Failure is Imminent

No work today... its a short week, so I'm not counting on too many days. Maybe some more time to write nonsense on the inkernet. Definitely more time to check out new records.

The topic of today's post is failure. I was thinking about this the other night, and then RSS summed it all up. Wil Shipley, of delicious monster writes an ode to failure... pushing yourself to the limit, without fear of losing yourself in the process.

In the spirit of laying it all on the line, I have pretty much decided my spring running schedule. Might as well put it down in pixels. If anyone wants to run these as well, let me know (i'm lookin at you mattiek).

March 26 - Around The Bay 30k in Hamilton, ON.

Early May (TBA) - Kingston Half Marathon

May 28 - Ottawa Marathon in Ottawa, ON.

Bring on the cold... let it snow... til there's no sunlight left at all... looks like we're setting ourselves on fire again.

iPod Therefore iAm

Another week, another collection of frequencies bouncing around the ninja lair. Lets get right to it, shall we?

Kano- Bars and Beats Mixtape: Call it grime, call it garage (no no, not that garage, this is garridge, mate), grab the mixtape. Looks like its a promo only deal, but its worth the effort. The smooth vocals are still there, but the pace is quickened and the rhymes are tighter.

New London Fire - I Sing The Body Holographic: Not necessarily groundbreaking; there are no boundaries being pushed here... you can hear the influences changing with every song. The Killers are in there, Keane is lurking, a heavy dose of U2 on "we don't bleed". When you can write melodies and hooks this well, a little bit of nicking your contemporaries can be forgiven: this is an extremely solid disc.

Eisley - Trolly Wood - Another headphone gem, courtesy of Shuffle. Telescope Eyes ruled this album for a long time, but the lilting harmonies on this track are just...well.. fun! Any song combining pop melodies, female vocals, country twang and the word hallelujah are cool in my books.

Grandaddy - Nature Anthem. Sometimes, commercials get it right... choosing the right song, and using it in just the right way. The song is actually enhanced by the corporate imagery. The last car commercial that grabbed me used The Flaming Lips "Do You Realize"... people were happy and smiling, apparently because of their car. This time Grandaddy has written a pop chorus so catchy that it doesn't need a verse... standard pastoral nature imagery, only without the usual odes to broken appliances. Its on the "Below The Radio" compilation - a custom Grandaddy authored mixtape... iTunes it.

I'd Like To Buy A Vowel

A word is a powerful thing: a collection of letters that when added together in combination can describe anything imaginable. When words come together, meaning is invoked, stories are told and lessons are learned. However, a word only becomes meaningful with a mind present to interpret its symbolism. Rhetoric, stimulates the mind to sense meaning deeper than what is actually on the page. The style of writing brings forth imagery and emotion in the reader, with the letters on the page simply serving as the vector between the writer's thoughts and reader's imagination.

The ability of the mind to wander into the beauty of text is limited only by the energy that must be devoted to decoding the letters themselves. The rest is easy. Authors may use eloquent vocabulary, prose vibrant as the brightest colours, symbolism thick as molasses, or carefully crafted communication to stimulate the mind of the reader. Words need not be long, as short words work just as well. It jst nds 2 mk sns, 2 b undrstd.

Witness the power of the mind. Certainly, based on prior experience, context and pattern recognition the human brain can infer meaning from even words that are incomplete. In a world where paint peels off of signs, coffee spills on magazines, and printers improvise document margins, this ability is an incredible evolutionary leap. However, hand in hand with this realization of supreme decoding ability has come a staggering decline in the ability to encode language; to write, with both meaning and style.

The internet and mobile devices have created an infrastructure that puts communication at our fingertips; the world of instant messaging. The incredible ease of data transmission, coupled with small screens and limitations on data length, has fractured conversations into a culture of soundbytes, with both sentences and words truncated to their smallest possible forms. Look around, the signs are everywhere: Diddy and J-Lo on the cover of magazines, shipping with Fedex, paying with Amex. In the pursuit of greater instancy, the message suffers. Because the mind must focus on decoding the words themselves, it decreases the ability to read between the lines and find the true meaning. To see this, one must simply look at the two greatest poets in literary history. Dylan (Zimmerman, not Thomas), would not relate, as L8 is not a simple twist of fate. If Shakespeare could text us now, he would surely tell us that "2 b is not To Be". The removal of vowels leaves words unable to sing, scream or shout. As the mind struggles to piece together appropriate sounds, metaphors and similes go unfound, like buried treasure with an incomplete map.

