Sometimes when I am riding skytrain into work, and I am feeling particularly Dostoevskian, I am apt to conclude that life is just one ceaseless and ever-growing French fry craving.
This is grim.
(And McDostoevskian.)
But it is also completely symptomatic of what it’s like to be navigating the throes of my personal, and very inconsistent existential life crisis.
One day I’m just fine.
And the next, I’m expecting Inspector Porfiry Petrovich to board the train at Joyce-Collingwood and arrest me in front of all the other semi-dazed travellers, proclaiming me to be a student and murderer in equal succession.
(I think some people just call this melodramatic malaise “being in their late twenties.”)
Plus my arrest would probably be for fare evasion.
Or maybe, anti-social behaviour.
I’m no ax-murderer.
To combat this insanity (inanity?) I have been listening to a lot of ridiculously fantastic music.
I know I just wrote a post about movies that highlighted a few of the different films that have impacted my life, but I’ve really been thinking quite a bit of late about all the things that up until this point, have made me, well, “me.”
During the summer between first and second year of my undergrad, I lived in Halifax and hung out quite a bit with a fabulous lass named Kathleen.
Kathleen had a touch of the nihilism in her (as are wont all twenty year-old self-styled academics), but she was also greatly distressed by the thought of all of the books she would never read, all of the movies she would never watch, and all of the songs that she would forget about and never hear again.
So in an effort to ensure she would remember as many of these things as possible, she would carry about a small notebook and write the names of anything and everything artistic that she would encounter throughout her daily meanderings.
Her scribblings were to her, a sort of literary, musical, and cinematic catch-all.
Of late, I too have begun to employ this system.
For the past few months, I haven’t been able to leave the house without the small pink notebook that is now chock-a-block of semi-flushed out blog post ideas, daily to-do lists, and half-cocked philosophical musings.
I just hope that nobody murders me and this is the first thing that CTV finds on my rapidly cooling body.
Nobody wants to be remembered by their inability to remember to purchase both dish detergent AND QTips.
(Why can’t I remember QTips!?)
But it’s also been super helpful.
Because sometimes inspiration strikes, or you hear a tune so brilliant that it’s everything you can do not to bust a move right then and there in front of Save-on-Food’s overpriced and under-stocked egg selection, or you see a character so desperate and strange that you can only assume that they fell out of a wormhole connecting our universe with whatever bizarro world exists out past the recesses of our equally wacky solar system.
You know.
The usual.
But to get back to the music of which I earlier wrote – there is so much stuff that I wish to share with you all.
The first being my latest obsession: Jungle.
A modern soul collective based out of London, UK, they are so absolutely groovetastic it boggles the mind.
I’ve been listening to their songs on continuous repeat for the past two days.
Check them out:
They are coming to Vancouver on October 14th and I cannot wait to get my epic dance on. For this night (and never this night only) I will be the dancing queen.
Young and sweet.
Next, another British band of whom I am completely enamoured: Bastille.
Every so often I like a band so much that I will break my “no music EVER whilst training” oath, and stick in ye olde earbuds as I tie up my running shoes.
I have broken this pledge many times over the past month because of this band.
Every song of their feels as though they are speaking directly to me, and by speak, I mean mailing an emotionally resonant and personally impactful treatise express-post straight into my soul.
They are SO GOOD.
Finally, new Spoon.
(For those neophytes out there, the band is just called “Spoon” not “new Spoon.” They just have released their latest EP.)
And for lack of a more poetic descriptor, it is bloody fantastic.
I don’t think this band is even capable of releasing a crap album, because everything they release is delicious.
And inspired.
So there you are.
For all of you who are also currently conquering your own existential demons (or at least riding out the “what does it all mean!?” wave), I suggest you put on your dancing shoes and break it down.
One French fry craving at a time.
Rant and Roll 