Category: thought

Posted on

Dreams

(Over on Ward Six, there was a post about dreams and the use of dreams in one’s writing. This is my response/non-response to that post.)

Dreams, without exploding into a cavalcade of pet-theories, feed our experiences back to us as deconstructed information. Familiar objects and people are shuffled, perhaps not randomly, and re-proposed to us. As reality.

I am haunted by dreams still. Dreams I had when I was a child. Nightmares. Fantasies. No wonder. When you are growing up, the easel upon which your dreams are painted is like an IMAX screen: massive, all-encompassing, as close to real as it gets. As you get older, as you obtain experience, as your field of vision and reason begins to vibrate independently – in other words, as you become an individual – dreams cease to take centre stage. They exist and appear just as often as before, but for some reason their weight and impact is lessened.

And yet, a handful of times every year (it’s so hard to pin-down because they disappear into the ether like clear helium balloons) I will have a dream which haunts me throughout the morning (if not the day). It is those dreams I try to write down. Some I make into short stories as realities. Some, I incorporate into long fiction as, well, dreams.

Dreams are language. They vex interpretation, yet I feel there is nothing arbitrary about their construct. I fancy: somewhere in our sleeping minds an architect awakens and sorts through our lives, our goals and fears, our friends and enemies, our passions and hatred. This architect then casts a mold: fluid, non-dimensional, mantic. And it is this we are exposed to in our vulnerable slumber.

We wake up and try, often in vain, to make sense of it. And yet I think the most sense we will ever make of our dreams is by not interpreting them at all but allowing them to stand on their own. Allow them to stand as imponderable totems, sculpted by a subconscious architect: haunting, monolithic riddles. They represent the need for non-linearity in our lives.

Share
Posted on

Fall

Leaves fallen,
now like fish
swimming through and over concrete,
under foot.

Like sticks of paint,
smudged by a perennial
Impressionist.

A forced perspective.
Nature saying:
“There is beauty.”
Against all we throw
at her.

Share
Posted on

The Dark Side

I was flipping through the NYT last Sunday and came across a short collection of riffs from filmmakers about their favourite “Holiday Movies”. The following, submitted by screenwriter David Benioff, was regarding Planes Trains and Automobiles by the late John Hughes:

Hughes once wrote: “I understood that the dark side of my middle-class, middle-American suburban life was not drugs, paganism or perversion. It was disappointment. There were no gnawing insects beneath the grass. Only dirt. I also knew that trapped inside every defeat is a small victory, and inside that small victory is the Great Defeat.”


I immediately caught the reference Benioff (via Hughes) was making and it struck a chord. You see, when we (in filmic terms) discuss the “dark side” of the middle-class in America, who else is this synonymous with? Correct: David Lynch. And was it not Lynch’s seminal dark-side-of-middle-class-America, Blue Velvet, which features – literally – gnawing insects beneath the grass at the beginning? Oh, and the drugs and sexual perversion? Still don’t believe me? Try this: Blue Velvet came out in ’86. Planes Trains and Automobiles? That was 1987.

When I read Hughes’ quote, I knew he had more to say about it. I could tell that he thought Hughes’ film (and perspective on America) got short shrift.

In any case, what I’m saying is Hughes was picking on Lynch, perhaps more so picking on all of the cineastes and self-styled torch holders of American Surrealism. Look, he’s saying (or I’m paraphrasing), why does any intelligent discussion of the “dark side” have to fast-forward to the Devil? Why are we in such a rush to point to the murkiest common denominator?

I think Hughes’ perspective is more realistic. Perhaps even more frightening because it is anything but abstract. If there’s anything which immobilizes the positivism of American  can-do – an adult Boogeyman if you will – it is the spectre of defeat. It is, after all, failure. There is nothing which cuts to the heart of our civilized fears with more power than failure, pure and simple. We do not want it infecting us. We do not want it living beside us, dying slowly.

I like the drama (nee opera) of Lynch’s perspective. But it is only that: one perspective. I feel we cheat ourselves by claiming that one perspective as definitive before we’ve truly allowed ourselves to look at the whole landscape of the human psyche.

I also think John Hughes had a good soul.

Share
Posted on

It Doesn’t Need To Be This Way

I was having brunch in the Market with my friend, Lady B, whom I’ve known for over 10 years. We were talking about “life changes” (we both being close to 40). We got onto the topic of how her and I sometimes are conditioned to expect the worst.

“With the house, didn’t you feel that, somehow, everything would inevitably go wrong and you wouldn’t get it after all?” she asked.

“Yes!”

It was as if she had read my mind. We were eating palacsinta at a small Hungarian bistro.

