tonight in my dream I fought Mark Kozelek cos he was my favourite musician but he ruined it by abusing a bunch of women and being a creep so I bunched my hands into fists and I punched him in the teeth the dream then cut to the end of the fight which I don't think I won but I was alright but I'm not sure the fight made me feel any better so I put on some rollerblades and found the host and apologized for spoiling dinner and as I rollerbladed through the warm, nighttime streets the dream shifted and I was in a restaurant having something to eat with a band of travelers fleeing something I don't remember the details but I remember we disagreed and I was outvoted and we were making a mistake and there was nothing I could do and I was heavy with a sense of doom and now we were in a barracks and I was sitting alone and a woman sat next to me with some kind of liquor I didn't know it was cold and sweet and it helped me forget the disaster to which I was sure our party was headed so I enjoyed myself that night if this was the end, I would go out right but the dream then skipped several years and I was married to the woman and we were exiled far from here when I awoke from the dream I felt like I had a mission I didn't know what it was, I only knew my emotional condition was of some kind of commitment in the face of defeat like giving up and fighting on, simultaneously so I don't know where the dream is telling me to go or if it's just a sign that I'm living in confusing times

I was just walking along a section of the Black Creek I’ve walked this way before but always stopped a bit further east but this chilly March day I went west to discover that there’s a quiet marshy area over there where the creek hits the river There were the ducks and geese and the red wing blackbirds and some robins and a cardinal and at one point I heard a silly little sound that turned out to be a muskrat crossing the path and I focused on the ways he was like a beaver and ignored the ways he was like a rat And later on I was watching a goose sitting in an imperious goosey way and I thought 'they’re so funny these geese they really think they’re better than us, hey?' and then I noticed some ruffling from underneath her feathers and out popped a ridiculous yellow gosling just waddling away And before I knew it there were eleven more goslings on the loose and my mind was boggling at how the hell they all fit underneath just one goose and I watched these silly things running around and exploring and crashing into each other like the animals in cartoons I used to watch in the morning So I watched them for awhile before I turned to head home cos I hadn’t eaten lunch and I was getting hungry and cold but on the walk back I remembered a show I used to watch with my parents when I was a very little kid called Marty Stouffers Wild America I don’t want to look Marty up because there’s good odds that he’s a bastard briefly on TV with animals in the 80s and now an old conservative but I remember that show was extremely exciting for little me and I was so into it that for awhile I told my parents when I grew up I was gonna be a zookeeper This faded away quickly for a variety of reasons partly just you’re a kid and your interests change with the passing seasons and growing up I eventually realized that zoos are pretty awful and when it comes down to it, with most animals I’m really not that comfortable But you don’t have to be 80s Marty Stouffer to appreciate a goose they’re funny and arrogant and graceful and they can be sweet if you maintain the truce that you keep a safe distance from them and especially their babies unless you’ve got bread in which case, throw it down, don't fuck around, the goose is gonna get fed

War zone, heavy action movie sequences. Seems to be a military tech company maybe fighting with a mercenary group, over who will have the weapons. I don’t really know, and I don’t really have a specific role in the fighting, it’s more like I’m watching it as a kind of action movie. After tons of massive explosions there’s a sequence over some water in which I get shot down and land in a shallow lake. I wade to the shore where enemies are waiting for me around a Humvee of sorts. I’m an older middle aged man, and now I’m dealing directly with a man a bit younger than me, who I know and I had once trusted. He offers me to join their side, but I ask him if I can trust that the weapons will be used for good (or something like that.) He can’t make that guarantee so I say I can’t be a part of it, but he doesn’t kill me, he lets me walk away. But I’m literally walking because I don’t have a car there. I’m in the middle of nowhere. So I walk down a side street and there's a group of old people who beckon me over and now I’m in their kitchen. They are very old, but they are praising me and thanking me and offering me pie. They have at least six different fresh pies for me to choose from. I choose a piece of cherry pie and cinnamon pie. It starts to seem funny to me that after all that war zone stuff, I’m just eating pie with old people. The main version of the dream is actually the second walk through for me, so I already know how it’s going to end. I’m a leader of a major revolutionary cell, we are about to pull off a massive and dangerous mission that has been in the works for a long time. I know that we are going to get caught, because at one point as I am stealing some hardware supplies from a store I remember that they catch me from the video tape from that store. The mission goes ahead and I rally everyone with a speech earlier in the day of the mission, just as a new group of people join us. Now we enter the final phases of prep before the mission, but I’m drawn close to someone who has a central role in the operation. Someone who I know will not survive. At one point, I help her with her last minute prep. She climbs on my shoulders to get something from a high shelf, but it seems to strike her that this is going to be the end. She seems to want to be close to me, so we put on a movie that feels familiar and hold each other. We recognize in this moment that there is a culmination of a deep love, and in the short time before the mission begins, we build a lifetimes worth of a love bond. Eventually the time comes and the mission starts to feel chaotic, perhaps because the cops are onto us. The end splices into a few different alternate endings, one where we successfully pull off the mission but she dies and I am captured. In another, she chooses not to go ahead with the mission, and it fails and most people are caught. I have a vague notion that we will live out our days together but remain stuck in a kind of unsatisfied loop for having betrayed the mission that meant so much to us and was our central bond.

