1998 raze there was this girl who was a little younger than me. i remember her face but not her name. she liked me for about five seconds. she came over to the trailer once when i was listening to electic light orchestra. "can't get it out of my head" was playing. "you *like* this music?" she said. her face told me all i needed to know. my five seconds were up. "poets" was everywhere that summer. i couldn't turn on the tv without seeing a tracking shot that moved from an aquarium full of bored-looking goldfish to gord downie in a short-sleeved button-up shirt proving you didn't need a plan if you wanted to dance. there was grace in just being yourself without apology. his voice was like that. it was pretty when it wanted to be, but he didn't sound like a singer. he sounded like a poet with too many words burning a hole in his brain. he needed to shove the language through his throat to give it a place to go. his vibrato was the sound of the words trying to get back where they came from while he forced them out so you could feel them move through the air and tunnel their way into you. he sang: "spring starts when a heartbeat's pounding when the birds can be heard above the reckoning carts doing some final accounting" i didn't even like the tragically hip. not yet. i was years away from having lived enough to feel those words move through me. but they did something to me anyway. they made me want to dance. my sister sat on my shoulders. we walked to the ice cream stand. "poets" started playing on a radio somewhere. i moved to the music. my sister laughed. she was moving too. "you *like* this song?" the girl who didn't like me anymore said. i didn't say anything. i smiled at her and sang. "porn speaks to its splintered legions to the pink amid the withered cornstalks in them winter regions yeah while aiming at the archetypal father he said with such broad and tentative swipes why do you even bother? yeah" i didn't know what porn was. i didn't care. i was dancing. 211123 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I love your scene-setting and I'd also like to gush about "Poets": the line about them not being antisocial ENOUGH always makes me grin. Then there's "Himalayas of the mind"! That vocal slide! And the whole thing being casually odd, funky, unpretentious. Probably wouldn't have appreciated it the year it came out - my ten-year-old self would've had question marks in her eyes, cartoon-style. And as a teenager, I was firmly on the Barenaked Ladies side of the whole Tragically Hip / Barenaked Ladies rivalry - the rivalry that maybe only existed in the Ontarios of my mind. So it must have been in my twenties that I discovered it. 211126 ... raze oh yeah? well, i love your modality! i've missed reading your words. i hope you're doing well and getting some good sleep. 211127 ... e_o_i (As much as I can with this schedule! And I'm so sorry for not getting back to you earlier! But the busy season is nearly over, knock on crossed fingers (that's how it's done, right?)) 211130 what's it to you? who go blather from