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I'm officially old.
I have come to this conclusion because I have officially passed from the "whee, retro!" stage to the "oh no, not this again" stage. I remember when the seventies revival was happening, and a cousin eighteen years older than I am rolled her eyes and said, "sure, it's fun if you didn't have to live through it the first time." Now I'm saying this myself.
I'm talking about the latest craze to sweep the Youth Of Today: cock rock. Yes, we've been threatened with the return of the mullet for a while, and now the music it came with is back; classic rock, hair metal, whatever you want to call it. And I have to admit, I'm afraid.
Before, it was easy to avoid this type of noise: just stick to large urban areas, and you were fine. If you wanted to indulge, you could always head up to the cottage for the eternally popular Top 500 Of All Time Countdown. And once in a while, it's fun to listen to that kind of thing. Just like it's fun to re-watch Spinal Tap every couple of years. Now that The Darkness has taken over, and Satanicide is ready to follow in their cloven footsteps, there will be no escape for another decade.
The problem with The Darkness is that they're poking fun at the whole genre, but some fans don't seem to realise it. They take it seriously. Far too seriously. They don't realise it's supposed to be funny.
Just to make it official, there are even books devoted to the history and mythology of hair metal. Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota researches the semantics of metal and chronicles its effects on small town teens.
And all I can think is, I remember far too well living through this the first time. And I don't want to go there again. I don't want to see men in tight pants. I don't want to see men with big hair that isn't a fro. Like Klosterman, I grew up in a small town. In Almonte, you had two choices: you could be a preppie or a rocker. I didn't want to be either. I'll cop to a fondness for Alice Cooper (inspired by his appearance on the Muppet Show), but I outgrew that fakey-evil stuff pretty quickly, and moved straight on to sullen-and-pretentious. The guitar solos are wanky, the lyrics often misogynistic. Sorry, I just can't relate to songs like "Tush" and "Hot for Teacher." And seminal bands like Led Zeppelin and Rush are more dorkily pretentious than a barrel of Morrisseys - The Immigrant Song? Ayn Rand? Give me a break. The argument that it's "everyman's music" doesn't hold much water.
In the small town where I grew up, you had two choices: you could be a preppy or a rocker. The preppies all listened to top 40 pop la soundtrack-to-a-John-Hughes-flick, came from white-collar families (one girl had every colour of Daniel Hechter sweatshirt imaginable), intended to go to university and get married. The rockers listened to hair metal, came from working-class families, dressed like wannabes, had few ambitions and usually ended up dropping out of high school. To me, it's the music of people with no ambition, no interest in life. The music of people who've given up.
I never fit in with either group. I was one of the desperate ones, one of the get-me-out-of-here ones, listening to desperate, get-me-out-of-here music, or sometimes soothing escape music. I don't want to be reminded of the apathy era by the apathy music.
But I'm afraid it's come too far for us to try to stop it now. Stations such as Much More Retro will make poodle perms and mullets seem normal again, as they broadcast such classics as Europe's "The Final Countdown" and other songs you never thought would see the light of day again.
Fortunately there are antidotes.
Just as bands like the Smiths and the Cure and the Cocteau Twins flourished at the same time as the first onslaught of noise, we now have bands like the Dears and Stars and Belle & Sebastien. For every neddless wanky guitar solo, there will be a Coldplay warble. And thank goodness for the electro revival.
Maybe the problem isn't that I'm old. Maybe it's just a matter of taste: I didn't like it then, why would I like it now? Maybe I'll just go to my room and sulk and strum my guitar until this is all over. I just have to learn how to play, first.
updated 11 september 2003. permalink
It's that time of year again.
Yep, the summer is over, I'm updating the Review again, and the Toronto International Film Festival has once again descended upon the city, bringing with it a plethora of wannabes and alreadyares. People will drink till dawn, people will try desperately to crash parties, people will try to seem more important than they are, people will sell their souls to see films now that will be playing every multiplex next month.
And then, there are the buffs.
This is a separate breed, not interested in who's famous or who wore what to which gala, but rather look on the festival as a rare opportunity to see brilliant films that won't be picked up by the distributers, films from around the world in any of a dozen subtitled languages, films that use the full potential of the medium to convey ideas and thoughts as opposed to just marketing strategies.
I know, I know, I say this every year, and then I go to the parties anyway. Um.
