing north.

In the wee hours, and the stars were shining, they nearly hit a young moose,
Running down the middle of the highway.
But they passed it in the passing lane, neither of them said a word.
Both of them were thinking of their mothers.

Nothing left to stay for every one we know is crazy,
They just drink and work and fight,
Let's change our names it's time we're moving on.

Alaska Highway, mile zero, the end and the beginning.
They stopped for a pee and nailed their graduation photos to a sign.
Chrissi leaned out the window and screamed, dust swirled in her hair,
And Steve knew he would follow her anywhere she asked him

Get in the car,
Get in the car,
Let's get the hell out of Dodge.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Clown & Bard



You couldn't avoid looking at the train tracks from This Ain't the Only Cafe, the establishment beside the Townehouse Tavern, where, with their fancy imported beers and homemade salsa, it was much easier than it was at the Townehouse for me to pretend like I didn't have a problem. I never took the train home for holidays, I never even considered the option, despite watching the trains come and go. When I went home to Toronto I would take the bus that departed from a terminal outside of down-town, an area of town I only ever went to because I was getting on or off of a bus.

I don't remember the first time I thought it, but I remember the first time I wondered aloud about having a drinking problem. I was twenty years old. I said it to Sandra as we left the Townehouse Tavern in the direction of her home, beneath the railway tracks. I can't remember her exact words, but they carried the weight of both an acknowledgment and a dismissal at once. In the spirit of Well, what can you do.

During my second year at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, I spent a lot of time at the Townehouse. It was my first experience of a bar that felt like home; a place as comfortable as a living room, with faces that I knew and could rely on to be there; a place I could go by myself. In the midst of a city I felt no connection to - a city I even kind of hated - and attending university for no reason other than that being my idea of the thing to do once high school was completed, I was initially drawn to the Townehouse because of its atmosphere, the bands that played there, and the interesting people who congregated there. I kept going back because I liked the people and I liked the beer. Or, rather, I liked that the beer was very cheap. It is hard to give Northern a sincere recommendation. I always drank to excess whenever I had occasion to drink during high school, and first year while living in residence was both excessive and frequent, but in an everyone's-doing-it / it's-my-first-year-away-from-home kind of way. It was at the Townehouse that beer really became a part of my life, and it was not only the drink itself. It would take me years and years and years to recognize this experience as being very much a part of the way I look at the world; the things I romanticize; the aesthetics I'm drawn to; the people I like "intuitively."

My favourite people look awesome sitting on a bar stool. They usually smoke cigarettes, wear sloppy clothes, don't draw attention to themselves, are quietly cynical, quietly judgmental, good talkers, good listeners, not very concerned with status in a conventional way, creatures of habit, empathetic, sincere, and drunk.

My favourite barrooms are dark places that are rarely too crowded, equipped with tables in hiding places for secret sharing. Both amiable and grouchy bartenders are acceptable, but personality is a must.

The Granite Brewery in Halifax has these things in spades. Amazing people, atmosphere, and way better draft than Northern. The Granite Brewery is my really favourite bar ever, and it became so much a part of my life in Halifax that it almost was my experience of Halifax. It was the first thing I wanted to show any visitors from out of town.

Geoff Berner's "Clown & Bard" is the best song I have ever heard about having a really fun, really horrible substance abuse problem and an awesome place in which to indulge. I wanted so badly to visit the actual Clown & Bard in Prague. Prague's awfully beautiful, I hear and see in photographs. I bet it's the kind of city that feels the way to many people that Halifax feels to me. I am stunned sometimes, just stopped in my tracks by these beautiful buildings that surround me. I am hopelessly in love with my city, but I have taken it for granted, spending my nights - my time, energy, money - in this building on Barrington street that somehow became the centre of my universe.

It's hard to separate the good stuff like friendships and honest conversations and listening to good music from the alcohol that's been its constant companion. They've been so entwined for as long as I've been a serious drinker.

This isn't about how I quit drinking three months ago and how weird that is and how my life and perspectives are changing and being challenged while I still feel in this state of limbo, like I'm between a place of comfortable reassurance and some unknown future because I think hope would be a good thing to let into my life. This isn't about how I feel even more lonely than I did a few months ago even though I'm supposedly making all these positive changes. This isn't about how I know, know, know with everything in my being that I cannot drink in moderation and that that's something that makes me kind of bitter. But I guess, of course, it is.

I miss my friends, tonight. Not that I don't believe in the lot of them, because in many, I do. But I miss being up until last call, playing trivial pursuit, sharing gossip, giving and receiving kind words and support, laughing, telling stupid jokes.

I don't miss hangovers, saying too much, spilling secrets, being mean, getting hurt, fooling around with someone too soon or too wrong, feeling really shitty about my choices. Some of these nights get me down, but these mornings never do.

That nice clean train with comfortable seats is right there, across the street. I don't always have to take the bus, even though it is really fun to talk to other travelers, and it stops for frequent smoke breaks.

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.

**I hope I don't need to state this so explicitly, but just in case: This entry, and this comparison to "Clown & Bard" is in no way about either The Townehouse Tavern or The Granite Brewery. They're wonderful establishments. This is just about me.



Clown & Bard - Geoff Berner

Her grandfather opened the trust fund in her Baltimore account,
But she was six months in the Paris of the Eastern Bloc by the time it ran out.
Oh, well I met her in that filthy basement where a fat man ran the bar.
She said, "If you're gonna drink that green stuff you've got to light it on fire."

I guess she knew me pretty well, despite the questions that I ducked.
She said, "You'll like it here, Prague's like a Disneyland for the terminally fucked."
But it don't fool me 'cause I can see all this beauty's just a trap set to kill.
And she grabbed my hand tight, said "Let me show you the lights from the top of the castle hill."

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
'Cause I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.

Well the water in that river's as dirty as the cops, but it shines so pretty at night.
But when I held her head as she puked absinthe off the Charles bridge it was a tender and a glamorous sight.
We kept up the charade just as long as we could until I had to get back in the van.
She said "I'd like to come with you but I'm saving up for Baltimore as soon as I can."

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
'Cause I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.

When I got back into town she wasn't hard to track down though they'd moved her down a couple of floors.
Cold and half dead on the unmade bed trying to squeeze the speed out through her pores.
I offered to buy her a one-way back stateside but I cried, they pleaded in vain.
She said "I don't think that I have got an urge to die, I really just can't explain."
I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
Well I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.
I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.