Welcome to post #100. I think I hear trumpets blaring.

Today I watched the Visconti film version of Death in Venice, which looks great and has an interesting take on certain scenes that should work well with arguments in my paper.

After the film I went downtown for my meeting with the man, George Elliott Clarke. We sat in the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel and talked about the course before moving onto all things Ottawa. He spent five years living there and makes a visit at least once a month for various reasons. He said that it's a city that's very closed off from other Canadian cities and operates differently with respect to its arts. I asked him what he thought of the arts in Ottawa, and he told me the following anecdote:

In 1989 a sculpture of two children sitting on a bench was dropped off out front of the Library and Archives Canada building by its artist, Lea Vivot. The bench sculpture stayed in front of the building for a year before someone in the government realized that it hadn't been given official permission to be there. So, Vivot was forced to remove it. In 1994, it was replaced by a casting with inscriptions of various people across Canada (including Clarke) related to the importance of reading.

Now, that's Clarke's version of the story, but Vivot definitely said this in an Ottawa Citizen interview: "The building needed something and I don't feel that artists have the time to go through the bureaucratic approach. In the same amount of time that it would take to go through all this (bureaucracy) I can cast another sculpture and enhance another space."

That word "bureaucracy" is one that Clarke kept using when describing the state of the arts in Ottawa. I don't know much about bureaucracy. I've always had a difficult time figuring out how a dominating political climate can affect a city's artistic output. But the anecdote he used points towards the idea that the art that doesn't receive any kind of direct government support to place it into public consciousness is ignored entirely at a federal level. Artists are left to fend for themselves after the offices and galleries shut down for the day.

Now, perhaps that's not so bad for a community - finding a little wherewithal. But this leads to Clarke's second point. In the artistic sphere, Canada is markedly different from the United States; whereas the States operate as a republic that encourages the growth of populist art, Canada still operates under monarchical influence that encourages a gravity towards classical forms. That's why the country has no Bob Dylan.

Canadian literature resides solely in the academic realm. Clarke's concerns seem to lie in revisiting our own literature (mentioning specifically MacLennan and Raddall) rather than in continuing to develop old themes and structures belonging to European nations. He wishes that our literature could find its way out of the forests and into the cities. He sees Quebec as the only part of the country that's producing art with a unique voice because it holds so fast to French-Canadian identity.

Most significantly, I think, is his observation that Canada is hierarchical in nature and prone to memory loss, and this goes beyond the ideas he brought forward regarding African-Canadians in his class. Clarke is worried that people (as a populous, not as academics) are already starting to forget Mordecai Richler, to forget Irving Layton, all the way back to the relevance of Canada's earliest authors. The Canadian attitude has always been to wipe the slate clean and start over in a search for something new, yet they can never seem to cut this invisible umbilical cord from England. Until the populous decides to build from its own recent history, Canada will remain an idea in a university in search of practical fulfillment.

We talked for an hour and a half. I got him to sign a couple of books before I shook his hand and left. I'm not sure I agree with everything he said, but I know I could have sat there for a lot longer sharing ideas with him. I don't get to share as many ideas as I used to. That part of it felt good.

When I got home I watched Die Hard to officially kick off my Christmas season. Tomorrow I should start getting at that Opera paper (though I still have 4 whole days).

Nothing like a little Facebook profile trolling to pass the time. I'm trying to grab the rest of Ken Andrews' solo album off the net, as well as some Of Montreal. My computer is still running a little slow and stuttering despite defragging it a couple of times and running virus scanners to knock out malware. Hopefully it will stay the course well enough to get me through my presentation in Touch of Evil next week.

I had that class today. The title of my presentation is going to be "Memo-rizing Touch of Evil: The Execution and Effect of Orson Welles' Intentions." I signed a book of Walter Murch (who was responsible for the re-edit) and Michael Ondaatje (who just pulled off yet another GG win for the amazing Divisadero) interviews out from the Innis library, which bring the total number of libraries to which I owe books to three. Innis isn't really much of a library, though. It's two floor of stacks along a single wall. Really, it barely warrants the staircase leading to its "computer lab" of two terminals. Innis is a strange building.

