Restraint

[05/30] Of hearts and guts and heinlein

October 6, 2010 – 10:50 pm

Day 05 – Your definition of love, in great detail:

Love is when you put your all chips next to someone else’s and bet double-or-nothing.

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it… It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.”

– Erica Jong

It means being willing to do the hard, difficult things that are necessary to smooth the road ahead; to tackle the things that neither of you are good at. Anyone can be loving while things are easy. It’s how you treat someone else when things are hard that is important.

It’s about being genuinely invested in someone else’s happiness, not just in how they relate to your own happiness. Helping them do things that you don’t benefit from, that don’t make you look good, that aren’t a comment on your relationship.

Love is not never having to say you’re sorry, it’s making a safe space for your loved ones to make mistakes in.

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[04/30] Of drums and noise

September 24, 2010 – 12:25 pm

Day 04 – Your music, in great detail:

I have been stuck on this day of the meme for two weeks, so I’m just going to say this: Industrial.

You can ask questions in the comments if you want, and I will answer them.

Next!

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Shake the Disease

September 16, 2010 – 11:33 am

(I’ve stalled on my 30 days meme, but only because the next entry is “your music in great detail” and I have no idea where to start. I’m also behind on posting the final tour diary, but who’s counting?)

I’ve had something hanging over me all week. I can shake it for a meal and a movie, but it comes back when I look the other way. I can’t tell where it’s from. Grey autumn skies seeping under my skin, the bends after coming up too fast for air when the tour ended, person after person cancelling plans while I’m shaking off envy of other people’s friendships, or something else, outside my vision.

Sleep retreats like summer nights, and I can’t make it more than an hour without waking. It’s 4:30 in the morning (it’s always 4:30 in the morning) and all I want is for the night to be over because I’d rather be working than thinking and it’s gotta be warmer at work than it is in my apartment anyway.

(It’s not.)

The days are long, the nights are erratic, and my schedule seems more like a threat than a commitment. The leaves outside my window have started to change (red maples bringing mono no aware to Canadians with neither sakura nor sensitivity), and the chill in the air is a promise of winter.

One week until equinox.

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[03/30] Of apple trees and Newton’s law

September 9, 2010 – 10:55 pm

Day 03 – Your parents, in great detail:

This is the kind of post that gets people in trouble. So a word of warning: If you’re the kind of person who stops reading something when people write “trigger warning”, if you’re related to me, or if you are ever likely to interact with me on a professional level, you should probably stop reading.

My father was a simple man.

Rather than trying to describe him, I will instead just copy and paste a few actual real-life headlines that might come up if you were to hypothetically search a comprehensive media database for his name, in no particular order:

  • Aylmer man to be tried for first-degree murder
  • Witness says arson accused was ‘crazy’
  • Four of seven men charged in Hull killing to be tried in Montreal
  • Hull bar operator sues police
  • Two found not guilty of arson conspiracy in Commercial Tavern fire
  • 2 get life terms for torture death
  • Bar gets liquor licence back; Judge rules Hull business’s rights violated
  • “King of Coke” busted in undercover sting operation

…and just for kicks, here’s an excerpt from one of the articles, slightly edited to protect the guilty:

He is known in the region for sit-up marathons to raise money for charity. But he also has a lengthy criminal record, including drug possession, plotting to traffic cocaine, obstruction of justice in a murder at the bar and failure to register a firearm. At liquor board hearings last year, RCMP Sgt. Paul Theriault testified that he was the head of a vast drug-trafficking organization tied to cities in Canada and northern United States.

Over a 3 1/2-year period, police said they intervened 63 times at the basement bar in Hull. Sixty people were charged with various crimes. Some of the complaints range from refusing to evacuate the bar after an anonymous bomb threat in 1988, to packing in 280 patrons though fire regulations allow only 187.

One woman was beaten at the bar after refusing advances from two pimps who wanted her to prostitute for them. Another woman had a broken glass ground into her face after refusing a man’s sexual advances.

