Wheat Kings

It seems every Canadian is writing about The Tragically Hip this month, and of course, because this ubiquitous Canadian band has been especially ubiquitous this summer. They are playing their very last shows, and it's sad, and admirable, and even those of us who aren't really fans are, as Canadians, so tied to this event.

In the fall of 1994 I moved to Sudbury to attend Laurentian University, and I lived in residence. It was a strange experience for me. My last year of high school had been spent at an alternative school where the status quo was constantly being questioned, and where I was surrounded by artists and musicians and weirdos. Laurentian, in contrast - and especially, residence - was a very different world. I found people I liked, and even (a very few) people I connected with, but I mostly felt out of place and out of sorts there. The drinking and late nights I could keep up with, but not the loudness that accompanied them. There was a testosterone-fueled, jocky atmosphere I recognized from American movies about American high schools, but I never had that kind of high school experience until I went to university.

I don't believe The Tragically Hip are those kinds of people, but when I think about them, I think about that kind of crowd, and I imagine the band lost amid a sea of keggers, where they are both encouraging and separate. I don't know what band Sloan is referring to with the line, "It's not the band I hate, it's their fans," but it has always made me think of The Tragically Hip.

But my fondest memory of their music is of sitting in the stairwell between the ninth and tenth floors of University College residence and singing along to "Wheat Kings" in a quiet moment of respite from the loudness, the falling-down-drunk of it all. It's the sitting-down-drunk, and the sharing of songs. Even though I am not really a fan, I really love that song, and we all knew all the words and in that moment of sharing I felt okay - even good - about the place I was in.

My other favourite Hip song is Courage. I read Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night in my Canadian Literature class at Laurentian, and it was one of my favourite books for many years. It was the version sung by Sarah Polley, in one of my favourite films, The Sweet Hereafter, though, that really made me love it.

Mostly, I have always thought The Tragically Hip were kind of boring musically. Always, though, I would follow that opinion up, quickly, with, "but I really respect them." It's undeniable that the lyrics are good. It's also undeniable that the spirit of the band is good. Gord Downie and his band have tapped into something that unifies every Canadian, and not just because so many of their songs are about Canada but sure, and of course, partly because of that. Downie is a storyteller, and he is not a blind nationalist, but someone who is curious and manages to light up dark corners and show them to people who might not otherwise listen or know where to look.

I'm going to be at a folk festival in Peterborough the night of the Hip's last show, which is being broadcast across Canada, but I think I will try to steal away for a bit, to find a television set in a nearby bar that is broadcasting it (I don't think this will be difficult).

When I feel like I don't fit in, it's not usually because I don't want to, but because I don't know how. And I love it that The Tragically Hip can tear down those walls. Gord Downie is such a strange and original frontperson for a straight up rock band and that alone lets you know it's not, actually, just a straight up rock band. And what I felt, sitting in that stairwell and singing "Wheat Kings" with those other voices, was connection and inclusion.

Canada loves you, Gord Downie, and I love that.

At The Airport

I used to say that my friend Andrea Lindsay and her boyfriend-turned-husband Guilhem were my favourite couple in the history of ever. There was all kinds of romantic about the way they defied the odds and their geographies and managed to remain together. But it wasn't just that. It was the way they were together; the way they amused one another. The way they matched each others wits and always looked to be having the best time they'd ever had.

Andrea was my roommate during my second year of university. She slept on the couch in our living room because our other, mostly absentee, roommate Kim wanted to maintain some kind of claim to her bedroom. It was clearly a front; a way in which to insist to her mother, who often visited, that she was not in fact living with her horrible boyfriend Josh. I was lonely in September, with Kim mostly away, and with Anne, my only other real friend in Sudbury, still living on campus and not venturing far from it. Andrea's own experience living in a large house populated with girls I'd known from residence was also isolating. Sudbury was a hard place for us and our somewhat snobbish southern Ontario airs. We became fast friends, intuitively, and figuring out, in November, a way for us to live together for the remainder of the school year was, despite typical roommate issues, no small saving grace.

