Time to dance

I'm all done for this term: last paper handed in, last revision to my book chapter submitted, christmas shopping done. I spent a good 5-10 minutes spontaneously after sending in my last assignment. Oh, it feels good to be free.

Of course, I've kind of been on holiday for the last few days already and it's been great fun seeing old friends and new and re-introducing myself to alcohol. Special mention to the Stars concert--the one I didn't quite see and the one I did. We also saw the band loading up their stuff, but unlike Andrew, we just waited around to avoid going out into the cold. Toronto--no good for the soul.

So speaking of Stars, it's time for me to foist my music on the world.
I think the best way to describe my music listening is to go back to the source--what was it that I was listening to exactly. Since September, I've been using iTunes and it helpfully keeps track of how many times I've listened to a song. So here are the tracks that I've listened to more than 20 times since I started using iTunes:

Song Band Times played

Rebellion (Lies) The Arcade Fire 43

Neighborhood #4 The Arcade Fire 39

Huddle Formation The Go! Team 33

Neighborhood #1 The Arcade Fire 30

Here She Comes B. Fleischmann 30

Fond Farewell Elliott Smith 29

Teenage Kicks The Undertones 26

Formed A Band Art Brut 24

Such Great Heights Iron and Wine 24

Fit but you know it The Streets 23

Wonderwall (live) Cat Power 22

The Drinking Song Akira The Don 21

Now, iTunes can be slightly idiosyncratic, and some of the selection (eg. Cat Power, B Fleishman) have to do with their inclusion on playlists I made, but it gets a couple of things right. The albums of the year for me are clearly the Arcade Fire and the Go! Team. Both albums have this amazing energy and unique sound that sounds nothing like anything else, but also clearly draws on the past. However, the list also misses a couple of bands that either arrived too late or too early: RJD2's soundscapes; Neko Case's live album; The Walkmen (solely for their brilliant song "The rat"); TV on the Radio's doo wop punk rock; Maxi Geil's Har Marish fun; Rilo Kiley's post-postal service work; the electronic but earthy work of Lali Puna; MIA, and Annie; the new folk of Joanna Newsome, Sufjan Stevens, and Devendra Banhart; Leslie Feist's solo album and of course, the latest from the Stars, which has grown on me substantially seeing it live.

Looking forward to seeing the Ottawa crew over Christmas, and for the rest of you have a good holiday!

So, my uncle died this last Tuesday night. He was 49. It turned out that he had leukemia since 1996. My family only found out about it a few years ago, and some people never knew at all until the end. Two weeks ago, he had a bone marrow transplant from an anonymous donor in Europe. Initially, he seemed to recover from it fine, but the anti-immune drugs they give you made him susceptible to a bacterial infection, which he couldn't fight off. I took the go train into Hamilton to see him before they turned off the respirator and to drive my aunt's car back to Toronto.

Some of you out there may remember him best as the guy who came to check up on us when we were staying at my grandmother's for that trip here in high school.

The past couple years since I've been living in Toronto Friday nights dinner have been in the company of my grandmother, my aunt and uncle and their two little kids. He could be a bit awkward in some ways and my awkwardness plus his awkwardness often added up to a whole lot of awkwardness. But he was the son who lived only a few blocks away from his mother to make sure that she could get groceries and get the refridgerator fixed, the guy who was the momentum in his social groups, pushing people together. My strongest memory of him for some reason was the couple of occasions when he took Rachel and I to the racetrack when we were quite little. For both my sister and I, this is a very powerful memory, but we're both at a loss to describe why it was so. Maybe it was the feeling of being exposed to a brand new world, a slight glimpse at a slightly seedier side of reality. Maybe it was the feeling of knowing that there was someone else, some one other than our parents who would do this for us, who had that same sense of responsibility for us, but manifested in entirely different ways. I don't know.

The past few days have been a flood of families, funerals and food. My uncle's family had been in the midst of renovation and they had all been staying at my grandmother's while the roof and the walls were put back onto their house. This meant everyone was cooped up in a single house, and with the tradition of sitting shiva, inside. It's times like this that really bring family dysfunctions to the forefront, although everyone has held it together fairly well considering.

I'm not sure how my grandmother's going to handle it. I'm not sure how my aunt and her kids are going to be.

We'll see what the next year brings for them.