further cognitive activity on the topic of A Perfect Fake

this morning i awoke to an unexpected email (WHO KNEW?!?!) from the director (who i am not personally acquainted with) of A Perfect Fake, the documentary i saw a few weeks ago that prompted some serious querying on my part. i am awaiting permission from him to publish the email, but wanted to publish my response in case my stance had seemed unclear or disciminatory to my reader(s) in any way.
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just got permission; here's the initial email, followed by my response.
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hey there
someone sent me your posting on my film A Perfect Fake...
so that was you, asking the 'woman question'? I am sorry if i sounded dismissive. its a complicated question, and its clear i didn't successfully address your concerns.
i am a bit baffled though, as to why you insisted (twice) in your posting on identifying Kathleen Pirrie Adams as a 'lesbian'--in italics yet!
However true this might be, your insistent identification of her sexual orientation seems to be aimed at somehow discrediting what she is saying....as if to say, sure, there's a woman in the film--but she's a lesbian, folks (wink wink)...I fail to see what relevance this has to anything....
Would you point out that someone is black, or Asian, or fat?
On the other hand, you also neglected to mention that in the same response, I also said that 'my producer was a woman'. As far as 'involvement' in making a film goes, you don't get much more 'involved' than a producer...they are the reason the film happens, full stop. They are 'involved' every step of the way. Clearly, this fact didn't suit you.

Anyway, let me just say this: I set out to make a film which had a particular tone-- a tone of non-judgement.

I am not interested in finger pointy indignation, or easy targets. I like work that forces the viewer to think, rather than joining them in fits of unearned moral outrage at how 'appalling' men are. I don't like smug holier than thou films. I don't like films that mock their characters....

this accounts in part, for the 'uncritical' presentation of the characters in my film. there are other things as well, but i suppose that's enough for now.

take care,
Marc de Guerre

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Hi,
This is an unexpected email, and i totally appreciate you taking the time to respond to my posting, (as well as somewhat fascinated at just how far-reaching my tiny blog seems to be.)
I do agree the "woman" question with regards to "A Perfect Fake" must have been a complicated one, and Definitely one that would exceed the time limit of the very short Q and A that Hot Docs was able to provide.
It seems however, that I need to elaborate on a few things that my posting might not have made clear.

I must assure you first off that Kathleen Pirrie Adams was An Utter Merit to the film. Not once in my thoughts has it been my intention to discredit her, and if she too has read my posting and is in doubt about this, please forward this to her, offer her both my sincere apologies for lack of clarity and my contact details if necessary. I am very happy to speak with her myself. In fact, I put the same sincere question out to you and to her that I did at the screening: I really would like to know what she (and the other women involved) thought about the film, off-camera, and the experience of making it.

I do maintain that gender orientation in this instance is of relevance. NOT in a "wink wink" kind of a way, as you intone, but in a Straight-Up "we are addressing issues of sex, and men's sexual relations with "women" (albeit false ones). I feel that heterosexual women DO have attitudes on this topic, and these attitudes are both Relevant and Highly Important. Ms. Adams' comments were spot-on, and intellectually astute, but what was lacking in the film (for me, anyway) were comments by heterosexual women, for whom this issue can be much more contentious. I feel that to ignore both genders' views of this issue; that is, the concerns of those men addicted, (which I felt were very well addressed, to your credit) and the concerns of the people (particularly female) that love/care/are close to them, is Dangerous.

I do also need to point out that I am one humble viewer; my blog is a personal endeavour with a small audience. I am recording my opinions of things I experience, and they are perhaps less researched or objective than a review that the daily Toronto papers or NOW weekly might proffer. I am still trying to negotiate my way through the understanding that a blog is a public platform, and some people reading (including yourself) may not be aware of my personal Antipathy towards discrimination of any sort. This is unfortunate, and hopefully I can make that clear in retrospect with this email.
As with my blog, your film was a personal project, and you have the Utter right to approach it with whatever perspective you may have. But opinions of any sort and medium, when put into a public forum are going to find dissenters.
This is out of your control and (in the case of my blog) mine.
I do feel that your film was non-judgemental, and I appreciate that must have been very difficult to achieve, and commend you on it. It was a difficult film to watch, and I confess that I knew it would be so before walking in. I'm not a moralist, (as further reading of my blog might attest to), nor am I interested in "holier than thou" endeavours to discredit fetishists or those with (how shall we phrase it?) alternative sexual leanings. Not at All.
But I am interested in addressing some of the more ethereal (perhaps traditionally feminine) issues in how the cyber-age is affecting our sexual relations with each other; the perspective in your film seemed unbalanced.
The truth of the matter is that you are male, and bring that to the table as a filmmaker. I am female, and bring that to the table as one of the film's audience members. If I continued to feel that righteous about what was missing in the film, I could go off and make my own film about the same subject. This is not something I am planning. I did, nonetheless, voice my opinion, however subjective, in the forum that I choose to record these things.
It is possible with a more selective screening venue that you could avoid getting reviews such as mine about your work, but would that be as productive? Your film was thought-provoking enough to have elicited a fairly loaded response on my part (as well as others who I spoke with about the film), so I would count that as a successful venture on your part regardless.

With your permission, I would love to post your concerns on my blog, as well as my response; perhaps it would be helpful to get some outside perspective from anyone else who might care to read it...

Cheers, and once again thank you for your email,
stef.

Life before Dread.

found this photo in a shoe box of nostalgia the other day. i had almost forgotten life before Dreads. which, as you can see, seems just as mopey and melancholic as my life DDE (during Dread era).

strangely, the other night i had a dream that all my dreads had broken off at exactly the same place just below the nape of my neck, and i was carrying the dread-dritus around in a pile, looking for a way/person/place to sew them back on.

Life is HELL.

i've decided that life is Hell Hell Hell. and the only respite from this hell on a Friday (the 13th, i might add) is an unexpected encounter with Willow Dawson at the Blessed Blessed Moonbean Café. All Hail dear friends, momentary respite from the chaos, and hot chocolate!

do you know what i Love right now?

of course you don't, that's why you are still reading.
i LOVE the fact that most of my life right now takes place in historical Toronto buildings. Brick, Coach House, Passe Muraille...even my yoga classes are in a historical building, complete with one of those creaky cranky elevator cages. all these Old buildings. i LOVE that. i feel it very apt to be surrounded by wooden doors and fireplaces and William Morris-esque wallpaper and inlaid bookshelves and decrepit stairwells and stain glass windows.

in Toronto, no less!?! who knew?!?!

somehow it makes my recent strayings from dead authors in favour of (shiver) contemporary ones more palatable.

although i do vaguely question the meretricity (sic sic sic) of the "historical" new lamp fixture at the bottom of the George Brown stairwell.

Chekov's Heartache.

yes yes yes yes YES. Dear Reader(s) Get thee hence and see this FANTASTIC play. Factory theatre (Toronto, of course). til the 28th May, i think...
Theatre Smith Gilmour and their co-conspirators are Masters of story-telling. MASTERS, i tell you. and this next chapter in the Chekov cycle is Stupendously enjoyable. they do SO much with nothing. SO much. by nothing i mean the Barest of stages, the most minimal of props, and the most Optimum of talent. and for such lush stories, the script is so bare. not one moment of the audience's time is wasted. there's Nothing extraneous, not one uttered word misplaced, No words that don't further your knowledge of the story,or the characters inside it, or what's to happen... Yay Yay YAY. Four performers play, what, 8, 12, 16 characters? and Real characters, exaggerated in an aesthetic sense, but with Real relations with each other. and all with the mere change of a hat, tying of a scarf, spin off the stage. complete suspension of disbelief, with nary a crutch of theatre trickery or duplicity. MAGIC.
(sigh) i have a weakness for what i see to be these exotic reminiscences of the eastern european world of Bruno Schulz and Kafka. for me there's some edgy dark of torment at the mere mention of Moscow or Poland, and i Love it.

Yay! all hail the modern creative brainchilds of communist suffering!

the perfect rejection letter.

a Great deal of unsolicited submissions i have read are memoirs. many many (sigh...Many!) people see their lives as memorable enough to expound on at great length and send to strangers.

as do i, right here and right now, in fact!. and you poor dear things who have happened upon this blog might well have to linger on these words (gods pray you have high speed!) until your anxious clickity click redirects you to more fruitful and informative webpages.

theoretically, i like this pretension; that so many aspiring writers are So thrilled with their own personal narratives and history, with the little things in life,that they feel it worthy of pen and paper (so to speak) and public consumption.
but still. the task of selecting for publication is an inevitable one. not everyone is gonna make it between the dustcovers.

how Wonderful it would be to be able to come up with the Perfect words to describe a submission as worthy, but not appropriate for publication.

i am hereby making it my new goal to come up with the perfect rejection letter!

this sounds, perhaps, immensely nihilistic and downright rude. but think of it; think of how progressive we would be in communicating with each other if we could make it apparent that all things/people are Important, and Loved, and Significant, whilst at the same time saying that their correct place is "some other publication"?
HOW HOW HOW? i think towards the small compassion debate a few postings down; that compassion involves ferocity, and i feel sometimes that that is true.

perhaps people need a distinct sense of what belongs in the world at large and what belongs in their heads and only in their heads. for the good of the World instead of their Egos.
sigh.

the next consistent submission topic, the one which makes me feel weighty and ponderous, is the people who have lost a loved one. so many people who have lost loved ones turn to writing to attempt to understand their grief, come to terms with their grief, understand how it has affected their lives. if i ever needed any more proof of the Magic that is the craft of writing, it is reading peoples' submissions about their lost partner, parent, or loved one to cancer or myriad other mortal ailments.

the same worry occurs, how to make people realize how Truly Truly important their stories are, whose publication would be the most obvious way of acknowledging that worth.

but this is what worries me, dear reader(s). is this some strange plague? that the only outlet for so many peoples' grief is putting it to paper and sending it to strangers? or, as is fast definitely becoming a plague (at least in my synapses) posting some blog somewhere in cyberspace in the hopes that someone will read and sympathize?

what exactly is the therapeutic aspect of having someone share your grief? there is one, i have NO doubt in my mind, i know for a Fact. and i believe that it is Grossly underestimated in the world, and not condoned or encouraged in the way it should be. but what is it? what does it accomplish, sharing the darker sides of one's psyche with others? and when is it "no longer suitable for publication"?

the inadvertency of googling.

i think i'm going to have to make a concerted effort to quell my latent perversion, and stop peppering my blog with thoughts on erotic sculpture and sex doll documentaries. before people were googling "Jeunet and bicycle" (nostalgic sigh) and arriving at my cyberstep. now people are getting here via "human and humiliation pics" YIKES.

