Hayden in 2023

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

We’re entering, hopefully, something identifiable as post-pandemic—
Couple years back I did not think 2023 would be ‘post-pandemic’
One day, it'll be post-pandemic—

These few weeks seem to have been designed for introspection
A lot is ending, a lot is beginning,
The month feels like an arch
The smallest, sharpest pivot—

I hit shuffle on Frank Ocean’s Blonde the other day on the way to work
I hadn’t heard the album since 2019
Now noticing how he’s there fleetingly, only when he needs to be
Most of the album is world building
I lucked out with the shuffle— thought the order was better than the original—
Coincidentally, it still began with Nikes and ended with Future Free
I got to work with a couple of tracks left, so I just let it play,
reading a series of headlines—
“Sudden acts of violence? Get used to it.”
David Crosby is dead.
Post-pandemic.
We are in post-pandemic I remind myself.
It’s snowing.

My trusty, dependable, comfy, homey, unquestionably underrated (and discontinued) Polk headphones bit the dust last year—
I replaced them with a pair of Bose QuietComfort,
(which were certainly a splurge, but I’ve always had a bucket-list desire to own Bose headphones)...
(and they were on sale)—
It was about time I transitioned to wireless headphones,
I’m still adjusting to the freedom—
I’m used to holding my head so still while wearing headphones, but now I can leave my device somewhere, and move—
They have a noise cancellation feature that surpasses holding pillows to your ears—
The first time I put them on I thought the power went out.
Yet — and, I still believe this — they don’t sound as nice as my Polks.
That Scandanavian-esque crispness (a la Bowers & Wilkins, etc)
Warm, wood palette—
No, they’re rather flat…
But at least I don’t hear anything else

Holiday cards are jumbled in my desk
Haven’t seen the sun for three months

On the way back I listened to something I hadn’t played in ages—
Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Why did I not make this? Why am I not making this?
Because I’m not Bill Callahan
I shouldn’t be making a Bill Callahan record
I want to make a Bill Callahan record
But then it would be Bill’s
Didn’t get around to finishing it, didn’t have time, paused—
hit play on the final track later that night—

Week after week I find myself sharing a rather small room with a group of a dozen or so teenagers—
(Somehow the room keeps changing, don’t ask)—
They’re local volunteers. I supervise them.
They get their hours. Graduate.
I get paid.
It all works out.

I bought my first iPhone in 2022.
The background on it is a Keith Haring-esque version of Frank Ocean’s Blonde
I had a teen notice it the other day, and they said ‘I learned about that guy in school!’
And I asked - Frank Ocean?
‘No, no - the art guy, he did graffiti!’
‘Oh - Keith Haring.’
‘Yeah! That guy.’
In that moment I realized I hadn’t listened to Blonde in almost four years.
They mention music a bit— makes sense—
Most are in that early ‘discovery’ phase, but it’s very different than mine,
Or the generation before mine,
Or the generation before that—
They know Kendrick, SZA, Tyler, James Blake—
(some of who, as baffling as it sounds, have released albums since these people were two-year-olds)
—typically, they find stuff on Spotify (not premium)
None of them listen to the radio (and two of them had never)
Only two or three have ever pirated music, most don’t know how,
Most don’t see why—
There’s no dig anymore. It’s there. It’s right there.
They did prove to me they knew how to use a VCR though—

Found some speakers and connected to them via Bluetooth, which I thought would be a colossal kerfuffle of passenger-seat-driver-chaos, but it worked out bizarrely peaceful— surprised how many of them let me just play music—

Is it weird that I was lost? I hadn’t a clue what to play at first. I was almost intimidated. I can DJ, whatever, but I knew I’d get skewed either way—
maybe I’m starting to ‘not-be-with it/hip’, not the cool rebellious youth anymore—
but you know what? It was okay—

Shuffled a bit. Neo-soul. Hip-hop. Indie pop. Things went over well with Noname’s 25— listened to near the entire record— acouple of Pharcyde tracks, Lauryn Hill, Genesis Owusu, St. Vincent— then when Belida Says came on, many said they knew it from TikTok, and I though ‘huh- k’, then Thundercat’s Changes came on and some said they knew that from TikTok too– (I, as you can tell, do not have TikTok, no matter the amount of them I have seen against my will)— acouple of them dug Wednesday, and I remember a Magdalena Bay track landing the soundtrack, so I played Secrets (Your Fire) and was shocked that almost all of them knew it (some through TikTok, some from siblings/parents/friends), but they knew it, and it kinda threw me for a loop. Day wound down and I started going back and forth with some Dilla / Pete Rock / Madlib instrumentals (which, got called elevator music several times, but in a loving way). Then I took a big leap— I hit play on an instrumental hip-hop record I made with friends nearly a decade ago now (which freaked me out) — it wasn’t bad. Aged okay. Nobody thought it was a dip in quality or anything (albeit, I have without question realized we could have trimmed 30-40% off most of those tracks… woops)

From that, I went home—
I needed to relisten (on my Bose headphones) to my last two releases
neither of which I’ve poked since releasing (2019 and 2021—)
Mango was first,
completely forgot I sampled Lana Del Rey on the intro and outro of that one— it was a few months pre-NFR—)
The record has an energy to it that I just don’t have anymore
I’m proud of it though— it’s good. I made something good, and I’m happy about that.
I’ve lost skills over time
I know that—
But I question what I used them for anyway…
Obsessing over uniqueness, pulling off production tricks
Trying to act like a skateboarder devising some trick that’s never been seen — but it’s still a skateboard trick—
and whether I should have put more thought into songwriting (which, was not disregarded, but felt out of place for the final product)—
More like Bill.
But I’m not Bill.
Am I Bill?
Am I Frank?
I'm not Frank—

In 2021 I released Geranium— built around the sound palette of elastic bands and a broken cassette tape—
textures, weaving, waving, wobbling—
bending, flexing, winding, tapping—
a darker, bass-driven sound—
giving it another listen, my ears remembered it more than Mango. SOPHIE died. DOOM died.
That month hit me. I was low. And this album knows it. But… I’m happy with what it resulted in. I’m content.
It came out of somewhere I don't miss, but it's there— I hear it—

The following day, a zen meditation session featuring a 1959 Japanese chant did not go over well.
Many gave me confused looks. I flipped over to Erykah Badu.

