Days go by and still I think of you
Days when I couldn’t live my life without you
Days go by and still I think of you
Days when I couldn’t live my life without you
Without you
Without you

You are still a whisper on my lips
A feeling at my fingertips
That’s pulling at my skin

You leave me when I’m at my worst
Feeling as if I’ve been cursed
Bitter cold within

Or so Gattaca says. I watched it with a friend yesterday, again, and still find the whole movie fascinating. If you remove the science fiction from the movie, it boils down to being able to do whatever you want, if you have the will and the desire to do so. Push yourself, put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you don’t necessarily have a guaranteed safe outcome, and I think that you will be surprised at the outcome. We are all capable of exceeding our own preconceived notions of what is possible for us. Go for it.

Some conversations yesterday day led me to think of a great Swedish band called Pain of Salvation. They are prog metal, but less metal and more prog than most. Anyway, they were relevant yesterday because the etymology of the band’s name centres around the suffering we go through in order to achieve Nirvana. We have to do things that we know hurt in order to put ourselves in a better place at the end. Anyway, I’m picking a track from them called Disco Queen, because I think that my friend will like the song a lot. The chorus is pretty fun. Are you a Disco Queen? I bet you are. As an aside, the high pitch chorus in the song is still the same two guys who front the band. A rather hilarious acoustic version of them doing it live still cracks me up.

It is relatively early on this Friday morning. I’ve been up for about an hour, so I am really just savouring the day at this point, enjoying the fact that it is Friday, and that today is a day off of the bike so I can relax and read my book a bit more.

I really don’t want to complicate my life. That is not to say that I don’t want to add to it, enhance it, even, but I want to keep it simple. To that end, I’ve had to make a few decisions about some things, and I may have to give out some unwelcome advice, but that’s the way it is.

I’ve been enjoying a Cape Breton musician lately, Carmel Mikol, who is really quite fantastic. Her vocal style, the way she phrases her songs, reminds me a lot of the Weakerthans, but I’ll let others be the judge of that. Here’s the title track, In My Bones, performed live at the Yellow Door in Montreal.

We’re young, then we’re old
Born with a fire that burns to coals
The path of hungry livin’
Is the one and only road
We’re pressed to make decisions
That divide and conquer souls
It’s a pity we’re forgiven
’cause it makes ours seem bold
Well in my bones I just know
this is nothing but a heart ache
but I’d rather have my heart break
than spend this night alone

Today’s walk to and from work was a real slog. February rain, freezing ice pellets, and lots of wind. But you know, it didn’t bother me. On days like this I am usually surprised by just how well music keeps me moving. With good headphones, I see traffic, I feel rain drops on my face and hood, but I don’t hear them. I am isolated. I had blogged about my rituals being reward-based in the past, but I think this is also a crucial part. And sometimes the music catches me off guard. In the middle of the walk home, Opeth’s “Black Rose Immortal” came on, an epic 20 minute long track that has so many amazing musical moments that some times I actually stop to listen for a bit. Like I did this time.

On the subject of music, I’ve been on a bit of a Rush kick lately. I suppose, in part, to recently finishing Dark Hollow by Brian Keene. The more I think about the book, the more I realize how much I enjoyed that novel. No doubt in part to his continual references to 80s metal. There is one passage where the main character is trying to describe a ritual involving Pan (as in Pan’s labyrinth), and the Temples of Syrinx, at which point the other characters in the book start singing “2112″ by Rush. Too funny.

Anyway, reading that book led down memory lane to a moment in the mid 80s — probably ’84, for obvious reasons — when Rush had released their “Grace Under Pressure” album. Some high school kids were listening to it on a ghetto blaster, and I was enthralled. I walked in when “The Body Electric” was on, and Geddy Lee was singing “one zero zero one, zero zero one, ess – oh – ess” and I needed to hear more. It’s not a heavy track, by any stretch, but it was my first foray into the world of Rush and I haven’t really looked back. I probably should have titled this post “Closer to the Heart”.

Today’s track is another tune from the “2112″ album. A Passage to Bangkok is another one of my all-time favourite Rush tunes. Enjoy.

More on the origins of the blog title in a bit, but lately, I do feel as if my world is in the margin of something bigger than it. My thoughts and actions sometimes feel like scribbles, written with a 2H pencil that’s rapidly being worn away over time. I press harder, hoping to make an impression that pushes through to other pages, and it works, on some days. On other days, all I end up doing is breaking my pencil. There is a lot of lead left, though. Mainly because there’s no room for an eraser on the pencil of time.

Today’s track is by In Flames. It’s a bit more screamy than some of their other stuff (although the Reroute To Remain album was pretty screamy), but I really dig it. It has some very catchy guitar riffs. If you’re listening along, here’s the first stanza.

Buds abloom in all directions
from which events occur
relations and virused meetings
catch fire and explode
In the margin of butterfly wings
entire cycles of evolution
outplayed and faded
sparked away back into
vacuum-filled nirvana