After class I went for sushi with Eileen and Tony and talked a bit about grad school. I'm starting to think that I should talk with some of my professors about continuing my studies. I think my slipping confidence in academia is influenced by the fact that I'm not really studying anything that echoes the grad proposal I was submitting to universities and organizations a year ago. I thought I'd be knee-deep in positioning Coupland in a natinal canon by now; instead, the closest I'm coming to a Canadian text all year is the story of a young man's role in a Communist war in Ethiopia. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying African-Canadian Literature, but it's only a small fraction of where my research interests lie. The ironic thing is I've got two people who are incredibly renowned for their work in the field of Canadian studies, and one of them is teaching me about European Opera and speaking a language of music that I can't comprehend.

The other, of course, is George Elliott Clarke, who presented on his own work today and read some of the poetry in Execution Poems, which was great to see. Clarke is a great poet, there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure if he's a great professor. I don't feel as though the ideas I brought to the table, when I felt brave enough to bring them, were given the kind of feedback I receive in other classes. Clarke is a great man, a nice guy, and a passionate speaker. I learned a lot from the texts, but I felt that there was so much more to get at in the course. I still don't feel as if I can tie Africadian studies into a more general, overarching Canadian context as effectively as I may have wanted to. I wanted to learn as much about Canada as I did about African-Canadians, and I felt that the course didn't achieve that. But the blame for that rests equally on my shoulders. I've always found that courses are in large part what you make them, and I hung on for the ride too often.

I have the class evaluations sitting on my bed because the drop-off office was closed when I went by. I'll drop them off before I meet with the Opera folks for the table-read tomorrow. After I got home I watched episode four of The War, which detailed the events of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France and coverage of the brutal battles with the Japanese on the Mariana Islands which contained some of the most violent footage in the series so far. Hearing the veterans talk about the war is a really emotional experience that fully enriches the documentary. Keith David also does a great job narrating.

Today was much better. It started out with Touch of Evil and proceeded into another lunch at the Red Room with Tony and Eileen. About three quarters of the restaurant was furnished with couches and upholstery. Tony and Eileen both seem like nice people and they're entertaining to listen to. Eileen really reminds me of Esther.

After that I studied up for African-Canadian literature. Nick Walsh (which I just noticed is eerily close to Nitz Walsh) was one of the presenters on Djanet Sears' Harlem Duet. Nick has got to have his eyes on being a professor, as he's one of those people that really goes all out for presentations and discussion. Turns out the guy's brother is the guitarist for Jen Militia.

Sometimes I find it difficult to talk in that class because Professor Clarke speaks from the heart and I feel like my relatively useless observations about Bakhtin's notion of polyphonic textual nature as it relates to Sears' play aren't going to register in quite the same way. I'm also white. Now, granted, 95% of the class is white. But I don't want to feel as though I'm talking in politically correct platitudes just to contribute to a discussion. It wouldn't be fair to the material. Professor Clarke talks at great length about the texts we study, and that's to be expected, but it's hard to deliver a complimentary idea that's more classically theoretical in approach when we're dealing with such emotional subject matter. That said, I'm learning a lot in the class, and the books have all been great reads.

I chatted a bit with Brooke afterwards, about where we're from and such. She mentioned a couple of places she's been to in Ottawa (including this one Russian bar...). It gave me a chance to gush about the city. She's from London, and I told her I'd heard stories...

I made the walk from Keele station again. After I got home I lounged for a bit befoe popping in Death in Venice, which I watched for an hour or so before putting on Orson Welles' broadcast of The War of the Worlds. I laid on the couch and listened to it for the first time, 69 years to the day it was first broadcast, and let its imagery play around inside my head. For those of you who don't know much about the story of the broadcast, it's a really interesting one: read more about it here.

Tomorrow I'm meeting with my Opera group before heading over to Matt's to do up Halloween. Have a happy one.

WHAT I'M IN F...

- wait a second, first things first. I slept through my first class, The Touch of Evil Project. Waking up was one of those uh-oh, why the fuck didn't my alarms (2) go off, why am I waking up under my own power kind of waking ups. Great start to a new course.

