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Jeff Halperin

Jeff Halperin

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Long-Term Don’t Care: a Doug Ford Crisis

21 Saturday May 2022

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doug ford, Ontario Election 2022

Photo Credit: Vlada Karpovich via Pexels

Canada had a relatively low COVID mortality rate compared to other OECD countries, but residents in Long-Term Care (LTC) died in disproportionately high numbers. To be clear, it’s not that COVID killed LTC residents in greater numbers here than it did young people because older people were more susceptible. It’s that LTC residents in Canada died in vastly higher percentages than LTC residents in other OECD countries.

Canada’s long-term care problems extend beyond Ontario, but our country was uniquely dangerous for seniors in LTC compared to other similar nations, and Ontario was and is a particularly dangerous province. In Ontario, seniors in for-profit LTCs were substantially more lethal.

Doug Ford’s ministers didn’t do much for LTCs when the virus hit in 2020. The Ministry of Health and Ministry of Long-Term Care submitted their reports, memos, and briefing notes concerning COVID-19 and long-term care to the CBC, which determined it sat back and was ill-prepared.

By May of 2021, 70% of all COVID deaths in Ontario were in LTC settings. This number has only gone up.

Doug Ford promised an “iron ring” around LTCs on March 30, 2020. He did not create one. A 2021 report by the Canadian Armed Forces led to widespread outcry as a picture emerged of seniors dying preventable deaths in “horrifying” conditions. Think cockroaches, dehydration, patients with ulcers neglected in beds, staff wearing contaminated gear. The backlash was so intense even Doug Ford promised an investigation and accountability. He had said the investigation was already underway, when in reality it had never begun and would never begin.

Instead, Doug Ford rushed to create a law protecting privately-owned LTCs from lawsuits. He claimed the law would protect all businesses from unnecessary lawsuits that could bankrupt them. That explanation seems a little convenient given the conservative connections to privately-owned LTCs.

For example, the former Conservative Party leader Mike Harris has sat on Chartwell’s board since 2004, and has made great piles of cash by reducing regulations and oversight. IE, cuts made prior to COVID resulted in LTCs being so deadly when the pandemic struck.

For-profit LTCs hire lobbyists with conservative ties. Current MPP Melissa Lantsman was a registered lobbyists for Extendicare. The list goes on. The revolving door between the conservative party and for-profit LTCs is such that the LTC’s failures are Ford’s failures, too.

The Liberals also deserve blame for overseeing the privatization of LTC for 15 years. This isn’t all on Doug Ford, but this is a story about governments deliberately sacrificing elderly Canadians’ quality of life for shareholder profits, a pattern that Doug Ford repeats so often, it’s about the only approach he knows.

Abandoning seniors was just the first stroke.

The federal government donated COVID tests to Ontario that somehow people never received unless they were students in private schools, and instead, for months, people paid Shoppers Drug Mart and other pharmacies $30 or $40 for a rapid test countries like the UK, US, and Germany made free or inexpensive (say, $4). (Ontario Pharmacies only began handing out boxes of free rapid tests weeks before the provincial election.)

By approaching the pandemic as a money-making opportunity for government insiders instead of treating it primarily as a public health crisis to solve, the Doug Ford government ended up relaying COVID tests to the very communities least likely to get COVID, and neglected communities that needed support the most.

This is a mutually reinforcing cycle: COVID initially spread in poorer, non-white communities because people there were more likely to work in-person jobs that couldn’t be done remotely. Existing systemic injustices made “frontlines heroes” more susceptible to getting the disease. But because Doug Ford governs primarily for the wealthy, poor people had to fend for themselves, which inevitably resulted in them getting COVID in higher rates while getting no to little government support.

Doug Ford refused to give working people paid-time-off, which experts said was required so workers with COVID symptoms could stay home rather than risk spreading the disease because they couldn’t afford to not work for a day. Ontario workers had more paid-time-off before the pandemic than during it.

Vaccination rates were initially lowest in communities where spread was highest. This pattern repeats itself and has done so throughout the pandemic.

It may sound like a cliché or oversimplification to say Doug Ford repeatedly put profits above people’s lives. I am confident that the more you read about his failings, the truer it will seem. This, despite his platitudes about representing ordinary people.

The idea that “frontlines heroes” were so actively neglected by this government, left to fend for themselves while the premier essentially handed over control to lobbyists and tycoons…it’s heartbreaking and unconscionable.

I half-joke that the media backlash was fiercer when a few young people tweeted “OK, boomer” in 2019 than when seniors died in appalling conditions under Doug Ford, who reacted by changing nothing except to further cement the dangerous conditions. We need to reckon with the underlying lethal economics behind our lethal long-term care centres. Indeed, conservative ministers were buying stocks in for-profit long-term care centres during the pandemic, while Doug Ford handed out millions of tax dollars to upgrade for-profit LTCs and changed laws to let LTCs increase their rates for rooms and charge extra for private ones.

The profiteers are already inside the government; they must be voted out in June.

War, Convoys, and the Point of it All

03 Thursday Mar 2022

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canadian politics, doug ford, ontario politics, Pandemic

I’m sure everyone thought a lot about life during the pandemic, the point of it all. If we were going to make it to the other side, what would we do once we got there? What is the point of life, society?

Being privileged as fuck, I was situated about as nicely as somebody can possibly be in a pandemic, and it was a fucking misery on all sides. The choice was doom-scroll or feel guilt and powerlessness at being unable to prevent what felt like society’s collapse.

I thought I was a cynical bastard, but it never occurred to me that people would oppose public health measures during a pandemic by invoking “Freedom.” The so-called “truck convoy,” which never represented the majority of Canadian truckers let alone Canadians, was fake-ass right-wing theatre from top to bottom.

Like all elements of cheap partisan political theatre, it needed some very real people to get swept up in it to give the appearance of legitimacy, and there were, but it was organized and coordinated by political extremists and violent crooks, including ex-military and ex-police. You can tell from the support it got from the alt-right shitbag pundit community that this was not a grassroots movement.

If it was actually a working-class protest, conservatives would have opposed it with every fibre of their being. The province’s conservatives have gouged workers and fought to undermine labour rights for the last 24 months of a pandemic, refusing not just what union reps said would be decent compensation but what doctors said was necessary to combat the pandemic–ie, paid sick days. Not even a global pandemic could shake the conscience of doug ford. The conservative support for the convoy was all the proof a person could want that the convoy was in no way working-class. Elon Musk, perhaps the world’s richest person, vocally supported it too.

