Jerry turned me on to the Avett Brothers recently. He has a thing for rockabilly bluegrass, and I can see why. They have a catalogue of about 109 tracks which he's now on the fourth time around. The only thing he'll break away for is Lyle Lovett. Who, I must admit, is far better than I remember.
Here's what I'm listening to right now:
beautiful song.
awesome beards.
from the Album/EP The Gleam II
31.12.09
30.12.09
tops, just tops 20:30
I was asked about my top ten albums of 2009. I recoiled at the thought.
Is my musical taste even noteworthy? Let's see:
10. Working on a Dream - Bruce Springstein (you know it's true)
9. Troubador - K'naan (surprise!)
8. The Wooden Sky - The Wooden Sky (fell in love)
7. Psychic Chasms - Neon Indian (it's just so effing cool)
6. Noble Beast - Andrew Bird (because he whistles so pretty)
5. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective (new wave lives!)
4. Hospice - The Antlers (new wave dies!)
3. Horehound - The Dead Weather (requisite Jack White)
2. Wilco (the Album) - Wilco (not as strong Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
1. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix (even though it's overplayed, it's already a classic)
And there you go.
Now somebody get me tickets to see Wilco at Hamilton Place Theatre on February 23rd. The 24th at Centennial Hall in London is also acceptable. Call it an early birthday present.
Happy Hoggmanay!
Is my musical taste even noteworthy? Let's see:
10. Working on a Dream - Bruce Springstein (you know it's true)
9. Troubador - K'naan (surprise!)
8. The Wooden Sky - The Wooden Sky (fell in love)
7. Psychic Chasms - Neon Indian (it's just so effing cool)
6. Noble Beast - Andrew Bird (because he whistles so pretty)
5. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective (new wave lives!)
4. Hospice - The Antlers (new wave dies!)
3. Horehound - The Dead Weather (requisite Jack White)
2. Wilco (the Album) - Wilco (not as strong Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
1. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix (even though it's overplayed, it's already a classic)
And there you go.
Now somebody get me tickets to see Wilco at Hamilton Place Theatre on February 23rd. The 24th at Centennial Hall in London is also acceptable. Call it an early birthday present.
Happy Hoggmanay!
27.12.09
butt-clenchingly honest 14:10
Simon Pegg (yes, the Simon Pegg) brought my attention - via twitter - to comedian Stewart Lee. Lee's comedy style is right up my alley: irreverent, literate, contemporary. Oh, and British.
This clip is the first episode of his BBC show, "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle". Clever. In it, he cracks wise on the publishing industry and the trouble it's facing due, in part at least, to its lack of actual value.
enjoy!
This clip is the first episode of his BBC show, "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle". Clever. In it, he cracks wise on the publishing industry and the trouble it's facing due, in part at least, to its lack of actual value.
enjoy!
21.12.09
(bit part) 21:00
Yes, I believe life is a performance.
No, I don't believe there's a rehearsal.
But then again I don't think there's really a difference: practice makes _______.
I don't even mean in a metaphysical sense. Everything we do is performative, is contrived, is artifice in some sense. We can internalize and make truth-claims all we want, but when it comes down to it all the things we've ever learned to do or say come from:
That doesn't make who we are any less real, mind you. But as someone who's spent most of his life watching, imitating, and improvising in an attempt to fit into a new community ever four or five years, you begin to feel less genuine every time you wear a different hat. But the feeling fades, and eventually the fidelity of the thing - it's faithfulness to your persona - becomes natural.
But how does that process work? What is it that finally convinces us that the hat we wear belongs on our head? How do we ever get over the imposter syndrome that follows us to every new job, on first dates, into competition, or whatever?
I'd postulate that it has a lot do with community. Everything about our language, our dress, our mannerisms comes from our community. We watch the way people act, we imitate them in their roles as we strive to fulfill our own, and we improvise within (or outside) the aspect of our characters. Usually we do it subconsciously...
Did you think you were in control? Maybe you did. Maybe you are. But not of everything, not by a long shot.
I'm trying to get a little more control over my performance as well, and I'm coming to realise that there are some core aspects of my performance technique that really get in the way. A significant part of my motis operandi is, I like to think, a healthy amount of personal generosity. In short, I give a lot away. A lot of time, a lot of talk, a lot of thought, a lot, a lot, a lot. Heretofore I've believed that I have an infinite supply of these things; "the love you make is equal to the love you take," kind of thing (not that John Lennon was really any wiser than you or me).
So, I've had a long-standing policy of being very, very generous with love. Downright amorous at times. Not just with the ladies, but with my friends both newly got and long lost. I love people, even the ones I really don't like. I've chosen to see everyone's redeeming qualities as the things that define them. Now, I know I can't be everyone's best friend, but there are times I feel like that's what I'm trying to do.
As a result, I have an enormous community around me, that I've gathered over the last twenty years or so. I have been surrounded with people of incredible value and spent no small amount of time and energy perfecting a performance of myself that is flexible enough to connect deeply with some very different personalities.
The trouble is that it's all too often on their terms. Which means the time and energy I spend on some people is lost. Gone for good. And I'm okay with that, because that's part of who I am. But I only believe that because I've spent so much bloody time and energy improvising personal generosity that I've nearly forgotten how to be for myself. If I was for myself, I would abhor all that wasted time and effort on people who didn't notice, didn't care, and didn't reciprocate; and I'd be done with it forever because I would know that I don't have time to play a bit part in anyone's life.
So from here on out, I won't.
...but this still nags at me:
Cynicism is about distrust. It's about believing that all people are motivated by self-interest. I'm not nearly as cynical as I make out to be. I can't be because I believe in things like decency and compassion; and because cynicism just isn't a very productive way to look at the world. It's apathetic and indifferent and miserable and just as selfish as that which it distrusts. Cynicism needs to be innovated so that it isn't just more of the same black-hearted, me-first, I'll-choose-my-side-and-shut-up-alright ideology that is the method of performance for people who are afraid to measure their lives against the hardest metric of all: the genuine acceptance of others, not for one's utility or worth but for the qualities of human empathy.
No, I don't believe there's a rehearsal.
But then again I don't think there's really a difference: practice makes _______.
I don't even mean in a metaphysical sense. Everything we do is performative, is contrived, is artifice in some sense. We can internalize and make truth-claims all we want, but when it comes down to it all the things we've ever learned to do or say come from:
watching
imitating
improvising
That doesn't make who we are any less real, mind you. But as someone who's spent most of his life watching, imitating, and improvising in an attempt to fit into a new community ever four or five years, you begin to feel less genuine every time you wear a different hat. But the feeling fades, and eventually the fidelity of the thing - it's faithfulness to your persona - becomes natural.
But how does that process work? What is it that finally convinces us that the hat we wear belongs on our head? How do we ever get over the imposter syndrome that follows us to every new job, on first dates, into competition, or whatever?
I'd postulate that it has a lot do with community. Everything about our language, our dress, our mannerisms comes from our community. We watch the way people act, we imitate them in their roles as we strive to fulfill our own, and we improvise within (or outside) the aspect of our characters. Usually we do it subconsciously...
Did you think you were in control? Maybe you did. Maybe you are. But not of everything, not by a long shot.
I'm trying to get a little more control over my performance as well, and I'm coming to realise that there are some core aspects of my performance technique that really get in the way. A significant part of my motis operandi is, I like to think, a healthy amount of personal generosity. In short, I give a lot away. A lot of time, a lot of talk, a lot of thought, a lot, a lot, a lot. Heretofore I've believed that I have an infinite supply of these things; "the love you make is equal to the love you take," kind of thing (not that John Lennon was really any wiser than you or me).
So, I've had a long-standing policy of being very, very generous with love. Downright amorous at times. Not just with the ladies, but with my friends both newly got and long lost. I love people, even the ones I really don't like. I've chosen to see everyone's redeeming qualities as the things that define them. Now, I know I can't be everyone's best friend, but there are times I feel like that's what I'm trying to do.
As a result, I have an enormous community around me, that I've gathered over the last twenty years or so. I have been surrounded with people of incredible value and spent no small amount of time and energy perfecting a performance of myself that is flexible enough to connect deeply with some very different personalities.
The trouble is that it's all too often on their terms. Which means the time and energy I spend on some people is lost. Gone for good. And I'm okay with that, because that's part of who I am. But I only believe that because I've spent so much bloody time and energy improvising personal generosity that I've nearly forgotten how to be for myself. If I was for myself, I would abhor all that wasted time and effort on people who didn't notice, didn't care, and didn't reciprocate; and I'd be done with it forever because I would know that I don't have time to play a bit part in anyone's life.
So from here on out, I won't.