He’s a fairly entitled fellow, having grown up in a castle in Turkey on a street that bears his family’s name (which has since been taken over by the Turkish government, and turned into a museum and movie set).

He’s also the reason my mother and I moved around so much when I was young; we had to stay one step ahead of him and his friends. The most time I ever spent with the man was when he kidnapped me as a child, I think, but the details are hazy. I did make an attempt to get to know him during my early teenage years, where he made his only positive contribution to my life: full access to a nightclub, dj gear, and a night of the week to do what I wanted with.

Sometime around this period we were made aware by the RCMP that my family and I had been under 24/7 police surveillance for years (sorry about that, Josh), and could expect to be under periodic surveillance pretty much forever (sorry about that, everyone I’ve ever lived with). It is also around this time I learned that, even if you’re guilty of a crime, if the police don’t like you they will just plain make shit up and and try to fuck you as hard as they can.

I haven’t seen him in years. He used to make a point of showing up outside my office if I started a new job, or calling me at other people’s houses when I was travelling (sorry about that, Amanda), but I think he’s lost interest. Last I heard, he married a Russian girl my age and is settling down somewhere. (If you want to know where, just look for the city that has the most carbombings of white Jeep Grand Cherokees with gold runners.)

…

Mother.

I feel less comfortable telling her story, mostly because there are a lot of fresh wounds there. But I’ll try to describe her, at least briefly:

She spent time in Mount Cashel’s sister orphanage, taught me how to put on lipstick and eyeshadow, saved my ass when I was buying hot computers for the mob and a deal went bad, tried to pay one of my friends to sleep with me, would slap me if she ever saw me riding a bike that wasn’t a Harley, made a lot of terrible decisions, always did everything in her power to keep me safe as a child, and was so adversarial that I left home before I was old enough to collect student welfare.

..

What’s tomorrow’s meme topic? “What you ate today, in great detail”?

Man I am looking forward to that.

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[02/30] Of beginnings and endings

September 8, 2010 – 12:35 pm

Day 02 – Your first love, in great detail:

It was 1998, I had just turned nineteen, and her name was Amanda. She had come with a friend to a birthday weekend cottage trip, and I think I started to fall for her when I realized she knew all the samples on The Prodigy Experience. We stayed up all night together on the beach, and it wasn’t long after that before we said ‘I love you’.

We spent a summer together doing all the things young people in love do, and then she moved to Peace River. Between long love letters and a week-long Christmas visit (via a 3-day Greyhound ride), we kept up a long-distance relationship for six months or so before it ended.

When I was a teenager, I used to lie like it was going out of style. It didn’t matter what. Big lies, small lies, brilliant lies, stupid lies. I lied if I liked you, I lied if I didn’t like you, I lied if the sun came out from behind a cloud, whatever. So when I realized that Amanda was The One, I wanted to make the foundation of our relationship an honest one. I told her about all the big, small, brilliant and stupid lies I had told her and all of our mutual friends. And, unsurprisingly (although quite surprisingly at the time) she said she couldn’t trust me and that was the end of that.

Looking over my old (unpublished) website archives, I found this Valentine’s Day entry from 1999:

“Good night, Jairus.” she said through tears, and I knew we wouldn’t speak again, not the way two people in love do.

There was a click, and the line went dead. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, I thought. There was supposed to be a happily-ever-after, or at the very least a horribly cliched breakup, something I could write about in my diary.

But there wasn’t. There was only the dull hum of the line, and me standing in the kitchen, feeling very, very much alone.

I mostly remember being stunned; I didn’t quite get how being honest with someone could mean that they wouldn’t trust you anymore.

Everything changed after that. I realized that if The Person Who Loves Me Most couldn’t handle being close to me, then I was likely doing something wrong. I wrote an open letter to my friends, letting them know that I had lied to all of them, each and every one.

