I have been a real grouch in these last few posts. I can completely understand why, but I think I ought to lighten up, at risk of being consumed by grouchiness. So, this post is going to be a recollection of all the things I love right now and a reminder of why I have to keep going.
-I love crowds. Sure, they're nauseating and oppressive, but I love masses of people configured in asymmetrical, autonomous wonder, free to their own devices, unique in what they're doing there but ultimately still together by pure circumstances. I love couples holding hands. I love friends hanging out in lineups. I love the look of the seriously studious; the biochem major, the rigorous highlighter of well-written notes, the geniuses of Excel. Those with plans and a conviction to make them happen. The anti-aristocrat, the overachiever, the daughters trying to make names for themselves, with long resumes of volunteer experience going well back to grade 9 and intentions of working in the government. I love the communion of hockey boys: I love brotherhood. I love smiling and laughing, and I especially love catching it in the wild.
-I love the smell of morning coffee in the rooms of people who couldn't be seen without it.
-I love the sun and the way it looks through any window.
-I love the North Saskatchewan River and the calm I get when I consider its size.
-I love being a townie. It's something I ought to hold with utter suspicion, but I love it. I love living in the big city. I love dressing like a disgruntled English teacher and going to shows and arthouse theatres with my other curiously dressed hipster friends, who are all doing seriously interesting things with their lives, whether that's being well acquainted with the graffiti scene, doing algebraic topology, or both. I love my encyclopedic knowledge of whatever being the common currency. I love how everyone around me knows a lot about who Bladee and Paul Tillich are, getting really psyched about the Steely Dan song playing at the bar or recounting the Parquet Courts record we didn't care for at the club. It's the feeling of "Oh, where have you people been all my life? I'm finally home!" With that all that said, I'm making a very deliberate effort to never forget where I came from. Hipsters and hipsterdom are extremely dangerous things to traffick in. It's like the one scene in Almost Famous, where Lester Bangs says "You CANNOT make friends with the rock stars! [...] They will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it!" Even though I'm not literally making friends with the rock stars - everyone I know is just some variation on my theme, being formerly lonely kids from smaller towns trying to find each other elsewhere - I do not want to succumb to the follies of finally being "cool." In the words of Ian MacKaye, cool's eternal, but it's always dated. I never want to forget being a lonely, sad teenager, one who spent nights calling you on the phone, feeling that human connection was a rare thing. That is my moral compass. Those are the times and the people I forever want to honour. I never want to betray those kids then: their fears, their dreams. Whatever I am to tackle, I want to tackle it with those kids in mind because without them, I wouldn't be here. Regardless, I will love them forever.
-I love my friends calling me in the middle of the night, asking for advice on what to do with their feelings about your other friends. I love being surprised at how much they're willing to tell you. I love how human my friends feel whenever I get to see them. I love every inch of them, flaws and all. I love laughing with them about it. I love feeling the confusion in the midst of it. I love the darkness of my bedroom during.
-I love being recommended books, records, and films. I love learning their secrets. I love those secrets being unique to the people who show me them. I love loving those things and wanting to spend my life with them. I love the firepower vested in all those things: the real feeling that Anti-Oedipus has the ability to rewire your world or that Edmonton could be the site of a scene.
-I think I'm actually beginning to learn self-compassion. That's kind of gay, and I'm a little turned off by therapy-speak, but it's true. I'm losing my patience for needless irony, so best believe I mean it. I've had a lot of hard nights out here in Edmonton, with the kind of time to think alone to yourself where you really either have to sink or swim. It's been so hard, but I think I'm starting to swim.
**When I say "I never want to forget being a sad, lonely teenager, one who spent nights calling you," I do not want to sound patronizing. I love you to death. I'm trying to say you're home.
That's all for now.