...but this still nags at me:
Cynicism is about distrust. It's about believing that all people are motivated by self-interest. I'm not nearly as cynical as I make out to be. I can't be because I believe in things like decency and compassion; and because cynicism just isn't a very productive way to look at the world. It's apathetic and indifferent and miserable and just as selfish as that which it distrusts. Cynicism needs to be innovated so that it isn't just more of the same black-hearted, me-first, I'll-choose-my-side-and-shut-up-alright ideology that is the method of performance for people who are afraid to measure their lives against the hardest metric of all: the genuine acceptance of others, not for one's utility or worth but for the qualities of human empathy.
je suis là 15:30
This animated short film is probably the best thing I've seen all year.
I'm going to see Avatar this week. Something tells me it won't be better.
Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.
I'm going to see Avatar this week. Something tells me it won't be better.
19.12.09
the progress of process; or, the grace of the interface 13:12
I'm at Ideas Transform, a Culture Camp happening at Kitchener City Hall at the moment.
At table 1 right now, we're discussing art, led by Sunshine Chin (and later, Kevin Sutton). Not criticism or appreciation or technique, but rather art as a service industry and why, in this region at least, there's a surplus of artistic production but a general malaise of artistic engagement in the community.
The conversation revolved around market pressures, tools of production and distribution, value, and consumption. It all smacks of the Horkheimer and Adorno article about the culture industry and the politics of mass produced and re-produced culture. Not art necessarily.
I dunno. I tend to think of art as a subversive activity: something that goes against the grain, turns preconceptions on their heads, and forces the "consumers" to consider culture in a different way. Subversion isn't necessarily the most marketable thing out there... except for, oh you know, punk music, skateboarding, vintage clothing...
update: Brock just said that for him "Facebook is becoming less and less relevant. It's full of garbage."
... carrying on, I think that the marketability of art & culture has more to do with value-adds and distribution than content. Content drives things, like web traffic for instance, or repeat business, innovation, and other creative enterprise. The art itself isn't really the commodity - it's tough to sell or place a market value on expression because it's so generally diverse and incomparable - but the experience/time that's trade can be given a price... right?
So, producing art seems to be a contention that underscores this discussion. I mean, art is a priori a process that never ends. Creativity in general is something that happens at points of contact, by the grace of the interface, between an object (or moment because art is an event horizon, not static) and a subject (a person, like you, with specific and individual experience).
We're moving on to jamming on creativity as a right.
Or should I say rite. Yes, I think so.
Artists, or other creatively-awakened persons, are also the most likely to consume artwork. But again we're confronted with the affect/effect of art versus getting it out there. The key is knowledge-based agents who guide, connect, present, mediate, and provide us with the all important context for art.
Okay. back to it.
At table 1 right now, we're discussing art, led by Sunshine Chin (and later, Kevin Sutton). Not criticism or appreciation or technique, but rather art as a service industry and why, in this region at least, there's a surplus of artistic production but a general malaise of artistic engagement in the community.
The conversation revolved around market pressures, tools of production and distribution, value, and consumption. It all smacks of the Horkheimer and Adorno article about the culture industry and the politics of mass produced and re-produced culture. Not art necessarily.
I dunno. I tend to think of art as a subversive activity: something that goes against the grain, turns preconceptions on their heads, and forces the "consumers" to consider culture in a different way. Subversion isn't necessarily the most marketable thing out there... except for, oh you know, punk music, skateboarding, vintage clothing...
update: Brock just said that for him "Facebook is becoming less and less relevant. It's full of garbage."
... carrying on, I think that the marketability of art & culture has more to do with value-adds and distribution than content. Content drives things, like web traffic for instance, or repeat business, innovation, and other creative enterprise. The art itself isn't really the commodity - it's tough to sell or place a market value on expression because it's so generally diverse and incomparable - but the experience/time that's trade can be given a price... right?
So, producing art seems to be a contention that underscores this discussion. I mean, art is a priori a process that never ends. Creativity in general is something that happens at points of contact, by the grace of the interface, between an object (or moment because art is an event horizon, not static) and a subject (a person, like you, with specific and individual experience).
We're moving on to jamming on creativity as a right.
Or should I say rite. Yes, I think so.
Artists, or other creatively-awakened persons, are also the most likely to consume artwork. But again we're confronted with the affect/effect of art versus getting it out there. The key is knowledge-based agents who guide, connect, present, mediate, and provide us with the all important context for art.
Okay. back to it.
16.12.09
doing xmas 16:47
Been thinking about the reason for the season? Me too. But not like that. More like this...
At the behest of a friend who claims not to "do Christmas", Mike, Steve and I hosted the Very Party Mansion Christmas Dinner Special at our place (the Party Mansion... you can actually follow us on twitter). It was the second time I'd cooked a turkey, and the first time I'd made cranberry sauce from scratch - it's the only way to do it and I'll never go back to the canned stuff.
It was a chilly night with a little snow in the air. There's a neighbourhood outdoor ice rink on my street, and several guests (including our visitors from Paris, France: Nicolas and Josépha) went for a skate after dinner, while the rest of us kept warm with impromptu picturades (pictionary+charades) and screened Elf.
Friends and Family are, for me at least, a necessary element of Christmastime. Of course, we should treasure and revere the relationships we have with the people we love all year round and not need an arbitrary holiday to show them that we care; but the thing about Christmas (or Yule, Saturnalia, Chrifsmas, or whatyouwill) is that we all do it together. We gather. We eat. We keep warm in the dark and remind each other that things will get warmer yet if we just hang on. And it's like it does, simply because we believe it will.
Seriously though, with 20-odd bodies in our house, we were able to turn the furnace off at 7 o'clock.
The original feast days in December observed by the celto-germanic peoples of Western Europe marked the winter solstice as a time to have a bit of a party because they knew - keen minders of the earth's cycles that they were thanks to the ancient druidic tradition of paying attention to the world around them (imagine that...) - that the days were about to get longer and they wouldn't be condemned to eternal dark and cold.
I travelled back in time to verify my assumptions. Here's a translated, transcribed conversation I overheard between some celtic dudes:
"Hey Cedric, did you notice that the sun was in the sky a little longer today than yesterday?"
"Yeah I did."
"Well, if tomorrow is even longer, then doesn't it stand to reason that the day after will follow the same trend, and before too long it'll start to get warmer?"
"That makes sense, sure."
"Well, we have enough elk meat for, like, 6 months. And we've been saving all that mead your wife made. If it's going to get warm in a few months, crops will probably start growing and game animals will be easier to find, and we won't need our food stores."
"Huh. You don't say."
"Yeah. We should probably start eating a lot more, actually. I don't want all that elk to go bad."
"Here's a thought: let's have a party! We can have it at the Party Mansion!"
"You mean the Mead Hall?"
"Yes. The Mead Hall is what I meant."
Attached to the old traditions are a few interesting characters. We're all familiar with Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Pere Noël, and probably his predecessor, Saint Nicolas. In a few European cultures, though, St. Nick isn't the only visitor kids have at Christmas.
This creepy customer is Krampus. He's Santa's good buddy and traveling companion and, aside from inappropriate play, he sneaks up on naughty boys and girls and hits them with sticks. The basket he has (seen here full of apples) is to cart the especially bad children off to hell.
It was a chilly night with a little snow in the air. There's a neighbourhood outdoor ice rink on my street, and several guests (including our visitors from Paris, France: Nicolas and Josépha) went for a skate after dinner, while the rest of us kept warm with impromptu picturades (pictionary+charades) and screened Elf.
Friends and Family are, for me at least, a necessary element of Christmastime. Of course, we should treasure and revere the relationships we have with the people we love all year round and not need an arbitrary holiday to show them that we care; but the thing about Christmas (or Yule, Saturnalia, Chrifsmas, or whatyouwill) is that we all do it together. We gather. We eat. We keep warm in the dark and remind each other that things will get warmer yet if we just hang on. And it's like it does, simply because we believe it will.
Seriously though, with 20-odd bodies in our house, we were able to turn the furnace off at 7 o'clock.
The original feast days in December observed by the celto-germanic peoples of Western Europe marked the winter solstice as a time to have a bit of a party because they knew - keen minders of the earth's cycles that they were thanks to the ancient druidic tradition of paying attention to the world around them (imagine that...) - that the days were about to get longer and they wouldn't be condemned to eternal dark and cold.
I travelled back in time to verify my assumptions. Here's a translated, transcribed conversation I overheard between some celtic dudes:
"Hey Cedric, did you notice that the sun was in the sky a little longer today than yesterday?"
"Yeah I did."
"Well, if tomorrow is even longer, then doesn't it stand to reason that the day after will follow the same trend, and before too long it'll start to get warmer?"
"That makes sense, sure."
"Well, we have enough elk meat for, like, 6 months. And we've been saving all that mead your wife made. If it's going to get warm in a few months, crops will probably start growing and game animals will be easier to find, and we won't need our food stores."
"Huh. You don't say."
"Yeah. We should probably start eating a lot more, actually. I don't want all that elk to go bad."
"Here's a thought: let's have a party! We can have it at the Party Mansion!"
"You mean the Mead Hall?"
"Yes. The Mead Hall is what I meant."
