You must travel far, out of your way
In order to free yourself completely

You must climb over your old friends and enemies

Hitchhike out of tunnel visions
Moonwalk away from culpability

Dive into sinkholes of fears
Fly out of a pit of therapies

Dive into shells of feelings
Fly out of manuals of dreams

You must walk through forests of clichés
Through deserts of being
Breaking chains of denial
For yourself, by yourself

Truth is the broth you offer
Sharing it with stone cold strangers

Trading analogies for beets
Morals for rubber
Dead ends for fish
Heartaches for heat

Thorns always float to the surface
What are trials without garnish?

Labels: artform, participation, suspicious activity here, theory, words

Dear Charlie,

The trees are wondering what comes next, standing up against the grey sky, mixed up with changing colours and branches undressed. What can I do? They ask. What can I do? Should they move or wait, they wonder. The wet grass giggles with waves of indifference, shrugging away their comedic tears.

The grass is stopped by a black wire fence, protecting cement bricks from amateur botanical jokes. Plastic trees stand guard, bored to death between the fence and the bay window.

Inside, a cat watches an old French movie, dreaming of his Alice In Wonderland moment. Or perhaps he just wants a chance to stop the loud woman from singing that chorus again. Oh, so long Marianne. It’s time that we began to laugh.

What’s his name? This sad clown, writing in his diary, writing about a bunch of sticks of dynamite wrapped up in a red summer dress. He wants to stop time; she doesn’t know his name. But she counts on his steady sanity to predictably burn when she finally adds up the notes. It’s quite simply amusing to lead the hand of a man who is bored with his rotations. So sensible and safe for work. Such a “disgrace to take it philosophically” and to count down to death, but oh so entertaining!

This is the blindness I see, sitting in a dark kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. You’re better off knowing you’re blind. But one can wonder what made it so.

Remember how it went? How it played out? The cruelty of seeing the past so fresh, so tender and to never again recognize the gestures that lit up your soul. You can only die once. Shall we name it, Charlie? It is ill advised. You never were that type of easy. I can’t define the colour of your eyes or the way you looked at me. I can’t put my finger on the calculator of your resurrections. I never know if one of my voices has reached you until the moment you repeat my words back to me, and even then… I don’t know. How can I be sure?

The risk is time. That’s all we have. That’s all we ever had and ever will, until the rotation stops. Did I steal from you, or you from I?

Labels: Dear Charlie, notice the sign, theory

There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics. The former is supple and lifelike, it follows our experience. The latter is abstract and rigid, more ideal. The latter is perfectly necessary, perfectly reliable: the former is only sometimes reliable and hardly ever systematic. But the logic of mathematics achieves necessity at the expense of living truth, it is less real than the other, although more certain. It achieves certainty by a flight from the concrete into abstraction. Doubtless, to an idealist, this would seem to be a more perfect reality. I am not an idealist. The logic of the poet — that is, the logic of language or the experience itself — develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant. 

The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton

Labels: passages, sun kil moon, theory

Le son de la machine. La vélocité des bras métaliques, sortant de leurs cercueils pour se heurter contre une feuille qui n'attends que ça. Elle est bien étendue, en attente de ses coups pour se faire marquer comme une fesse de bête qui est désormais pièce d'inventaire.

Écrire de cette façon demande patience et mains fortes. L'ampleur de la machine demande tout ton attention. Tu ne pourras trahir son importance depuis le trône de solitude, en pissant les bières de la fabrique à inspiration. Tu y penseras quatre fois avant d'écrire une connerie, sinon, c'est toute une autre histoire qui s'étendra devant toi, avec des personnages armés jusqu'aux dents de blanc.

Ce n'est pas facile la vie sans touche Retour Arrière. Sans Supprimer.



(À suivre...)

Labels: artform, jargon, theory

“I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
- Emma Goldman

Labels: art, confession, theory, underwear

My face for a jar of ink is a hip replacement.

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

Charles Bukowski
(Factotum)

Labels: book, echo, theory

There are many ways to push a man to the edge of reason. One of them, being the most widespread method used in this era, is a bombardment of the senses.

An ordinary man is confronted to irrepressible noises maybe twice a day. Now, place this same man in the middle of the blinding lights of an immersive media circus, submitted to a parade of dancing signs to Best Bets and Pleased For Sure, surrounded by a chorus of children singing Do You Hear What I Hear? Welcome to the Holiday Reform Camp.

Labels: experiment, love, party, social, theory

Religion is built upon belief.

Belief is built upon?

Anything.

