2008, You Mother Fucker.
Major Highlights: Mercy Killing - a fantastic explosion/implosion far away from home, impressive and cataclysmic enough to suffice for a sudden death, and a chapter of life stretching back too many years finally gets a long overdue bullet in the head. Karma takes all and I'm not even fighting it. Good night and good luck. Next? A week in the care of some great people, Czech mountains and cold rivers puts my problems in a far greater context, makes it all alright. Yes there is good to make up for the shit in people. (Děkuji, Nemůžu se dočkat, až tě zase uvidím.) Next? Home. Graduating school. Moving homes. Taking a lot more space and time to myself and not apologizing for it.
Writing. Doing a lot of writing. A piece called No He Is Not Sleeping for Harvest Magazine's Death Issue. (from a book project called Nine Lives that will probably take me forever), Some really elaborate interviews for random zines (Buried Alive and a few more). A part in Brian Peterson's book Burning Fight about 90's hardcore (no doubt in my mind he's done an amazing job of it and that it'll do the whole era a lot of justice - check that book and the Chicago release shows out). Also started this interview in series form for Stuck In The City, on growing up in and into Hamilton Hardcore (Greg and everybody associated with SITC has been doing a lion's share of shitwork with shows in Toronto. Check them & their shows out). Music. Nothing for a few months. Then bam - the itch. Drumming, though. Who knew? I grew up on it. Haven't drummed since the CS 7" and I'm reaaaally rusty, but wanted to do it before I could find some apathetic 34 year old's reason not to do it, so I started something fresh with some like-minded people that is fun, dumb, and full of cum - exactly my speed after the events of this year:
(Mature Situations @ Siesta Nouveau 12.27.08)
Work. Did this, a lot. Having been in bands all my life and juggling the rest, I have a job I enjoy in a place with actual counterculture value, that I can actually support. But it doesn't do much for the fact that my time isn't worth much money, with or without a B.A. Been considering ways to have fun with this whole global economic collapse thing. How great would it be if all the punks became majority shareholders in major corporations by buying into it in the worst of the collapse? Or if the 30% of us who aren't trust fund kids (sorry, but it's true) got stinking fucking rich that way and could start any club, build any halfpipe or put out any record we wanted. Just a thought. Apparently I am a dreamer rather than a realist. What else? Fell back in love with the hunting and gathering of records, and oh god, how could I forget you?
Vroom Vroom - Caught up with an old labor of love in the form of a 1975 Honda CB360 Twin that I got dirt cheap last year, which was soon followed by a 1978 Yamaha 750XS Triple. Learned that I get more out of working with my hands than my head these days. A lot of days in the shed with strong coffee and King Crimson making mechanical problems worse and better, but at least learning a lot along the way. Planning a motorcycle road trip in the spring/summer that will make Easy Rider look like Brokeback Mountain. High Anxiety. Worked on the label, got Cheap Tragedies and Eating Glass records out. Burning Love EP, posthumous Cursed 7" & DVD and Lullabye Arkestra, Nightbringer, Crux of Aux and other records are all in the works. Layouts. Did some fun stuff. The EG 7", an Endless Blockade/Shank 7", the VCM CD. 1060. Got to collaborate with the best person I know on some layouts and designs, and planning more in the new year. Missing Persons. You're looking at it. Started as an exercise in writing just to get back into shape and kick out the writer's block. And I guess it worked. I skipped over cell phones (my prediction...head cancer, just you wait) and the social networking side of the internet, but I like this. It's just information, you can take it or leave it. After the Melvins in Detroit last fall, I'm working off my list of bands I need to see before I die or they die. Top of the list: The Cramps. Somehow. Finally saw Neurosis, at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn. And Bo Diddley had a stroke just days before the Toronto show was to happen.
Favorite things about 2008:
The Decline of Western Civilization. Decades of unrealistically non-sustainable hyper-capitalism finally hits tipping point and meets some natural equilibrium in the form of recession and the West sinks in prominence - entire world freaks out and starts talking about the next apocalypse. Millenial anxiety skips 992 years: "2012"? Bullshit. Find me somebody that said the same of any millenia, or Y2K. Once it comes and goes and the sky doesn't fall, they tend to just make breakfast, lose the bumper stickers, shut up and pretend they were never that irrational. Just like the voting majority of post-Bush Americans will pretend they weren't so swept up in CNN hypnotism that they were attacking Mosques, looking sideways at anyone remotely brown and repeating pushbutton xenophobe shit like "freedom fries" and "git r done" and not joking. 2012, I don't buy it. But people love apocalypse theories. It gives them excuses to be apathetic shitheels in the meantime. Shit is bad, sure, but cataclysm doesn't run on the calendar year. The numerology of it is purely incidental. Politics. A costly, unnecessary Canadian election just months after the last one, the third in...six years? Yes I did not vote. I'll get you next month. Or talk to me when we get to vote on separating from England, like any half civilized, self-respecting monarchal outpost has done by now, and we'll go from there. You wonder why Canada has such a crisis of political vagueness. Oh yeah, and America elects a Black man the president of the worst tangled mess in history. (Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?) How liberal. Baby steps, America. Baby steps. With the history of disaster politics in the last few years, and monumentally backwards decisions being made while the whole world was forced into a state of shock, I can't help but think the script for how this plays out has already been written. But for now I cross my fingers and hope he has a good stunt double.
And speaking of the arts & entertainment...Movies: Guy Ritchie's Rock N Rolla and Let The Right One In (Sweden) blow my mind. As do Iron Age and the Young Widows' live shows. Best records of the year: Young Widows - Old Wounds, Dismember -S/T & Ken Mode - Mennonite. Currently rereading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon and Philip K Dick's Time Out of Joint, fostering an unhealthy fixation on Bobby Gentry and trying to get all the photos from Europe/Scandinavia/UK into some kind of album I can post here, but there's 1500+ pictures so, all in good time.
Good night MMVIII. Here's to new maps of the world.
P.S. This Blows...My Mind!
3 comments:
I contributed to Harvest, too. Sebastian came to our (shitty) Berlin show, and made that show worth it for me. Mine's called D'Enoument. I'm excited to read yours, chris!
A lot of "year's end" schlock is showing up all over the place, but this is the first piece that I'm actually glad to have read.
It doesn't hurt that you can unscramble language better than most, but thanks for just asking and answering "What the fuck?" infinitely more often than most.
Hope you keep it up.
-Blake
Chris... I'm beginning to believe you can be both a dreamer, and a realist. I will prove this shit. 'Don't think, just do.' is the motto to my master plan.
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