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A disturbing number of love songs follow this basic theme: “You make me feel like shit and you betray my trust, but I love you so I’m going to put up with it”. To me, that sounds like the unhealthiest possible way to be in love with someone. Love, to me, is a mutual and constructive thing, where two (or more) people are committed to making each other’s lives better. Sure, people make mistakes and sometimes it is necessary to forgive them, but at some point you have to really ask whether the person who’s cheating on you for their fourth or fifth time actually loves you. And you have to start asking some questions about yourself as well, I’d say.
So I put a twist on this “you betray me but I love you” trope and added to it, turning it into “you betray me, and I love you, but I’m still leaving”. Because it’s possible to love someone enough to know that they’re no good for you, and the best thing you can do is get your distance. And that’s what this song is about.
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I recently became single. How/why it happened isn’t a particularly interesting story, but suffice it to say that as breakups go, it was very civilized. And so now I’m single again, and trying to figure out what that means for a 31 year-old guy with essentially no free time and no particular interest in rushing into another relationship.
Unlike the last time I was single, however, Tinder is now a thing. For those of you who somehow don’t know, Tinder is an app for your phone where you upload a few photos and a short profile, and other users either swipe right if they think they’d like to meet you, or left if they don’t. If two people swipe right on each other, it’s a “match”, and they can message each other to arrange a date. It’s basically online dating in the Candy Crush era: superficial, simple, addictive, but ultimately mostly just a distraction.
I wrote a song about Tinder, and online dating in general. Very little of it is based on personal experience (I’m an OKCupid man myself), although it’s not exactly fiction – maybe think of it as “inspired by a true story”. Not my story, but certainly the story of hundreds if not thousands of people who signed up for a good time and ended up getting way more than they bargained for.
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The fundamental component of love is trust. That’s what I think, anyway. If you can’t rely on someone, if they can’t be held to their word, then what kind of love could be possible? Love requires us to be our most vulnerable selves, and that requires enough trust to know that the other person won’t exploit that vulnerability.
I wrote this song while I was in the midst of writing another song (that I ended up recording, hating, and burying). It had an old-style blues feel to it, and so I started with a blues-like line “Oh woman, why you do me like you do?” There are a lot of blues songs about infidelity, but most follow the “please forgive me for cheating” or “I know you’ve been cheating” script. I decided to do something a little different, and explore the idea of being a faithful partner who was nonetheless suspected of cheating. … Continue Reading
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At the beginning of the month, my girlfriend Jessica moved into my apartment. This is the culmination of many months of her partially living at my apartment. A lot of this arrangement is purely pragmatic – since she was spending 3-4 nights a week at my place anyway, it made enough sense for her to just fill in that gap. Also, we’ve put in enough time and effort and gone through enough bumps and bruises that a lot of the anxieties I had about sharing space with her have been addressed. There were fewer and fewer reasons not to try living together, and a lot of reasons why we both felt it would be a great idea (to her credit, she arrived at that conclusion months before I did). Plus a lot of her stuff is nicer than mine.
Jessica works nights, meaning that about half of the week she sleeps during the day. Over the past few months, there were a number of instances where she would sleep at my place during the day (I live in a really quiet neighbourhood – for a while she lived across the street from a train yard) and then have to take off for work or errands. On days when I thought it was likely she’d be there, I tried to get into the habit of making the bed (which is a habit I picked up from her – I hardly ever do it when it’s just me). Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I’d come home from work to find the bed unmade because she’d been sleeping in it – a circumstance that always made me smile. I liked that she felt comfortable and at home at my place. … Continue Reading
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One thing I’ve been doing this summer is getting out on the streets of Vancouver and busking. Here’s a picture of me doing that:
The guy who took that photo is a kind passerby named Fred, who also just happened to have a piece of recording equipment on his person. Because he enjoyed what I was doing, and because he’s a kind and generous person, he recorded me performing one of my new favourite tunes. Check it out:
Because of a few new demands on my time and some fun developments, I’m going to be playing fewer solo shows over the next little while, but I do hope to keep busking as long as the weather allows. Catch me at Kits Beach or in Olympic Village playing this and other covers and originals. If you see me, come say hi!
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Most things in life can be changed with effort – whether that’s the concerted effort of a passionate group of people, or the determined effort of an individual. But there remain some things that are beyond the scope of our powers to change. Assuming that we have the wisdom to discern the difference, there’s only one logical approach to things we truly cannot change, and that’s to try and find the positive within them.
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There are a lot of things to love about the city of Vancouver. There’s never any smog, it doesn’t get very cold, there are mountains, we’re right on the ocean, people are attractive and friendly, politics tends to be left-leaning, and there are a lot of different kinds of people living here. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
But hands down, without hesitation, my absolute favourite thing about Vancouver happens around this time of year. Winters here are rainy, grey, and not terribly exciting. But as we approach April, the city transforms into a goddamn fairy wonderland.
Trees all over the city turn pink and redolent with cherry blossoms. These trees are planted all over the city. For a three-week period, pockets of pink explode into fragrant bloom. This, for example, is my street: … Continue Reading
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When a romantic relationship ends, you don’t go back to being the person you were before the relationship started. That has been my recent experience, anyway. My relationship with my now-ex was a big deal for me, because it was the first one I’d had after 8 years of being single. It was amazing to me how much I needed to learn not only about how to be in a relationship period, but about myself and what kind of person I was.
So I wrote a song about that. Lyrics, as always, are below the fold.
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Muse’s Absolution shares the coveted title of “albums I bought after hearing the single for the first time” with Radiohead’s Ok Computer. It wasn’t the big single “Time Is Running Out” that did it for me, incidentally, but the somewhat less-popular “Hysteria” that pushed me to the record store. From the first beat, “Hysteria” appealed not only to the part of me that loves hard rock, but the part of me that can’t get enough of cerebral and complex soundscapes. The rest of the album (those of you who have listened to it know what I’m talking about) is almost theatrical in its presentation – blistering rock woven into a tapestry of operatic composition. It’s a masterpiece.
Since then I haven’t missed a Muse album release date. While they achieved galactic superstardom on the back of the Black Holes and Revelations album, I was far more partial to their next album The Resistance which stands out to me as their best work. Their most recent album, however, gave us the song that is probably their single best individual contribution: “Madness”.
My dad was a big fan of legendary Brit-rock band Queen, so we heard a lot of Freddie Mercury in my childhood home. The thing that makes me love Queen and Muse is the fact that they do not shy away from classical European music (largely of the Romantic-era vintage, another personal favourite), with all its bombastic overtures and haunting ballads. It’s all there. Beethoven would feel very much at home playing backing keys for both bands. “Madness” is what happens when Muse tries to recreate Queen’s magic touch, and it hits all of my musical pleasure centres.
Because the song is so closely tied to its classical roots, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and re-create the song on my favourite classical instrument: the viola.
All parts, including percussion and ‘cello’ were produced using my viola with an occasional assist from my Line6 POD HD500. Most of the ‘effects’ on the string parts were added in production/mixing. This song sets a personal record for “largest number of tracks”, weighing in at a total of 18 separate parts. It was a monster to put together, but definitely a fun experience. Recording it forced me to come face-to-face with my own limitations as both a sound engineer (obviously) but as a player as well. I also got to stare the sonic limitations of my viola in the eye in a way that I don’t normally have to when it sits under my chin.
All in all, it was a fun project and I’m looking forward to doing more. If you like it, please share it!
Crommunist 