The alt-right were deliberately conflating the right to protest with the right to park enormous trucks in very tight public places. Just like “50,000 truckers” became maybe hundreds at the pinnacle of that fake-ass protest, the presence of trucks made the size of the protest seem a lot bigger than it was. The physicality of the trucks compensated for the relatively low number of people.

All of this felt foreboding at the time. I saw a picture of a maga militia member (three-percenter) in camo fatigues and patches standing at University and College. The flags with swastikas, confederate flags, and other hate symbols in Ottawa have been well-documented.

But it feels small now that war has broken out in a major European city. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is horrifying for reasons too obvious to state. Seeing trucker carlson of faux news go from promoting the convoy to defending vladimir putin after the invasion…

Alt-right ratfuckery is all connected. I’ve seen rabid social media support from the same accounts for the so-called truck convoy, putin’s invasion, modi’s hindutva pogroms, the January 6 insurrection on the US capital…they’re all inter-linked.

Condemning the war is inevitable, but what else is there to say?

Despite everything, the crushing hopelessness gives way sometimes to optimism based on my belief that normal people are doing amazing things behind closed doors, in their private lives, things which will never be reported. Little things to cheer up those around them, support people. From community solidarity, people helping strangers and kin.

I’m not saying that these good and great private deeds will be enough to overcome war, the inherent violence of alt-right politics, end the pandemic, or fix the climate crisis. It’s just that people genuinely give me a good feeling. Being cynical about politics is reasonable right now, too utterly reasonably, but that’s not the same thing as misanthropy. I love people and always will.

I’ve had spiritual musical-revelations lately involving Parliament Funkadelic and somehow, not to be flippant, but this to me feels like the kind of thing that can fill in society’s hollowness. I’m not sure what the point of North American society is. It feels wasteful and dangerous in a stupid, vulgar sense.

The things people commonly point to as the crown achievements of civilization feel to me not just bad but anti-civilized. A legal code is an achievement compared to what you find in the jungle, but ours enshrine and protect racism as basically its central premise. Our technology is advanced, but it only exists for advertising, which in turn only exists to sell things probably unsustainably-produced things made by horrifically exploited people, if not outright slaves. Phones make people miserable, they’re expensive, and wasteful. Cars are sophisticated machines that can be beautiful and convenient, but they waste resources to a shocking degree, are the sole source of murder-inducing traffic jams, and they injure or kill people every day. Gas is rising in costs and our corrupt premier does everything possible to lock-in cars for the future in a way that disfigures the natural world, solves 0 problems, causes new many problems and exacerbates old ones, wastes billions of dollars, and benefits nobody except his oligarch donors and pandemic profiteers like galen weston (ford nixed public charging stations and is now putting them at en routes which galen weston owns; ford received COVID tests from the federal government, which mysteriously never got distributed, while galen weston sold COVID tests for $40).

During the pandemic my apartment got broken into while my girlfriend and I were asleep and her car was stolen and totalled, I developed shingles from stress, our place had roaches and neighbours who made my gf uncomfortable, we had to finally move apartments and after a year of not seeing anyone got COVID from the movers pre-vaccination Dec 2020, my GF broke her collar bone in a bike accident…still, I feel fortunate, humbled, grateful to be alive.

I can’t be the only one who has wondered, am I depressed, or is this merely a reasonable reaction to this moment?

We are governed by culturally impoverished aristocrats who don’t give a fuck. John tory, ford, and trudeau are all spoiled sheltered nepotism hires. If a private equity firm could take human form, it would take basically these human forms.

I’m from Forest Hill, I grew up anything but a radical leftist. Indeed, if anything, my upbringing only helps me to recognize a tycoon politician on sight. Toronto is lopsided as hell, and deliberately so. The mayor of a city where housing costs rose 28% in one year claims to be fighting for affordability? Our leaders aren’t failing to do what’s right, they’re successfully doing wrong.

So long as we continue to elect slum landlords as our representatives, who cancel public service under the guise of “savings,” homelessness will only grow and increase in severity and life will get harder and more brutal. I also feel like upper class people are miserable here, too. Depression is everywhere. What is the point of this city?

Either you need to rent a home to people to gouge them (ie, be a landlord) or be gouged yourself. Fuck or be fucked. Housing should be a human right, not a retirement strategy. If this is a wealthy society, what is the point of being wealthy if people need to either live on the street or stress about a mortgage their entire life?

Is it better to be a hammer than a nail? Maybe, but that’s a false choice, and the hammer is stressing over failing to live up to inflated, vulgar, unrealistic class expectations and feeling like shit because at heart it knows to “make it” in this society may involve causing harm to oneself or others or both.

I’m glad organized religion has lost its central position in society, but this is a society that doesn’t value human life or culture properly or at all. A spiritual crisis underlies our political ones. I encourage everyone to be outrageously nice to each other, read novelists like Roberto Bolano or Tolstoy or actual political writers and academics not the disgraceful postmedia blowhard class, and listen to deep funk and spiritual jazz very loudly on the best speakers you can access. Pamper your own soul, because we’re all going to die some day and you owe it to yourself. The point of life has to involve loving other people, friends and family and neighbours, but love for the species means spreading the work of our best artists and contributing to the life of the soul.

People need to come together now, at whatever stage of the pandemic this is, and that means privileged people with power need to condemn the racist violent barbaric tycoon politics being conducted in our name and exchange it for something genuinely peaceful, civilized, and cultured.

The Breakup Suite, by Trevor Abes — Poetry Review

19 Monday Apr 2021

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TheBreakupSuite, Trevor Abes

The series of poems contained in Abes’ beautiful collection is almost too raw emotionally to be judged fairly in aesthetic terms, yet the language is undeniable. The Breakup Suite is about exactly what it sounds like.

You seldom ever see someone else at their lowest emotional moment, fresh after a breakup of a 5-year relationship, and if somehow you do, you don’t expect it to be written about at all, let alone like this. You expect the person to be a fucking mess, yet the outpouring of a heart here is graceful, measured, balanced, contained.

The poems are as much a triumph of spirit and resolve as of language. The love of writing is as palpable as Abes’ love for “E.”

I felt like, for Abes to move on in life, the sentence and the sentiment had to be pitch perfect. Working out his own feelings and expressing them just so was the same act.

Which writer said, “I write so that I know what I think.” Whereas poets and writers may sometimes select frivolous subjects or go on sentimental trips, the stakes here are high. Abes writes poems where another person may go on a bender, with the same level of sobriety and reflection that the debauchee invests into getting drunk. He’s responding to devastation by trying to master his emotions, not get conquered by them.

The result is poetry that documents the collapsing of a shared rich, complex, loving inner world without any such collapse in the poems. That these poems can face the onslaught of raw emotion like this and endure suggests the poet can, too.