Attached to the old traditions are a few interesting characters. We're all familiar with Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Pere Noël, and probably his predecessor, Saint Nicolas. In a few European cultures, though, St. Nick isn't the only visitor kids have at Christmas.
This creepy customer is Krampus. He's Santa's good buddy and traveling companion and, aside from inappropriate play, he sneaks up on naughty boys and girls and hits them with sticks. The basket he has (seen here full of apples) is to cart the especially bad children off to hell.
This cheery french fellow is Le Père Fouettard (the whipping father) who does pretty much the same thing as Krampus but without the weird sexual stuff. An added bonus is that he not only switches little buggers with sticks, but also gives them coal. I don't care who you ask, but coal was pretty useful stuff in the 14th century, just not as fun as straw dolls or wooden horses.
I saved the most interesting for last.
My Dutch friends (all two of them) would agree that Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is a pretty compelling Christmas companion. He's allied with Sint Nikolaas, who's actually a patron saint of mariners in Holland, and he resembles a Moorish merchant - who would have arrived from Spain or Northern Africa in Amsterdam via trade ship (Othello, anyone?).
Piet became popular in the Netherlands in the 19th century and shares many of his attributes with the other two lovelies, except for the whole racial profiling thing. Let's face it: some Dutch political leaders aren't the most ethnically sensitive folks out there.
So, where does that leave us with the whole reason-for-the-season thing? I'm not exactly sure. The holiday is so all over the map that it's hard to say what, or whom exactly it's for. Oh wait, I forgot to mention the late JC. Mary's boy-child. Away in a Manger. Pa-rum pa-pum-pum, and all that. Except that Jesus' birthday is actually (wait for it)... June 17. That is, if you're a person whose faith doesn't blind you to verifiable, repeatable observation (ie.: science). If you are that's cool. Carry on. But you should check out Jer. 10:2-4 and Matthew 15:9 and let me know what you decide do about the heathen tree in your living room.
Interesting factoid: the Christmas tree is another germano-celtic tradition. It was popularized in England (and the rest of the Empire) by Queen Victoria in the late 19th Century because her German husband, Prince Albert, liked that fresh pine scent so much that he just had to have one. Actually, it was a long standing tradition among Germanic peoples to bring the evergreen into the house in December as a symbol of life during the dark winter months. I'm glad Victoria was enough of a proto-environmentalist that having a tree in her home wasn't an affront to her English protestant propriety.
Interesting factoid: the Christmas tree is another germano-celtic tradition. It was popularized in England (and the rest of the Empire) by Queen Victoria in the late 19th Century because her German husband, Prince Albert, liked that fresh pine scent so much that he just had to have one. Actually, it was a long standing tradition among Germanic peoples to bring the evergreen into the house in December as a symbol of life during the dark winter months. I'm glad Victoria was enough of a proto-environmentalist that having a tree in her home wasn't an affront to her English protestant propriety.
Obviously kids are big part of the main event: the possibility and anticipation (not to mention the apprehension of being dragged to hell by horned dude with one foot and one hoof) adds a nostalgic tranquility to our bleak Canadian winters that keeps most people in good spirits until at least New Years'.
Pagan solstice rituals are awesome, but now that we have science it hardly seems worth celebrating the inevitable outcome of a little rocky planet with a tilted axis on an elliptical orbit around a medium-sized ball of burning space-gas. All the magic's gone out of it.
Okay. Maybe I should ask a simpler question. What do we all want out of Christmas? Presents? Turkey? Snow? How about a blanket-statement like... oh, I dunno... happiness? What makes you happy? Go find it, make it, buy it, just get your hands on it.
...and then give it to someone you love.
Holy crap does that ever feel good to do.
Happy Christmas everyone.
14.12.09
populiterate 12:53
Singer/songwriter Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip, Canada's quintessential blues-rock cum indie-folk group, stars in this short film, narrated by the late Al Purdy, one of Canada's greatest poet-warriors.
11.12.09
pancake spaceman 11:45
stellar video. stellar music. stellar spaceman with pancakes for brains. wait for it.
8.12.09
the wake 01:04
ijustranoutonyouandimnotcomingbackidontcareifyoucryintheshowereverydayforayear
sometimes, i think i must be a heartless bastard for the things i've done. maybe it's my ferocious catholic guilt speaking, but i've been careless with the hearts of good people and left them without looking back and without really considering the affect i may have had on their lives.
of course, when they pop up in front of you at starbucks on a monday night, it's tough not to glance over your shoulder to make sure your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.
- I thought I left you behind a long, long time ago.
- You did.
- What are you doing here, now?
- Did you think I would stay in the past?
and i might have. but things like this keep happening to me.
maybe you can identify with this. maybe you see blind people everywhere you go and you wonder if it means something. maybe you keep hearing a certain song that evokes a very potent memory. maybe people keep asking you the same question: "How are you doing?"
maybe not. but there's a reason that i can't shake the feeling that my past is trying to tell me something. it's because i know that there's something i can learn from this - that i can take with me as i forge ahead in the starbucks queue.
i place my order. she pays for both of us because i've left my wallet in the car. i want everything to be casual, fun: reveling in the good times and pining for those days again if only for as long as my drink stays hot. it isn't like that though.
she's different than i remember; and i can say that honestly because i wasn't expecting anything at all, let alone a conversation. i listen intently. i'm trying to find the tracks the person i once knew all those years ago somewhere in the corners of her quiet voice. i can't find them in the forest of her words anywhere. there it is, in her laugh, but it's like an echo and i don't believe in it enough to follow it any further through the trees.
i tell her my secrets anyway - the ones that everybody knows - and she tells me some of hers.
hers.
hers are about me. they aren't recent secrets and i think i'm not the first one to hear them, either. she tells them like a tune that she hums when she isn't paying attention to anything but the feeling of hot water on her skin in the morning while the notes flow past her ankles and disappear into the drain.
sometimes, i think i must be a heartless bastard for the things i've done. maybe it's my ferocious catholic guilt speaking, but i've been careless with the hearts of good people and left them without looking back and without really considering the affect i may have had on their lives.
of course, when they pop up in front of you at starbucks on a monday night, it's tough not to glance over your shoulder to make sure your eyes aren't playing tricks on you.
- I thought I left you behind a long, long time ago.
- You did.
- What are you doing here, now?
- Did you think I would stay in the past?
and i might have. but things like this keep happening to me.
maybe you can identify with this. maybe you see blind people everywhere you go and you wonder if it means something. maybe you keep hearing a certain song that evokes a very potent memory. maybe people keep asking you the same question: "How are you doing?"
maybe not. but there's a reason that i can't shake the feeling that my past is trying to tell me something. it's because i know that there's something i can learn from this - that i can take with me as i forge ahead in the starbucks queue.
i place my order. she pays for both of us because i've left my wallet in the car. i want everything to be casual, fun: reveling in the good times and pining for those days again if only for as long as my drink stays hot. it isn't like that though.
she's different than i remember; and i can say that honestly because i wasn't expecting anything at all, let alone a conversation. i listen intently. i'm trying to find the tracks the person i once knew all those years ago somewhere in the corners of her quiet voice. i can't find them in the forest of her words anywhere. there it is, in her laugh, but it's like an echo and i don't believe in it enough to follow it any further through the trees.
i tell her my secrets anyway - the ones that everybody knows - and she tells me some of hers.
hers.
hers are about me. they aren't recent secrets and i think i'm not the first one to hear them, either. she tells them like a tune that she hums when she isn't paying attention to anything but the feeling of hot water on her skin in the morning while the notes flow past her ankles and disappear into the drain.
3.12.09
2.12.09
flaws 02:24
We've all got them. Sometimes I wonder how aware of them we are.
They make us undeniably, unmistakably, unbearably human sometimes. So we try to hide them. Occasionally we succeed. Inevitably we fail.
They are physical, psychological, emotional, total, and tragic. But they are also what is most special about each of us. Our flaws confound us and they confound the ones we love. They challenge us to overcome them, and they tempt our friends and families to abandon us.
But we need our flaws because they force us to become more than just what we arrived with.
When I was young things were easy. I was charming, bright, different. I knew things, was wise beyond my years, I was told. Maybe it was true. Probably it wasn't. Nevertheless, I came by success easily. I grew accustomed to it. As a result, failure is now the bitterest of pills I can choke down. But, Nietzsche tells me, whatever does not kill me makes me stronger (he went crazy and died 2 years after writing those words, just fyi). Since "growing up" I've had to rely less on my charisma and more on my intellect to get me through. It ain't easy because I'm really not smarter than anyone else. I find that now I often resent the poor lessons of my wooly infancy.
I've had some time to think since then though and it occurs to me that our lives aren't lessons or tests or even gifts. They aren't to be squandered on what we wish they could be or should have been or were meant to be. In Leviathan, Hobbes writes that human existence is "brutish, nasty, and short." And so it is, on an individual scale. On a flawed, lonely, bereft-of-all-meaning measurement.
