I started writing music after high school which began with only me and a guitar. In a folk style, it reflected my walks and the seasons that carve a bit more into my life. Five albums later, written in four different places, the music has evolved and grown along with the music that I surround myself with.
Christmas time involves returning home to Ontario and shipping back and forth between St. Catharines and Toronto to visit the family and familiar friends and the ones I hardly get to see.
Earl Place has been my Toronto home since I left for Montreal. The day before new year's eve, I stayed there at Dani's apartment, which used to be Davy's but who now lives two floors down. Its hard to imagine of how a home lives on after you've breathed along with its walls. Her charm was spread all over the apartment and turned that space into something of her own. There are a few places I've lived in over the years that I wondered what new memories were born inside them and how it wouldn't resemble what I knew then. Its comforting to know that snapshot of my private life and memories will stay only with me and the apartment washes it's own walls for the next occupants tacked-on photos.
After a steady night, I went back up to Dani's couch while everyone was sleeping. Calm and wrapped in the Christmas mood that returns every year from my youth and under the yellow and blue glow of Dani's christmas tree in the corner of the room. "Living Language" became the year's finale.
Between "Living Language" and the year's end, Dani and I spent the day together and we walked the neighbourhood trying to find everything purple for our new years party. Our most fun and natural day of the year was only interrupted by the bitter cold wind on the street blowing in our faces. It took all our energy to fight it off so she told me she'd have talk to me later, which was when we got inside the mall across the street.
We said goodbye in style to the year, even though we missed the countdown by two minutes, with purple colours everywhere. My friends always make fun of me for saying obvious things or talking too much. Thats what friends do and even though I heard it the next day, or the next year, It quickly became one of my favorite new year's in as many years.
As the year's finale, "Living Language" put into perspective the incredible moments of the past four seasons shaped by family, friends and strangers. Albums always touch, but nothing like this year. They play common themes and help me dig deep to teach me something about myself. Like playing semi-tones until you reach the chord, laughing to myself and ecstatic that I've become somebody else or maybe more like myself. Either way, my Living Language evolves.
I decided to contact Brael and Tokyo Bloodworm to tell them the perfect way "Living Language" closed my year and my plan to contact all the artists that have truly touched my life. Along with the friends that I can touch and see, they are my closest friends. I received an incredible reply thanking me for sharing and also to say how much they enjoyed my music and hoping for a copy to listen to on the bus or on a walk. Either way, they told me I made their day - that compliment from them gave me encouragement. With each musician I contacted, the more I realized that I wasn't alone in my dreamy ways. Connections to emotions in time run deep in their music and it has always been the reason for mine.
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