MakingHappy

Stairs Behind Coloured Glass

Davin Risk, Craig Marshall, and I are going to be projecting artwork onto the wall at the corner of Queen Street West and Noble Street on the night of Nuit Blanche, this Saturday September 29 beginning once the sky is dark and continuing into the wee hours.

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Keri wrote an excellent piece on perfection and the energy that is wasted perpetuating the lie. And while I'm at it I have got to mention Keri's two new books... a plug that is LONG overdue. Both Davin and I love Wreck This Journal and bought four copies as soon as it came out for ourselves and as gifts for people we thought might enjoy it. I am still working through the activities in fits and spurts. It's been a good excuse to get the watercolours out and try out those fancy watercolour pencils Davin bought a while back. Come to think of it we really need to reinstate Arts & Crafts Night now that the Summer is coming to an end.

Keri's second book this summer is The Guerilla Art Kit and is filled with activities to get you thinking about making art to put out into the world -- art that will be found and experienced randomly and without the sense of permanence and validation often attributed to showing in a gallery setting.

Grassy Bridge Covering Abandoned Tracks

Davin Risk, Craig Marshall, and I are going to be projecting images, animations, and artwork onto the wall at the corner of Queen Street West and Noble Street on the night of Nuit Blanche, this Saturday September 29 beginning once the sky is dark and continuing into the wee hours. I am also going to place a bunch of small prints on the street nearby for the taking so look for that if you're into it.

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New SOLO section on Making Room Magazine featuring beautiful, selected artists images. The first in this frequently updated feature is "Melissa swimming in the lake" by Montreal photographer Alain Astruc.

Beautiful Marquee (Portage, Michigan)

I think this is Portage, Michigan. If memory serves we were driving along the highway and spotted a sign indicating a certain American coffee franchise (rhymes with Barlucks) up ahead. I am ashamed to admit that I am enough of a coffee addict that coming upon a franchised coffee sign is like following a beautiful rainbow to inner peace and happiness. I have experienced more shamefully joyful moments coming upon a glorious espresso-based coffee establishment than I care to admit publicly. I can't drink drip coffee and that poses a very difficult situation as soon as I leave the core of any major city. In my normal life I could give a shit about certain franchised coffee establishments. But on the road my eyes are trained like an eagle to spot anything that might resemble an establishment that serves reasonably drinkable espresso-based coffee beverages.

With Whitney Houston blasting the self-love anthem "The Greatest Love of All" over satellite radio, I made a remark about the differing designs of the American flag banners lining the intersecting streets as we pulled up to the plaza housing said coffee establishment. I found it interesting that the banners in one direction sported a wave motif while the banners in the other direction were more traditional. Was there an eagle incorporated? I forget now. As I made a remark about these banners I mentioned the city/town of Portage pronouncing it Port-auge to which my driving companion replied, Yeah, I don't think they pronounce it like that here, Gayla. I think they say Port-ige. Regardless of how you pronounce it, I love you Portage, Michigan and I will forever be in your debt for the addition of a Barlucks to that plaza I forget the name of on that street I forget the name of with the flag motif banners with waves, and the more traditional flag motif banners without waves but possibly incorporating an eagle.

$1.00 and Some Change Inc. COMING SOON

I had planned to post this picture with an accompanying story about my experience here taking this photo. I wanted to tell you about the people who drove by slowly and suspiciously watching me and wondering what I was up to, what possible interest I could have had in this store. And how nervous this attention made my friend who drove the car. How at first I was relieved that my camera had not exploded (although it did later) but how that relief turned to hesitation when I realized that people were slowly driving by watching me with suspicion and curiosity and hesitation and how normally I am not afraid of people but what a crazy mix of emotions I suddenly felt at that moment and how one of them was fear and how that fear turned to shame for feeling afraid of another person. And how another thought that crossed my mind was the realization that I am essentially a tourist and a visitor in a place where a lot of people have suffered and are continuing to suffer a great sense of loss and hopelessness and that they don't know that I have also experienced these things too.

