Catching Up With (Happiness)

Sometimes you get an hour of total bliss, when everything comes together. You're finished work, you're looking forward to the year's first snowstorm, you have a DVD you're looking forward to watching (episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus") and a book you're enjoying (John Barth's "Once Upon a Time"). As if that wasn't enough, the songs you're working on are -- in your opinion -- the best things you've ever done (tentatively titled "Road to Avondale" and "Little Bit Out") and somebody just positively reviewed your latest CD collaboration with Infant Cycle:

St.Bernard’s four tracks give instead the idea of a mini-movie, as instruments, field recordings and pre-existent voices lead our brain towards the nowhere of significance. At one point, I was so mesmerized by the apparent nonsense of certain repetitions, I couldn’t decide if what I was hearing was too simple to accept a description or just nullifying my thoughts; one’s left even more anguished in the final minutes of the disc. Music that is intense and uninviting at one and the same time but, this notwithstanding, we all know that - aesthetic pleasures or not - if something stimulates a reaction, then it means that it’s good enough.

I am oddly complimented.

An additional "catching up" point: if you like the "Daily Muffy" episodes (or you didn't know they existed), another oldie (from 2003) is getting underway. St. Mark and I try to defeat SARS in Toronto's Chinatown, and then tackle West Nile and Mad Cow as an afterthought.