I survived 2020 it’ll say on t-shirts that have become tattered old rags half buried in the dirt as we trudge out through the neighbourhood in 2033 hoping the gangs are occupied elsewhere in what’s left of the city Maybe that’s melodramatic I don’t really know what comin but if this crisis is a mountain we’re a long way from the summit day after inauguration and teamsters in the Bronx are on strike and there’s more cops to break em up then there were for the Capitol riot It’s getting very 1930s out here and everyone I talk to is nervous about the future and doesn’t know what to do to stop the slide into crisis and panic and walk the line between the need to struggle and the need to manage because we’re no use to anyone if our own shits all fucked up but looking out for number one is a big part of the problem so here I am, writing extremely literal songs about how to cope with the feeling that we’re approaching the end of it all So I don’t know what to tell you, it’s 2021 I’ve predicted this for years but now it’s here it’s no fun I don’t know what to tell you, it’s 2021 I know no place to hide and I know no place to run I don’t know what to tell you it’s 2021 Here’s the thing about the virus, when you let it spread it mutates so they’re making vaccines but then they’re gonna have to make updates and because so many places are just letting it go nuts there’s gonna be too many mutations for the vaccines to keep up and people will keep dying, more and more, young and old and a lot of people will get angry and we’ll be told it’s our own fault, why didn’t you just stay home? and the answer is clear: you didn’t give people the money to pay the rent and stay afloat so they worked, they had to, and you knew it and the virus kept spreading and people kept getting sick and as things get worse and people get more desperate they start looking for answers beyond the usual bullshit Cos in this world we get lied to every single day by the press, the politicians, the police, and that’s to say nothing of the endless tidal wave of advertising that only occasionally comes anyway near actually saying anything So I don’t know what to tell you, it’s 2021 I’ve predicted this for years but now it’s here it’s no fun I don’t know what to tell you, it’s 2021 I know no place to hide and I know no place to run I don’t know what to tell you, it’s 2021 Sick that there's no other way sad that I've got bills to pay the system, there's nothing else They pay for you to die today prey, your highs and lowest wage dropping from yourself selling self help It's just the system It's just the system I really want to tell you let's change what's going on the crisis in slow motion keeps speeding on and on come on drop this bullshit cos something must be done cruel optimism pending, I'll act before I'm gone I really cannot tell you, I know what should be done I hope that shit compels you, it's just the same swan song I know that this is ending, I don't know where to start my honesty will fell you, I think we are fargone