Aliens.
Insects.
Animals.
Stars.
Deities.
Tea leaves.
Books.
Television.
Fashion.
Medication.
Dreams...

Pick a card, any card.

Ah, I see you picked the wild card, the blank card of desire.
What do you think this means?

Labels: suspicious activity here, theory

People are walking around, feeling alone and all they do is murmur “nobody cares” and nobody can muster up the courage to scream at all the space in between. If you scream, you are thrown into a bin. Nobody wants to go in a bin. So there are pills and alcohol to bring them together. The disenchanted and the lonely. What also helps bring them together is their belief of being incomplete. There is also that darn regret. That life-sucking monster that wants to drag all hope down into the abyss. It freezes life into the background. So while drinks are being mixed, the little voices are drowned in the noise of the gathering of empty bottles and cash being registered.

If there exists important questions, I would like to have the answers to them and to have the remedies that would calm the hearts and souls around me. I wish I could save lives with my speech. When someone says “All I need is for you to come here, hold me in your arms, tell me that you love me and that you will love me like before.” that I could say “I will,” but I can’t. Instead, I have words and colors. Maybe I should try to write the script of a revolution. I will sit here at my desk, write dialogues for actors that will play disenchanted and lonely adults who, through those dialogues, will unite and recreate the world. I will do this from my desk. While I write, he will be sitting in a white room, full of strangers, asking himself where he went wrong and how he can make it right again.



Lars and the real girl

Maybe, while I write, he will plan ahead instead of feeling trapped. When you feel the wolf approaching, you don’t sit and wait for the strike, you plan.

He’s not like everyone else. Everyone else seems to think they know what normal is like. He’s the guy with the ruse. He may look like a poor little mouse, yet you can see the darkness of a lion in his eyes. They try to push him into a corner, to be a man’s man, get the girl and do the girl.

What if one day, he showed-up with a life-size doll? That would put them in their place. They would see how ridiculous it is to give in. Unless, unless they play along. Well, it could be amusing. It would be like childhood all over again. Oh, sweet tea time and dinner parties. The pretending wouldn’t last long. Unless, they all want her to be real. Unless they want the fake to be a real part of their lives. Then, he could end up dancing, alone, in the middle of a crowded room, in front of the monster he created and asking himself where he went wrong and how he can make it right again.

He could also get lost, asking himself what everybody sees in this plastic truth. Why do they desperately hang on to it? He might believe for a moment that this doll is more than what she really is. Because, again, they are making it a reality as they dress it in hope and by making him feel that he is not part of it. The ruse could overtake him: to kiss her once, to be the prince charming who wakes her from her comatose so they could both be real, together.

Well, that’s not how the story goes, Pinocchio.

Labels: echo, film, suspicious activity here, theory

Labels: film, jargon, notes, theory

Ricky is a young man living in Montreal. He has dark hair and eyes, is thin and likes to drink coffee. I met Ricky today, for the first time. We met at a coffee shop. Two strangers, face to face.

A week ago or so, I sent out a message in a bottle, asking for a genie. Well he appeared when summoned and granted me one wish. Or was it a vision? This is part of what he wrote, some lines in the sand:

She is a beautiful soul like me. A keen observer of the world and our habits. An adventurer who understands that we must peer outside to really know what the temperature is like inside. His bloodstream is filled with nicotine and caffeine as mine is. I do it to cope with the terrors in my head. I can't say for sure if she feels the same. I drew a map of our conversation and future conversations to be had, locations on the map included the phrase "we are semi-automatic"a question mark, the internet, coffee shops to discuss more, and courage. Lots of squiggly lines connecting these things. There was much laughter breathed onto this map, and like a raincloud, it hovers over it and makes me smile to look over.

We discussed the internet, decided we love it and need to have a talk with the internet to help it improve itself. Its becoming slightly arrogant and needs a reality check. We discussed people and automatic responses and our laziness and fears. We talked about courage and what it is? She said we lack balls. I agree. I said its a courageous act to travel to the unknown. She asked if a soldier is courageous. I thought of my dad and moving to Canada with little money to start a new life with two young children and his courage to do so.

I start my own adventures. The rest, what happens next, I swear I could not invent it any better myself, if I was handed that control.

Read Ricky's journal entry here.

Labels: conversations, experiment, theory, titles

I know nothing of art, success or society. I can hardly bring myself to get up in the morning and get dressed, let alone write theories and commentaries that could possibly shed light on anything remotely important. That said, I think art is a joke. The good kind. I think art is more important than the oscars, fashion, guns, politics and coffee.

