when I am king!

First day of school. My first class was absolutely phenomenal. 19th Century American Lit with Professor Paul Downes. I was sitting in the corner with a 2nd year student - and I've had class with Downes before so I was anticipating him walking into the room for a reason. He's wiry, has the perfect sprinkling of grey in his black boyish hair, and dresses well - sort of like a late 80's to early 90's British hybrid of punk/Radiohead, but academically. It works for him. Then he opens his mouth...my remark to 2nd year student "And cue all the red blooded females in the class falling in love". I like to think I'm a wit.

Anyhow I really wanted to get into something that really annoyed me during the class. Well it was less annoying and more just "what happened?". We're starting the class off with the Declaration of Independence, and today we looked at photocopies of the pages of an actual US passport. Some part of my brain kept telling me that there was something illicit about that, probably because I'm crazy. Anyway the overarching theme was this harkening back to the frontier and symbols of Freedom such as the bald eagle. Downes pointed out the irony that the bird almost went extinct, that was very enjoyable. The images broke down a bit like this: bald eagle/mountains, Mount Rushmore, the west coast/train, the midwest/man ploughing, cowboys, Statue of Liberty, a totem pole, a ship, and a satellite. Very very frontier, and new in depiction.

So...usually when I'm in a class where I feel very engaged a I get this build up in my chest and it becomes this explosive thing that just has to come out otherwise I might spontaneously combust. I like participating. Can you tell?

I forget what line of questioning we were following but my mind made a jump re: the design of the passport. He motioned for me to make my statement so I launched into it and was trying to explain that rather than it being the people who designed the passport trying to romanticize the frontier/self made man aspect of the United States it seemed more like a practical choice. The fact that there are no cities represented in the passport [to me] points to the creators/designers need to avoid controversy. How does one pick cities that are emblematic of the United States without creating some sort of outcry from citizens about how one city is better than the other? I think that if it were Russia, at least they could just put Moscow in the passport, and nobody would say anything because that's just how it is. But the US is actually a conglomerate of many little countries. NYC, it can be argued is it's own country, and LA is just whack (I say that in a loving way). To me it points to a kind of fracturing (which is so American Lit) of the unity of the US (in the present), the designers had to go back to a different time to create a sense of again - unity, etc.

I'm halfway through this statement when some girl just randomly cuts in to what I'm saying, very loudly. She was trying to claim that there was a city represented in the passport because of the Statue of Liberty, and kept trying to run away with this, so I countered with the fact that there was absolutely nothing other than the top part of the statue seen in the image which I believe was a deliberate choice. Lady Liberty is an emblem for Freedom. (it has to be capitalized, you know it does) I finished my statement, which was appreciated. I just don't understand why this girl felt it was so important to not let me finish and had to jump in and not wait. Was that so important? Why was it so important? It just threw me off for a moment in terms of pettiness.

I later decided that it was because I had looked at her earlier and possibly showed some form of disapproval for her choice of outfit. She was wearing white dress socks with black leather secretary shoes with thick chunky heels, grey bell-y bottoms and a white oxford-ish shirt, but with embellishments. It was kind of wanna-be Audrey Hepburn but not quite hitting the mark. Missing it by almost a mile. It was the shoe/sock combo that got me I think. I was going to make a comment about it earlier but then it developed into a whole story because she decided to go and be passionate about something I actually think was insignificant and eventually banal.

BUT I think it's interesting that I've never experienced something like it before at U of T. It whet my appetite for shooting people down.

I'm gonna let my brain marinate in that for a bit. It's gratifying.

not so linear after all

Remember how I mentioned on twitter that we should talk about how Lateralus was a seminal record/song to my maturing as a person, or a stage thereof? That time is now come.

Lateralus came out May 15th, 2001. I was like what...in grade 10 or 11? It was the first Tool album that I had ever listened to. From beginning to end. I was hanging out with my friend Jonathan at the time and he wouldn't stop going on about this one band who had a hilarious song named "Prison Sex". So finally I gave in. And it was everything I had ever been looking for from a collective and spoke directly to some part inside of me that I could never place until then. A place I couldn't really put into words. I'm not going to review the record, I'll just tell you what it means to me.