My favourite X-Men character was from the team X-Force they were rebels who took a more militant line than Charles Xavier the character I chose was an alien named Shatterstar who felt no human emotions but was dynamite with his two long swords His original creator didn’t give his character a lot of depth but later writers explored the question of his being emotionless and whether it was a defense mechanism installed by an evil master or one he developed on his own to cope with some disaster Until tonight I always thought I just liked the guy for his swords and his cool robotic eye and his literal interpretations of others words but it hit me like a train tonight that I was drawn to the idea of moving though the world without ever having a feeling No pain, no sadness, no worry, no hurt I had been such a happy kid but by my teenage years it was hard and sure enough as I got older every time I was reeling I desperately tried to make myself immune to any kind of feeling It’s a cool trick and I’m sure many of you know it too you can just disconnect and feel grey instead of feeling blue but it’s also backfired on me in several respects and cost me love and friendship and the fullness of human expression But strangely enough in our society these traits are romanticized so many forces pushing us every day to detach our lives and be remote and aloof and unbothered and unaffected by the people around us and the emotions we feel when to them we are connected Anyway an interesting thing happened long after I had stopped reading a new set of writers took over Shatterstar's character and gave him feelings and made him gay and gave him love and let him develop as a person he became an important figure for MCU LGBTQ representation And while I’m not big on empty liberal gestures of inclusivity I think it’s really cool that Shatterstar became so interesting and it turned out his original creator was a total piece of shit who was angry about the changes made to his brilliant creation “He’s not gay” Rob Liefeld protests, “he’s just a really cool fighter with swords” the thing is, Rob, you created this guy when you were literally 24 and at that age maybe it’s enough to just have a guy be great at fighting but we’re adults now and there ought to be something exciting About people taking your creation and building it into something new but you’re upset because they made your macho swordsman gay, aren’t you the world passed you by, reactionary shit no longer flies and people want to read stories about a wide range of people with a wide range of lives When you were 24, I was 9, and I think it kinda says something that three decades later I like these changes but you find them upsetting your character appealed to young boys who couldn’t manage their emotions and now he is a symbol of the possibility of those young boys growing

Turn on City TV on any Tuesday evening, you'll see people doing things that most of us absolutely couldn't. Taking all kinds of dramatic moral stands and acts of rebellion, as if there weren't a hundred disciplinary measures and pressures to stop us from taking real action in our lives. An entire entertainment industry built around the premise that we have to stand up for what we believe, embedded in a society where you cannot do that unless your beliefs are trite, shallow, individualistic, consumptive and utterly unthreatening to the status quo.

Briefly today I wanted to be in another life needless to say lately my own hasn’t been a slice and in a moment of spacey misery this afternoon I imagined I was in Lower Manhattan in an expensive suit it was lightly raining and I was in a cafe I didn’t really care if my clothes got wet because hey I can always buy some more right? Give me something to do with the time I take off from whatever rich ass thing I do The fantasy was sparked by a memory from 2011 when I did a talk at the United Nations not like the main building, I’m no Ban Ki Moon it was in a side complex in a small room but still I felt that day the seduction of power like I was some important person whose opinion really mattered and today as I drifted through a miserable day I thought 'damn what if I’d chosen another way' It’s all ego, I can feel it the appeal is externally driven it's about how I’m seen by others and the self-image that it colours but I know it’s an illusion not even a compelling temptation the loneliness inside of me now would follow me there anyhow So in the midst of this thought stream I opened a cartoon about spending time with a tree to get a trees eye view it was meant to be twee and cute but it put a lump in my neck because I’m trying to be happy I’m trying everything I can and I’d sincerely like to know how a tree stays solid how it builds its roots and remains forever grounded how it sways with the wind and sags with the snow but in the spring and summer without fail all its leaves will grow Why can’t I figure out the formula for that? I’m 38 years old and I’m an intelligent man but nothing that I do gives me the fundamental shape of a beautiful old tree just being in its place