(for the record, and any stray newcomers, you will not find ANY postings here on humans being humiliated. get help and get lost.)

of course, i suppose when you put reeses pieces at your doorstep, you have to expect small brown shivelly aliens to come calling. likewise with all the saucy language.

numbered survey tallys and erotic sculpture.

was working on a survey tally yesterday, thinking how inscrutable numbers are.
the question was: rate your interests from one to five in the following areas: you know, medicine, current events, book reviews, erotic sculpture...
and some poor individual was obviously having a very difficult time with the erotic sculpture option. there was an Assertive circling of 5, crossed out and replaced by a circling of 2, and 4 had obviously been addressed as well and then scribbled over; the rest of the survey was unblemished, but this one question had caused quite the struggle. heheh.

public service announcement and entreaty too...

so, dear reader(s), at long last, after all this humming and ha'ing, i have given notice on my fair apartment. i will finally be leaving the east end for fairer pastures come July. sigh. where? i don't know. how? bless it i don't know either, and somehow i doubt all my books will fit in that crumpled up satchel at the end of my travelling stick that i moved in here with.
but there you have it. times change. if anyone is looking, or knows anyone who is looking, to move for the month of July, click, click, click. i've Geekily put a few pictures up of said place, along with the necessary skinny. it's really a pretty decent abode, and my neighbours are choice, although some warning should be made about the dilapidated state of the actual building. i call it "urban flavour".
but we all knew i'd turn into a little-less-urban-building kind of gal, didn't we?
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wow. that was quick. it's tomorrow, and it's spoken for. by more than one person, even! guess that decides things rather irrevocably, doesn't it?

Gleeful Shiver.

dear friends.
haagen daaz cookie dough dynamo.
need i say more?

hysteria and the perfect fake.

you know, i am Not a feminist, by strict definition. i have better things to rant about (or i would hope i do) than to pull out my tiny soapbox and tell the world how i've been wronged by virtue of my gender.
that said...

1. hysteria.

dear reader(s), i was involved in a multi-media arts show at Buddies last year entitled "Hysteria". Fantastic experience. perhaps a bit more female-centric than i'm used to, which is a limitation i usually find a little worrisome, since i think a balance of estrogen and testosterone is necessary in most endeavours to bring about perspective and quality.
However.
this was the first time i gave the word hysteria a moment of real attention.
now the following is a definition of hysteria from the glorious knowledge bank of Wikipedia (bear with me, here...):

Hysteria is a diagnostic label applied to a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often centered on a body part, most often on an imagined problem with that body part ... People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.
The term originates with the Greek medical term, hysterikos. This referred to a supposed medical condition, peculiar to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus, hystera in Greek. The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that the cause of hysteria was irregular movement of blood from the uterus to the brain.
The same general definition came into widespread use in the late 1800s to describe what is today generally considered to be sexual dissatisfaction. "Treatment" typically consisted of the use of vibrators or water sprays to cause orgasm. By the early 1900s the practice, and usage of the term, had fallen from use, until it was again popularised when the writings of Sigmund Freud became known and influential in Britain and the USA in the 1920s. The Freudian psychoanalytic school of psychology uses its own, somewhat controversial, ways to treat hysteria.

okay.
next.

2. the Perfect Fake.

i'm not sure what it is in me that gets myself into these situations: i often do strange research or have odd conversations under the guise of "stretching the boundaries of my knowledge and/or experience". i will chase after things that disturb me or i find threatening, precisely to find out why i am affected as such. truth be told, there is no time to date that i have significantly changed my attitude towards certain things, and more often than not i end up just feeling nauseated by some of the world's more atrocious leanings — one would think i would leave well enough alone — but alas, i don't.
which brings us to Friday.
a documentary entitled "the perfect fake". i was the one who proposed seeing it, despite caveats from Barker that we would very probably both leave feeling offended, anxious, or just plain Unusual. surprising absolutely noone, i didn't listen.

the documentary, in case it isn't obvious, is about sex dolls and cyber-porn. (yes. sex-dolls and cyber porn.)

the documentary was (Very Cleverly) coupled with "Life-Like", a piece on taxidermy. (yes, Taxidermy. moose heads in basements and stuffed dead house pets.)

characters included:
(in "life-like"): a woman with a recently deceased pet dog that she was determined to have immortalized through an effective freeze drying.

(in "perfect fake") a 40 year old anonymous executive who runs around wearing a wedding ring, whilst he keeps a separate apartment for his 40 odd sex dolls. the number is, of course, ever rising. he fucks each new one as they arrive, and has solitary little orgies with his numerous moppets of debauchery.

a man who has one of these life-like vixens for his partner, takes her on trips and photographs her in parks with the daisies blowing in the distance. "when she doesn't want me to take her photograph," he says, " i can be agressive and take her photograph anyway"
of course, you can, dearheart, of course you can.
(note the use of the pronoun she. not it, but she.)

another man spends his time constructing blow job machines. he describes them as reminiscent of vacuum cleaners. (vacuum cleaners)"lots of people like to fuck vacuum cleaners" he says, just before giving viewers a (clothed) demonstration of how his high-tech machinery works. "it feels like Really having sex" REAL sex, ladies and gentlemen.

i would at this juncture like to pose a question about the "male" as he was presented here, catering to what were repeatedly asserted to be his natural born desires. WHAT ON FUCKING EARTH IS NATURAL ABOUT A HUMAN BEING SHACKING UP WITH A RUBBER DOLL, SPREAD EAGLED IN A SCHOOL KILT, POPPING HER HEAD OFF AND STUFFING HER IN A BAG TO TAKE HER PLACES WITH HIM?

DEAR READER(S), ARE THEY KIDDING?!?!

i would like, for a moment, to refer you once again to the outset of this posting, with the defining tenets of "hysteria": Hysteria is a diagnostic label applied to a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often centered on a body part, most often on an imagined problem with that body part
yes. and is this the same "sexual dissatisfaction" of the 1800's that doctors "treated" women for with vibrators and the like?

have we put so much estrogen in our dairy products that men are taking over the roles once reserved for us?

the filmmaker was present for the q and a afterwards, and explained his impetus for making the documentary was an article he read on some spanish company determined to make a hard core porn film that was/is all CGI. the filmmaker found himself contemplating how it would change the experience of watching porn.
i asked if any women were involved making the film. he seemed baffled by my question. there was, after all, the lesbian sociologist in the commentary part near the beginning. he had no answer to what any women involved thought of the film. and then this dodge: "this film is about men" the ENTIRE film is about the manufacturing of "women", and it is considered to be ONLY about men.

now it is true. this film is largely Not about men who've been rejected by women; it is about men who want nothing to do with women in the first place. "Woman" (as most of us define the term) is no longer the ideal here. and, as one doll creator said, with a teddy bear on his lap during the interview: "once you've created that world for yourself you become resistant to change."

there was, to me, this irreducible irony of watching a bunch of men sit around and discuss themselves, like their relationships to females (or fake ones) could be understandable simply by virtue of an all-male debate. (sorry, and one lesbian, of course.)

now, to attempt another perspective on this, there are probably alot of guys out there who should be shacking up with dolls. many don't know how to communicate, and much importantly don't want to communicate, and i'm sure many assume that their actions as a result have no repercussion on anyone around them, and cause a Great Deal of Harm to those they're involved with .

i would like to propose that many of us aren't taught to live well in this age of toys and excess. what was it... "without God, everything is permitted." well, just 'coz there may not be a "God", Just because everything is permitted, doesn't mean that nothing is sacred. we're so busy going about creating toys to replace what we are lacking, because we no longer even try to define sacred these days, much less search for it.

all hail a new age of sacredness, i propose it in the forms of Respect, Etiquette (tempered and modernized of course) and chivalry. i Swear it. if we were all better behaved in our general daily considerations of each other we might begin to find it easier to find other people sacred again.

since i'm aware that my views are not necessarily those held by my reader(s), someone in the audience did ask the price difference between getting a doll made and getting an animal stuffed. one of the taxidermists was present and when given the microphone said "well, the stuffed animals are cheaper, if that's any help."

if that's any help.

did i say i was taking a hiatus?

i lied.
i ran into an old friend the other day and was, as is my wont, Very excited. i hadn't seen him in ages and he is a dear and wonderful person. unfortunately, my good humour waned somewhat when, in the course of our four minute conversation, he successfully managed to steer the topic away from what his own life at least three times. he asked about my activities and seemed to assume i was content to go on about them self-absorbedly with nary an interest in his own diversions.
in fact, he seemed Hellbent on keeping me at arms length in every way. the vibe was Weird, dear reader(s), and i didn't get it. but it made me feel distant,disappointed, and just plain shunned.
then when he left, i felt guilty and invasive for asking about his life, like i had stumbled on some nasty little secret of a man, which i know for a fact is not true. he's happily partnered, a respectible citizen, engaged in legal pursuits, always was. (heheh, famous last words)
then i wondered for a moment (Conjecture, of course) if he was feeling defensive 'coz we were once involved for a short while and he thought i was lavishing him with inappropriate attentions by showing an interest.
this is not the first time or the first person this has happened with.
so, Just in Case this is the reason...
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY. i am EFFUSIVE. THAT IS MY WAY.
i am effusive with/about MANY people, male and female, and with a willful disregard for their status in my life (be it acquaintance, friend, lover) if i like you, you're Stuck with my Effusiveness. DEAL WITH IT.

and Rest Assured that just because i am effusive does NOT mean i'm imagining you without any pants on.