First off the men in Tool are incredibly technically proficient. Danny Carey is someone I will always look to as one of the best drummers of our time. But right off the bat the thing I connected with most was Maynard's voice - absolutely primitively growly, yet at the same time he has this capacity to sound like (for lack of a better word) an angel. This duality is instantly obvious and incredibly magnetic. Then there are the lyrics. Usually that is what I listen for first - this is what gets me hooked. So it's grade 11(ish) and of course I'm going through an incredibly angsty phase. My parents are being dicks, mostly my stepfather, life at home is...unbearable, I'm depressed, problems feel insurmountable, I feel disconnected from society as a whole. I'm not accepted -- the people at my school, well they're not nice. Yet despite everything I have this amazing capacity to try to live life as fully as I can, it's been one of the constants in my life. The fact that I experience things very intensely in terms of my feelings means that the lows are incredibly low, but the highs.....are unlike anything else -- the closest I've come is being on fentanyl when I was in hospital.

So this record comes around and I listen to it, and I'm discovering all of these interesting things, realizing the references. Finding out more about what this band is all about. Finding out about the origins or influences of the songs. The first one I really listened to a lot was Schism - which to me is about how lack of communication is what causes the breakdown of relationships, universal right? But...just...the way it's put, and yes it's pretentious but it's so eloquent and elegant at the same time "The light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us so / We cannot see to reach an end, crippling our communication" wordy and kind of complex, but absolutely beautiful. But....lateralus - the song...was what really opened my eyes, I suppose. I don't even know what I mean by that.

Anyway here's a little bit about the technical side of the song: via wiki:

The song is known for its distinct time signatures. The time signatures of the chorus of the song change from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8; as drummer Danny Carey says, "It was originally titled 9-8-7. For the time signatures. Then it turned out that 987 was the 17th number of the Fibonacci sequence. So that was cool." (this made every magazine, though Spin mostly label Tool as math rock)

This is going to sound so granola-y but, it's probably the most positive, life affirming song I have ever encountered. It's funny because it comes right after a song that is so absolutely angry - Ticks&Leeches (about the record company and the shit they had to deal with re: that). Maynard sings about everything that people experience "over thinking over analyzing separate the body from the mind" I have a tendency to pick everything apart, obsessively, compulsively. I have such a hard time turning my brain off so that lyric is hilarious to me. It's like "dude you are speaking to me!" But it's about more than that - it's about pushing oneself to new levels, to keep going, despite everything that's trying to hold you back in your life, to fight against gravity, to break free. "There is so much more and beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities". And my favourite line, one I use all the time "Feed my will to feel this moment/urging me to cross the line", it's about living in the moment, living for the moment, about embracing the things in your life that make you feel the way you need to. It's about pushing the envelope "watch it bend".

There's more. I feel like ever since actually digesting this, all of it, I try to live a no holds barred life. There is no tomorrow. There is only today. There is only this moment which keeps going but will never be the same. And sometimes I slip, but ... damnit I only have one life, I refuse to regret anything. I would rather do, and fail, than not try at all. And if I'm afraid at the moment...I will do what I need to so that hopefully, if my moment extends itself to a future, I will be braver then. "Whatever will bewilder me". This song reinforces that even though the world can be a horrible, terrifying, hostile place - it can also be beautiful. Sometimes you have to seek the beauty out, it's not always just there for the taking. But...but but but....even when life has you down, even when everything seems like it's falling apart, even when you're incandescent with rage...you need to remember that a moment will exist, or has existed where everything came together, everything fell into place, even if it was just for a split second there was that joy where you were aware of that one amazing feeling of just...getting it, getting life. Sometimes they're few and far between - these moments - and sometimes they won't stop coming and you get overwhelmed. But they're what we live for. I grasp them tightly. I look forward to more.

So even though I'm cynical, and bitter, and humorously angry half the time -- I do still believe in people. I mean...I say I have no faith, and to a certain extent this is true. I operate under the logic that mostly everyone I know will disappoint me somewhere down the line, it's just a matter of time. But this doesn't preclude me from still loving them. Because I guess despite everything even though it doesn't seem like it, I'm a huge optimist, huge. But that's our secret okay?

ps. here's a link if you're interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus_(song)