Drowning Nor Waving

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about inspiration.

(No, this is not a writing post. It is a post about the things we do with our hands.)

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Jack Layton -- for the international readers, the leader of the (social democrat) New Democratic Party and the current federal official opposition -- died abruptly of cancer two weeks ago. The response was solid national mourning: my very political Twitter friends posted their personal Jack stories; publishing people linked articles and eulogies; my very apolitical suburban upper-middle-class relatives talked about him in an almost puzzled, off-balance way at a family funeral last weekend, like people who'd lost a tooth and kept worrying at the gum. People who didn't like this mostly demonstrated enough sense and class to keep their mouths shut and respect everyone else's mourning.

There was a state funeral, and a lying-in-state at both the Parliament buildings in Ottawa and City Hall here, where he served for many years as a very active and visible city councillor. I went to the visitation with friends, and waited an hour and a half in line to pay my respects at that flag-draped coffin. commodorified, who was in town though I did not know it, inadvertently started a tribute they'll be talking about in the history books. We left chalk. It was almost the definition of a community experience: the vast iceberg of a whole city and country groaning and shifting together. Everyone drawing a little closer.

He left a letter. It was his last public act. It's called A Letter to Canadians, and was released shortly after his family announced that he had passed away.

You should read it, but here's the important bit:

...consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

I am not politically partisan, both by personal inclination and professional obligation, but I believe in those words. They took me in the chest and made me cry at my desk for the loss of a person I'd never met. They are good words, and I say that in the way Beowulf keeps repeating þæt wæs god cyning. Yes, they confirm my worldview to a certain extent, and one must always be a little careful of that. But they are good words. They are right.

I want them so very badly to be right.

It's been a week. Things go back to normal. They do, and they don't.

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But this is a post about inspiration.

I don't know why it's faintly embarrassing to say that paragraph inspired me, especially when it came from someone who was often cited as being close in the vicinity of inspiration: down the block or right next door. I want to twist to avoid the word. I want synonyms, waterings-down, elisions.

Possibly it's terrifying.

It's the same root as respire and spirit; Latin spirare. It means "to breathe". It means to have something put its lips to yours and fill your lungs or soul like a sail.

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There is, I think, a particular courage inherent in being willing to be inspired: being willing to take someone else's words into you, breathe them into your lungs, and let them animate your arms and legs and heart. To hear someone else's words and change your life is a ceding of a certain kind of control, and it's frightening, and brave: it puts you on roads you didn't plan to walk to places you've never been, and some of them can be trying and terrible and dark.

They demand willingness to devote yourself passionately to something bigger than you, and nebulous, and chancy, and like all passions, bearing a terrible risk of heartbreak. And many of us, in pursuit of ways to never fail, are perfectly willing to make a very bad tradeoff, and never try.

It does not mean agreeing with everything the speaker ever said or did. That's role model, not inspire, and I remain very against role model on the grounds that it's sloppy critical thinking. But it means picking your stars, and orienting yourself by them, and then throwing yourself into space by their light.

(Yes. Throwing yourself into space.)

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It's been six months since my grandmother died. She left a letter for each of us too. Mine was not polished in the way political rhetoric is: either because of the times, or possibly my great-grandfather's views on women and education, my grandmother never got halfway through high school. But it was honest, like the one I linked above. It was good words, and true.

She told me that she would be there for me, and that good things would happen; questions would be answered in their own ways. She told me to always smile.

I take that as one of my stars too. I carry it in my lungs.

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This can be read, I suppose, as an argument for activism. It's definitely an argument for living an engaged and deliberate life. It could also be an enormous arrogance and intrusion: to have someone else speak, and expect you to twist and alter your life and all your careful plans.

What I think I'm asking here is for you to take courage: to not shrink from that word (that task, that challenge) or minimize it. To reject the cynical, slowly or altogether, raise sail, and fix, one by one, your stars.

It's terrifying, yeah. Space is cold. Jumping is the kind of thing that always tends to make my knees lock.

But it's the most natural thing in the world, too. It's nothing but breathing.

Breathe in.

Dr. My Roommate and I went for a walk last night: the tea shop, and then Fiesta Farms (which was closed), and since Fiesta was closed, the big Loblaws at Christie and Dupont. I wanted the groceries; she wanted the walk, and maybe some yogourt while we were up.

I don't remember how we got onto the topic of why we don't drive.

Neither of us do. We both can; we both have held driver's licences in the past, although for me it's the deep and distant past: I haven't been behind the wheel of a car since I was 18. The roommate bikes, and I walk.

She had a reason for why she didn't drive, a fairly neat and clearly articulated one which has nothing to do with the way bike lanes, cars, cyclist and driver behaviour on the roads, safety, and the whole general culture war between bikes and cars, downtown and uptown, is politically exploding in Toronto this month, after the Public Works Committee of municipal council recommended that the year-old bike lanes on Jarvis be removed.

