ff

it has been a long week. fuck off february. just. go see 'still alice'. spoiler alert: i'm now in love with kristen stewart. first movie i've liked her in. (except 'panic room', obvi.)

happy friday, familyfamilyfamily, memorylifelove.

saved my life (ff, fm)

we are doubling up today - saved my life and feminist monday. i planned on writing a wee bit about björk on friday, but honestly i just soaked in the new album and also the above tove lo song and had all the feels. oh the feels! you guys!! but also: so good. (reminds me a bit of medulla, which is my fave björk - intense close choral-ish harmonies that make me go ooooooof.) now on to the feminism.

{jessica hopper interviewing björk for pitchfork}

* the invisible woman: a conversation with björk

the whole interview is great, but particularly the discussion of women auteurs in music is worth reading.



happy monday, heart breakers and hearts broken.

legacy

it is all heavy in the heart that i give you what we now know was oscar de la renta's last collection with the man himself at the helm. de la renta passed away yesterday, at 82 years old, and the whole fashion world is feeling the loss. he was such a brilliantly talented man, but also a good and kind man, according to all accounts. i can't even begin to get my head around what he did to/for fashion through his lifetime.

{oscar de la renta spring 2015, photos by fabrio ionà for indigitalimages.com by way of style.com}

thank you for all the beautiful things.

take it from my sight

{from here}

if you are not following what is happening in ferguson, start right this second. this one is a big one. this is one we will remember.

if you are not heartbroken and furious, you are not paying attention.

my heart is broken. that country is broken.

i have been sitting up these last few nights, and last week, watching. suppressing the desire to throw up. not able to suppress the tears. i am thinking about the brother from ragtime... he wanted to say... every day i wake up knowing what you've lost and what is owing...
yeah, i know i'm comparing it to a musical, i know, i know. but it is so fucking sad, that's all i can handle. we are all coalhouse. we are all michael brown.

say goodbye to music, say goodbye to light.

forgive me the cheesiness. it's all way too much without it.

i read the second autopsy and couldn't stop weeping.
that was an 18 year old boy.
arms up.
head hanging.

and left. laying there.

(someone on twitter pointed out the tragic poetry in the medical examiner being the same man who reviewed the autopsies of jfk and mlk jr.)

we'll never get to heaven till we reach that day...

you do not shoot an unarmed human person six times. you don't. you don't you don't. not for jaywalking or for shoplifting. not for anything.

(and FUCK you for that narrative, as if shoplifting could ever come close to a motive - ignoring that the cop didn't know that michael was suspected. find me a teenaged white girl who never shoplifted a lipstick, a pair of earrings... i honestly can't handle that there are people out there who thought that saying this human, this BOY, wasn't an innocent victim because of fucking shoplifting? or any other bullshit character assassination. it wouldn't matter if he was a total piece of shit. that's not the point. the point is. unarmed. unarmed. no. furious.)

you do not threaten to shoot a reporter when you are supposed to be de-escalating a rage built up by and boiled over by the unjustifiable and obscene shooting of a human person. you do not dress up in military grade armour and call people animals when one of yours has murdered one of theirs.

it is all so very far gone beyond wrong.
a day of peace, a day of pride, a day of justice: we have been denied. let the new day dawn, oh lord i pray...

{from the daily mail}

we're on eachothers' team

twice this year i have cried and cried and cried over the death of a celebrity. being empathic to a crippling degree means i get real sad about stuff all the time, and i'm generally pretty okay at being rational while being sad, but these two got through real deep. philip seymour hoffman, robin williams.

i've talked about depression times a million on here, and elsewhere, and i'm tired so tired and would probably just say the same things again, open heart breakable heart, void vs ache, the nothing, and and and, so go back and read if you feel like it. there are also other people saying things too, of course. i am grateful to them.

today, just : there are a lot of spectacular amazing gifted giving smart funny gentle badass beautiful humans on team depression. it makes being in the club a little better to think about them. the ones who talk and do and fight however they can, even if it is just tiny in my livingroom, they make it better to be a person who has been depressed and will pretty much certainly be depressed again at some point. but. oof. it is a hard team to be on. of course. because it is a team that loses a lot, a lot of good ones, best ones. this year has been a bad one for our team. and i am so sad.

saved my life and all of that

i have been gone forever. there was much to do. and then there was hawaii. and then there was the end of my job. (there is a new one coming soon, you'll hear about that before long.) and then a friend of mine died. and all of our hearts broke, me and so many people in this city and beyond. we have been dealing. we have been spending time. indulging. grieving. sharing. loving. being together. walking. missing. remembering. hugging and holding. eating and drinking. being lost. being grateful. being angry. young men should not die.