We talked about this, because she’d felt the exact same way when she and her partner bought their house. She speculated, correctly in my estimation, that this mode of thinking – let’s call it auto-tragic thinking – was the result of her and I coming from divorced families (the divorces or circumstances surrounding them being particularly destructive). The end-result, if not in all cases then certainly in ours, was that we were conditioned to expect gift horses to have mouth cancer and every silver lining to have a cloud moving in its way. Happiness was a pulled rug away from tragedy.

I thought about moments in my life – moments that everyone experiences – like applying for a job, asking someone out for a date. Moments where, realistically, we hope/aim for the best. The difference between the average person and people like myself and Lady B is that, in the event we don’t get the job we hope for, in the event that special someone isn’t interested in us, we tend to see it as a fateful inevitability; a symptom of a curse. Of course, we say to ourselves. Why should this be any different than any other time?

The subject clearly struck a chord for both of us.

“You expect it to be like in Carrie.” she said in a follow-up email, discussing how we became conditioned to expect the worst. “You’re at the prom, thinking that everything’s turning around in your life and then suddenly you’re covered in pig blood.”

The best male equivalent I could think of was Laurence Harvey’s character in (the original) The Manchurian Candidate; a tragic puppet whose fleeting tastes of freedom coincide with horrific end results.

So, no, neither Lady B nor I are cursed. Our houses have not fallen down or been taken away from us by a nightmarish bureaucracy. If anything we are only beginning to sense just how much re-wiring is necessary for us to see things clearly, without the faulty psychological infrastructure that led to us to believe that, indeed, the odds were stacked against us.

The mind is a frightening thing. This is why I read books and watch films which challenge my preconceptions. This is why I am lucky to have friends such as Lady B.

Share
Posted on

For *’s Sake

It’s been one of those battle-cries of mine the last while. Everything in the world, culturally-speaking (and I don’t necessarily mean high culture) seems to be evaporating into mindless bullshit.

The AV Club – a site I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with already – just posted an interview with actor Paul Giamatti. In the opening summary, the interviewer describes the plot of his latest film, which reads like a counterscript of 1999’s Being John Malkovich and yet there is no mention of this parallel anywhere in the article, something even Entertainment Tonight would do. The interviewer talks about this upcoming film with Giamatti as if it and his role – the John Malkovich role, if it were Being John Malkovich – were just soulless objects to be discussed out of necessity. In other words, it’s just like any other media-junket interview, like something you would read in InStyle or Chatelaine. Not that those examples are b-a-d, but when you pride yourself as better, especially savvy, tongue-in-cheek better, you shouldn’t even be in the same postal code as InStyle or Chatelaine if you want to retain your reputation.

The Motley Fool – again, a site previously known for being savvy, even though they deal with the stock market – now reads like Ain’t It Cool News, complete with arguments which, under rational analysis, seem completely idiotic and antithetical to what one would assume is their mission statement (ie. being different than the rest of those brain-dead-and-short-sighted Money sites).

Oh, and CNN. Not that they’ve ever been more relevant than a Reuters news ticker, but they’ve gone from mediocre to stupid by allowing one of their show hosts, Lou Dobbs, to continuously question the origin of Barack Obama’s citizenship, a paranoid suspicion virulent in the libertarian/right-wing fringe of the U.S. that has been repeatedly disproved (read: he doesn’t want Johnny Foreigner running and ruining the most-possibly-greatest-country-ever-in-the-world).

Now, one of the arguments I can imagine hearing is: well, Matt, in a 24-hour newsday (whether on TV or the Internet) when people expect constant information there inevitably has to be weaker material. To which I say: I understand, but I’d settle for less information over less hours (if need be), if it means the information will be consistent and better. After all, you are what you eat, and in this day and age we feed on media in an astonishingly unconscious and voracious manner.

Share
Posted on

Returning

Although this will go down as a formative, self-defining year, one of my great frustrations of 2009 is the inability to find the time and/or energy to collect, polish, publish all of the things, happenings, and concepts that come across my path – not even a healthy fraction. I’ve had more success capturing visuals but that’s due to being in the right place/time with a cellphone camera rather than wilfully executing a deliberate agenda.

Work is going like gangbusters, which I am thankful for, the novel is improving with every moment I spend revising it (helps that people actually want to read it), and most recently/surprisingly I have become a homeowner. Just two days ago I was offered a part-time teaching position from a respectable college for a respectable film/TV program.