Andrea was at Laurentian University for two reasons: because she could major in vocal music there and, I think even more so, because they had an exchange program with a university in France, where her boyfriend lived. Their meeting was seemingly both fated and brief. Guilhem had been a French exchange student at the high school Andrea went to for her OAC year, although he had attended the school the previous year and before Andrea had transferred into it. In the meantime she had gotten to know Guilhem's old friends, and they were introduced when he came to visit the following year. I think they knew each other for about a week before he returned to France, but they stayed in touch and made a commitment to one another, taking such a brilliant leap of faith. I can't even imagine.

Laurentian University got rid of its exchange program and Andrea left Sudbury to finish her education in her home town of Guelph. For years, Guilhem and Andrea flew back and forth to see one another over holidays and summer vacations. I first met him during the summer following our year in Sudbury, when I spent a week-end with them in Guelph. And I understood immediately how there are things that are worth that amount of trouble. Andrea's an exceptionally clever and funny person. She's engaging and silly and just plain hilarious and it was hard to imagine how she would find an equal; someone who could light up a room and draw your ears and eyes so easily and earnestly. Guilhem is perfect; every bit as quirky and smart and open. It was the absolute opposite of being a struggle to make conversation with him. And every one of the handful of occasions on which I've found myself in his presence - and on his couch - it has felt like he too is an old friend.

Guilhem has since immigrated to Canada. The two of them have been married and living together in Montreal for years now, and I think I will be devastated if they ever break up!

I said that I used to say they were my favourite couple ever, and that's because I've decided that I feel ready to pass the torch onto another brilliant couple whose relationship I actually get to observe as more than a very occasional house guest on my way through Quebec.

My brother Ted and his finance Hayley are the new champions. Their relationship, while certainly not filled with the kinds of obstacles confronted by Andrea and Guilhem, is also pretty unique among the many couples I've gotten to know. They are honest to God high school sweethearts whom I'm pretty sure have never even been on a date, never even kissed another person in their whole lives. I used to think it was weird, that surely they both must want to experience other relationships, or even to have some more time to explore their own interests as single people. But that probably just stems from some sub-conscious jealousy about how they managed to get so lucky so young.

I've been fortunate to have Ted and Hayley here in Halifax for the past twenty months, while they both attended school out here. I haven't made the best use of this opportunity, I suppose, and I am a bit regretful about the times we should have spent together. They're both leaving in less than three weeks, to go back to Ontario, where they will surely reside, together, forever. But the times we did have were wonderful. I feel so grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know Hayley as well as I have. I used to think she was shy but I don't anymore. I love seeing them together. I love that my brother is with the kind of person who would totally be glad to have me sleep on her couch, and with whom I could converse for hours, hardly noticing the time at all. She's smart and curious and easily entertained, and no one amuses her more than my brother. Is that the ticket? Being able to amuse one another for the rest of your lives? If that's marriage it sounds like a whole lot of fun.

Ted and Hayley are getting married this coming August, and they're searching for a first dance song. Why they don't just dance to their song, Queen's "Your My Best Friend" is beyond me, but I suppose that in their otherwise fairly untraditional wedding they would at least like a somewhat traditional - at least slow - song to which to have that dance. So of course I volunteered my time and my music collection and spent last night making a cd of potential first dance songs.

It was way harder than I thought it would be. Of course I couldn't include most of my favourite love songs, which are usually either a little bit dark or else of the nostalgia variety. And even happy love songs that describe situations or characters so far removed from Ted and Hayley's experience had to be eliminated. Which means all of those thanks-for-saving-me-from-all-the-crappy-things-that-happened-before-I-met-you songs were out. And really, that doesn't leave a lot. I did come up with enough to compile a cd for them, and one of the songs I included was Old Man Luedecke's "At The Airport."

