Back to the homepage.
Back to the index.

Date: January 5th, 2020

Time of Writing: 6:08 PM

Weather: Chilly and clear.

Mood: A little bit fatigued.

Day Overview: Took a long time for me to get to sleep, into and past the wee hours of the morning. Ed, Theo and Lucas wrote and recorded a song and filmed a music video, in which I had a cameo that I cannot disclose until the video is out. My lips are sealed. Stayed up late reading SCP Foundation articles and was about to get to sleep when Edward started snoring really, really loud. It woke Lucas up, but not Theo - he was out like a light and would eventually start talking in his sleep but that's neither here nor there. Lucas and I wondered about what was causing this to happen, whether it was the angle of his head on the pillow or he was having a bad dream or something. I deduced that it was due to his headphones, which he had fallen asleep wearing - they were covering his ears so he could not hear how loud he was snoring and thus did not wake him up. I pulled one of the headphones off of his ear, he snored twice, and then stopped. I executed a celebratory dab as he briefly looked up, checked on his phone, and then hurriedly told us he was gonnagodosomething and left the room for a half hour. I got to sleep at around 5:00 AM

When I awoke, it was just ten in the morning. We all woke up at roughly the same time. Theo was in a bit of a hurry to get home, because he needed to pack the car for his return voyage to Canada. His winter vacation and mine barely overlapped, alas. We ate pancakes together before he left, and the rest of his briefly hung out upstairs playing video games. Edward drove Lucas home. I stuck around for a bit. Edward brought back lunch, and we browsed around on the internet for a little while before it was time for me to go. Ed's family was having company over, and though they asked whether I was going to stay for dinner I didn't want to overstay my welcome. One slightly delayed subway ride later I'm back home, sitting down to write this blog post.

On My Mind: My train today was delayed due to a passenger falling onto the tracks at a different station on the line. Emergency services were called and the person was removed, but I couldn't help but wonder if the person had fallen onto the tracks or jumped. It reminded me of another time that I was going to take the train home from Edward's house. I was by myself late one Friday night, around 11:00 PM or so, waiting for the train, when I noticed two men sort of swaying back and forth at the edge of the platform a little ways away from me. They talked to each other in confused, slurred tones, and when they turned to approach me I saw that they were red in the face.

Excuse me, the taller, more cogent of the pair asked, do y'know if this, if this side of the track, if this train side of the - if this one goes to Braintree? I shook my head and told him he was on the wrong side of the tracks. He thanked me, then turned to his friend and swore. Wrong side. They muttered something to each other and for a few moments I was able to turn away from them and resume staring at my phone.

Then, all of a sudden, they jumped down onto the tracks!

I couldn't believe my eyes. It was the first time I'd seen someone on the subway tracks who wasn't a station employee. They bumbled along, jumping over each rail. I wanted to call out to them, tell them to avoid the third rail, but it seemed they were aware enough of that. The third rail is positioned underneath the platform, which was okay for their ascent but made climbing up difficult unless they used the service ladder at the end of the platform, which they feasibly could have done but ignored for whatever reason. The shorter man was boosted up to the opposite platform by the taller man and made it with ease, but the taller man had some trouble hoisting himself up. He lost his footing and dangled briefly over the third rail - at this point I frantically looked around the station, searching for any other witness, but it was almost entirely empty - before he managed to swing back to the middle of the tracks and try again. That time, he made it. Once they climbed up they decided for whatever reason to wave at me. Aghast as I was, I was able to wave back - or maybe I only waved back because I was so shocked. I wonder if they made it home.

Consumed:

• Swim by Caribou: I listened to this one in anticipation of the Caribou album scheduled to release later this year, Suddenly, and it's my second Caribou album I've heard. The other, 2014's Our Love, was one of the first albums I listened to when I was first getting into music in High School. At first I thought it was pretty mind blowing, the way the lush synths, steady mellow drum beats and soft vocals blended together in a way I'd never heard before, but over time as I listened to more music its charm wore off on me. This release does that further; it's one of the rare occasions that I've been prompted explicitly by a specific release to revise a rating downward, and thus Our Love has been bumped down from a 7/10 to a 6/10 on my Rate Your Music page. Swim is greatly more ambitious than Our Love and thus a little rougher around the edges. A lot of the vocals just don't work because they're not in a comfortable register for Caribou's voice. However, the instrumentals here are a lot more dynamic than I expected given Caribou's other work I've heard. Besides a couple tracks, the opener Odessa and hypnotic mid-album instrumental Bowls, most of the album feels pretty standard, but those two tracks alone elevate this album well above average. I wonder what would have happened if I picked this album to listen to instead of Our Love back then. What if indeed. 7/10
• 3776 wo Kikanai Riyuu ga Aru to Sureba (Is There A Reason Not To Listen To 3776?) by 3776: Before last year's wonderful album about being Mt. Fuji, 3776 put out something a lot more down to Earth, an album about simply climbing Mt. Fuji. The best parts of this album are as good as anything on Saijiki, and the album is engaging throughout, with a great blend of genres and styles explored under a uniquely guiding musical philosophy that ties everything together into one neat coherent package. This would easily earn it a 9/10 or possibly even a 10/10 if it were not for one part: the spoken word bits and interludes. My problem with these parts is not that I cannot understand them, sure I can't speak Japanese but that honestly doesn't bother me. I've liked spoken bit parts that I don't understand on other albums. There's two things specifically that bother me about the interludes on this album, and that's the frequency and the fact that they often cover up what sounds like really good musical interludes. There's six Interval tracks on this album, labelled A through F. They occur roughly every two songs or so. This chops up the album's pacing waaaaay too much, and I get it that the whole concept is that the album is 3,776 seconds long and thus matching the height of Mt. Fuji in meters, but that could easily happen with just the instrumentals behind these interludes. However, there are a few more unlabelled interludes that occur within tracks, where the music is faded down a little and Chiyono Ide just starts talking over it, and those suck ninety percent of the time. The music is great, but I can't easily ignore this flaw. Thus, the album gets only an 8/10.

Produced: Contributed a few lyrics and advised a bit generally on the song early in the morning today, but otherwise I haven't written anything. Lazy Sunday.

Other Thoughts: So far I've basically been using my index page as a de facto About Me section; however, in the near future, I plan on revising it, turning it into a true gateway to the rest of the site instead of a destination in of itself. Expect it to change later this week.