And yet, at risk of portraying myself as spoilt (or tetched), it seems as if it’s not enough. I feel there is so much going on that I want to grab hold of: the recent (Twitter-inspired) trend of authors turning around and publicly accusing peers of personal attacks when in fact they are just doing their jobs (eg. book reviews), the aesthetics of stereoscopic imagery (that’s 3D for you junior rangers), and the way in which the world unravels and combines at the same moment in time like a Möbius strip, and what about the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo…?

It’s too much for me. Everything: life, art, work… I hit the mattress every night and practically pass out. I used to read… I read War & (f’ing) Peace in the time between laying down and actually sleeping. Luxury! says the current me. Mind you, he gets more sleep and perhaps has a better grasp on the whole “early to bed, early to rise” thing. Maybe I shouldn’t be visualizing the voice of “current me” as being spoken in the harsh brogue of a Scottish authoritarian.

Things felt as if they were falling apart in the spring, like when the aperture ring on my Zorki-4 came loose, right in the middle of shooting some nice “golden hour” shots on Dundas West (just south of Kensington Market) after a fallow 35mm winter. Little could I guess that within a few months I’d be living in a house just five minutes north of where I took these photos. Thankfully, most of them came out fine. Perhaps it was all an elaborate metaphor for being patient, for trying hard to see the forest rather than scrutinize the pines, the mouths of gift horses, etc.

This may all be true, if terribly clichéd. And who would give a horse as a gift in the first place?

This is not a lengthy letdown friends, as if to say that this blog has served its purpose and is to be cast onto the great cyber-somethingsomething where cyber-things are cast and probably set on fire. No, I will not be taking this blog on a walk into the woods, with Daddy and his shotgun. I’m just reaching a threshold where life is requiring more concentration and energy, leading me to ask (hello, rhetorical!) how imaginary magnitude can adapt to suit these changes without looking like an outmoded vehicle or an abandoned hobby (or both). Yes, as I said, rhetorical. But since when has rhetorical ever been a particularly devastating accusation?

Rhetoric is just a temporary building material, made up of the same stuff that kludges are moulded out of. Hope (if not faith), led by patience. That word again: patience. I think I met you somewhere, at a bar maybe, when I was younger and looking for your type. It is true that rhetoric cannot keep a tower standing, but it can inspire the building of towers.

Where am I going with this…right: things are odd, and unbalanced, and it all points to a giant (fictional) neon sign blinking just above my head, big-city halo-like, which says: TRANSITIONAL PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT. Fair enough (if not sexy).

I suppose I am writing this to say that I’m here for you, but not in the way that I was, which is not to say that I am not still here. My focus is changing, not changing for change’s sake but fermenting into something more stable and powerful. I guess, if I may go back and answer an earlier question, the reason why I am not as prolific here as before is that – now that I am slipping into a new stream of life – my energy must be treated as a finite commodity. Perhaps this, for now, is “success”, and I’m just looking at it like a paleontologist holding a magnifying glass against a piece of the Arctic ice shelf, unsure of what is before him.

Tell you what: when I find out, I’ll let you know. The long and short of it is that I’m still here, but here may be changing to suit my needs. We’ll see. We.

Share
Posted on

Niagara Falls

From the Wikipedia entry “Slowly I Turned“:

The routine has two performers pretending to meet for the first time, with one of them becoming highly agitated over the utterance of particular words. Names and cities (such as Niagara Falls) have been used as the trigger, which then send the unbalanced person into a state of mania; the implication is that the words have an unpleasant association in the character’s past. While the other performer merely acts bewildered, the crazed actor relives the incident, uttering the words, “Slowly I turned…step by step…inch by inch…,” as he approaches the stunned onlooker. Reacting as if this stranger is the object of his rage, the angry actor begins hitting or strangling him, until the screams of the victim shake him out of his delusion. The actor then apologizes, admitting his irrational reaction to the mention of those certain words. This follows with the victim innocently repeating the words, sparking the insane reaction all over again. This pattern is repeated in various forms, sometimes with the entrance of a third actor, uninformed as to the situation. This third person predictably ends up mentioning the words and setting off the manic performer, but with the twist that the second actor, not this new third person, is still the recipient of the violence.

I spent about five years, between my late-teens and early twenties, working in photo labs. It was the easiest thing for me to do, seeing as I had a natural disposition toward photography. I spent many hundreds and hundreds (I suppose I could just write “thousands”, but then that seems like such an exaggeration) of hours printing other people’s photographs, correcting the colour, correcting the density – even occasionally eliminating hairs or scratches on the negatives. All said, it was a thankless job, but not a job one does in the first place if one is seeking thanks.

It was while I held this position that I read (or heard – I am convinced the toxic chemicals eroded my memories from those days) that the most photographed place on the earth was not the pyramids of Egypt, not the Great Wall of China, nor was it the Grand Canyon.