I have a headache, I’m depressed, I need warmth. I want to curl up in bed and dream of suns.

Art, in all it's forms, starts me up. We all know how art can affect/infect people, but I can't say for sure what it represents. I think the story created by the reader, listener, spectator is separate from the artist’s story. Both are important, personal and reflective. That’s why it's so easy for fans to admire/worship musicians because they are responding to what feels like a voice that is personally speaking to them. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, how many times have you heard that a song saved somebody’s life?

Yet how much can the listener really know of what made that song possible? For all I know, that poem has nothing to do with what I think it is saying. Of course I think art can be the tool/statement that the creator wills it to be but once it is released into the wild, the chances of it returning intact are slim. Its likeness will change in every eye that falls upon it.

I see art on the train floor. At first glance it's just a scribble or stain but after staring at it a few minutes, the abstract morphs into whatever my mind can produce at that moment. A piece of art is like a big fat red dot on a map with an arrow next to it saying "You are here." Let that be translated through you, as you wish. Ingest it and spew it out like you want but don't blame the dot. Don’t blame the messenger for being too loud or too red, just move on to the next dot. So, to define art is ridiculous. Give awards to humanitarians, not artists. The way some societies are so sick with power to instill a sense of rivalry in everything is beyond me.

So there's this woman sitting at a bar and a man walks up to her and says "Be very careful leaving tonight. I just had a vision that you had an accident because of alcohol." and leaves. The woman, finishing her first margarita, rolls her eyes, pays the bartender and exits the bar. As she is crossing the street, she pulls out her car keys out of her purse and gets hit by a truck transporting a load of beer.

Labels: artwork, cult, kids in the hall, notice the sign, opinion, theory, there is no ship like championship, titles

I was reminded of how indefinite it can be when I was watching a movie the other night. There was a scene where a few characters where running in fear from a flying adversary. The runaways were grasshoppers and the chaser was a bird. 

I've been in and out of so many reflections that it is hard for me to clearly draw the line around the obstacles and pick up what could have been the best moments of my life. Growing up, I never thought about perception. It just never came up in conversations at the cafeteria table or at home around our steaks and potatoes. But I think I assumed that everything could be lumped into two boxes: good and bad. I admit, it worked for me for a long time because I was a simple girl who thought simple things and liked to simplify the world. 

Once in film school, I realized that there is more to the picture than heads or tails. And the answer is more than a guess but it's so easy to get caught up in the first take… So I learned to split things open and dissect parts of the whole as though everything was a crime scene investigation. Every little detail was important as it suggested to me how it affected the heart of the matter. I can tell you, truthfully, that such an experience, when you get the chance to see the mechanics behind the big picture, your perception is altered forever. You cannot forget about it. You cannot go back to the previous view and there is no coming out of it. It stays with you, in everything you do and all that you witness.

It's not an exercise that I disliked. I found myself more and more intrigued by the possibilities of what lay beneath. Might have gone a little mad in the process. Trying to simplify my world is still part of my daily routine but digging for truth remains my gasoline. So easily I forget what is important to me then fall back on the chair in the corner, wearing a pointy hat. My finger is half inked because half of me will never betray my mind and the other half cannot hold on to everything my mind wants to keep.

Labels: alarming truthness, echo, film, theory

I wrote something the other day before falling asleep. It started out as a thought, which I twisted into a dream, then threaded into a theory.

It was all going through my mind quickly, so comfortably laying on a pillow. I slowly stepped out of bed and pulled out one of my older notebooks from my small bookshelf. I set myself on my bed, on my stomach, and started writing something along the lines of "living without."

Maybe what I need to do is weigh my life against a ruler in need increments.

Labels: experiment, glass, mercury, theory

There are many ordinary objects around me that I sometimes perceive as meaningful reminders like I would a road sign. There are many songs, words, forms, behaviors that I often appropriate for no other reason but to give meaning to my life or a reason to believe that there is more to it than the mere appearance of living.

Life, I have discovered, is now for me synonym of connectedness. I admit it took me some time, but never did I presume being quick at anything but dreaming. Which is good because dreaming is what helped me get where I am today... The songs, words, forms and behaviors that could be mine are also, in my mind, a part of everyone I am in contact with. And this is true in manifestations that I cannot conjure on my own. So, it IS because either I will it to be, either because I believe it to be or because of some other relation that I am not aware of, but all in connection with another belief that is not my own. My thoughts are like radio waves. Your thoughts are like echoes and vice versa.

