Brief thoughts on Bowie's death, almost two weeks later

I'm a little late to add to the David Bowie remembrance train, nor do I have any good stories about how Bowie inspired or saved me when I was young. I remember seeing the rerun of his 1979 SNL appearance with Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias when I was 16, and had somewhat of an awareness of his importance to music, but my appreciation didn't really flower until adulthood. Since his passing, I've listened to the three Bowie albums I own copies of (Ziggy Stardust, Station To Station, "Heroes"), as well as the rest of his discography on Spotify; I didn't give Blackstar a play until after he died, but wonder what it would have felt like to have those early impressions of the album suddenly change shape as Bowie's true intentions for the work revealed themselves. As I said before, I don't really have much else to add to the conversation, but I strongly recommend Jacqueline Valencia's moving and nuanced look at how important his music was in her life. 

Bowie's death has me wondering whether I would mourn any musician's death on that same level. About ten years ago, when my friend Wilson was starting to get into Bob Dylan, we had a discussion about whether his inevitable passing would be one of those events that spawns a massive collective mourning: Wilson didn't think so; he theorized that Dylan had so long ago become a mythical figure that news of his death would almost be anti-climactic.  It would still be a bummer, but I can't really disagree with that assessment.

30 in 30: Day 30

This exercise winds down with one last entry. It's a relief to not have to worry about my daily posting quota or feel guilt over marking the day with a one-sentence post, and there's some bit of satisfaction to take in posting every day for 30 days, but the thing I worry about is that I'm going to squander this momentum. Maybe it will channel itself into my renewed focus on the SNL reviews, but what I really want is to regularly update the two streams of my blog. I aspire to the level of writing I see regularly on The Belle Jar and Trans Canada (My Way), and want to have something more to say than what I thought of a 30-year-old episode of a television show. For someone who's been trying to write for years, I'm still searching for my voice. 

I started a new job last week; it's in Dartmouth, so the commute is a bit longer than it was to my old job. This means I have to wake up earlier, which technically means I should be getting to bed earlier than I have been. Old habits die hard. Wil Wheaton just posted an entry on his blog about seven things he did to reboot his life that gave me pause, but do I need a reboot of my life, or do I need to figure out what I want before I can do that?

I'm giving myself two weeks until my friends' party to pare down the growing backlog of photos I still need to edit from this summer (going back to June). I don't know what the penalty will be aside from feeling like I can't stay on top of things, but it has to be done or it will either grow bigger with every event I shoot, or hold me back from wanting to take more pictures.

That's 30.

30 in 30: Day 29

Another year of skipping the Halifax Pop Explosion; the fourth in a row. I keep telling myself that I'm going to go to the next one, but just like Sappyfest, I don't even bother. Maybe I'm being needlessly frugal or maybe I've reached the age where I can't be bothered to get excited about live music. When my friend was in town last week, he suggested just going out to random shows with no regard as to whether I was familiar with the band or knew anyone else that was attending. Sometimes I just prefer to spend the money on a burrito.

There are nights where it hits me that I live in this amazing harbourfront city, and taking advantage of what it has to offer is just a matter of me willing myself to take a bus out of suburbia. And yet, when I do, I'm at a loss as to what to do, or I realize that I spent the time and effort to do something I didn't exactly want to do, and now have to spend even more to make it back home. If I take my camera, it suddenly becomes a load I wish I didn't have to carry or worry about. If I don't, I come across a scene that I wish I could take a good picture of. I have to justify everything to myself.

Random scenes come to me when I'm out and about, but they dissipate by the time I sit down to put pen to paper. I have an idea for a mood I want to create and some of the people that come to mind as the basis for characters, but nothing much in terms of plotting.

I leave you tonight with a 30 year old Prefab Sprout song.

30 in 30: Day 27

I keep thinking I need to make plans to go for coffee or drinks with people, but by the time I'm back home from work, I'm back into hermit mode and come up with a litany of excuses for not sending the message. It's late. It's early. I just saw them. I haven't seen them in a long time. We're not really that close. I can't afford it. Et cetera, et cetera. (I keep hearing the voice of one of my freshman year Poli Sci profs at Mount Allison saying the "et cetera" part.)

I've always felt that in the unlikely case that I manage to become famous for something, I would handle it poorly. As much as I would like to be able to do something that gives me respect and recognition, or create something of lasting value, I have a feeling all these insecurities I have would only magnify under the spotlight. Would I seclude myself like Jan Hooks did in her last years? Possibly. 

30 in 30: Day 25

I could speak at length about the federal election, but I used all my good stuff on social media, and I don't really want this space to get bogged down with my own political leanings. My main hope is that Atlantic Canada is on the receiving end of some major investments: I want economic opportunity, but more than that I want this place to not feel as cut off (in various respects) from the rest of Canada as it often does. 

30 in 30: Day 24

Too distracted to write, watched the election.

30 in 30: Day 23

I'm still trying to make sense of why I didn't bother checking out more of Nocturne last night, instead opting to go home almost immediately after leaving Lot Six. I checked even less out than I did last year, which also was a little bit of a bust. Was it just the rain that actually let up fairly early on but dampened my interest to the point where I went home? Was I really in a rush to get home for Saturday Night Live? Do I actually give a fuck about the arts, or do I only try to convince myself that I do?

I haven't really felt that I've been able to take full advantage of living in the city, largely due to financial constraints. Live music, art shows, theatre...I can never really bring myself to go out to any of these. Maybe it's just a side effect of the precarious work I was doing for the last 11 months. It's funny, when I lived in Miramichi, I longed to be in a place with a decent amount of cultural life, but now that I'm in Halifax and close to all this art, I don't normally bother, not even when it's free and involves people I know. Ever since the provincial government gutted the film tax credit in April, I'm afraid that one ripple effect is that the cultural life of Halifax is going to dry up.

How long will I stay in Halifax? I don't know. I'm not especially settled here; I do have a good circle of friends, but I don't have a stable career or family tying me to this place, and I'm very reluctant to be in a relationship or follow through on an attraction until I feel a little more stable on the career front. Life tends to go on even while I'm trying to figure out who I am and what I want: I have to eat, pay rent, try to socialize, and sleep anyway, regardless of whether I write or take pictures. I'm not sure whether either is what I should be or want to be doing with my life.

Then again, as Carolyn Mark sang, "everything happens either not at all or at the same time."

30 in 30: Day 22

The last few days since I got back into Halifax weren't especially good for sitting down and writing, for some reason or another. I really didn't like it, but I don't know why I just didn't sit down and power through it or shut off all the other distractions I had going on in the background.

In the last week or so, I came up on a few reminders of the past: a script from a summer-stock production of Annie; an old website profile with a list of mix CDs I compiled, some for other people... All these mementos of the person I was, the things I thought I wanted, and the people that drifted in and out of my life over the years. Quite a few are still around.

There's a yearly multi-venue art festival in Halifax called Nocturne: I ostensibly went out to it tonight, but didn't really feel like checking it all out. I love what it represents, and that it brings so many people out to check the different installations all through the city, but I think I only peeked at about three or four of them. I was more invested in meeting up with one of my old friends who was in town.

I could make this a long treatise on my changing motivations and desires, but I'm still trying to figure all that out right now.

30 in 30: Day 21

The word drought continues (also, I have a headache). I swear, I will make up for this.