Huzzah!

Last night was fun. Grand Analog put on a good show, and I really dug what he played. Hip hop is so much fun to dance too, I almost forgot.

I got way too drunk, and was almost passing out on the patio, then I went inside the bathroom to get sick, then I was OK, and drank some water, then went back to drinking booze again. Haha.

I had a great time with Jocelyn, we just sat around and talked about various things for a few hours it seemed. It was awesome. We mostly talked about music, and disusing certain words. I totally would like to see Hawksley Workman again.

Tonight is Subcity Dwellers, that promises to be a good fun time. I hear more and more people I know are coming, so that should be awesomeness. Saturday TV on the Radio is playing at the Burt. I would really like to go see them. I only know one song by them, and it's really killer, and they seem like they would be amazing live.

There's just so many awesome shows coming up in the next little bit. I'm really excited and looking forward too them. My mom just called, she forgot to call me yesterday. She's getting me a laptop for my birthday. Huzzah!!!

There was a lady who approached us on the patio, last night, and asked me for a cigarette, she then told us this heart breaking story. I hope she's safe and is/was able to get where she needs to go. I can't remember her name (I was ridiculously drunk), I wish I could. I've experienced some of the things she was going through. I could understand where she was coming from, and I really wanted to help her. I just really hope and pray she made it to her destination safely.

24

Today I am now 24. Came to work, and am currently still at work. I think the plan for tonight is me and a friend are going to see Grand Analog and stick out like sore thumbs at a hip hop show. But it should be fun.

Monday we went to the grand re-opening of the West End Cultural Centre. It was awesome, Hawksley Workman was hilarious. He's an egomaniac (in the best possible use of the word), but incredibly entertaining. It was super cool, it was just him with his guitar and Mr. Lonely on piano. Very intimate, between songs, he would do what seemed to be a stand-up comedy routine. Like I said very entertaining. He has amazing vocal abilities. I would definitely go see him again. I could see how every show he does is a different experience from the last. The way he would strut across the stage was awesome and amazing.

Greg MacPherson was cool. I love his songwriting style, it's very storytellerish. I totally love song writers who tell stories with their lyrics and melodies. It was just him on stage with his guitar, he switched between an acoustic and two electrics. It was sort of empowering/inspiring to see him on stage just himself and his guitar. It's like you don't necessarily need a band, just you and your guitar, and that's it.

So that sort of got me into a songwriting mood. After the show, and started penning a country tune for a friend. I wrote my own lonesome country tune a week or so ago, and coincidentally my friend's life is like a soap opera. Based on her experiences over the past week and a bit, the song practically wrote itself. It's like the Simpsons when Homer writes Baby on Board, there was a moment when I was writing and was like "hey this song practically writes itself".

I need to practice guitar as I often say. But I can rarely get the focus I need, or the patience. I'm very easily distracted, at least with writing it's purging and getting everything out. But practicing guitar is a very different thing. I hate when I get an awesome lyric or line in my head and I'm driving, and it's just not possible for me to pull over to start writing, otherwise I'd be on the side of the highway for hours. When I finally get to my destination the line is now gone. It's such a peevish quality of mine.

But Grand Analog should be fun tonight, and should be a low key event. Tomorrow night is Subcity Dwellers, the Farrell Bros' and The Magnificent 7's. That also promises to be a good fun time.

Improvement

I did the radio show for the first time on my own on Sunday. It was scary and nerve racking. I needed to talk louder, and I blanked a few times. I totally forgot what I wanted to say at some moments. My music I had well prepared in advance. The music part of the show went off without a hitch. It was the talking part that did me in. Next time I won't wing it, I think I'll bring along notes with my play list that way I know what I want to touch on. As one of my friends said, at least it leaves room for improvement.

I'm always up for improvement. At least I got my first show out of the way, and that's good. I have plenty of room to improve, and hopefully I can learn to speak louder and be not so nervous on air. The "umms" really got to me. I'm super stoked though for taking over the show in the summer.

I'll really need a laptop or something. Some sort of internet that I can access whenever I choose. That's why a laptop would be my best option. Here's hoping someone is kind enough to buy me one, because god knows I'm not going to buy my own.

In exactly one week I turn 24. I'm unsure about how I feel about this event in my life. I don't really have any concrete plans for my birthday, but I've never really been one to have plans, or to celebrate, etc. For myself, I'm going back to a simpler time of being a vegetarian. That is my birthday present to myself.

Monday night me and a few friends are going to see Hawksley Workman open up the West End Cultural Centre. I'm totally excited and stoked. Next Wednesday Grand Analog is having a CD release party that happens to fall on the day of my birthday. Which is totally exciting. I'm half tempted to go, but part of me also wants to do nothing on my birthday. On the Thursday after Subcity Dwellers are also playing at the West End Cultural Centre. I got tickets for that, so I'm most definitely going to that.

