11:32pm

On the one hand I wish I had more time to sit down and craft really good material for this blog. On the other hand I'm pleased that I have too much else to do.

After spending most of my life in one or another academic environment, it's kind of an unusual feeling to be overwhelmed with work that is entirely of my own construction. When I was in school it wasn't at all uncommon for me to be overloaded by essays and whatnot, usually because I was too lazy or too distracted to get the head starts I really should have on those assignments. Since moving back to Toronto in September I have been pretty lax on myself; giving myself some time to breathe and decompress from the insanity of 2008, but in and around the New Year I found myself getting bored. And bored for me equals madness -- not that good "I'm a crazy artist" kind of madness, either: more the "I am contemplating more and more often, and with greater aesthetic detail, burying a pick axe in someone's head for stealing my seat on the subway" kind of madness.

So here I am, on Obama Day, after spending several hours debating the finer points of political science with a bunch of armchair bureaucrats and half-drunk skate punks, trying to write in a blog to explain why I don't like wasting time.

Music is better than booze, for one thing. Even sitting around plucking away and trying in vain to get down the needling details of Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen is better than staring vacantly at a TV screen while my ninth drink slips slowly and inexorably toward its final resting place -- overturned on my floor to collect dust and bugs. Or, God forbid, falling prey to the Guitar Hero fanaticism that seems to have gripped my roommate of late. Talk about wasting time.

I feel at this point that I have to run to catch up with myself. I've talked my whole life about doing what I love, all day, every day -- and suddenly, with no real warning whatsoever, it's upon me. I spend my day writing -- what I'm writing doesn't matter, it's enough that I'm manipulating words and weaving rhetoric -- and when I come home I have considerable musical responsibilities to attend to. This is more fulfilling than any girlfriend, paycheque or other external satisfaction has ever been. I am thrilled, happy, grateful.

And, goddamn it, thanks for pointing it out -- yes. I am very much alone. I guess the groupies are a little farther behind trying to catch up with me, and maybe once I get to that point I'll start feeling a little more in touch with humans. But for right now I'm holed up in my head, trying to wring every last morsel of inspiration I can from everyone and everything around me. It doesn't make for terribly reciprocal romantic liaisons, I would imagine -- don't try to love me when I'm in the state I'm in.

I'm going to cram that Guitar Hero up his ass. Love him like a brother, but I'm writing real music here, on an instrument not primarily composed of plastic. Do I feel superior? Yeah. Sue me.

On some level I feel kind of bad posting this kind of nonsense in an online forum -- because some people actually deign to read this stuff, and honestly I'd rather be entertaining you (all three of you). But sometimes I need to get this out of the way so I can get to the music -- like an archaeologist sweeping dirt off a fossil, except I'm more in the leafblower camp than I am in the little-noncy-brush camp.

What? You don't like it, don't read it! I didn't ask you to show up! Get the fuck off my lawn!