ACHTUNG! Bloooggg... Suuucckiiinggg.... Mee..... IINNNNNNN.

ladies and gentlemen of the internet, it's an Addiction, let's face it.
i'm taking a few days off to indulge in some significant real life encounters to ensure that i'm still socially acceptable as a functioning human being.
not to mention my Drawing, dear reader(s)! my Drawing!
but soon i will rejoin you (well,your computer screens) with finely tuned thoughts on naked lady blogs and a (hopefully less Venomous than it is now) review of the sex-doll documentary Barker and i saw on Friday night.
sigh.
Too much fun. so safe, so cyber, so Bloggy. i mean, Come on, dear citizens of the internet, it's a SATURDAY NIGHT! WHAT am i DOING?!!?!
forsooth! my pencil and papers beckon. sigh. would that i had some ice cream too.
right.

September Songs and the Glory of the Grotesque.

saw September Songs tonight with my dear mum, and it was quite exciting to me that she loved it as she did. she is an Utter Addict of Good music (classical, predominantly) and this strange little doc was more a series of cabaret-style ad-hoc music videos with the likes of PJ Harvey, Mary Margaret O'Hara, William S. Burroughs, and other diverse and edgy musicians, who modernized bits of his music in a frequently unorthodox fashion, (in a Huge old warehouse in Toronto actually, at lansdowne and dupont back in 1994, now demolished, of course).

thoughtful as a whip, she pointed out that this love of the grotesque,cabaret, burlesque, was a stark overcompensation for the despair and ruin that Germany found itself in after the war. an almost therapeutic swing of the proverbial scales.
i had never considered this, evident though it may be; that there is nothing left to do in the wake of such intense violence, poverty and destruction, but overemphasize the ridiculousness of it all, to live the life of excess; with debauchery, drugs, alcohol, anything to counterbalance the effects of the cultural evisceration.
and then the 50's came along and the scales swung back...abolition, reassessment, restrictions, re-structure.
and then the 60's...questioning those constraints again, flying in the face of them...and so on and so on.

well, whatever to the debauchery and the drugs. that's adolescence to me. these genres, however, are aesthetically captivating. The key to them is a different kind of Largesse, one that doesn't involve self-immolation. the drag, the costumes, the makeup, the exaggerated gestures...perhaps the only ways left to Effect people (who want to Live, that is).
could it be that this is Why this stuff is making its way back into the public eye (or so i would hope?) not, you understand, as a counterbalance to war and ugliness, (not directly, anyhow), but because there is such a Glut (of everything), that the only stimulation one can hope to get is through profound Exaggeration?

there is also, if i may be so bold, a constituent satire to much cabaret (which is, incidentally, the french word for coffee-tray, which lends further credence to my philosophy that coffee houses are the gardens of all cultural genius), grotesque, burlesque...all of which indicate to me a love of Folly which i must confess i share Whole-heartedly.

looking up related topics for kicks, i took a moment to consult my OED on the subject of burlesque, and was (as usual) somewhat surprised: definition of Burlesque: (OED,1980; i know, it's old.) imitating derisively; bombastic, mock-serious, caricaturing or parodying (esp. literary or dramatic work)
far cry (and somewhat richer) from how we define it these days...at least in this city.
and yet, not really that off-base, in some context.

incidentally, i have just found my new favourite website Ever in the Universe. jahsonic.com . be still my blogging heart.

Pornocratie.

i first encountered this painting at a Felicien Rops exhibit in Venice about a thousand years ago. tonight i rediscover it on my cyber-meanderings in a search for thoughts on the Grotesque, and it Delights me once again. yay yay Yay.

"My Pornocratie is complete. This drawing delights me. I would like to show you this beautiful naked girl, clad only in black shoes and gloves in silk, leather and velvet, her hair styled. Wearing a blindfold she walks on a marble stage, guided by a pig with a "golden tail" across a blue sky. Three loves - ancient loves - vanish in tears (...) I did this in four days in a room of blue satin, in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction".
Letter from Rops to H. Liesse, 1879.

followed by some further thought on the piece from www.jahsonic.com

"For some the pig with the golden tail represents the image of luxury and lucre steering the woman, whose only excuse is her blindness; for others, it is the image of man, bestial and stupid, kept in check by the woman. This image of the pig, as well as those of the puppet and the pierrot are shared by many of Rops’ contemporaries.

Pornokrates heralds the advent to the art world of the contemporary woman which Rops glorified. She is characterised by her arrogance, her composure and her ruthlessness."

1879, ladies and gentlemen. 1879.

first off for the evening and Most Excellent.

i'm trying to think what this reminds me of...i'm not very musically literate...but it's kind of like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole with an electronic keyboard trying to record everything she passes as she falls.
or something.
Check this tune out. you won't regret it.

attention: what follows is excessively wordy and very likely pointless. but that's why you come to this blog, isn't it?

so it's been your average couple of days in (on?) this caste of the independent left-leaning world. you know, stress, deadlines, no money, bad business sense, too much email, not enough reading, Definitely not enough drawing, caring badly for myself...

except for ice cream, of course. there has been ice cream.

a few interactions with people that have perhaps been commonplace, but coupled with my Rampantly overactive synapses, have also prompted much philosophizing that i intend to besiege you, dear reader(s) with, now.

in fact, i was so ravaged by thought yesterday that i am transcribing this from jotted notes (it's True! pen and paper (thumpa thumpa) still exist! Bless Them! Bless Them! Bless Them!) scribbled during stolen moments (blush) during my shift at work, standing in the foul cold that is supposed to be springtime in this great city.

so. i guess i started with a question. surprising Absolutely No one, namely, how does one feel Objectively and feel Strongly about something at the same time?

my answer? i don't know that one can.

let's backtrack for a moment.
when one is involved with something one must be Fully involved. Whatever it is. work, love, friendship, family, volunteering, Art.
so okay. here i am, in whatever it is, let's call it Monday (we can all relate to a Monday of some sort or another...so it's a safe generalization) and i'm Involved with it. i've had my orange juice, i've had my tea, (not all at once, of course) and off i go.

now. the problem is that once one has been involved with anything for any length of time (hours, days, months, years...), one gets Comfortable. let's face it, humans are creatures of habit, aren't we? it is an empirical fact that our synapses develop (literally/physically) grooves of well-tuned patterns through which energy travels, which compel us to do things repetitively. this is how we get so good at them. good at a certain kind of work, a certain kind of communication, a certain kind of relationship.

it has been my experience that the Ego, ah yes, the mortal human Ego, is the cursed spawn of satan that ruins all good (and often comfortable) things.
not unlike Faust, Ego comes along and says "yeah, yeah, been there, done that, this is getting Boring...How Can I Have More?!?"
let's face it, ladies and gentlemen, things get boring. there must be some important 18th century french philosopher that had a pithier way of putting it, but i'm convinced that this is the core of all dissent, war, and evil in the world; the human psyche's sudden need, after a certain familiarity has been established, to ask: "what's in it for me? what's in it for me?"
and so the Ego insinuates itself into the nether regions of our future plans and begins to spawn doubt and push at walls.

now pushing at walls, in a fundamental way, is a Good thing. growth, change, yes, yes, how lovely.

but imagine for a moment, dear reader(s), if i may use a Brash and Hippy example, if trees had Egos. (that's right, trees.) what if every time they settled down and started growing roots they decided that the earth wasn't quite right, the temperature was a bit off, the view was shamefully insufficient, and they got up and started wandering around looking for a new place to settle.

dear reader(s), it just isn't rational. and definitely a cause for concern.

i heard a story today about a man who had recently left his partner and child after a long-term committed relationship, and something about the story made me Profoundly melancholic, in a way that, alas, hasn't abated for a few days now.
how odd. i have no partner, no child, and no interest in anyone beyond my navel-gazing self at the moment. not to mention that these stories are a dime a dozen. this must be the third of this sort i've been exposed to in a fortnight.
i mean, it's a hypothetical water cooler story!
(well, the story isn't hypothetical, i don't think, but the water cooler definitely is.)
(i work in a very small office.)
(we're on a budget. )
(if worse comes to worse we drink out of the toilet bowls.)
(ok, just kidding.)

as a person who has contemplated at least 27 different careers, at least that many different cities on this planet to settle in, and about a dozen suitors at some point or another, i'm in no position to make comments about other peoples' sense of doubt or tendencies to stray.
but i do question it. these days i Do.
perhaps people who leave their families, their homelands, their partners, reach a point of philanthropy and serving the world (so to speak) when their sense of mortality and autobiography takes over. perhaps the shared story, the narrative they built in tandem with their surroundings, becomes insufficient....Ego steps in and says "NOT SUFFICIENT! NOT SUFFICIENT! NOT SUFFICIENT!" and thusly do things begin disassembling.

it's only the ego that recognizes compromise.

comfort is a condition where people overlook details, forget about (or willingly ignore) the little things.
and then suddenly all those Little things that you've ignored have made a modest exit for more attentive suitors, and whatever they added up to, namely the proverbial "Big Thing", is gone, is nothing, and so of course you go looking for that Next Big Thing— the new job, the new lover, the new life.

one may have the skills to build from scratch on a search like this, but can one safely build a stable structure on top of ruins?

my vote is No.
Nothing stands if the foundation Sucks.

sigh. yes, dear reader(s) dark and wordy (and very possibly useless) intellectual ponderings on a tuesday evening. i wonder if this is 'coz i haven't had a chance to draw creepily in the past couple of days.

it's a Strange brain in here.

t-shirts, oh how i Love them.

sometimes...when i'm alone...i google myself.

a thought for the self-absorbed who never want to line up at Hot Docs.