But I didn't let the morning go to waste. I emailed the prof immediately, apologizing for my absence and inquiring as to where and when I could pick up my syllabus. While waiting for a response I went to Future Shop online and bought a new alarm clock and a digital camera with memory cards. Then I started investigating grants for the next Ottawa Art Bazaar. I came across some information on a package I'm going to put together, so I sent out requests to some folks for their help. The first application for the Ontario Arts Council is due October 1st, so I'm going to look into it more extensively this week, as well as the leads I have on a couple of other sources.

Finally, Professor Corinn Columpar emailed me back, setting up a meeting for tomorrow so that she could assign me a presentation slot. She also told me where I could access the syllabus online. Therefore -

WHAT I'M IN FOR (PART TWO)

The Touch of Evil Project is not devoted entirely to the Orson Welles film; in fact, I'll be looking at a bunch of films including The Magnificent Ambersons, The Third Man, Kiss Me Deadly, Morocco, Greed, Klute, and Lone Star. The theme of the course, I think, involves interruptions and overhauls of the creative process resulting in the perversion of a director's vision. Sounds very cool. The actual "Touch of Evil Project" is a culmination of each student's contribution of one particular aspect of the film, echoed in the other material we'll be examining. I'll be graded on my contribution, which will take the form of a presentation, as well as participation, a class facilitation, and a final project (research paper or something mindblowing) with proposal and presentation. Lots of presenting. But at least the subject matter is beyond engaging.

WHAT I'M IN FOR (PART THREE)

George Elliott Clarke seems like a genuinely warm, enjoyable man, who is extremely passionate about African-Canadian Lit (although he dislikes the term "African-Canadian", "black" and any other generalization of race, claiming these definitions are only in place for political reasons). His intensity grew as he went over what we'll be studying piece by piece, and peaked in his telling of an experience he had on a plane (back from Berlin, nonetheless) just this past Sunday when a man accused him of stealing food. I volunteered to present on Oni the Haitian Sensation, and sent him an email after the fact to stress my interest. I hope I'm able to, because I'd love to turn it into an opportunity to take a closer look at Ottawa's spoken word scene. I get a kick out of making my classes into examinations of my direct interests. In the meantime, I'll be looking at Lorena Gale's "Angelique", Austin Clarke's "Choosing his Coffin", Afua Cooper's "Hanging of Angelique", Dionne Brand's "Land to Light On", Mary Shadd's "A Plea for Emigration", Djanet Sears' "Harlem Duet", Nega Mezlekia's "Notes from the Hyena's Belly", and material by the man himself as well as some films.

The University of Toronto seems like a very competitive place. I like to take my time when it comes to courses, meeting professors, sharing my ideas. I like to get the feel of the room. And the feeling I get from the rooms I've been in so far is that continuous attempts are being made to cement one's place in the front of the line. I'll pass it off to a general excitement, for now. But I've personally never been one to take the first bite of a kill.

I found out how much I'll be getting scholarship-wise. I almost fainted. The feeling came over me that I'd done something terribly wrong. I'm starting to feel funny about applying for OSAP. But the revelation is putting interesting thoughts in my head. Like where I may be spending New Year's Eve.

I don't have another class until Friday, but tomorrow is a day full of appointments. And I really shouldn't sleep through them.

My baby's up there somewhere, in the sky on the other side of the globe. At 11:11 I made my wish for her...

--

A gull drops to kiss
    its dark, watery double,
       soars again alone.

- George Elliott Clarke, "Solitude" (from "Whylah Falls")

