in which we're going to walk around this city with our headphones on to block the noise

This is going to be a bit of an homage to/ripoff of This Recording. Deal with it.

"then i'll dig a tunnel / from my window to yours"


'Neighbourhood #1 Tunnels' is probably the best thing Arcade Fire ever recorded, but it's still not one of my top 15 songs of the last decade. It might sneak into the top 50 around number 30 or so because it's a damn good song, but I've never been excessively obsessed with Arcade Fire. I think that they have a couple of amazing singles, and many more songs that turn out to be far too overwhelming by overdramatizing everything in a very obviously melodramatic way.


I do think, however, that the couplet from "Tunnels" quoted at the top of this post is probably the best distillation of the mood and sensibility of last decade as expressed in music, and possibly in any art-form [if you really want me to go allegorical on this shit - this is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in two lines. Think about it. I just blew your mind, right?].


Living in Canada helps. Then you know how it feels like to dread stepping outside, to always want to stay in under the blankets next to the TV and the radiator and books and sleep, and how to counter these urges by wanting to see people and live. Everyone I know who lives in Canada in the winter wishes that there was some sort of a tunnel to take them to a friend's house, their workplace, or the closest bar. It's the only thing you can wish for at -20. Well, that and the ability to hibernate for the winter. It's why there's been a Canadian feature film and countless local legends about people staying indoors for weeks and months that are ingrained in the national psyche as much as the Gordie Howe hat trick.


But that's not all. We're isolated, but we're also close. Everyone is an island, don't tell me they aren't; I spend more than eight hours a day staring into a computer - how could another human being know me or what I think at any given moment? [Hell, that's how I get away with not doing work but pretending that I am. Anyway...] But Facebook, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter, whatever stereoscopic 3d virtual reality networking platform comes out tomorrow, these are all our windows to each other. There's no point in posting 140 character messages of various degrees of banality and personal revelation unless you're hoping that people will read them and feel like they know you better and respond. It's a shaky enterprise without much foundation in fact. Tunneling through rock and snow and soil to reach someone somewhere.


So we try to dig tunnels, and sometimes (most of the time) these tunnels collapse, and sometimes the windows are closed, but other times, they're open and it's warm.

Pictures are stolen from various Flickrs. Sorry.