have we met?

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a dame of wealth and taste/ I've been around for a long long year/ stole many a man's soul and faith ~

Actually when you really think about the lyrics of that song and how in the intro Mick Jagger sings about Pilate and the title of the song being "Sympathy for the Devil" well...I don't know if this is something that's really obvious to people who are overt Stones fans but it makes me think of The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. It's got the devil, and Pilate. But I digress...

I said something today which has been echoing in my mind for a while now : It sucks when people don't see you, or don't see you as the person you know you are, or refuse to.

Part of the whole year and a bit I had to myself as a single person was figuring out who I was separate from anyone else, what I really wanted in life, etc. Obviously this is subject to change but I am the type of person that doesn't waver much, consistency is something I value a lot. Possibly because in my last relationship someone was very inconsistent.

So now having entered into something new knowing all I know, it's very hard for me to be sympathetic to someone who wavers in decision making. I always try to tell the truth - especially at the beginning of new situations and ....well...I try to represent myself the way I am in my regular every day life. None of this "best behaviour" bullshit. I mean obviously I fret over what I'm wearing a tiny bit more but....that's always me.

And that's the point I'm making with my statement. Hello, have you met me? Perhaps I should tell you again: I like having alone time, I love reading, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my hair, I'm superficial, I like men in tight pants, I stare at the Sartorialist's website hours on end, I think men's hair is important, I get uncomfortable if someone is wearing ugly shoes, appearance matters to me, I get theoretical erections over cars, airplanes and helicopters (sometimes guns), I am materialistic to a fault, I will cut my nose off to spite my face, I can be an asshole, I judge people quickly and harshly and find myself to be right most of the time. I am my own worst critic but I am also my own best champion. I can be incredibly narcissistic at times (eg. I wish I could clone myself in male form), and at times I revert to being a girl. I have no problem spending 200$ on a pair of pants or 3000$ on a computer.

But I love dogs, outdoorsy shit, rockclimbing, hanging out with my boys and buying them shots, working hard, and not taking myself (too) seriously, and if you gain my trust and friendship - barring some catastrophic event, I will always go to bat for you and defend you until my last breath. Kind of like a white knight, or that Rihanna song about the umbrella.

I also have several different plans for what to do when I finally graduate - considered the options and have given myself several possible routes to take. I know I want to have a house in Toronto (ginormous library a must), and an apartment in Vienna. I know that I want to write, but that it probably won't be my main profession if I choose to write novels, not at first. I know that whatever career I have (out of the ones I'm setting myself up for) I won't be compromising my fulfilment. I also know what kind of lifestyle I want to lead (and am leading), and I know what I need to do to support it. I want to be able to have the freedom to visit Europe more than once a year. I also want a dog (this could present a problem in terms of going to Europe more than once a year, but I've thought about it). I want to own a mid-engine car eventually, and I'm willing to sacrifice spawning offspring for a Veyron. (Although I think if I had "child" it would be the best looking smartest thing in the world, there's that narcissism for you)

I just...like things the way I like them...and I feel confused, betrayed, saddened and ....generally malaised when I find that someone has been not completely truthful with me. And not in one of those blatant lie kind of ways (although that too). I'm technically an adult. I can handle rough situations. If I have an issue that I need to discuss with someone I have already thought out the theoretical and practical sides and made contingencies for my contingencies, I look forward. I consider my options before I make a tactical strike. It's how I roll. So to have someone try to shoehorn me into being something I'm not, or adapt themselves (for whatever reason) into the image of what they think I want....well that's bad. Because it's ersatz, it's not real, and the facade will eventually slip, revealing a truth that may not be suitable - to any party.

And that makes people upset.

And then I get grumpy.

And you don't want that.

I'll go my own way

So Sahira and I went to see Massive Attack at the Sound Academy last night. She was late because she was helping her mom move,

more on that terrible story here:

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/806414--can-linda-sepp-possibly-be-helped

The situation is just.....I'm tired of explaining it to people because it's such a long story, and it's really sad, and ridiculous at the same time, from a "can't we do anything about this" standpoint.