The thing is, for those of us working in the arts, it can be frustrating to see the same old thing year after year. To see good projects get ignored while all of the major media outlets battle one another to write the same story over and over again.
The weird thing is, lately there seems to be some sort of pseudo indie cred thing going on. Over the past year, I've noticed more and more repeat stories appearing. Films like A Mighty Wind and Thirteen got features every day of their opening weeks, for example. It reminded me of high school, where the preppy kids would all decide to like a certain "alternative" band, combining the thrill of imagining they were being different with the comfort of conformity.
From a publicist's standpoint, it's frustrating to see every journo sucked into the black whole of one film.
From a reader's standpoint, it's just boring. How many articles can I read about Thirteen? Maybe two, tops. Not eight, and five of them in the same paper.
So please please please, can this year be different? Can we read about the films that won't be getting saturation coverage for the next eight months? Can we read about new directors and actors that we've never heard of before?
And can we please have a moratorium on boring fashion gossip?
updated 4 september 2003. permalink
The envelope please...
Last year I wrote a disparaging column about the hokiness of the Canada Reads project.
This year, while continuing to believe the whole thing is hokey, I'm going to implore that you read one of the losers.
I do intend to read winner Prochaine Episode as well. Denise Bombardier, its champion in the Canada Reads debates, was the most eloquent and thoughtful of the group, open to exploring the other books while others on the crew openly admitted they read their "competitors" with an eye to finding flaws. Feh. Besides, I've read other books translated by Sheila Fischman, so the fact that she worked on this one is recommendation enough for me.
But I grew up with Sarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan. It was one of the many thousands of books on my parents' shelves, a thin paperback with a sort of sketchy drawing of a bespectacled woman's face on the front, the title in purple with a yellow shadow (it will be interesting to go have a look and see how accurate this memory is). As an eleven year old, I didn't "get" half of the jokes, didn't appreciate the satirisation of Canada's lit crit scene the same way I do now. No, as a child I mostly latched on to the funny poems, memorising and reciting them to the irritation of anyone who heard them more than twice.
My favourite: The Genius
I'm a genius, I'm a genius
What more can I desire
I toot upon my little flute
And twang upon my lyre.
I dabble in oil paints
In cinnabar and ochre
At night I am dissipated
And play poker.
In my little book, in my little book
I write verses
Sometimes they don't rhyme
Curses.
The above is quoted from memory. It obviously had a great influence on my life. I was one of those pretentious kids growing up (well duh, I think the fact that I read Sarah Binks at that age is pretty much conclusive proof). I secretly wanted to live the genius life as described by the poem, but at the same time recognized it as laughable. Thus was crystallized the central theme of my dorky life, which has led to decades of conflict and angst.
But I can laugh about it!
And in a world where everyone takes everything so unnecessarily seriously, that is a valuable thing. When everyone is hollering and getting cranky, being able to say, "Hi, I'm a pretentious dork. Kisses," becomes a valuable commodity. Who wants to hang with the cranky people? Pas moi. The world needs some smart levity, and Sarah's got it.
I was pleased and surprised to see Sarah Binks as one of the selections. Vote for Sarah Binks while you still have the chance.
updated 24 april 2003. permalink
Art again!
I want one of these.
I saw them in a gallery the other day: an installation of wee houses, homes, identical but not quite, each with its own organic case of home-made felt, soft and seamless.
There was a neighbourhood, a cul de sac.
I want one. I want a full sized house like this.
This is what a home should be: cushiony cloudlike, soft and gentle and inviting.
Of course, at the same time that these homes comfort and soothe us, they are also... the same. There's the rub. You can be unique and exciting or have gentle comfort but not both, not both. A reminder that there is a price to be paid for quietude; that ignorance is bliss, but it's still ignorance.
So maybe I don't want to live in one of these houses. Maybe I want one, or a short little street of them, to look at, to cuddle (really -- they are delightfully soft to the touch, small cloudlike homes, seamless, with no way in and no way out). To be comforted by, and to maybe remind me why life isn't comfortable all the time, that the price for constant comfort is too high.
It's amazing how much a soft little marshmallow sculpture has to say when you stop to think about it. Perhaps that is the difference between craft and art: craft is lovely to behold, art is lovely to behold but is maybe hiding a dagger behind its back. It has something to tell you, and you may not be thrilled with what it has to say, but it will say it in a way which will betwitch you.
