Off to Portland and then Toronto

I’m making lots of headway in the research interview area and feeling better about announcing that I’m on vacation starting tomorrow. I will be joining Brian in Portland (he drove there, left home on Tuesday afternoon) and we’re staying at The Benson, a grand old hotel on Broadway downtown, until the 6th. Then Brian starts the long drive back and I fly to Vancouver to connect to my flight to Toronto, where I’ll be until the 12th, staying for the first time at the Sutton Place on Bay St right near where Brian’s office once was. I was in Portland a little over two years ago, June 2007, and was last in Toronto over reading week of February 2007, so I owe both of these cities, cities I very much cherish, a visit.

“Hear all the bombs, they fade away”: Folk Fest 2009

This year’s titular line is from “Sons and Daughters” by The Decemberists, whose Friday night mainstage closer was my high point of this year’s Calgary Folk Music Festival and in fact one of the top, oh, three concerts of my life. But first the shot that’s evidence of an overspent fest weekend: the sunburnt face with Kid Koala setting up on stage:

Since I already blogged about how much Iron & Wine affected crybaby me on Thursday, let me talk a bit about mainstage Friday since it seems sort of contentious. I didn’t actually catch a lot of it since I was watching the “twilight” stage instead, with Chad Van Gaalen doing a beautiful job and then similarly inspiring were the personable, funny and charming Esthero and then the amazing in a Broken Social Scene side project way (which they are so that’s not a complaint) Apostle of Hustle, so all I caught was most of an energetic but somewhat predictable concert by Arrested Development (yes, “Tennessee” Arrested Development, who know how to play a crowd really well- Aimee Mann, I wish you were there to take notes, from these guys or better yet from Esthero), but they didn’t really “wow” me.

And then came The Decemberists. Full disclosure: I had never heard a note from these guys, a Portland (yay!) 5-piece whose guitarist, I find out later, is from Valparaiso Indiana (yay! right near my hometown!) and who went to Coe College in Iowa (yay for Hoosier alumni of quirky liberal arts colleges!); they had two additional members tonight, women vocalists, one in a sort of Maid Marian get up and the other in black leather dominatrix crossed with the dark angel from Angels in America. The rest of the band were in these 1900s suits and dress and looked like, well, folkies. Again, I knew NOTHING about these guys. The show? It was a sort of rock opera, with repeated leitmotifs and an epic feel about it. Since the performers were “in character” and since songs bled into one another, there was zero interaction with the audience. Not very folky, even though the songs had elements of English/Irish ballads (but also, for lack of a better term, glam rock), and for me? It worked like fucking amoxicillin. I was FLOORED. It was absolutely superb, note-perfect, catchy, memorable, thrilling, as perfect a concert as I could hope for. And then- and then- and then, and this is what made it so special in my opinion, they do an encore to appease the 12,000 adoring audience members. And it’s, like, the OPPOSITE of everything we’d just seen. Lead singer Colin Melroy talks to the audience, lays on the love and the charm, makes us love him and ourselves and one another, and exhorts us in a singalong that I NEVER WANTED TO END. It was something I’ll never forget. Here’s a video from “Beasley564″ on youtube:

This is a good video that’s shot clearly from close in and has excellent sound, but it was cut before we got to the singalong part, where we sang the verse in this post’s title over and over and over again. It was a great moment.

And that would have been enough for me, really, but the weekend had not even started, so I trudged back to Prince’s Island on Saturday around 2:00pm and caught a concert (the folk fest has both “concerts” and “workshops” on the smaller stages during the day on Saturday and Sunday; “concerts” are 45-minute shows by one artist/group; “workshops” are mashups of usually three different acts who take turns and collaborate/jam/improvise during one another’s songs. Sometimes it works well; other times, not so much) by Saskatoon’s Deep Dark Woods, which was great even though I couldn’t help but think that these guys were made to do The Band covers, and that’s not an insult. Then I caught another mini-concert, this one by the outstanding, just incredibly talented Mark Berube and the Patriotic Few, from Montreal. They deserved a bigger audience; ours was huddled under what shade we could find (it was HOT!), and then there were something like 6,000 people at a workshop on another stage (there are 6 stages, 7 with the mainstage) with Steven Page and Sarah Harmer among others. THEN I headed over to the odd long tent that is the Ship and Anchor stage to see a workshop featuring- this is good- Esthero, Chad Van Gaalen, Emily Wells and Kid Koala. Yes, THAT Kid Koala, doing his first folk fest. I uploaded a bit from Emily’s “Passenger” and I hope you can view this link. What a beautiful experience.

As on Friday, we eschewed most of the mainstage for the twilight stage to see an inventive, energetic Tom Fun Orchestra and then a beautiful, interesting, engaging set from Kid Koala. This was his first folk festival but he fit the mood perfectly. His last number was mesmerizing and moving, a version of Moon River, that Brian caught in nearly its entirety and that he posted to facebook, and here it is. Thanks, Brian! After KK was the very dense, interesting and challenging Akron/Family… and then I went home, exhausted but happy for the 45-minute walk on a beautiful summer night.

