it's 9:14 pm, on August 03, 2016 - you are the ocean and i am just a lake.

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In Edmonton, the Hip ended up playing the first song from their catalogue I ever fell in love with, something I had said just the day before they'd probably never do. "Scared" isn't their most loved or best known song, and so I didn't ever thing I'd get to see it live, not now. When I first saw them play in grade nine, it was their big hit. At the time of its release, "Scared" was a well-known single; I know that, because it got played on the radio. It was played on the radio to death.

I know that, because that's how I fell for it, listening to the radio and then, listening to the cd on repeat, learning all the words.

In Edmonton, they also played "Wheat Kings". A buzzfeed article cleverly said, "Fiddler's Green was one boy I loved, Wheat Kings was all the rest." As true as that is, it wasn't until I read the possible happily ever after of Emperor Penguin - the same post - that reminded me "the choice to keep going together is love."

In Edmonton, they ended their first set - two encores would follow - with "Ahead by a Century". I was glad, absurdly glad, they didn't end the show with that, because then I'd have been weeping and broken leaving the show. Ahead by a Century was the song, for so long, before other things squeezed in to take their place beside it. But, as I heard it live, maybe the last time, I knew it had never left.

High school was Day for Night and Trouble at the Henhouse and Phantom Power. All those songs, all those lives. Phantom Power came out the same year that I met the first boy who broke my heart, but it wasn't his anthem at the time. Gordie was too obscure, too ambiguous, for the deep ache he left behind. In hindsight, that's perfect, because he was always obscure, never clear, and that's why I fell, and that's why he could break my heart.

By the time Phantom Power came out I was in grade 12; by the time everyone knew the Hip were icons, we were clumsily drinking in the basement of a bar, that first night we really met, and bonding over That Night In Toronto, and never stopped.

I'm pretty sure it was around that time I'd already fallen for the second boy who'd break my heart.

I wouldn't admit it for another six years.

Don't sound so detached, this is you and me. Maybe Emperor Penguin was the first boy I loved, and Wheat Kings all you others.

~

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i want to say it was about kurt cobain, since he was from seattle - November 17, 2016
dark ages - November 09, 2016
- - September 15, 2016
- - September 05, 2016
- - September 01, 2016

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