Retro #15: July

July was such a packed month—I’m exhausted but for entirely great reasons.

This month I achieved a really exciting personal milestone—after 20 years of living in Toronto, I finally played a show at the Rex Hotel, the legendary jazz bar on Queen St.

When I moved here for school in 2006 (oof), I was studying jazz and dreamed of playing at the Rex one day. Instead, I ended up playing in indie rock bands and never really played much jazz at all outside of school, and so I assumed this one-time dream would never happen. But the great Friendly Rich asked me to sub in with his Lollipop People at a late-night Rex set last month, and I did, and it was so awesome. I had a great time and I think I was even tricked into playing some actual jazz… I feel very grateful to know so many cool musicians who want me to make art with them!

(Sorry, that’s a screencap from an instagram video, lol)

The World Cup also wrapped up in July and it was such a fun time, both in a host city and in general. Portugal vs Croatia at BMO Field was one of the craziest events Toronto has maybe ever hosted?? That last-minute Croatia goal that was ultimately disallowed … Ronaldo finally scoring in the knockout stages but only on a penalty (lol, lmao) … the huge Portuguese and Croatian diasporas in Toronto … Thousands of people tried to catch a glimpse of Ronaldo at his downtown hotel. Absolute scenes.

On the day of the final I was at the Blue Jays game with my little nephews (ages 6 and 4), which was a delightful and wildly overstimulating experience, but we got home in the middle of the second half and stumbled upon a watch party in the park next to my building, hosted by a “multicultural festival” with various East African food tents. Now that’s the Toronto World Cup energy I was looking for. Most of the group was cheering for Spain, which I’d say worked out pretty well for them.

(There were quite a few more people than you can see in the photo, but we were all in the shade!)

I also read a few books I really liked this month. One of them was The Clarion by Nina Dunic, a beautiful and melancholy piece of literary fiction with some nice music-related details. I loved the writing style—it’s so spare but so full somehow, like each word was absolutely necessary and filled with meaning. It’s one of those books where not a lot of plot happens, but so much develops inside the characters’ heads and lives, and you can really feel the humanity in there. I loved it, highly recommend.

Another was Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling which I mentioned a few months ago after reading his original New Yorker article about this story and learning that I’d read it the day before this book came out, lol. I listened to the audiobook, which Keefe read himself. The book sprawls out into all kinds of history—including my ancestral family history, about the migration of workers from India to East Africa and then Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from the region! I sure wasn’t expecting that—but what felt like digressions eventually tied themselves back to the main idea, which (to me) was that every person in the world is affected by myriad factors that influence how they think and act, and we can’t always know what motivates them. This book was a strange true-crime investigation and historical document and third-person memoir in a way. I will read anything Patrick Radden Keefe writes, and I thought the audiobook was a great way to experience this one.

My bandmate Adam got married this month, too! Here’s a bad, astigmatism-coded photo of the band all dressed up—I know we got better versions of this photo but I don’t have any of them…

Stuff I liked this month

• Why are berries everywhere, in every season? Driscoll’s.
• I got really into reading Lisa Black’s Locard Institute thrillers this month (read them in order). They’re police procedural style and have a lot of interesting detail about forensic detective work, which the author used to do herself.
• Friendly Rich’s new album A Bruised Sunset, with the Iranian trio Chesmak, is a masterpiece.
• In the New Yorker: Did a climber leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?
• If you’re in Leslieville, get a fresh apple fritter here and thank me later. (The sandwiches are also great—we eat them weekly.)
• The new Fiver album Cleaning House is as artistically excellent as I’ve come to expect from them.
• I laughed. (I actually love improv comedy! But when it doesn’t work it really doesn’t work.)