ser•en•dip•i•ty: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way
One of the benefits of living in Portland, aside from escaping Allergy Valley, is the great variety of music that is either from or comes through here. I just found out late last week that Andrew Bird is playing at the Crystal Ballroom this upcoming Friday. I’ve just started listening to him not altogether too long ago, but I’ve really been digging it. Apparently, he’s also a classically trained violinist and stuff, and I bet he puts on a hell of a show.
This has been a hell of a year for fantastic albums so far. Hissing Fauna (Of Montreal), Phantom Punch (Sondre Lerche), and Year Zero (NIN) have all been in heavy rotation, along with another gem, The National Anthem of Nowhere by Apostle of Hustle. I stumbled across this mostly on chance. I liked the description, but that doesn’t always translate into liking the music. In fact, not too often, but one has to take some chances to ever expand their horizons.
So I’ve had Apostle of Hustle on the brain a lot lately. And eventually, as with a lot of bands, I get to a point where I’ve listened to the album thirty times, I’ve got new, undiscovered favorite tunes floating to the top of my playlist more and more often, and I stop and wonder, “Who the hell are these guys?”
Turns out it’s a project by the lead guitarist for The Broken Social Scene– whom I’ve only ever heard one song by at this point– then I saw something about a tour in lo my many hyperlinks. And behold! Apostle of Hustle at the Crystal… On Friday! Opening for Andrew Bird!
Serendipity!
May 2nd, 2007
Year Zero, whose ideas, taken part and parcel, aren’t new unto themselves, but the synthesis of a totalitarian fascist society coupled with the overwhelming strength of big pharma– a scenario that could be lifted out of the pages of Wired magazine– create only the first act of the play. Just before the curtain draws, there is the awakening, the phenomena that seems to be driven by The Big Man In The Sky or, perhaps, The Big Aliens In The Sky.
I should probably preface the rest of this by saying that the burden of proof rests on those trying to prove it, and not on the defense; that is to say, if there is a giant, omniscient force in this world, I remain largely skeptical given the scant proof we have for such an idea.
I can’t help but be reminded of the man in the red sweatsuit that would come over and visit my crap apartment, the top floor of a dilapidated home, sometime around the winter of 1997. He was the friend of our own couch squatter– they had met at the Eugene Mission– he was an older man, with probably just over forty years behind him. Oh, and he was Jesus.
I don’t mean that he was Latino; he was a white dude with scraggly hair and a wiry beard who told me, in certain terms, that he was the Son of God. Apparently, he and John the Baptist were staying at the Mission together. He talked at length about an eventual “ascension” sort of event that was to come, and how certain people in various positions of celebrity and power would be “revealed” to be angels. Specifically, I recall him mentioning Bill Clinton and Michael Jordan. Jordan, at least, is a natural fit– the man already flies.
It seems there is just a part of us that needs to believe that something will come along and take care of us, since we can’t possibly be responsible for the unfathomable vastness of our combined existence on this lonely planet. Researchers have discovered a part of the brain that, when stimulated, will evoke a response indicative of a perceived event. Those of a religious bent describe it as a “spiritual event”, while believers in extraterrestrial life describe it as an “abduction”-type event.
From “The Warning”:
“You’ve become a virus
Killing off his host
We been watching you with all of our eyes
And what you seem to value most
…
We have come to intervene
You will change your ways and you will make amends
Or we will wipe this place clean”
The idea of a savior, in the form of an advanced alien race, a man in a red sweatsuit, or Superman, is certainly appealing, but I remain skeptical.
May 2nd, 2007