The fallout was exactly as bad as you might think it would be. Some people didn’t care. Some people forgave me, but we were never really close after. Some people never spoke to me again. Some people screamed at me until they cried.

Years later, I rebuilt a friendship with Amanda. There were a lot of mea culpas, a lot of tentative steps to figure out if as adults we were interested in opening up again after caring so much about each other as teenagers. We spent time together on the rare occasions we were in the same city, dropped little notes to each other in tough times, talked about old friends and old stories.

Then, a few months ago, I said to her that rainbow parties are myth and moral panic and it was crazy to be worried about the dangers they pose to her unborn child, and she de-friended me on Facebook.

So that’s nice.

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[01/30] Content Creation Meme, first in a series

September 7, 2010 – 2:03 am

Day 01 – Introduction:

I’m Jairus. I’m 31 years old, male, and I live in the city I was born in; Ottawa, Canada.

I work as the Web Communications Coordinator for a Crown Corporation, a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill. I’m trying to cut down on the amount of groups/classes/etc that I identify as, but my Twitter bio claims that I am a DJ, hacker, electronic musician, designer, and copyright nerd. Things I am not include: white, straight, vanilla, liberal/conservative, religious, or good with money.

I don’t remember much of my childhood, which is probably for the best. I have a lot of siblings, but grew up with my mother, and my brother Josh. (My younger brother named Josh, that is. I also have an older brother named Josh. It’s complicated.) As a teenager I was very good at hacking, stealing, telling stories, being homeless, making friends, lying, and Quake. I moved to Toronto with my then-girlfriend (Jessica) and then-roommate (Venk) shortly after I got a job and a home, and spent a few years there alternately making crazy dot-com money and surviving on a bag of unwashed rice and other people’s leftovers.

After coming back to Ottawa and spending most of my 20s living and loving with the multi-talented DJ Leslie and a rotating cast of friends, foes, and family, I struck out on my own last year, and now live alone in Chinatown with two feral kittens, three video game systems, and four single-purpose kitchen appliances. I’m madly in love with the beautiful Audra Williams, and try to avoid having Facebook describe any of my other relationships as ‘complicated’.

I’ve just returned from a 5-week tour of the United States and Canada (playing the final show tomorrow at Zaphods, where I’ve DJed with Leslie for nearly a decade), and am really looking forward to figuring out what it is I want to do next.

Read More »

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Wind and Cities (or: this is not a tour diary)

August 28, 2010 – 10:28 pm

In Chicago. Spent the day wandering the city (including a fantastic two hours as part of an architecture walking tour), and have been left with tired feet and a heavy heart.

Being in the United States is rough at the best of times, and seeing just how many mentally ill, homeless, hungry people there are in this city gets to me. It’s so fucking brutal.

The tour’s coming to an end, which is of course bittersweet. I’m looking forward to seeing the people (and kittens) in Ottawa that I love and miss, but there’s a lot about the city that leaves me raw when I think about it. Homesickness, without any city that makes me feel like I’m home.

Going to go out to Neo tonight. We’ll see if my sorrows float.

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Tragedy (For Us): California Dreamin

August 25, 2010 – 12:16 pm

Das Bunker, Los Angeles. Some kind of crazy rivethead mecca, the likes of which I thought were all but extinct.

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We rolled into LA in the early afternoon, and spent a few hours decompressing at Rev John’s, where we were joined both by his lovable italian greyhounds, and by the darling Audra Williams, who flew out to join us on the road for a week.

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John’s hospitality was above and beyond. We all walked away happy, fed, and with a lot of Das Bunker merch. Plus, the show was killer. The place was packed, people were cheering, and it took a full five minutes to make it from the stage to the merch booth after my set was over. Yann, of course, fucked shit up old-school.

A quick jaunt to San Francisco later, we were at the Retox Lounge.

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We were worried about this show, as SF crowds are fickle and cruel creatures; but it was a smash success. Nearly everyone there told us “I don’t normally come out to this venue, but…”, and the dancefloor was moving all night.