It was Niagara Falls, Canada.

And you know what? That person was absolutely right, from my perspective at least. I have seen so many photographs of Niagara Falls, from so many angles, from so many different types of cameras, lenses, and film stocks that when Ingrid and I went there during the summer, it felt as if I were entering some sort of nightmare/dream world. I hadn’t seen the Falls since I was a kid (with the exception of seeing them from the American side once – not impressive at all) and yet I was intimately familiar with every inch of it. It is the closest thing to recreating deja vu that one can do, I suppose.

Needless to say, I took photos. What else are you going to do? It’s a giant, massively awe-inspiring natural waterfall. And when I got my slides back, I looked at them and groaned – it didn’t matter how good they were, how picture-postcard they were. I’d seen them all before. From every angle, every camera, every lens, and every film stock.

I eventually found one photo which wasn’t so eerily pre-reminiscent: a stranger on an observation deck, staring out (not down) philosophically, as if Camus were alive and in Niagara Falls no less. It is through this photo that I found it possible to combat the madness of my previous occupation: to find the angle no one else has bothered to capture. I do not consider it an exceptional photograph from a technical point of view, but for personal reasons it is a healthy way to re-pave my perception of a subject so totally saturated by the second-hand experience of first-hand observation.

Share
Posted on

Art & Suicide

As reported in the news over the weekend, spilling into the papers this week, American novelist/essayist David Foster Wallace took his life. He had hung himself in his home, only to be discovered later by his wife.

To be honest, I’ve only read one piece by Wallace – an essay in an issue of Harper’s almost ten years ago on the release of the revised Oxford English Dictionary – and yet it left an indelible impression on me. It made me laugh out loud with its quirky honesty and his style was unique and strong; in short, it made me take notice of writing and writers at a time when it simply was not on my radar (for various reasons). I always swore I would read one of his books, but the prospects of picking up the one he is best known for, Infinite Jest, all 1,000 pages of it, was intimidating. It still is, but that has more to do with the fact that I’m in the middle (or, factually, just past the middle) of War & Peace with Joyce’s Ulysses staring at me from the bookshelf longingly.

Wallace’s suicide is the second in the last few years by an artist who’s work I’d kept an eye on. The first was that of American humorist and performer, Spalding Gray, who – it is assumed – leapt from a ferry into the Hudson River and drowned. I saw him at Massey Hall (one of the most venerable venues in Toronto) many years ago. As with Wallace’s essay, I remember crying with laughter during Gray’s droll monologue.

Which brings us to the question of artists and suicide.

Someone on Bookninja had this to say in reaction to the story:

In my work (psychiatry) I’ve seen so many creative people who are so tortured inside. I’ve often wondered if, given the choice, they’d choose peace over creativity. Maybe suicide is exercising that choice.

I thought about this. I wanted to respond, because I had something to say, but in the end I decided it would only be a tangent and while tangents are allowable in most online situations, an obituary is not exactly the place for one.

The answer is that artists do not want peace, or at least an artificial peace. To do so would be to abandon the tension which is inherent in art (and science, for that matter). In their art, over the course of their lives, artists attempt to resolve this tension; to articulate what it is that is at the centre of a storm which motivates them to create. The tension is the artist. Them against an outside world which does not work. Art becomes a philosophical expression of an existential dilemma. With this as the case, how many artists would willingly barter peace for creativity if such a trade were even possible? Not many, I would wager. What is peace when art allows you to reach higher than ever before, to touch the cookie jar of euphoria with your fingertips?

Like Wallace and Gray, I too suffer from depression. Their passing gives me pause, to put it lightly. Last night over dinner, Ingrid and I had a long talk about this – Wallace, Gray, art, and suicide – and she used a quote from Wallace that she’d read in one of the obituaries, that suicide happens very slowly. He is right. It is not, as commonly portrayed, an impulsive decision, but rather something which gestates very gradually within the mind of the sufferer. The danger is that this internalized dialogue, over the course of years, may eventually lead to the rationalization or acceptance of suicide as a logical option or self-fulfilling prophecy.

Art, however, is not depression, and depression should not be construed as something which only afflicts those in the arts. When you are depressed, anything can inflame the situation. Both the fire and the water used to douse it. It is for this reason that I take a moment to bring this up. So that people may understand what is, for lack of a better term, a mental illness. Allow me to suggest a wonderful series in the Globe and Mail, perhaps the best collection of stories and first-person recollections on the subject to be found in any newspaper.

I tip my hat to Wallace, to Gray. I mourn for the grief experienced by their loved ones.

