4.19.2009
Location: Fifth and High, Columbus, OH
Pages: Yage Letters, Walden
Ears: Indians-Yankees Baseball Game

For all of the questions posed by Andy in the recent weeks, Toronto has proved to be the answer.  The ol’ “change of scenery,” the semi-bohemian living simplicity of these fantastic friends I meet there, the recording of invaluable Jeremy drum tracks, the joyous flow of whisky and coffee and wine and pasta, all during that strange section of our lives caught between that tail end of our undergraduate degrees and the cautious decision of The Next Step.  It’s that comfort you get when you discover more people really alive out there, the comfort of suddenly feeling less alone in your own stutter-stepping into the specifics of the rest of your life.  Everyone makes very little and spends very little, everyone has their own creative projects they’re working on in any free time they can muster, everyone has separately come to their own opinion of the insanity of the modern age and has defiantly rambled through temp agencies, volunteer opportunities, karaoke bars on weekdays, shelves of timeless counter culture literature, minor drug experimentation, and both successes and failures in love to find themselves temporarily here, on Concord Avenue, this gang fully interchangeable with the rest of the modern noncomformists I run amok with back in Columbus.

Truly out of a dream

So the week is a happy blur, beginning with the joyous vegetarian potluck-slash-wine-guzzling extraordinaire (which transitions nicely to the shouting to the heavens from the jam room), and ending with a hard drive full of recordings, new friends, and a bit more confidence that the world hasn’t died yet as long as there are the happy few of us scattered in these increasingly-connected social coves who haven’t stopped learning, who haven’t begun the slow death into domestication, who are fighting to live our own lives raging against the ridiculous concept they snuck in on us years before we were born that whoso would be a man must have a real job.  But of course it’s all futile and temporary – it is the goal of every living cell to become two cells – and we’ll eventually find that comfortable mix of time we’re willing to exchange for the amount of money we need to feed our offspring, keep ourselves happy, and stray not too far from our youthful stubbornness.  But, in the meantime, we’re certainly learning to capitalize on these few precious months of freedom before a kid pops out and your entire priority system is upended.

There's my boy

Anyway, the details of the week are fantastic and non-stop, but I hasten to turn this into another “boy my egg salad sandwich was delicious” blogs that dilute this here world wide web, and suffice it to say that though the specifics of our modern existential dilemmas seem to make them unique, the time-tested remedies still hold true: travel, wine, a good night’s sleep, and a genuine sense that, if only momentarily, that we actually lived our lives as we see fit – a joy I experienced for nine glorious days in Toronto, Ontario.

Anna Sudac taking these clapping tracks seriously