A few years ago, if you were to tell me anything like this I may have had trouble understanding what it all meant. But now, by the grace of those in my life, I am open to more possibilities and potentialities. Even those that by their human term are gone, they remain in my life by their intentions and actions strung in the code of my experience, my body and soul. And nothing can take that away from me because, in my mind, what I am witness to is transformed into knowledge which is transferred through thought, which must evaporate like puddles and reform as clouds and rain. Rain falls on everyone. Is it new or old? I don’t know. But it falls on all of us. My tear drops on my head.

It is hard to separate myself from what everyone goes through. It’s hard to start a revolution with an object that is doomed to be destroyed. It’s hard to believe in a love that will turn the world around the other way when what holds our love will one day disappear. So we have this moment with all that we let it offer us and what we give back.

The letters, numbers and all the objects in between ARE because someone willed them to be. Love and its family IS because someone believed in it.

You say “Trust” and although I know little about you, I trust the part of you that is symbolic. You say “Feeling” and yes, that is where they meet. So if what you see means that someone loves you, then that is what it is. Let it be a reflection of something that gives you Hope and let that hope move you to where you want to be with and within the world. Like I said, it is the soul of those around me that reflects what I need to survive the appearance of living. And if I were to break it down to smaller pieces, it would still reflect the same thing in every part: truth.

Yet, this is all in my mind. Or anywhere else I decide to put it.

Labels: artform, theory

It has been a crazy week. I don’t know if I can write a proper entry. There is so much going on behind my eyes right now.

First, everything looks like winter already. The tint of sunlight that slowly hits my paper blinds in the morning. The smell of cold wet leaves barely freezing together at 4 in the afternoon, when the sun sets. This marks the period when all I want to do is roll over and hide. Nothing makes sense anymore. I leave my blinds down and try to make the best of it inside. Because out there, all there is left is supersized superficial purchasing opportunities. Pumpkins are still smiling under dangling wired lighting. There’s an abundance of red attacking innocent people who just want to go home. Conversations about gifts and party dresses will haunt most public areas along with other stress-related issues such as climate change and scientific truth.

Every year I usually go off and tell unsuspecting acquaintances how the holiday season is just crank and pull. All the fuss over what is not the iconic lore they used to know is misspent time and energy. The icy holiday season is now the summum of the dollar symbol. It’s all about people feeling obliged and abiding to a school of thought that they don’t even try to comprehend. And on and on.

But this year will be different. My little cousin came up with this great idea to make presents this year. Actually using our hands and imagination to create something singular and personal. I like that thought. And because of her, I’ve been thinking about winter and how difficult it is for me to feel alive through it and realized that maybe that is why the holidays are what they are today. Winter would be very drab without the big lights of celebration shining over grey doorways. Maybe somewhere along the way the reason got shot for something else but if the reason was for people to be brought together in order for them to not be depressed and alone then who am I to frown upon it? I just wish it was clearer that family affairs like Christmas celebrations are not about stuff (and keeping receipts for stuff and regifting stuff) but about peoples.

Peoples like you and I... that sit in front of computer screens thinking about stuff that isn’t material. Peoples. Yes, I like saying Peoples. (Does Peoples make me look dumb?) Peoples are not dollars. Oh nice, snowflakes...

Labels: folk, theory

I first wanted to post this on someone else’s blog as a comment but thought, in the end, better not. Better not add my rant to a stranger’s home. Because that person might not want to hear about it and I don’t want to upset anyone. Assuming that nobody wants to be disturbed.

Today, talking about misfortunes, I spun jokes about how, when you lose your marbles, drop a puzzle box or your groceries, when everything falls down around you, often, you will take a second or two to watch it unfold until you realize "Well, I have to pick things up now." The people around you also take a second or two to observe, absorb and react to what just happened. Sometimes, they just stand there and watch you. But they do, I imagine, relate... They must think "Awe. I hate it when that happens!" And go on their way.

Some people might think "I could help!" So they move in and participate and the show then becomes interactive. They bend down next to you and maybe smile and help you put things back in their place. (Sometimes they find new places and it is the good kind.)

But there are many people, like me, who often think that people don’t want to interact. They don’t want to be bothered by someone they don’t watch movies with. So the world ends up being a stage. We watch, feel and sometimes flip the channel or get some chips. We walk around perceiving situations and believe (or abide) this scene cannot be altered or it is self-reliant. No wonder so many people feel alone and out of place.

I'd like you to know that if you ever see me lose my marbles, I will appreciate any help offered.

Thank you.

Labels: “Do I dare?”, experiment, love, participation, please feel secure, theory