My reasons? I had to stop for a second (on the other side of a stoplight, next to the big, leafy hedge at Bathurst and Wells, which nudged against my shoulder) and unearth it. Yes, there are the environmental benefits, the health benefits, the fiscal benefits of choosing not to drive, but those are really the bullshit on top. If I really wanted to drive a car, I would, I'm sure, have an equal list of benefits to doing so. There is something deep inside me that just finds the act inimical to my personal nature, and so no matter what the drawbacks, I'll put it aside and structure my life -- downtown rents, travel times, occasionally missing get-togethers in the far suburbs or Hamilton -- around that lack of desire for cars.

What it is (I said, after starting to walk again, reaching up to brush low-hanging maple leaves, get a handful of the humid, muggy breeze) is that I dislike the disconnection that comes with doing your travelling in a car. When you are in a car, you have a skin of metal between you and everything else. You control the temperature of the air, the sounds you hear, the tactile input. You don't have a chance to see things, so much, because if you're being anything like a good driver, your eyes are on the road. It can be an inherently wagons-circled experience: moving on your way in a bubble. In a car, the world goes by.

On your feet, you move through the world, and in it. You smell the air. You hear insects, and traffic, and wind, and other people's snippets of conversation. You touch and are touched by plants; pet other people's dogs in the park; jostle and bump and shake hands. You stop places, read signs, look in windows, study the sky. You linger. You engage.

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This morning, I read a post from one of my favourite Torontostuff bloggers, Cityslikr, about being at home in the city.

What struck me most about these conversations, though, was how in touch with their surroundings the folks were who spent their time hunting and fishing. At home in their environment, knowing everything there was to know about every hill they climbed, every point they positioned themselves at while tracking their quarry.

....

It all got me to thinking and wondering if those of us big city dwellers could ever attain such equanimity with where we live.

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The other reason I don't drive is because of a certain idiosyncratic little fear.

I get afraid, I think, that when you spend too much time in spaces that are defined by hard borders, which you control, which are all about you and where you are not simply a component, equal to all others, of that bigger, more-encompassing space? That your head and your heart start to think that way too. That you withdraw a little from an openness to random experiences -- to the thought that you may well get rained on, or told by a drunk-or-just-weird guy on the sidewalk that you are totally awesome -- and a sense of community, both social and geographical. You will not have stories about your places. You are not at home.

This could be true. This could be true just personally for me. This could be a delicately crafted pile of steaming bullshit. Who's to say? For you it might be nothing, or more of my trademark flakery -- and that's cool, because we're different people. For me, it's like breathing.

I have lived in this neighbourhood a year next week, and I know its byways. I move through it like a needle through soft fabric. I can tell you stories about this tree, or the Most Metal Garage in All Toronto (south of Bloor, alleyway around Lippincott or thereabouts), or the Door to Nowhere, whose function we do not understand, but the pondering of which is really, really entertaining. I know where all the little parks are, and the fruit trees, the cheap hardware stores, the secret bar patios. I know my neighbours. I know when the tiger lilies bloom. My fingerprints are all over this place now. Its fingerprints are all over me.

And maybe that's the first step to the thought Cityslikr's positing: Cities are our homes. Instead of fighting that idea, we need to embrace it and figure out the best ways to make our home, well, livable. Dare I say, desirable? For everyone who chooses to put down stakes here and not just those who can afford it.

I think about how to do that a lot. Don't talk about it so much lately, not in this venue, but it's going on up there. And some of that drive to the livable and desirable comes from civic programs, funding allotments, infrastructure initiatives; but some of that comes from us. Some of that is cultivating a personal and very individual capacity to open yourself to whatever the city will throw your way; to giving it space to leave fingerprints all over your head and heart, and not just trying to leave yours on it. Relationships are two-way things. Your interaction with the place you live in, if it is to be truly a home, is no less a relationship than a marriage. You can't keep a marriage going on metal walls, and controlled sound systems, and climate control.

I have no water-proof, bee-proof, age-proof idea on how to do this. Like I said, you're you and I'm me, and what works for one person is pretty much guaranteed to not work for another, and that's just how things are. But I do have a good starting point:

Take a walk. Take a couple, long and meandering, with no particular destination in mind, or no real attachment to how you get there. Engage with the things you find along the way. Touch things, and smell. Linger.

See how you feel about it.

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It was a good walk, last night. I got home, and slept well after.

Saw, with concertgoing compatriot ksumnersmith and her guy, the first show of 2011 tonight: four Toronto indie bands that are actually indie enough that 99% of everyone hasn't yet heard of them (and won't for probably a year or two) at the Toronto Underground Cinema.

Yes, I am aware that I just said "I went to see bands you don't even know about." In this case I am not just being a disgusting cooler-than-thou Annex hipster (although if you call me that, I will say "thank you!"); I didn't really know about this show until last week myself and went specifically to see a grand total of one of the four, which I only discovered...well, last week. Hanging out for the other sets was done in a spirit of adventure and discovery. Also, it was an $8 show and really, why the hell not.