A lot of dancing will be had next week. I'm totally looking forward to it. There's a band playing tomorrow night I really wanna check out, however I'm broke until Friday. This sucks. I knew over the weekend I wanted to save some money. But no I didn't, because I don't like to think ahead, and I was hoping the show was Saturday rather than Thursday.

I want to do something that I love. Something I can do with passion. Being a clerk is really getting to me. I do it to pay the bills, but I'd love to get paid to do something I love, like talk, be on the radio, playing music, and things like that. Hopefully over the summer the right person will be listening to my show. There's very little passion in my life right now. My passions are for music and writing. I'm having a difficult time focusing.

I was watching or listening to something the other day where it had such a "wow" moment for me. But I can't really remember what that was all about. It'll come back to me in time I'm sure, because it was such a wow moment. I just wish I could remember the concretes of that moment, and what it was all about.

Only Cowards Sing At Night

Here's the play list for the show of Sunday, May 17th.

1. Wab Kinew - Live by the Drum
2. Devendra Banhart - Lover
3. Little Joy - The Next Time Around
4. CKY - Attached at the Hip
5. Subcity Dwellers - Sweeya
6. Shout Out Out Out Out - Dude You Feel Electrical
7. Desert Sessions - Crawl Home
8. Buck 65 - Corrugated Tin Facade
9. Beck - Think I'm In Love
10. The Real McKenzies - Guy On Stage
11. Chris Carmichael - Gone
12. Grand Analog - Let's Make Love
13. Propagandhi - Without Love
14. Nizlopi - Wash Away
15. The Sea and Cake - Afternoon Speaker
16. Romi Mayes - Givin Is Gone
17. Megapuss - Crop Circle Jerk '94
18. Bunky Echo-Hawk - Decolonization is Sexy
19. Wab Kinew - Last Word

I also played Don't Watch Me Dancing by Little Joy, I don't recall when exactly I played it. It was towards the end of the show. Sometime after Nizlopi and before Megapuss.

Pouring

It's raining right now. I started raining when I laid down in bed last night, that was around 2 or 3 am. It stopped raining when I finally decided it was time to drift off to sleep. I'll say that was approximately around 4 or 5. I'm one of those people who actually likes and enjoys the rain. As much as I love sunny days, I also love a good rainy day. Everyone here is complaining about the rain, I'm sick of it. My favourite weather in the whole-wide-world is sun showers. It's the best of both worlds, it's sunny and rainy, oh how I love it, unfortunately it's not sun showering today.

Before work, I went and bought some guitar picks, because I'm constantly losing them. Here's hoping I won't have to buy more for another week or two.

No internet, and trying to find music is hard. Here's hoping that I get a laptop for my birthday, but I'm highly doubting that.

Monday I did up buying film, however no one answered my calls, and I decided I didn't want to go out and take pictures on my own. So I ended up just staying home.

I do have a pretty stellar play list going, but it feels like I'm missing something, or leaving something out. As the show gets closer, I'm getting more and more nervous. I'm worried people won't like the music I have to play.

Maybe I'm missing something in my life. As much as I try to be happy and cool, sometimes, it's hard to do so. I really miss being in love. I love being alone and on my own, but at the same time, once in a while I miss the companionship, and always having someone to be there for you, emotionally, and intimately.

I've been having really weird and bizarre dreams lately. The other night, I had a dream I was doing the radio show, and just the station was weird and what not. And I had a dog out of nowhere. Last night I had this dream I was following this guy around, we were looking for something but couldn't seem to find it. Actually in my dream, the more I think about it, there was something I needed to get from him, so I was following him, so I was just following him everywhere, and he'd be like oh it's here, then I'd ask him for it, and he wouldn't have it, and encourage me to keep on following. I think I need to stop following. This sucks, I don't want to stop following, and give up. In my dream I also had a baby randomly. The baby randomly showed up in my dream, and I was her mom.

When I was younger I used to have dreams about my future son, in my dreams, people would always take him away from me, and return him after 2 years. The dream I had last night, she was a newborn, and she was given to me, or I had her without knowing. This was definitely different, and I'm not sure what it all means. When I was younger, I used to cry for my son and in my dreams, I desperately wanted him back. With this baby, it was given to me, and I didn't want it. I was wondering why people would willingly give me this baby, and how could they trust me with it. It's not like other baby of my dreams where I would to anything to keep him.

I'm trying to figure out what this all means. I think I need to invest in some dream books or something. My dreams need analysing, or maybe it's just me trying to over analyse everything again. It's a problem of mine over analysing situations.