Talking about the actual breakup feels like I’m cheapening out on the language, which is continually impressive. The love felt is inspiring, even if it’s over now. The poems come almost as a secondary accomplishment, like, they’re great, but, holy shit, this poet really knows how to love someone and live life!

Abes says in the intro that maybe these poems could help someone else who is reeling after a breakup, but the world of love he describes is, well, lovely. That it was written during COVID is incidental in a sense. It mattered to the couple in their lives, not to the poems per se.

“The number of hours I’ve spent worrying
About whether or not I’d ever be able to ignore your Facebook and
Instagram to get a taste of the life we had even though it stirred my guts
to tears…
It’s not embarrassing so much as evidence of how I loved you big enough
To not take insurance out on us…”

-Excerpt from When Hope Returns

The language is precise but modern and matter of fact, not overblown ornate Poetry. It’s honest and unassuming. Sensitive, but tough, and even muscular in its sensitivity. If being raw and vulnerable, open and honest at your deepest point, is a tough form of modern masculinity, The Breakup Suite lays a blueprint.

These poems contain a slice of love as charged as you’re likely to find, and, despite Abes’ contention it may only be suitable for people fresh off a breakup (“poetry for the dumped”), these are simply very moving poems. In the way you can listen to the blues even if you woke up this morning and all you had was not gone, anyone can and should read these poems.

Writing them was a courageous act.

If you’d like to read The Breakup Suite, please email transfer $10 to Trevor (trevorstevenabes @ gmail dot com) and he’ll send you the PDF, or you can order a copy of the physical book from Amazon.

Disclosure: Trevor and I briefly worked for the same company in 2019. We’ve met exactly once, at a staff party. I describe the extent of our relationship because a review this positive may sound like sponsored content. It’s not! Only, had we not worked together, I wouldn’t have found his poetry.

Ode to My Grateful Dead T-Shirts

01 Thursday Aug 2019

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Bootleg Ts, Dead shirts, Grateful Dead T-shirts, Jerry Garcia

Looking through pictures from overnight summer camp a while ago really made me miss, of all things, my old Dead t-shirts. I wore a dead t-shirt consecutively every day between 1997-2000.

Bootleg Grateful Dead t-shirt culture has been written about at large. In my day I competed against CWP counselors for who had the coolest Jerry shit and the best tapes. I  held my own.

Today is August 1, Jerry’s Bday: happy birthday, big guy! Love you forever! In honour of it I’d like to catalogue My Dead Ts for posterity, with pictures where possible.

  1. “Space Your Face”—First Dead T, acquired in 1994. Standard Dead Skeleton with cool space shit inside it. This is me and my younger bro. This pic shows how long I’ve been in the game!

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2. “You know our love will not fade away”—Silhouette of Jerry’s face with lyrics from Not Fade Away on the back. Purchased in Vermont by my parents on a trip in ’95 or ’96.

3. “Nothing left to do but smile, smile smile”—This T was given to me by a family friend, herein called The Source, which he got from the parking lot of a Jerry-era Dead show. I got it in 1996, an early long-sleeved gem. Black and purple on either side of the stealie, with a smiley inside and the lyrics from He’s Gone, “Steal your face right off your head,” underneath.

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4. Sugar Magnolia T—Stealie with green and yellow on either side of the lightning bolt. Underneath was lyrics from Sugar Mag, “She’s my summer love in the Spring, Fall, and Winter…” Tour dates on the back from Fall 92 Dead tour. Shirts like this get reproduced today, but you can’t find ’em like this anymore.

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5. Blue tie dye, Skeleton with Roses—Blue/white tye dye. Acquired from The Source. I’ve seen this shirt on other people, but it was cool! I had the same image on a window sticker that’s still beautifying my parent’s house.

6. Deal T—Jerry-era parking lot T from The Source featuring a cartoon Jerry playing poker against cartoon skeletons, with the lyrics to Deal in bubble letters. Tour dates from 92 Tour on back. This was the best shirt of them all! In 1999 I happened to be wearing this shirt at a Merl Saunders concert, who played keys with Jerry in the Legion Of Mary. Merl sang Deal that night and I was in the front row, pointing to the lyrics on my shirt he was singing. He smiled. RIP, Merl! I wish I had a picture of this T somewhere!

7. VW Busses—Lot shirt from The Source. Dates from 90s tour on back. Everybody who saw me was envious of this BEAST of a shirt, and I’d kill to have it back and in good condition (I wore it to shreds). It was the best shirt I or anyone else ever owned.

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7. American Gothic Skeletons—Classic Grant Wood American painting rendered in Grateful Dead styles, a male and female skeleton farmer in tie dyes and overalls, etc. Lot t-shirt given by a good friend’s older brother—Source 2. This shirt was COOL!

8. Yosemite Sam Dead—frosh shirt from early 90s, inherited from Source 2. You can’t see the ‘stache on the skeleton, but it was there alright.

yo sammity sam Dead t

10. Blues for Allah—Dead at the Pyramids Egypt t-shirt, acquired in 1998. “What good is spilling blood, it will not grow a thing.” A friend bought it for me when she visited Israel. I still have this shirt!

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11. Warrior skeleton—this low key Dead T-shirt had a pic of a skeleton on horseback wearing native regalia, on his shield was an ad supporting the Rex Foundation, named after a Dead roadie who died. Acquired from The Source.

12. The Wheel—Jerry Bear riding a motorcycle, green tye dye. I gave this to a close buddy and devoted Dead Head. I got a lot of shirts in my day, more than I gave away.

13. Jerrymeister—people think this is a booze shirt, but it’s Jerrymeister. Lyrics from Brown Eyed Women on the back. Purchased at Grateful Fest in Ohio, ’09.

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14. “Grateful Dead Ain’t Nothin’ to Fuck With”—Dead and Wu Tang mash-up. Phish show parking lot, SPAC, ’14.

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15. San Diego Chargers/ Stealie—Chargers/Dead mashup. Grateful Fest, ’09. Pretty much just a white t-shirt at this point.

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16. Ohio Buckeyes/Stealie—Dead/Buckeyes mashup, Grateful Fest ’09. Gave to a beloved friend.

17. Pink/Salmon Jerry Stealie—from Grateful Fest, ’09. It’s a nice thick cotton piece, of higher quality than other bootleg shirts, which you come to appreciate after a while.