SAG (self absorbed git; invariably unattractive and whiney pitched): i bought this ticket so i wouldn't have to line up!
stef: well, you don't have to line up at all. you can go and stand across the street and stare at the line-up if you want, and chuckle to yourself that you have your ticket (just as they do) but aren't standing in line. but when you come back,you have to respect that there is a line-up. and wait 'til it's gone before going in. (pithy logic courtesy of Ron K.)

temporary eclipse of my beloved blog and some conflicting views on balloon art.

ironically, someone this morning commented scathingly (i thought, or perhaps misinterpreted) on my lack of affection for conceptual balloon art in queen west galleries. near as i can tell this crashed my beloved blog ... dear uhclem was kind enough to enlighten me. i think i've fixed the problem. but i'm going to refer my dear reader(s) here to my last response to the conflict which i thought was lucid enough in the end. the link is to the whole posting, as well as all comments. of course. as always, further opinions welcome.

OK.

went to the sheridan illustration show in the distillery tonight. and there was some Astonishing work. but even better, which is so frequently the case, some of the stuff that i didn't see there. Blessed Internet. case in point:


"globalize" by Dave Barnes.

and last but Absolutely NOT least for the evening.

tomorrow i go in to Coach House for my first day doing a little part-time (thumpa thumpa) production work there. Coach House, the land of ancient presses, overstuffed chairs, poetry inscribed in the driveway, and books up to the roof. and yes, for the modernists and Addicts amongst us, some very lovely macintoshes as well.
Dear reader(s), my excitement Cannot be underestimated.
sigh.
WEEEEHOOOOO!
with the luck i've been having of late, i have this recurring image in my head of the Gods consulting their ledgers..." s. lenk, s. lenk... by the Great Guns of Gudrun, we've got it ALL wrong! it's STEPHEN LENK who's meant for such fortuity. stop her! strike her down! quickly! before she gets to the children!

(not my children, by the way. just to be clear, dear reader(s).
they are not even a twinkle in my proverbial eye.)

a delayed response to an earlier comment and a synapse-stimulating link on the nature of Art and non-art.

this posting is in fact a shameless cut'n'paste of a long overdue response to JP's proffering of a Not Art link on an earlier posting. having finally paid the appropriate attentions to said article, i hereby respond in part with a snippit i first discovered in an article by Emily Vey Duke posted on www.goodreads.ca, which i found particulary astute in addressing the issue.

i direct you specifically about 6 paragraphs down in the article, and quote it here as well, for those of you disinclined to the non-sequitur click:

The problem is that students in art schools, especially at the undergraduate level, are taught the Duchampian paradigm 'it's art if you say it is, and saying it's art when it's not artful is itself a radical act.' They're taught to be suspicious of the beautiful and the interesting, and to follow their quirky whims regardless of the relevance they have to anyone else. They're also taught, without ever being explicitly told, that as soon as something is art, it's precious. As a result, art education creates artists who believe that they don't have to try very hard to make something of immeasurable value.

This is no service to the art world. In fact, I think it's why art is suffering such a crisis of irrelevance to the public at large. The work we're producing is just not good enough to catch the eye of the non-art-initiated viewer, let alone to hold her attention for long enough to make her care.

i'm not suggesting that this is THE definition of art. that would be like saying, there is a God, and this is what "he" looks like.
i am asserting, however, that this is an apt description of a problem endemic to much modern art practise.

i would like to temper my response, however, with a tip of the hat to our earlier IRL conversation about this, JP, when we were speaking about Dada, and it's evisceration of all that went before, and how successfully that brought forth a new perspective and a new era in art-making. and art making that i am also a great and loyal admirer of.

i think there is room in the art world (and i mean all arts here: poetry, theatre, music, etc...) for anyone who honestly wants to communicate with others. i think the ideas people wish to keep to themselves (by manifesting them in obscure and unwelcoming ways), should be kept to themselves.

book launch frivolity and thoughts on being audience to private (and Other peoples') things.

we of course had a glorious time at Coach House's book launch last night, determining (ok, i determined) that hereafter it would be more appropriate to frequent these events as the "Brick Posse", with the staid and silent Yohannes heading up (staid and silently) puffing on his cigarette, and the rest of us following up behind with trenchcoats flowing in a wind (manufactured by hidden fans), and holding weighty tomes of literary greatness and looking tough, as poets stop reading and bohemians everywhere step back in awe and let us pass through to get first dibs on the shrimp sauce and deep fried wontons.

of course for the sake of modernity and all sense of equality and protocol, we would have to switch up the staid front-man smoker role, 'xcept the rest of us are only occasional smokers or trying to quit.

anyhow. these readings are interesting. i guess i do use the word "interesting" in it's questionable context. although by NO means do i mean this in a derrogatory sense (NONE. i am a TRUE supporter of the humble reading. TRUE TRUE TRUE.) and tonight's was actually particularly gratifying 'coz there were SO many people there. much much support.

readings in general.
books must be the utmost difficult thing to market on earth. it demands making a public event out of an inherently private habit. every passage i heard sounded fantastic, but i confess that it only harboured a desire for me to read the book so i could see it on paper. so in that sense, of course, it was an immense success! and yet... i don't know. the thing about silent slam a few weeks back that really struck me was this accomodation of art with the inherent social aspect of the event. people were allowed to talk, drink, interact, or read poetry as it was being written.
it's probably just me, but i find it hard to be audience to such a .... quiet act as reading, and still be completely caught up in it, despite white noise and distraction. and always this separation. audience/performer. and yet there must be boundaries, i think, if the intention of any work is to be clear.
maybe.
i don't know.
Tonight the fine people of the Hot Docs documentary festival (welcome to my next sundry job in the world of cultural subsistence) reminded us that although there are some bigwig sponsors involved, they aren't just cutting a cheque, they want to be involved. either by attending the documentary forums, the parties, seeing the films. one could question the definition of "involvement" in this sense, and yet this is more involvement than many Canada Council members can claim once they write their grant cheque. it's a good point.
This same topic of conversation the other night talking about fundraising events, in the hopes of making them more interactive between artists and patrons, instead of just rich people standing around and watching us dance. Events where the patrons themselves dress up, get involved, get crazy in a place that has been made safe for them to get crazy in. (i'm not talking crazy in a soused mother-fucker causing trouble kind of way...YAWN to that shit...i mean in the sense of being other than who they usually find themselves forced to be due to their life choices)
all this seemed very important to me, this need to understand other peoples' need to be Involved. in whatever capacity they are capable of.

we can't all be writers.
we can't all be readers.
in an ideal world (well, in ideal world) we would all be able to do both ad infinitum.
but, of course, as someone said long ago in a poetry class i sat in on, "what would poetry be like if weall could make a living at it?"
play well with all the other children, that's really what this life is all about.

blogging,lunchtime, and strange submissions.

lunch hour. and Rebecca said something about going to my blog. then she mumbled something like "i'm in your blog....i'm eating my lunch" and i said "i didn't blog about you eating lunch!!"
and then i realized she was talking about real life.
eating lunch in real life.
right now. as we were talking.

the other day as i was trying to demonstrate something on another laptop, i grabbed Michael's cellphone and started rubbing it on the desk whilst staring at the screen, thinking it was a mouse.

i've obviously very ill.

moving on, of course... i found out later on today about Gerald Wallace Goode, an elderly gentleman who has been submitting cut up polaroids and strange tidbits of writing to Brick for 20 years. just these strange little prose pieces with sentences like "a paramount rule for us writers is to avoid being a hack and i might have broken that rule by allowing myself to get carried away by a bunch of stones stacked together as they are in that remote section of land". In issue 73 the fair editors gave this gentleman a colour insert with a collection of his strange obscure blurry polaroids of barber shopfronts and distant buildings. the polaroids look like fragments of glass that have been finely polished and washed up by the ocean, with strange remnants of other worlds inside them.

as we opened up Mister Goode's submissions file to rifle through it for a moment Rebecca suddenly exclaimed. "he's gotten a computer! oh my god! have you seen this? he's gotten a computer! his last submission is from a computer!" it seems for the past 19 years his submissions have been from an old manual typewriter, and somehow this very old man has made the leap.

it's at this juncture that i feel the need to quote Brick quoting Rainer Maria Rilke (dear Dear Blessed (thumpa thumpa) Rilke):

"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little appreciated as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them".

Oswald Hall.

the following was written on the back of this gentleman's subscription renewal to Brick:

"you recommend a 10 year subscription.
that would end in 2015
i was born in 1908
there is a statistical possibility that i will reach the age of 207 but the probability is very remote!"

oh. Dear Dear Mister Oswald.

Michael promptly insisted that Yohannes renew the man's subscription for the next 10 years, writing him a note by hand to include with the renewal: (and i'm paraphrasing somewhat in retrospect) "we received your notice and have determined that your statistical probability of survival to the year 2015 will increase significantly with your receiving Brick, so we have extended your subscription for 10 years at no extra cost to you. we hereby INSIST that you live to the age of 207."

this was my Very Favourite Part of the Entire Day.

theater passe dachau.

alright. so i'm going to give all (any) of you privileged reader(s) who happen upon this the skinny on the first illustration for Passe Muraille's season brochures.

i need to preface it with a quick caveat: to anyone who may happen upon this who is a part of Passe Muraille's next season, who is affiliated with Passe Muraille or invested in it in any way... DON'T WORRY. the image you see below this is NOT going to be used to promote the grand ole' place. i post this image as part of this self-involved blogging preoccupation that constitutes my navel-gazing attempts to understand pathological inclinations.
(was that a mouthful?)
so.
we agreed that an overall image would suffice for the May mailing brochure, due to time constraints and the need to be inclusive at this early point...not something specific to the plays of the season perse, but something indicative of ... you know... Passe Muraille, "Theatre Beyond Walls" (their mandate, for the uninitiated) etc. etc.
bandying about ideas, Sue came up with an idea i was IMMENSELY sympathetic to, namely the use of an illustration of the building (which is gloriously old, historic, iconic, and all that) with it's roof laid open and hands pushing out against the walls.
perhaps a bit literal, "theatre beyond walls" but with potential for an excellent and interesting image...and meaning i could draw (thumpa thumpa) hands Hands HANDS! (i like hands)
HANDS!
seems harmless enough, right? one would think, anyhow.
(sigh) behold, dear reader(s):



as Sue most aptly commented before sending me back to the drawing board: sweetheart, it's a little too Auschwitz.  "For you, it’s a light and frothy picture, for the average bear it is quite dark in tone."

