Forgery League

Monday - worked like mad on a new blog-based web site for Spinglobe, and several other projects.

Tuesday - more of the same; nearly burned myself out. Largely self-inflicted. Must remember to take breaks. At least I didn’t spend ten hours straight at a desk again. Blog is looking good though.

Wednesday - jammed and hung out with the gang out High Park way, which made everything all better again. I didn’t have my bass with me, so among other things I tried to get as many different sounds as I could out of one cymbal and one gong suspended from a radio-style mic stand.

Thursday - recorded bass tracks for Ellen Carol’s upcoming CD, at Don Kerr’s brand new basement studio. I’ve recorded myself a lot, of course, and been in lots of studios, but it was my first Actual Recording Session. And it went quite smoothly, too. Afterward, went bowling as part of a fundraiser for Gallery 44‘s youth programs. I am a terrible bowler.

Friday - All a blur. I think I worked on the company blog some more.

Saturday - much sleeping in. Also headed in to the new office-to-be to help install some receptacles for the network. In the evening, some very adventurous jamming with Roulette and friends (I played mostly bass and drums).

Sunday - sore as hell. Must have been playing like a maniac last night.

Monday - met up with office mates at the new space again. It’s gonna be pretty cool. And as a sort of reward, I finally snagged those monitors I’ve had my eye on for months. Lots of work to do on the studio now to get it into shape. But: progress!

This summer we moved to a house just north of the Danforth, near Chester station. It’s a cozy neighbourhood, an old “streetcar suburb” from the early years of the 20th century, fairly well off, mostly single-family homes on snug little lots. And holy geez do they do Hallowe’en. It was a lovely mild night last night, and the sidewalks were absolutely crammed with parents and kids. Every other house seemed to have elaborate decorations. It really felt like a celebration, a time for neighbours to mingle, chat, try to outdo one another, and generally have fun. As a non-parent, I was very much an outsider, but it was still cool to see.

I really love it when the sound of people drowns out the sound of traffic, especially on a warm night. I strolled down Baldwin early this past summer, on the first “patio” weekend, as the sound of clinking glasses and cutlery and soft conversation drifted across the road. Between that and the lights on the trees (for some reason I love the sight of artificial light filtering through tree branches at night) it was really magical.

In other news, we looked at a great new potential office space today, near Queen and Broadview. Many cool possibilities. The hot water’s already partly solar heated, and there’s talk of a green roof, solar and wind power, and other initiatives; we’d have a lot of freedom to shape the space; they’re planning to rent out other parts of the building to other like-minded initiatives (architects, artists, and ‘green’ companies). It would be really cool to work on building a community of little workplaces there, both socially and physically, in the built/landscaped environment.

So I’ve been raving about Christopher Alexander‘s A Pattern Language, which talks about the sort of ‘building’ I mean. It’s an approach quite at odds with modern development practices, one that seeks to create spaces that have a real, genuine life, that instill a sense of wholeness, wellness, humanness, and do so at all scales, from regions to streets to rooms to windowsills. We can only do this, Alexander has argued, by allowing people to shape their own spaces in a real and direct way. I can barely do it justice in a short entry. Go read his books - they completely deserve the term “classic”.

Speaking of books, I ordered a copy of Worldchanging, the book for the office, and it arrived today. It’s a hefty little compendium of ideas and resources for making human civilization more sustainable, filed under Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics and Planet. I’ve heard it compared to the venerable Whole Earth Catalog series, and it’s not a bad comparison - page after page of useful and inspiring stuff from all over, aimed at bettering the world. Go buy it now.

(And it just so happened that when I opened it at random, the first page I came upon was the one about “Place-Making” - complete with a discussion of A Pattern Language...)

Recently Sean, Stephen and I visited Everdale, an organic farm/education centre near Erin, this side of Guelph. We may be doing some neat work on their web site, and part of the visit was to discuss that. Part of it was just to see the place, though…  which was quite thrilling.

We’d never seen a real straw-bale built building before, and they have several. The main one is Home Alive!, a cozy little two-story house with a well thought out heating and cooling system, a rainwater catchment system, plus photovoltaic and wind power, and radiant heating in the floors and bathtub(!) The thick walls give it a wonderfully snug feeling, and deep reveals for the windows… so much of it is straight out of Christopher Alexander and co.‘s A Pattern Language. The beams are made out of recycled timbers, for an extra rustic touch.