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18. Jerry Bear—this one was a gift, a friend saw it at The Gap! Weird, but hey. Dead shirts once supported people in need of money to see more Jerry shows and now it’s sweatshops, but this shirt does

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19. Sphinx Jerry Bear tie dye—This had a Jerry Bear as a Sphinx, and there was a pyramid or two. I vaguely remember getting it at Kensington in the 2000s. Looking through pics I saw it. I also had another Space Your Face tie dye, and probably some others I can’t remember to be honest.

random tie dye

20. Cats Under the Stars: I got a JGB T-shirt in San Fran in 2012, with the famous logo from the Cats album.

Honourable Mentions:

You get to spoon with Jerry every night when this is your blankie. Acquired in late 90s from The Source, who I understand got it from Haight/Ashbury.img_20190801_095657.jpg

Technically this is not a Dead shirt. My good buddy, younger brother of Source #2, is seen rocking a serious tie dye skiing/snowboarding Jerry Bear shirt.

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Against categorizing people

12 Monday Nov 2018

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Beatles, Bieber, categorizing, Languages, mindfulness

How odd it is, the number of people with intense opinions / judgements about millions of total strangers.  Whether these opinions are positive or negative, the very underlying premise–that a person can have an accurate opinion about millions of strangers–is ridiculous, even if it’s quite commonly done.

It usually take the basic form of, people from ____ country are _____. Nations get reputations, or people from these countries are thought to embody certain supposedly national traits.

Another form of generalization comes from people making an assessment of the government of a certain country, and judge citizens of that country in relation to what they think of the people ruling it.

It’s usually subconscious, and it’s done even though it sounds quite stupid when said aloud.

People from rich Western countries look down on people who live under totalitarian rule, like North Korea, or under more or less military rule, like Pakistan. I suspect North Americans will say they care about the lives of such people, and they may, but there’s still a quiet and automatic feeling of superiority. We have no control over the system of government we’re born into, but I suppose many people here feel like we earned it. Like we deserve to have been born in a stable, wealthy nation.

I know people who hate Trudeau, yet are prepared to judge millions of people in another country by who rules over them. There are people who make an assessment of a foreign country’s leadership, then, based on this, believe these countries should be militarily invaded and attacked. Really, consider this.

My rule of thumb is, anybody who can’t name the language spoken in another country, let alone actually speak it, can’t really have an opinion about that country worth hearing. I lived in India for 1.5 years and didn’t learn Hindi. I only interacted to a subset of people who speak English, and this was very limiting. I know a lot more about India than I used to, but for a real political opinion, speak to a native. Natives from different regions. You can begin to understand another country’s politics when you understand their political cartoons.

The thing that determines status worldwide is money: Rich nations export their culture, and their culture becomes international pop culture. It’s not necessarily because it’s better art, there’s just money behind it, and confidence, and this sends it around the world. The fact that it’s been exported convinces people it ought to have been exported, and they’re more likely to embrace it because it was presented to them than they would if they stumbled on it themselves in some remote corner of the internet.

That art from their country is present around the world makes the people from that country feel superior, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with the art’s creation. That’s why politicians eagerly claim artists born within their borders, even if they didn’t fund or inspire or have anything else to do with the art. Countries even brag about writers who spent their lives denouncing that country, or at least its government. Politicians are likely to praise local writers they have never read, let alone understand.

It’s not a coincidence that America’s culture has circled the globe, and so has its military. Beyonce is great! Coca Cola is shit. Governments judge art not aesthetically but by how much Soft Power it’s worth. Art in this sense has no artistic value, or at least is not valued for its actual artistic value, it just confers status and prestige. If you see the way people scream at concerts, from Beatles to Bieber, you’ll see it’s as if they’re responding to partaking in their status by being in its presence, rather than showing appreciation for music they enjoy.

I am definitely not criticizing American artists! Most writers and musicians I love are American. I repeat, I love them. But all countries produce excellent artists, and we simply never come to know them. I’m sure of it. People claiming prestige because they come from the country that produced Melville, even if they’ve never read Moby Dick, are the same people judging strangers by what cultural capital that country has allegedly produced.

Culture in North America usually takes the form of ready-made Products–songs, novels, something ready for sale. In India, I found culture was mostly created to make the surroundings more beautiful. Textiles were created so people have something nicer to wear, and even though of course they are sold, its inspiration was artistic rather than commercial. Music is played in temples, to accompany prayer. I went to Piano Man to see some jazz, but small venues like that are rare. When I wanted to listen to some music, I went to my local Gurdwara.

Cultural needs to be understood in its context. There are people who think Pakistan isn’t a cultural capital because it allegedly hasn’t produced novels in the Western Canon. This is like saying American writers are behind because it hasn’t produced any good ghazals.

Anyway, I submit that people shouldn’t judge strangers by things that have absolutely nothing to do with them: their government, their artists. The truth is, they say you can be married to someone for years, and one day wake up and realize you don’t really know them. How is it then, that people form such strong and rigid views about millions of perfect strangers?

We’re probably hard-wired for the days when humans lived in way smaller groups, and even though it’s tempting to do we’re not mentally equipped to process reasonable verdicts on millions let alone billions of people. Especially total strangers. So it’s good to recognize this limitation, and only judge people or things after making reasonable contact. Don’t judge things without context. It sounds easy, but we all kind of do it.

Calibrate your outlook according to your staggering ignorance (no matter how many things you know, there’s way more you don’t…this has nothing to do with lack of intelligence, there’s just way too much out there to grasp–it’d take many lifetimes), be humbled by this, and keenly appreciate how little we know. Then judge, or not judge, accordingly.

 

On what I currently listen for in music

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

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Jeff Halperin, Miles Davs, Music, The Band

My musical ear has changed. I always listened to excellent music—my first loves were MC Hammer, Aerosmith, Dance Mix 92-95, Phish and of course Grateful Dead. I don’t regret one note I listened to, but I wasn’t listening to the whole of every song, and gravitated too heavily to the guitar.

It’s begging the question: Did I focus too much on guitar because I was a guitar player, or is that why I became a guitar player in the first place? In either case, I didn’t properly value rhythm sections. I should have listened to everything. This might seem like not really a big deal but actually I think of it now as a sonic sin, akin to watching only 80% of the every screen while watching a movie. Musically, I was crooked.

Rhythm sections were something I responded to, I felt them, but didn’t hear. To be fair, I listened to a lot of bootleg Dead tapes with varying degrees of audio quality. But to listen to the drums without really hearing the bass is to hear the drums without their context. Drums and bass live together, there’s a dialogue between them in the music, and to only hear one is to really miss both.

I have known this for a while now, maybe months, but felt this quite intensely the other day messing around on a bass while my buddy drummed. The bass drum and the bass guitar are a tandem. It’s very possible to like a band because of their rhythm section without quite knowing that’s why you like them. That’s why Dave Byrne of Talking Heads wore that big suit, to make his head look small and his body look big as a reminder that music is fundamentally physical, not intellectual.