The Underground is a weird venue for music. I think this might have been a bit of an experiment for them. I've seen a bunch of movies there (friend theshaggy is housemates with one of the owners, and we spent a fair bit of time hanging out there this spring/summer) and it's a good theatre with good acoustics, but there's not a stage per se or dance space. They set up a stage on risers of sorts, and while a bunch of people hung out in the seats, some of the more dancingly-inclined sort of crowded by the stage and in the aisles and did their best. I admit I kind of prefer club-style venues for this sort of thing. If I'm going to dance, I want space, and if the music's much good I want to be dancing.

The lobby did actually work out well, though: there was the concessions for food and beer, and the merch tables could be out there, and if someone wasn't interested in this particular set (each band played a 40-minute set or so) they could go hang out in the lobby and not bother other people.

Okay. Actual sets:

The opener was Young Doctors in Love, who I think were added late. This was kind of melodic poppy stuff, two female vocalists, dancy but not hugely remarkable? Bits of their songs kept sounding like other songs. Their drummer kicked a good deal of ass and was awesomely steady. I didn't find this good or bad or awful, it was mostly just there.

Heartbeat Hotel was who I came to see: they had a song on BlogTO's Neighbourhood Mixtape last week (there, I have given you one of my sources for good music) that made me listen to the thing over and over and over, and then stop listening to the five-song mix and just listen to that song, and then go to their Bandcamp site and just buy everything they'd ever made. This has so far proven to be a good decision.

They're less polished live, a bit fuzzy, but still together. I don't know if they have the thing of doing live shoegazer quite together yet, not the way Andrew Bird or Owen Pallett do. They had a good fanbase out too; this is when people started going up front and dancing. They do the wall of sound thing well -- good thumpy through-your-bones drums -- and I like their vocalist live; there's a good rawness to it, versus the "we don't know what we're doing" kind. I didn't quite get my slip-under-the-skin-of-the-music happy place -- and admittedly I spent most of today in a weirdly grim mood, and that probably wasn't helping -- but I got close, and they closed out with two songs I knew and really liked.

(Interestingly, when we were heading out, I took a nose around their merch table and got talking to two of the guys from said band, and asked if they were doing anything else local soon because I found them last week and I like their stuff etc. And they were very nice, and even though I had already bought digital copies of their last EP, they gave me a physical one for free, which was super sweet and unexpected. And if anyone does like the stuff on the Bandcamp site, apparently they're doing a show late next month at Sneaky Dee's, and I will probably go.)

The Ruby Spirit was obviously one of the bigger deals of the night -- fanbase, a better video-montage thingie than Heartbeat Hotel had, costumes, etc. They're a lot more polished than the other two bands, better technical skills on the instruments and just more together in general, and seemed to be doing this sort of big-band pop cabaret Moulin Rouge thingie. They had some dancers up behind them who were obviously their friends in matching white shirts and feathery hair things. I am not being uncharitable when I say that only two of the six were much good at moving one's body in a dancy way. So think We Are Trying For Amanda Palmer or maybe Hannah Fury Fronts a Band With Guitars.

Thing is, they left me weirdly cold (and Karina said the same, actually): maybe it was the singer doing the carnival-barker overenunciating between songs in a very deliberate way, or maybe it was the dancers that were sort of...if you're going to do that, go all-out and have funky costumes or get people who are good dancers. Or maybe it was the weird backhanded "Oh, if you're going to sit in the seats you'll be fined $100" thing the guitarist came out with. Or maybe it was just the very conscious theatricalness of it all: the presentation, the music itself, everything. It was working to be very cabaret, and I have a bit of a reaction to the sensibility of that on a few levels and for a few reasons. I just did not click with this one. Period.

We decided to skip out on The Lovely Killbots; it was close to one in the morning, the potential fourth compatriot wasn't making it from uptown after all, and my blood sugar was doing a couple dubious things. The company decamped up the street for some iffy Chinese and then we went our ways. I walked home through Kensington in the dark and quiet and thick snow, watching the last bits and bobs of the bar crowds empty out, and decided to wipe away the penises and swear words the drunk kids from the Brunny had drawn in the snow piled on parked cars along the side streets. Because y'know, it was a nice night, and even if I can't prevent people from being dicks about things, I don't actually have to walk by and leave their dickery out there.

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So in sum: This thing with going to shows of bands that are really young as bands is interesting. It was kind of like watching junior hockey or reading semipro fiction; you see as much of what isn't there yet as what is, and what could be there very soon, what's growing, and there's an interestingness in that. Also, I have to say the price is right. Tonight's outing equalled out to $2 per set.

I am reminded that I like night walking very much, especially when there's a lot of bright white snow on the ground. There is a terrible peacefulness to 2:15 in the morning in the wintertime.

Lastly, it is late and I am tired. Bonne nuit, l'internet.