Six: Celebrities you've never heard of

I was thinking today on the train home from Toronto that some songs lock us into a certain place and time. Sometimes but not necessarily the time where we first were listening to them. Not the first time you ever hear it, mind, but the first real listen. But sometimes it's a song you've heard numerous times before, but leaves a greater impression at one particular time.

I believe that's what B. Schatz calls curse songs, although I'm sure he got that phrase from somewhere. He links his curse songs with girls he has loved and lost. Mine are considerably more platonic, mostly relating to school and other quotidian aspects of life. Sure, I've got my songs that remind me of girls what hurt me. Part of the reason, I suspect, I love Aerosmith's Just Push Play album is that it so perfectly acts as the soundtrack to that very difficult Grade 8 year, as I listened to it fairly constantly that year trying to balance my understanding of why the Aero-fan community loathed it and why in my adolescent state of mind it seemed like a very good piece of work (and on that level, it still speaks to me, and holds up far better than it ought to.) So I can listen to that album and reflect on how much I've grown, and be impressed with myself. Anyway, they're called Curse Songs because I guess by and large the feelings they remind you of are negative, and those songs inextricably linked to those feelings are inescapable. But mine are neutral, leaning toward pleasantly nostalgic. I am going to express the last two years of my life as a narrative of particular songs and general artists.

I was largely out of love with music during my time at Sheridan. My computer was a jumbled mess, my MP3 collection scattered to the winds that was my hard drive. I did not yet own an iPod until the end of second year. Mind you, whenever I hear any notable song by Boney M, I am immediately taken back to my first stint at HMV. So there you have it.

The iPod became my constant companion pretty instantly after I got it, but nothing really grabs me until this one memory standing on the platform at Oakville GO - a place I hadn't often been before then but have been countless times since. I was going to Toronto to take a tour of the Innis campus and get all the preliminaries. I was still unsure about this University thing, it had been dreamt up on a whim and I was having second thoughts about the whole arrangement. The song in question is She Said She Said by the Beatles, which I can't even be sure when I first heard it. Maybe it was not long before, maybe it was years earlier. I know this was not the first time but it really struck me in a particular way.

When I started school, I made a playlist of songs, hits (and misses) from the late 90's, and this along with my random playlists became the soundtrack of my first semester at U of T. I couldn't tell you what musical artists were on the top of the charts in fall 2007, but I can tell you that I listened to Possum Kingdom by Toadies (a song that was taken from me when it was put into Guitar Hero II for 360) a lot, along with Lit's My Own Worst Enemy (later of Rock Band 2) Verve's Bittersweet Symphony, Robbie Williams' Millennium, Inside Out (Eve 6) Tubthimping (Chumbawamaba) You Get What You Give (New Radicals) and a host of singer-songwritery girl songs that I don't care to own up to. Natalie Imbruglia, there I said it. Sheesh. Among other things. A lot of those songs have a double-curse on them, since they remind me of that time but also the time they originate, when I was young and innocent. Well, sorta innocent.

The second semester of that year actually has a song in the Schatz tradition, a couple anyway. A girl had told me her feelings, and I was very overwhelmed (and ultimately missed whatever chance I may have had, a fact of which we are both aware.) And that month, the music I had been listening to a lot was the Beta Band, specifically the songs Dry the Rain and Needles in my Eyes, which still get me a bit misty-eyed for that time period, because they just strike me with that alarming feeling of being in over my head very much by accident.

For a while, Weezer's Pinkerton (the whole album) was associated with the end of that year, but it appears to have worn off. I can't think of any really evocative songs until a year later; The Weakerthans will always remind me of some cold, lonely evenings in March 2009 (specifically, Plea From a Cat Named Virtue, Civil Twilight and Left and Leaving.) And then we have Through & Through & Through by Joel Plaskett, which is what I listen to if I want to be teleported back to the Half-Past days.

Anyway. I'm not sure what has possessed me to write so extensively on such an untimely matter, because really, it was not an uninteresting day in and of itself.

I miss having Fridays off. I still have Fridays off, but they haven't been my own in weeks. It's a pity too, because after Thursday nights spent restlessly in short story collection I enjoy coming home, kicking around for several hours, watching west-coast primetime, and then sleeping for hours and hours. But there's important business. I went out to Toronto to meet up with my Drama group to talk Trifles. One member has some big ideas that I don't necessarily agree with but haven't decided whether it's worth standing ground. I'm not the kind of guy who goes to war unless he really wants to go to war.

Then I fucking go to war.

Well I went out there, except I was having a bad day. The bad day started when I realized I had gotten up an hour late if I were to make it in time for the meeting we had set. So I was a half hour late. Other minor setbacks. No big deal. Then I arrived in time to sit in on the end of a read-through. We talked about our interpretation for a little while then made our plan to meet up again and dispersed. I was there for maybe 45 minutes. Dissatisfied for having schlepped out to Toronto for only that, I called up Vasa to see if she wanted to hang out until I saw fit to go home.

This is rare for me because I honestly could've just gone home. Hell, I'd even seen Vasa that week. But no, I took the opportunity to branch out. In retrospect, I could've called Ryan and seen if he had the afternoon off. He'll be my first call next time.

Anyway. She said sure, come over, "we're" going to a costume shop to check out Halloween stuff. "We" being some of the girls I'd met earlier in the week at Glee, her boyfriend John, and this other guy. So I went along. I ended up talking to some of the other girls a fair bit, learning names, making good smalltalk. Doing prop comedy in costume shops.

The group split up, and the two guys and Vasa and I ended up in American Apparel of all places because she was building a classic Star Trek costume (Uhura stylez) out of a t-shirt skirt.

On the way home, I thought about how long it had been since I ordered my Halloween costume, and when I got home, lo and behold, a notice was waiting to tell me I could pick it up. A rather frustrating day became an enjoyable, rewarding one for several reasons. The costume has a good balance between seeming homemade and seeming authentic, and fits well, except I have pretty short arms. I've been wearing it. I bought a Tiki-type tribal necklace that may or may not go along with it. The Lebowski wig doesn't really go with it, if I wanted to be Horace. Otherwise, it's quite a bitchin' costume. I'm pleased.

Accomplished very little tonight. More midterms ahoy. Sigh, sigh, keep on rockin'
-Scotto