i re-read joan didion. the year of magical thinking. the memorial was this last weekend. it was hard and wonderful. full of love and tears and laughter. we are not good at grieving, we in this country, continent, time. i can't tell you how much it helped to be weeping in a space with other weeping people for a few hours. i can't tell you how much i love these people, my people, in this city. i can't tell you how thankful i am that i am in this strange bubble of time where i am not working and can be with these people.

here is the song, the video, that has been on repeat this last week. until morning light.



next week i will be back to Real Life. until then. reading. dancing. singing. remembering. loving.

on this

 {philip seymour hoffman}

i used to think it was silly to get upset over celebrity deaths. i mean, really upset. beyond the general sadness that you feel when anyone dies, the sort of heavy shrug knowing someone has lost someone and of course that is sad. but to get really upset. to feel that i was suffering. that i had any part of that loss. it seemed silly. until alexander mcqueen died. and all my reason dropped out from under me, and i was shaken in a way i didn't really have any right to. i was furious and lost. i felt as though my team, my family, had suffered a truly terrible loss. like 'we' would never be the same. whoever 'we' was. not a real thing, 'we', just a feeling.

"His metier was human loneliness — 

the terrible uncinematic kind that has very little to do with high-noon heroism and everything to do with everyday empathy — 

and the necessary curse of human self-knowledge." 

{tom junod on hoffman. for esquire}

yesterday's news of philip seymour hoffman's passing had that same hard and harsh impact. i felt and feel hollowed out. and i feel sickly sad and embarrassed, ashamed? what right do i have to mourn him? his family, his kids, his friends. 'we' are losing an artist, and the idea of a man. they have lost a person. a true and complete person. i am mourning him, though. i can't help it. i am selfish and i will miss him and his work so so much. 'we' will never be the same.

roger

there is a piece of writing that is circulating amongst my pals back in the homeland of edmonton. just in case you haven't run into it yet, i'mma throw to it here.
 
* on homelessness and support (or lack thereof) social aid/affordable housing

this is a lovely tribute to a loved man, and an eloquent rebuttal to the nay-saying NIMBYs of terwillegar, and a lot of cities in this country we're lucky enough to call home. i am grateful for her honesty and openess about her and her family's experience.  i am impressed that she remains kind and hopeful in the face of rage-making ignorance and close-mindedness.

"To those of you who say you are not affluent, I say there are many people in Edmonton who make more money than you do, and plenty more who make less, but if your wealth depends on keeping others poor, then you will never truly be wealthy.

Call me idealistic — I’ve been called worse — but I have to believe Terwillegar Speaks represents a very vocal but very minor number of people’s views in that part of my city."

{salena kitteringham for the edmonton journal}

(and going by the communities and people i know in old edmo, she is right. there's a lot of greatness and kindness and generosity in that city. i hope it wins out. i hope it makes noise. i think it will.)

off and back.

i spent years feeling unsettled... always working towards a something. i don't remember when it started exactly. university? just after? i am not sure. it seems like forever ago. there was always a something. tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow... forever waiting to be living completely.

(probably it is a 20s something. feeling like you are preparing for being a whole thing. (almost out of those. 20s...))

anyways. i wasn't, anymore, for a little while. just for a few months. all of the things stopped being somewhere else and were just being. i loved all of the things right here and right now. i was present and happy and good. job life home friends love city. it's not that before i was unhappy. just not there.

and then: there.

still looking forward and excited and wondering and nervous... but there. here... present.

and now. not, again. waiting. looking. and it is harder to go backwards. it turns out. than to feel behind in the first place. i am sick of looking forward. making choices for then instead of now. i would like to just be here.

i was very happy and very here.

kathy

{me & kathy in 1990}

no amount of words can explain what music means to me, and what being taught to listen and internalize has done for me far beyond my musical undertakings. i am so grateful for the gift of music that i was given so early in my life. i can't come up with anything to say that doesn't sound trite and cliched.

so. just. thank you. kathy. for your kindness and generosity and patience and joy and for everything. my suzuki ear is truly the greatest gift i have ever been given. so much love and so much thanks and so much sadness. the world lost a truly special woman this week.

saved my life.

david rakoff.

this week's 'this american life' is entirely him. in his memory.

take a listen. it is a wonderful thing. he was a wonderful thing. he was canadian! it is so sad to have lost him.

he talks about the facade. the ability to joke. to cover a deep melancholy and loneliness. wit. and so much more. he was an amazing storyteller. and he burns RENT. which. is exactly what everyone should do. haha! amazing!

and his performance at this year's TAL live was my very favourite thing. i cried when i first saw it. and then cried again, harder, when it was replayed on the podcast. here it is. it is a type of magic i can't begin to explain.



thank you, david, for everything.

happy monday friends.