Pretty sneaky, huh?
updated 10 april 2003. permalink
An antidote to the troubles.
It's hard to focus on anything with this war going on in the background.
But it's possible.
Every day I hear another complaint about saturation coverage. War talk is unavoidable, so people say. I've heard tons of complaints about non-stop coverage on the CBC. Obviously, these people ar listening to the wrong station. CBC radio two has solved the what-to-do-about-the-war problem: they have their regular news on the hour; say, "for ongoing coverage of the war, please turn to CBC radio one," and then return to regular programming. The Arts Report, for example. A sonata, perhaps.
Or you can listen to your own music, CDs, mix tapes, pull out that comb and tissue paper, whatever. Sing. Hum. Whistle.
If the newspaper is too daunting, read a novel. Or a short story. Or a poem.
Turn off the tv.
Do a crossword puzzle. Knit a sweater. Take up quilting. Give your bike a tune-up. Weed the garden. Have a bath.
When the world is coming apart, it needs to be put back together. It needs the smart solace of the fruit of creative minds. I recently heard (wish I could remember where) someone describe fiction as "a how-to book for living." This is what we need right now. When people are dying, we need to know how to live. Not sure how to cope with grief? With anger? Read Tolstoy. Or Kundera.
Or write that novel yourself.
Art is what makes life worth living. So create something. Whether it's building a chair or writing a song, the act of creation brings renewal. The smell of sawdust, dirt under your fingernails, realizing suddenly that three hours have passed while you've been typing madly, all of these lead to one thing: the chance to step back, breathe deeply, and say yes. Yes. There. I made that.
There is no satisfaction to be had in destruction. Or inaction. When the world is going crazy, do something to make the world a better place.
updated 27 march 2003. permalink
The things we wish for and the things we become.
Last night I was at a fundraiser at Lotus. A fellow reveller pointed to the multi-armed sculpture that grows from the ground floor bar up to the second storey lounge.
"Did you see that Michael Jackson special?" he asked.
"No," I said, "I think I'm the only person alive who didn't."
"He has this huge 'tree of creativity' in his backyard. He climbs it when he wants to write music. He's amazingly agile, he zoomed right up through all of the branches while the reporter was wheezing and couldn't get off the ground. And he sat up there, smiling. I wonder if I could climb this thing."
Fortunately the question was rhetorical, because I think we would all have gotten in a bit of trouble if he'd tried.
Jackson was in the news again today, losing a court case (he was being sued for having backed out of performances). He's been in the news a lot lately, always being criticised. He dangled his baby out of a window. He names his children after himself. His face is forever changing into something unrecognisable.
But remember The Wiz? Remember Off The Wall? What happened?
I was a big Michael Jackson fan as a kid. My sister teased me mercilessly about it. He had the kind of charms that appeal to pubescent girls: he was male, without being masculine. Completely non-threatening. I guess that isn't a fun role to be pigeonholed into, though. Like many "good guys," he went after the "bad boy" role. Like many tall poppies, he got cut down.
I went through a period of denial after my period of fanhood: typically pre-teen fickle. Went through the same thing with Duran Duran. Eventually I settled into the tastes I have today, and am no longer embarrassed at my former passions. Duran Duran followed the typical path of teen idols: they were huge, they were mocked, they disappeared, they did a comeback tour.
Michael Jackson did not follow the typical path. Nothing about his life has been typical. Is it the Curse of the Child Star? Maybe, but not all child stars suffer such fate. Some grow up to be normal and well-adjusted (cf Ron Howard).
But you could apply this question to anyone. What makes some people crazy and some people sane? There is no answer to that one.
If I was in Michael Jackson's shoes, if I had led half the life he has, I think I'd want to build a Neverland, too. A place where I could hide from the world and not have to be a grown-up if I didn't want to. I often wish I had a place like that for myself.
Maybe that's why the world is so obsessed with Michael Jackson: he's living a little dream that we refuse to admit to having.
updated 14 march 2003. permalink
WhatÕs worse than plagiarism?
Getting put down for defending yourself.
The background: Seth Shafer, struggling writer, won the Fictionline prize last year for a short story entitled Main Strengths.