Early, the jazz bass player’s role was to support a soloist improvising over the tune’s harmony. They soloed, too, but it was mostly a supportive role. In 1970 Miles gives us Bitches Brew, which isn’t just a killer album title, it provides musical hints about the new direction: the instruments simmer together in a cauldron. Gone is the formula for 50’s jazz and even the freer 60’s stuff, where all instruments play the head of the tune, principle soloist solos first followed by second and third horn, drum solo then close with the song’s opening melody. Rather, there’s one groove that everyone participates in at the same time.

I had one saxophone lesson in 2007, wherein my teacher made an astute observation that astonished me: Coltrane was a hog! He kept soloing forever and forever, with the best rhythm players backing him. There was no melodic exchange. Now, I love Coltrane deeply, but this is more or less what he did.

A nasty alto player who used to run the Dal sax department told me something similarly astonishing: He said Cannonball Adderley was content with his bad ass swing, while tortured Coltrane changed his sound every week because he was just unsatisfied. I had thought Coltrane’s quest to find music’s highest height was a service to humanity. I will never say a bad word about John Coltrane, whose sublime music has genuinely given to me more than what religious people get from religion. Once in a while I’ll play him and have a kind of sacred experience, but generally I need music structured differently.

Miles said he learned from Sly and the Family Stone how to dismantle that old standard jazz formula, and melt his horn into the other instruments, rather than playing one after another in their turn.

The Band is the perfect sound for me now because of its balance. On the surface they don’t appear to have anything in common with Miles, but not only did they play on bills together in the early 70’s, their music is both a cauldron even if the brew is nothing alike.

The Band was a bar band for 10 years before they recorded their first album. This is key to understanding them. They had played loud high-octane Rock in every bar in the American South and Ontario. In the studio, in Big Pink, they wanted to turn the instruments down, hear each other, play songs on which their instruments intertwined. No virtuoso guitar or drum or bass solos. Their music is on a foundation of interdependence.

Most bands only have one or two super talented members whereas everyone in The Band is an all star. So maybe other groups can’t be as balanced as they are because their talent is dispersed lopsidedly—it’s a question of talent, not vision.

Glenn Gould said it’s “anti-democratic” for a pianist to have one dominant hand. Sure, but commitment to democracy isn’t enough, it’s very difficult to have a left hand that plays as deftly as the right. Gould would call The Band democratic. They are perfectly, utterly balanced.

There’s something so tacky to me now, even vulgar, about million-notes-a-minute guitar solos. So guitar-centric. “Play rhythm for me while I shred” is like asking friends for a favour rather than hanging out together on equal terms. This kind of solo is a physical achievement of dexterity, not necessarily a musical one. I can marvel at Steve Vai and G3, even feel envy at their shocking chops, but I don’t really want to listen to it.

Picasso had to prove he could paint in a renaissance style before his more abstract stuff was taken seriously. Why? For many people art can’t be serious unless it passes a certain threshold of technical achievement. This is understandable to an extent—you don’t want to celebrate an artist that produces something an untrained infant can.

Yet complexity does not equal quality. Would his abstract work be any less incredible if Picasso couldn’t also paint in a renaissance style? Does Neil Young need jazz chops to be taken seriously? Of course not, it’s ridiculous. Every artist is their own genre.

Most art presupposes the possession of certain amount of artistic skill, but not all. Judging art purely by the skill required to pull it off, rather than by the vision or soul behind it, is nearly as vulgar as judging paintings by how much money the Art World says it is worth. A solo isn’t good because it’s hard to play, but because it’s musical. Of course it’s OK to be impressed with a tough passage, but only if it’s musical.

Art is a mood, a vibe, a sound, a feel. Art is not ranked along any one ultimate hierarchy. But in music, I think it’s important to give the same weight to all the instruments. Actually I think Western Classical generally privileges melody and harmony over rhythm, the first conditioning of the Western ear. This dynamic trickles down.

The ironic thing is African music was often called “primitive” specifically because the rhythms were literally too sophisticated for Westerners to process. There’s a moment in the Ginger Baker documentary when he’s hanging privately with one of his hero drummers as a teenager, who plays records of some African drumming. Baker is asked to name the time signature, identify where the beat starts. He cannot.

Balance for me in music is along this axis to, between harmony, melody and rhythm. Rhythm should be a feature, not in service to the other two. I listen to a lot of Atlantic Soul records now, where the punch is the groove, not some dazzling soloist.

Music is infinite permutations of tension and release. I want to caution against confusing sophistication in music or art for quality: Like I said, I still love that old Dance Mix stuff, and a lot of old E-A-B blues is basic on paper but sounds like shit unless you play and sing with feel. If you can dance to a tune or you like hearing a song, that song has done its job.

But the music hitting me hardest now has togetherness, it’s communal. The Band sounds like they’re all having a great time hanging out together (and when they stopped enjoying hanging out, their music immediately suffered). It’s not an accident that they all play each other’s instruments, live and on albums. They’ve transcended their particular instrument and are playing music.

A wise friend told me once there are four stages to music. The first is “unconscious-unknowing.” Think of a child who plays air guitar because they feel the music in their bones but have no idea how to play actual music. Second is “conscious-unknowing,” the beginner who labours to follow the basic instructions, but is now playing music. Third is “conscious-knowing,” the accomplished musician who knows what and how to play but still must think about it. The final stage, that almost nobody reaches, is “unconscious-knowing,” where music is simply felt and transferred to the instrument immediately, without thought required.

This fourth category is filled with musicians who have transcended their instrument, or maybe two or more instruments. Their music isn’t a physical phenomenon anymore. It’s not even a cerebral one, because while it takes brains to play, it’s about feeling as much as thoughts. Not just the degree of thoughts and feelings—not how much intelligence and feeling is there–but the nature of these things.

The only pertinent question to musicians in the fourth category is: what are their musical thoughts like? How good are these thoughts/feelings? Charlie Parker’s music is nearly impossible to play, but that isn’t his real achievement. It’s his ideas that are impossible to conceive of. Lots of people mimic Parker today, and they are incredible musicians! It’s very, very hard to do! But they are reproducing his licks, not the mental originality that gave rise to them in the first place.

Musical ideas need not be complex to be good. It’s instructive that when musicians get tired of playing bebop, they mellow out and play grooves. Miles’ Birth of the Cool or even Kind of Blue. Thought of this way, the idea of ranking musicians or bands in sequential order is ridiculous.