SO true! SO weird! my poor performers, looking like they aren't stretching boundaries, but clammering to get out of the gas chambers!

dear reader(s), how does this happen? HOW?!?!

you will be happy to know that we have arrived at a working idea that is significantly more...optimistic in nature.

yes i'm still here and have a great deal more to say.

.... but not right now. so there.

fascinating minutiae.

that's all. "fascinating minutiae".
i mean that pretty much says it all.
(sigh) thanks JP.

springtime and a saturday night.

tonight Barker and i saw a naked man running down the street at bloor and ossington, at around 9pm-ish. we were babbling away and then i said "oh look, there's a naked man across the street" and Barker said "why, so there is!" and then we kept walking.
he did pause for a moment in front of a shoe store and then raced south down ossington, figuring it was closed, i guess, so nothing would be had of window shopping.

a sure and significant sign that spring is in the air.

and some pithy one-liners from the evening that followed...

on regret for past ills:
Rebecca: at what point can we stop blaming age for our mistakes?
Michael: when we're dead. "sorry i smell so bad, but i'm dead." nope. doesn't work. can't blame yourself.

on post modern art:
Rebecca (affecting the air of one of those ridiculous intellectual wankers we all love so much): oh yes the (place incongrous "art" object and ridiculous thematic explanation here) means the state of my soul... and the macaroni is just for decoration"

on tofu:
Michael: you start with the soya bean, you know, a noble enough food. then that gets turned into tofu, which is already a little dodgy, and then you do tofu-urkey, which is just dishonest. i can't eat it on a mere matter of principle. it's just a dishonest food.

stef: if i could just get rid of my ego things would go alot more smoothly for me.
Michael: have you figured out a way to get rid of your ego?
stef: i tried leaving it in your office, but it was too big to fit.

slush-pile deflowering.

i was introduced to Brick's unsolicited submissions pile yesterday...prefaced by the discovery of this quote from Russel Lynes in an earlier issue: "Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."
reading it to Rebecca, her usually demure and mannered self chuckled demonically; "that's so mean ... and wonderful!" she said. Perfect.
we commiserated over the submissions, agreeing that it's so painful to go through. not just because there are alot of bad writers /photographers out there, but because there is so much hope in the submissions pile, and to be the person who has to judge it all and send stuff back unaccepted is a difficult and thankless task.

and yet how does one accomodate all aspiring artists? the 51 year old retiree's memoir about his wife and him moving house, the texan man's haikus about bulldozers, the self-portraits submitted by a profound gentleman in a baseball cap, taken in the reflection of his bathroom mirror...
with every post-it note attached marked "no", or "not appropriate for Brick", i felt my own idealistic self standing at the shooting range, having my own odds and ends subjected to cruel derision and dismissal at the hands of strangers.
more interestingly, was the realization that i have difficulty finding praise for my own work, hence the difficulty finding praise for others'. (sigh) it's shocking and unfortunate, really.

later we all discussed the difference between writing for the love of writing Itself, vs. writing for the purpose of being read. i think the fundamental thing, the responsibility, is when one has decided to submit writing, to open it up to the public for consumption. a responsibility ensues: that of caring for one's audience, potential or otherwise. to respect their time by not sharing impertinent or inappropriate information, for realizing that not every personal drama we live through is relevant or important to others.

writing (indeed all artistic expression) is an act of compassion, where the writer wants to share, whether it beauty, pain, perversions, or unusual experiences in their lives that keep them getting up in the morning. and really, one must consider one's reader. not in a self-conscious "out to please and censored accordingly" kind of way, but more as an editorial tactic for keeping things focused and engaging.

i do know that as a reader i do not like to have my time flagrantly wasted. my nighttable is already sagging with countless books clamouring to get my attention.
it is important to be considerate of one's gifts before presenting them.

branding.(from the gossip flowchart of an email rambling.)

Barker suggested a few days ago that i should brand myself, he said he'd help me with my marketing campaign:
really? i said. as what?
Brand StefLenk.
of course.
Excellent. all lowercase please, with a period at the end.

"steflenk.
only for the most worthy, erudite, and romantically inclined consumer."

i'll go all-caps when i go national so people will still be able to hear me from far away.

form vs. line.

ruminating for a short while over tea on thursday with my friend, neighbour, and photoshop guru Diana, who is the world's answer to translating age-old art concerns into the digital world. she asked me what i thought the difference was between line and form.
as someone whose drawing tends toward the form-ing of things, and mistrusts my own lines always, i didn't know that i had a satisfactory response, but here's what i came up with, and even if the logic is faulty, boy does it sound profound :

form indicates there is already an answer, while line expects that there can't possibly be one.

language doodles by a blogging neophyte.

for those of you who have been regaled by the playful ponderings of my pseudonomical commentator of misspellt and magical re-interpretations of the english language, i direct you now to her fresh born cyber-self-publication mission oatetherteaching.blogspot.com. ah, english...how much FUN you are!

father and son.

and Complete proof that i am offensive and 180 degrees shy of sane.
i really cannot figure out what goes on in the depths of my mind...honest to Gods.
unfortunately, that is half the reason i find it so fascinating, being me. anyhow. i think this little doodle puts me (for today anyhow) into the category of "latent perverts on the internet".
(sigh) oh well, nice to try new things...see our next posting for a return to more organic librarian-ism.

Dionysus' Secret.

safety.

potters wheel.

stray question after an evening of dionysian excess and moments of infathomable dialogue.

if people want to live a lie why do they bother conversing with people who do not?
.......
that was one of those questions fueled by wine and vaguaries that deserves a bit more detail, i suppose.

the evening was spent working at Passe Muraille's annual fundraiser, surrounded by Artists aplenty and "other members of the theatre community" (read: board members and rich sponsors). i see these (latter) faces just once a year for this token event, that sees our humble theatre decked out in glassware, opulent catering, and lots and lots of chatter.

overhearing peoples' critiques (about art and life) makes me wonder about the nature of criticism and the nature of honesty.

about peoples' ability to make brash and assertive statements about what is good, what is bad, what is honest– when their actions (what they do with their lives, the responsibility with which they evaluate their own actions, the compassion they have for others around them and their behaviours) are so diametrically opposed to everything they are saying.

i have trouble understanding how these people can use words like good, bad, openness, honesty, and whatever other adjectives we use to shower praise on both art and other humans, as they sit from their privileged seat as audience member, coward, or passive observer.

this is not a rant against rich people or sponsors. i include myself and my community amongst the people who have difficulty with this. i too am guilty of speaking spontaneously, of wild notions and endless pipedreams about things i want to do, the person i would be in an ideal world.

the most unwieldy challenge of being burdened with ideas is to keep up with onesself and the real world. words carry weight, but they do not supplant actions.

when people speak in the active tense, expecting their verbs to carry the burden of their inaction, those same verbs lose all their significance, and discredit the speaker.

shameless marketing of a creepy song by dear Friend and fellow blogger.

Barker is convinced noone is visiting his blog, and he has just posted the most Awesome little tune, that sounds something like armageddon day at the circus. jukebox of the apocalypse, dear reader(s), visit it. you won't be disappointed. and if you are, well, it could be you have no taste, we don't know who you are and won't hold it against you. :]

random bits of glee and thought in a publicatory environment.

i would just like to say that i am officially ruined for any other internship (or job, for that matter) i may ever find myself in; Brick (Literary Journal, to the uninitiated) is Bloody Fantastic.
and here i find myself again with new snippits, new people... what's the protocol, blogging alumnae? names? no names? the generic and strategic third person for those of you reader(s) who have no idea who i'm talking about?
perhaps i'll just start writing and see...

to start with, the entire office was Rife with the scent of one tiny but ambitious hyacinth plant, which is blooming like some Great Blooming Thing in the window, and made cheerfulness inevitable at the start of the day.

we went to biz depot on a sundry postage mission. when we got there i elected to stay silent about this sudden (and predictable, i confess) desire to purchase all manner and copious amounts of post-it notes. this is real business, i thought; there are more important things at stake than my strange and embarrassing predilections for sticky bright paper.
as we wandered through the aisles, we came, of course, upon them. my heart galumphed for a moment, but i remained strong and walked away empty handed.
then, as we got further away from the danger zone, Rebecca (managing editor Extraordinaire) turned to me and confessed an excessive Love of office supplies that was bordering on addiction. she Too, it seems, had had a moment of reckoning when we were in the post-it notes aisle. when all was told, we revelled like two fellow sufferers finding themselves off the wagon and running amok through the office supplies.

i find things like this very edifying.
(i am, of course, easily pleased.)

later we had a discussion (whilst stuffing envelopes for aforementioned postage) about Humour as the only way to get past taking oneself too seriously. for the first time in ages i found myself thinking once again about Lear's Fool, one of my ALL-TIME favourite characters in Literature, (next to Erasmus' Stultitia in Praise of Folly) .
i Truly believe that humour is the Only way to function properly in a world where no one wants to hear the bare Truth about anything. you say everything you can possibly say, and when someone feels threatened, you pass it off with mirth and mockery.

