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Scribbled Notes on the Importance of Provocation

“Great art has dreadful manners…”

– Simon Shama

“It is important to have this idea in one’s mind, because otherwise one fails to grasp the whole spirit of modern Science-Philosophy. It does not aim at Truth; it does not conceive of Truth (in any ordinary sense of the word) as possible; it aims at maximum convenience.”

– Aleister Crowley

The enemy of philosophy is comfort, whether it be the philosophy of Art, Science, or Religion. I believe the aim should be truth seeking and its inevitable provocations, knowing that the process of seeking is fraught with necessary kludges and haphazard experimentation.

Knowledge is painful. Moving forward requires muscles, and muscles require exercise to stay useful. Tango dancers are not born, they practise themselves into being.

In the West, with the rise of the middle class after the Second World War, we increasingly have seen our lives surrounded – nay swaddled – in easy-to-access comforts: emotional, intellectual, spiritual.

Youths strictly consider university and college as a direct line toward employment and the beginning of their professional lives; the knowledge and the knowledge seeking of those institutions reduced to a utilitarian concept for sake of securing a Degree. When you graduate, it’s all about your career, which becomes tied to money with the paying of debts, the purchasing of cars and houses, the investments for retirement. Along this linear path, comforts are sought to take our minds off this linearity; these comforts do not refute linearity but provide means to make the linearity easier. The lawnmower, for example.

And if one day, a biologist or a philosopher writes something which reiterates the natural chaos of our human lives, we frown and ignore it. Some of us will demand our money back (whether possible or not) and walk away in a huff to their air-conditioned livingroom/car.

Again, the seeking of truth leads to conceptual provocation and whatever truths we manage to unearth often come without directions for usage. But I will accept the kludges, the orphaned questions begging at the back of my head, if I feel that it brings us one step closer to knowing more about nature and human existence.

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The Drawing of Blood

Speaking with my wife last night, we came to the conclusion that U.S. Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama suffers from the same problem as that of the head of Canada’s opposition Liberal Party, Stéphane Dion.

They are both intelligent, seemingly well-rounded people, who aim to represent, at least when compared with the rest of the politicians around them at the federal level, a different perspective.

Unfortunately, they both need to draw blood. And soon.

In Obama’s case, fascinating though it may be for pundits, the current Democratic primary is turning into a farce. He’s been in the lead, with both widespread party and public support. And yet, Hillary Clinton has been gaining on him. The problem is that, in being a nice, measured, principled man who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, he’s allowing the other nominee to eat away at his chances to win the ticket. Clinton can get her hands dirty; she has, she can, and she will. This, combined with a persuasive argument that Obama isn’t seasoned enough to work on a world stage, means that he must roll up his sleeves and “finish” his opponent. Strike the killing blow. Draw blood, lest he be the one whose blood is drained by her well-managed campaign.

With Monsieur Dion, it’s a similar scenario. Elected leader of the opposition after the Liberal Party lost the last federal election to the Conservatives, he was – at the time – if not the most enigmatic choice, certainly the more seasoned, non-conflicted nominee. He’s intelligent, savvy, experienced. Unfortunately, he’s also wary of cameras, his English pronunciation is weak, and most importantly – thanks to a well-managed campaign by the reigning minority Conservative government – is made to look weaker by a series of “confidence motions” the Conservatives have strategically engineered in such a way as to create a poison pill for the Liberals. If they vote against the government on a confidence motion, there’s a good chance there will be another federal election as a result (and all the money, time, and mud-slinging that comes with it). If Dion instructs the Liberals not to vote, they appear to have no backbone. Like Obama, Stéphane Dion must draw blood; an election in 2008, at this rate, is inevitable and he must show that he can punch back (as well as absorbing punches thrown at him).

Is there room for “nice” people in federal politics? Absolutely. There should be more: more disinterested, more historically aware, more cross-partisan politicians. That said, I would be remiss if I also didn’t make it clear that no one wants a wimp leading their country, regardless of whether their wimpishness is a question of intelligence or willpower. Like checking out boxers’ stats before a fight, we look for one thing and one thing only: can they finish their opponent?