We spent a few days off in SF (graciously hosted by Coolio and Sharon) where Scott and Yann got to relax, and Audra and I got to explore the city.

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SF is one of those places that reminds me just how small Ottawa really is. Places like 826 Valencia could never survive at home, and institutions like City Lights would never have been able to do what they did. There aren’t enough people, there isn’t any support from the city itself, and it’s nearly impossible to build sustained support for any kind of artistic enterprise.

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But I digress.

We left California for Portland, which – if i may sound like an asshole – I had no idea was so cool. Austin is the only other city in the states where I’ve seen so many amazing, indie businesses and arts/crafts.

We played at The Fez Ballroom, which is a beautiful concert hall. After a dozen converted gallery spaces and cramped clubs, it was a breath of fresh air. Scott’s opening set had people cheering from the middle of the first song on, and while it was a great show for all three of us, he kicked the shit out of Yann and I both in crowd reaction and merch sales, which is pretty awesome.

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(We also got to check out Derek’s store before we left. Verdict: Fantastic, not enough Ad·ver·sary.)

Seattle was next, where we were hosted by the lovely Jeri, who was gracious and generous, and made sure everything we needed was taken care of.

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The show itself was quiet, but a good time. We had the next day off, and Audra and I took a ferry over to Vachon where we spent a night at her friend Heather’s idyllic country home. Hot tubs make for great stress relievers after two weeks in a car, incidentally.

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One surprisingly painless border crossing later, and we were in Vancouver for the Zombie A-Go-Go. There was a line outside the door when doors opened, and by the time I was on stage the club was packed full of (remarkably well-costumed) zombies. Zombie cops, zombie flapper girls, zombie gangsters, zombie groupies, zombie fairies (what?), zombie movie stars. Zombies zombies zombies.

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Everyone was a bit worried that the crowd wasn’t going to dig the music, since so many of the people were at the club as part of the zombie walk, but it was easily one of the most enthusiastic dancefloors of the entire tour to date.

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We grabbed a quick bite to eat after the doors closed, and then it was right back in the car to make it to Edmonton for the next show. The crowd there was small, but seemed to be comprised entirely of electronic musicians who were all listening, if you know what I mean.

Audra left back to Ottawa the next morning, and after a long and emotionally numbing day at the West Edmonton Mall, we got in the car at 5am to head off to Winnipeg for yesterday’s show.

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Stay tuned!

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Tragedy (For Us): Going Down

August 14, 2010 – 12:21 pm

DC.

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Baltimore was fantastic. Soundcheck was a total clusterfuck, but after we got everything working, it kept working well. They had a four-projector video wall and some very talented VJs who worked very hard to make us look like we were a nightclub from the future.

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Worms of The Earth opened, which was great. Last time I saw him play was a year or two ago in Quebec City, and while I don’t remember a shirtless finale then, it worked well for Baltimore. The club was packed by the time we went on stage, and it was a killer show. The best of the tour so far, for sure.

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Next: New Orleans.

I had thought I was prepared for what the city was going to look like. Not at all. I don’t know what it looked like right after Katrina, but it’s still a disaster zone today. Families living on traffic medians, block after block looking like it has been bombed out. We were only there for an evening, but the city broke my heart.

The show itself took place in a house turned fucked-up voodoo house turned art gallery turned concert venue. The owner drove a white hearse covered in skulls and marked front-to-back with sigils. There were altars in every corner of every room, bones and offerings to appease or antagonize the loas, and a couple nine year old kids running around playing hide and seek.

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The sound system they had was completely unprepared for the kind of horrible noises we wanted to make, but they picked up a new system and brought it in for us within an hour or two, and then we were ready to roll.

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After leaving NOLA, we spent two nights driving through Texas, with pit stops in Austin and El Paso. We made a pilgrimage to The Jackalope, ate some amazing Mexican food, but with over ten hours of driving a day, there wasn’t much room for sight seeing.