the unwritten fact, the Glorious wonderful thing, is that if you have spoken honestly, Everyone will know it, even if you laugh it off.

laughing off honesty. heheh. comedy=denial, obviously. back to the opposite of tragedy. how excellent. of course many people cop out of telling the truth when it gets tough with stupid jokes and dismissive comments. Different from Humour. VERY DIFFERENT. that's not what i'm talking about.

everyone should have to read King Lear. sorry, all you anti-Shakespearians out there. but it's true.

what other pithy little remembrances have i got about the day's dialogues....hmm.

i happened upon a Stunning photograph of Carole Corbeil, which we agreed looks like "nostalgia personified"... and i think we all agree that nostalgia is Just Fine, thank you very much. It was really utterly captivating. and very odd, to see such a peaceful photo of someone who has passed away.

my other office cohort and boss, Yohannes, made a comment that the concept "a picture is worth 1000 words" is ridiculous. i agree Wholeheartedly. the problem with pictures/visuals (and probably the reason they are so much more coercive than copy) is that they leave nothing to interpretation. think of the following: a billboard with a photo of some skinny chick on it, and the phrase "some skinny chick" (divorced from the billboard context).
which one is more accomodating to your thoughts?

pictures can only mean 1 thing.
1000 words means... infinity.

and also, you can't airbrush a word.

of course, in addressing arts, one must (must one? yes, i guess one must) address things like those ridiculous balloon installations and whatever other post-modern art pap that should have stayed in idea form on a piece of paper amongst pretentious gits trying to outwit their viewers.
to be fair, the glorious paintings of the Renaissance were nothing short of propaganda, it's true.
but what aesthetically preferable creations to some of the wankery we see gracing gallery walls on Queen West!
you know what it is? those Renaissance paintings were Intensely Human.
balloons on a wall are just party favours.
NOT everything is Art.

a day in the life of my internship.

Michael Redhill called from the road to tell us he just drove by the office of a dermatologist by the name of doctor pus.

evisceration for a new beginning.

conversing with JP today about getting oneself into self-destructive situations/relationships of All sorts, and how much that Sucks.

he pointed out that regret is pointless. destruction (or self-destructive situations) are not necessarily futile and useless. take dada.

one definition of Dada or Dadaism [French, from dada, child's word for a horse]: Nihilistic movement in the arts that flourished chiefly in France, Switzerland, and Germany from about 1916 to about 1920 [and later -ed.] and that was based on the principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism, and the rejection of laws of beauty and social organization.

in order to come up with a whole new definition of art (of oneself), one has to destroy everything left standing of the old art (self).

this bears more thought, but i like it.
it is definitely possible to reach breaking points where one Finally Finally stops making the same mistakes. one breaks once too often, heals, and then Actually moves on.

Shakespeare did get one thing right.

i was talking with two close friends, what, a week ago, perhaps? about the nature of tragedy. the works of shakespeare became implicit, since he kind of coined the term.

what is the opposite of tragedy?
denial.
not comedy?
comedy only means you get out alive.

ladies and gentlemen of bohemia...

tonight i was at a Ruddy Fantastic event, an i must comment on it for a moment or five.

the silent slam,curated by Sandra Alland and hosted by a new events company called Meniscus was unprecedented (to me, anyhow) in the world of "nights of poetry". gone were the lung cancer candidates in berets pondering from atop barstools about the states of their livers; this was a Truly modern and literary feast. yay!

but before i tell you all about it, you must let me back up for a short moment. (you must. this is my blog after all, the ultimate in late-night tv-less navel-gazing ventures.)
this posting wouldn't be steflenk worthy without a slight meandering into some sort of nostalgia. so.
it was the nomadic era, probably about 10 years ago (holy shit, i can actually say that something happened 10 years ago that i remember!) that i was wandering around in Frankfurt, Germany, looking for something cheap and entertaining to do (yes, yes, who wasn't wandering the streets of Germany 10 years ago looking for cheap entertainment?) when i saw some tattered paper sign up for the nuyorican poets, putting on a slam at some embassy or other. in english of course. i think it was the word english that pulled me over, and the word slam that baffled me just enough to head out to it. definitely, it was not a pre-meditated outing, nor was it a likely one, in a land of german-speaking-ness and backpacking poverty.
anyhow. the evening was a bunch of Awesome writers citing verse impromptu, written on the spot, singing it, moving it, hip hopping it..., and a whole lot of confused but accomodating krauts in the audience (i can say that, i'm a kraut myself, although i think i've probably misspelt the word, for some reason i find that rather funny)
the night radically shifted my view on "poetry" proper. there was stream of consciousness writing, there was formal rhyme and rhythm, but it was all kind of shaken up and real, and above all things, fathomable. in layman's language!
at the time i remember making a connection between poetry and musical lyrics for the first time, and realizing that our equivalent to the romantics of centuries past lies frequently in the lyrics of musicians, and we are in fact surrounded by the stuff.
but even after that i still remained unmoved by those tiny books of verse hovering in the peripheries of indie bookshops everywhere. (furious blush) i know. it's wrong. but, truth be told, there is some poetry i read that shakes my universe, and alot that i read that leaves me as tepid and indifferent as cold tea.
a.a milne is, to me, Poet Extraordinaire. as are lewis carroll and e.e cummings. stephen crane's poems from the "dark riders" probably tops almost all novels i proclaim to be life changing favourites. but some of that other "my love is like a great big loon from rural saskatchewan" stuff has left a sour taste in my mouth for making the forray into other lesser-known writers of verse. usually i stick with novels, to be frank, they are straight-up. perhaps i haven't been up for the challenge of poetry. who knows.

anyhow.

the silent slam.

two laptops were set up in a boxing ring type style in the Drake's basement, with projectors above them, connected to the computers. poets went two at a time, facing off, with a view of their own screen projected onto the opposing wall, behind the other poet. they were given two words (in round 1), one word and one painting (one of my paintings, be still my self-absorbed and eager-to-be-involved-heart) in round 2, a word and a photograph (one of three by Aviva Armour-Ostoff on auction) in round 3, and in the last round they were made to write on the subject of DJ murr's spinning, which was going on for the duration of the event.

my experience with poetry (traditionally, anyhow) is that of this immensely private undertaking, and So subjective, and often so loaded with intellectual tripe and "if you don't get this you're obviously daft" pomposity, that the mere notion of sitting down in a crowded room full of people to address it face-on makes me apprehensive and doubtful. but the way silent slam was set up, people milled about, drank, chatted, bid on auction pieces, and also watched the screens and poets as they typed away. this informal set-up took pressure off the writers to "perform", and pressures off the audience, who were still taking part in this immensely personal experience, but one which accomodated their need to exchange pleasantries with acquaintances, chat with friends, and, yes, dear bohemians, drink beer. and the work was Fantastic. FANTASTIC. i asked to be put on the list of interested buyers when they put together a chapbook of the event, not to mention finding myself seduced into coveting yet more books (of the poets involved).

watching the poets type also brought on this odd realization of the relationships many modern writers have come to have with computers: some poets were preoccupied with font type, size, placement, some pounded out stream-of-consciousness impromptu diatribes, some sat for 5 of the 10 minute time limits pondering and then carefully typed their well-chosen words in. all of them were completely absorbed in the task at hand.

sigh. HOW AWESOME for poetry. this format might be a new way to take away the stigma, the "oh-for-the-love-of-allah's -elbows-please-don't-start-on-the-poetry" feeling one gets sometimes when the P word comes up at nights out, when one is behind on one's reading, and worried about sounding clever.
which, i must confess, i sometimes do. sometimes. it's the mark of a simpleton. but it's a Glorious Glorious life.

FOR THE LOVE OF CHRISTS' TINY TOES.

ENOUGH with the snow already. didn't anyone get the memo? springtime, powers that be. SPRINGTIME. gah.

for Barker's old, dim eyeballs.

white background. happy now? :]

things about boys you were never afraid to ask about, but still didn't get a straight answer.

i was poking around in the graphic novels at Pages today, on this Glorious Glorious spring day, and happened across an older work by Chester Brown, entitled "The Playboy".
do i need another book to add to my to-read list? of course not. so i put aside "the Life of Pi" (Bloody Fantastic, thoughts reserved 'til i finish it), purchased "The Playboy" (i know), and finished that book on the spot.
okay, half an hour later, over peppermint tea at the jet fuel.

let me take a moment, dear reader(s), to tell you about it.

actually, bear with me for a moment of digression, before i get to the juicy stuff this post-heading promises.

now, a while back i read "Blankets" by Craig Thompson, a weighty tome of a graphic novel about a guy growing up in a small town under religious fundamentalist parents. and what it was like to be in love with a girl with that righteous shadow hanging over him. and how to feel okay about wanting to be intimate, wanting to be sexual, hell, wanting to be in Love, and to bring sex into the equation without being ashamed about it, or considering sexual propositions to be twisted, perverse or just plain Evil.

later on, about a year and a half ago, i was very fortunate to be in a car ride with two male acquaintances, one of whom was (no doubt still is) an eccentric sort. out of nowhere he started up this Immensely candid discussion about sex, and what it was like to be a male teenager. He talked about reaching puberty and having Utterly No Concept that a girl might even Want to have sex with him at the time, since human coitus is really, let's face it, a bizarre kind of physical union. like, who thought of it? the mechanics of sex. stick A into B = mutual bliss and satisfaction. who knew?!?!
and the idea that a girl might be into any of this action was Completely Unheard Of (in the words of this guy, as i sat in the back of the car listening) , and how disempowering that doubt was to him at the time.
of course the guy who started the conversation made the other guy almost Immediately and IMMENSELY uncomfortable, and it Certainly can't have been helpful to have a girl sitting in the back like a secret agent taking notes, so the conversation didn't last long.