It seems cruel to move on from that to Massive Attack, but, at this point both of Linda's children (her son Skye is one of my besties) don't want to think about the situation. Anyway so - we were both in various stages of grump-dom. The weather in Toronto has been kind of shit lately, it was nice in the morning. Jacket weather however turned into violent rain, thunder and lightning. We took the streetcar down to around Cherry St. and then got a cab to the Sound Academy which is on the water. Nobody likes this venue because of how awkward it is to get there, if you don't drive you have to walk, or take a cab, it's completely out of the way. Our cabbie Bruce gave us his card so we could call him after the show because it was going to be a clusterfuck to get out of, cab-wise. We got in at around 9ish and got drinks. Some girl was on stage. Tight shiny tights and white shirt, weird glasses, we were like "wtf?". So we went closer and both looked at each other funny - she was kind of a hybrid of scenester and a throwback to the 80's. So we hung around and watched her - she was really spunky and energetic. I think what won me over was that she looked like she was having fun singing her songs and doing her thing, and no matter whether people were dancing or not she was optimistic. The other cool thing was that she was on the stage alone. She had all sorts of synthesizers and junk, probably some sort of MOOG and other stuff which I can't name. (a quick check of her blog shows she uses macbooks and gadgets like an OB-8, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Buchla too)
She played piano too, well keyboard. We were totally into it by the end of her set. I ended up buying one of her supercool shirts and her EP. Oh yeah, her name is Amanda Warner (which I had to google) and her band name is MNDR. She was really sweet and signed the shirt for me, I'm wearing it right now.
here's a link to her myspace, it's the only place that actually has decent fidelity, (bad youtube, bad!):
http://www.myspace.com/mndrtronica
I Go Away and Fade to Black (which is her song for Black Flag I think she said yesterday) are awesome to start with.

The next opener after that was Martina Topley Bird. Let me just say - I wasn't super into her set, but fuck, she is absolutely gorgeous, like - "I couldn't take my eyes off her" gorgeous. She was also wearing an awesome sequinned dress (purple) with a hood and big shoulders. Her voice was awesome but her music just wasn't my cup of tea. It was also her birthday. I'm not sure how exactly to describe her music - it's kind of, well it reminded me of a British version of Andrew Bird, except he's waaaaaay cooler to me, with his hilarious lyrics (crazy, they have the same last name, and both basically appear on stage alone and create a wall of sound by/with looping/pedals). She was a little more jazzy - it's kind of what I imagine 40 year olds listen to. I don't know what that means, whatever (TG excepted). Anyhow after she was done we waited almost a whole hour for Massive Attack to come onstage.

And that's where the weirdness began. Don't get me wrong, the concert was amazing. Robert Del Naja is just....well...as well as talented, very good looking. The backdrop was great, interesting light show, lots of scrolling text - mostly political stuff, Howard Zinn quotes, etc. Each song had some sort of corresponding graphic displayed on the (I'm having a hard time describing it) ...light board? Maybe I can find a picture.

Ah there it is. It was for lack of a better word, COOL. That light fixture approximated photograph quality images - at one point during the encore there was a globe that looked three dimensional and had flight times on the side. It was, well it warmed the cockles of my heart. My favourite part might have been when binary was running all throughout - which reminds me I got one of the limited edition screen printed posters - it's pretty. This was the debut of the North American tour and they were all on top of it. It was easily one of the more fun concerts I've been to, just because of the dance-ability of the songs/tracks. 3D (Del Naja) brought Martina out for a few songs - namely Teardrop. I got goosebumps - I've loved that song since I was a young'in. Overall I feel sorry for whoever missed it - but they're doing it again tomorrow night at the same venue. I'm not really sure what else I can say about it - Massive Attack have been around for a long time -their music is very well known - I mean Teardrop is the intro to House (the show) in a lot of countries so they're definitely mainstream so I don't feel that I need to get into particulars about their music. The one thing that did strike me was how Radiohead-like the concert felt. And of course it's the other way around because Massive Attack have always been electronica whereas Thom et al., only got into that around Kid A and Amnesiac (both of which I love) - but both have an inherent danceability - this is important to me. Which people don't really know about me, it's not something I advertise. As a child of two dancers/choreographers, I'm not that good - rhythm I've got....dancing....eeeh, maybe.

