GTA, Somewhere Off The 400, Day Off

Hotel rooms. I’m more comfortable in them than most people. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life in them and have formulated a ranking system of sorts.

On days like today, when I’m in transit between two cities, it’s always best to remain outside of a city center, such as Toronto, because it’s hard to find bus parking and, in truth, a waste of money when it comes to rooms. Sure, there’s more to do in downtown Toronto, but days off are commonly spent sleeping, laying in the bathtub with the lights out drinking beer, watching films (please let someone around here have the new Ken Burns documentary), and catching up on things like email and the news. Sometimes days off are filled with press, which I’m not a fan of as it tends to detract from the ability to relax. But for the most part they pass pretty quickly. You sort of fall into an unconscious state of mind given how busy things are otherwise.

This hotel is what I call ‘new sheets’. It’s one of those highway mega-court hotels that are brand new, the rooms are brand new, so it’s comfortable and serves the purpose well. A ‘pass out’ hotel would be, for example, The Opus in Montreal. It’s the sort where you tend to spend the day in a bathrobe, eat room service, and stay in bed most of the time. Another type, and probably the most familiar, would be an ‘old faithful’, typically Fairmont’s and the like. They’re the sort that you have a long standing relationship with so you tend to get highly reduced rates for nice rooms because of your continued business and the staff are always prepared when you check in – meaning that your credit card is on file, everything is done, and they just recognize you and hand you a room key. Lastly there are ‘shit kickers’, or hotels that were at one time nice, or at least comfortable, but have, over the years, fallen into disrepair. In smaller towns they’re the norm.

I’m not an ostentatious man, but when it comes to hotels I believe that they represent the last true bastion of customer service. Of course, you get what you pay for, but in a world in which service has massively declined, and people’s pride in their work is at an all time low, it’s an experience to stay at, for example, The George V in Paris. When it comes to hotels of that caliber, nowhere in the world will you find dedication to customer service at such levels.

There used to be a time when you could pull into a gas station and the attendant would wash your windows, check your oil, check your tire pressure, and fill up your car all at the same time (I speak from vast experience). But those days are gone. Considered menial, such occupations are now viewed by many, especially young people, as beneath them, which is rather telling. In a day and age in which so many cling to the belief that they should automatically inherit a decent living, the apathy displayed by those that find themselves doing something that doesn’t reflect that expectation is vastly apparent.

I didn’t learn how to play the guitar until I was 20. At the time we were in a recession and work was extremely hard to come by. Many, myself included, were forced to go on welfare while we hunted for whatever we could find to get by. After three months in college I dropped out because the prospect of having a paycheck was more important than trying to scrounge for cash to remain in school and afford the supplies needed to paint. So it was back to full time work and writing prose on paper towels between gassing up cars.

I’ve been lucky in life, no question about it. I have also worked my ass off and paid a pretty hefty personal price for where I am today, which is sitting in a ‘clean sheets’ waiting for the day to pass before going to Bala tomorrow.

Were all of this to end tomorrow, I would, in truth, be qualified to do absolutely nothing, and that is something that has never been lost on me in all these years – and is the reason I spend up to an hour in some cases signing things for fans after shows and taking pictures with them. Besides an over abundance of self-education, I have no formal education beyond that of high school – three months of art school doesn’t really count. I suppose this is where I say it’s good to be a hot, young girl that can use her wiles to secure a future, which seems to be a trend on the rise in many urban centers. Perhaps, if I hit the gym every day, I might be able to land some lonely cougar with enough wealth to support me because she happened to love Beautiful Midnight nine years ago and was lucky enough to screw some other poor bastard out of his hard earned cash. But as it stands now, after some thirteen years of playing and recording music professionally, I don’t even own a home. When the band broke up, its debt was transferred to me alone, which means that even though everyone else got their equal share of monies over the years which helped accumulate that debt, I was stuck with it and thus forced into a position of having to accept less money to record and live because of the inevitable negative backlash at my label and the unwillingness of many there to properly work my solo efforts.

I guess, when all is said and done, it’s no wonder I spent a year puking and subsiding on Boost drink, apples, and nutrition bars. That and, of course, passing out because of panic attacks. The added pressure of having to care for another person was a huge factor as well, and one that ultimately landed me in the position of having to try and make up lost ground so that I might be able to actually look at finding a place somewhere to put down some roots.

But you see, everything happens for a reason. And no matter where you find yourself, be it pumping gas or the head of some giant company, your integrity is what is of the greatest import. Because once you abandon it, there is no way to reclaim it. Once it is lost, it is lost forever, because inside you will always know that you allowed it to be sacrificed.

It may be a rather antiquated notion, but in this world your integrity is all that you really have. In the end, it is the only part of anything that you accomplished that will be remembered. Because any fool that wants something bad enough, and is willing to get on their knees to get it, can make their dreams come true. But in doing so, they will have to spend the rest of their lives a prisoner to that moment when they allowed themselves to be sacrificed in the name of their ambition.

There is no dishonour in pumping gas for a living, working at a fast food joint, or picking up other people’s garbage. There is only dishonour in it if you allow yourself to believe that it is dishonourable because you would willingly sacrifice your integrity for something deemed better. In this world there is always something ‘better’, there is always ‘more’ to be had. But it is how we go about defining those things that is the real test of ourselves.