This question looms large over the next year.

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If You Were On a Deserted Island…

One of the hardest questions you could ask me is the ubiquitous “If you were on a deserted island and could only have (x) number of books and/or albums and/or films, which would you pick?”

First off, I’ve always felt the question itself (or others like it) are closer to Buddhist koans than what they really are: idle, consumerist rhetoric. A koan is intended to divert the individual’s mind from overly-rational thought – one of the most common examples being the question “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”. The point is not to take it literally (i.e. provide an answer), but to allow the unexpected nature of the predicament to unearth a more creative, less predictable perspective on one’s inner and outer life.

Getting back to the “deserted island”, it’s not hard to see the comparison, particularly when electrically-powered audio/visual equipment needs to be installed on said “island”. Is there a company which specializes in such installations? How expensive is the shipping? Furthermore, I’m assuming there’s food on the island – that would be good, lest the subject, after starving for several hours and unable to drink sea water, begins to munch on their precious copy of Mann’s “Death in Venice”.

Let’s go further, exploring the impossibility of the question. If I was on a deserted island with, let’s say, only 5 books, I would probably lose my mind very quickly. The reason being that the 5 books we pick are based on what we’ve read within the comfort of more controlled circumstances. Can you imagine being stuck on an island with a stack of books written by Dickens and Shakespeare – tell me ye olde language wouldn’t grate after a while? What if you were only kidding yourself about them – pressured by peers, no doubt – then what? A stack of books you can’t stand but are forced to read? You might as well skip the island and go to university. But why only fiction? I’d sure like a moment – and a deserted island sounds perfect – to learn the basics of electricity; unfortunately, assuming all I have is a palm tree, it’s unlikely that I will be able to do much in the way of experimenting, and I’m the type who needs to get his hands dirty in order to understand things.

I come to the conclusion that, unless you are asking me the question in order to develop my non-rational consciousness, I must insist, despite whatever books, albums, movies, or magically-transported reruns of sports games I pick, that one thing be added to the stack without question: a pistol with a single bullet in the chamber.

How’s that for an answer?

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Damn you, Harper’s

About eight years ago, I read my first copy of Harper’s. Up until then, I’d never been a magazine person (not counting the subscription I had, at the age of 16, to Psychology Today…and then later, Spy for a brief period, while they were struggling with bankruptcy). Okay. Let’s just say that, from my twenties onward, I wasn’t a magazine person. But one day I picked up Harper’s and I fell in love. I discovered something densely intelligent, funny, and with such a variety of content that one could spend countless hours reading (nay appreciating, savouring) every morsel it served. Lastly, for someone who was much more interested at the time in non-fiction, it was a godsend.

Then, after 9/11/01 [sidenote: it took a tragedy for people to officially confuse the order of the month and day when writing the date], I fell out of love. Not immediately, mind you – if anything, out-of-the-gate, Harper’s was one of the few mainstream voices of sanity in the aftermath. While everyone in the mass media seemed to conform to a dangerously singular mindset (i.e. being complacent), Harper’s was honestly critical and asked the necessary questions. But, over time, I found then-editor Lewis Lapham’s essays too predictably left-wing (and I think the fact that they were predictable was perhaps the greater sin). The magazine also began to suffer from the same Americentric cocooning as the rest – I believe the turning point for me was an essay on how pragmatism was a uniquely American concept. Oh, really.

I felt like I was reading something written by people who had never left their homes, or who didn’t want their presumptions challenged. In other words, for reasons arguable or not in hindsight, it became a magazine like any other.

Flash-forward to 2008: with the hell-job in its trailing throes, I found myself in a bookstore itching for something different to peruse – something less weighty (literally) than a book. And sure enough, as if face-t0-face with an ex-girlfriend, I was staring at a copy of Harper’s on a magazine rack. I picked it up, flipped through, and seeing a lack of blatant political indignation, sighed, and proceeded to the cash register.