I know I’ve had a bit of an energy shift the last year.
I wrote about half an album in late 2021 that I haven’t worked on finishing and it kinda haunts me that I’m ignoring it.
My tastes are changing. I’m not writing as well as I should be. I’m not thinking as well as I should be—

‘We’re entering a different era!’
‘The vibe has changed’ — various teenagers
While we aren’t entering a post-apocalypse by any means, there will undeniably be a personality shift.
Things broke. Rules broke. Standards broke.
I see a generation who knows no bounds but two — death and capitalism
They see it, they recognize it, yet they fear neither, and everything apart from those two things is fiction.

And then I felt something very concerning.
Something that I thought would happen when I was their age—
I feel like an adult.

When I took on
listened to nothing but free jazz for four months late 2018,
or my Canadiana dig of 2020
my blues dig in 2021 (which, may have been the most fulfilling— I think I actually achieved something with this one)
I felt like a ‘successful music listener’—
Whatever that is.
(it is not a thing)
I didn’t do a chart-worthy dig this year, but I have been revisiting the 70s (well, in particular, filling in the gaps I missed with the 70s)—
but when I work with the next generation,
I think of old records,
discovering Television, The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, Sigur Rós, My Bloody Valentine—
what it felt when I found a really great song—
memories, of when I was their age— which, genuinely, was not that long ago, nor does it feel like it—
and how I’ve disregarded what no one day shows—
They know there is no such thing as a music collector anymore—
they have it all—
They’re here for everything. And they know one day they will be gone.
It is staggering how much they acknowledge this—
Including a rather dark humoured teen who has fought/won/fought/won/and fought with cancer her entire life—
There is no successful music listener.
Not anymore.
Perhaps not ever.
The successful music listener exists only to one's own definition.
Be it.

I watched Lukas Dhont’s Close the other day.
It would be good if it wasn’t contrived.
It was good.
But it wasn’t.
It’s fake.
It’s a movie.
I craved something more.

With all this talk of BIll and Franks, I was hit with a brick last night—
Episode three of The Last of Us knocked me sideways—
Beautiful, unexpected, heartfelt and honest—
Made me feel alive and full of light—
The quality of mediums is changing.
Tom Verlaine is dead.

I’m surprised by the introvertedness which came out of this all
(the pandemic)
how many of them tell me they aren’t that outgoing at school, work, etc
yet they could perform as boldly as any drama major when in the right company
How many get hit with FOMO (and how many are surprised that I know what that means— and what rizz is)
and how I know that this time around it is true—
they will change the world,
because they have grown through a world we have never seen—

albeit tired, the next generation is fearless,
with endless resources
and they’re an absolute united force like I’ve never seen—

yet, looking forward to what’s next,
I have no idea where I will be looking from when I see it.



January, 2023

[craola]

I quite enjoyed this read. Perhaps my new favorite diary in the BEA forums. Eloquent. Relatable. We are dinosaurs, aren’t we?
_________________
follow me on the bandcamp.

[Hayden]

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Babylon is powered by a pulse—

There’s a busking duo, somewhere,
I think it’s a subway station in Toronto,
maybe New York,
and they riff off this colossal saxophone heartbeat,
almost like a kick drum, thumping,
and they loop and loop, and it works,
because it’s dynamic, vibrant,
edgy, active, straightforward—
this devouring, unignorable life,
and they only need to hit a few notes
before sweat hits the metro’s tiles—

Hurwitz’s hundred-minute score lives off the same pulse,
it’s a contemporary, ever-moving, ever-changing circus,
performing wherever the manic wind blows—

The more I listen to music, the more I realize it’s just 12 notes
(talent, built up)
At what point are you free?
So many of my favourite albums
reach that pinnacle of freedoms—
(when it’s no longer 12 notes),
It’s everything, at anytime,
as imperfect as you can make it—
Windchill’s hitting -30C as Fiona Apple’s
ever-longwind titled The Idler Wheel thumps—
I’ve come to the conclusion this album is four things:
Vocals, piano, a doublebass and percussion—
(there’s some strings in the mix too, but that comes fifth)
Instruments on the album include:
—Thighs
—Pillow
—Voice of pain
—Truck stomping
—A bouzouki
It’s music, sure,
but for the time being it’s just distracting me from how cold it is—
It’s almost jazz, really, if it was—
why it isn’t, I’m not sure—

Perfect music is bad.
Quantization? Bad.
Sheet music? Bad.
Julliard? Bad.

I think Fiona has become a busker.
She began with an Optigan, some violins, but years later
Fetch The Bolt Cutters lists ‘water tower’ as an instrument,
(and a, quote, ‘harp thing’)—
It reminds me of Picasso,
who spent a lifetime learning to paint like a child,
how Pollock went from landscapes to paintdrips,
how Fontana’s greatest composition is a single line—
When I think of Moondog or Rahsaan Roland Kirk,
both of whom were blind,
and how they did not play instruments ‘correctly’,
with such skill, innovation and passion that it did not matter,
who cares for the classically trained cellist?
or the pianist who can speed through Flight of The Bumblebee
without missing a single note?
Precision achieves nothing when it’s lifeless.
I wonder if the best song ever composed
will be played on a paint bucket,
snow around their feet,
breathe freezing in the air,
a crowd of a hundred stopping in their tracks—
and then it will be over—

We like to be comfortable, which is boring,
yet, we do not like to be bored—
Which is a conundrum.