What's one life? It has value, to be sure, but not so much as two lives, for what should be obvious reasons. We're more than the sum of our parts, and the more parts the greater the sum.
Our communities are flawed too, but within those communities are the salves to mend our flaws. My flaws and your flaws and his and her flaws are inconsequential when we bandy together to accomplish the things we cannot do alone. And I tell you: we can do nothing alone. So, I tell you this:
We're all in this together.
27.11.09
sustainability is so last year 13:54
About bloody time.
Watch the TEDtalk.
Tell me what you think.
This isn't a drill, people.
I'm actively recruiting for a KW Transition initiative.
26.11.09
Sabbaticalistic 11:25
I can't tell if I'm on sabbatical already or in desperate need of one.
I think that technically, a sabbatical is an extended leave from your job with the understanding that when you return your job will still be there. If that's the case, I'm not on one because my 'job' was never a real job and there's no guarantee that I'll ever be able to return to it.
I want to though, some day. I miss academe. I miss feeling like I belonged somewhere and was part of something larger. I miss having elders to look up to. I miss wandering hallways, drinking way too much coffee, arriving just in time to lead seminars of eager undergrads. I miss getting excited about ideas. I miss believing I could make a difference with words.
But that's not what I'm doing now.
What am I doing now?
I'm not really sure. I don't think anyone is. But that doesn't stop them from being blindly supportive of it which, to be honest, is getting a little old. Someone who hasn't given me a second thought in months said to me the other day that it seemed like what I was doing was a great opportunity and that it seemed to be going well and that they hoped I continued to be happy. Oh for three. Well, not entirely - things aren't awful; but I find it strange that someone who doesn't know anything about anything and doesn't really like me anyways would bother to even pretend to care or lend support.
I'm just complaining now.
So, sabbaticals are actually terrifically useful experiences and can help a person learn skills and gain experience they wouldn't otherwise, meet people they'd never have met and live another life for a limited amount of time. If I'm not on one now, maybe I should plan one. It might be cool to just move from sabbatical to sabbatical for the rest of my days: like a working holiday, except less holiday more working. But who wants time off anyway?
Rilo Kiley - It's a Hit
more about "Sabbaticalistic", posted with vodpod
I think that technically, a sabbatical is an extended leave from your job with the understanding that when you return your job will still be there. If that's the case, I'm not on one because my 'job' was never a real job and there's no guarantee that I'll ever be able to return to it.
I want to though, some day. I miss academe. I miss feeling like I belonged somewhere and was part of something larger. I miss having elders to look up to. I miss wandering hallways, drinking way too much coffee, arriving just in time to lead seminars of eager undergrads. I miss getting excited about ideas. I miss believing I could make a difference with words.
But that's not what I'm doing now.
What am I doing now?
I'm not really sure. I don't think anyone is. But that doesn't stop them from being blindly supportive of it which, to be honest, is getting a little old. Someone who hasn't given me a second thought in months said to me the other day that it seemed like what I was doing was a great opportunity and that it seemed to be going well and that they hoped I continued to be happy. Oh for three. Well, not entirely - things aren't awful; but I find it strange that someone who doesn't know anything about anything and doesn't really like me anyways would bother to even pretend to care or lend support.
I'm just complaining now.
So, sabbaticals are actually terrifically useful experiences and can help a person learn skills and gain experience they wouldn't otherwise, meet people they'd never have met and live another life for a limited amount of time. If I'm not on one now, maybe I should plan one. It might be cool to just move from sabbatical to sabbatical for the rest of my days: like a working holiday, except less holiday more working. But who wants time off anyway?
Rilo Kiley - It's a Hit
more about "Sabbaticalistic", posted with vodpod
23.11.09
and I quote 16:10
"Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
"You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."
Rose Walker in Sandman: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman
*thanks to Sonya for reminding me
how much I love Gaiman
19.11.09
Father McKenzie 23:59
You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone, yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.
An afterthought:
Loneliness is something we don't talk about because of the shame associated with it. It's hard to talk about and often, if you're lonely, you have no one to talk to about it in the first place. I spent a good two hours looking for art, images, music, and literature about loneliness and, sadly, I knew more about it than google seemed to. The ATAT (the Imperial Walker from Star Wars, for the uninitiated) scratching at the door, though, was a search engine score.
Why would I post this? Not a vote for sympathy (thanks anyway though), no; it's because I want to draw attention to the way popular culture deals with loneliness. Or rather, doesn't.
High culture (whatever that is) seems to talk about it with a little more veracity. Consider Ingmar Bergman, the man the New York Times called "the master filmmaker who found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition":
People tell me I'm transparent... 14:30
I don't think they mean I'm invisible, but once you hear it enough, you have to wonder.
So I've been thinking about transparency. What is it to be see-through? We pay a lot of lip-service to transparency as a good quality in our organizations, like governments because we like to think that if we can see everything we'll be... safer? happier? better informed? what?
What do we mean when we say something is transparent? Depending on the context, I think it alludes to the ease with which we can perceive the inner workings of a process or system; that is to say, the insides of a transparent thing are visible. For some reason people equate seeing with understanding. It may have something to do with epistemology and etymology (insofar as language forms the very way we think): the French voir "to see" is the root verb for both avoir "to be" and savoir "to know", and while we speak English for the mostpart in North America, our ideas about governance and democracy - not to mention psychology - are heavily influenced by French thinkers. But I digress....
I generally don't like the assertion that I, personally, am transparent: it has an air of derision about it and I don't think anyone likes to feel invisible. It's more than that, I guess. It implies that my motives are simple and obvious, that I lack mystery or depth, that I'm overly candid. Which is strange, because those should all be really great qualities... or would be in a culture that values sincerity.
Is it fair to assume that the standards to which we hold our institutions should follow from those to which we hold one another? We want others to be honest and forthright, but criticize those qualities as poor strategy or carelessness for matters that may have consequences of personal cost.
Somewhere in the middle of all this is the practice of discretion. The idea that we can and should choose when to be transparent, however, undermines the integrity of sincerity as a social mode, does it not? I'm not suggesting we should wear our hearts on our sleeves at all times, but I am wondering why, as a rule, we don't.
What would happen if we did?
It's not the same as advertising our deepest emotions or making a spectacle of our inner monologue, exactly; what I'm curious about is what would happen to us if we acted and spoke without the blades of sarcasm? Would we eventually shuck off the armour of cynicism we wear around our family, friends and coworkers?
I'm speaking of this as a hypothetical way of being. Having tried from time to time to engage the people in my life from a place of utter sincerity, I've found that it's often met with confusion or discomfort; and what you get in return - because the way we approach the world is, inevitably, our expectation of its response - is wounded pride, a deflated ego, and nothing to do on a Friday night.
I'm including what I believe to be the only score from Chicago worth hearing (John C. Reilly - Mr Cellophane) as a musical accompaniment to the trouble with transparency. Enjoy.
Please post a comment with you thoughts, sarcastic or sincere (just tell us which it is).
So I've been thinking about transparency. What is it to be see-through? We pay a lot of lip-service to transparency as a good quality in our organizations, like governments because we like to think that if we can see everything we'll be... safer? happier? better informed? what?
What do we mean when we say something is transparent? Depending on the context, I think it alludes to the ease with which we can perceive the inner workings of a process or system; that is to say, the insides of a transparent thing are visible. For some reason people equate seeing with understanding. It may have something to do with epistemology and etymology (insofar as language forms the very way we think): the French voir "to see" is the root verb for both avoir "to be" and savoir "to know", and while we speak English for the mostpart in North America, our ideas about governance and democracy - not to mention psychology - are heavily influenced by French thinkers. But I digress....
I generally don't like the assertion that I, personally, am transparent: it has an air of derision about it and I don't think anyone likes to feel invisible. It's more than that, I guess. It implies that my motives are simple and obvious, that I lack mystery or depth, that I'm overly candid. Which is strange, because those should all be really great qualities... or would be in a culture that values sincerity.
Is it fair to assume that the standards to which we hold our institutions should follow from those to which we hold one another? We want others to be honest and forthright, but criticize those qualities as poor strategy or carelessness for matters that may have consequences of personal cost.
Somewhere in the middle of all this is the practice of discretion. The idea that we can and should choose when to be transparent, however, undermines the integrity of sincerity as a social mode, does it not? I'm not suggesting we should wear our hearts on our sleeves at all times, but I am wondering why, as a rule, we don't.
What would happen if we did?
It's not the same as advertising our deepest emotions or making a spectacle of our inner monologue, exactly; what I'm curious about is what would happen to us if we acted and spoke without the blades of sarcasm? Would we eventually shuck off the armour of cynicism we wear around our family, friends and coworkers?
I'm speaking of this as a hypothetical way of being. Having tried from time to time to engage the people in my life from a place of utter sincerity, I've found that it's often met with confusion or discomfort; and what you get in return - because the way we approach the world is, inevitably, our expectation of its response - is wounded pride, a deflated ego, and nothing to do on a Friday night.