Sure enough, I found myself addicted once again. The Readings section, with its immaculately edited selection of essays, fiction, poetry, and miscellaneous news items. The ubiquitous Harper’s Index. A fascinating piece on the possibility of transmissible cancer, by David Quammen. A report on the raw-milk controversy (with a Canadian angle, no less). Last but not least, a series of 22 short fiction pieces by Paul Theroux – each of them excellent.

While I am delighted at what seems to be the return of a full-blooded Harper’s, I’m equally despondent: it’s almost too much of a good thing. I can’t pick it up without devoting hours to reading every bit of it. As a result, I worry that everything else I’m reading (or promising to read – hello, Ulysses) will fall by the wayside.

Damn you, Harper’s. Damn you.

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On Hypocrisy

hy-po-cris-y
1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2. a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.

There are two measurable forms of hypocrisy. It is important that we separate them as the word – the accusation – is so stinging that we often forget that there are significant degrees. These two persuasions can be summed as Man and SuperMan.

1. Man: you have opinions and state them from time to time. These can be zealous statements or inoffensive observations. Not exactly Jesus at the Mount stuff. A friend comes up to you one day – could be an old acquaintance for all you know – and, pointing out an incongruity between something you once said and something you’ve done, calls you a hypocrite.

2. SuperMan: your role, or at least the one you’ve staked for yourself, is one of “paragon of society”. You mean what you say, you say what you mean, and you’ve claimed your tract of ideological real estate on your beliefs. And then one day the New York Times prints an article about how you spent thousands of dollars on prostitutes and in doing so, you are exposed as – you guessed it – a hypocrite.

The question is: are these two accusations of hypocrisy equally condemnable? I say: no.

Most of us who’ve read a few books, shared deep conversations with friends, and watched a couple of debates, have developed opinions. Although the zealotry of said beliefs is certainly a factor, the individual generally has every right to voice them. The thing is this: beliefs, for the most part, should not be static. We should always be investigating our beliefs and allowing them to be challenged – in being challenged, our beliefs are honed and shaped into finer (though sometimes less easily-communicable) instruments. As a result, something you may have thought/said last year – though your overall position may not have turned 180-degrees – has probably changed (whether that means “hardened”, “softened” or some other adjective, it doesn’t matter). So, when that certain someone approaches you and accuses you of being a hypocrite, is it true? Not strictly, no. Again, as long as you aren’t preaching, as long as you aren’t being duplicitous and are simply guilty of being human (although this defence can be specious at times), then no, you aren’t being a hypocrite as far as the definition above implies. Which isn’t to say that you still won’t piss people off or that we can behave with impunity. We should all have to answer for our beliefs – it helps us to justify them or find fault.

This is my problem with the whole “flip-flop” accusation used in political debate over the last half-decade. Look: I don’t want a politician who’s views never change, and if they do (as in “grow” or “adapt to reality”) and have the temerity to voice an evolved opinion which differs, why should they then be castigated (or perhaps the question should be: why does the castigation stick)? Of course, there are some politicians who are out-and-out liars and conniving, half-reptile bastards who will use babies to shield themselves from bullets. But most politicians aren’t like that and it irks me whenever I hear the term “flip-flop” when it’s someone trying to adapt to a complex issue. When that accusation is levied it is implied that they are hypocrites when in fact they aren’t.

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(I’m still here)

It’s the 10th of March and we are within 17.8 centimetres of breaking a Toronto record for the most snowfall, set in the winter of ’38-39 @ 207.4 cm. You know prospects are bleak when people start betting whether we will overcome the record, as opposed to the typical Toronto attitude, which is “It’s March! It’s almost Spring! Why do I have to shovel?”.

The symptoms of winter hold on to us; they take us hostage without ransom notes, without reason. We wake up, wondering which of the three sweaters we have been rotating for the past four months we shall wear, staring contemptuously at our winter coats, at our cold salt-stained boots.

Spring, I reason, is a triumph of the mind over the body and the heart – both of which are savaged by winters like this. You have to believe that some Spring day, no matter how far off from now, the temperature will rise to 10 degrees and not drop. You have to believe that there will be a day where you can remove your coat while standing outside and not feel the stopwatch of our animal frailty ticking toward frostbite. Soon, the snow will permanently melt from the sidewalks like an ancient curse lifted.