I think of Godard
who mastered a shape so clear
only to pulverize it—

I think of contemporary masters
like Yo-Yo Ma, Sarah Chang and Mutter,
how they have made no contribution to music—

How hard you have to squeeze
until juice comes out—

I think of Ai Weiwei dropping a Han dynasty urn
and how Earl did the same to make
Some Rap Songs
how you have to break something
to make somebody feel
simple— broken—
and how when one is both, it is neither—
Twombly, Cummings, Schiele—

ChatGPT has begun—
ChatGPT detector has begun—
Some porcelain, dead emotion has sprung—

“Nick Cave slams AI-generated song, calls it a grotesque mockery”—

“I am the sinner, I am the saint/
I am the darkness, I am the light/
I am the hunter, I am the prey/
I am the devil, I am the saviour.” — AI

“I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI — that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster,” — Cave

I can't word it better than that, but
I fear AI art, AI literature, AI music—
I’ve heard it— it is what it is, I get it—
but it’s nothing.
Apart from being music made by AI, it has no value.
I think dance is the only artform safe.
I don’t fear technology, apart from when it interferes with art—
Basquiat's sketch, turned into an NFT, the owner permitted to destroy the original— I felt fear—
AI-generated cybertopian landscape won an anonymous painting competition— I felt fear—
I fear what this will bloom into—
Things will end—

You can ‘humanize’ MIDI tracks,
(which only means knocking the mark off a millisecond or two from perfection In either direction)
to avoid sounding like an algorithm/hologram/synthetic smile,
but that is yet another fraud—

There’s this Tom Waits cover by the Eagles,
Ol’55—
squeezed,
coated in this fake gloss,
crystalized—
and I fear, knowing that’s how most know the song—

Google lost $100billion because their AI got a question wrong.
I don’t know what the question is/was—
really doesn’t matter—
the $100billion feels just as fake—

Seinfeld AI, Seinfeld AI, Seinfeld AI,
something, Jesus—
Nothing's forever
things will become obsolete,
there will be consequences,
and we will watch it coming at us at 100km/h,
eyes in the headlights,
surprised when it hits—

Watched Nick Cave’s latest documentary/concert/performance—
his descent into minimalism,
and all these notes, whether
unknowable, unmanageable, uncontainable,
uncontrollable, unimaginable, undefeatable,
knowing to celebrate what it is to be human—

All that Breathes—
and it’s stupid good Planet Earth-esque cinematography.
A snail wanders by the flames.
Cow’s muck through waterlogged alleyways.
An owl, held.

And when I think of Babylon’s pulse
Fiona’s inevitable paintbucket
How it took Nick everything to realize how little you need
I know the future of art is safe,
no matter how battered, blocked,
squashed, sidelined or monetized,
for it must be human—



February, 2023

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

So, Wayne Shorter died—

(what feels like) a lifetime ago
his squealing tenor on Speak No Evil
inspired me to make my ‘first’ ‘real’ album—
how a saxophone could be a chainsaw—
which, opened the gates to Ayler,
Braxton,
Barbieri,
Brötzmann,
Brown,
which, opened bigger gates—
(and, naturally, ruined them—)
Diddling Bert Jansch, Blackwell and Avalon Blues,
I haven’t picked up a saxophone in a decade—
(It is, by all means, something I’ve quit—
I knew it was an instrument which outweighed my talent),
Sorry Wayne—
Sanders,
Coleman,
but thank you.

Rollins, I fear you are alone.

I listened to a project by
Patrick Shiroishi & Dustin Wong
earlier this month
where they used a post-production technique
that a mere two years ago I had never heard—
I listened to a project by
Heejin Jang
earlier this month
where they used a post-production technique
that a mere two years ago I had never heard—
The same one!
…… wait…..
Two years?
No, it was five—
It was five years ago.
Five.
It’s a growling drone, spliced and sown—
In Mexico, tipsy off (the best and cheapest) tequila (I’ve ever had)
I dusted off a session from what Shorter inspired
and used this technique to twist brass into something it isn’t
(which, ultimately sat on a harddrive for a few years
before being served cold on Geranium—)
Hadn’t heard anyone else do it since
(until this month)—
And now I know I was far from first.

This day-in-day-out
tires creativity to a standstill—
I’ve seen time bite, harsh and true,
as I listen to Nyokabi Kariuki
release an album alike to an idea
I scrapped years ago because I knew
I couldn’t make justice of it—
I’m glad she did though,
She made something true—

I do feel myself fraying from creativity
Inspiration curiosity exploration and
drive,
slowly—
It is a bad thing, unquestionably,
and I fear it,
but I’m not ignorant enough to ignore reality—
It just… is. It is.

Art/fake art/money/fake money
has been a collective that’s captivated me
and put my mind in places I never want it to be—
Roadside Da Vinci bought through Bitcoin,
Dollarstore Warhol swiped with AMEX,
NFTs leveraged by government bonds,
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee accidentally
bartered for a backalley stack of zero rupee notes—
Throughout my eduction, exploration and love of art
one of the biggest gripes people shout is
‘WHY IS IT WORTH $100 MILLION OH MY GOD???’
as if that’s the most important part of the piece—
(For the record, I don’t care what an artwork is worth,
it’s just an ideal vehicle for money laundering—
end of $100billion a year story)—
Second gripe people shout is of course
‘MY CHILD COULD DO THAT’
because they won’t shut the fuck up—

I watch Ulay and Abramovic part
and felt unsolvable second-hand-sorrow when the former passed—
What’s that worth?
What can that be sold for?—
To think art and economics are the same is devilwork.
Is a pirated copy of Sgt. Peppers not worth the same as the
$billion$million$hundredthousand$theyprobablylostcount$
it made?
and I read the deals
the sold catalogues
the pressure to monetize hobbies
the words
content/consume/package/streaming
until my eyes bleed,
Yet art is worth—
The best is priceless.
And I spin in circles.

/

I won an award this month—
(for relative mediocrity, not going to skirt the fact)
a small silly thing, corporate, got a free dinner out of it,
(truffle ravioli)—
Was about halfway through finishing dessert
when a waitress came around and asked
‘Can I take that’
and for some reason I said yes—
I was squeezed at a table with someone
who (apparently/evidently) I had met before
but awkwardly greeted them with
‘Nice to meet you! ’
so, that was great—
I sat in my seat watching a city mayor
compare land to Coca-Cola,
eyeing people tapping BID on
an app-run silent auction
buying whoknowswhat crap
while eschewing the beansprouts on their plate
and seeking any excuse to slurp another glass of free booze—
Went onstage, lights, handshake, photograph, tinsel—
—all meant nothing, truly, just someone's money doing a dance—
I was invited to a second gala (last weekend)
said no—
didn’t ask how it went.
Was just kinda tired.