Anyway, that got us excited all over again about the idea of building. Sean’s started talking about building a small set of offices that could serve as an “incubator” for green businesses. Sean suggested a music studio too. I’m picturing a network of people to hang out with, a room for coffee and hanging out, perhaps a little quiet space for people to do yoga or nap… I still have reservations about moving out of town, but all these ideas have me a bit more optimistic about the prospect.

Of course, the more elaborate it gets, the more time and money it takes. So I’ve been wondering what sort of stages we could go through to build something. We could start by getting land with a conventional building on it and living there, or using it as a retreat.

The initial buildings could be little detached cabins, usable later if we decide to offer the place as a retreat… but simple enough that it’s not a catastrophe if there are some mistakes. We’ll learn as we go.

The office could grow piece by piece too: one room, with some tables and a comfortable couch, a desk. Then build a second section, this one with plumbing, a two-piece bathroom and kitchen. And keep growing from there. The third section might be two stories… and so on.

Sean and I just got back this evening from spending a weekend with our officemates - the five of us trekked up to a cottage about three hours north of town, and hung out, ate lots, strolled around, had a bonfire, and talked big crazy talk about the company. They’re a cool bunch (two partners plus three freelancers, the latter including me), and I’m really glad we’re all working together.

I’m such a city kid now. I hadn’t been looking forward to the trip at all. But in all, it was a lovely time.

On a little hike through the woods, it struck me that I’m especially fascinated with fungi, ferns, lichens, mosses… non-plants, proto-plants, primitive things. Things that can survive on bare rock. Beautiful things that grow out of dead trees. Things that might have around when the dinosaurs ruled. I was filled with glee when I found a boulder maybe the size of a chest freezer, which was covered in several sorts of moss and lichen, and a unique species of fern. Everywhere else, a more complex-looking fern had out-competed it, but this one had found a niche in the thin soil atop this rock.

And the fall leaves were quite gorgeous, too. As the years go by, I’m slowly starting to appreciate autumn.

Things I am currently obsessed with, or which just make me happy:

• The stompy, swinging beat that appears in songs like Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” and “My Generation” by the Who - it probably goes back further than that too, but I can’t quite remember at the moment. Anyway, it all started when I was casting about for a new arrangement for one of J’s songs, and I’m starting to think some sort of weird mashup medley is in order. We could throw in “This Charming Man” while we’re at it. Have to find someone to play the Johnny Marr guitar part though. Update: Wow. Those songs have been going through my head non-stop for the past day and a half. In the middle of it, I walked into a grocery store where they happened to be playing “You Can’t Hurry Love”. (I knew there was a Motown connection in there somewhere…)
• Coffee. We’ve taken on a job for Merchants of Green Coffee, a local outfit that sells fairly traded, sustainably grown coffee beans and the equipment to roast and brew them. As part of the deal we got a little coffee roaster. From what I’m told, coffee beans keep for years if they’re green, but once roasted they only last a few days, and once ground, mere hours. Fresh-roasted stuff is quite lovely. I only started drinking coffee at all about a month ago, now that I’m working pretty much every day at the Spinglobe office. It makes me feel so professional and productive! Even if I’m not. 
• The phrase “losing one’s shit” - which I’ve usually read in reference to a singer’s over-the-top performance. I’ve never actually had occasion to use it myself; it just makes me giggle.

Might have a couple of interesting musical collaborations to report on soon too. Yay!

Flickershow news: a friend of ours has it in mind to do a tiny-budget video of “Invincible”, and we’re aiming to shoot it on April 9th. We won’t have time to record the final version of the song before that, but we’ve put together a demo to use for shooting.

Been doing a lot of covers lately, trying out things I can sing and play bass on at the same time. In the midst of all that, I’ve been doing some work on original tunes - as always, I have about half a dozen of them going in parallel, none of them finished. But it’s a nice feeling to be making progress. Maybe this weekend I’ll devote a day to wrangling them into shape and making a CD for the rest of the band…

Latest web site: SpinHost. I’d been puttering around trying to come up with a logo, when the spin -> wind turbine idea finally wandered up and thumped me on the head. So the logo and site take their cues from streamlined Air Age stuff. There are some further refinements to come - the photograph of the turbine isn’t final, for one thing. I’m gonna replace it as soon as I can get down to the Ex to take a picture of the one there.