We used waste hours just walking around.

In the past few years -- since I started university, I guess -- I've come to realise a few things. That things aren't always black and white -- or conversely, that they can be. That beer really is delicious and should be consumed as often as possible. That I was really f-ing sheltered growing up, and that the suburbs are both good and bad. That the world is really very large, and my life is actually pretty small and inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things. And, yesterday, that bad things really do happen to good people. I could go on, but those are the most important.

I grew up -- and still live -- in one of those little neighbourhoods on the edge of the city, where the houses were all built according to the same five plans and almost everyone is white (seriously, and that holds true even now) and middle/upper-middle class and has some sort of smiling dog. Everyone's parents are still together, and half your friends have a cottage somewhere -- if you don't, you've at least got an RV or a boat or something. Vacations to Disney and every extracurricular you can imagine and the assumption that you'll go to university and get a decent degree (if you're a girl, a MRS degree should also be in the plan.) My childhood was spent riding my bike around quiet streets with my brother and the two neighbour kids who were remotely our age. 25 cent slurpies at Red Rooster and babysitting. There was nothing bad about any of it, unless you count scraped knees. Orderly and idyllic.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that is that yes, I was one of the really sheltered ones. My entire worldview was my neighbourhood, my school, and any place my parents thought might be safe enough for more than five minutes. I had almost no concept of much outside of any of this until high school, when -- like half of you, I guess -- the world started to be too small. Branching out was necessary, spread your wings, whatever the eff else. And that was the same point, too, when I started to realise exactly how large the world was. My normal suburban lifestyle was really just like its houses, probably only going to go a few ways. Odd feeling, coming to that conclusion. (I don't mean to really knock the suburbs, by the way. It's good to grow up that safe. But when you manage to do something like get lost taking the LRT...well, there's probably a problem.)

That's why the Arcade Fire video was my favourite "map", I suppose. Because it's a visual representation of my feelings about the suburbs and growing up in them and how it might make you crazy some days and exactly how small and ordered my life really is. When it zooms out (which we all do, playing around on Google Earth, everything getting further and further), and everything you know gets smaller and less significant...it makes you think, I guess. (And there. An explanation other than just "I love Arcade Fire.")

"Edmonton" -- The Rural Alberta Advantage

Posting this was probably going to be inevitable (I love these guys so much), so I figured I might as well do it sooner rather than later. Thus: a song about Edmonton that -- if you hate this place as much as I do -- might warm the cockles of your heart for it at least a little bit.

From a session at Blackbyrd in 2009:

(In all honesty, I like this one better, but how could I not post the Blackbyrd version on an Edmonton blog? Exactly. I couldn't.)

Anyways, references to/whole songs about Alberta (and how people who live here/aren't here feel about it) were a pretty big aspect of their first record, Hometowns, and they do it in a way that actually makes this province sound kind of interesting. In my last post I mentioned how I sometimes get nostalgic for Edmonton even though I haven't left yet (and I know that still doesn't make much sense.) These guys usually manage to do it. And I'm just throwing it out there since they're coming back soon, but that drummer is insane and their live show is great. So. I hope somebody likes this and this post wasn't in vain.

(...they are, of course, based in Toronto.)

I don't know what I'd call "my" Edmonton, only that it isn't really home. I always think it's funny that you can grow up in a place, or be from there (for the record, I'm not -- we moved from St. John's when I was five) but still not think of it as being home. People make their own homes. Mine isn't here. And when you only live in a place (as opposed to loving it, or however you want to define home), it changes how you experience and inhabit it.

I don't think I can ever quite grasp the concept of Edmonton as a full-fledged "city"; to me, it's more like a collection of places I go and people I see. Whyte Ave, campus, downtown, the west end. Friends and the people I try to avoid. Even if I hate it for the most part, there are places and parts that make it bearable, that I might even love -- Remedy (where I'm at right now, actually, and if you've never had their chai, you're missing out.) The trails that wind through my neighbourhood and make it a little less suburban. Gallagher Hill during Folk Fest. That park behind the Safeway on Whyte, not that you get to know why. Even the mall (though that is definitely a love/hate relationship.) When someone from outside asks me to describe Edmonton, these are always the places that come to mind. Even then, it's less about the places than what I've done there; I always end up telling the stories, not describing the building.

And even though it's not home and I haven't left yet, I get weirdly nostalgic for it sometimes. I'm counting down the days until I finally leave, and there are days when I miss it already, the summer days at the Fringe or skiing in Jasper or everything else that makes this place worth it. Knowing that one day I won't get to experience this makes me miss it, I guess?

This is really disjointed and I'm not entirely sure that I'm properly articulating everything I wanted to say. Tumblr has ruined me. I don't know how to blog anymore unless it's commenting on a lolcat or a picture of Lord CHRISTian Bale. Oh well. Maybe next time?

I ripped off the title of a Woodpigeon song.

Because I'm that creative.