I'm including what I believe to be the only score from Chicago worth hearing (John C. Reilly - Mr Cellophane) as a musical accompaniment to the trouble with transparency. Enjoy.
Please post a comment with you thoughts, sarcastic or sincere (just tell us which it is).
17.11.09
if I'm a dog... 11:16
Rivers Cuomo is a fascinating person. Had he been born about a hundred years earlier, he'd likely be regarded as a tortured genius of an artist; but in contemporary terms he's a messed up rockstar. Funny how that works.
The song posted above is Butterfly from the 1997 release, Pinkerton, which is unarguably (you could try to argue that the blue album was, but you'd just sound like a dummy) their best album. This record was received quite poorly by Weezer's populist audience, but was so personally important to Rivers that he gave up music for several years and pursued a degree in literature from Harvard. After that, he lived in house with blacked-out windows and dark walls for a year before returning with the green album, which, though well-received and very commercial, lacked the intensity and depth of Pinkerton. Hard to reproduce, but I'm still holding out.
Three albums later (Raditude just came out), Weezer is still one of the most successful blends of commercial pop and angsty grunge since the 1990s.
16.11.09
blurg. 18:00
Below is a video I've pilfered from youtube (like you need a link...) that I'm posting as mindless entertainment to offset the dreary post from earlier today.
Liz Lemon makes me smile. I should've been fictional.
Liz Lemon makes me smile. I should've been fictional.
take us higher 11:37
gravity's a problem.
There's an interesting confluence between Foucault's work on surveillance and The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1972) which suggests that the media industry over the last 60 years or so has systematically altered the West's social structure to champion the culture of luck.
My assertion here (yes, I'm finally getting to my thesis) is that watching - as well as being watched - is part of the dialectic of a visual culture which values admonishment, shame, and ostracization as tools for perpetuating conformity. I think we're living in a techno-panopticon.
But there's good news too: there are still plenty of spaces in which we can escape from the gaze of peers and strangers: those dark, secret corners and places to hide in plain sight where we can recede into ourselves to connect with the things we think we truly feel. It's just too bad that that kind of reflexivity is such a solitary pursuit in our cultural milieu. Not all observation is imprisonment: maybe there's still something out there that allows us to be seen and still be different and valid at the same time.
I enjoy this peculiar video and remix of The Cardigans' "Junk of the Hearts" for the tension between proscribed behavioural spaces and human desire... (embedding disabled):
I had a conversation a little while back with Greg about imprisonment: the prisons we live in, the walls we build around ourselves, and the structures that limit and confound us. Suffice it to say, they're everywhere.
Modern theories of imprisonment stem largely from the French philosopher (as do most things I think about) Michel Foucault's seminal work Surveiller et punir [1975] (Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Pantheon, 1977) in which he discusses the phenomenon of Panopticism, using Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon (in brief: a prison wherein the prisoners monitor one another...) to illustrate the social dynamics of surveillance as psychic bondage (not the sexy kind).
So what, if anything, does it mean to live in a world dominated by surveillance? Digital optics (cameras) are everywhere, social media allow us to "share" every detail we wish (though the politics of self-construction trouble those representations), and the private sphere has acquired the aspect of concealment rather than being taken for granted as the norm for our daily lives. We're all celebrities: Warhol was right and we're all getting our 15 minutes - and with a culture so accelerated as to tempt us away from ever sitting still (unless we're in the act of surveillance), those 15 minutes are all we may have left.
So what, if anything, does it mean to live in a world dominated by surveillance? Digital optics (cameras) are everywhere, social media allow us to "share" every detail we wish (though the politics of self-construction trouble those representations), and the private sphere has acquired the aspect of concealment rather than being taken for granted as the norm for our daily lives. We're all celebrities: Warhol was right and we're all getting our 15 minutes - and with a culture so accelerated as to tempt us away from ever sitting still (unless we're in the act of surveillance), those 15 minutes are all we may have left.
There's an interesting confluence between Foucault's work on surveillance and The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1972) which suggests that the media industry over the last 60 years or so has systematically altered the West's social structure to champion the culture of luck.
My assertion here (yes, I'm finally getting to my thesis) is that watching - as well as being watched - is part of the dialectic of a visual culture which values admonishment, shame, and ostracization as tools for perpetuating conformity. I think we're living in a techno-panopticon.
But there's good news too: there are still plenty of spaces in which we can escape from the gaze of peers and strangers: those dark, secret corners and places to hide in plain sight where we can recede into ourselves to connect with the things we think we truly feel. It's just too bad that that kind of reflexivity is such a solitary pursuit in our cultural milieu. Not all observation is imprisonment: maybe there's still something out there that allows us to be seen and still be different and valid at the same time.
I enjoy this peculiar video and remix of The Cardigans' "Junk of the Hearts" for the tension between proscribed behavioural spaces and human desire... (embedding disabled):
And this... well, it's a cover of All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan) by Bear McCreary and Katee Sackhoff that was used in Battlestar Galactica as an overture for the themes of the best sci-fi show since... ever. Lyrically and thematically it conveys the idea that we're either prisoners or we're crazy. Or both...
15.11.09
codes and secret longing 12:40
thanks to Rainn Wilson (twitter @rainnwilson) for reminding me of how much I adore this song.
i struggle with live performance videos on youtube. i'm not a huge fan of the Tears for Fears video I posted (though the song, i love) - it was pretty flat. this one though, of Iron & Wine from the Green Man festival in 2008 restores my hope in live music.
I suppose it betrays my reservations about live music in general: i think it needs to be intimate. I mean, if you're really going to make a connection with someone, a performer or perfect stranger or whathaveyou, you have to be close enough to see the cracks in their walls. With some people, Sam Beam for instance, walls seem to be there merely to call attention the cracks in them.
The larger-venue shows I've been to recently (U2, Bob Dylan) left me wanting - not a bad thing, per se, but I get more out of a show at the eBar or Maxwell's because of the immediacy and sense of improvisation or uniqueness to a show there. It's like theatre: anything could happen in a small venue show and it's different every time. The audience of a small show has a different kind of presence than the anonymous crowd at a stadium show: they're real.
Tonight at Maxwell's: Grand River Orchestra and Great Dane. Come out. Be real.
i struggle with live performance videos on youtube. i'm not a huge fan of the Tears for Fears video I posted (though the song, i love) - it was pretty flat. this one though, of Iron & Wine from the Green Man festival in 2008 restores my hope in live music.
I suppose it betrays my reservations about live music in general: i think it needs to be intimate. I mean, if you're really going to make a connection with someone, a performer or perfect stranger or whathaveyou, you have to be close enough to see the cracks in their walls. With some people, Sam Beam for instance, walls seem to be there merely to call attention the cracks in them.
The larger-venue shows I've been to recently (U2, Bob Dylan) left me wanting - not a bad thing, per se, but I get more out of a show at the eBar or Maxwell's because of the immediacy and sense of improvisation or uniqueness to a show there. It's like theatre: anything could happen in a small venue show and it's different every time. The audience of a small show has a different kind of presence than the anonymous crowd at a stadium show: they're real.
Tonight at Maxwell's: Grand River Orchestra and Great Dane. Come out. Be real.
12.11.09
welcome to your life 21:15
there's no substitute for the musical innovations of the 1980s. I'm not sure why, but the world only became a real place for me in the 80s. Maybe it's because I born in 1980; but everything before then seems to be just a story.
That's right: after five beers on a Thursday I assume that anything I didn't personally experience is a fiction.
If we haven't met, I apologize.
11.11.09
YYJ/YYC/YYZ 01:01
I have favourite airports.
how weird is that?
I don't particularly like Pearson: it feels like a mall. A big one, with too much security and no soul.
Should airports have souls? Are they haunted places? I mean, they're sites of memory and reunion, of heartache and desperation, of commerce and, well, diaspora.
I think Calgary airport has a soul. It's stuck out in the middle of Airdrie, which if you know, is a soulless suburb of Texas North that grew up around the airport. But the airport itself is like a map of the province of Alberta (sort of).
I'm here now on a two hour layover between Victoria and Toronto, and I can wander this airport like a kid in a theme-park, recalling the points of interest, finding pleasure in what's changed, laughing aloud at some of the more ridiculous displays. I'm going to refrain from wandering the terminal with my macbook because it's better if you experience it firsthand.
So, here is my invitation to you:
come to the Calgary International Airport at least once.
The only one I prefer is Vancouver International because of the incredible view over the tarmac, plains, to the mountains. Go there too if you get the chance.
10.11.09
harder than you think 11:32
I'm not a hard person. hard to know/stand/love maybe, but not hard in and of myself. at least, I don't regard myself as such.