I worry that a lot of people hear music on YouTube and it sounds like shit. MP4s, or iTunes, sounds like shit. Non-flac digital files compress music so that a device can store a million songs. Really, the sound waves have a narrower range. It’s a real distortion. Apple, Spotify and YouTube offer immediate access to every song on earth, and in exchange, they don’t sound as good. This may differ from recording to recording, or on your speakers or something, but I suspect there is a generation hearing subpar music. As TVs have improved their picture, our audio quality has gotten worse.

I say this not merely as grumpy man, but from having taught guitar to kids for years and seeing how they listen now, on devices or computers. I suspect the worsening audio quality impacts the way contemporary producers and DJs create and play music. Medium Is The Message kinda thing. But that’s a longer story for another day.

An old proverb I heard is “chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.” Same goes for music. Take from it as much or as little as you want. If you like having it on in the background, cool! But listening actively is a life-long activity that evolves, and pleasure really deepens. However far you want to go in listening to music, there are many who have already gone further. That this is true is just such, such a blessing.

Response to Professional Essay: Exercise 3.16–Writing By Choice, Eric Hendersen

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Writing By Choice, Third Edition. Eric Hendersen. Oxford University Press. Don Mills Ontario. Page 96-96

  1. Briefly analyze the essay’s introduction. Consider the effectiveness of the opening and the thesis statement. Is Halperin successful in establishing his approach to the topic of dog versus houseplants?

“They’re barking money pits, these dogs, and for too long we’ve been under the false impression that they’re better than houseplants.”

Yes. Halperin’s opening and thesis statement are effective–finally, a writer addresses the crucial issue of “dogs versus houseplants,” for so long neglected by the Mainstream Media.

 

  1. How could you characterize the writer’s tone? Give specific examples. How could awareness of tone affect your reading of the essay?

Halperin’s tone is fearless. Resolute. Some writers are glib in the face of society’s most dire crises, relying on humour as a crutch because the grimmest truths are too uncomfortable.

“Unlike dogs, plants will forever maintain their poise no matter how many times you ring the doorbell…Dogs, on the other hand, are famous for attacking mailmen—an obvious sign of class warfare.”

In an era where mafia states infiltrate Western countries, where the planet’s ecology is systematically destroyed and sold, and global economic disparity is increasing grotesquely in an age of post-scarcity, these are dark times and it is comforting to find a writer as serious and perceptive as Halperin.

 

  1. Analyze one of the body paragraphs, using criteria discussed in this and/or previous chapters.

“Finally, after years of attachment, your plant will grow and so will your pleasure with it. With casual care, your plant can actually outlive you. No matter how much you care for your dog, it will end up dead in a crumpled heap on the floor…”

Here, Halperin’s overflowing optimism is balanced against his aversion to sentimentality. Without being mawkish Halperin manages to describe love’s unfathomable ability to survive death, so long as the heart in which it resides is true.

The world has not seen metaphysical musings combining cosmic seriousness with comic playfulness since John Donne, 1572-1631. Of course, no criterion in this university textbook can sufficiently describe the lofty heights reached in this paragraph or any other.

 

  1. Identify the compare and contrast method Halperin uses and the bases for comparison. You can use the appropriate diagrammatic model on page 95, above, to show method and bases for comparison.

“It’s not all economics. Plants give back oxygen without even being asked. This is a real kindness because you can’t overestimate the importance of oxygen…dogs only give you something with the understanding that you’ll throw it back to them in an endlessly futile cycle.”

Halperin uses the compare/contrast method in body paragraph 5 to denounce the way capitalistic societies have become totally transactional—where the commercial pay-or-be-paid ethos filters down to inner lives, so that even personal relationships are conducted like bookkeeping where every positive and negative action/remark is kept inside a ledger, where all existence is reduced to a realm where altruism by definition does not and cannot exist. This is definitely what Halperin is really getting at.

 

House Plants Are Better Than Dogs

[full text]

[1] Some people believe that a home isn’t a home without a dog. To hear these people talk, you’d think that shedded hair, sharp fangs and crap on carpets are trivial matters. They’re barking money pits, these dogs, and for too long we’ve been under the false impression that they’re better than houseplants. Let’s investigate.

[2] Unlike dogs, plants will forever maintain their poise no matter how many times you ring the doorbell. Calm, cool and collected, the houseplant is a model of patience and even temperament. They bow down to nobody, see no race or class. Perfectly reflecting the modern zeitgeist, plants represent the highest ideal of egalitarian tolerance. Dogs, on the other hand, are famous for attacking mailmen–an obvious gesture of class warfare.

[3] You can be sure plants won’t harass the company at your next dinner party, but don’t be fooled into thinking they’re entirely dormant. They grow in response to Bach fugues, which would be a compliment to their ear, if they had one.

[4] In light of nuclear disaster and the rising cost of gas, there’s a big hubbub about how best to harness the sun’s energy. But plants settled this millions of years ago. Living off the sun’s rays, plants are their own solar panels. Scientifically way ahead of us and financially more responsible, plants don’t need government handouts for their energy exchange program. Shame dogs don’t eat rain and sunshine, eh?

[5] It’s not all economics. Plants give back oxygen without even being asked. That is a real kindness because you can hardly overstate the importance of oxygen. Plants can’t help but be givers. In comparison, dogs only give you something with the understanding that you’ll throw it back to them over and over in an endlessly futile cycle. Also, dogs need to go to school just to figure out how to sit down or play dead. Plants don’t need to be taught how to play dead. They’re autodidacts

[6] Admittedly there’s something to be said for a dog that quietly nestles on your lap after a hard day’s work. But ask yourself: has your dog signed a contract indicating he won’t revert to pissy pre-housebroken days? What if some horrible canine violence on TV suddenly provokes him and he becomes a biter? Plants offer unrivalled peace of mind. You can take plants at their word. Nothing can make them bite you or crap under your bed.

[7] Finally, after years of attachment, your plant will grow and so will your pleasure with it. With casual care, your plant can actually outlive you. No matter how you care for your dog, it will end up dead in a crumpled heap on the floor. If you have kids, they’ll cry. All’s well that ends well, but it never ends well with dogs.

[8] Yes, dogs can be sweet, cuddly and affectionate–they aren’t wholly without commendable traits, even though it’s much, much better to get a houseplant. But in all fairness, at least dogs are a cheaper, lower maintenance, and cuter alternative to getting a baby.

On Trudeau in India

24 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Tags

Modi, Trudeau in India, trump, Trump Jr

Indian’s love for Trudeau was palpable to me when I was there. I’d ride on the Delhi metro, people asked where I was from, I’d say Canada, and they started praising him, eyes lit up. Colleagues went pretty gaga too. Not everyone, but many.  
That’s worn off, it seems. Indian media got a whiff of how thick he lays on overt shows of multiculturalism. Corny and embarrassing, he made an exhibit of himself. You can wear Indian garb without drawing too much attention to yourself. Trudeau wore juutis to meet SRK.  It’s hardly apocalypse, though. Just clothing. I’d rather have a leader who tries too hard to appear multicultural than one mostly silent in the face of Muslims being lynched, or another who is soft-on-Nazis.

20160222_232855

The author at a wedding in Delhi, February 2016.

Oddly I’ve just been reading Khushwant Singh’s old essays on the roots of communal violence in Punjab. The Atwal episode is indeed strange and unjustifiable– a mistake was made. There are questions not just about how Atwal got invited, but about how he was suddenly allowed to enter India, when Jagmeet Singh was denied a visa. More will be learned about this. Right wing Indians suspect Trudeau’s government covertly supports Khalistan independence. I doubt Justin knows what that is. Likewise, it’s amusing how the attack dogs in conservative media here are suddenly experts on Khalistan.
 
While Trudeau’s India trip went stunningly bad, it’s not like the stakes were very high. What would real ties with Modi–the Hindu nationalist killer of gujarat–look like? What was to be gained here was relatively low in dollar value, high in cultural exchange between nations with a strong, historical fondness for each other…ie a great trip for Trudeau would have brought about results mostly symbolic anyway. India’s economy has lost its sheen post-demonetization/gst and Nirav Modi has the spotlight back on ol’ fashion crony corruption. Trudeau is in Delhi now with Hayley Wickenheiser and Ladakhi hockey players on an exchange–My loves, combined! Canadian Ice hockey and not just India but Ladakh coming together, it’s a warm thought.

IMG_20170812_142012_HDR

Ladakh!! August 2017.

Modi has less to gain than Canadians may think by posing with Trudeau. They each represent countries that get along well, apart from that they have nothing in common. Some from India’s right celebrate trump’s birthday by eating cake in Jantar Mantar. Trudeau may be more useful as a person to be distanced from. Not even his worst detractor here will call Trudeau a strong-man leader. Modi’s coolness wasn’t an accident, but the Canada-India cultural connection is too strong for him to sideline Trudeau altogether. They hugged in the end.
 
But Modi ran to the airport to hug trump the instant he landed because he feels a kinship with a leader who also leads via personality-cult and fascist tendencies. And trump has new condos to sell in India, so he pretends to care about India. Indeed, trump Jr is in India right now talking with billionaires, to try to get their money.  Trump backs India enough to hug Modi and do the photo op because it suits his personal economic interests, but will deny H1B visas to Indians seeking to come to America because ultimately they’re not white.
 
That’s my view of things, from the vantage of TO. By the way, I love and miss you India!! Reminder: a country is much, much more than its leader. Indeed, national leaders almost never reflect their country’s actual inhabitants.

IMG_20170701_221146

Canada at 150 in New Delhi at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

“Me Too” backlash is ridiculous

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Some people are mad (or scared!) culture seems finally determined to protect women from sexual assault and rape. They may insist protecting women is a good thing, yes, but the effort has gone too far!

“It’s a Witch Hunt!” they say. No, it’s not. There are no such things as witches. Creeps and rapists exist. They’re everywhere.

OK, but now any woman can say anything and just like that, an innocent man’s life is ruined. Actually, when a female victim comes forward, it’s she who gets piled on, threatened, her reputation attacked. There are very real barriers keeping victims from speaking out publicly. The notion that women are lining up en masse to make up lies just to destroy innocent men is ridiculous.

Why is there more concern about these theoretical men who could maybe have their futures ruined, instead of all the actual women whose past, present and futures contain suffering?

“OK,” they say, “but not every creepy thing is rape!” Who can’t tell between a grope and forced penetration? Women know the difference. Any normal person does. They’re all unacceptable, but they’re not interchangeable or identical. This is easy to understand.

The’re a fear that employers and political parties are just throwing anybody from Aziz to Weinstein under the bus together. Well, companies and political parties have always clamored to protect their reputation / brand. When have they ever cared more about ethics and legal justice for workers than their own self-interest? The only thing that’s changed is, now, enough people consider sexual assault to be bad that they want to disassociated themselves from it.

The notion that men can’t make jokes in the workplace anymore, because anything will get them fired…is it really so onerous, to ask professionals to be professional? I held some zingers back. It kind of was a crime! They were good ones. But, damn it, I was a committed professional in my last office.

People are very quick to defend an accused man, even before anyone knows what he’s accused of. An illustrative example is Patrick Brown, the Conservative candidate for Ontario until a few days ago. His entire staff stepped down when it became known that a report accusing him of sexual assault was imminent. Brown denied all guilt. Many supported him. I heard his backers suggest it was merely a butt grab…even before they had any idea what he was accused of.

Turns out the accusation is that as a federal MP he gave alcohol to an 18-year-old and asked her to suck his dick. Words to the effect of that or “put this in your mouth.” She did, then she was uncomfortable and stopped. Another woman accused him of giving her alcohol when she was 18, and throwing her on the bed trying to kiss her. He maintained his innocence, his party tossed him out.

I’m not sure hatred for Kathleen Wynne was the only reason people rushed to defend Brown, because women in general are doubted. Rather than try to glean reality accurately, there’s a tendency to minimize, to reduce all accusations to the mildest one any man has ever been accused of.

Brown is an interesting case, because journalists and insiders apparently knew about him long before. They interpreted this story as finally it’s coming out, whereas this came out of the blue for most people, myself included. Who else knew, and when? That can be asked of every case.

Recall, even Weinstein initially insisted on his innocence and people believed him. Even though now apparently everybody knew. It’s been since reported in New Yorker’s “Army of Spies” that he hired former Mossad agent to spy on women he abused, to make sure they didn’t come forward, and to make sure journalists didn’t report on him for it.

There’s a fundamental difference between the court of public opinion and actual courts. An accused has the presumption of innocence when the state can imprison them. This is as it should be!

But by granting accused men the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion, they assume women coming forward are guilty: it’s impossible to assume they’re both equally innocent at the same time. The neutral thing is keep your opinion suspended until more is known. Though I admit, I am now inclined to believe women.  Remember, this court is just the collective society’s opinion. It can’t punish anyone. Public opinion never fires someone, only companies or political parties do, and it’s based on their perception of how public opinion will affect them.

The flood of men being called out is because there’s a decades-long backlog. It’ll slow down, hopefully, when men improve.