You don’t hear a lot of songs about people going to the dentist and that’s odd because everyone does it and it can cause a lot of tension it’s scary and sometimes painful and you get a guilt trip about flossing and there’s vulnerability in the surrendering of your bodily autonomy I’ve had not one but two dental offices investigated for fraudulent behaviour one guy lost his license to practice but the other is still doing dental procedures it’s the clinic at York Lanes in Toronto so if you happen to be a patient there I suggest finding somewhere else, they’ve got a bad reputation and it’s deserved So confession time, after York lanes I was pretty done with all of it I said to myself 'life is short and I feel fine and I really don’t need this shit' that was in 2011 I remember it was during Occupy Wall Street there was a camp set up in St James Park and I went down though I couldn’t talk because of the freezing And since then I just didn’t go to a dentist some part of me knew it was a bad idea but the anxiety was too intense and if I tell you about my York Lanes root canal you’ll understand what I mean let me see if I can do in one stanza, but if it takes two please bear with me I said I was nervous so they put me under for the procedure I was supposed to breath into a mask and count down as I got sleepier but by 4 I still felt pretty alert and I said so and they panicked and gave me a much higher dose and then I really crashed I honestly thought I was dying, everything went deep black and still and silent I remember trying to wrench myself back into consciousness cos I wasn’t ready to bite it next thing I knew, some time had passed, and I was sitting in the chair and the hygienists were talking among themselves, I hadn’t died, I was still there But they were saying some really weird stuff and to this day I don’t know if it was real one said to the other 'oh my god there’s so much blood, is this normal?' the other replied 'I don’t know I’m not a hygienist I work at the pharmacy down the hall' look, maybe I hallucinated all of this, but man it didn’t make me feel good at all So maybe now you understand why it took me so long to venture back to that scene in fact it took until I was munching on some bread in 2020 and I broke off a piece not of the bread but if my tooth and now I had no choice and right in the middle of the pandemic, man at this news I did not rejoice But listen, I’m home right now, my mouth is frozen, and I’m laying in bed and I’m ok, I didn’t die or hallucinate and I’m not even that upset so this is the story of what a difference a good dentist can make so if you’re a good dentist and you’re listening, thank you for what you do, it’s truly great At the start we chatted a bit and I mentioned being nervous about the virus turns out, he’s a leukemia survivor and his immune system is suppressed right away I’m thinking shit this guys in more danger than me, is he ok? and we talked about it and shared our concerns and I gotta say it was weird to be consoling and reassuring the person who a few minutes later was gonna be shoving needles into my mouth and drilling into my tooth like some deranged tooth slayer but he wasn’t deranged, he was a really thoughtful dude from Ireland who was interested in my book we talked about the residential school system and indigenous reparations while the local anesthetic took He told me he was disappointed about Justin Trudeau and as my mouth froze I said I know what you mean but as I argue in the book these parties are pretty similar and that’s how it’s always been the words didn’t come out very clearly but I could tell he was taking it in while at the same time assessing whether it was time to put a clamp around my tooth and start clearing out my dentin The dental assistant gave me a pair of sunglasses since I was staring at the light they were great big wraparounds, the kind that were really big in the 1990s imagine what kind of absolute asshole I must have looked like in that dentists chair, jaw clamped open, face half frozen, Ken Griffey Jr sunglasses and thinning hair But the dentist kept treating me with respect and dignity, explaining each procedure without condescension even though he knew I couldn’t answer and there was a limit to my comprehension the music on the radio was not good but it was definitely inoffensive and at one point the assistant caught herself tapping two dental instruments together to the rhythm section Don’t get me wrong, none of this was fun and I still had a pretty tight grip on the face mask in my hand and I was sweating profusely, the AC unit was broken but I doubt that was the only factor and I don’t like needles so getting several of them jammed into my mouth is about the last thing I would ever want and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I’m out But that dentist was remarkably kind and human he was from Ireland but he’d lived here for years and I only noticed his accent when his said the word 'tooth' which he pronounced as 'tuth' and it turned out we had a mutual friend and he also teaches at the u of t so we had a lot in common and the whole experience really put me at ease I’m not some corporate shill and these songs aren’t a billboard so no, I’m not going to share the name of the clinic I’m writing about this strange human experience of having another person do work on you that is delicate and finicky and how in those moments of vulnerability the way we are treated matters so much I was so anxious this morning and now all I can think about is that I can’t wait to eat some lunch Just like in every profession there are obviously good dentists and bad ones my sister has worked in a couple of dental offices and she’s definitely seen that entire spectrum but dental work is care work so if you’re a dentist please, be a human being and take good care of the idiot in that chair, no matter how frustrating they are being