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We arrived in Arizona yesterday. I have never, ever felt heat like the heat here. It was 46c when we arrived in Phoenix that afternoon, and it was 43c when we got back to the hotel that night after the show.

Yann and Scott were both loopy and twitchy from the heat, but I’d love to spend an entire summer down here.

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The club we played at had an incredible system, but we were competing with Rasputina down the street (and, elsewhere, Weird Al!) and the attendance was the lowest on the tour so far. The people that were there were enthusiastic, though. I’d rather have a dozen people watching and cheering than two dozen talking over the music. I’m looking at you, Boston.

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Yesterday was Los Angeles. Stay Tuned!

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Tour Diary of The Future

August 7, 2010 – 3:39 am

I’m writing this as we drive out of NYC, onwards to Baltimore and beyond. We’re four shows in so far, and we’re about to hit a heavy stretch of driving in the next few days.

We started out in Montreal, where we had a killer show at Saphir. People were screaming, sound was fantastic, and a lot of friends (including the lovely Audra!) were there to support us.

The Setup

The next day we headed to Quebec City, where our hosts treated us like kings with an amazing burger barbeque, and let us clutter up their lovely home with all of our crap. The show was solid; not as many people were there as the promoter had hoped, but the room was still packed full of enthusiastic people, and we sold a lot of merch.

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We went back to Montreal for a few days to regroup and prepare for the rest of the tour. (The great thing about having two shows so close to home with a few days off after is that you get to see all the holes in your planning, and you get a chance to fix them.

There was a lot of ass-busting work, but there was also a chance to spend some time with new, amazing people. It was a great way to spend our last few days in Canada.

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So, after a lot of tetris magic packing all our stuff, and an uneventful-yet-incredibly-time-consuming stop at the border to process our artist visas, we were in the US, never to return.

With that said, probably we’ll return to Canada in a few weeks.

We played Boston on Wednesday and New York on Thursday.

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The Boston crew did a really great job turning a wood-panelled bar into an awesome looking electronic venue, but the crowd didn’t really turn out for it. And most of the crowd that did spent their time talking loudly over the bands. We lost money on the show for sure. We did, however, get to see some old friends, pick up a lot of new merch, and high-five each other a lot for actually making it into the US legally.

New York is always a fun place to be. The promoter put us up in a hotel in SoHo, bought us delicious pizza, and even had stagehands for moving all of our shit up and down two flights of stairs.

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The show itself was great, if a bit weird. All of my/Yann’s industrial scene New York friends who said they were going to be there never materialized (except you, Lenny – you’re a hero), but all the invited non-industrial scene people showed.

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The opening act had a really tough time. They played a lot of unstructured noisescape stuff, mixed with some really heavy broken beat tracks, and the crowd was not into it at all (which especially sucks since the promoter pushed back the start times by an hour so people would get a chance to see them). They had some great sounds but it was clearly not what anyone was expecting.

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I played both heavier and dancier than I have so far on the tour, and the crowd responded really fucking well to it. It was a fun set to play, trying to find a balance between something that the tough-crowd industrial crew would enjoy, and something that wasn’t going to alienate people who weren’t wearing all black.

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My sister was in attendance (bless her hip-hop heart),  and she told me that someone who was dancing to my set leaned over and said “this guy is just so FIERCE!” – made my fucking night.

Sadly, due to the show start time getting pushed back, by the time Yann was on stage to work his Iszoloscope magic, at least half the people who had were there for the end of my set had left. People were still dancing and really into it, but there weren’t nearly as many bodies.

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After the show, Yann, Scott and I went out for a bite of food with my sister, who took us to an awesome little diner where the other patrons provided much entertainment.

We took it easy today, and spent the day wandering around Manhattan. Some time in Central Park, some time to explore the aircraft-carrier-turned-museum U.S.S. Intrepid, and some time to eat at a crazy awesome Italian place (with no sign out front) that a sassy black beat cop recommended to us.

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…and now, Baltimore bound!

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