Category: me

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House

The following tale could be told, all story elements considered, over the course of an hour. I shall, for sake of blog aesthetics, keep it brief.

Ingrid and I decided not too long ago that it was time to look for a house. We went through the movements – contacted a mortgage broker, then contacted a real estate agent – and found ourselves seriously looking at houses. As in, “come to the house for 2pm and have a look”.

You learn very quickly what it is that you want, by virtue of what you don’t like: suspicious patch jobs, poorly graded foundations, murky unfinished basements. Then, of course, comes price. Finding a house – a good house – in downtown Toronto for a decent price is difficult. All the talk in the media about flailing real estate markets may be correct on the whole, but I can tell you from experience that downtown Toronto prices are still inflated (or, at the very least, stuck at pre-recession-2008 prices).

Ingrid then left for a week’s vacation to see a friend (and sometimes-bandmate of mine) in London, England. Two days after she left, I receive a house listing via email from our real estate agent – look at this, she says, it’s perfect for you two. I was afraid of this; I lived in terror that this would happen – that, while Ingrid was away, I would find a house and (because the downtown buyers’ market is still strong) would need to make a quick decision as to whether or not to put in an offer. I saw the place on Friday (same day I received the email) and needed to have an answer for Sunday. Nice house. Nice owners. Great neighbourhood. Good price, considering house, owners, and neighbourhood.

Long story short, I bought a house that Sunday which Ingrid has never seen, save for photos and descriptions sent via email. I am currently going through a swirling mass of elation, buyer’s remorse, stress, and raw, drug-like excitement. I swear, my life mirrors B-movies and 80s TV shows sometimes.

Thankfully, she lands in Toronto tomorrow, so I will not be the only one trying to get a handle on this. I cannot even imagine – on her end – how surreal an experience this must’ve been.

I also don’t want to see my phone bill.

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Repeat after me:


there is no such thing


as mind control.

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Images

I think images are worth repeating

images repeated from a painting

Images taken from a painting

from a photo worth re-seeing

I love images worth repeating

project them upon the ceiling

Multiply them with silk screening

see them with a different feeling

– from Images, lyrics by Lou Reed

Every May in Toronto there is what is called CONTACT. It is a photography showcase. What makes it unique is that, rather than two or three galleries being the centre of interest, the photographs are integrated into (and across) the city. Storefronts bear photographs, abandoned buildings bear them, you see them inside bars and cafés. Go along the Junction and you can’t sit down without seeing signs pointing into stores, saying “Temporary Gallery”.

This integration was quite stunning a couple of years ago; someone got permission to have their photographs – printed on clear plastic film – adorn the glass-paned bus shelters along Queen West. Each one responded to each other and the environment. It was thought-out. Choreographed, if you will. It was, photography or no photography, an art installation.

This year I find myself wishing CONTACT would end (if not May). Though I have not seen (what I can only assume is) the A-grade stuff in the chosen galleries, I have to say that I’m going to scream if I have to walk past many more of them. There is no order. Just image, after image, after image. Just images. Rectangular submissions without point, intent, self-awareness.

I am surrounded by photos, everywhere, at a point where I am going through a photographic/existential crisis. The film vs. digital divide has divided me, particularly since my 35mm lens is giving me problems (I sooo don’t want to get out the jeweller’s screwdriver kit). Meanwhile, I’m having great fun (at low resolution) with my BlackBerry’s camera – it allows me to do so much I wish my manual film-camera could do: being spontaneous without lugging a 2lb Soviet brick. Having a preview window is also a great plus. In the end, however, the resolution isn’t good and the colour is often skewed blue/cyan (meaning I often have to import the photo onto my laptop and futz w/ Photoshop before I can upload it).

Just before this all came about, things were quite different. I had joined a local, well-respected photography collective and was expecting a medium format camera to be sent from an eBay seller. My photographic future appeared, allow me this, picture-perfect. In short, the camera never worked, the seller was less than useless in helping the situation, and it simply can’t be fixed locally. Add to this my affair with a shallow cameraphone, my 35mm lens issue, and said well-respected photography collective annoying me with “bulk” emails (filled with both utterly useless and useful information without care for clear formatting). Add CONTACT and stir, liberally.

In short, it has all forced me to face a philosophical and practical dilemma which I never really thought I’d need to face: why do I take pictures? What am I taking pictures of? What is the eye behind the viewfinder? Is it a diary? Is it journalism? How seriously are you going to take this? Professional-seriously or I’m-just-fucking-around-and-don’t-want-to-think-about-it-seriously?

Thus I find myself subconsciously referring to a song from Songs For Drella, a dedication to Andy Warhol by Lou Reed and John Cale. It spins like a mantra, like a whirling dervish, and I stare intently at it hoping that I’ll see the meaning in its elusive centre.

I’m no urban idiot savant

spewing paint without any order

I’m no sphinx, no mystery enigma

what I paint is very ordinary

I don’t think I’m old or modern

I don’t think I think I’m thinking

It doesn’t matter what I’m thinking

It’s the images that are worth repeating

Ah, repeating, images

Images

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Mobile: Dispatch #1

Dispatch…

1.​ to send off or away with speed, as a messenger, telegram, body of troops, etc.

