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Showing posts from November, 2009

the dream of sleep

So ... November is almost gone and I have a few commitments to finish for December ... I might be lucky enough to get to my new studio one morning and one night a week. That's with writing group going out the window for a few months. Basically it's: go to work, work, come home from work, make supper, take baby, go to bed. Which is fine, you just have to triage everything else. So ... I probably won't be posting much for the next few weeks. Actually, let's just say I won't be posting anything until the New Year.

dark all day

untitled ; pen and ink on paper, 4 x 8 inches, illustration for a story. You'll have to click on the image to see a decently-sized version. And yes: the little black cloud is back.

The Big Heat

We watched The Big Heat on Friday night ... a Fritz Lang vehicle for Glenn Ford to be a completely heartless bastard ... even Lee Marvin has more anthropomorphic qualities when he throws boiling coffee in his girlfriend's face. Then on Saturday morning (while C went to yoga), I drugged Miss Fartsalot with formula and watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , a great movie that is too long by about twenty minutes. But it looks good and sounds even better and is almost all about character instead of the plot-driven engine that makes most westerns. Okay, some more baby for Grandma ...

Blood Meridian

The Kid ; pen and ink on paper. Blood Meridian (Or the Evening Redness in the West) What a damnable, difficult book. It is violence and death and the Book of Daniel if it was about the Old West. If it was an animal it would be obviously, drunkenly, ferociously male, completely bereft of anything to redeem it to the female species save for a bloodied but impressive sense of fate (sorry, Nathan's girlfriend). It is as western as No Country for Old Men and as doomed as The Road but it has none of their collected sense of impetus and danger. Instead it shows itself like a tintype held up to a campfire, this wondrous but foiling language that you have to squeeze away at with your thumb to only half understand the terrible picture underneath. Beware that this is a gifted author who is not above just making up words, full stop. The story is about a character we know only as The Kid but he's more like a welcome vantage point than any creature that we could claim to know. He disappear

Christmas ruins everything

Here's C, looking all Santa-is-magic . Which is fine and good and heartwarming (even if the inflatable reindeer is a bit sad). And this is what Christmas should be -- a kid's holiday, centred around the idea of giving. (And let's not even pretend with the whole Jesus thing because I don't know any kids who have the faintest idea who Jesus is. They don't even do the play anymore in school, do they?) It's all the rest of it that makes me wish Christmas didn't exist. The relentless marketing, the endless heaps of crap in the stores, the tinned music, the forced cheer and obligatory social events. Who has not been late and crowded and half sick with cold or flu or stress on a plane, train or automobile at some point during the Christmas season and wished that they were dead? There was a story on the radio this morning about a poll showing that Canadians intended to spend less this Christmas. What a load of horseshit. The same people will always go grinning int

let the weeping begin

There was a time in my life when I grieved for all the stupid things I did in my youth. This is not to say that stupid things have left my life, or that I consider myself above or beyond their reach. But there is a particular kind of stupid thing -- a kind of stupid thing that can only be possible (I hope) in one's teens or twenties -- that still makes me wince from its memory. Like walking to school with wet hair in the dead of winter. Or making a joke about mamma's boys to the guy whose mother just died. Or shouting expletives at my friends when a gaggle of teachers was standing right behind me. And these are the examples that are fit for public consumption. This morning -- this brisk November morning in Canada -- I walked by a teenage girl waiting at the edge of her front lawn for her ride to school, and quite suddenly this girl appeared to me like some kind of mixed-up medieval beast, the half-man-half-wolf kind of thing, because while I could make sense of her top half --

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Welcome to a movie that is not a movie. Of course, there are many movies like this, these things on film more monument than story, but so often those feel like mistakes, like stories that never started, while this is a movie that doesn't try, that simply pulls back a heavy red curtain to reveal something endlessly charming and somewhat tired, in every noble sense of that word. Bill Murray at his weary, deadpan best; Willem Dafoe as the boyish German; Owen Wilson with that nose again; Anjelica Huston looking like Iggy Pop in drag; Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum and Seu Jorge singing David Bowie in Portuguese. The sets alone are the stuff of little boy's dreams ... all sixties gadgetry and fantastical forts and all things miniature that fly and sail and slide underwater. What more do you want?