Ung Lee, Princeton MFA student, borrowed this story (and others, by other authors) to use as part of his Masters Thesis. Main Strengths was renamed Accidents, and work went on to win the SUNY Stony Brook $1,000 Short Fiction Prize, Samuel Shellabarger $5,000 Creative Thesis Prize and Althea B. Clark Reading Prize. One of his advisors was Joyce Carol Oates. There has been no comment from anyone affiliated with Princeton for legal reasons. And Lee is out of the country.
After the Princetonian broke the story, the controversy swirled its way to a number of literary sites. Moby Lives interviewed Seth. He wrote a (remarkably magnanimous) article for the Morning News. Writers discussed the issue in a number of online hangouts, like the Zoetrope workshop site, where both Shafer and Lee were members (although Lee doesn't appear to have submitted anything.
But the media doesnÕt seem to care.
When someone on the Atlantic MonthlyÕs Post & Riposte suggested heading over to the New York Times forum in order to try to generate interest at America's most-respected newspaper (after all, this is an Ivy League school, there are prestigious awards involved, and famous names), they were shouted down immediately by the stalwarts there -- a classic case of "blame the victim." Childish accusations of impersonation flew (in one direction only). It takes two to tango, and the New York Times denizens would rather aim their peashooters than dance.
One wonders: why such hostility? Why such anger directed at someone theyÕve never met, someone whoÕs done no harm? Some claimed it wasn't "newsworthy" (although much un-newsworthy stuff gets published, even in the New York Times). They argued that Plagiarism is too common to be of interest.
But surely if plagiarism is that pervasive, if it's that big an issue, it should be newsworthy? A bit of googling reveals that plagiarism and other forms of cheating are very common -- outside of the Fine Arts. I found story after story about plagiarism by students of History, Economics, Biology, Computer Science, Law, Civil Engineering, Med school -- just about every Science you could think of, and a few Arts, but in the Fine Arts it's unheard of.
This is what bothers me about the whole case.
I can sort of understand plagiarism in some studies. There is fierce competition, there are high-paying jobs at stake. Possibly a student didnÕt even want to study Law or whatever in the first place, possibly his course of study was foisted upon him by his striving parents. Pressure + deep-seated resentment could easily add up to someone who's willing to cheat to get ahead. In another scenario, maybe the student understands his subject, but doesnÕt have the English language skills necessary to write a grad school paper (this is the justification used by someone I used to know who sold term papers).
But the arts are different. There is very little money, no guaranteed money. The arts are something you do out of love. Because you are driven. Creative Writing is 100% about language and ideas. If you don't have ideas you are driven to express, and if you don't have the skills to express them, you are not a writer. Why pursue a difficult field with no monetary rewards if you don't have to by avocation?
The whole idea of plagiarism goes against the very nature of creative writing.
I was almost relieved to find out Lee's major was in psychology rather than Fine Arts. Psychology is something you might pursue (or be goaded into pursuing) for the money.
We won't find out the truth until Lee returns from his travels. We may not find out even then, if the newspapers don't care.
updated 7 march 2003. permalink
Media Overload Is Over (If You Want It)
I was just listening to a show on the radio about the upcoming Grammies, highlighting some of the favourites to win.
I had only ever heard two of the songs before (Norah Jones and Coldplay; not too surprising for an old softy such as myself).
It got me thinking about the media overload so many complain of, and how easy it is to avoid. The other day when I was driving to work (yes, I know, but it's been far too cold to ride my bicycle lately), I had to wait about forty-five minutes for a light to turn green at a very busy intersection: Strachan and Lakeshore. It's always busy at that interesction. I took a look around me to see how many billboards were up to persuade this captive audience: I could see one for beer, and one for condominiums. That was it. Other than that, All I could see was trees, the lake, a sliver of the war monument, some buildings, and the lovely stone gates to the Exhibition grounds. I drove a fair way along Lakeshore before I saw another.
The fact is, like many other things people complain of, advertising is pretty easy to avoid. Listen to college radio or the CBC, or your own mix tapes. Read books instead of magazines. Throw away your television, and voila.
Once again, like just about everything else on the planet, it comes down to taking responsibility for your own choices. If you choose to immerse yourself in the commercial world, complaining about commercialism is idiotic. It's like the yuppies who gentrified Ottawa's Glebe neighbourhood, which features fairgrounds and a stadium. For years, it was a relatively poor neighbourhood. The residents, rather than complaining about the noise, were happy to rent out their front lawns as parking spots. Then yuppies came in and complained about the noise of the Ex and football games and rock concerts. Um, you didn't notice the stadium across the street when you bought your house? Like, duh.