We must believe.

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City on Fire

By local standards, this post is coming late. Newspaper articles have been written. Photos have been uploaded to Facebook. Donation jars have been installed in our local bars. That said, I’ve never promised to be bleeding edge.

Last week, on Wednesday the 20th, a fire broke out on a patch of historic Queen Street West buildings. If our morning paper had been delivered, I wouldn’t have known until much later, but as luck would have it I found myself walking to the corner store at Queen and Shaw and saw a massive plume of black smoke not far in the distance. I trotted home, told my wife there was a fire and switched on the local TV news. Before our eyes, we watched a 6-alarm fire gutting three businesses that were stalwarts on Queen West: Suspect Video (one of the best DVD/memorabilia stores in the city), National Sound (one of the few places which stocked turntable supplies – I bought my stereo there), and Duke’s bicycle shop (itself an institution). Gone. Wiped off the map.

It wasn’t until yesterday, when I came upon a couple of friends on Ossington, that I realised I’d been avoiding seeing the remains. I told them I was going to take some snapshots around the neighbourhood (a habit I’d all but stopped in the latter part of 2007) and they asked if I was going to go to Queen and Bathurst – where the fire struck.

“I can’t.” I said.

I mentioned how it had broken my heart to see it on TV, to know that these stores (and others) were forever gone. It wasn’t just the stores themselves – it was the location which mattered just as much. Queen West has been fighting a losing battle against gentrification and with the loss of these three historic buildings it just seems inevitable that something rich and ghastly will step into their place, without credentials or care for such. The street which launched a million inspirations, a thousand bands, which housed countless artists of a myriad disciplines is being swallowed by real estate speculators, generic retail chains, and the sort of brazen cultural co-opting that wouldn’t sound convincing if it were fiction.

Last night, after band practise, I walked down Bathurst to Queen. It was evening and the sides of Queen were fenced with black security gates to protect what was now a scene of investigation. I walked east for a bit until I stood across from the charred carcases, obscured by bulldozers and demolition equipment. I pressed forward until my face nearly touched the fencing, staring at the remains in the night, lit indirectly by street lights. Behind me, people kept walking past. I was in their way. These are the same people, I thought, who will welcome the Pottery Barn, who won’t think twice about the Tim Horton’s and American Apparel outlets which inevitably take the place of independently-owned businesses. They are impatient for convenience and similarity – they don’t trust those thorny things which can’t be slickly marketed to their lifestyles: video stores with semi-pornographic gore magazines, audio stores which aren’t driven by underpaid commission sales staff, clothing stores which don’t produce the same uniform styles and colours that you see at the mall.

I love Toronto. I hate Toronto. And when I stood there in the night, staring at the wreckage, I wondered whether I was long for it. Whether some day I will simply say: “I’m tired of waiting for my city’s soul to come back.”.

In the meantime, I will give. I will donate to those who lost their businesses and their homes, their livelihoods (thankfully not their lives). Everyone I know – friends who matter, at least – care about this loss. They care, not as consumers, but as citizens and members of the community. My hope is that this tragedy will inspire more like them.

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Dispatch – 02/15/08

An eclectic stew for you today, the reader.

Last night’s show at Mitzi’s Sister (see previous entry) went very well. The band was tight, though I found myself slightly disappointed overall in the experience. Part of it has to do with the fact that, when you step onto a stage to perform (whether it be reading, acting, or drumming), particularly when you don’t have the opportunity to very often, time passes like a buttered bullet. You find yourself walking off the stage, seemingly five minutes after you got up there when in fact it’s been more like forty. As the glare of the stage lights leave your eyes and you join the ranks of the audience, ending your turn as it were, you feel as if you could’ve done more – either in your performance or in your enjoyment of the experience.

The last time we played (same place, nearly the same date), the situation was reversed. I had a blast and thought we did a great job (also the crowd was bigger and they defied the typical “Toronto audience” behaviour, with one or two actually dancing), but when I talked to the band they were less than thrilled.