I was watching Star Wars (that's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope for anyone born after 1989) today. It's a movie I've seen many times, and I couldn't really provide you with a cohesive description of its plot, but that makes it great for repeat viewings. I paid close attention this time around to the final assault on the Death Star, and finally understood that one of the pilots who accompanies Luke is an old friend of his from Tatooine. He's one of the last three pilots including Luke, and he's the last member of the Rebellion to bite it in the film. The other pilot is of course Wedge, who is in all three films and delivers an ass-whooping time and again WITHOUT the Force and really without assistance from anyone. He evens saves Luke's ass in the final assault, when Luke's old "buddy" is SUPPOSED to, but is nowhere to be found. Now, Wedge is hit by enemy fire and has to pull out of the trench. But he's the only member of the Rebellion besides Luke, Han and Chewie to survive the attack. So why isn't he at the fucking awards ceremony with the others when the film comes to a close? What, they couldn't have moved one of the extras they hired as a token elder senator out of the frame to clear a space? I mean, it's not like he even had to walk IN with the main characters. Lucas could have placed him already standing off to the side, with a tinier, SILVER medal, just to show that he'd already been honoured for his dedication. Bottom line, Wedge saved Luke's ASS, and that grand hall would be a floating assemblage of Yavin IV bits and pieces complete with digitally added explosion halo if it weren't for him. Respect Wedge.

Anyway, I've obviously been taking it easy today. I picked up some more clothing at the Village, and started into the meat and potatoes of Whylah Falls, which is incredibly beautiful, reading as if Ondaatje had written James Baldwin in stanzas. I'm nearly halfway through Generica as well, and it's holding my interest. I also listened to the latest SModcast, continued my online Scrabble losing streak, and watched some first season X-Files (some of those really early episodes are painful to sit through; as big of a fan as I was of the show, it really didn't hit its stride until a few seasons in).

I picked up tickets to see the Hives next month, and I'm taking Matt as his birthday present. Toronto has far too many good shows going on at the same time. It's completely overwhelming. I'm almost thankful that most of the shows are out of my price range (I'm not paying $37.50 to see the Kaiser Chiefs unless they somehow morph into Catherine Wheel partway through their set).

And I started writing again, a story I had only begun scratching at a couple of weeks ago. I had an idea, opened up Word, wrote it down until it was fleshed out enough, saved it and closed it up. 333 words without driving myself crazy. It's a good sign, and I wager last night's ramble definitely helped.

I feel, somehow, as though floodgates are about to open.

When I read, I am overcome with emotion and thought. Reading ignites ideas, little bits of fire grow wings, more often than not sputtering and fluttering out after I've had a chance to calm down, to leave the idea behind and let it walk on its own. I'll read a paragraph and I'll have the most enormous inclination to write the perfect sidekick, an inspired companion to the lines I'm mowing through. I read something set in an office, and it convinces me with the force of God dictating to Adam that I should add a chapter onto whatever I've cooked up and set it in an office. Add a couple of Canadian tropes, twist it with a little magic realism and VOILA! But then I stop reading. More often than not, the fire goes out, the wings cease to beat, the idea can't walk on its own.

But sometimes... once in awhile, the idea sticks. There's a purity in it that I can sense. I carry this idea around with me, adding accouterments, shaping it in my brain, sometimes for years at a time. I become obsessed with it. I start to value it as one would value a childhood love. It becomes something almost physically attached to my body - a wrinkle, a rib, an unsettling click in a joint. And then... I can't write it down.

I'll mention what I know for certain. I never felt more alive as a writer than I was as recently as a couple of years back, when I was printing out my own chapbooks fairly regularly for about a year and a half. I don't know if anyone read them, if they retained any of the information, but it felt as though I was saying things that needed to be said. Lately I've been wondering if it was simply a youthful idealism on my part to think that I was being unique in my output, that I was writing worthwhile material that would impact some loosely defined world of readers and critics and artists. But none of that matters.

In the five chapbooks I wrote alone (Heartsex, Joel, The Scene, Kitsch, and Puget Sound) I wrote about love, sex, art, coincidence, accidents, apocalypse, dreams, idol worship, memory, music, alcohol... and God. Last night I tried communicating to Andrea how writing about God was really the only thing that kept drawing me back to the craft (I probably failed miserably, looking too much like a Modernist and coming off as a little crazy). But it's true, and I didn't really recognize it until I tried explaining it. To use your classic neoliberal preface, I'm not a religious person, but I see God at work in everyday life. Nothing provokes my curiosity more than the existence of God, despite the fact that I've developed an outwardly calm veneer on the matter, as opposed to my younger, more adamantly existential self. On the flip side (?), I believe in the existence of beauty as truth. What's in front of us - our loved ones, that pencil on your desk, is enough to bring spiritual satisfaction, simply by its being there for us to engage, regardless of the presence of God.

