At the street party the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, came and made a little speech. I know Olivia, I interviewed her 7 years ago for my Masters and I knew her husband a little too and admired him. It was great interviewing her back then. She invited me into her house and it’s an awesome house they had downtown. I think she is an introvert which is what made it weird watching her give this speech because it was like she was pretending to be an extrovert. I was reminded of Pee Wee Herman which I did not think a good thing. I was also reminded of a philosopher I once read who said if you love books don’t go into the business of selling them. You will then be obligated to encourage people to buy things to cover your costs. You will be all about books you don’t even like in order to make business work. You will become distracted in ways that remove you from why you loved books in the first place. I think about that when I teach music business courses, to help people remember playing music and making money from music are different things. Watching Olivia I thought about this dilemma in politics. You might wish to change things but if you are elected you have to consider many other views and needs which are not necessarily why you got involved in the first place. It seems to me more effective not to enter politics. More effective for songwriting not to care if it conforms to ideas of pop structures. I also recently viewed the Paul Reubens doc – it is phenomenal.