The crowd was significantly older than Sahira and I, we may have been some of the youngest kids there. And thus the weirdness. I've never in my life been to a concert where people have been so incredibly rude and inconsiderate. People kept pushing and shoving, I got elbowed in the middle of one of my favourite songs, people kept bumping into me, and not a little bit, a LOT. People were coming out of the center of the crowd to get beer and drinks and go back, and they were completely careless about who they shoved. I don't understand this kind of attitude. You're there to see the show, pick a spot and fucking stay there, if you need a beer bring one with you, but once you're in the MIDDLE of the crowd you're disturbing other people's experience by constantly coming and going. There was a meathead in front of us who keept creeping on his girlfriend and just in general being gross, and shoving us a lot. I smashed my bag into someone on purpose because they kept pushing me forward, and I told a lot of people off. I'm pretty good at being pedantic and belligerent when I need to, but I've never been as close to punching someone as I was last night. My levels of rage were really high, and it somewhat diminished the concert for me. I've never been so ashamed and disgusted by the people of Toronto before. Here's hoping they were all from suburbs or something.

That being said, it was Martina's birthday and 3D asked us all to sing Happy Birthday to her, so we did - which was nice. Debut of the North American tour on her birthday and the whole crowd sings to her - she seemed so happy and embarrassed, it was adorable. Overall I had a great time - I'm just a bit sore about how rude people were. Massive Attack is definitely a show that's not to be missed, or at least experienced once in your life.

books

Usually I use the summer for pleasure reading (although I do that during school too) but the summer is when I can get most of it done. For example last year when I spent a month in Europe I read six books, mostly on trains.
So I already have a stack that I haven't read yet. It goes like this:
American Tabloid - James Ellroy
East of Eden - Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (TG don't be mad I'm not done yet)
Foundation -Asimov
on top of that there are a bunch of magazines I haven't finished, like the Arts & Letters and Religion issues of Lapham's Quarterly (I've read some, not all, and I love reading ALL)
Then there's the new issue of Monocle that I picked up, and then there's the books I really really really want. Like NOW.
Those are:
Solar by Ian McKewan -a novel about an over the hill nobel physicist (to satisfy my physics fetish)
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead - a new biography by Paula Byrne - because I loved Brideshead Revisited and think Waugh was extraordinary, that book got me through swine flu
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano - I saw it in an ad on the subway, and I'm not gonna lie, the author looked really hot, also - prime numbers and being an isolated person (from the writeup on the ad) - sounds like good reading.
So that's everything I want to read or finish reading and then there's my school reading list:
The Novel (with Mike) list:
Robinson Crusoe (read it already)
Foe by J.M Coetzee
Tristram Shandy
Moby-Dick (read it already)
Emma - Jane Austen (read it already)
Little Casino - Gilbert Sorrentino
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Great Expectations - Kathy Acker
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
Mrs.Dalloway (read it already)
The End of the Story - Lydia Davis
My other course, 20th Century American Lit list:
Paul's Case - Willa Cather
Souls Belated- Edith Wharton
The Beast in the Jungle - Henry James
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (read it already)
Mrs. Spring Fragrance - Sui Sin Far
selections from Up from Slavery - Booker T. Washington
selections from The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
The Wasteland/The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (read it already)
Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
Babylon Revisited - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A TONNE of Robert Frost stuff
A TONNE of William Carlos Williams (who I love, feverishly and a lot of whom I've read, thanks to the aforementioned Mike)
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
Good Country People - Flannery O'Connor
Petrified Man - Eudora Welty
Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Howl - Allen Ginsberg (already read, love)
selected poems of Sylvia Plath, Frank O'Hara, and Pat Parker
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee
The Lady from Lucknow - Bharati Mukherjee
A Coyote Colombus Story - Thomas King
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
and finally People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk - Lorrie Moore
plus there will be a bunch of screenings
I so look forward to all of it - but how am I going to get all of my personal reading done? Oh the quagmire.