I have such a clear and embarrassing memory of seeing Old Man Luedecke play a show at Ginger's just after Sean and I broke up. I mean, the events of that evening aren't all that clear. I don't remember if it was immediately after, or if it was two weeks later, after my return from a much needed week with my Mom, in Ontario. I'm not totally sure that Sean was there too but I believe he was. I know it was while we were still living together on Allan street. I know I had to go back there that night. I remember sitting up close to the stage, and that the venue was fairly empty, and it was like Chris Luedecke was singing directly to me. Which must have been very uncomfortable for him because I was bawling my eyes out and completely wasted. My very clear memory is of how concerned he seemed about me. The room seemed so small and I felt so alone and terrible and lost and his concerned expression was a small but remarkable comfort. I must have stopped crying, but I stayed, and I listened to every song. He is, after all, the kind of authentic folk singer it is difficult to turn away from.

Now, I don't know Chris Luedecke very well, but he has always struck me as being a worrier. In fact, I am pretty sure that at some point during every conversation I have ever had with him he has expressed concern about something he felt he should be doing or had not done properly. I could win medals in Worrying Events were they to be introduced, and I hope they never are, because I obviously don't need another thing to worry about. I'm extremely confident in my ability to freak out about inconsequential things. But I think Chris Luedecke would make for a pretty mean competitor. I think a part of having that kind of constitution involves having a difficult time with acts of faith. Not that faith is impossible, but it is rare and, for me at least, almost always counter-intuitively second-guessed. So it makes me really happy and hopeful that a guy like Chris can write some of the songs that he does.

I like to think that I'm open to the possibility of wonder and whimsy and - yes - true love, even as I get older and more distrustful and more isolated and self-involved. It's refreshing to hear love songs that are just about love; not obstacles or regret or fear or character building. It's a bold kind of honesty that I defensively shrink from with explanations and apologies.

Oh, Ted and Hayley are lucky, and I think they should dance like robots to Queen not even if it might make them laugh during that very special moment, but absolutely positively because it will.

At The Airport - Old Man Luedecke

Oh the static of our phone calls,
Coming down like brick walls.
And you're so beautiful I can barely see you.
It's like we've never touched,
Our kisses long but rushed
And your cheeks have never seemed so serene.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

And in the baggage line,
I'm in another time,
But mostly all we can really say is "Hey."
But I get to take you home
Where we can be alone,
It's better than any Christmas Day.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

Oh the static of our phone calls,
Coming down like brick walls.
And you're so beautiful I can barely see you.
It's like we've never touched,
Our kisses long but rushed
And your cheeks have never seemed so serene.

At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there that cannot be believed.
At the airport, at the airport,
There's kisses there whose memory never leaves.

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.

Anchorage

I think I probably started included Michelle Shocked's "Anchorage" on every mix tape I made for anybody shortly after I first moved to Halifax. It's a very "Amelia song," as my dear friend and ex-boyfriend Sean would say. He really would say this, rolling his eyes, because by the time I met him, this song's inclusion on the countless mix tapes I made for other people was already a cliche. But aside from that, it is an "Amelia song" because I am sentimental like that about old friends, and I am also in love with faraway, cold places like Alaska. Or at least with the idea of them.

In Sean's basement apartment on Woodbine avenue, we began a tradition of playing DJ for one another, drinking Lakers or cheap red wine, sharing our favourites with one another and eventually compiling them on mixes for our friends, usually yet unknown to one party, and as we, at this beginning stage of our relationship, were fairly unknown to one another too, we learned about each other through the way we related to our friends and how and why we would make the selections that were made.

There are a few old friends that I think about when I listen to "Anchorage," mostly people who have both settled into family life, and who are also far removed from being involved in any kind of artistic or musical community the way that I am. It's a lifestyle difference that is clearly articulated here in the way this song contrasts Anchorage, Alaska with New York City. I feel a real fondness for these old friends, but I also feel the miles in between us and like it's impossible to ever recover what we had in high school or in our first few years of "adulthood."