Do you people like my singing voice or nah? Cos I’ve been smoking cigars and I think it’s having an effect I mean it might also just be that I’m getting older or maybe I carry too much tension in my neck and my shoulders But I remember covering Always Love by Nada Surf at the Albert with the original Consumer Goods: Ian, Alison, Ken, and Chris Hiebert Chris and I had a falling out a few years later it was about Jian Ghomeshi and I wasn’t wrong but I still wish I could do it over Cos I was harsh and unforgiving and he was smug and defensive it was a bad combination but I don't think he’s a bad guy and I was partly responsible for the escalation and if the same thing happened today I’d take a long puff on a Cuban cigar and say 'fair enough man this stuff is complex and there’s no simple answer' Which is true and not true but you gotta pick your battles and that one wasn’t worth it so if these words ever somehow find you, hey, I’m sorry for being a dick Chris Hiebert Anyway Nada Surf at the Royal Albert Arms in the early 2000s I could hit every note, even the I in 'I’ve been held back by something' And the other day that song came on in the car I thought fuck I fucking love this song and I cranked it up and I started wailing but when but I got to the chorus my throat totally faltered I sounded like when people in movies sing who can’t sing and I was bewildered So is it the cigars? I really don’t know I also teach nine classes a year in big rooms with no microphone and I don’t get to sing with a band very often so maybe I’m just out of practice it’s not the same when you’re at home and the audience is a couple of fat cats I don’t think I’m gonna quit cigars, though I might scale back a bit they’re just such an important ritual, I go out front and I just sit and I think and I write and I smoke and I reflect and maybe gradually destroy my vocal chords you know what, I can just sing in a lower range right? Yeah of course Cos life is about simple pleasures and the simpler the better like that fight with Chris Hiebert I was so full of piss and vinegar but ultimately I should have taken a deep breath and said 'Tyler this ain’t it you had some nice times with the dude, who gives a shit?' It’s not that nothing matters, man it does and Ghomeshi was an asshole but Chris Hiebert probably knows that and just needed to get there on his own and me chewing him out didn’t help in fact it probably made it worse when you’re young and you’ve got opinions man you can be the fucking worst Or at least I could, and I’m sure I still can, yeah I see a few people nodding their heads yeah I know, that's why I smoke this cigars and sit on my porch and reflect on which battles to pick and which ones to let go and how to say ‘man you might want to reconsider this, but hey, it’s up to you ya know’ Anyway ok this has been me checking in about cigars and arguments and my singing not every song I write can be about some poor sweet animal dying sometimes the stakes can be a bit lower, you know? alright I’m heading inside it’s starting to get cold

I’m not morbid or a goth and I don’t think about dying very often but the current situation has certainly made me a bit more conscious of the increasingly real possibility that I could get this fucking virus and if the wrong lemons line up it could have deadly consequences From the outset I wanna say I know this isn’t likely and I’m lucky as fuck compared to a lot of people around me and maybe that’s part of the reason I haven’t really dwelt upon how incredibly strange it would be to drop out of the world while everything else carried on But tonight I was reading a John Le Carré book and a scene in a soviet hospital suddenly got a hook into my consciousness, and earlier that night I’d been reading that doctors in Montreal are having to prioritize which patients to keep alive and which ones to kill And for about five minutes I sat staring at the Le Carré page thinking 'what if I went into the hospital and out I never came? What would happen to my cat? He’s old and needs insulin every day and he can’t just move, and who would take him, and where would he stay?' And thankfully that horrible thought moved quickly into another a more logistical concern about what would happen with all the stuff in my apartment and I looked at these pictures on my wall, which I chose so carefully and pictured someone I’d never met loading up a box or chucking them in the recycling and I thought about all my bills, what would happen to my the athletic subscription? Could I pass it on to someone? there’s still like ten months left in it and the whole thought process was so strange and unreal a life with so many details arranged, all irrelevant without the rat at the centre of the wheel Like what about my shirts and my shoes and my new rice cooker? What about the weird churchy bookmark I’m using as a placeholder in this spy novel set in glasnost Moscow in the 80s? The bookmark was just in there I have no idea from where it came There is so much minutiae, so much detail, so much relief that means nothing to anyone anywhere but means so much to me and then I die, just boom, that’s the end it’s so strange to begin to comprehend What would I do? How would I act? Would I be conscious? What started the whole thought was a Russian woman in the book in hospital she was giving blood, stoic and unmoved, and it was a lazy stereotype but still I wondered would I be able to die quietly and with grace and goodwill Or would I fight it and make life difficult for everyone around me? Would I have to make phone calls to arrange my end of life bureaucracy? Would people visit? I guess not, it’s covid, I’d just die alone in a hospital kinda brutal, but at least no one would see me in a state so miserable I live alone so my ugliest moments are pretty private my dignity would probably prefer to keep it that way right down to the wire Or would it? Would I even care at that point? What goes through your mind when you know you’re about to leave the world forever and you’re running out of time? I don’t know, sure I’ll think about it more as the years pass but I’m marking the moment when I first thought about the strangeness of being alive and then not, having a life and then being gone when I’ve thought about these things before its been someone else I’ve lost Anyway, if I have unfinished music I’d sure like my friends to complete it there's no rush but Gareth should add harmonies and Ryan’s in charge of mixing and save the slides from my lessons, you’re all welcome to use them I have a pretty cool collection of X-Men figurines you can go through and choose 'em And what would the impact of my life have been? Of course I know that there are people I loved and who have loved me but when you really think about dying you trip into some strange questions and they don’t have answers they don’t even have suggestions So on a cold night in January 2021 I’m making music that will live on after my time has come that I hope is some kind of minor contribution to helping a few people push back against the pull of isolation