These are the two most pointed conclusions I have to come to regarding my writing - first, is the notion of God still important to me, and secondly, whether or not I can still find beauty in an agnostic world. If the answers to either of these is no, I won't be able to write any longer. I just won't. It won't work. Thankfully, I don't think that will happen.

-

Position is where you
put it, where it is,
did you, for example, that

large tank there, silvered,
with the white church along-
side, lift

all that, to what
purpose? How
heavy the slow

world is with
everything put
in place. Some

man walks by, a
car beside him on
the dropped

road, a leaf of
yellow color is
going to

fall. It
all drops into
place. My

face is heavy
with the sight. I can
feel my eye breaking.

- Robert Creeley, The Window

-

On another note, things happened today:

I saw Andrea off at the bus terminal. Through the haze of being awake at 8:30 I still felt like crying. She leaves for Germany in a week. We kissed long and hard and squeezed hands.

I had to go to my MA orientation almost immediately afterwards. While waiting in the Sanford Fleming building, Jonathan Abresch sidled up to me. We graduated Carleton at the same time and are now entering our graduate studies, though with very different priorities. He's pretty heavy into the Medieval side of things, whereas I'm going as interdisciplinary and contemporary as I can. It was good to see him. The meeting was your average hodgepodge of vagueness, but everyone who spoke seemed genuinely approachable. Some folks from echolocation also took the floor, inviting students to their first meeting of the year, which I am looking forward to and will most certainly attend.

I went home and slept for what turned into a couple of hours, then slouched back to campus for my meeting with MA program Associate Director Sara Salih, which went swimmingly. I'm going to stick around Toronto until Friday so that I can take a tour of the library. I've been in Robarts a handful of times now and I still haven't seen a book.

I spent the rest of the evening reading, letting the floodgates open. Read the ten-year anniversary intro to Whylah Falls (complete with Discography. That's what I like to see). Hopefully I'll be spending the next couple of days effectively organizing what remains of my free time. It's a commodity I will soon miss.

I added a fancy new userpic, taken by the fancy Andrea, featuring my fancy new haircut. Effin' fancy.

Jason's gone for the weekend, so we stayed up late watching Ocean's 12, which was good but felt long (that's what she said! Sorry, too many Office episodes)...

First off, my sister Holly just got engaged to her boyfriend Steve. They've been dating for about 7 years, so it was a while coming. My parents just had their 38th wedding anniversary a couple of days ago, and I think the announcement coincided, so that's nice.

I started off the day marching over to the license bureau and shelling out $75 to renew my driver's license, which expired ten months ago (I don't drive). I was having my picture taken when some guy walked right past me in the line of the shot, so I was momentarily taken aback. The woman at the counter smiled as if thinking "these are the kind of douchebags I'm going to have to deal with on a Friday? Faaaaaaaaantastic." She assured me he didn't end up in the final shot, but I'm expecting a photo of me in mid-WTF glance. If your license photo is supposed to be bad, at least mine will come with a story.

We made our way to the U of T campus to pick up my student card and tour around a little. We checked out the old buildings that looked like something out of Harry Potter. Apparently there had been a fire in the regular location of the English Department offices, so everything is moving to the far north of the campus. I still have yet to find out where exactly my classes will be taking place.

After visiting the University bookstore, we made for the Eaton's Centre. We stopped at a Tim Horton's and I tried tipping the cashier but she told me they don't accept tips. That's BALLS. I worked there for four and a half years and those people DESERVE tips. Way too cockamamie. I picked up records by The New Pornographers and Rilo Kiley, plus Whylah Falls by George Elliot Clarke to prepare myself for what this guy is capable of. Andrea showed me the spot where she picked up the fake Maine ID she used back when I first met her. Sam The Record Man has closed its doors, on a sad note. Maegen used to work there and I myself have fond memories of browsing its racks.

After additional shopping and one hilarious photo op we headed home, watched some TV, ate a good meal, and said goodbye to August. Not a bad day on the whole.