Last year, my old friends Kim and Anne, with whom I was reunited through facebook (of course) concocted a crazy scheme, wherein Anne and I would, over the Christmas holidays, make the five hour drive from southern Ontario to visit Kim in Sudbury where she now owns a home with her police officer partner and her children, and where the three of us - a lifetime ago it often seems - attended university immediately following high school. I hadn't seen either of them in close to a decade, but our facebook correspondences were excited and optimistic, and I guess I am generally of the opinion that people don't really change that much, and that the often inexplicable reasons we all have for liking who we like are usually enduring.

Kim and I never had any illusions about the unlikeliness of our friendship. We both really hated living in residence, and we hid in our tiny shared dorm room together, but that confined space and the people who surrounded us were all that really seemed to bind us. She dragged me out to Ralph's Sports Bar where I was forced to put up with godawful dance music and the succession of bland, jockey guys who took a shine to her. I dragged her to the Townehouse Tavern where she was forced to listen to punk bands and drink disgusting northern draught in a smokey room full of weirdos. Anne, who lived a few floors below us, was kind of in the middle. Which is not to say that she was easy. On the contrary, Anne is one of the most sensitive people I have ever met, and I bet she sucked up all kinds of things and situations she probably didn't want to be a part of. Looking back, I don't know how I wasn't constantly and openly amazed by how much alike we were in our temperaments.

The last time I saw Anne, prior to our reunion this past December, I was visiting my friend Andrea - also a friend from Sudbury, who I had met my second year there - in their mutual home town of Guelph, Ontario. It was weird, because I was definitely there to see (and I stayed with) Andrea, but I made a point of meeting up with Anne one evening. When I'd visited Guelph in the past it had been to see Anne. This time there was an awkward tension between us. I really felt that we had "grown apart" and it made me feel sad and uncomfortable. If I honestly analyze these kinds of situations I know that it is probably more about me than about the other person. There was an over-riding sense of shame. I could see that Anne was happily back in school, in a serious relationship (with the man she would eventually marry), and was acting, well, like the adult that she was. Me: I still felt and acted like a kid. I was a university drop-out, still getting wasted all the time, living rent-free at my mom's, working at Chapters, and making plans to travel across Canada. I was openly self-righteous, insisting that I was being authentically myself. But I was lazy and selfish and aimless and incredibly worried about how apparent all of that might be to other people.

And because aside from being nearly, finally, finished an undergraduate degree, I didn't actually feel that my life or lifestyle had changed all that much in the interim, I was nervous about our 2007 reunion.

It was good. I think Anne and I approached one another with an appropriate amount of reserve, but we talked about quite a lot of weighty stuff during the ten hours total that we spent in her car together. I won't get into details, because a lot of it was pretty personal. There was reminiscing of course, and at the same time it was like we were taking stock of and comparing the people we were to the people we are. I was really impressed with Anne's self-awareness, and it was absolutely heartening to see how comfortable she eventually became - or, at least, so it seemed - with herself.

Kim was exactly as I'd remembered her and completely easy to be with. But I don't see any of myself in her.

I think one of the best things about "Anchorage" is Leroy. He's exactly the kind of guy you want your dear friend to end up with.

I think Anne and I were really glad to see one another, and glad to get back to our own lives, and that we will be glad to see one another again.

Anchorage - Michelle Shocked

I took time out to write to my old friend

I walked across that burning bridge

Mailed my letter off to Dallas

But her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska

She said:"Hey girl, it's about time you wrote

It's been over two years you know, my old friend

Take me back to the days of the foreign telegrams

And the all-night rock and rollin'...

We was wild then

Hey Shell, you know it's kind of funny

Texas always seemed so big

But you know you're in the largest state in the union

When you're anchored down in Anchorage

Hey Girl, I think the last time I saw you

Was on me and Leroy's wedding day

What was the name of that love song they played?

