something i enjoyed...

There is a special place in my heart reserved for people so dedicated to language and writing that it utterly transforms their fundamental relationship with the world around them.

If you also have a soft spot for 'wordies' then you'll enjoy this as much as I did.

quote of the day...

"Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed."

- Baz Kershaw, 'The Radical in Performance'

cats of many colours...

Today the CBC has released the most comprehensive broadside against the Federal Conservative election machine since initially outing the Guelph robo-call scandal.  If reports are to be believed, and most of them seem already to have been publicly substantiated by Elections Canada, then the last federal election was quite likely marred by a stunning polling station shell game played by CPC 'get-out-the-vote' operatives to knowingly misdirect enfranchised citizens and in some cases to frustrate them to a degree that they chose not to vote at all.  Yep, this is what voter suppression looks like.

The NDP are right to shout loudly in the press about this issue, given that the Liberals seem to have sullied their own hands in a few less-than-ethical uses of so called 'robo call' technology.  It is imperative that the Official Opposition hold the Government to account on this behaviour, which can only increase voter cynicism and from this follows that great enemy of political engagement: voter apathy.

If it is shown that centralized Conservative agents set out to willfully misinform Canadians in a coordinated nation-wide campaign of voter suppression then the last election should immediately be declared invalid, the House of Commons prorogued and an election called immediately.  What is most sad is that the CPC came riding into Ottawa with a high idealism of cleaning up corruption, promoting transparency and most importantly championing accountability.  And now?  With a spotty record on all their key ideals, and with a very real possibility that some within the ruling party believed themselves so close to a coveted majority that they were willing to sideline Canadian voters to get it, will Canadians still buy the goods that the Conservatives stand for moral government in Ottawa?

Tommy Douglas once said Canadians were mice perpetually voting for cats of different colours and calling that change.  Given this latest scandal, that has never felt more true.

"the artist is a kind of bourgeois"...

An axiom of the novel is that people whose lives are devoted to the competition for status--the bourgeois, the philistines--are inferior to those who devote themselves to the realization of an aesthetic or ethical ideal.  The very fact of being a novel reader is the badge of this distinction: to be a reader, in this sense, is really to be a writer of one's life, to try to shape one's life in the image of the values promoted by what one reads.  Yet the proud reader should remember that the pursuit of outward status and the pursuit of inward perfection can both be understood as ways of imposing direction, and therefore narrative, on a life.  Both status and goodness are useful for this purpose because both are fundamentally unachievable: it will always be possible, and therefore necessary, to become "higher" or "better" than one is.  These ways of imposing meaning on life are more similar to each other than either one is to the horrible vacancy of the vast majority of lives, which are composed simply of endless repetition.  Compared to the peasant, the bourgeois is a kind of artist--and the artist is a kind of bourgeois.

Taken from this extraordinary collection of "Meditations on life and letters."

the pen is mightier than the...

Another strike for technology.  

I may try and put pen to paper at least one a day for a week to see if my writing does in fact get "psychologically denser," whatever that might mean...  I'll keep you posted.  

thinking about politics this afternoon...

Watching the results from the K-W by-election in Ontario yesterday, and of course talking through it with my left-leaning political junkie of a partner, it now seems inevitable that we will have an NDP federal government in my lifetime.

The old provincial PC strongholds are beginning to fall like so many 416 ridings did for the Liberals in the last federal election.

I, for one, am desperately looking forward to a renewal of our sad political culture in Canada.  Layton, for the first time in what felt like a living eternity, made people excited to be citizens and voters, to be political and engaged.  He died at the height of his achievements, thrusting the NDP into the oppositions benches on Parliament Hill, capturing that fickle mistress, Quebec, in spectacular fashion, and quite likely hammering the penultimate nail in the Liberal Party of Canada's coffin.

And so we lost Layton, and now we have Thom Mulcair.  Yes, Mulcair lacks Layton's folksy sincerity that made him a lovable leader, though in Mulcair we have an arguably more professional politician, who has been in power (albeit as a Quebec Liberal), and understands well how to walk a fine line in the circus of Canadian politics.  That is a skill much in demand in these wedge-issue times, with a Conservative government ready and willing to unleash every form of underhanded tactic in order to maintain power for what increasingly seems like a pursuit for its own sake.

I mean, can anybody name a single policy brought in by Harper's CPCs that will endure as his legacy for Canadians?  And no, the sudden monarchist turn or jingoistic militarism will not likely survive a left-of-centre course correction, I can only hope.

We are seemingly out of ideas.  Or rather, the current governing party has show that with a majority mandate it still can't find its footing and do anything better than minor conservative tinkering (though some acts of tinkering are admittedly more damaging that others).  And the "natural governing party" is leaderless, penny-less, and very clearly out of touch with what most Canadian affectionately call 'reality'.

But then there remains the NDP, which has not yet fully stepped up to the plate but if the past is a predictor of the future, are quietly polishing a prime ministerial treasury of good ideas, and biding their time, building their bridges and looking to the next election when we will all, hopefully, be offered something worth voting for.

I just hope the not-too-terribly-distant future is soon enough for Canada.

we've lost another good one...

The recent death of Gore Vidal made headlines across North America (of course), which may account for why I somehow missed an even more monumental passing, that of art critic and defender of a pure and meaningful modernism in art, Robert Hughes.