For many years I thought I would enter the music industry—
not as a superstar of course, just there—
somewhere, doing something, for some reason—
could've been as a critic, or producer, or agency,
maybe some deskshit at Universal, Sony or WB,
but with the batterings of PR, marketing, media, economics, commerce and event management,
(or, in otherwords, my education)
that dream faded—
It was no longer a dream.
It was entering assured heartbreak.

And I thought about the Oscars,
And I thought about the Grammys,
I used to watch the Grammys—
I used to care about the Grammys—
It’s a celebration of music—
I don’t watch the Grammys anymore—
I don’t care about the Grammys anymore—
Least there’s still the Oscars.
I like those.
Congratulations EEAAO.
You created something seismic.

I put near nothing into that work
and felt very little from it,
which perhaps lead to an emptiness amid
the hooplah—
I thought of projects I poured soul into,
Poems written at a word a minute.
Songs written with laughs between the takes.
and pieces wrought from nostalgia, love and strife—
how they will gather dust, ignored, and always be worth more to me
than any accolade I'll ever receive—
The more work, time, passion and trust
I put into a project,
the more I fear it—
And, while perhaps something I have known for years,
this is only a recent realization of mine—
(More a confession,
an embarrassment, truthfully),
which brought me to the conclusion:
Art cannot be valued with money.
Art can only be valued with time.
For that’s art’s only equal.

Art and corporate cannot mix
and still be true to themselves—
And, with this,
fighting forward,
a smirk on my face,
I feel a bittersweet sense of freedom.



March, 2023

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Gonna hopscotch for a sec—
(music/life/music/life)
try to jot this out in one take
(time’s short)—

Had a colleague quit,
which, I mean, happens—
decent salary, solid perks
(free lunches, international trips, full benefits, etc)—
and when they came up to me to finally say it
they were straight as could be:
“Can’t afford this job anymore— I’m going home”
—no runaround, hiding-behind-the-bush,
just legit— “I’m out, this doesn’t work”
and I can’t count the amount of times
I wish I could say the same— (well,
and for it to actually mean something)—
Whatever’s happened these past few years has
sucked the soul out of everyone I know—
And I miss people…
I don’t see the same people I used to see—
They’re lacklustre, beaten, tired, dulled,
they laugh at uninteresting jokes
in some halfdead chuckle,
and I ask where they went,
when and why
and when they’ll return—
I’m not sure what happened.
You watch people say ‘this apple is a great investment!’
so amid cockamamie it sells for $50
Then, abruptly, every apple costs $50
and nobody can afford to eat—
Because some rich idiot bought an apple for $50
Then people have nothing to do but leave—
and I can’t help but ask,
Where is a punk scene at?
Where is the punk?
I swore in 2016 we’d see a punk revival—
and, yeah, there’s things here and there,
but everything’s softer than it should be—
For the first time in many decades,
I'm not hearing music reflect society—
I’m not seeing the rebellion/anarchy/
panic/insightful political art/
you’d expect to be abundant
(especially in rock and hip-hop)
and when I look at the lacklustre faces
I once knew to be shining,
I feel like I know why,
and I worry if the path we’re trekking
is towards somewhere so
uninspired that we’re
going to lose generations—
there’s a tiredness in the world
right now that I’ve never seen the
likes of— and it’s going to be a
hole to we need to ladder out
of before it digs deeper…

I don’t want this entry to be boring—
or please not a lecture, Jesus—
but for several years now I’ve been
tinkering/experimenting/essaying/
hypothesising/researching/watching
how economics affects art—
(Let’s just be real, it does—)
which all started when I realized
how affordable, accessible and
realistically attainable to record
an album is nowadays—
(it was the positives that smacked me in the face first)
AWESOME— people can do this!
I CAN DO THIS!
Because I think we sometimes forget how expensive
It used to be to write, record, produce and distribute
a superstar/commercial/indie/off-indie/off-off-indie album—
For over a decade now, you have had the ability to
write, record, produce, mix, master and distribute music
for the grand total of $0— (ish, maybe a couple hundred)
(whatever comes out of that, who knows,
but you can do it— right now. today.)
and we’ve all seen how this accessibility has made releases flourish
(around the world)
pockets that never shone are at the forefront
with innovative compositions, new sounds, fresh visions—
and to watch and listen and enjoy the rewards of
this transition of accessibility has been phenomenal,
but,
the internet’s done funny things to us.
Oversaturation.
Overmonetization.
Overpressurization.
and amid this garden of a million pieces of art,
what is anything worth?
We must remember— and hope—
the answer is not the minimum that can go into it—
and to not get buried beneath the avalanche.

I don’t know why,
(I’ve never been able to express it properly)
but I feel dance is the safest form of art
(from attack, that is)
and I think it comes down to how fleeting it is—
nothing but movement—
nothing.
as much as it’s a work of space, a work of time,
It is never permanent—
and in its freedom,
it finds itself safe from harm.