Sunday was a relatively short day as I had plans to only attend one mini-concert and one workshop–mainstage didn’t really appeal to me–and I had my heart set on seeing Emily Wells do her thing again, solo, and made it down for her 12:50 show. And she was just outstanding. I just posted my video of her doing the live sampling she does; this is “Symphony #1″ and it is beautiful. Everything she did was beautiful.

I was feeling sunburnt and dehydrated to the degree of feeling faint-tipsy and I could have absconded at this point, but I stuck around to see a “brass” workshop with Belle Orchestre and friends, which was loud and fun, but I was running on fumes and headed home afterwards.

I have been to every Calgary Folk Fest since 2001 (for at least one day, but usually for all four), and when I consider the sheer emotions I experienced at this years, I have to say that it was the best one I’ve experienced so far. Kudos to all involved, including Brian (whose sponsorship–he does the audience research–nets me not only one of his 4-day all-access passes, but also the ability to enter the artists’ lounge backstage and to meet some of these musicians) for a job very, very well done.

I’ve never done this before, but there’s a first time for many things, so…

…song lyrics.

“The Trapeze Swinger” by Iron and Wine. Brought me to tears at last night’s Folk Fest mainstage. Is doing the same as I type this.

Please, remember me
Happily
By the rosebush laughing
With bruises on my chin
The time when
We counted every black car passing
Your house beneath the hill
And up until
Someone caught us in the kitchen
With maps, a mountain range,
A piggy bank
A vision too removed to mention
But

Please, remember me
Fondly
I heard from someone you’re still pretty
And then
They went on to say
That the pearly gates
Had some eloquent graffiti
Like ‘We’ll meet again’
And ‘Fuck the man’
And ‘Tell my mother not to worry’
And angels with their gray
Handshakes
Were always done in such a hurry
And

Please, remember me
At Halloween
Making fools of all the neighbors
Our faces painted white
By midnight
We’d forgotten one another
And when the morning came
I was ashamed
Only now it seems so silly
That season left the world
And then returned
And now you’re lit up by the city
So

Please, remember me
Mistakenly
In the window of the tallest tower call
Then pass us by
But much too high
To see the empty road at happy hour
Leave and resonate
Just like the gates
Around the holy kingdom
With words like ‘Lost and Found’ and ‘Don’t Look Down’
And ‘Someone Save Temptation’
And

Please, remember me
As in the dream
We had as rug-burned babies
Among the fallen trees
And fast asleep
Aside the lions and the ladies
That called you what you like
And even might
Give a gift for your behavior
A fleeting chance to see
A trapeze
Swing as high as any savior
But

Please, remember me
My misery
And how it lost me all I wanted
Those dogs that love the rain
And chasing trains
The colored birds above there running
In circles round the well
And where it spells
On the wall behind St. Peter’s
So bright with cinder gray
And spray paint
‘Who the hell can see forever?’
And

Please, remember me
Seldomly
In the car behind the carnival
My hand between your knees
You turn from me
And said ‘The trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last’
The clown that passed
Saw me just come up with anger
When it filled with circus dogs
The parking lot
Had an element of danger
So

Please, remember me
Finally
And all my uphill clawing
My dear
But if i make
The pearly gates
Do my best to make a drawing
Of G-d and Lucifer
A boy and girl
An angel kissin on a sinner
A monkey and a man
A marching band
All around the frightened trapeze swingers

On the curious pleasure of getting sick of something

July 18: I haven’t been in the classroom in more than three months, and I am starting to feel a familiar itch. It’s about wanting summer to be over so that I can be occupied with teaching and associate term-time work, and that’s not because I’m bored with summer, I think; it’s because the pressures of summer become unbearable after three months. “HA!” you guffaw, “PRESSURES? What “pressures” do you have? You get almost five months off!” Ah, dear reader, the rub lies therein: We don’t “get five months off.” We don’t have to teach in the summer, and this is precisely when we’re most expected to be productive in our research role. I’ve been (finally) doing interviews for my coffee project over the last couple of weeks and have a manuscript (yeah, just one) close to completion that I can submit to a journal before classes start, and have fallen on a twist to the topic of my last (unsuccessful) SSHRC grant application to resubmit, and I’ve had a lot of committee-/graduate-defense-related things since classes let out (including a dissertation defense Monday morning) and I’m on the committee that reviews professors’ performance reports starting mid-August, so I’ve had what I think is a “productive” enough summer so far, but this is the thing about academia: Work is never done. Classes end, yes, but working in a merit-based environment, and one in which, in principle, even tenured professors can be fired for a lack of productivity, the treadmill is never off. We get 4 weeks of actual “vacation” time that nobody ever claims because we’re all expected to take it during summer.

So when classes start, yes things get a little exhausting and forget the idea that we (academics and our families) can take any breaks during those 26-30 weeks, depending on the school, when classes are in session. But nobody really expects you to do anything but your concrete (ah, concreteness!) teaching and service obligations during the school year. I find this a bizarre relief, sort of like how people with stressful home lives are happy to be at their offices, or in their cars or on transit for their work commutes.

