8 minute post

I'm on deadline on this one because Coronation Street starts in 8 minutes and lately it's been the highlight of my days in my living room.

There's something strange about working and living in the same space. I've been super antsy lately and I think it has to do with the fact that I live in a space with not much storage so my need to have things AWAY and TIDY is so much greater when I have to work right next to my kitchen. In fact, looking around, you could say I work in the same room as my kitchen and living room. It's not like i can make a sandwich for lunch and plan on doing the dishes later because it's right there and when I'm talking to MTV about booking a band, I don't want to be distracted by a load of dirty dishes sitting nearby.

I've given a lot of my money to the Solutions store up at Yonge and Eglinton. My upstairs closet now has floor to ceiling shelves filled with books and six drawers of CDs. It's like a freaking monument to 2008. Welcome to the new world of testing your faith in the entertainment industry. A world where you crave company, and your friendships with local coffee shops becomes paramount to your sanity. Honestly, I can't say there has ever been a time in my life where I have had to spend as much time with myself. I've begun to really tighten everything up, cleaning the place, recycling, exercise, groceries (I buy less because I'm obsessed with using absolutely everything because I get so bored of me that I have to compartmentalize everything.)

My friend Josh said winter is worse. He did freelance journalism from home for years. But he had a wife and partner who came home at certain times. I can believe it. At least now I can take a meeting in a park, or walk home from MuchMusic when I service videos. In winter I barely want to open my door - and my mind still doesn't understand the snow-with-lack-of-mountain scenario.

Maybe I'll buy a fish...

(to be continued...)

backyard jams and other such things

Justin Rutledge had his housewarming party this weekend. My friend Jesse is a friend and fellow Parkdale-ian and so he brought me along for the festivities. The house is overflowing with character - carefully chosen rustic furniture, bright paint, a piano patiently waiting to be re-stringed, a kitchen which I learned is the classroom of pie-making, and a decent sized backyard. I don't know all the details of how it came to be but the keg tap apparently courtesy of the dakota tavern is a nice homey detail all musicians must aspire to as well.

At a certain point in the evening, we crammed our bodies into the backyard garage and with about four guitars accompanying, broke into a full sing along of modern love by david bowie and then the weight by the band. I've had modern love stuck in my head ever since. I love that sort of stuff. When I worked at the French camp, the late night guitar sessions were always my favorite, usually around a fire under a blanket. I realize I know way more French-Canadian classics than English ones now but no matter.

Good moment. Great weekend. House warming that left me with the warm and fuzzies inside.

regained sense of urgency

I have always maintained that what sets apart a decent publicist from a GREAT publicist is their sense of urgency.

Due to my recent vacation in Europe I had totally lost all sense of urgency, and was wondering if I'd finally and irrevocably lost my will to promote. That was until this morning. I had a meeting with two other publicists who I am working with on the new Land of Talk record which is coming out in October and it totally re-energized my focus. I'm thankful for it. I think life would be dull without passion.

I do however take this second to pause and moan for a moment about how wierd the range of artists I am working on. My mind is exhausted from the mental juggling!

I'm working Alice Cooper, Human Highway, Land of Talk, Melanie Doane, Plants and Animals, Patrick Watson and Grizzly Bear simultaneously.

So fucking crazy.

reconnect

I met L one summer in Toronto. He's one of the most beautiful people I've ever had pleasure of laying eyes on. We met at a party in my friend K's backyard in Roncesvalles. We'd painted her apartment lime green and the patio furniture was reclaimed from the free section on craigslist. It set the scene for an inspired housewarming party with a crowd that frequented much of the world/brazilian scene events in Toronto. Most were Lula Lounge regulars, able to either dance or drum. There was a huge drumming circle going on in the garage for hours, and music was blaring from all levels of the house as K had convinced the other tenants to join in.

I knew some of the people, having worked in the cultural arts sphere for a while. L's brothers were there in the drum circle, and I was invited to go across to the Zellers parking lot to help schlep his drums back to the party so he could join in. We cut through the nearby dingy resto/bar filled with saggy eyed locals cosying up to pool tables. In that walk I think I learned that he was a Brazilian Canadian - his fam had moved him to TO when he was eleven and had three older brothers - two of which were at the party. We drank the over-cachaca'd mojitos K had made.

For one month, we basked in theexcitement of new summer romance, holding hands at outdoor concerts, taking long walks around the city, dancing, and spending time in the bubble of my apartment, cooking, kissing and listening to rainstorms. I began to understand the reality of dating someone who was immersed in the drumming culture of Toronto - literally no matter where we met, someone would pop up and start tapping on something. It would last for hours. It got under my skin a little bit.

He popped the bubble one weekend when we had plans to head up to a nearby farm area and camp with a bunch of the Brazilian friends. I recall the conversation was oddly turned around when he awkwardly tried to explain that he'd love for me to come, but he didn't want me to think we were exclusive and he didn't want me to be mad. In the most smart decision I've ever made, I basically shut him down and said I'd rather not go and for about a year we did not speak. The whole thing was rude and incongruous with the rest of the comfort and romance and my system could not deal with it.

