My Favourite Things #1 - The Metz Poster

It’s damn busy out there. It’s hard to find the time to read a book, much less write one. My daughter turned thirteen yesterday and I can’t fathom how that’s possible. The moments blur together, like a film ripped at triple speed through a smoking projector. 

I try to slow things down once in a while. Nothing so extravagant as a contemplative walk past ponds mirroring pink granite and skies of obscene blue (though that would be nice too), but just long enough to remark lightly on whatever might be pleasing me out of all proportion at that moment. Some music, probably, or some art. Something someone said (or restrained themselves from saying), some food, some small act.

A set of faint bookmarks on life’s passage is what I’m after. A way for me, when I look back, of wrestling the odd moment free of the stream’s white roar. 

For instance, and to get us started, I can’t listen all the time to Metz, the Toronto punk band. It’s too much some days; it’s music that leaves blisters. But taken in moderation their fearsome racket is as beautiful as waves collapsing onto a darkened beach.

Their first album is the one I return to most. Even the cover art with the boy at his desk, head on his books, completely spent, is marvelous. And I’ve written before about the effect their music can have on me. Played for long enough, my guess is it might restart a broken heart. But those earlier reviews felt like just so many words thrown loosely into a deafening wind.

A few weeks back, though, after a final walkthrough at what would soon be their first home, young buyers presented me with a folded, creased poster advertising live Metz performances. One of them had seen the band years back in the States somewhere.  The band members had all signed the image. These clients had read my earlier bit, they said, and wanted me to have it. 

It was just a regular sort of shift on a hilltop in Portsmouth Village, a pretty house, some scudding cloud, another day at the office, until suddenly it wasn’t that at all and I was moved far beyond the ordinary moment into a consideration of what it was made work worthwhile and of course this moment right here was exactly it. 

And now, when it gets rough out there, I return to that gift -  the poster itself and the act of these good people giving it away - and I draw energy enough to go on. And if that doesn’t quite do it (I take a lot of energy, after all - ask anyone), I put on the album itself, as you should too, whenever the time is right.

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Here’s Wet Blanket.