I broke my sobriety this month (April)
which, lasted a couple years
(for health reasons)
but in a moment— just kinda happened—
(wasn’t a bad thing/slip-up/collapse)
I actually felt good about it—
I’ve always written better drunk—
thought better drunk,
lived better drunk,
felt better drunk—
and I missed it, honestly,
because something just flows,
(I grew up in a party town
so I caught onto it a bit
younger than maybe I should)
but I’ve never been stumbling
the street midday vomiting
In the nearest trashbin/sidewalk/
curb/plant/sewer/shoe/pothole
or anything like that—
but I can’t argue it helps me think

The first time I remember being
mournful about a singer dying was
Amy Winehouse—
and that moment I learned is still etched in my head–
I remember thinking (the exact words)
“Why did she go that far?”
and I look at Lady Day, Jim, Townes, Janis,
I remember Radcliffe, stoned/drunk/amess,
screaming about a Toronto hotel lobby,
now knowing they sought how far gone you need to go to become you—
And, now at the age Amy was,
Hendrix,
Morrison,
Joplin,
Basquiat,
I get it—
And I no longer ask.

but I had a good month—
my credit card(s) hit $0 for the first time in too long—
I think there’s a song about that, somewhere—
I don’t really use my Twitter account anymore,
which, is another good thing—
If have one, somewhere, but I stopped
(long before it turned into this current chaos)
but now whenever I go to the site
it’s just algorithmic mud of the ugliest
shit I’ve ever seen—
hate, toxicity, gloating,
climbing to the top of a shitpile to scream
BREAKING NEWS:
Just— fuck—

Ahmad Jamal died.
It’s weird— for some reason (never figured out why)
there was a glitch on a very early version of iTunes I had
where every single time you changed a datapoint
(in a song titles, artist name, lyrics, etc etc)
the album art would automatically revert to
Ahmad Jamal’s ‘The Awakening’
even though I’d never owned that record
(or even heard it, heard of it, heard of him, etc)
and that was my introduction to Jamal—
‘The Awakening’ plastered on absolutely everything.
(Only listened to it for the first time maybe 4-5 years ago)—
Great soul.
RIP

And there’s still light, of course,
Beef is beautiful—
(I had some ill-explained jot on how hate creates a powerful relationship a few weeks back, think it was in a film thread— this entire series floored me, brilliant)
and that chase scene Bill Hader directed enthralled me more than anything else this year—
I know we’re onto the next season, but that moment felt like a pivot in television—
Or whatever Donald Glover’s doing, consistently 80% of the way to making a good point—
I watched Ozark for the first time,
Binged over a couple weekends,
It’s good— it’s fine, whatever— but I keep laughing.
It’s too overwrought. Too fake.
And, oddly, for something so stark, too funny—
AND THE LEAFS WON.
Take that Florida.

I’m listening to a lot of Bill Callahan recently.
Matt Berninger.
Nick Cave.
Dylan.
Cohen.
Robert Johnson.
Townes Van Zandt.
Tim Buckley.
Gil Scott-Heron.
I revert to ‘I’m New Here’ quite a lot—
I find it’s had a peculiar effect on everyone
(including myself, especially early off in my listening days)
It’s a simple record, on the surface,
28-minutes, one dude doing his thing,
title, coincidentally, taken from Callahan,
with a Johnson cover, a Benton cover
(later sampled by Drake)
bookended with Kanye samples,
and, of course, the rest of it was
later reworked by Jamie XX (house)
later reworked by McCraven (jazz)
because the versatility this
post-addiction
post-industrial
post-humour
post-confessional
piece of blues
has,
is in its rawness— a true expression
what it means to be broken—

when I ponder
who are the post-impressionists of music?
In the most literal sense,
not
who could not contain themselves,
who surrendered to art—
like Gauguin, Van Gogh,
Munch, Pollock, Rothko,
Seurat, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec—
but who could depict reality using
optics never thought,
lenses never looked through,
I find the cycle's similarities
(and no, they are not romantic)
terrifying—

And amid this dulling
helter-skelter
we are currently being squeezed,
as my thoughts get muddier,
tangled, cluttered and fogged,
as a billion voices yell shit
through a megaphone,
as I watch my generation, lost,
seeking anywhichway forward
knowing no answers along the way,
I think back to Bill’s simple words,
in the voice of Gil—
I’m new here.


April, 2023.

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

in light of maple blues,
amid Canada’s woes,
I cannot help but feel a pride
when I mention Joni, Neil,
Leonard, Robbie and Gordon,
the later of which,
unequivocally Canadian,
in ways only measurable in
denim jackets, freshwater rivers,
weatherworn docks and
the iron-spikes of railways,
set sail this month—

and as much as Lightfoot is gone,
whether or not you see the empty chair,
his voice, his words, and his blunt ruggedness
which carved the definition of southern Ontario
in ways which had yet to be said or portrayed,
is the sound of a hundred million autumn leaves
and the melody’s of Muskoka’s breeze,
a foreverness to to what he shaped—

when I think of the songwriters of the north,
and how our pen has crossed from Huron to Zanzibar,
how Neil’s choruses pounds from Singapore bars
and Cohen’s ghost laments Argentina’s funerals
to see how this small pocket of gold
has stretched the world over,
I know, when Canada peaks,
its mountains stand among the best—

there is an atmosphere
to Alice Munro
of
which, no matter I may skirt, I am a part—
and it took me many, many years
to welcome this belonging I’ve only
surrounded myself with since day one,
— and how ironic it took a million miles elsewhere to see it—

from lyrics scripted into birchbark
and the unexplainable nostalgia
for a single sliver of sunset, a
unified sense of ‘us’ is somewhere
In Downie’s cokemachineglow—

as a child
there was an inferiority complex
associated with being Canadian
(when compared to the USA)—
now, justly, this made sense
when it came to the late 90s
(especially with cinema, TV)
but it slipped—

and gaze upon Maud’s canvases
of childish wonder (in a good way, of course)
and
see the Edmund Fitzgerald overquoted
time and time in black and white
and grey and gold over and over,
the
canvases of Jackson and Carr,
how Carson turns words to knife
and
what it’s like to be swallowed in
the nowness of Guston,
I feel these specs are
proof that Canada,
by broken means,
is its own—

I
entered an era where I didn’t enjoy art—
works were an idea, concepts, blueprints—
I
broke music down until it was nothing,
chords, scales, notes, keys—
I
saw paintings as no more than lines,
theories, colours, patterns—
and as
I
read poems, novels, and everything in-between,
there was nothing more than words.
In different orders.
said by different people.
inked, on a page, motionless—

and I’m glad whatever that waves was
has crashed ashore and woken me up,
because it led to something new—
to experience something with no
expectations— no preconceived
notions— no boundaries— no rules—
no standards— it just needs to be.
and I’ve found something in that.