A year later he showed up outside my house, called me, and asked if he could come in. I was nearby so I let him in, curious. He apologized for his abruptness, and what happened. He'd felt badly about it and it bothered him that he'd never let me know. I was actually glad for it as I wasn't sure if I was a crazy lady reacting to a bad situation, so I was calmed to know that he felt he had mistreated me in some way.

We didn't see each other too much but the bridge had been rebuilt, all was well. I ran into him in Kensington one day. He was playing with his brothers for Pedestrian Sundays. I waved hello. Later on he called me and we chatted for a little bit. I don't think either of us had any expectations anymore, but it was nice to hear from him.

Once I came back from vacation, he invited me over for dinner. He'd cooked this soul warming batch of thai peanut sauce stir fry which he'd made from scratch (I'm going to attempt the recipe he described next weekend) and we drank some wine on the front balcony of his new house and caught up. Next month he's headed on a huge bike trip from Toronto to south America. He plans to be away for about three years. He's funding it via the income from the tenants in his house that he just bought with the settlement money from the massive car accident he incurred some years ago that left him re-learning basic things like how to walk.

His manner is calm, his apartment is warm. The trip seems to inspire him. It's a required journey for him. I think he just needs to do it, meet people, experience life. I understand that from the perspective of having been in a major life changing accident myself that you learn that perhaps you need to take the time for yourself to live something that is an odyssey of sorts. After the accident, he couldn't walk, and so biking for him is one of those things that got added to the list of precious things.

He made my weekend. It was nice to reconnect, and hear how he's living his life in his own way. I'm always looking for different perspectives.

did i miss you? not entirely

Do you ever go away to check and see if you missed parts of your life?

I just went on a little vacation to meet up with some of my family. Ok, actually, all of my immediate family is more accurate. My two sisters, brother, my mum and dad and as an added bonus my gran came along too. We met in the south of France for a barging holiday. It was one of these 'must-be-realized' childhood dreams of my father and even though my mum gets quite sea sick, she basically said we should just get it over with and go along with it. I'm not sure if the boat crash that came three days later was part of the plan or not, but it certainly was a low point on the trip. Long story short - we can-opener-ed the top half of the boat, knocking off the silver steering wheel on the upper deck of the boat that housed the seven Websters, and entirely wedging ourselves to a complete stop under a low lying bridge. I was actually quite pleased when we had stopped as the ride to this end was terrifying as we swayed from side to side in the whitecapped waters of the etang de thau just outside the banks of the canal rhone-sete. My mother was below decks, wretching her guts out, my sister was in black mood ignoring the family, my parents and brother up on deck trying to regain control and my other sister and gran helping my mum out. I wasn't a hero. The moment the decision was made to go forward into the etang, I was boiling furious, white-mad, and hysterical. I just wanted off.

Ironically this all changed the moment we hit the bridge. The boat stopped, and despite the four boats we had hit trying to moor earlier, and the financial damage we had just caused, and likely the emotional trauma we wreaked, I was instantly calm, and able to get everyone tied off, and their stuff off the boat. Solid ground seems to do wonders for me.

So, now I return to my home, my life here and my job and people have been asking me how my vacation was. Usually people say it was great and move on. I'm not sure that's entirely fair, so I usually find a glib way to say my dad crashed the boat and move the conversation along.

It was a good vacation in one respect. Being far away from your daily life, your tempo, your dramas and traumas, is quite liberating. And I needed it. I was mentally fried upon departure. The toll of job changes and the long standing mindfuck that I 'd recently cut ties with had worn my core to the bare minimum function level. What I got out of this vacation was wonderful... I found that I didn't miss any of it. In other words, any decisions I had made, friendships that were not working, relationships that hurt too much, jobs that were too unstable... I missed none of it. And you realize too, that you are more than any of it. It's a really good way to measure things sometimes. I did miss my bed and my shower, and am happy to be reunited with them.

I got home in the middle of Caribana weekend. It took me a while to get back to the time change correctly and when I did I was still quite anti-social and not really wanting to dive back into anything too quickly.

I went to a concert alone on Tuesday, for work. It was quite boring to be by myself at an all ages show that was energy fueled, and by all points achieved success by audience standards. I've done it many times before, but this one was kind of different because it actually it felt like work. (An aside... never ever go see Coldplay alone either, it will set you into a wierd emotional funk...) I did meet two other lonely onlys at the show that evening - a girl from Regina who had no friends who liked music as much as she and a guy from Winnipeg who had been recently laid off and had heard the bands on NME Radio so much he thought he'd better buy a ticket and check it out. And none of his friends were adventurous enough to go either. Before meeting these two characters, I had no idea that lonely concert-going was happening as much as lonely movie-watching. I used to do the movie-watching a lot because there were so many art-flicks I wanted to see that after a while I wore out my welcome with even my artsiest of friends.