The Early Years (2002-2005)

My best Canadian music experience: sitting in the computer room of the Palais des Congres convention centre, the girl opposite me suddenly started playing local band the Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies)” on her laptop. Which I started nodding my head along to (“sleeping is giving in” is such a good line). So she goes - “oh do you like that song?“And I said yeah - I had the song with me. And then the guy next to me went, “oh I have that song on my computer too”. And then the other girl opposite me was like “oh yeah so do I”. So we tried playing the same song on 4 machines at the same time. As an effort in coordination it was a failure - seriously ugly phasing effects - but as a shared musical moment it was great. Four people, three countries (Canada, America, Singapore), one song.

You know, one could wax lyrical about walking down Rue St Denis and crate-digging in used-record stores (picked up a copy of Supremes A’ Go-Go, which, naturally, is out of print on vinyl) and eating crepes and the temptations of music and DVDs at Archambault. But that’s easy enough. So over the next few days I’ll run through my top Montreal memories, starting with this one:

I don’t often talk about work (for the same reasons most bloggers don’t ever talk about work), but I suppose it’s no secret that I handle climate change issues. So, as a purely personal decision, I decided to purchase some carbon dioxide offsets from Climate Care to make up for the carbon dioxide emissions from my taking a Singapore-London-Montreal flight. Which means some of my money has gone towards sustainable energy and reforestation projects.

Back in Singapore, and will be off to reservist training tomorrow. So, some quick links to keep all entertained: The Shining as feel-good flick of the summer (requires QuickTime) Sarah Silverman sings “Give the Jew Girl Toys” While He-Man sings Four Non Blondes. A transcript of Eddie Izzard’s classic standup bit Dressed to Kill Le Front de Libération des Nains de Jardins

The bitter cold has a funny way of focusing the mind - for four years I griped through winters in Boston, but here in Montreal I’ve come to realise I may hate the cold, I may get depressed by it, but it creates a clarity of mind in me. Today I walked through the hustle of Quartier Chinois, down the cobblestoned streets of Vieux Montreal, trudged along till snow snuck swimming into my shoes and my face felt about to be sloughed off, sheared by the wind. But what one learns about oneself sometimes is pretty priceless.

Was speaking to some colleagues here in Montreal yesterday, and one of them remarked about me, “you’re the kind of guy who won’t do something to wrong yourself” (okay, I’m translating from the Mandarin) - which was in line with questions on Paths in Life that have been playing in my head the last couple of days. Questions which revolve on what, for me, is a central concern: how does one live a life without regret?

I hear from Mr Brown that La Idler, fellow blogger and a collaborator on Tomorrow and the Bloggercon, has passed away. Incredibly sad news - it’s quite gut-wrenching to read her posts on moving overseas and her future plans. Rest in peace, Sondra.

Thursday having been Thanksgiving in America, I should at least make one post in the midst of my work and recreation to give some thanks… An interlude: some of my favourite songs involving thanking -

Right. I leave for London in a couple of days, and then I’m off to Montreal, and after that I have army reservist commitments. So - what with work and spending time with the Girlfriend - this blog is likely to be on winter break till about a month’s time. But you can leave suggestions on what to do in Montreal in the comments (yes, all comments get e-mailed to me).

Whenever you click publish in Blogger these days, it goes through google-analytics.com - what’s up with that? I guess I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I’m annoyed that I bought the Pet Shop Boys’ Behaviour album in America, and thus own a copy of Behavior. Golden retriever gives birth to green retriever. Hey, I learnt a new word: ‘kinkajou’. Here’s a nice kinkajou page. Does J.T. LeRoy exist? And why is that a topic for WWD?

Since I used a quote from the Pet Shop Boys’ “Being Boring” in my previous post, here’s a still from Bruce Weber’s video for the song, ripe with a sexuality that nicely contrasts with the bittersweet tone of the song, recalling the halycon days of pre-AIDS hedonism.

“In my nineteen nineties I never dreamt that I would get to be The creature that I always meant to be” The Pet Shop Boys, “Being Boring” Sometimes songs become seared in one’s consciousness - yesterday my MP3 player brought up the one-two punch of Sister Hazel’s “All For You” and the Wallflowers’ “One Headlight”, both of which are decent MOR songs admittedly but are embedded in my mind mostly for the fall of ‘97, specifically a driving trip up to Kittery, Maine from Boston, off to get my first-ever set of winter gear. All throughout, while we moved in and out of the range of various radio stations’ transmitters, those two songs were unavoidable earworms, occupying every channel, burrowing insidiously into my mind. And even now listening to them calls up, in the manner of Proustian madeleines, the deep reds of autumn foliage, dipping my toes into the cold Atlantic Ocean, and the dim knowledge that all this preparation for the onset of the cold was part of the first steps towards something life-altering, being in America, four years of finding the person I was meant to be.

A bag of books (what US students will know as the M-bag) that I had sent from the US 4 years ago when I was leaving arrived in Singapore recently. What a long, strange trip it must have been.

The National Library here in Singapore is allowing people to borrow 8 books instead of the usual 4 for the holiday season - so I’m knee deep in reading. Currently going through New Yorker critic Anthony Lane’s collection of film and other essays Nobody’s Perfect, which has some interesting thoughts on Buster Keaton as the all-American vs what he sees as Chaplin’s English obsession with class… I don’t know, though, I don’t think I would ever prefer Keaton to Chaplin, but maybe that’s just me.

There’s something of sheer joy in this photo of a boy trampolining with a goat.

It’s NaNoWriMo, which signed up for last year in an abortive attempt to get some writing off the ground… I’m not really going to be able to discipline myself to write a novel in a month, or even a short story, particularly given that I’m going to be travelling for almost 3 weeks near the end of November.

Was sent the BBC’s list of 50 things to eat before you die - seems like not that new a list, but anyway it was fun to look through it (even some choices were really boring - I love pizza and burgers, but they seem so ubiquitous that to put them on a “things to eat before you die” list seems odd)… so, italicising what I haven’t had, it looks like 46 down, 4 to go…

Well - it’s tough to do a set list through the haze of memory, but digging through my records I can roughly recall what I did or didn’t play at Sunday’s gig. So here’s the setlist.

I remember being intrigued by the Wired story about Friends Beyond the Wall, the company that Photoshops pictures so that prison inmates can look like they have spent time with their loved ones. Which I can see - it must make it easier for their loved ones to have a photo they can display on their office desk, for instance. But then in doing a Google Image Search, I found Famous Friends, which basically lets you pretend you’ve hung out with celebrities, which I thought was a bit ridiculous:

So, two items about celebrities made me think about love and aging: first, there’s an extensive “Woody Allen at 70” interview in the upcoming Vanity Fair, parts of which are discussed in this BBC News article.