This, dear reader(s), was one of the first times, yes a mere year and a half ago, at the age of 29, that i was given even a Clue that guys (well, some guys) actually worried about this kind of stuff. strange, disconcerting, but True. honesty of this sort is so Unbelievably hard to come by, that the conversation still resounds in my brain to this day.

anyhow, back to "Blankets". Craig Thompson is straight up, unassuming, and Above all, Not so Bloody Fucking macho. forgive me, dear males who may read this, i am unflinchingly dedicated to your gender, but macho is like this strange seething virus that no doubt Our Very Mothers are guilty of propagating. it makes some guys incapable of admitting vulnerability, doubt, or any kind of dissatisfaction with themselves or their world. and it has made some communication, in times now gone, hours ago, years ago, lifetimes ago, well nigh impossible.
now i DON'T think this is the sole responsibility of the male part of our species. in fact, we girls are just as guilty for not being sensitive to the fact that guys might share our own anxiety or self-consciousness.
not to mention the added burden guys have of years of conditioning to keep that stuff under their belts (so to speak).

anyhow.
back to The Playboy. The Playboy is about Chester Brown's relationship to porn, from the age of 15 and onwards. it's short, it's pithy, and it's Completely and Utterly Honest. He revisits himself as a teenager, how he biked across town 'coz he was too embarrassed to buy a playboy where anyone might see him, how he got addicted to them, how he started preferring masturbating to real sex, and was subsequently forced to imagine playboy chickeys when he was in bed with his real girlfriends... if he was going to keep things, how shall we say, Perpendicular.

and, may i say, as a girl who's been known to be quite fond of Perpendicular... WHO KNEW. i mean read the above again. WHO KNEW?!? no one tells us, dear gentlemen, that somehow you've been forced into such a corner with your sexuality, and Definitely no one tells us that it might affect our very relationships with you all, years? months? hours? lifetimes? later.

it seems to me that guys have been forced to downplay their sexuality pretty much across the board, and it becomes this covert, pervasive and troubling secret.
as a result of this imposed modesty, may i say, many girls also end up not understanding how it all works themselves.

the popular conclusions seem to be:
a) that somehow male sexuality is evil and agressive and to be avoided at all costs, in favour of some eunuch librarian true-love charming prince (uh, not so much), or
b), go for the tiger, ladies, but if things don't go right in the sack it's probably your fault.

in fact, there are Many things that some of us girls (read: me) had to find out by proxy, and what a drag that was to our (my) delicate sense of self-esteem.
this idea that an excess of alcohol can be debilitating in the sack? pshaw. i was a 21 year old WRECK (that's right) before that was cleared up and catalogued in the "things not to worry about" category of getting laid.
that the solo porn experience can be preferable for obliterating the confusion and anxiety of another person's presence? didn't know that either. and let me tell you. the mystery was MISERY.

this stuff and more may be old (so to speak) hat to me now, but i'll Never forget the value of finding this stuff out, and what a relief it was to be, even just a little, off the proverbial hook.

so. thank you gay male (and progressive male) confidantes, thank you Dan Savage, and, as i've just discovered today, thank you Chester Brown.

NO thank you to whatever force out there (including us intimidating females?) that has kept guys storing this stuff in the bottoms of their drawers, under their bed, in the inaccessible areas of their own conjecture.

in conclusion, this is my announcement to the world, blessed humble blogger that i may be.

boys, there's MORE THAN ONE OF YOU not filling us in on the machinations of your unmentionables. and it's capable of making our sex lives and self esteem HELL.

girls, there's MORE THAN ONE OF YOU not getting the skinny (or somehow discouraging said skinny) from being discussed, and rendering both parties uncomfortable and anxiously worried about their own sexuality.

as i ponder all of this i can't even imagine how many questions about girls remain unanswered for guys, whether we be teenagers or twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings.
(chuckle) or maybe no one is confused and curious except for me, sitting here with Far too many books and too much solitary time on a sunday night to think about it all.

and, just to top things off, my downstairs neighbours have just started having sex. which, if you have ever seen either of my downstairs neighbours, is the Greatest mystery of all. (shiver).
although their timing is impeccable.

who needs formaldehyde when you've got wendy's?

this found on someone else's blog... just a few gratuitous clicks in that top right corner every so often, to see who else besides me sees fit to pollute the literary cyberstream...

and i quote:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A diner at a Wendy's fast food restaurant in San Jose, California, found a human finger in a bowl of chili prepared by the chain, local officials said on Wednesday.

"This individual apparently did take a spoonful, did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know, spit it out and recognized it," said Ben Gale, director of the department of environmental health for Santa Clara County. "Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited."

Local officials launched an investigation after the incident on Tuesday night and the medical examiner determined on Wednesday that the object was a human finger.

Officials are trying to determine if the finger came in the raw materials Wendy's used to prepare the chili, Gale said.

Wendy's International Inc. corporate office did not immediately return a call for comment. Wendy's is the third-largest hamburger chain.

the critical mass of synaptic critique.

i mean, i really just wanted to write that heading, which i freely admit is Utterly over the top. which should surprise absolutely no one.

saw "tunnel" on thursday and "american standard" on friday, and i have to say that, as with books, there is a point when you've seen a fair amount of theatre when you begin to understand it beyond a general critique of its quality. that is, i'm finally starting to understand more about what I personally like in theatre, beyond evaluating its quality as a piece of work. which is really cool. i guess this is what curators and art directors access, when determining bodies of work to be shown congruently.
there's a whole lot of good work out there (and a whole lot of crap) but the significance in talking about it with anyone is being able to differentiate between your personal evaluation and an objective one. this is of course the age of GLUT, in all arenas, information, capitalist excess, and also, dare i say it, good ideas. good curating is like good management of information. so it doesn't get lost in irrelevance or on people whose tastes lie elsewhere.

can i just say i'm a huge fan of physical theatre. HUGE. in this case i'm talking about the bluemouth show. sweet jesus it was pretty incredible. and the...how do i not give it away...picture frame with mylar? YOW.

tho' i'm also a fan of storytelling. both of the above were too abstract for me in places. (shrug) i like stories. i'm pretty linear (which is completely bizarre, given my digressive nature, but true, nonetheless) i think it's 'coz i don't process info as well aurally as i do when i read it. so i'm a bit dim when things jump all over the map. i would like to read "american standard" on paper. i was thinking that as i was watching it, and then realized, in a small fit of melancholy, how much great theatre must get lost after the production is over precisely 'coz it's too small a venture to ever get published.

no wonder theatre schools are addicted to studying classical theatre. that's the only significant pile of paper they have to work from. i also wonder if the addiction to studying classical theatre isn't a way to keep even the creative sorts in tow. Let's face it, shakespeare isn't as incendiary as either suicide site or american standard is. not in this day and age. but how do you teach people to revolt? the first thing on most agendas is to teach people to appreciate. which, when i read it like that, seems a noble undertaking...

for an objective moment, may i say the acting in both of the above shows was Phenomenal, as were the production values, and i have reached the end of this week with a whole lot of that all too familiar awe of what people manage to put together with Love and a shoe-string budget. awesome.

and the illustrator chosen to create images for Theatre Passe Muraille's 05-06 brochures...

(dabbing corner of eye with hanky)
i'd like to thank the academy, my mum, my cousin...

shortcut to revisit my astonishing story of bike recovery.

and this to Mike, the Awesome courier who fixed my flat and trued my wheel and reaffirmed my faith in human nature this morning, after the second busted inner tube in less than a week (at 9am in the morning, no less) had me feeling despondent and all wintered-out. this is the story you are looking for, to send out to all bikeys who've ever had a bike stolen. rest assured there is some justice in the world.

i'm a bloody hacking genius.

ok. almost a genius. when i can get rid of the title atop the title i'll be a full-on self-learned einstein of the blogging world. ha. i mean really. who needs television when you've got html?

yes it's a new background colour.

and as primitive a hacker as i am, i am now determined to figure out how to put my own picture where the header bar is.
but i'm not so determined that i won't post this in the hope that some clever soul can help me out.

well, some people have tv, i have futile aesthetic changes to blog templates.

you have to admit it's better than crack.

should i take a moment to discuss my strange predilections?

who knows. but seeing as there is a great deal of what might be considered dark matter in the last couple of weeks, i'm feeling a bit concerned. gods know i've probably got some government file out there somewhere, what with outstanding student loans, questionable credit card purchases, and countless library renewals from the "...for dummies" series. and, of course, tonight, as usual, it's late and i'm feeling ponderous.
or preponderous, as the case may be.

i'm not quite sure where this interest in anatomy comes from. to make myself sound deep, i'm going to say it's because my father was a doctor, and the preoccupation became marked around the time i found out he was dead. maybe my attempts to make peace with him are now relegated to studying strange organs floating in fermaldehyde (that's Definitely spelt wrong).
heheh. i don't really believe that.
but this half nausea/half fascination is a real mystery. a funny one; the former finds the nerve endings in my hands going too numb to draw, and the latter keeps me going back with sketch book in hand.
Willow and i were marvelling the other day about this process. taking dead things and putting them in jars to look at them.
we are probably the only machines on this planet that are this curious about ourselves.
Barker (i think) told me that he read somewhere that porn was invented by Eadweard (sic) Muybridge this need to record the things we can't see while we are participating in them. the same too of all facets of the human being. i always remember johnny's armageddon speech in the film naked (mike leigh), when he's going on about how quiet our functions are. i mean the internal ones. aside from the occasional gurgle, belch, or sneeze, we hear nothing. Amazing.

one disgruntled canadian.

i mean, do we really need any more snow? Really?
obviously no one got the memo. grr.

nostalgia...(the series)

it's only with a slight ironic chuckle that i notice my computer's default inclination to add a number after i type the word nostalgia in the title section. this is not the first time i've used that heading.
well, SO BE IT! sitting around with Barker and ice cream on a sunday night, he pointed out that the word nostalgia is in fact not a positive term, etymologically speaking. i, of course, did not believe him.
so i pulled out the old oed and stuck my nose in it, to come out with this:
nostalgia n 1. severe homesickness. 2. sorrowful longing for conditions of a past age; regretful or wistful memory of earlier time.
hmm. it's a strange definition to me. honest to gods, very few things give me greater joy than nostalgia.

of course i also draw dead babies.

baby making machines.

now THIS, dear reader(s), is what the female human body is all about. if something starts growing in our ovaries, (even if it isn't a child), all our body thinks is "living creature, give it defenses"
this is a drawing of an ovarian cyst.
with teeth and hair.
and they are far more common than anyone would like to think.
these cysts, that is, not drawings of them. :)

let's start with some dead things, shall we?

the funniest thing is when you've gotten away with breaking a rule for so long that you are a regular. the guy who closes up the anatomy labs every night now recognizes willow and i, and i think i would be almost insulted if we were asked to leave, despite the "personnel only" sign on the door. heheh.

may i just say how AWESOME it is to work with a quill pen? is that what they are even called? christ's toes, i'll get spontaneous in my manner of drawing yet. YAHOO!

patient and loyal reader(s)!