I can't begin to guess at what anyone else thinks - I'm so terrible at reading most human signs that I usually assume that:
a) no one thinks anything; or,
b) they are just as or more self-conscious than I am
But around family... people who know your history, have memories in common with you, and can never really be expunged from your life (as a continuum of past-present-future) and always have an opinion about what you are doing vs. what you should be doing, I find myself in that weird place of worrying about the judgements of people who may not have seen me in years. a) and b) still apply, but the knowledge that these people will be around for years and years to come changes the stakes. Their hopes and expectations aren't there to hold me up to any arbitrary standard; rather, they ask questions on subjects they know little of because they connect those things to me. My cousins don't care about literature, but they ask because they're curious about me. It's different.
And then there are the tots. All of my cousins have children ranging from ages 1 to 15. There's no telling what they think, really: they don't even know themselves (well, maybe the 15-year-old does). But they certainly are paying attention and they certainly have an opinion. Very immediate, very definite, very affective. I can't help but care deeply about what children are thinking.
Maybe if I were a little harder I could avoid these uncomfortable functions on the coast. Maybe if I were harder I could escape the dysfunction of my modern family unit. Maybe if I were hard I could reinvent myself the way I wish I were: harder than you think.
But to do that would be to lose something that the value of which can't be measured, that is unlike anything else, that is never the same as it was, is fleeting, is genuine, is tender. Families aren't hard organisations: they're flexible and permeable and adaptive. Members come and go. Parts break. Things go missing. And we need to be soft enough to move and fill the gaps or find someone to fill it for you/us.
9.11.09
controlled burn 11:13
time for some reconstitution.
Here I am. In Victoria (Saanich actually, at the mo'). It's early on the west coast. I'm sharing a room with my sister, Karin in the hojo we usually stay at when we come here. It's the first place we ever got drunk together, so it's kind of a special hojo - very emotionally charged. we hadn't seen each other in a long time and finally had an opportunity to just hang out away from everything.
Currently she's making coffee in the little machine, which is exploding:
"They didn't specify you had to put the lid on. now I got a hot mess. literally... not like britney spears," she says. And later... "Um... it's still doing something bad."
Karin's all about the controlled burn. "burn" as in scathing insult. she knows exactly when and how much to scorch you or I or a celebrity to still be funny without hurting your feelings. I'd like to take full credit for her possession of this surgical skill with verbal jabs because of my overly sensitive nature coupled with appreciation for a good burn.
We're off to breakfast soon with almost the entire Asp clan. Wish you were here (really though, because I'm going to overload on family after about 20 minutes' exposure).
Ohbijou, see me through this troubled breakfast....
Here I am. In Victoria (Saanich actually, at the mo'). It's early on the west coast. I'm sharing a room with my sister, Karin in the hojo we usually stay at when we come here. It's the first place we ever got drunk together, so it's kind of a special hojo - very emotionally charged. we hadn't seen each other in a long time and finally had an opportunity to just hang out away from everything.
Currently she's making coffee in the little machine, which is exploding:
"They didn't specify you had to put the lid on. now I got a hot mess. literally... not like britney spears," she says. And later... "Um... it's still doing something bad."
Karin's all about the controlled burn. "burn" as in scathing insult. she knows exactly when and how much to scorch you or I or a celebrity to still be funny without hurting your feelings. I'd like to take full credit for her possession of this surgical skill with verbal jabs because of my overly sensitive nature coupled with appreciation for a good burn.
We're off to breakfast soon with almost the entire Asp clan. Wish you were here (really though, because I'm going to overload on family after about 20 minutes' exposure).
Ohbijou, see me through this troubled breakfast....
8.11.09
the week that earned a photo-essay 10:52
It's been an awful week this week.
It's also been one of the best I can remember.
I have cried and laughed harder than I had in a while.
I have hardly slept.
I have eaten way too much.
I went out nearly every night because I needed to be around people I love more than usual.
Monday: French class with Bex (that's Guy in the background. He's not our French teacher).
Tuesday: music with Jerry (music not pictured).
Wednesday: Young Galaxy and Malajube with Jo, Cassie, and Eric. Earlier that day I got some very bad news.
Thursday: Most Serene Republic and The Meligrove Band with Jo and les boys (pictured: Mike)
Friday: game night at the Scowcroft residence:
Saturday was a big one: market breakfast, dogwalking, and Bob Dylan at the Aud. Really kind of a perfect day.
Sunday: switch gears. pack. fly to Victoria. The bad news I received on Wednesday is waiting for me there. But I've got a back catalogue of good feelings to bring with me through the deserved and inevitable family grief of losing someone unexpectedly, unfairly, and despite the miracles of modern medicine. 
Dear Brian: you were a harbour.
1.11.09
fibs 23:17
everything I believe is a lie.
well, sort of. I've got this thing about truth. You can have it--my thing about the truth--because I'm not really using it. It goes like this:
we're all born liars. lucky thing too, or we'd all end up in a place like this. we need our lies because they're the things that spare us, prepare us, and endear us. and the best thing about lies, is that they can become true if we follow through on them.
i stopped lying to get out of trouble when i was just a kid because it made me feel like there was something about myself i needed to hide. couldn't stand it. as a result i found that people respect you more for telling the truth and that life is far more interesting when you 'fess up to the things you've done wrong. you get through more doors, i find, when you're humble enough to admit the things you've done wrong.
it's amazing, also, how your choices change when you don't acknowledge lying as an option for covering up your errors in judgement. it's uncomfortable at first, limiting yourself that way, but hey "the truth will set you free."
except that it doesn't. not in the contemporary sense of freedom. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that our culture's concept of freedom is just shy of anarchy and has nothing to do with the notion of liberty that formed the basis of Enlightenment thought and politics. oddly enough, those notions have a lot to do with the pursuit of truth: truth about knowledge, truth about God, truth about justice, truth about whatever. nope, truth nowadays really hinders freedom. it makes it harder to get a job, harder to find a mate, harder to be happy. so, instead we lie.
truth, as i think of it, is tenuous and based on interpretation and reception and our culturally-determined perspective. in short, truth is a lie because it's never the same for any two people; what's true for you isn't necessarily true for me. which is okay really, because most of the lies we tell are the ones that we want to be true, or the things we need to believe just to get through the day.
she loves me.
i'm not fat.
every little thing's going to be all right.
our best lies are stories. they're the lies that we grew up with that help us unpack the baggage we acquire as we move through the world. we use these lies to reconcile things that shouldn't be with the way we want them to be. our stories start out as lies and billow into a white screen on the inside of the back of our heads onto which the world is projected through our eyes. there are plenty of bad stories, to be sure, but we can always learn better ones and we can always choose to tell better stories. if the truth won't set us free, at least we're at liberty to lie.
maybe it's time i started telling lies that could help us all get out of the trouble we're in.
or maybe we just need a little more music...
well, sort of. I've got this thing about truth. You can have it--my thing about the truth--because I'm not really using it. It goes like this:
we're all born liars. lucky thing too, or we'd all end up in a place like this. we need our lies because they're the things that spare us, prepare us, and endear us. and the best thing about lies, is that they can become true if we follow through on them.
i stopped lying to get out of trouble when i was just a kid because it made me feel like there was something about myself i needed to hide. couldn't stand it. as a result i found that people respect you more for telling the truth and that life is far more interesting when you 'fess up to the things you've done wrong. you get through more doors, i find, when you're humble enough to admit the things you've done wrong.
it's amazing, also, how your choices change when you don't acknowledge lying as an option for covering up your errors in judgement. it's uncomfortable at first, limiting yourself that way, but hey "the truth will set you free."
except that it doesn't. not in the contemporary sense of freedom. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that our culture's concept of freedom is just shy of anarchy and has nothing to do with the notion of liberty that formed the basis of Enlightenment thought and politics. oddly enough, those notions have a lot to do with the pursuit of truth: truth about knowledge, truth about God, truth about justice, truth about whatever. nope, truth nowadays really hinders freedom. it makes it harder to get a job, harder to find a mate, harder to be happy. so, instead we lie.
truth, as i think of it, is tenuous and based on interpretation and reception and our culturally-determined perspective. in short, truth is a lie because it's never the same for any two people; what's true for you isn't necessarily true for me. which is okay really, because most of the lies we tell are the ones that we want to be true, or the things we need to believe just to get through the day.
she loves me.
i'm not fat.
every little thing's going to be all right.
our best lies are stories. they're the lies that we grew up with that help us unpack the baggage we acquire as we move through the world. we use these lies to reconcile things that shouldn't be with the way we want them to be. our stories start out as lies and billow into a white screen on the inside of the back of our heads onto which the world is projected through our eyes. there are plenty of bad stories, to be sure, but we can always learn better ones and we can always choose to tell better stories. if the truth won't set us free, at least we're at liberty to lie.
maybe it's time i started telling lies that could help us all get out of the trouble we're in.
or maybe we just need a little more music...