I was going to write about how heartbreaking this particular place was. This specific place but not the whole. Because there were other feelings too and some of them were not despair or heartbreak or hopelessness but quite the opposite. I wanted to write and tell you how I left this place feeling a feeling that I still don't know how to write with words. That I hope maybe the picture speaks for those words I can't put together into sentences. This is partly why I take pictures -- because I really want to have the words, and while I really try I just can't always get at them to say what I want to say in the way I want to say it.

So even now I am expressing a desire to express something to you because even though I am writing this right now and I am TRYING to say what I mean to say I just don't think it is coming across at all. And maybe I should have just left it without the words and left it up to your imagination. Maybe I should have had enough confidence in the photo that you can get a glimpse of what I feel... that I can communicate with you without forming sentences with words.

The sign in this picture encapsulates the overall feeling I had in my short visit to Flint, Michigan... lost and failed dreams. Unfulfilled and crushed hope. How someone had an idea for a store. Maybe that store would be that first or second or third step forward towards a change in their life. God, nothing makes me sadder than crushed hope... except maybe hope that never was. And nothing makes me angrier too. So angry that hope is hard to come by and angrier still that it is something so frequently crushed. Maybe I'm just making this shit up and I've got it totally wrong. And maybe I'm still not really getting at what I want to say here because it is more than the words I have written. There are other words that come to mind but I can't put them together with other words.

I think of war. And not the war where a country fights another with weapons but the war we wage on each other and the passive wars we wage on people we can't see when we make poor choices in leaders, when we do not lend our support to socially responsible policies, when we separate ourselves from disenfranchised people and pretend that we are also not disenfranchised simply by the fact that this is a culture of haves and have nots and regardless of what side you are on everyone is ultimately getting fucked (although some are also doing some major fucking), and the little bombs we drop when we turn our eyes away and pretend that there are things going on around us that we can't change and that are not our concern and we divert that attention into the house that isn't big enough and the perfection that always eludes us, and the celebrity that can't hold their shit together publicly. I can never really get why we aren't all just a hell of a lot more angrier.

And I wonder these things about myself too. And really all of this isn't to tell you anything at all maybe but to remind myself of what I see, how I see it, what that means to me, who I am, and who I am striving to be.

Worthless IIII (Picture Menus Available at Window)

I don't know what the hell is going on but the last week has been a constant stream of pathetic attempts at contact with long-since ended friendships/acquaintanceships -- contact that feels more like being poked in the back of the head by a very long and fragile contraption comprised of several long sticks held together with scotch tape than direct, clear and honest communication. It's sort of like people leave your life for one reason or another and even though they don't really want to address the problems between you or have any real relationship they still want you to be available for occasional poking in the back of your skull with that sad and precarious stick whenever it suits them rather than just parting ways entirely.... or god forbid addressing the situation head-on (or sideways for that matter). Just tell me what you want already!

I want to be clear that while I am venting I am not painting myself as a hapless victim. I had as much a hand in cultivating what where inevitably poor relationships with these people as they did. As adults we formed bad relationships between each other collectively and I do not want to underestimate or downplay my part in that or act like I'm a victim of other people's insanity. I've engaged in plenty of my own craziness over the years -- in fact it was my own compliance and participation in the bad relationships that formed at least 50% of the inevitable mess that they were. But I am no longer that person that you can have a bad relationship with and then come back to after some time has passed and act like nothing happened and then we will together fall back quietly into the same old pattern and be done with it. And never speak of it EVER.

On the flip side I have had the experience of breaking up terribly with a friend and then coming back after some time has passed, hashing it out and forming a new friendship that acknowledges the past and is infinitely saner. Having experienced positive results from a very different kind of communication has turned me into a person who can't abide by that other way of non-functioning. I know how things can be. I refuse to go back. If we can't talk honestly then there is no relationship to speak of. Those who insist on poking me with the scotch-taped sad stick know where they can shove it.