Hughes was interviewed a few years back by Eleanor Wachtel (Writers and Company), and it is a conversation I have listened to many times, both for the deep humour of Hughes' character that is so deftly drawn out by Wachtel, but also to hear first hand his often tragic life story that never diminished the brilliance with which he approached his chief passion, namely the understanding and celebration of human artistic achievement.

This piece, published in the Guardian, is a good primer if you know little of Hughes.

And for a little more, watch this.  You won't regret the time spent.

gore vidal, a man for most seasons...

If you have never read a word of Gore Vidal's, then run out and find a copy of Palimpsest.

It was the first of Vidal's writings I chanced to discover, and though much has been made of his sexual exploits and the relish with which he documents them in this book (and others, though often through the lens of fiction), it is the quality of his writing, his singular voice, and the total lack of reticence that makes Palimpsest a thrilling page turner, happily discovered in my mid-twenties, a time past hero worship, and yet...

I did look up to Gore Vidal (beautiful in his youth, but arch and crushingly witty too), perhaps I fell a little bit in love.  I started wading through his back catalogue, reading City and the Pillar, and then a clutch of essays (all of them damned near perfect), and whatever other Vidal marginalia I chanced upon I read with great admiration, enjoyment and a slight touch of resentment at his capacity to live so freely and without shame.  At the height of his writing career he fully inhabited his most vital self, his works a residue of a man living for himself, a man who had been characterized by friends (and his many enemies) as "without a subconscious" so completely did his interior and exterior worlds correspond.

Much has been made of his uneven later career, his ill-conceived political stands, especially surrounding the tragic events of 9-11, the increasingly retrospective nature of his output, his diminishing powers, the unfortunate emergence of an ageing human being from that mass of superhuman living.  This too shall pass...

His legacy is the voluminous output of his early and middle career, his manner of engaging his peers in a constant challenge to the American status quo, and ultimately, his determined quest to raise the bar, speak and write honestly, and undermine hypocrisy (political, literary, sexual) with a vocational zeal.

I offer a pair of tributes to Gore Vidal below, and in the meantime intend to dig out my copy of Palimpsest for an eager re-reading.

NY Times Tribute to Gore Vidal
LA Times Obituary for Gore Vidal

of senators and speedos...

The Federal Budget was tabled today.  And yes, the budget is a hugely consequential event that portends an ever-more conservative Canada, where the old work till their older, where public servants are disposed of with nonchalance, where the private sector gets more free money, the taxes stay low and the gas pipes flow free.  And yes, this is a chance for a newly-minted and much-hyped NDP leader to show voters what he's got, and perhaps finally give the PM a run for his money in the House of Commons.  And yes, the Minister of Finance donned lovely new shoes, and when offered a penny for his thoughts announced he was doing away with pennies altogether.  So yes, a big day indeed.

But I'm WAY more interested in this!  I mean, what the f*ck?  That guy's a senator??

felled by cold...

It's basically a fact that every spring, with the first full burst of good weather I get hit hard by a cold. Well, at least I know I can still set my biological clock by the phenomenon... Day 2, sore throat fading, body and head aches holding firm.

On the bright side it IS gorgeous outside, and I still managed to finish reading Malaise of Modernity by Charles Taylor despite a thick fog of DayQuil and acetaminophen... That's got to count for something, right?

hard day's night's day's evening...

Without a doubt the hardest thing about OFHRP is the fatigue that sets in after a long day of work is followed by a long night of insulating a basement is followed by a long day at work. Throw in an early morning medical appointment, a dog with acute gastrointestinal problems requiring a trip to the vet, a series of unexpected reno issues to resolve, oh, and let's not forget a pile of dirty dishes and a pile of dirty laundry both calling out for attention, and well... let's just say I'm in no mood to read Charles Taylor tonight.

No, no, tonight will involve shutting off my brain, drinking some beer with my life partner in crime, while we both remind ourselves of why we weren't totally crazy to buy a 102 year old house and try and make a go of it.

Priorities are important, after all.

been a long time...

Yes, I'm a terribly inconsistent blogger. Truth is, for the last couple of months I've disappeared into the gaping jaws of Our First Home Renovation Project (OFHRP).

*cue dramatic off-stage scream*

It's been quite an experience, and all I can say is that I've learned a lot, am amazed at how we've risen to the challenge, and I probably drink my weight in wine on a weekly basis. Oh, and without my partner as the main lead on OFHRP I'd probably be a tear soaked mess desperately clutching a handful of tiny screws and shaking my fist at a stack of cracked drywall. But anyway, it's going just fine...

In whatever downtime can be found, I'm reading as much as I can (my antidote to stress in all its forms), and right now I'm cracking my head against the big brain of Charles Taylor, trying to get through the first 100 pages of his grand tome A Secular Age, while also dipping my toes into his Massey Lecture The Malaise of Modernity (also available as a CBC on-line audio broadcast!).

I won't attempt to summarize his ideas or provide some personal insight or anything like that (at least not until I make it even 1/5 of the way into one of his works), but Taylor's philosophical writing is the kind of hard brain candy that I totally go in for, and is keeping me happily buzzing with thoughts great and small while the paint dries and the plaster cracks.

Now, where's that bottle of wine gotten to...?