The use of shorthand and abbreviations is nothing new, as the lecture notes of any undergraduate student will demonstrate. Nor are they limited to the realm of the young, text messaging masses, as any medical journal will demonstrate. However, in each case, they serve a higher purpose: simplifying extraneous information so that the message is not lost for the sake of details. Certainly, the risk of losing literary style in a mundane text message to a friend is not anything to lose sleep over. Its true: the screens are small, and although thumbs are opposable, they are simply not built for typing. The invention of punctuation-based faces and emotional cues have similar merit when space limits the ability to fully express sarcasm and humor.

However, outside of this limited scope of utilitarian communication, a real world exists. A world of pens, paper and pixels without 150 character limits: a world where anyone can state a message, but everyone searches for meaning. Recently, worlds have collided and writing has suffered. For the keen investors out there, put your money into shares of Wheel of Fortune, for if the world revolves around a balance of supply and demand, current market research shows the cost of vowels is soaring. Whether through habit, laziness or a false sense of creativity, student work seems more at home in the world of Nokia rather than that of academia. With the multitude of words in existence, each and every person can surely devise something more creative than a phonetic remix of proper grammar. If humour is indeed humourous, one needn't instruct the audience to laugh out loud. And with all the typing, texting and telecommunicating, surely the musculature and dexterity of the human hand is capable of the endurance that is necessary to construct every letter in a word, every word in a sentence.

Languages are in a constant state of flux, with slang, jargon and new styles continually penetrating the collective lexicon considered as proper. As our interaction with computer and electronic devices increases, perhaps the current trend towards explicit emotional direction will be necessary. Even the most creative work will require a tag or emotional cue to trigger the proper response from the digital audience; the best joke ever told will go over like a lead balloon without the requisite (lol) to indicate humour, the sarcastic comment requiring a wink to prevent misunderstanding and subsequent meltdown. Until then, take into account the humanity of the audience, embracing the rhetorical devices that have stood the test of time. The following statement may also serve as a guideline when communicating with other human beings, a philosophical concept that no computer could ever understand:
If a collection of fractured words sit on a page, and no one is able to read them, do they make a sound?
The simple answer? No ;).

Sonic The Substitute

Been working more lately... maybe different is a better word than more. Working hours that are usually worked by normal people; sleeping for most of the hours that normal people sleep. Still on a bit of a vampire schedule, trying to fit everything into a day is sometimes worth keeping eyes open for a few extra hours. The new site is finished: so everyone go and show the rock star some love.

The more consistent work in the outside world provides ample opportunity for Podding new music. I've gotten so much new stuff lately that shuffle isn't gonna cut it, gotta listen to these ones all the way through: the way it was meant to be. Wrote another music post while working last week, and that will be posted soon. Here is today's update:

Hooverphonic - More Sweet Music/No More Sweet Music double album. The old albums are classics (New Stereophonic... and Blue Wonder Power Milk) ... staples... they never come off of the iPod.. this one continues the trend. More like Portishead than ever, this album is the liquid of cool. The lead single "Wake Up" sounds a million times better when the sun goes down and the subwoofer is up... bouncing beats off the moon and back to my waiting ear drums. If you're working on perfecting the late night bus/train playlist (one of my life goals...) give these tracks heavy consideration.

On that note, what ever happened to Portishead? Their site redirects to Beth Gibbons' site. Did she Beyonce Timberlake the group?

The Plastic Constellations - Crusades. Spun this one this morning... its brash. You know an album has a lot to live up to when the first song begins with the power chord that kicks off "Killing in the Name"! Some call this punk music... but the lines are blurring so quickly. As boybands with axes like Sum41 Blink182, Blink183 and Blink184 take on the punk mantle, this sorta stuff becomes indie rock. Parts of this album have the ferocity of a hard Dave Grohl vocal on top of the blitzkrieg re-bop of Bloc Party. Sounds angry and exciting. Count me in.