I forgot how it goes

I don't recall how it goes

Anchorage

Anchored down in Anchorage

Leroy got a better job so we moved

Kevin lost a tooth now he's started school

I got a brand new eight month old baby girl

I sound like a housewife

I think I'm a housewife

Hey Girl, what's it like to be in New York?

New York City - imagine that!

Tell me, what's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker?

Leroy says "Send a picture"

Leroy says "Hello"

Leroy says "Oh, keep on rocking, girl"

"yeah, keep on rocking"

Hey Shell, you know it's kind of funny

Texas always seemed so big

But you know you're in the largest state in the union

When you're anchored down in Anchorage

Oh, Anchorage

Anchored down in Anchorage

Oh, Anchorage

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

I can't remember ever being unfamiliar with The Beatles' self-titled double album, popularly referred to as The White Album. In a small way, it's a shame, because I'd love to have a recollection of that moment of discovery.

By the time we moved into our home on Edgevalley Drive, when I was nine years old, the album was already well known to me, but it is that basement I am always taken back to when I listen to The White Album. The bar that took up a significant portion of our rec. room, instead of being stocked with various bottles of spirits was stocked with the records that my parents had collected when they were children, teenagers, and young adults. There were stacks and stacks of these records piled on the shelves behind the bar out of sight from where we were usually positioned in the room. It was an effort to dig through these, and to finally select what I wanted to hear, and place the chosen album on the turntable that sat on top of the bar. It's weird that my brothers never did this. I have asked them which albums or songs remind them of their childhood, and they always recall what was popular at the time, completely disinterested in or unaware of this musical history our parents brought with them, before there was us, in boxes they packed and unpacked in a series of moves that coincided with the landmark events in their lives. I wonder about my father listening to this music in his residence room when he was going to the University of Toronto; in the first apartment he shared with my mother as a newlywed; and finally, how he felt hearing his nine-year-old daughter belt out the words to "Happiness is a Warm Gun" with such unrestrained enthusiasm.

It was easy to distinguish my father's records from the ones that had belonged to my mother because he had signed his name to the cover of his, something my collector-brain, after years of working in second-hand bookstores, is fairly appalled by, but which I otherwise find endearing. For some reason, or for several reasons, my father had been concerned about losing his claim to these, and this signature in bold blue ink was evidence of their importance to him. I don't know where these records have ended up, and I'm inclined to doubt that my father does, either; I think it's true that stuff begins to lose its importance as we get older, and particularly as the not-stuff, like relationships with people and geography, is revealed to be inconstant and even fleeting. What you ultimately get to keep is your own picture in your own head. The Beatles didn't write these songs for me or my dad.

One of the records was scratched. In one chorus of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," George Harrison sings, "While my g-weeps." My mom always thought the lyric,"I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping" was ridiculous; that it was only included because it rhymed. And maybe she's right, but I have looked at floors and spaces and felt immobilized by the amount of dust and dirt and clutter I am confronted by. It is too much, sometimes. But eventually, you pick up the broom, because you want to put something new over that mess, or you at least want your damage deposit back.

My very first apartment, which I shared with Kim and Andrea during my second year of university, that first time around, was at the corner of Bloor and College streets in Sudbury, Ontario. I thought it was funny, living at the corner of these two side-streets that shared their names with major streets in Toronto that ran parallel to one another, and which would never, ever, meet. I had copied onto cassettes a number of albums from home, and of course one of these was The White Album. I anticipated the skip, appreciated the scratched record sounds that had been transferred to this cassette and this city, and on those nights where I was feeling lonely and homesick, it made me feel a little less so.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Beatles (Harrison)

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love

I don't know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you.

I look at the world and I notice it's turning

While my guitar gently weeps

With every mistake we must surely be learning

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know how you were diverted

You were perverted too

I don't know how you were inverted

No one alerted you.

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

Look at you all...

Still my guitar gently weeps.