Hell's Half Acre

I just got back from the Hawksley Workman (featuring Hey Rosetta!) concert, and MAN, it was AWESOME. I don't think I've ever seen anyone put on a show like Hawksley does, and he doesn't need fancy light shows or flames shooting out of the stage like some bands do...he just needs to stand up there and be Hawksley Workman.

It's mostly awesome rock show, with Hawksley doing little spontaneous comedy bit between songs. None of the "This is a song about an ex-girlfriend of mine, and how sometimes things just don't work out..." no, with Hawksley it's "So I came back from Australia and there were pidgeons living in my apartment. There was bird poop over everything...and I got a parking ticket, and there were other parking tickets from history, and I kept trying to say "try to understand, I've got a bunch of birds in my apartment, I don't have anywhere to live. I pay the rent, but the birds live there. They only let me in sometimes to brush my teeth. I pay the rent, but I can only brush my teeth on Wednesdays." And I guess what they were trying to tell me was that while I was sunning my ass in Australia, everyone in Toronto had to suffer through the winter...this song is called The City is a Drag."

I mean, who else do you know that can open a rock concert with a song about soup?! (It's an amazing love song - that made me very hungry).

Hey Rosetta did an awesome opening set. And I think if I didn't already love them, I would have been inspired to find out more about them...which is really I think the goal of an opening act. Then at the end of Hawksley's show, the audience demanded an encore, and both Hawksley Workman AND Hey Rosetta came out to do a mass performance of "Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off" It was awesome, because both Hawksley and Tim Baker have these amazing vocal chords...so it was great to see them do a song together, and you could tell they were having fun too.

Hawksley's band was awesome too. Of course there was Mr. Lonely, but he also had an drummer from Newfoundland and a violin player from Vancouver...and MAN, that violin player was CRAZY. The sounds he could get out of that thing were unbelievable. I can't even describe it, but Hawksley would give him these solos and then just stare at him in absolute wonder.

At one point in the show, Hawksley started complaining about his amp. "There's this sound amps make when they are about to die, well, anyway, what I'm saying is that after the show we'll make a canoe out of it. After the show, me and the boys like to get together and make something buoyant."

As Sonya and I walked to the car, we laughed again over that line, and Sonya said "After the show? I think they've already made something buoyant!"

And that pretty much summed up the night!

As you can tell, inspiration for this journal has not struck me recently. And so, it is time to reach into the vault (ie: my hard drive) and find some amusing things. For this week's addition: Conversations with Hilarious Friends!

Bruno: The Post-Modern Henchman

Alix says: I told him if he stayed I would get my henchman Bruno to crack his knee caps.
Alix says: Because no matter what Gabe says - as long as I believe in Bruno, he is real.
Sherrie says: WELL if Gabe had done his masters he would know that in such a world of relativity like ours, where there is no standard of truth or ability to measure reality, then Bruno is REAL because you say he is.
Alix says: Bruno: The Post-Modern Henchman
Sherrie says: and he is FUCKING scary
Alix says: If he doesn't intimidate you with his physical strength, he will bring you to tears by making you question everything you held to be true.
Sherrie says: and he won't have to hurt you because you will slice open your own veins from the sheer fleetingness of it all
Alix says: Exactly..thus making Bruno's "jobs" untraceable to me


Saner

Alix says: You are insane
Gabe says: and getting SANER
Alix says: Really?
Gabe says: Saner: CRAP!! He's after me!!!:-O

I had a guy with midnight hair stretched out with his head resting on me. I sat bent over him, running my fingers through his hair as he chatted with another person in the room. The darkest hair I had ever seen, and woven through it in small lines was every colour of the rainbow, not in the dull colour of hair dye, but in bright brilliant colour. I ran my fingers through his hair and listened to his voice rumble against me. 'This is heaven' I thought, as I took in his beauty.

He informed me in disappointment that we would be late for the show, and he had to go ahead. I could travel with his friends. We jumped in the expensive car that did not actually belong to any one of us, as the dream previous had established, and left for the show. I joked with his friends. Outside the hall to the concert, we laughed as I ate a slice of apple one of his friends gave me. They went in to get seats and I said I would be right behind them. I looked down the corridor for something I could focus on.

There was the taste of apple on my tongue. There was a digital clock that told me the time was twenty past three. There was the dim light of the corridor. There was my right hand on my chest, where his head had been. I knew the alarm would sound any minute and ruin the dream. I had to shut it off without waking. I had to somehow move without gaining full consciousness. I kept my right hand where it was and focused on the digital clock, and moved my left out from under the blankets, which were not present in the hallway. I felt the edge of my desk beside me. I felt the clock-radio, and was relieved when I found the second switch from the right. I clicked it up. The hallway flicked. The digital clock at the end of the hall told me it was three ten. Time counted down here and that seemed normal to me.

I made my way into the concert hall, and found an empty seat in the middle. He would be the lead singer, I realized, and thought it amusing that I would conjure myself a cliche. But I didn't love him because he was the lead singer, or just because his hair was midnight black with all the colours woven through, and he had laid against me while I ran my fingers through his hair.

I still had the taste of apple on my tongue, the feel of his hair through my fingers, when the auditorium lights dimmed and stage lights came up, and the band was silhouetted on stage. The music started and it was some sort of heavy punk rock, the words unintelligible, yelled into the mic, I had a brief thought of 'I don't even particularly like this music,' but I wanted so desperately for the spotlight to come on, so I could see his face.

But the auditorium shattered around me, when to my left REM began to sing:

"But that was just a dream,
That was just a dream..."

I hit snooze in a burst of frustration, and tried to return to the concert, focus on the taste of apple on my tongue, the stage lights as I had last seen them...but it was useless. It was already three o'clock and I had been waking up every nine minutes since noon. It was only after I had gotten out of bed that I realized how appropriate it was that I should be woken with those exact lines from that exact band.

I'm tired of this research paper, and having to do all these little nitpicky things to it. I mean honestly, I thought this degree was about knowledge not about how many commas appear in your footnotes. Anyway, to illustrate the ways in which my frustration is making itself known, Sherrie thought I should post the example I sent her of what a table of contents should look like: