I have tickets - more accurately, one ticket - to see Delain and Visions of Atlantis. I debated getting one for Xandria/Battle Beast/Kamelot but that one is on a Tuesday. I know I'd enjoy it but .... it's on a Tuesday. 

Also, all booked up to go to the east coast in October. Finally! 

This is a playlist for my d&d character.



1. Northwest Passage: And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west. Tris came from a community of caravan merchants. 

2. Gimme Shelter: Ooh, see the fire is sweepin' our streets today... gimme shelter, or I'm gonna fade away. A mad lich, Raven, raided her caravan with fireballs. Her parents and her younger sister were slain, leaving her the sole survivor. 
 
3. Winterbreak: You're wondering how to leave it here, and I haven't seen you since last winter break. Tris took shelter with the Order of the Silver Dragon, a chivalric society devoted to justice. There, she fell in love with another squire, Ella. It didn't last. 

4. Keep the Car Running: If some night I don't come home Please don't think I've left you alone... keep the car running. Tris didn't quite fit in with the Order after that. After a string of anger management issues, she decided to leave to seek her glory elsewhere, promising to return and receive her knighthood. She soon met up with a group of adventurers called the Last Resort, including Carric, Audra, Xavril, and Resha. 

5. Hand of Sorrow: The child without a name grew up to be the hand, to watch you, to shield you or kill on demand. After a few years of adventuring, Tris found that her sister, Mariel, had survived under the tutelage of the lich responsible for the caravan attack. Unfortunately, this happened while Mariel was leading a gang of pirates to raid a settlement. During the attack, Audra's sister was kidnapped. 

6. Storyteller: And all along she asked why love wasn't worth a fight - was it worth her fight? Eventually, the party made their way to the Ravenspire to rescue Audra's sister, and Tris reunited with Mariel. Mariel had read Tris's published novel recounting her adventures in the meantime, and had grown cynical in her training. But when it came down to it, Mariel sided with the party against Raven. However, this mission was not without price, and Xavril was lost. 
 
7. Numbers: Be careful who you're thinking will save you in the end - maybe we're all just waiting for one beautiful friend. Party tensions increased as the party ventured into the desert of Farrell to deal with Resha's wayward mentor, and then to the jungles of Syland attend Carric's sister's wedding. Carmilla and Fendrell, a pair of twins sharing a single body, also joined the party.  

8. Delete Forever: Lying so awake, things I can't escape - lately I just turn 'em into demons. Flew into the sun, fucking heroin - lately I just turn 'em into reasons and excuses. Tris turned to taking drugs to deal with Xavril's death and intraparty stress 

9. Stray Italian Greyhound: Oh no not now, please not now, I just settled into the glass half empty. Tris began to develop feelings for Carmilla: feelings that she just could not figure out how to deal with. The two of them went on a few dates. Eventually, the party managed to acquire a second body for Carmilla, temporarily losing Resha in the process. 

10. The (Shipped) Gold Standard: I wanna scream "I love you" from the top of my lungs, but I'm afraid that someone else will hear me You can only blame your problems on the world for so long before it all becomes the same old song. Tris's racial insecurities, drug issues, shock of losing party members, and lingering lich threat caught up with her. She rejected Carmilla, ran away from the party, and regretted it almost immediately afterwards. 

11. Calling the Rain: Heed, it's like calling the rain, it's like bearing in pain, like embracing life and decaying in death. Tensions on the continent of Suzoa came to a boil as the wizard Lady Zolera tried to gain control of the Arcane Well. Tris couldn't leave her party members behind to deal with that threat alone. She put aside her issues and returned to the party. Facing the Arcane Well, she had a realization that she wanted to survive and wash away the evil and corruption in the world and herself, and live life fully. 

12. For Me, This is Heaven: When the time we have now ends, when the big hand goes round again, can you still feel the butterflies? Can you still hear the last goodnight... If I don't let myself be happy now, then when? Tris took up Lady Zolera's newly vacated seat on the council and used her good publicity as a published author to correct the direction of the empire. Years later, she regained enough confidence to ask Carmilla if maybe she wanted to give things another try. And Carmilla said yes. 

MUNA - winterbreak




This song, like my ex's best friend, conjures for me similar feelings of making the wrong decisions. The hazy texture of the guitars and vocoders evokes frost upon a windowpane in December, as you trudge home in the slush briefly transformed from brown to orange in the sodium street lamps.  Yet for all the open-endedness and uncertainty of the verses, there's something cyclical about the percussion and structure of the chorus. This is a conversation you've had before. You already know how it ends because you've seen it end before, in the melting snowbanks of March that reveal all the ugliness and cowardice inherent in your blood, sure as morning. 

But - it's not March, is it? It's still December. Maybe this will be the time you get it right. Maybe in this liminal period between Christmas and New Years, where in the song's bridge the percussion barely dares to breathe and the guitars disappear into the background of the shitty house party and you can barely breathe in the air suspended between you, maybe this is the time it'll work. In this moment the weight of failure is a thousand years away, you can no longer feel your own pulse or your skin or the chill of the basement apartment, and there is nothing left to do but to kiss her. 

It doesn't end well. It'll end as it's ended every time. But you don't know that in this winterbreak, this beautiful sliver in time with no past and no future. 

 

As per prompt 30 of the 30-day music meme (more like the 300-day music meme...) this is another song that reminds me of myself for two reasons. The first of which because MGK is a total forking mess in the song.  He knows he's making the wrong decision, that nothing good is going to happen. There's a little gasp in the instrumental right at the 0:30 mark in the prechorus when he realizes, oh shit, they're going home. And then by the time they hit the elevator at 0:38, it's too late, it's inevitable that something is going to happen, and that moment is just so delicious that the drums kick in to mark the beat of his stupid traitorous heart, and then there's nothing to be done but to ride that the momentum headlong into the chorus. 

The chorus is almost perfunctory compared to the prechorus - but I think that's about right too, isn't it? Sometimes the buildup, the knowledge that you are making the bad decision is sweeter than the reward itself. This leads into blackbear's verse, which is the spare and measured justification to MGK's ex that she has no fuckin business getting mad at MGK. Yet despite the yowl blackbear is able to summon up, it's ultimately uncathartic and barely casts a pall over the second iteration of the chorus. 

But here's the thing. You can only do a bad thing so many time before it stops feeling sweet. And that's why I think the outro is perfect. It's a hollow, distorted version of the first verse. It's like a hangover. All the mystery and the excitement is gone and dead in the cold light of day. 

This song is perfect. 

Oh, and the second reason it also reminds me of myself? He's oversharing. SO MUCH. What is even the meaning of dignity?? I have a whole playlist on spotify about bad decisions and this one is right at the top. 

 

Haven't we seen a prompt like this before on day 12? This 30-day song challenge has taken far too long. 

This was one of the last songs I learned on piano before I was allowed to quit, with seven years of unenthusiastic musical education by an equally unenthusiastic teacher under my belt. I would probably have liked it better if anybody had bothered to explain who tf these composers were, why I had to learn a piece from List A, B, C, etc. and what was even the point of differentiation from the etudes. The music history course I did, which was eight weeks of intense memorisation of biographies and compositions, was by far the most painful schooling I had ever undertaken. Worse than the traffic course where the prof made us teach it to each other in weekly seminars. Worse than the hydrology course where the TA had a chip on his shoulder. I cried weekly in that history course. No other school or work made me leak from my eyeballs like music history did.

Also, I realized that I could just... quit the things I didn't like. Like the demand modelling course for my master's. Or the ITS course. Or grade 12 biology. But at the same time, I think I achieved more when I believed that failure wasn't an option, but giving myself mid-exam pep talks that vacillate between "People like you don't fail," or "You're gonna be doomed if you do poorly" was... unhealthy. 

Chvrches - Final Girl

In the final cut
In the final scene
There's a final girl
And you know that she should be screaming now

Often, I feel sad when I think about my brother. Certainly my parents do. Certainly the rest of my family does, and his friends.

But I had to pick up his cell phone from the police and the laptop from the university. The police didn't access the devices - I had to break into and comb through both devices to find his suicide notes on the hard drive. He had a loaded printer in his dorm room, by the way. Was it so hard to print out those notes? He planned it out, you know. He went to the hardware store, and bought safety goggles and tools so he could break the window the "safe" way. But when I found the notes, I realized that he didn't even mention me once. Was it too much to expect, that someone who was sick could still remember me instead of discounting a full third of their immediate family?

And I used to always feel like I had a "way out." No matter how I'd feel on any particular day, I took comfort in the fact that no bad feeling could last forever, that if things ever got really out of hand, I could find a way out. Or that, if I grew up to be a complete and total failure, that he'd have his shit together and be able to make sure my parents were OK and make them proud. Or that we could help each other when we both got oldBut now I'm furious that he found that way out first, and closed the door behind him. My parents have only one kid left! The bar for success is now much lower, hovering around "not dying." But all that pressure, once distributed between two siblings, is now concentrated on one. So I resent my brother for getting to take the quick way out and leaving me behind on the long route.

It's been five years. I'm allowed to be sad. But I'm also allowed to be angry. Shivani said, that people with depression were often sadder than people with metastatic cancer, and I was like, no fucking shit, Sherlock, sometimes they even kill themselves. Krogoth says I scream nearly every night in my sleep. But how could I not? I am the final girl. I survived. He didn't.  

Triosphere - steal away the light




I'm spoiled for choice on day 29, but It's been so many days since I posted for day 28 that it's better not to overthink this. Ida Haukland has a commanding voice with great range. I like her raspy lower register best, but her higher tones are no slouch either. 

 Taylor Swift - Treacherous 


You know, it took me a year before I told Justin I loved him (though it only took until day 26 to get Ms Taylor Swift in on the 30-day song challenge). We were dogsledding around our anniversary in northern Ontario. I remember him giggling a little afterwards, like he couldn't believe it. I knew he loved me, of course. But I was under a lot of stress during that time and trying to be careful about what I was doing with my future. Falling in love was a choice. 

Doesn't make it sound very romantic, does it? Well, let's put it this way. Falling in love is like making a choice to paddle down a river with in a homemade kayak, with potentially amazing views, but without knowing what's at the end of the river. 

But I do love kayaking. 

The Carpenters - I won't last a day without you 


I can't imagine anybody but Karen Carpenter selling the sentimentality that comprises so much of the Carpenters' oeuvre. She delivers all of her vocals with a gentle smile and a wink that says, "I know it's schmaltzy, but wouldn't it be nice if it were true?" Listening to Karen Carpenter's voice is like drinking tea on a rainy day while wrapped in a blanket. 

And yes, this is my favourite Carpenters song.

Delain - Burning Bridges



Delain won the gold Kewpie doll for uncannily good timing when they released Apocalypse & Chill in February 2020. Shame on me for missing it. I've always found Delain a wee bit scattered and their albums have never quite clicked for me, either in concept or execution. But I immediately grokked Apocalypse & Chill. It felt a bit like the time I heard The Unforgiving or 1989 or Transatlanticism for the first time. It turns out I like a concept album about global warming as much as demon hunters and difficult relationships. 

Then immediately after that I realized that all but one of the band members had left, and that the remaining guy was continuing Delain as a studio project only. That was a big ol' kick in the head. They might as well be broken up now. But at least Delain got to go out on a high note.