I actually have had some interesting insights on the third wave of late, thanks to interviews with baristas and one local roaster, and it’s this: Whatever the social “glue”that binds this subculture, there are huge differences in terms of what I might call “business models” and how the businesses that the third wave comprises are run. I’m writing about the “role” that equipment plays in helping to organize sociality in third-wave shops and I might be guilty of making it look as if there are more commonalities among these shops than my observations can allow me to claim. In fact, they can be run very differently with management’s styles running from laissez-faire to the organizational form of a well-oiled machine. This is precisely the sort of learning that I could only glean from interviews and it’s a great lesson. One can only set about opening a “third wave” shop with so much specificity beforehand, because the shop’s operation will probably be unavoidably idiographic. Does this mean that there is no “subculture” here? I think to answer that I have to wrestle with the sense, reference, and even controversy surrounding the term “subculture.” I didn’t anticipate that this would be a problem focus for this project and this is one advantage of, you know, listening.

As I write this I am happy to report that my sister-in-law (Brian’s sister) Grace, her husband Shubhash, and their three teenagers, Ishan (who starts at U of Western Ontario next month), Chandini and Varij are blessing us with a visit from Trinidad. They are right now with Uncle Brian en route home from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, the famous dinosaur museum, and we’re heading out for Vietnamese (a cuisine that is off the radar in TT). It’s a challenge to have so many people in a 2-bedroom house but I appreciate their effort in coming out here very, very much; I feel honoured. That’s a nice summer feeling that I don’t want to lose.

Happy Birthday, USA: Here are things I miss about America.

But first, some Canada Day pics. Canada was, as every year, July 1, and these pictures are from the celebration at Prince’s Island Park, which is to at the north end of downtown and is also where the Folk Fest and other nice things happen. It was incredibly crowded and a bright, cool day for it, just wonderful.

And today is July 4. This was always a fun and, pretty much, meaningful holiday for me as a kid; we’d trundle off to Munster Community Park to watch fireworks most years and also we’d have scads (and scads and scads and scads some years) of semi-legal and ILlegal fireworks to set off at home; I remember one year when my twin brother Paul bought a GROSS, as in 144, M80s. He spent the better part of summer coming up with new ways to explode things. So this was always a season of drama for me growing up, so I can’t help but have some affection for the holiday.

For the US per se? Not as much- I’ve become and remain an inveterate Canadian flag waver, and I’ve been loathe to admit that there is anything I miss about the country that gave me citizenship as an accident of my birth. But the fact is, there are lots of things I covet about living in America, and in honor (no, not “honour”) of its 233rd birthday, here are some:

1. Without question, the THING I miss the most (as against the PEOPLE, so hold your horses folks) is outrageous, incredible consumer choice that you have in the States. Products come on line there so much faster than they do here (if they come here at all), and more cheaply; as well, there are superb brands and outlets that we don’t have and I wish to hell we did. I could spend all day composing a list of examples, but here are some off the top of my head: Tivo, the iPhone, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond (finally opening here), Nordstrom, Qdoba and Baja Fresh and every other fast-serve Mexican-ish place that isn’t Taco Bell, White Castle, cheap mobile phone service, cheap cable, cheap airfares, Cheez-Its, $100 Grand candy bars, Cold Stone Creamery, Macy’s, and I’ll leave it at that because I’m getting depressed.

2. Okay, PEOPLE! My family, most of my network of friends, most of the people that matter to me are in the US. And “people” also comprise those who give what I think is the best customer service in the world; warm and fast and maybe a little obsequious but it’s all good. I’m not saying that customer service is necessarily worse, always, in Canada (or Germany or any of the other countries that I’ve been that aren’t the US), but in general, I find service in the US to be a breath of fresh air.

3. Mexican food. Damn, I miss good Mex. We stuffed ourselves silly at taquerias in Walla Walla, a city of 30,000, when we live in a city of 1.2 million that can support exactly one real taqueria. Sure there are way more Mexicans there, but, still. Come on.

4. The INTERSTATES. It is mind-boggling to think that I can drive down to Montana and hop on I-80 and about 40 hours later be in Hammond. And that’s just one interstate highway. We don’t have remotely that sort of network in Canada, nowhere near that level of accessibility, and we don’t have a SINGLE FREEWAY, not one, that approaches the quality of ANY of your interstate expressways. There are freeways here to be sure but none crosses the country in any way comparable to, say, I-10 does.

5. Airports with good transit access. I know this looks really specific, but when you travel a lot it becomes incredibly burdensome to have to factor in a $50+ cab ride to get to your destination from the airport as one must do in Calgary or Edmonton or Toronto. There are some great examples of not having to do that in US airports that put ours to shame: O’Hare (not to get to my mom’s in NW Indiana unfortunately, but to get to downtown Chicago, piece of cake), Portland, Atlanta… soon we can add Seattle to that list, hop on, hop off the train and Bob’s your uncle. I love that and it’s a damn shame Canada’s airports are generally so poorly served.

6. The diversity in landscapes, climates, all the natural endowment that is so rich and moving. We have natural beauty in spades in Canada but nowhere near the diversity of that in the US.

You know, this post is giving me more pause for reflection than I’d expected. I’m going to wrap this up now, wish my American friends and family a happy 4th, and think some more.