James Blunt - Back to Bedlam. Is this popular? Isn't that the best feeling... when you cut yourself off from the machine that tells you what is supposed to be popular. without watching music videos, without listening to radio... i can hear a melody like this, and wonder... how popular is this guy... should i hate this? "You're Beautiful" seems like the sort of song that people might love to hate if they had to hear it a thousand times a day. It is the song that might be ruined by big playlist in the sky (*cough* ClearChannel)... the puke reflex that comes from having something incessitantly shoved down your throat doesn't happen when you're left to discover it yourself... it's suddenly turned into an iPod masterpiece. If you hate it, then you hate it... but at least you're not hating it because someone told you once an hour that brussel sprouts are good for you.

Who Are You, and What Have You Done With October?

Its funny, how certain periods of time have a feeling to them: an unmeasurable quantity associated with the hours and minutes, like a massless weight dangling from the second hand of the ticking clock. This concept is easily noticeable when you think of the days in a week. The bleary eyed feeling of a Monday morning is perhaps the most widely agreed upon emotion on the planet. The stark contrast between the carefree Saturday and the looming dreadlines of Sunday would surely be detectable with a strong enough litmus test. Everyone can empathize with the schizophrenic nature of Wednesday, its morning feeling like an eternal temporal limbo, its afternoon rolling quickly towards Saturday. If time is the fourth dimension, then its feeling must be the fifth.

The feeling dimension is not limited merely to days, it appears in periods that are both shortened and lengthened. Perhaps the most current representation of this phenomenon of time-feeling continuum is the sensations of the passing of the months. The description of months passing is not altogether accurate, as not all months "pass" in the same way. The endless months of summer seem to pass all too quickly, the lengthened days bringing feelings of shortened time. Conversely, the winter months pass slowly, the shortened days bringing longings for the hazy days of August. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, in this case, our black sheep is October.

Advanced physicists have hypothesized for years about gaps in space and time. A further extension of this field of study brings to light a theory to which everyone can relate: holes in the time-feeling continuum. Case in point: October. Rather than the concrete emotions associated with other months, October exists as a contrarian force. Electrons have positrons. Matter has antimatter. Feelings have antifeelings. The eleven months have October. The elusive October bears such little feeling of its own that unless expertly scrutinized on a calendar, its very existence is often completely overlooked. October begins with the mourning of September, and finishes with the shock of November, with a yet unknown quantity existing between. Its as if November 1st awakens us from a month of slumber: the leaves are falling, the morning is chilled, a calendar is torn, and Christmas is close.

In hindsight though, October has a lot to offer. In the context of its timely siblings, its feeling is lost. However, when isolated under a microscope, it is teeming with feeling. Its days can feel pleasant, without the congestion of August humidity. Its nights can feel cool and peaceful, without the searing chill of December. Its events are associated with the feelings of new birth and approaching closure. Skates are sharpened by a biting north wind, bringing with them dreams about what may yet be. The World Series brings a sudden urgency to the seemingly inconsequential summer engagements, as dreams are held onto like a tree's grip on its final few leaves. Given the proper amount of consideration, October surely has its share of proponents. A random sampling of people on the street would surely choose to replace the cold winter days with October's warmth, or trade the suffocating July nights for October's chill. The problem then becomes not a lack of feeling, but rather a lack of reflection on the month's merits.

Whatever force it is that causes our collective loss of time, we may never know. Perhaps October's sand is just ever so much finer, so that it slips through the hourglass at an imperceptibly increased rate. What matters though is that our attention is diverted from our primary three dimensions, for all they can measure are the places and things that cause our ever increasing hurry. It is the newly captured continuum that matters most. October may be gone again, leaving nothing more than fallen leaves and the vapors of frosty breath, but I know it will come again. And when it does, I will be ready: armed with the knowledge that when all of the window dressing is stripped away, October possesses the only two constants of our own existence: feeling and time.