September 27-28, 2001 — Never for the right reasons

Johnston and I didn't hesitate to decide that two nights of Godspeed You Black Emperor! can never be a bad thing. Tickets for both the Thursday and Friday night shows were quickly purchased, and after Converge on Wednesday, it made for a nice conclusion to the week.

Unfortunately, Thursday night also meant a temporary return to art rock hell. The opening band as listed on our ticket was an instrumental band made up of simply violin and drums. That would've been interesting. The opening band that took the stage was very similar to the one that had opened for Do Make Say Think the week before that led to my rant about the horrors of opening bands. (They even had the same drummer.) Johnston and I suffered through it a couple of rows from the front to ensure a good view for Godspeed.

Godspeed played a wonderful set. A couple of their new songs sounded fantastic, and they played slow riot for new zero kanada in its entirety as an encore. A great night.

Erika was at the show, but I didn't see her. I still haven't seen her since I left for Ottawa in the spring.

I ran into a few people from Middle House (my university residence from back in the days of higher education) after the show. It was a bit awkward, but mercifully brief. (I've nothing against the people, but I just don't have anything to say anymore — what would they want to hear from someone who gave up after one year?)

Friday was a nice day. Andrew made dinner for everyone, but I'd already started cooking my dinner, and I don't really eat chicken, anyway. We ate together and then went to the second Godspeed show. We had to transfer to a second bus on Keele Street that would take us the rest of the way to the Palais Royale, where the show was taking place. We ended up missing it, so we walked. We ended up passing the bus we'd just missed a few blocks down the street. It was surrounded by police cars and it looked like the windows had been shot out. We never did figure out what happened...

I enjoyed the first show more than the second. It was still very much worth going to both, but there's something about 19+ crowds that I'm not terribly keen on, and Godspeed's set was better on the first night, I think. A tall fellow beside me kept taking pictures with his digital camera, which didn't help. He blinded me with his flash on at least a half-dozen occasions. The girl he was there with eventually snapped at him when he was hitting me in the face with the camera's shoulder strap, as I guess she'd noticed my dramatic blinking and eye-wiping after each blinding flash. He stopped taking pictures.

The show didn't end until the subway had stopped running, and we ended up getting home at around 3:30 am because we had to take streetcars and buses the entire way, along with a walk from Bathurst to Oakwood. But we made it.

In other news, I've decided that I'm not fit to have any sort of intimate relationship with another human being. Anything above a vaguely healthy friendship is beyond my capabilities as far as interacting in a manner similar to that of a normal human being is concerned.

Needless to say, there's a reasonably complicated back story that goes along with this decision. But keeping with my generally vague and frustrating manner of writing as of late, you're not going to hear it.

Getting back on track, though: When I see people doing normal human things, I'm pretty good at gauging what is going on. I generally understand why people act the way they do. But I'm never sure how I'm supposed to act. Nothing feels natural. When I am in a relationship, I find that I end up copying the other person more than anything, and whenever I've been close to someone, everything collapsed as soon as we were apart for any extended period of time. I just went numb. It was as though the feelings didn't exist when the person wasn't in the room with me.

I'm not sure if it goes deeper than inexperience. Not having had a girlfriend prior to the age of nineteen can't've helped, but I didn't think it would be like this. I had convinced myself that love couldn't possibly be that difficult, and that I'd know what to do when the time came.

Except that I didn't.

So for now, I don't think I want for there to be a next time. I don't want things to fall apart again, especially not as quickly as they pretty much always have. I'll undoubtedly change my mind as soon as the opportunity arises, but for now I'm going to take a stand for the sake of having an explanation regarding why I'm perpetually out of relationships. Or something like that.