I find, unfortunately,
one of the easiest things to do is complain
which, in turn, can sometimes be fun to read,
but at its worst it’s a clump of whine—
on occasion of course, it is very important,
as Mr. Ego so excellent monologues in
(the masterpiece) Ratatouille,
but about so much? Is a hobby.
aimless, loud, messy—

for a week or so I was
surrounded by bassoons,

cellos, clarinets, trombones
being squeaked by
schoolers smaller
than the timpanis
they wheeled out,

and they’re good,
y’know? could definitely
do stuff I couldn’t at
their age,

til some kid comes
out of nowhere and
shred Vivaldi like
he’s Hendrix—
absolutely rips it,
gave it some grit too—
and as happy as
everyone was when
the solo finished, I
don’t think anyone
laughed more that
when somebody made
an unflattering squonk
on a tuba—

but you know what I fell for?
what I loved? —
what made me wash into some
sort of cacophony-haze dream?
the warm-ups.
playing everything.
all at once.
nothing spared.
no idea untouched.
it was this limbo between
novice and professional
that gave it such life
it created a sound of youth—
unabashedly, flourishing youth—
and I hadn’t heard that
anywhere in years….

It reminded me these are not merely notes.
Or words.
Or lines.
It is us.

and when I hear some dumb
Stompin’ Tom Conners rag,
in light of time, in light of memory,
In light of community,
it is still dumb, but with love—

Stan Rogers. Oscar Peterson.
Lismer. Reid. Thomson.
Ondaatje. Pittman. Purdy.

and, to Lightfoot,
a fallen leaf
from the top
of this mighty
tree, I could
only ever aspire
to see the same
view—



In the meantime,
there’s a hooker waiting
the corner out my window—
Hope she has a good Wednesday.

May, 2023.

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Sorry bout the smoke folks—
Think Villeneuve’s shooting Blade Runner 2079
or some reshoots for Dune Part 2,
Maybe a sequel to Enemy? That’d be neat.
Not sure what the plot would be, but it’d
be nice for more of the world to learn about
Toronto’s giant spider (Lenny)—

I’ve never known another
musician who attacked you
with an instrument quite like
Peter Brötzmann—

Coleman, Coltrane, Ayler,
Braxton, Zorn, Parker, Jarman,
yeah, they could do it, suppose,
but Brötzmann stabbed you,
relentless— squealing, pouncing,
squeezing— you’d put on a
record and be ambushed by this
brass blitz slicing wherever it
could, pouring salt in the wounds,
an elephantine colossus of
unignorable shrieking, knife-like,
a true bombardment of noise—

From For Adolphe Sax, a salute to the paintbrush,
to Machine Gun, an onslaught of its namesake,
to Nipples, a dense, free-for-all warfare on wax,
his records explode with expressions deserving of their wordlessness

For the most part, I’m not actively
afraid of being murdered, but
Peter Brötzmann reminded me it
could very well happen—

I rewatched Down By Law a couple weeks back,
(y’know, the one with Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni
that’d never have a thread of a chance of being made today,
uses Jockey Full of Bourbon like an absolute banger,
black-and-white bayou-blues, feels like a dry bottle of whiskey)
and it reminded me how simple something can
be in order to make no direct sense at all—
it’s all you need— a couple faces, a couple walls,
some strife, some grit, a rule or two
and something to break them with—
how hypnotic flybuzz can be
a dying lightbulb
a curb.

I’ve never been able to decide between minimalism and maximalism—
(there’s nothing wrong in enjoying both, of course)
but I’ve always struggled to fall into one or the other,
and it’s often resulted in making myself look like a mess—
when I think of Brötzmann’s wall of sound,
Jarmusch’s slow-panned empty roads,
how Rothko used the entire frame for air,
or see De Kooning splatter relentless jags,
the lenses of
Ozu vs Wong Kar-Wai
Antonioni vs Fellini
Kiarostami vs Almodovar
Cassavetes vs Tarantino
Tarr vs Lynch
I find inspiration in all of them.

I’d like to be like Francis Bacon.
He did both at the same time.
Tarkovsky.
Wes Anderson.
Lanthimos.
Miro.
But I’m not Francis Bacon.
Tarkovsky. Anderson.
Lanthimos. Miro.
I just watch Down By Law
and find myself
rewatching the final
scene over and
aver and
over
and
….

I am making a mess.


I have thought about environment a lot recently,
the where
and how it affects, shapes, sculps—
ambience, atmosphere, acoustics,
the space as a canvas itself—
textures. tones. curvature. expanse.

I thought about a room, an impossibly large room,
so large you could possibly miss the only thing inside it—
a pingpong ball.
(Nothing less, nothing more)
Just a simple pingpong ball,
housed in something solely for it.
And no matter how ignorable it is, you can’t.
That’s all you have to captivate you.
It is the weight of the room, and it deserves something
and then, of course, someone steps on it.
... what have they done?

I often, if not always, remember where I
saw a painting,
read a book,
ate a dish—
the sounds.
the light.
the hues.
the density.
the movements.
(albeit, blurred)
and, despite not being physical,
I always remember where I first heard an album,
I see it, who was around me,
what, why, when—
Music paints time.
It is pigments atop air.
It is something you cannot see otherwise.