"all my lies are only wishes"
30.10.09
keywords 12:40
the past. ghosts. memory. history. internal struggles with a practical heart and meandering mind. hope tempered by disappointment. mornings. notebooks. rain. robots. myself. myself. my self. engineers. local food. leaves. feathers. hats. coffee. the end of oil. growing up. money woes. parents. siblings. unrequited everything. music. music. music. art. websites. clients. exes. prisons. publishing. birch trees. eavesdropping. dreams. fire. yoga. envy. masks. books. books books. generosity. lovemaking. forgiveness. hope. understanding. being selfish. resentment. guilt. dogs. cast iron. pet-names. breathing. teeth-brushing. taking off my shoes. wool. faith. losing things. magazines. fashion. stationery. phonecalls. talking. anxiety. driving. hiking. photographs. history. memory. ghosts. the future.
27.10.09
26.10.09
echoplex days 10:42
Thom Yorke + Flea = (eyes closed, head bobbing)
in other news:
these kids are awesome. Catch them Wednesday night at eBar in Guelph.
in other news:
these kids are awesome. Catch them Wednesday night at eBar in Guelph.
this blog 00:11
this entry is a kind of interim report/page marker/interruption to cynovation as a project.
the blog, in general, as a form of contemporary narration is a funny thing. it's ethereal (having no tactile or real-world production), crude (because it lacks or has no need for the elegance of literary tradition), and miscellaneous. In short: I'm a fan.
I have, however, noticed something about my own blog.
When I rebooted it earlier this year I had intended it to be an apostrophe to a pair of cities to which I was a relative newcomer. I wanted to have some small voice in this medium to express the way in which a modern exmetropolitan, not-so-densely populated region fed the kind of cynicism that brands my generation (Gen X, but just barely) in general, and my own life in particular.
Cynicism is rarely an honest gambit. It's a gloss. It's a veneer. It's a shroud we cast over ourselves to keep off the cold. The more I practised it, the more I began to feel as though I was wearing a borrowed garment. It fits just fine, but it isn't mine.
That's not to say I haven't got a healthy amount of ironic distaste for the state of affairs in the world at large. But as I mull over and compose a thought or a point or a musing, I've made an effort (perhaps subconsciously) to keep it honest.
Not just honest, but open. Open to the point where things get personal. I've mentioned this before. I don't know if I'm my to accomplishing what I set out to do a few months back, but as I make a 'go' of it I find that there's a narrative emerging. It might be that the act of writing (or my formal education) causes me to focus on narrative structure; either way, I could argue that one is emerging.
So, can the blog hold its own as a literary form? Maybe.
Thoughts?
the blog, in general, as a form of contemporary narration is a funny thing. it's ethereal (having no tactile or real-world production), crude (because it lacks or has no need for the elegance of literary tradition), and miscellaneous. In short: I'm a fan.
I have, however, noticed something about my own blog.
When I rebooted it earlier this year I had intended it to be an apostrophe to a pair of cities to which I was a relative newcomer. I wanted to have some small voice in this medium to express the way in which a modern exmetropolitan, not-so-densely populated region fed the kind of cynicism that brands my generation (Gen X, but just barely) in general, and my own life in particular.
Cynicism is rarely an honest gambit. It's a gloss. It's a veneer. It's a shroud we cast over ourselves to keep off the cold. The more I practised it, the more I began to feel as though I was wearing a borrowed garment. It fits just fine, but it isn't mine.
That's not to say I haven't got a healthy amount of ironic distaste for the state of affairs in the world at large. But as I mull over and compose a thought or a point or a musing, I've made an effort (perhaps subconsciously) to keep it honest.
Not just honest, but open. Open to the point where things get personal. I've mentioned this before. I don't know if I'm my to accomplishing what I set out to do a few months back, but as I make a 'go' of it I find that there's a narrative emerging. It might be that the act of writing (or my formal education) causes me to focus on narrative structure; either way, I could argue that one is emerging.
So, can the blog hold its own as a literary form? Maybe.
Thoughts?
23.10.09
oh dear oh dear oh dear 12:56
...Cassie's going to tease me so bad over this celebrity crush.
Rightly so.
British. Blonde. Beat beat beat.
Rightly so.
British. Blonde. Beat beat beat.
#iwishiwasarobot 01:14
...because then I'd be a better person.
We're marvelous machines, really. Not only is the capacity and capability of the human body still being pushed and re-imagined, but our bodies are part of an amazing cycle that, perhaps by design and perhaps by serendipity, continually reinvents bodies and adapts them to new and unexpected situations.
There are some who suggest we cheat death. Which is probably a big mistake. Death is an essential part of why, for a few billion years, this planet and its biosphere have managed to work. Not without immense suffering and turmoil, of course, but these things are the rule. The history of life on Earth is one of conflict and struggle, interrupted by only brief periods of relative tranquility and calm.
This was going to be a blog about me as a robot. While I am a machine, I'm no robot. I don't really have a hard-and-fast definition of a robot, but of course I'm thinking of a synthetic life form, made to specifications to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, and live longer than this old meat-bag I currently call home.
I like my meat-bag. More than I used to, anyways. I'm even fond of some of its design flaws - because they force me to be smarter just to get through the week. Others though, are just obnoxious.
Take, for instance, the mood.
I have lots of them. You probably do too. I'm usually content to shrug them off as occupational hazards germane to the trade of writing... except that they're not really hazardous to me. Not immediately, at any rate, and not in the same way as they are to the people around me in their various capacities.
A confession: I'm a moody prick.
A select few have had the cojones to point this out to me. I'm glad of that, but I'm also glad that not everybody's doing it because that at least means I'm not a moody prick all the time (or that they're too polite to say so, which is just as good). And yeah, moodiness is an obnoxious trait. But I kind of need it.
To a writer, mood is the harmony that makes voice more than mere words. It's probably the most difficult part of narrative structure to talk about (which is why it disappeared from literary studies half a century ago) and maybe the most essential.
Essential.
Of essence.
The essence of moods, of death too, is the transition. Death destroys and from it the parts become something new. Moods swing, and in the motion of moods we see the irrational become the rational, the revolting become beautiful, the prick become the prince (I mean Hamlet, not me). And vice versa. Can't have one without the other.
Give me the valley and the mountain top;
there's no one on the plateau anyway,
no one
but the robots.
We're marvelous machines, really. Not only is the capacity and capability of the human body still being pushed and re-imagined, but our bodies are part of an amazing cycle that, perhaps by design and perhaps by serendipity, continually reinvents bodies and adapts them to new and unexpected situations.
There are some who suggest we cheat death. Which is probably a big mistake. Death is an essential part of why, for a few billion years, this planet and its biosphere have managed to work. Not without immense suffering and turmoil, of course, but these things are the rule. The history of life on Earth is one of conflict and struggle, interrupted by only brief periods of relative tranquility and calm.
This was going to be a blog about me as a robot. While I am a machine, I'm no robot. I don't really have a hard-and-fast definition of a robot, but of course I'm thinking of a synthetic life form, made to specifications to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, and live longer than this old meat-bag I currently call home.
I like my meat-bag. More than I used to, anyways. I'm even fond of some of its design flaws - because they force me to be smarter just to get through the week. Others though, are just obnoxious.
Take, for instance, the mood.
I have lots of them. You probably do too. I'm usually content to shrug them off as occupational hazards germane to the trade of writing... except that they're not really hazardous to me. Not immediately, at any rate, and not in the same way as they are to the people around me in their various capacities.
A confession: I'm a moody prick.
A select few have had the cojones to point this out to me. I'm glad of that, but I'm also glad that not everybody's doing it because that at least means I'm not a moody prick all the time (or that they're too polite to say so, which is just as good). And yeah, moodiness is an obnoxious trait. But I kind of need it.
To a writer, mood is the harmony that makes voice more than mere words. It's probably the most difficult part of narrative structure to talk about (which is why it disappeared from literary studies half a century ago) and maybe the most essential.
Essential.
Of essence.
The essence of moods, of death too, is the transition. Death destroys and from it the parts become something new. Moods swing, and in the motion of moods we see the irrational become the rational, the revolting become beautiful, the prick become the prince (I mean Hamlet, not me). And vice versa. Can't have one without the other.
Give me the valley and the mountain top;
there's no one on the plateau anyway,
no one
but the robots.
22.10.09
I wish I were a robot... 14:17
...'cause then I wouldn't have these:
...as on-the-fence as I am about season 2 of Flight of the Conchords, I do love this track.
et vous?
...as on-the-fence as I am about season 2 of Flight of the Conchords, I do love this track.
et vous?
21.10.09
dream me a dream 13:54
I've been having some strange dreams of late.
I haven't made up my mind on dreams yet. I feel like there is some kind of eerie significance to them. Some people I know say that dreams can be clairvoyant, others subscribe to the philosophy that our dreams are a process of random neuron-firing that affects our unconscious sensory cortexes and in turn we form these random images and sensations into a narrative.
Why can't it be both, I ask you?
Okay, so: my dreams are pretty close approximations of these...
- 1 -
- 2 -
... doesn't seem all that random. huh.
19.10.09
headio 08:50
Monday.