connectivity, part two

Yes, eeeek. Every artist has heard that reaction before. After awhile, you learn to face it. Even dig it. In fact, I had a friend in design school who was never sure of his work until he showed it to his wife; if she hated it, then he knew it was good. This is the second part of an essay about online connectivity. In the first part I talked about the 'usefulness' of blogging (and social media in general) -- in terms of creating a presence and cultivating relationships -- and its specific contribution to my life as a writer. Today I'll talk about these things from my perspective as a visual artist . The web is a highly visual experience, full stop. Suddenly, just about any image you can think of is available. Flickr, a popular Yahoo image-hosting site, just uploaded its four billionth photo . That's four billion photos of birthday parties and wild flowers and vintage motorcycles and artsy girls in their twenties running around the forest at night wearing nothing but a

connectivity

Recently I was asked to talk about my experience with having a blog and my ideas about online connectivity. I thought I would make a better (and more appropriate) job of it by writing here. For people on the outside looking in, these discussions always seems to boil down to one question: how is social media useful? Yes, the 'useful' thing. This goes back to the bad old days of the web, where the whole thing seemed a bit like Alice's adventures in Wonderland: illusory and quixotic, this wandering adventure that you couldn't hold in your hands let alone understand what the point was. And then the tech bubble burst, and all those dot-coms went bust, and all the skeptical people on earth said I told you so . And those same people look at things like Blogger and Twitter and Facebook and say It seems like a waste of time. And for many people it is. I mean, online landscapes are fun to roam around in but like any tourist (or Alice) you'll eventually just want to go home

the day off

> Hey dad, I heard you have the day off tomorrow. >> Yes I do, you gorgeous little cupcake. >But dad, you *do* realize ... >... that you won't *really* have the day off. FYI, I like my bottle just above room temperature. Oh, and mommy would really appreciate something in the oven for when she comes home from the bar. Now tickle my feet and sing to me, you big bozo!

at last

Finally: the topic that just won't go away. I wonder how we'll feel when it finally *does* go away? * * * * * And while we're flirting with the subject of end-times, I can tell you that I just started reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian . Just started. Already it's so much denser and knotted than either No Country for Old Men or The Road . Already there's been beatings, stabbings, shootings and malicious fires, thieving and privation and flight across a nightmare landscape. Just like H1N1!

now *that's* how you write a card

Dug out of a box from all my recent re-shiftings. The author is a mental patient. I don't remember taking her to Wally's Foodbasket. What I do remember is taking her by the arm and walking her up and down the hallway while her giggled breathing spilled out of control. It was a just-before-bed kind of thing. She called it "her exercises". She also called me Bernie a lot of the time.

things carried

Things in my extra carry bag (stenciled "Eat From Kingston's Countryside") this morning: one thermos cup of coffee with lid tightly secured, one peanut butter sandwich in a sandwich bag, one single-serving yoghurt, two overripe bananas (C won't eat them), one metal pencil holder, one cereal bar (sweet & salty), one old copy of Communication Arts (Illustration Annual 42), one copy of Surrealist Painting (soft cover, Phaidon). * * * * * Things I've overheard this week, walking home from work: Shaggy, snaggle-toothed man >> You like her. She's your buddy. Middle-aged woman wearing a hoodie over a nightgown >> She's lucky I don't punch her in the neck.* * I have to say, the phrase "punch in the neck" has gained considerably more currency in the last couple of years. * * * * * Fell asleep on the couch last night with Oona on my chest. Total heat-seeking suckyfest. I think that was around 8:30. C says she came and 'res

an open letter to my studio

An Open Letter To My Painting Studio Well, *former* studio. I know, you hate to hear that. And yes, it was rough, seeing me move out the way I did -- little by little over the last month, stealing away a canvas here, a pile of books there, until that last awful day found me moving boxes in the rain, looking distracted and wild and utterly tired, tramping around in muddy shoes, up and down those stairs, over and over, disappearing with a bang, and then coming back at night, almost slumped over, just tearing down what remained and throwing it in plastic bins, like I didn't even care, like I just wanted to be done with you. Well, you saw correctly. Don't get me wrong, you have loads to offer to the right guy. For starters, your location is marvellous. I mean, you're pretty much exactly halfway between home and work. And for a guy who walks, that's pretty seductive. I loved being downtown, loved being able to pop around the corner for a coffee or across the street for a mea