GnR vs. Miles Davis

Hello Blogosphere,

How're things? I know. It's been a while. I've been busy and, when I haven't been busy, I haven't had much to say. Lots of half-baked ideas that never get cooked because the oven seems to be on the fritz.

Anyways, it's a grey Saturday morning and I'm listening to Davis' Kind of Blue for the first time in a year, year and a half. I keep forgetting what a great album it is. I go in spurts with my jazz listening so it was not until last night that I finally put some choice albums on my ipod - Kind of Blue, Nefertiti, Coltrane's Blue Train and My Favourite Things, Mingus Ah Um, Brubeck's Time Out - the greatest hits, as it were. That, and a little more Shostakovich, and I do believe my ipod is ready for tomorrow's run to Sarnia (train trips go better with good music).

The last time I really listened to Kind of Blue, I was in Sarnia. I was hanging out with a friend on his roof-top back patio. There was this watery quality to the light, as if fall had finally sapped most of the sun's strength and all that was left was this pale white disc. We hung out and talked - nothing important - but it was just a cool afternoon. Sometimes the music really does make the scene, I guess, and that's what I'm thinking of right now while Miles does his thing.

But let's get to the really important question. What have I been reading? I know. You're dying to know. Anyways, I've gone for the guilty pleasure. I've tried to be good. I'm still working on the Canadian book project. Heck, I even picked up Augustine's Confessions yesterday. But what has taken up my precious reading time lately is Slash's autobiography.

I am a mostly unrepentant Guns N Roses fan. I love their stuff. Now, I don't get weird about - I have no compulsion to mimic Axl's cornrows or wander around with a bandanna hanging out of my back pocket - I just go through phases where I spend a lot of time listening to Appetite for Destruction or Use Your Illusions. Then I put it away. So, while I tried to resist, a Slash autobiography quickly became part of my reading list.

So far, it's been fun. It's definitely not great literature. It definitely will not get put up on my bookshelf beside Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Jim Harrison's Off to the Side, but that's fine. We all need a little trash now and again. For some, it might be the occasional Harlequin. For others, a Mack Bolan. I'd recommend against the Da Vinci Code as a guilty pleasure (I still feel dirty for having read such a dreadful book) but it's too late for that. For me, it's a ghost written biography of a hard rock guitarist.

Well, I must be off. I'm celebrating New Year's for the first time in a decade and I really don't have a thing to wear. And I'm too old for togas. Besides, it's (probably) not that sort of party.

So long for now.

RG