Toronto Skyline (View from Leslie Spit)

Canadian Wedding

This was the last picture I took before my camera experienced its first breakage... the minor breakage that was temporarily fixed before the major breakage that took place about a week later.

God I can't wait for my camera to come back.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am still sick. Gah. I tried to get some work done today but it wasn't much. I officially need to be unsick and back to work. As I write this I am running on a small wind that is quickly fading. I think I'm avoiding tonight's entertainment, "Everything's Gone Green." I don't know anything about the movie but I just have a bad feeling about it. We've had a run of bad films around here recently and I don't think I can take more cinematic disappointment. Plus I've been looking at the same 700-800 square feet for three days solid and am about to pull out my own hair for entertainment purposes.

You can't see it in the photo but the bike is a limited edition Tim Hortons bike.

Wedding Bocce (Pointing)

My camera is supposed to come back from repair within the next few days. Total cost: $159 GASP. I could buy a camera for that much dough, albeit a cheap piece of shit camera but still.... I could get a Great Wall to replace the one that is constantly perched on the cusp of a total breakdown. So it goes I suppose. Expensive cameras are expensive to fix. Breakages are inevitable. I've been using the camera regularly for two years solid without a tune-up and who knows how long ago it was last serviced. I need to accept and stop whining about it.

I've been sick with some sort of unknown publicly contracted illness over the last few days but am beginning to come out of it. When I am sick I always complain that it couldn't be a worse time. There is no sick leave for the self-employed. But honestly this time around it really couldn't have been more convenient since I had just wrapped up a few projects and could easily lose a few days without the world coming to an end. Sure it would have been more fun to spend those days enjoying the last days of summer but I am so rarely bedridden these days that I really can't complain about a few days in bed watching daytime television and shitty movies, and re-reading old issues of Bitch magazine.

The Beach

I popped into a used bookstore today searching for a new book to read and came out instead with two used, reissued Sebadoh albums.

I've been listening while working and it's like a trip through age 19 and the horror that was living in university residence for a year after having already lived in my own apartment with my own kitchen, my own bathroom, my privacy, and my rules for two years prior. It was 1992. At the time I was supposed to be pursuing a degree in science (I had already resolved to switch to fine art) so I was living in the science and phys ed residence with the jocks.

Let me tell you that was a supremely awesome match... for everyone involved.

One of the local colleges had hot tub pub every Thursday and all the girls pronounced shampoo and food like "sham-pewww" and "fewd." The most surreal moment was standing on a bridge walkway on the first Thursday of the year looking down on two bustling hot tubs filled with frenetic, fumbling post-teens recently broken free of the shackles of parental dominance, a guy cooking hot dogs on a barbecue, and a crowd of the same hot tub-bound students attempting to 'mosh' to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" while a DJ begs them all to stop. Later, while sitting in a friends' common room trying to process that this is indeed how my university experience is going to play itself out, an enthusiastically drunk and shirtless freshman flashes past the window with scrapes all over his chest and arms.

It mostly felt like I was living inside all nine, PAINFUL seasons of Beverley Hills 90210 but with the smell of fast food induced shit, off-gassing carpets, and bacon intermingling at all times.

So far "The Freed Man" does little for me but I am enjoying "Sebadoh III." It comes with a disk of extras that includes an old favourite, "Ride the Darker Wave." "The Freed Weed" was the album I really liked from that era.

Welcome

Song: "The Passenger" Iggy Pop. I've had this in my head all day.

Playground (Givens Shaw School)

I am currently watching "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" a documentary about historian and social activist Howard Zinn. Well, that's not really the whole truth. The whole truth is that Davin is in the other room watching it and I got up and left the room about 15 minutes ago. I can't watch a documentary now-a-days without thinking about how they shot the interview and imagining what kind of things might have happened off camera; pondering whether there were sound distractions that made them stop taping; how many times the subject had to walk into the room on camera... that sort of thing. I don't think I'm ruined for documentaries forever -- just until I stop aggravating on and off about the show, or until I see it and can get on with my life without wondering which portions of those tapes were used. GAH! Thinking, "Please do not use that one part where I said that really dumb thing." And "Please do not use any of that whole section where I was not ready for my close-up." I wish I could be more ego-less and just forget about it entirely.