Also, ignore boomers when they inevitably say ridiculous things like “in my day, we didn’t consider that assault!” as if their obsolete standards should matter in this day they just acknowledged we’re not in. Do they think assault should be tolerated now, because they tolerated it?

More to the point, who cares about them? Black people had separate water fountains in the US until 1964, and the last Canadian Government-run residential school closed in 1994. It would be a needless shame if we calibrated today’s world according to what that generation found OK.

I should add, nothing above is really partisan or buzzkill-y. Have sex! Enjoy! Fuck! Have afternoon anal for all I care. Just have it be consensual, which isn’t a big ask. If your’e doing it all right she won’t merely give you permission, she’ll repeatedly beg you to fuck her harder.

[Note: Jan 30–I don’t want to be mistaken for sounding flippant last para: I should have made my larger point clearer, that if a man/woman sends “mixed signals” it should interpreted as a red light not a green.

Also, I used salty language here perhaps unadvisably but not mindlessly, to indirectly combat the misguided notion I fear is kinda prevalent among men, that concern for safety/comfort of your sexual partner is somehow for prigs or killjoys.]

 

On Aging: An increasingly growing problem

29 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Tags

aging, Happy new years, New years, parenting

On my forehead stand a couple relics, hairs that have bravely refused to recede. They demarcate the old boundaries of my hairline. A stinging reminder of what was. Proud but sad, like a luxury hotel in an abandoned country.

I noticed them years ago when a Cool Barber downtown cut them off. Why is he applying a razor to my forehead? It was my first time at a Cool Barber so I thought maybe that was a trend? What I’m saying is, it was inconceivable to me that my hairline could recede.

When a buddy told me in 2014 that I was in fact losing some hair, I feared he was losing his mind. Me? When time begins to deteriorate the body, it doesn’t usually announce itself. Timing and severity is the difference between the balding 20-year old and the Silver Fox whose thick grey hair signals, unfairly, both old age and youth. But my situation seemed doubly unfair: Not only am I subject to hair loss, but why do I have in several places where hair isn’t strictly necessary, but not my head? What kind of shit is this, fate, you bastard?

My dad used to point to the skin on his head and say to me: “Look, son: this is your future.” I laughed. It was funny then and even now, despite the statement’s latent horror. The unavoidable fact is I am older than I used to be.

People say when you return home after skipping town things stay the same. That isn’t quite true. The cost of Toronto housing has become three or four tiers more insane and my social circle includes literal babies. The sign you have completed one major revolution in life’s cycle is hanging out with people well under the legal drinking age.

How, when did it come to this? Timeless questions. Age and time was once automatically measured and felt when it was linked to a school year. Time was divided into neat sections, then every few months was a milestone. Summer. As reward for completing some little time unit, go drink and smoke in the woods for two months (camp, fun place). Then start it all again. Repeat. Such was time. One day there is nothing left to graduate.

But my god, I’m not dying! I’m 33. Growing up, especially for males, was to have an immortality complex. The first signs of aging doesn’t mean death is around the corner, but it’s a sign that I am in fact subject to death. This is new and tbh not altogether pleasant.

With age comes responsibilities, some great and inevitable, but I don’t want age to determine things.

One of the best nights I had in India was hanging out with a 55-year-old friend, drinking and singing songs on guitar until 5am. In North America and in consumer society in general people are slotted into demographics. The more they are targeted, the more its reinforced and they come to think of themselves in narrow age terms. This is reductionist and limiting. People feel they can’t learn new skills or art, adventure. Age groups do not mingle here. It’s not like that elsewhere.

In 2016 I went to a rager Holi party loaded with babies and grandparents. That obnoxious class of people—20-somethings—were in abundance too. There was a kiddy pool, fully-catered food and open bar. I was wet, full and drunk. Some military gentleman hosted it in his Defence Colony home. The dance floor was hot, karaoke was bumping. I wasn’t sure what affect bhang would have on me, so I took it twice. Everyone went home by 4:30pm.

This party would never happen in Canada, not just because Holi is Indian but age here creates rigid barriers. Silos. Surrounded by people of different ages, people perform. The young strive to appear mature. The older, mature enough. People try to be an age, instead of themselves.

This different schema/outlook has parenting implications. My good Delhi buddy is a 40-year-old father with an 11-year-old kid. The boy came to some parties and saw us smoking hash. It’s a funny time in Toronto as we await Canada legalizing weed—there are people (crusty obsolete weenies) who would call child services and report this maniac of a dad, even as conservative politicians who recently demanded mandatory minimums for possessing weed jostle to become drug dealers. (Great article on Julian Fantino’s hypocrisy) My buddy justified it on very principled, philosophical grounds. In thrust, “I live a moral life, so why should I have to hide anything from my child?”

Aging requires answering one fundamental question: Will I live how my parents/community did, or carve out something different? There is no right answer There are probably elements of both. It’s worth saying, some otherwise indefensible values are defended simply because it’s the traditional way of doing things. But the familiarity and sense of belonging to one’s own culture can be meaningful, too.

This will affect where people decide to live, whether to raise a family, what kind of values underlie all this in our adult lives.

Actually, I no longer believe there is any such thing as “adults”. When you’re six, the nine-year-old at the playground is intimidating because they’re enormous and, being nine, they know life. I wonder what senior citizens think, as they watch people in their 60s and 70s fuck up the planet so badly. As a kid you see a friend’s parents, or your own, and you assume they’re responsible and wise. No, some are just children ravaged by time, so they look like that. Really they have coke problems, mid-life crises or other complexes. Maybe they’re terminally immature.

Age guarantees nothing. There are many very wise children and elderly maniacs with no grip on reality. Don’t get me wrong all things being equal, age brings wisdom and I respect people who lived through stuff. But all things are not equal, and the notion that people are on a guaranteed track marching forward towards Responsibility and Wisdom simply because they haven’t died yet is not true.

Wordsworth and Blake were onto something when they praised children. I’ve never seen an infant commit genocide! Everyone loves childhood innocence. What about adult guilt?

My hope is AI replaces everybody so we can all chill for a living. I’d like for us to all age gracefully, without being so fixated on the look rather than the health of our bodies. I don’t want to be forced or nudged into abiding by social mores concerning age that aren’t mine.

I won’t be a different man when those lonesome, heroic forehead hairs finally admit defeat. Other hairs will surely go, too. I accept my age now. It’s OK! Again, I’m not 101. But when I am fatter and even more severely weathered I hope there’s still a party for me somewhere, playing guitar until late. If there isn’t, I’ll make my own. Even if I’m saddled with those ever-present things going around these days, children.

Happy New Year’s, everybody!

 

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