Same goes for marketing overkill. It's easy to ignore if you choose to. And if you don't choose to, well... who's fault is that? If you don't like advertising, don't look at it, and certainly don't respond to it.
Now, I have no problem with people who do like advertising. Some ads are quite clever. It's the hyposcrisy that bugs me. The "I'm oppressed by this billboard" cries of people who go home to watch Fox and UPN. They're as bad as people who moan about being "too busy" when one of the activities that takes up their precious time is watching television. If watching television is so draining, turn it off! No one is forcing you to watch!
Repeat after me: You Can't Have It Both Ways.
updated 22 february 2003. permalink
the littlest things can be the most lovely.
I have an abiding fondness for the small, obscure collective projects that the internet provides such a fertile feeding ground for. I have a stack of links to such things: behold, 99 secrets, 100 journals. I used to have many more, but unfortunately such projects are subject to the whims and vagaries of the bank accounts of writers and other amateurs of life.
But they are lovely nonetheless. Small ways for creativity to connect people a thousand worlds away, connect minds using ideas and thoughtful words.
The latest such project I have come across is the poem tag project, an outlet for brief shimmering slivers of haiku and verse, just enough words to tie down an image for a moment, like honey becoming crystalline, catching light and refracting thoughts for a moment before melting.
There are many poem tags scattered across the web, like stepping stones from journal to journal, each connected in their fondness for the written word, but widely divergent in their viewpoints and ideas. It's a simple and pure project, with no room for ego-blowing pontification and omphalokepsis, only a dozen words or so on a small piece of paper, like an introduction or a question or a label: this is who I am, not my name, but my thoughts, distilled to the fifth essence of purity.
This is who I am, yours to love or dislike.
updated 6 february 2003. permalink
I feel extraordinarily privileged right about now.
I just started working on the Distillery Jazz Festival, in Toronto's historic Gooderham & Worts Distillery District. It's a stunning collection of forty buildings on thirteen acres of land on the outskirts of Toronto's downtown.
These buildings were built, for the most part, in the mid- to late- nineteenth century, and unlike most buildings of that age, remain largely untouched. No hap-hazard additions and stopgap repairs, no mis-guided renos. They are old and beautiful and real and lovely. For years - decades - they stood empty, occasionally being rented out for film shoots. Wandering around inside these beautiful relics - crawling along catwalks at ceiling level, climbing rickety wooden staircases into windowed cupolas - is like stepping into a living museum. Old wood, old brick, natural light. These buildinigs were built at a time when people had not just respect, but a real love of buildings and the craftsmanship that goes into building them. They're industrial buildings, but they have character, detail, beauty.
What's most amazing is what's being done with the site.
The new owners are turning it into an arts and culture village, leasing buildings to galleries, to theatre groups, to Artscape, to cafs and shops that keep the original feel of the campus. There is no neon here. All buildings that are open to the public retain their original feel: on the bare-brick walls of the Sandra Ainsley Gallery, next to the visually stunning glasswork of Dale Chihuly, is a stencilled warning: "No Smoking in Lunchroom Before 12:15." There are scrawled grafitti signatures of the workers who inhabited these walls a hundred years ago. There is history, and respect for history.
And respect for the creative process. Everyone in the area has some labour of love, some passion that they're making real. We all work together. We rent each other's spaces, we hire each other's services, we lunch at Balzac's and discuss our ideas over coffee.
And we are inspired by the spaces we work in. When I'm at my desk, I look out a window onto an old stone building, I watch the weathervane spin. It could be a hundred years ago. This sense of permanence, of continuity, grounds everything we do, legitimizes our sense of collective purpose.
This is one story with a happy ending. A story where developers moved into a historic site, and treated it with reverence and respect. They don't just have plans, they have visions. And their visions have character, detail, beauty.
I never want to leave.
updated 30 january 2003. permalink
So?
You're probably wondering.
What the hell happened?
Long story short: Everything happened.
Yes, I reached fifty thousand words on my novel. In fact, I have gone far past that. This thing might actually work. I've also been helping a friend with his one-man-show/book/prophesy-of-the-apocalypse, coming soon to a theatre near you.
All this, and much much more!
Next week, we return you to your regularly scheduled weekly updates, every Thursday or thereabouts.
updated 7 january 2003. permalink
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