i don’t know much about ithaca. i’ve lived there for all of august 2006 and it seems in some ways progressive and in many ways sleepy. most indie bands know better than to ignore this not-quite-post-hippie place, and it has a world-class university with a lot of money to bring from the outside what can’t be had locally. but otherwise… Bring Your Own Happiness.

i’m moving there in january, which i’m told is a bleak month in the middle of nowhere upstate new york. i’m also told that people lose their minds due to the isolation just like jack nicholson in the shining, or at least they turn to alcoholism to drown out the boredom.

but i don’t care. i never drink to get wasted, and i never get bored. i always slip in a flask of my own happiness wherever i go. and there are no better reasons in the world for me to move there than the reasons i have. in fact, not only am i looking forward to it, the thought of making ithaca a home puts a grin on my face so wide that it makes my ears tickle. call me an optimist. call me a fool on east hill.

in tune with this delusional elation, CBC Radio 1 Vancouver plied me with sonic heaven today while i walked down Commercial Drive bundled up in a thick fuzzy blanket of unorthodox snow. i had to stop in my tracks, all breathless with anticipation of the quiet, intense warmth of the happiness i am about to nestle into in the centrally isolated city of Ithaca, NY.

clearly this video is set in a small marine town (prob. italian, note a street sign with the word “calle” on it), so it fit both the future nostalgia i feel about vancouver-by-the-ocean as well as the pre-emptive glee i feel about me and mi querida in ithaca-soporifica-on-the-lake.

[UPDATE: as per Music Snobbery‘s interview with the artist, it’s Valencia, Spain, roughly the size of Vancouver, with some clearly bucholic Dundarave- or Steveston- or White Rock-like nooks and crannies, and centrally located twixt Madrid, Barcelona and Eivissa]

in any case, this is my new quiet ithaca anthem.

it’s on Nettwerk, it’s called Quiet Town, and it’s by Josh Rouse. if you’re at all into Nick Drake, Seu Jorge, Elliott Smith, Fredo Viola, The Carrie Birds, or even tangentially Salt/Po’ Girl/The Be Good Tanyas…