Someone in the Howard Zinn documentary used the phrase, "moral outrage" and it has been running in my head on repeat over and over since. Moral OUTRAGE. MORAL outrage. MORAL OUTRAGE. I like this phrase.

We just finished watching the entire run of "My So-Called Life." The language of the show has completely seeped into my vocabulary. I find myself saying "like", "whatever" and "or something" more than ever. This is not good.

I recently rented the first "Kids of Degrassi Street" DVD and wow is it ever fantastic! The first two episodes were particularly good although I am finding that the others do not compare. Episode one is about artistic integrity and episode two is surprisingly anti-authoritarian and gets into the idea that some rules are unjust and should be broken. We could all stand to learn these lessons. I for one am still learning them.

Song: "Respiration" Black Star

Prize Winning (Mustard Festival)

This apartment is too small and I am constantly bumping into furniture for lack of space. I have no money in the bank and zero security for the future. The cameras are all fucked. This humidity is terrible. I work too hard and am not fairly compensated. Bike #1 needs to be fixed. I am desperate for a real vacation.

And yet I'm really happy. I'm excited about what comes next and the things that are brewing. I am not compromising or compromised. I have a second bike that works just fine. I have care, understanding, respect, friendship, and love. The fridge is full of good, healthy food. I have 28 jars of canned sauce... and counting. Corners have been turned. Big corners. I am alive. This is the life I chose and it's turning out to be pretty good. This has been a great summer all around.

Part of getting here was letting go of the disappointment of 33 and the expectations that weren't met. I have had to let go of a lot of dumb ideas about success that were never even mine to begin with. Writing this reminds me of Nina Simone singing "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" and Pavement's "Here."

Film: I loved Ken Loach's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley." I have loved all of his movies that I have seen. Unfortunately they are mostly hard to come by.

Music: I had a sudden urge to listen to Squeeze. I've been enjoying The Singles today while working. Except for "Cool for Cats." I do not like that song.

Reaching

So my Nikon came back yesterday, finally. But now my Hasselblad and my Mamiya are toast.

The Summer the Cameras Died.

We traveled out of town last Saturday so I could spend the day photographing someone for a project I am working on. Late this afternoon I enjoyed a strong coffee with a friend followed by a half hour sitting alone quietly in my community garden soaking up the lull of chirping crickets, peaceful solitude, and the gentle hum of the beer store fridges. Returning home feeling energetic and relaxed I was met by Davin's grim face. He had just returned home with my film and it turns out that all of it was blank short of four non-project-related photos in the middle of one roll. Gah. And by "gah" I mean FUCKITY FUCK FUCK.*

Ironically enough, the shittiest medium format camera of the bunch -- the one that is basically held together with tape -- marches on. I'm far too invested in rational thinking to be superstitious yet I am almost afraid to commit that to writing for fear that camera will go next. Especially since I scanned a roll taken on a whim at one of the sessions and I really like it. A friend tried to console me with the suggestion that maybe these set-backs will force me to innovate to which I replied, "But I already know what I want to do. What can I learn from blank film?"

Maybe I was wrong. But only just a little bit.

* Interestingly enough spell check confirms that both "shittest" and "fuck" are correct spellings but "gah" is not. Neither is "fuckity."

Song: "Rock Music" The Pixies

B'nai Fishel Towers

I've photographed these towers a few times.

Song: "Radio, Radio" Elvis Costello

Ugly (Beautiful) Tomatoes

Currently jarring 50 lbs of tomatoes made into roasted tomato sauce and roasted salsa ranchero. Currently very tired but loving that there will be no good-tasting tomato drought come mid-winter.