I’ve always desired to make an album of wood,
mixed with a bit of metal, some fruit, maybe flowers,
spritzed with bergamot, the acoustics of an amphitheatre,
played with worn instruments, sewn into fabric patterns,
wrapping around your ear a little more than L&R’s limits,
with the balance and consistency of rippling lakewater—
I’m not sure what sound would come out of a feather
should you put it under the needle, or a slice of aloe,
leather, a slab of fresh dug clay— but as I listen to
the same twelve notes over and over, the idea
is blanketing me more and more—

Art looks to empty space
absence,
a dot amidst boundless stretches—

Like myself,
or our divided friends in Down By Law,
I believe the art of the future has two paths—
Veering towards the grotesque, or veering towards nature.
For both, in their fields, are extremes—

I see a tree--------------------------------I see a tree
I cannot rival a tree—-----------I cannot rival a tree
I cannot--------------------------------I chop it down

And to Mr. Brötzmann, as much as
I am baffled as to how you balanced both,
you devised something undeniably human—



June, 2023

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

I never used to listen to albums on Youtube—
didn’t even used to be a thing— you’d click
on a new track by whoknowswho and it’d
probably be fake, or edited, or a jumpscare,
sometimes it wouldn’t even be music at all,
just an image of the artist with no audio
(or worse, a robot voice) kindly asking you
to click the link below V that most certainly
did not contain a virus— it contains the brand
new song you’re looking for in an .exe format!
We all know .exe format has the best audio
quality— sometimes the audio is so good
it makes your computer scream and catch
fire, do a little dance, singalong lyrics going
somewhat like EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXZQKXZKX—
now, luckily, before I used to listen to music
on Youtube there was this super kosher
magical application called ‘Limewire’ that
made you able to detect viruses better
than a palaeontologist detects femurs
because if you didn’t you’d have a stack
of bricked laptops that probably just
needed a new harddrive, but this is 2007
we’re talking about, so you’re probably
just going to run to Future Shop and
buy a new piece of crap Acer that’s 50%
off because the CD-rom drive doesn’t
work or something like that, and BAM
you reinstall Limewire and do it all over
again— you’d download all the hits, for
free! No need to empty your teenage
wallet to iTunes’ buck-a-song mp3s—
could just click a bit n’ queue up a p2p for
Gnarlz Barkly - Cravy(!) 192kbps.mp4
JUSTI TIMBERLAKE-MYLOVE(FEAT TI).WMA
Rhiana - SOS UMBRELLA SHUT UP AND.MOV
FoBThnks fr th Mmrs (Fall out boy).AAC
PARTY LiKE AR0CKSTARR (X-REAL-RAP-X).m4a
(and occasionally oldiesbutgoodies like)—
SMELLSLIKETEENSPIRIT!!!!NIRVANA!!!!.mp3
MariahCareyFantasy.jpeg.png
Oasis - Wonerwall (BRITISH).exe
—wait! I spotted it, it’s that last one!
don’t click that last one! no no no no—

The first time I ever listened to Nirvana’s
Nevermind I downloaded all the tracks
Individually off Limewire— think some
were different sources too, different
uploaders, different formats— I even
distinctly recall Lounge Act being near
impossible to find, and I refused to
listen to the album until I found a version
of it (because, remember, at the time
you couldn’t just Google ‘Lounge Act’
and expect to be able to listen to it—
the tracks I squeezed from the lime
probably had a 200-ish vbr and not
an ounce of metadata apart from the
titles, so I had to import all the info
manually until it synced to Windows
Media Player and would play somewhat
as seamlessly as an $8 CD I could’ve
just probably picked up from Walmart
instead of a couple Arizonas and a
chocolate bar, but what’s the point of
blaring Lithium into $20 headphones if
you don’t have something to snack on?

Not going to lie, I mooched the internet too—
(at the time I was capped at 75 gigs a month and
it was shared between— I kid you not— 7 people,
and the down speed was about 150kb/s at best)—
there was this beach club that only operated
in the summer, but come October/November
you could sit in a muskoka chair out back
and use their security-free wi-fi no hassle
(apart from one time when I thought I was
getting busted but it was actually just some
guys I went to high school with who used
the space to smoke weed on occasion)—
thinking back on it, it was actually really nice—

skip a year or two— Zippyshare (RIP) links
on Blogspot posts were always a dream—
mixtapes on hotnewhiphop too— could
always pluck something like LiveLoveA$AP,
House of Balloons, 1999, Elmatic, 6 Kiss,
Nostalgia, Ultra— some Clams Casino,
Chief Keef— all HQ, all free, no viruses,
metadata plugged where it needed to be—
Freddie Gibbs, Action Bronson, Das Racist—
download the 320kbps mp3s, sync them
to a shiny iPod touch or a Motorola Razr,
easy-peasy-no-laws-broken-squeezy,
(I have a copies of both Danny Brown’s
Hot Soup and XXX on vinyl now, but the
first time I listened to them they were free
downloads on some MixtapeMonkey kinda
thing— I also recall The Weeknd curating an
entire site just for his 2011 trilogy— not sure
why, but that site’s format stuck with me—
there was nothing on it but these free albums
he made, and I’d never seen anything like it—

In late 2011 I found Bandcamp— I’d just wrapped
up my first ever sessions in a studio and thought
“well… maybe I could do what The Weeknd did?”
which, well… cost money, so I didn’t— but there was
these neat up-and-coming website that let you
upload your music for free and sell it (!!!) if you
wanted, so I bounced some WAVs and went back
to the beach club and tried uploading them to
Bandcamp, but it didn’t work for some reason, so
I ended up plopping some mp3s in a zip, stuck it
on Mediafire and called it a day— but, oddly,
despite also being free, I never used to listen to
streams on Bandcamp— I’d always dig around trying
to find the free releases and download them to my
iPod so I could listen to them on the bus to school
or plug them into a soundsystem or ‘pick them up’
and share them elsewhere, no internet connection
needed, just there— but the amount of times
I hit play and let an album stream? … maybe twice?
(until 2014/2015 when the platform gained traction—
I think sometimes people forget how barren Bandcamp
used to be— apart from Sufjan Stevens you couldn’t
find a single recognizable name for miles)— and
the best song on Youtube around this time was called
‘REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT’, which
wasn’t exactly as much of a banger as Acid Rap—