Methinks this disconnectedness is a drummer-thing. Or a writer-posing-as-drummer-thing. Someday I’ll know what I want to do when I grow up.

– – –

Yesterday there was school shooting in Illinois at a university. Five dead and fifteen wounded. While this left me numbed – what really can I or anyone else do about it after the fact? – what I found staggering was that this was the fourth shooting at a U.S. school in the last week.

In the (normally poisonous) comment section on the Globe & Mail, someone noted how this phenomena (of which we are certainly not immune in Canada) seems to be applicable only to wealthier Western societies. In other words, for no apparent logical reason, given the superficial socio-economic circumstances of the communities in which these acts occur.

Earlier this week, my wife and I finally got around to watching Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. I’d avoided seeing it because, although I was sure it was going to be well done, I didn’t want to see something that articulated such a heavy-hitting subject – the Columbine massacre of April 1999. The film surprised me, in that rather than meditating on the after-effects (ie. 2 video-hours of grief), it dealt with the event as it happened, mostly in real-time, from the perspective of several characters who are students in the high school, including the two killers. Neither glorifying the horror nor practising intellectual avoidance, I thought the film was very strong, though ironically I thought it could’ve been more meditative in the end – perhaps a more hands-on narrative was necessary. This is not to say that it was Peckinpah via Linklater.

Aside from the coincidental nature of seeing Elephant amidst a surge of related killings across the U.S., I cannot help but wonder what lies at the heart of this. I can tell you what doesn’t, as far as I’m concerned: guns, videogames, and violent films. Each, in their own way, are massively influential on youths, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way a cause.

It’s as if, more and more, there is a proportion of our society that acts as if it’s had a frontal lobotomy, thus removing a moral imperative that, for most, would stop us from taking enjoyment from the random killing of others around us. I find myself looking for answers: is this a bio-medical condition (say, exposure to heavy metals), a psychological illness, or strictly speaking is this something that can be explained sociologically? All of the above?

But another part of me often wonders: when we removed Christianity from public spaces like schools (and I don’t argue with the need to do so), did we replace it with anything substantial? I sometimes wonder if, in the removal of a code of behaviour (as corrupted, hypocritical, or out-of-touch as it may have been) are we thoughtful of what should be put in its place – something substantial and not generic, p0litically-correct lip service which ends up inspiring no one? Or, am I kidding myself, in that we are all really indiscriminate savages on the inside, holding on desperately to illusions of civilization?

– – –

I remember, as a kid and avid comic-reader at the time, reading a story called The Realists. A handsome high school hunk-type is lured by the “new girl”, a beauty, back to her house after school one day. She tempts him with a special drink. When he drinks it, it’s like he’s under the influence of a drug – everyone around him is ugly and fat, food is rotten, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and sees that he’s hideous. She tells him that what he drank is real water, and that what he and the rest of society consumes is laced with a drug which provides the illusion of a beautiful “normalcy”. He runs out of her house, screaming, and as the “drug” wears off, he decides to treat the experience like a bad dream and forget the fact that what he thinks is reality is actually an engineered apparition.

– – –

These are fleeting thoughts, sufficiently scattered. Enjoy your weekend.

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Science Fiction, or, Children of a Lesser Genre

I caught an entry on the popular literary blog/magazine Book Ninja, highlighting an article by writer Clive Thompson, revealingly titled “Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing“. I wanted to respond on Book Ninja, but I realised that I wasn’t responding to the article so much as forking the argument in an unrelated direction. That, and, well, when I tried posting my response the bloody “security phrase” was wrong and when I clicked the Back button on my browser my eloquent, finely-crafted response was gone. Consider this a means of channelling my sorrow.

Thompson contends that the strength of science fiction over so-called “literary fiction” is that the latter, in regards to ideas, has become so mired in everyday realism that it’s become less interesting as a result.

While that is debatable, there’s a bit which I thought contentious:

“So, then, why does sci-fi, the inheritor of this intellectual tradition, get short shrift among serious adult readers? Probably because the genre tolerates execrable prose stylists. Plus, many of sci-fi’s most famous authors — like Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick — have positively deranged notions about the inner lives of women.”

