Out of the past

Joni Void + N NAO, “Je Vois / Non-Dit,” Corona Borealis Longplay Singles series (Constellation Records)

He sat in the morning sun, watching tiny fibres spin and hover in thin air in the long sunbeams that spanned the kitchen. The miniscule bits of matter weighed almost nothing at all; they were barely existent. We breathe these bits in and out by the thousands every day without noticing. They react almost with a sort of intelligence, like miniature insects or microscopic strands of string. These bits were wonderful, each one reflecting a little piece of the universe.These bits either were or are about to become us.

Pierce With Arrow, “In the Depths of His Eyes,” Shatter (Dais Records)

Everybody had a hard year. Nobody had a good time. Nobody had a wet dream.And we only saw the sunshine on our government-mandated walks, should they happen to have fortunately fallen on sunny days.

He watched his friends make incremental inroads and get eclipsed by the world. This happened to him, too. Just making a thing is not the same thing as making a good thing. Mostly, he watched people get varying levels of drunk. And he also got varying levels of drunk. Sometimes he was drunker than they were, and sometimes they were drunker than he was.

Dream, April 1, 2020

I am in a living room sitting on an old brown leather couch. There is a girl there with me. She is restless, like a little kid. She says, “these restrictions are too strict.” I agree with her. She says she wants to watch a movie. I say that I’m annoyed by all the trucks passing by. Then we are in a car on the street outside my house. There are trucks everywhere and greyish army-like vehicles driving around. I say to her, “something bad has happened.”

Lutto Lento (with Katarzyna Karpowicz), “Horned Heart,” LEGENDO (Haunter Records)

“Get an education because they can’t take that away,” my dear old grandfather — who escaped the Ukrainian famine genocide and was quite preoccupied with not having things taken away from him — used to tell me. But they can devalue it to the point where it’s worthless. And then they can take away the world you might have enjoyed it in. They can remove the dock from the canal where you liked to soak up the sunshine in the summertime. Then they can take away the canal and the sunshine and summertime, too. Then they’ll take the wintertime and the snow that you loved to catch on your tongue, and watch sparkle out the window on lonesome nights as it gently draped hazy orange-lit streets. They’ll take that. They’ll take away the blue in the sky. They’ll take away the fluff in the clouds. They’ll take the warmth of the wind and blow it you know where. But you’ll be glad you got an education. Because that they can’t take away. 

ACT!, Section 1 (1​-​20), “Grey Matter AR” Snapchat Compositions [100] (Halocline Trance)

Listen here.

To think that we once escaped through the past, or toward the future, through lines of flight drawn between different and complementary points of entry — there is always a space between. Unraveling that mystery is no longer possible in a world where science is paramount, where spatiotemporal reality itself is held over society’s collective head like an anvil: either comply or the entire world will be destroyed. You didn’t create these conditions, but you’re sure going to feel their consequences. No Future? It’s worse than that. Today there’s no “No Future.”

Ana Roxanne, “A Study in Vastness,” Because of a Flower (Kranky Records)

It’s the sound that keeps him sane out here. The non-organized nature of it. Bells. Chimes. Birds. Dogs. Waves. You can hear the wind out here. And you get the feeling that everything else can hear it, too. The blood in his body feels okay when he’s here. When everything is still and quiet. Too many noises today. He only wants to hear the wind. The wind is the only real power. It is the primary thing that moves everything else or keeps it away. The wind shapes the landscape. Bless the wind that shakes the tree that blows the seed that feeds the birds that tweet so sweet. I better start going back, he thought. But God how he wished there was a home for him out here.

When he got tired, he looked at television. All the programs had become so dialogue-driven. But the dialogue was absurdly generic. It seemed like any character could have delivered the lines. Everyone and everything was interchangeable. Nothing seemed much different from the next thing. He lurched forward with the remote control, shadow-boxing a blunt fist toward the TV set. The television was a large box, finished in deep brown mahogany, that made an irreparable square depression in the carpet. Unnameable crumbs collected at its base in a kind of carpet gutter. He noticed the square depression whenever he moved it to vacuum up the crumbs. The remote had buttons that clicked as they were pushed. He clicked. The channels flicked obediently. His eyelids were heavy. There was something so distant about remote control. In fact, distance was its essence.

He slept and dreamt that he would unexpectedly find something that he was really good at, like singing or painting. Like there was a hidden genius inside him just waiting to be discovered. If he could only write the next great American novel, he thought. But he was Canadian, and nobody read novels anymore. ■

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This feature was originally published in the December issue of Cult MTL. To see previous editions of Play Recent, please click here.