SIIIGHHH. AT LAST.
it's been at least a couple of weeks since i have been able to pay due attention to this beloved blog. gah. another niggling reminder of how much work still remains to properly balance dire and personal ruminative activity with the Unexpected and not Altogether pleasant chaos that sometimes is my Other life. in this instance we are speaking of school, dear reader(s). school. which i am Actually Done with as of next tuesday, but really, as of thursday the heat will be off. glory glory be.

in the midst of my pile of school projects, which i unfortunately take as seriously as environmentalism, brushing thrice daily and the atom bomb, i suddenly realized i was growing hesitant to blog, thinking how futile and useless posting incomplete thoughts and vague ideas is.
'til yesterday, somewhere in hour 17 of my 22 hour day, when i realized that i had just inadvertently applied to this little addiction the same damaging expectations i have been guilty of imposing on writing, relationships, and all other manner of sacred activity in the past.
which is, in short, Rubbish.
so.
tonight's meanderings are for those of you tenacious creatures still reading; friends, compadres, near strangers, and the occasional pervert. the management thanks you for your forbearance, and we now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

you've GOT to be kidding.

click it. just click it.

ok, it's not that this blog is some staggering work of genius...

but somehow it's strangely gratifying. this little guy's dad just started a blog for him, and he's only a week old. it's like the modern day time-capsule or something.
it will probably end up to be no end of repetitive baby pictures, records of drool, worrisome diaper contents, and non-stop pablum reports, but ... who knows? who knows what time will contribute to the mix.
strange and captivating era we live in, non?

FINALLY.

i decided the other day that i was going to start keeping a record of time. literally. a list of how long it takes for me to do things.
this could be common practise for the larger part of the civilized world, but alas, not so for me.
i'm such a parsimonious wench when it comes to dealing with money, but not so with time, it seems. It's not a consideration when i'm doing a project i care about. or even ones i don't, sometimes. i start something, and i go go go go go, and it's a bit Nuts, really.
anyhow, rarely can i give myself an accurate sense of just how many hours i wiled away on any one thing, until nights like this, at work After spending nine hours straight on ONE project with nary a cup of tea in the interim.
it can't be healthy. one loses perspective with this way of working.
as with life, now that i think about it.
anyhow, the interesting thing about breaking time down is actually having a numeric value to that ethereal notion that there is always more time, or that there is never enough.
both are true.
to think before one spends it.
time that is.
there's the rub.

love and money (and bartending, i guess)

i'm in a business program. there is no denying that. but what Amazes me is how deprecatory publishing sorts can be about the very creators of material they are seeking to reproduce and disseminate. all year long, little scathing remarks about how self-centred authors are, how Mad. and very few observations about how these traits are quite possibly the very survival mechanisms that actually keep writers going, when business types are so willing to walk if the numbers are wrong.

the statistic is somewhere around 3% of authors that actually make a living at this trade.
there's a number for you.
that's a whole lot of bartenders.
or a Whole lot of people working Really Really hard for the Love of their work.

ah, once again, love or money. is that really the choice?
to make money you make compromises, so too with love. are they really any different?
of Course they are.
a friend pointed out to me a few weeks ago that money and love are not related, and i was pretty horrified to realize i had trouble comprehending the statement. something, probably, to do with how closely money, or lack thereof, was associated with care when i was a kid.
no wonder it's a hard choice to make.
humans are animals above all else. we learn the terms of survival, and that comes first. the Biggest challenge i suppose, is to actually Define survival.

goodreads.ca

this rather delayed posting is a heads up to Timothy Comeau's website www.goodreads.ca. It fortuitously came to my attention as a result of the Suicide Site debate below. he has selected bits from the debate going on at this site to add to an already comprehensive collection of interesting articles and pontifications of his own. check it out.

not that i'm addicted to drawing dead babies or anything...

ridiculous behaviour.

14 km on my bicycle today. in this INSANE cold. part of me feels smug, a much bigger part of me is beginning to understand that i am truly Off My Tree.
so when i left the house this evening i decided to walk.

saw Finding Neverland. Wept shamelessly.
this too a sign of lunacy.
Real artists don't weep at johnny depp movies.

earlier today: a disconcerting meeting with the administrator of my program re: this fast looming internship of mine.
her advice re: portfolios and whatnot?
"when you go in for your meeting, you have to show them work that has less of your personality in it. (pause) of course your personality is going to be important, but you need to show them that you can shift out of it."

sigh. why do i find this notion gravely disturbing?

bits on books.

i'm going to at last take a moment to try to extract myself from the attentions i'm giving to the suicide site debate (see a couple of postings down) and get on with it.
but before i do, a tip of the hat to them; for any/all of you torontonians who may be reading, check out "suicide site guide to the city" at buddies, it's a thought provoking piece.
and weigh in, by all means, on the discussion below.
had a guest speaker from kids publishing in this marketing class of mine today. kids' publishing seems to be the hidden rock beneath which all individuals with strong opinions go to work.
that sounds deprecatory; i mean the Opposite though. he was Fantastic.
one of the few speakers with spine we've had in the past semester.

a few notes of significance:
(on why book banning is so much more incendiary than other kinds of censorship; we are terrified of the word because the word is so PRIVATE. "i read this book separate from you and you and you..." and there is no telling where that word goes when it is absorbed in private, what influence it may have, as opposed to the influence of media messages disseminated in darkened rooms with a fellow audience, or at public rallies with coercive leanings.

fact: the toronto public library system is the largest library board in the world, second only to hong kong. that's the statistic. but only 18% of these libraries are manned by a full time librarian.

and from yesterday: "in the western world we've never trained consumers to understand the VALUE of what they are purchasing." what it COSTS to make it in the first place. in a realistic situation. magazines, for example, are sold at next to nothing (subscription rates anyhow), and they are sold as something disposable, some fleeting temporal entertainment. this says something to the consumer, it makes a tactful statement about how much all the work that goes into them is worth.

pro-choice.

for the record. Just in Case.
still enamoured with embryos and all that oddity, but from a purely incidental standpoint.
good point, jp.

six embryonic stages.

as promised from wednesday, "sketches to follow" from one of my pilgrimages to what i affectionately call "the dead peoples' museum".
look at this stuff. this is a HUMAN BEING.
jesus. this is how it Begins. talk about putting your ego in check.

traffic2.

after sitting 90% finished for over a month...see saturday 15 january for the original sketch.
gods i love reading week.

meditation2.

see february 12th for the original sketch.

...i don't know, you know, it seems like something always gets lost from drawing to painting. sigh.

ex-lefties and suicide site guide to the city.

i don't quite get this blogging thing. i mean, there's no index, no table of contents, no page numbers....so the other night, in a fit of distraction and lethargy to the tasks at hand, i Finally clicked on this"next blog" phenomenon in the upper right, to at last discover its purpose: the portal to a vast and random gagillion of other forrays into online-journaldom.

found a bunch that verified my niggling doubts about the habit, "what i had for breakfast and the state of my underwear" type stuff (oops that must have been mine) and one posting that stuck in my mind.
i of course clicked onward without the necessary bookmarking, and now couldn't find it again if i tried.

it was by a person of left leaning politics gone rightist. the only thing i remember which grabbed me was his observation that for all the leftist-qvetching, we ignore the glory of free speech, social assistance, feminism etc that has come in part with the predominant structure of our western world.

i'm NOT saying i agree with this co-relation.
but i find it thought provoking.
we've been doing something right. to some extent. i don't know what it is, but i can't deny some of the developments of this part of the world that i profit from as a human, that keep me relatively safe.
i definitely Know that i can't be content with an "us vs. them" set of conclusions on the whole thing.

saw "suicide site guide to the city" tonight.
parts were great, parts were not. i'm definitely not convinced maintaining this elitist circle of artists and corraling them together against the "opposition" is the answer

the problem is this Creating of the opposition in the first place, instead of trying to understand them, how they work.

this one idea did stick with me; that all us artists might be under some group delusion, fed social capital since we don't seem to be worth any of the money from the ones that have an abundance of it.
we keep on chasing down the attention and waiting for our resultant riches, but in the end just get creatively milked dry.

the old "dance,monkey,dance" scenario.
yes.

watery luggage.

spent 4.5 hours in the anatomy labs today, examining embryos and such (sketches to follow) and as i was looking behind me, at a cupboard full of skulls, i thought how odd it must be to be the person scooping all the mush out of them to preserve them.

perhaps that's part of where evil comes from, this revelation that it's all really just mush.

at the end of the day we are all capable of being hollowed out and put on display.

just a fleshy suitcase for 99% water to wander around in.