I’ll admit, at the time I never used thepiratebay or
RARBG (RIP) or kickasstorrents (RIP) or… Iunno, napster
or some crap, because they were always too
shady/sketchy/porny for me and I started getting
war flashbacks of Limewire when all the ads of single
ladies in my area started spluttering across the screen,
and I got absolutely lost on how magnet torrents
worked because the only copy of how-to-pirate-
for-dummys had been checked out of the library
for a solid five years straight— but it was also a time
you could google ‘Marquee Moon Mediafire’ and
it’d be the first thing revving in the engine, so—

first time I ever had a gun pointed at me I was listening
to Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster (acouple seconds
into Bad Romance, basically had just hit play) that
I’d ripped from mediafire maybe an hour or two
earlier that evening, because that’s how I was able
to pluck some new songs from the internet and take
them with me to the store— there was a yearning to it,
the dig, the struggle— to seek, not be handed— and
when you bit into that fruit it tasted so different…
I dove into it. My mind buzzing with the endless exploration—
but I needed to fight for it… it wasn’t fulfilling otherwise—
a finiteness was required— and I remembered thinking:
‘I hope to god this cop isn’t pointing a gun at me because
I illegally downloaded a pop album and plopped the songs
onto an old cellphone—’ (which, thankfully, was not the case)—

skip to 2012— I bought a record player! And my first
two records (Bookends & Stop Making Sense)
—because somehoworanother you always remember
your first— and I felt such a odd freedom with these
records— there were records everywhere around that
time, and my god were they cheap— think my ace copy
of Blood On The Tracks was $2.50— it’s still the copy I
have today (great condition really)— and my god
did I fall in love with digging through crates— all of them,
any store, any time, any place— twenty minutes after
having my wisdom teeth pulled I spotted a flea market
and starting digging through some cracked plastic
baskets infront a trinket booth and thought I was tripping
when I caught a copy of After The Gold Rush for $0.25—
there’s this adrenaline of not knowing what the next
sleeve will be… could be anything— something new,
something old, something lost, something nobody
ever played, or maybe it’ll be a record I knew I needed
to fill that 1cm gap on my shelf— and that dig kept me
going, made me fall in love all over again… maybe even
moreso— that record player I bought in 2012 is still the
record player I use today— love it, really— it’s played a lot—

I never used to stream— anything, ever— any medium—
but then I listened to James Blake’s Colour In Anything
on this fancey shmancy newfangled thingy called Spotify—
I remember SO. MANY. ADS. — my god, it was every third
song— worse than the radio, this was awful— I didn’t have
time to keep listening to ads while going through a double
album— barely even made it to the finish line— never
doing this again, why would I ever do this again? Just
zippyshare/mediafire/Yandex, Bandcamp it, whatever—
bleh— You wouldn‘t download a car! but, I mean—
yeah I would, especially if you made me drive one with ads
plastered all over it and the horn was the McDonalds’ jingle—

but, I never used to listen to albums on Youtube—

I never used to stream albums on Bandcamp, Spotify, Soundcloud—

but I do now—

I listen to all of it.

Handed to me on a platter, free.

The album is on Youtube. Immediately. Bandcamp. Spotify. New.

Clock clicks midnight, n I can hit play— anywhere, whenever, easy—
every album a minute away—

no trudge, no hike, no climb, no strife—

even figured out the trick to skip ads on Spotify—

but, ever since then,
now that the tape hiss is gone,
the vinyl doesn’t warp,
the CD doesn’t skip,
the exe wearing an mp3 onesie doesn’t brick another harddrive
and there isn’t a gun pointed at my face,

nothing’s quite felt real—


July 2023

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

cupfuls of August shimmer
behind picket-fence patterns
splattered mustard and marmalade,
gleams of buttercups sunbathing in
bushels as we succumb to dull labour
and these days blur, blot and bleed
a chorus of clotheslines, squeaking
to salmon wriggling upstream
and mumbles of bonfires dwindling
in the ember-peppered breeze

and as these overripe days waltz,
rainsoaked, fuller than thunder,
nimble bandits with names so simple
tumble, reap and weigh
while we spin, drunk, dazed,
plucking tattered clouds as we
stumble to the slope, lay in
morning-mowed grass, and know,
as handholds unfurl crimson,
we tried to outrun summer—











All of my favourite films hurt a little—
Food. Music. Friends. Memories. Poems.
I rewatched Lost In Translation three times
in fives hours, just looping there— it's one
of my comfort films, but I've never been
able to pinpoint why— it's a film that hurts—
it's marriages in disarray, friendships/love
destined to be frayed, people, lost, somewhere
ahome knowing they're somewhere away—
Past Lives afterwards, a similar gist,
(in theory)— and I found I didn't enjoy it as
much because it didn't hurt like I wanted—
and I never realized I used pain as a metric—
did I enjoy it? or did it hurt? sure,
could be both, but I never noticed its
prevalence on the palette— pain, ache—
for the sake of recognizing you feel—
and how honest that wrench in your gut pricks—
(and this is not sappy, manic, gloom, melancholy)
just the truth— heart on display, connection,
a genuine pang, stinging, lingering sore
far after the picture has left the screen—
and more and more, I'm finding this pain
not coming from death, crime, strife,
but from what's alive, in loss, knowing
no barrier or enemy or hurdle but time—

I rewatched Before Sunrise acouple nights ago,
Before Sunset the day after (hadn't watched
either in a while)— in fact, in the first few minutes
of Sunrise I realized I hadn't watched it since
before I was the age of the characters (nowadays
I'm somewhere inbetween the two, had they made
an installment circa 1999, etc—) I'd seen Before
Sunset a few times since though, it's the happiest
of the trilogy I think, flies by fast, witty, fervent—
there's a comfort to the entirely of the work, an ease—
but I usually avoid Sunrise and Midnight because
they hurt so much— yet... I love them for it—
and this time around, I realized Sunrise is my favourite,
because I thought of it differently— I always
knew the series was a trilogy, my first watch was
after Midnight— but I thought of Sunrise as a singular
piece, 1995, solo, not knowing a prequel would be made—
and I fell into how much it hurt— this fleeting should be
could be won't be probably never will (unless you're a
romantic of course, which... despite my better senses,
I feel I've become somewhere along the way—) and
I just fell into it.

There'll be a day.
The day is everything.
The day will end.
You will get on a train.

I am older than when Jesse and Celine met.
Older than when Charlotte jets off to Tokyo.
I am older than I was in June. July. As of tomorrow,
August—
and in time, I find a new sense of pain—
a day has come I realize these endless hours cannot be unwritten.
Just writ.


August 2023