It’s more than six months in lockdown and generally I’m doing ok but one thing that’s nagging at me more and more every day is how I want to go into a warm pub somewhere in the UK draw a pint and another and order some food and stay As long as I like, comfortable at the corner of a place like the goblin ha where years ago I was bartender it wasn’t a cool job like it is over here more like being a fixed point in people’s day, a familiar face willing to hear Whatever bullshit people wanted to get off their chest sometimes it was light and funny sometimes it had a lotta heft but life was lived and it went on and everyone was a little less alone and for a public bar it felt a little bit like a home And I romanticize this experience now that’s it’s over at the time I wasn’t always happy and I was a bit of a loner sometimes I’d play the piano until the owner told me to cut it out because I was depressing all the customers and sales were going down And I remember this guy who struggled with narcolepsy he would go to the bathroom and sometimes in there he would disappear and we had to go find him and make sure he hadn’t hit his head he wanted to work on the Queen Mary cruise ship and I doubt that ever happened for him But he was always welcome to rest his head on the countertop and I’d set his drink aside until whenever he woke up life was being lived and though I was far from home I found a way to make this place my own I can’t say I was living healthy and it was sustainable but it was part of a process of coming out of my shell and I learned to hate the Tories and the English and Tony Blair and how to iron a shirt and when to head upstairs And the two farmers who came into the bar every night before close and ordered a line of 6 drinks to nurse until the sun rose it probably wasn’t legal but I didn’t ask any questions I was being paid under the table to avoid any extra taxes And I remember a chef throwing a plate at someone’s head but he ducked out of the way so it hit his girlfriend there was a lot of blood and it caused a serious clutter but somehow we became friends and he called me 'seal clubber' I’m not sure there’s any grand lesson in these stories sometimes it’s hard to relate to this stuff now I'm approaching my forties but just for an evening I’d love to pop my head back in and spend a quiet night in the corner of the Goblin

We share so much more than the star we orbit we share the sky and the rivers and the trees in the forest we share so much more than the star we orbit we share love and humour and agony and disappointment and improvement we share so much more than the star we orbit we share the hard fact that someday we will all be morbid we share so much more than the star we orbit we share the knowledge that’s there’s always more to the story than what’s reported We share so much more than the star we orbit some say a deep collective knowledge that in most of us is dormant we share so much more than the star we orbit and what that star shares with us we held too tight and now it’s warming the entire planet as it travels long on its orbit around the star from which the life of every known being is dependent we are so dependent on the star that we orbit it’s one of so many things that we wake up every day and take for granted So when I say we share so much, we who travel in our orbit I mean we’re all the fucking same, tiny creatures on a small planet tiny creatures with tiny lives that feel so very important and they are, otherwise what’s the point of this star we orbit? So instead of finding other words to rhyme with the star we orbit cos I’m down to warrant, torrent informant abhorrent and a glass dish full of sorbet I’ll let you get back to the things you do on the star we orbit goodnight, my friends, sleep well and straight don’t get your back contorted