So I've got plans. Big plans. But that's still over a year in the future. What about the now? If I really dislike my life here enough to leave forever in a year and a bit for the sunny orange-y embrace of SoCal and whatever U.S. coast I end up on afterward, the time in between, even with a solid exit strategy in mind, could stretch forever in an anxious quagmire.
Good question, imagination. We need some short term strategic planning, drop our prices while the competition is intense and demand is plentiful. So here's the mildly self defeating plan I came up with: unilateral secession from the Ottawa scene. Hey, it worked for the south.
No more intimate acoustic shows or punk rawkouts. No more disco dance nights. It's all the same people anyways, or at most people who are around the same people. Ottawa is never about walking in a straight line, but always circling around (the same drain). It's exhausting, in that NASCAR way. I'm tired of being cripplingly anxious every time I go out. I hate always anticipating being unhappy and looking over my shoulder. So no more movie nights at the theatre [how the hell do the trailers for Greenberg make a movie that's apparently a uniquely grim and uncompromising existential black comedy look like such a generic film?] and no more trips to the Black Sheep Inn at Wakefield. No more nothing. It will be a sad blow to my poor exercises in concert photography, as well as to my chances to see my beloved Fucked Corpse (or even Caribou). But whatever, there's a fucking pillar in front of every single stage in Ottawa. You can't see shit. It's enough to drive one mad.
So fuck off live music, club nights, and big screen movies in Ottawa. Fuck off scene. You never took me anywhere, and you never once bought me a drink.
I'm going to focus inwards and settle into my comfort zone. Control what and who I experience. Spend some quality alone time with books and drinks and movies on my own. I can read every single issue of Spin magazine online now, and find out about new shit in the outside world that way. I probably hate too much stuff. Besides, couples do it all the time - they settle into a zone where they don't go out much, kind of get used to living/being with each other, and sometimes invite other couples and unfortunate singleton friends for dressy dinner parties. Why can't I do this solo? Well, I can and I will. Also, Bon Iver. Just saying.
Bonus urban fantasy short story idea:
Reincarnation exists. But you're always reincarnated as the same person and experience roughly the same events over and over and over again. There's still lots of room for individual agency and free will and that sort of junk - you can be a Wall Street shark in one life and a hippie communist in another - but people mostly don't exercise it. Mostly, they do the same things and make the same mistakes over and over and over again. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they actually make good choices and come out happier and 'better' at the end. The other thing that exists are supernatural beings (kind of angels but not really) who watch over people and guide them from one round to the next. They think that the idea is that at the end people should achieve a nirvana like state and just be good and then disappear or be one with the cosmos or whatever, but so far it hasn't happened (as far as the protagonists of the story, two of these beings, are aware) and after watching the same people for pretty much forever they're kind of skeptical that it ever will. In the meantime, watching people do the same shit over and over for millenia and literally make the same mistakes over and over and over again is fucking boring. So boring that most 'angels' have resorted to gambling on the outcomes of every minute event in people's reincarnations - whether Joe Blow will fully butter his toast, or only do half of it, on a specific morning; whether Jane Doe put change in her right pocket or left pocket at the bar at her 30th birthday party at a bar, that kind of stuff. The 'angels' have pretty good recall, so they're aware of the various probabilities at stake. There should be an actual plot and stuff, but I haven't thought of one yet. So yeah, endless near identical reincarnations and gambling addicted angels. Someone must have done it before, but if not - copyrighted here motherfucker!
3 comments:
Just come out in Toronto instead.
-A.
Oh, that's gonna happen no doubt. You better prepare the scene.
Reincarnation exists. But you're always reincarnated as the same person and experience roughly the same events over and over and over again. There's still lots of room for individual agency and free will and that sort of junk - you can be a Wall Street shark in one life and a hippie communist in another - but people mostly don't exercise it. Mostly, they do the same things and make the same mistakes over and over and over again. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they actually make good choices and come out happier and 'better' at the end.
Hell yes.
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