Share
Posted on

Getting Better: Take It Outside

Writing programs, whether they be of the one-day or the week-long-getaway variety, can be good or bad things. In particular, I think anyone who is a closeted writer (ie. short stories and poetry hidden on your computer like pornography) and feels the need to affirm (or reaffirm) their direction should consider – at least as an option – a writing program. Provided you do some research and find a good course, a writing program allows you to unload your craft in front of others, receive honest feedback, and illuminate your shortcomings as well as your strengths.

Of course, there are always risks. Your teacher/mentor may not get along with you at all, for stylistic or personality-related reasons. You could be a poet in a room full of prose writers. You may find your peers to be full of themselves. You may find yourself an unintentional participant in a Self-Congratulations Society, where no one will accept or voice constructive criticism.

I lucked out, to put it briefly

Many years ago, I hooked up with a Toronto-based group, headed by someone who ran a web-based forum for local writers. It was ok. It wasn’t what I wanted then, though of course I can articulate it perfectly now. The person coordinating the meeting I attended (and as an aside, being someone who coordinates a couple of groups now, it can be a thankless, dispiriting job) was not, at least on the surface, someone focused on the art or spirit of writing. She seemed more interested in writing events (contests and the like) rather than writing itself. This, I contend, is not wrong, but rather – being the sensitive philosophical type I am – it simply didn’t jive with what I wanted. But even this is good, because the more you investigate the more you learn about what you need versus want. As a result of trial-by-error, your desires become less metaphysical and more concrete.

Fast-forward years later…my then-fiancée, Ingrid, who works in publishing, recommended the Humber College School for Writers’ Summer Workshop. I had a novel. I didn’t know whether it was good or bad, and it wasn’t helped that I had no writer friends to bounce it off of for feedback. I looked into the program and decided to attend (financed by American Express). I ended up spending a week in a classroom of eight, with poet/novelist DM Thomas (The White Hotel) as our mentor. It was perfect. I could not have asked for a more seminal experience. Everything clicked. I walked away at the end, having attended seminars, Q&A’s, and forums, with a much more evolved viewpoint of both the art and business of writing.

That week I learned to love and respect the art of revising/editing, something I’d always treated like poison. I met some great people who, for the first time, I could actually talk to about writing without having to explain what writing was in order to help them understand me. I was publicly confronted with a then-serious illness (habitually using it’s when I should’ve been using its). I was flattered by the positive feedback I received but not stung or made sullen by honest critiques either.

As a result of that single week, my outlook, philosophy, and activity in writing was immensely deepened. I started a monthly writers’ group – the very same sort of group I was searching for in vain before – which carries on successfully to this day (we celebrate our 3rd “birthaversary” this summer, in fact). The novel which had consumed so much of my time back then has since been shelved, having realised that it needed so much work that it was better for me to start from scratch and return to it later (under the axiom, “if you love someone set them free”). Now, of course, I have a new novel which I’m very happy with (along with a nice collection of short stories).

I write this because sometimes – particularly when you are an artist, alone, in an environment seemingly bereft of people who can empathize with what you do – it’s important to look outside for that next important step: getting involved so as to help yourself. As writers, we can’t allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking we are failures if we do not wake up at 5am, complete four chapters by lunch, followed by spending the afternoon staring solemnly out of our 3rd storey “writing nook” windows while we wait for the absinthe to kick in. That’s mythology.

I should also mention an extremely good (short) book, called Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland [ISBN: 0961454733]. I recommend it to anyone from any artistic background who is looking for some objective advice, written by people who truly understand. Lastly, even though I mention this book and provide a link to the Humber College course previously, it’s just as important for people to discover what’s right for themselves – there are many options out there. Please do your research.

Share
Posted on

A sign

I’ve been unable to parlay this into a larger essay – this is not to say there isn’t an essay in it, but rather the time and thought necessary to write it has been elusive. In Toronto, there is a gentleman by the name of Reg Hartt. He runs a program called Cineforum, where he screens classic silent films, censored cartoons, and obscure treats like the ever-reliable “Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon” mash-ups. His advertising is ubiquitous in the city; black and white ads stapled and taped to hydro posts and litterboxes, with large sans serif block letters: “SIDDHARTHA by HESSE“, “SEX AND VIOLENCE CARTOON FILM FESTIVAL“.

Nobody comes close to Reg when it comes to promoting on the street. He is tireless.

In any case, one day I saw the following ad for a lecture at Reg’s. It is a phrase which has stuck in my mind like a thorn:

SO LONG AS MAN
WANTS GOD ON EARTH
THERE WILL ALWAYS
BE A HITLER
Share
Proudly powered by WordPress