2.​ to dismiss (a person), as after an audience.

3.​ to put to death; kill

Dispatch from the 501 Queen streetcar. Thoughts dispatched, sent like troops via cellphone: instant, unilateral.

This is not a dialogue.

Dispatch. Done with; I am finished incubating this thought. I am done. It has been sent in contravention of MacLuhan, without a message.

Message sent.

[Sent via BlackBerry]

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Master: “May the wind always be behind your back. “

Student: “What, and fuck up my hair?”

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Dear Reader,

It may have come to your attention (those who visit semi-often) that I have not been posting here that often (aside from the Twitter-y things on the right column).

This is true.

I am a little swamped these days with non-Imaginary Magnitude-y things (i.e. work). I have not, I insist, lost interest.

Please stay tuned. I will eventually return with more consistency than what is currently on display.

Cheers,

Matt

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Happy "Family Day"

Tomorrow (Monday) is a newly-created holiday (which, if you’ve been in Canada in February, is crucial for mental survival), called “Family Day”. This is its second year in existence and nobody really knows what to do with it. Okay, when I say “nobody” I mean me.

I’ve never been someone who makes elaborate plans in advance of long-weekends. For me, weekends are about plugging-out of work and relaxing, writing, photography, and the occasional neighbourhood brunch. I suppose if I had a cottage up north things would be different (not that February is necessarily when you want to be at a cottage up north).

Add to this the ree-coc-u-lous name “Family Day”. The premier of Ontario deemed it so, pinning its creation to his rationale; whether said rationale is window-dressing or solemn honesty is beside the point. I hate the name. I’m not a militant sort, but what of those of us without children? Should I spend the day meditating on my biological error? Are all those people gearing-up to get drunk up and down Ossington Avenue tonight doing so as a testament to the strength of the Ontarian family? Doubtful.

Rather than spending it with our kids (who don’t exist, though we do have a lovely cat – her name is Selchie), I shall be mending clothing with holes, cleaning up some paperwork, filing things away, and reading. And yes, we’re going for drinks tonight.

So, from our family to yours, have a lovely Family Day tomorrow, gracious readers.

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An Unspoken Rule: It’s Never Simple

For the last few years, I’d get the odd inspiration to write something suitable for the Facts & Arguments section of the Globe and Mail. For those unacquainted, it is a daily feature of one of our national newspapers; a personal essay between 800 and 1,000 words, open to the public for submissions.

Easy, right?

Truth: no. Every time I’ve tried in the past, I can’t pull it off. Can’t even get past two paragraphs. It’s not a question of writing 800 words of personal essay, but rather pulling off 800 words of personal essay that actually is interesting to a wide array of people which isn’t intellectually disingenuous at the same time. I say this because it’s easy to make fun of the Facts & Arguments essay (or at least I find it easy). “In the end,” I’ve joked to my wife, “what I learnt from my cat is that it’s not the travails I endured, but the lessons contained therein which have enriched my life. Ha, ha“. They are all, clichés aside, about personal experiences which lead to larger realizations. You could compare this (somewhat) to the essay featured at the back of the New York Times Sunday magazine, only longer and not as consistently curated.

Again: easy, right? After all, it’s just 800 words of personal stuff. You’re a writer, eh Cahill?

Truth: no, not easy. No, not at all. One misty Sunday morning over the Christmas break, I got the inspiration and decided that I was going to finally hunker down and do it. Me, the fiction-writing blogging sorta guy was going to sit his ass down and write an honest to goodness Facts & Arguments-style essay if it killed me. And it had to be good. And it had to be honest. No bullshit. No cynical kiss-ass formula-copying. It would, after all, have my name on it, published or not.

I realized several things immediately:

  1. Even though I write for this blog, which could be construed as “personal non-fiction” (or whatever the latest strain of non-fiction terminology is), it’s still pretty free-form stuff. It’s not like I have an editor, aside from my own middling expectations. In other words, it was not a load of help.

  2. Unlike fiction, I couldn’t write it all down as a semi-coherent story and then revise-by-whim from there. I don’t write enough non-fiction to have those strengths. My first “draft” (and trust me, that word deserves those odious quotation-marks) was a stinky grab-bag of overly-literary ideas which made no sense to the world outside my head, which for the most part seemed up my ass at the time that I wrote it.

  3. Being honest in a blog and being honest in a personal essay intended for mass (as in nationwide) publication are two totally (totally) separate things. I had to pay attention to a lot more than I had bargained for. And no swearing.

It has been torture. I’ve spent more time on this than I care to mention (at last count, thirteen revisions in two weeks). And yet, I didn’t want to give up. The format was a challenge and as a writer/artist/whatever it’s important to be challenged, especially if one wants to be versatile. In the end (ha ha), I’ve finally got something worth submitting. Whether it actually gets published (and, God knows, I’ve done my best on this sucker) is no longer a chief concern. The goal was to submit my best effort and that is what I’ve done (though of course I’ve cursed my chances of this ever happening, having written about it beforehand and all).

Many lessons learnt, indeed.

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