I really just want to be on a nice beach somewhere without a care in the world.

Gorgeous

Yesterday I co-hosted my friends radio show. Next Sunday I'm on my own. I'm totally nervous, scared and excited. The server for the station went down over the weekend, so unfortunately there's no archive of the show from yesterday. My first show on my own, hopefully nothing goes wrong, and it archives, and my friends and family will be able to download it. Many of my friends and family don't live in the same city as me, so having it stream online is a great thing for me.

I'm at work right now, listening to music, working on a play list for Sundays show. It's such a daunting task. Picking music I like, that I think others will like, that also doesn't have swears. Hopefully has Canadian/Local content, it also can't be top 40. Like wow. I have a pretty big set list right now, but I'm pretty much putting anything on it. I want it to be music I truly dig, and also music that I think other people will dig. I'm more worried about the music than the actual talking. Talking isn't a huge thing for me, in fact it's pretty hard to get me to shut the fuck up. Very rarely in my life am I actually speechless. I'll definitely have to edit my play list down, there's some stuff on there I'm not really digging. But at the same time I don't know if I have enough music to fill an hour and half time slot, and I also don't want to play the same artists over, and over again. I have less than a week to figure this out. It shouldn't be a problem.

It's so nice outside and I'm done work in less than an hour. I spent 5 rolls of film yesterday. I need to buy more. I think I'm going to wander aimlessly taking pictures. I wish I had someone to do it with, but meh whatever. I'm not one for initiating plans with anyone person. I'd rather be the invitee than the one doing the inviting. But yes outdoor, building/nature/whatever pictures must be had today. It's just such a beautiful day you can't pass it up. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. Maybe I will call up a friend or something. It's way too nice of a day to spend on your own. That's the plan, shower, leave work, buy film, go home, pick up my camera, and either take the bus or drive to wherever I feel is right.

Mixed Bag

A lot has happened in the past week or two.

I lost one of my cousins. She was the prettiest thing in the world. She had beautiful hazel-green eyes. She was the life of the party. I hadn't really seen her in the past few years. The last time I seen her, she was definitely the life of the party. She had the cutest littlest boy ever. I grew up with her, and she was an amazing person. Whenever you seen her she had the greatest smile on her face. I grew up with her, in the same household from time to time. I've known her since she was a baby. She'll forever be loved and missed, by her friends and family. Rest in peace Courtney.

Other than that, I went to my reserve for the funeral. There was a lot of people there. I got to see a lot of people that I grew apart from, and burned bridges with. It was nice trying to rebuild those relationships. It was a shitty reason why we were all together in one place. But I got to reconnect with many people I had left behind for whatever dumb reason at the time. I got to apologise and hopefully make amends and rebuild bridges that I burned.

I spent some time with my sister while I was out there, and we had a really great time together. I was thoroughly impressed, when the two of us get together, sometime a scene can be built or something. This time it went very swimmingly, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with my sister in the future.

On Friday night I went to this party on my reserve it was off the hook. There was guys there playing their guitars. It was so much fun. They played music all night long. They were playing the most amazing music. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Foo Fighters, etc. Almost every song we requested they would play. It was totally inspiring. They had two guitars going, one guy would play lead and the other would play rhythm. There was probably 5+ guitar players, and they just rotated the line-up for the song changes. It was a really awesome vibe. So much so I didn't want to leave the party, I ended up staying until Saturday afternoon at 3. I was complimenting one of the guys on his guitar playing and mentioned I had been writing some music recently. That got him to open up, and he played me a few tunes he penned himself. They were pretty killer, and I'm very impressed with the talent my small reservation has to offer.

When I got back home on Sunday, the weekend gave me inspiration to pick up my guitar again. I haven't really touched it in over a month. But this week I've played with it at least once a day. It definitely refreshed me, from my stalemate of practicing.

A friend and I have actually started a band. We plan to get together in the next little while, and collaborate on some song writing. Our band doesn't have a name as of yet, but when we do find one I'm sure it'll be a killer name. We haven't really jammed yet either. The band is in the development stage. But at least I finally belong to one.

I also got some more awesome news on Sunday. One of my friends has a radio show, and she's going away for the summer, so she asked if I could take over her radio show, come July. I'm really stoked for that. It should expose me to awesome new music, and get my name out there. Over the next month and a bit, I'll be sitting in on her radio show and learning the ins and outs. I'm really nervous and excited for this. More excited than nervous, but I'm sure a week or two before I take over the show, the nerves will kick in hardcore!

I just want to end this by saying Rest In Peace to a beautiful angel - Courtney Arica Jack. I hope you're happier now, than you ever were. You'll forever be missed and loved.