I woke up with this in my head. I figure a little funk in the morning isn't a bad way to start the day. If you see me dancing down the sidewalk, feel free to join in. Nothing like an old fashioned street-dance.
I woke up with this in my head. I figure a little funk in the morning isn't a bad way to start the day. If you see me dancing down the sidewalk, feel free to join in. Nothing like an old fashioned street-dance.
15.10.09
n't 11:37
I've been encountering a lot of resistance lately. For various things, from various people, for various reasons there seems to be a lot of negativity out there.
That's not to say there isn't a time and a place for the word "no". Some things can't or shouldn't be done; others won't work no matter how hard you try. As much as I abhor the notion of fate, in some instances we're bound to fail.
So effing what? is my question to you.
One of my favourite things to say is "...not with that attitude" whenever someone says they can't accomplish something before they've given it a shot. If you can think of all the reasons why a thing can't be done before you've learned what the possibilities are then, well, you might avoid one failure but you're missing the millions of opportunities that come from improvising a solution.
I consider myself part of the try-and-fail camp. I fail lots. I'm good at it. I'm sure I'll fail far more, for years to come. In fact, I pretty much always aim too high and expect too much. But I'm seldom disappointed because I understand the value of failure. I fail to understand the value in not trying.
Here's a list of words I also fail to understand:
no
not
can't
won't
don't
shouldn't
impossible
unfeasible
ridiculous
absurd
unimaginable
forget it
unable
foolish
unattainable
Just for the record, I sort of stop listening when one of those words appears in every sentence of a conversation.
That's not to say there isn't a time and a place for the word "no". Some things can't or shouldn't be done; others won't work no matter how hard you try. As much as I abhor the notion of fate, in some instances we're bound to fail.
So effing what? is my question to you.
One of my favourite things to say is "...not with that attitude" whenever someone says they can't accomplish something before they've given it a shot. If you can think of all the reasons why a thing can't be done before you've learned what the possibilities are then, well, you might avoid one failure but you're missing the millions of opportunities that come from improvising a solution.
I consider myself part of the try-and-fail camp. I fail lots. I'm good at it. I'm sure I'll fail far more, for years to come. In fact, I pretty much always aim too high and expect too much. But I'm seldom disappointed because I understand the value of failure. I fail to understand the value in not trying.
Here's a list of words I also fail to understand:
no
not
can't
won't
don't
shouldn't
impossible
unfeasible
ridiculous
absurd
unimaginable
forget it
unable
foolish
unattainable
Just for the record, I sort of stop listening when one of those words appears in every sentence of a conversation.
12.10.09
distance and time (absence II) 23:05
Apparently space and distance aren't one and the same. Well, sort of. Distance is a quality of space, and it's probably how we most often think about space: space is something between objects. The space between two things is a distance.
Distant stars.
Distant memories.
You're so distant right now.
Distance suggests a position in space relative to another. These positions are not necessarily fixed, mind you, but if there's a distance perceived then it's safe to say that the objects in question are separated by space (and possibly more). I guess I could be talking about particles, but I'm not. I'm talking about us. So, the space between objects, is really the space between subjects. Ahhhh....
There's a theory out there that distance is equivalent to a period of time (D=cT). Intuitively (read: subjectively) I know that's true. It takes time to cross a distance. It takes me 40 minutes to walk to work, 10 on the bus, and about 7 by car. And yet, it's the same distance. The difference, of course, is velocity. If I move faster, I arrive earlier, pretty reliably.
So, what about impassable (or impassible) distances? Those literal and figurative gulfs in space-time that keep us apart, like borders, traffic jams, bad cell reception, or an utter lack of empathy. How do we reconcile distance-time with the barricades of our own making and unmaking? What keeps us from each other isn't space. Is it?
I suggested to the people involved with TEDx Waterloo that communication technology not only makes the world smaller, it also compresses time. We fit more in because space isn't the kind of barrier it once was. We can do all kinds of things remotely because information moves so quickly.
And yet, I feel like my cell phone and twitter and facebook are no surrogates for the presence of another person. As there's less and less time, there is more and more distance... but that would mean there is more space.... which actually kind of makes sense. We've invented virtual space (yet another opportunity for distance and absence) where time is negligible because our commtech gets closer and closer to light-speed.
The faster we talk, the further we get from each other.
I think I'd rather go the distance.
Distant stars.
Distant memories.
You're so distant right now.
Distance suggests a position in space relative to another. These positions are not necessarily fixed, mind you, but if there's a distance perceived then it's safe to say that the objects in question are separated by space (and possibly more). I guess I could be talking about particles, but I'm not. I'm talking about us. So, the space between objects, is really the space between subjects. Ahhhh....
There's a theory out there that distance is equivalent to a period of time (D=cT). Intuitively (read: subjectively) I know that's true. It takes time to cross a distance. It takes me 40 minutes to walk to work, 10 on the bus, and about 7 by car. And yet, it's the same distance. The difference, of course, is velocity. If I move faster, I arrive earlier, pretty reliably.
So, what about impassable (or impassible) distances? Those literal and figurative gulfs in space-time that keep us apart, like borders, traffic jams, bad cell reception, or an utter lack of empathy. How do we reconcile distance-time with the barricades of our own making and unmaking? What keeps us from each other isn't space. Is it?
I suggested to the people involved with TEDx Waterloo that communication technology not only makes the world smaller, it also compresses time. We fit more in because space isn't the kind of barrier it once was. We can do all kinds of things remotely because information moves so quickly.
And yet, I feel like my cell phone and twitter and facebook are no surrogates for the presence of another person. As there's less and less time, there is more and more distance... but that would mean there is more space.... which actually kind of makes sense. We've invented virtual space (yet another opportunity for distance and absence) where time is negligible because our commtech gets closer and closer to light-speed.
The faster we talk, the further we get from each other.
I think I'd rather go the distance.
8.10.09
7.10.09
folly 10:12
I've been hearing the phrase "everything happens for a reason" a lot lately. For almost a year now, actually; and I just want to clear something up.
Even if a thing happens for a reason (cause=effect), there's not a reason for everything that happens. I mean, there is in the sense that nothing happens without a cause to set it in motion, but the word "reason" implies an order or predestination for a thing to happen.
Case in point: the Titanic. It sank. For good reason. You might say (and some do) that the sinking of the largest ship built to that point was a lesson in humility for human ambition.
Even if a thing happens for a reason (cause=effect), there's not a reason for everything that happens. I mean, there is in the sense that nothing happens without a cause to set it in motion, but the word "reason" implies an order or predestination for a thing to happen.
Case in point: the Titanic. It sank. For good reason. You might say (and some do) that the sinking of the largest ship built to that point was a lesson in humility for human ambition.
I think those people were thinking of this Lady
Whose ambition sent a whole cast of characters to early graves.
There was a reason for all that, though: it was because somebody wrote it that way. It actually is predestined. The Titanic, in hindsight, may have seemed like it was a shoddily made thing, but the circumstances of its fate are great examples of the kind of random convergence that makes life what it is.
What it is is nothing less than our own need to make it make sense.
The Titanic sank because, due to cost-saving initiatives, its bulkheads were built too low to keep water from filling the hull.
Bumblebees can fly because they beat their wings really, really fast (it's science).
Lady Macbeth is a fictional character and not a fair nor an accurate comparison to any real person for any reason.
Reason is something we have at our disposal, to assign as we choose to things that happen. Or not.
I don't always need to make sense of things. I usually like to learn from experience, but honestly: I've seen so many things that make no sense whatever that I wonder if reason is really the best tool for being at peace with life when things don't go the way we want. Or even when they do. Maybe especially when they do.
I don't always need to make sense of things. I usually like to learn from experience, but honestly: I've seen so many things that make no sense whatever that I wonder if reason is really the best tool for being at peace with life when things don't go the way we want. Or even when they do. Maybe especially when they do.
6.10.09
wildtech 08:55
so, yesterday Dicovery--the organization we love to love for bringing the majesty of creation to us in 1080p--release it's list of the Top 10 Transgenic Animals.
It's kind of weird and not at all unlike Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx & Crake, which constructs a not-too-distant future that has commercialized genetically engineered animals and commodified genes to the point where the world her characters call home is one almost entirely man-made. I think that sucks. We're not very good at design as it is, why would we want to mess with the indifferent perfection of the natural world?
It's kind of weird and not at all unlike Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx & Crake, which constructs a not-too-distant future that has commercialized genetically engineered animals and commodified genes to the point where the world her characters call home is one almost entirely man-made. I think that sucks. We're not very good at design as it is, why would we want to mess with the indifferent perfection of the natural world?
What caught my attention was the first image in the series:
eerie, at best.
...and not just because I work for a company called Pink Elephant, but because this "animal" is the literalisation of a beautiful metaphorical expression that has no equivalent in the material realm.
Should we, just because we can, make flights of fancy real? What do we gain but a tragic novelty? What do we lose but the infinite possibility of the unrealised?