Firstly, let me get the following off my chest: I hate the term “science fiction”. [Note: Thompson rubs salt in this irritation by including dragons into the mix. Dragons? Methinks he has his genres confused]. “Science fiction” is a left-brained label which conjures 50’s-era Youth Adventure stories with rocket ships and lasers. In other words, the connotation of “science fiction” is that it is a lesser, more utilitarian form of fiction than the hallowed halls of “literary fiction”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, you can’t blame people for thinking this when they step into the Science Fiction section of their neighbourhood Book Behemoth. Row upon row of monochromatic, serialised “space and laser” stories. Blame the capitalists, I say. If you’re a publisher and you know that 16-year old kids will devour clichés so long as they involve space travel, you won’t care about quality.

However, to directly address Thompson’s contention, I would like to know how “execrable prose” and “deranged notions of women” are the sole providence of science fiction? Are we talking about a genetic disorder from which our precious “literary fiction” is immune? Are you telling me that one is cleaner than the other – do you really want to go there, Thompson? Eh?

I do stand in agreement though: science fiction (for lack of a better term) historically represents the bleeding edge of philosophy. What people who shun the genre don’t realise is that it often transpires without a space ship, laser, or tight-pantaloon’d woman in sight. Need I mention the likes of Stanislaw Lem, Eugene Zamiatin, or the Strugatsky Brothers? Some of the greatest sci-fi writers produced their best-known work under political tyranny (it should be stated: the one convenient thing about writing in a genre that the establishment doesn’t take seriously is that one can communicate vast, revolutionary ideas without getting caught).

What bugs me is that when authors of “literary fiction” dip into the conceits of science fiction, there is often praise for their bold move (as if they were writing in a foreign language), yet – outside the likes of William Gibson – there is scant recognition for the science fiction author who transcends the confines (or expectations) of his or her genre.

In truth, as a writer, I’m torn between the gravitational pulls of both “literary fiction” and “science fiction”. I think an otherworldliness can make the everyday more captivating for the reader, but it takes skill to balance both so that you’re neither stretching believability nor betraying the wonder of the other by miring it in mundanity. I respect both strains of fiction yet I consider it tragic that so many good books and stories remain unread because of nothing more than a problem in perception.

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Requiem For a Pariah: Bobby Fischer

I read the news last night and saw that Bobby Fischer had passed away. Like many people who were familiar with his life and accomplishments, there was mix of surprise, disappointment, and (sadly) relief.

Fischer was the yin/yang of fame and fortune – in his youthful prime, the greatest chess player who ever walked the earth, and in the years that followed, an increasingly paranoid, hateful, and divisive man.

He embodied the so-called American Dream: a lower-class kid who started playing competitive chess by the age of 8, to become an International Grandmaster by the age of 15. The highlight of his career was winning the 1972 world championship against then-Soviet opponent Boris Spassky in Reykjavík, Iceland. He was the first American to win the championship in over a century and, in light of the Cold War, was embraced as a hero by millions of people around the world. As a chess player, Fischer was imaginative, often employing so-called “traditional” moves in new ways. He closed down his opponents mercilessly.

The problem, which certainly did not begin late in life, was that he was a sheltered, neurotic, perhaps even mentally unbalanced individual. It wasn’t enough for him to control the chessboard: he demanded that everything about his playing environments be to his standards, which often meant no cameras, no illustrators, no televisions. He lived most of his life in reclusion, eventually leaving the United States (persecuted for playing chess in Yugoslavia while it was under embargo) to live throughout Europe and the Asian Pacific. He became an ex-pat with a paranoia streak. He became infamous for radio interviews he gave in the Philippines, denouncing conspiracies which were often anti-Semitic in nature. In short, he was a mess. I’ve read some of the transcripts (I didn’t want to believe it when I’d first heard), and it pretty much destroyed any respect I had for the man. I’m only thankful he wasn’t organized enough to start a militia.

He died of unknown causes on the same island which was the scene of his greatest triumph – Iceland. In this there is some dark poetry to be written. About heroes. About the duality of an unparallelled tenacity. But dark still. Very dark.

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