September 5th, 2008
Eden Mills
Oh, yeah, and I’ll be at The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival on Sunday, reading in the first hour (12:30 to 1:30) and then listening raptly for the rest of the afternoon. Hooray!
You are far and away / my most imaginary friend
RR
The Billboard
“If I could tell you what the play was about in one line I would just write the line and put it up on a billboard rather than go through all the trouble of writing the play.” — Judith Thompson, as quoted by Daniel MacIvor in the “The Process Process: 40 Random Thoughts on Playwrighting” (worthwhile thoughts for any type of writing/wrighting, thought) in The Hart House Review
If I could talk I’d tell you / if I could smile I’d let you know
RR
September 1st, 2008
Awesomeness
from so many sources, most of them helpfully catalogued on the interweb!
Listen: Kerry Clare reads Carol Shields’s Unless at Seen Reading (and accidentally matches her dress to the cover).
Look: Exile Quarterly‘s website got a redesign.
Marvel: Steven W. Beattie wrote 31 short story reviews in August (good ones; I guess it’d be a less impressive feat if they sucked).
Read: I got interviewed by Deanna McFadden at Experience Toronto.
Dream: Fred tells me maybe we *can* someday retire to the moon.
Expect: Coming Attractions 08 (that link is to last year’s model, but you get the idea) to be on shelves in the next couple months, containing three stories each by three new authors, one of which is me! (And the stories are “ContEd,” “The House on Elsbeth” and “Tech Support,” if you are curious.)
Oh my goodness, tomorrow is back-to-school! Not for me, though. Sigh.
I don’t wanna choose black or blue / I don’t wanna see what they done to you
RR
August 31st, 2008
News
You know how kids construct their image of the outside world from scraps of cartoons and fragments of school assignments, and the rest from imagination? So they get lots of stuff wrong–sewer grates are to keep the alligators out of the streets, whatever day is garbage day on your street is garbage day for the whole world–and growing up is the process of idly mentioning these incorrect suppositions and getting them straightened out by the older and the wiser.
Except, some of these suppositions are so irrelevant and minor that you never bring them up, and they don’t get mentioned in a class or conversation for years and years. And then you’re thirty, and you are somewhat crushed to find out over Mexican food that no space program–not Canada’s or the US’s or anyone’s–is working towards the goal of building a glass or possibly Pyrex dome on the moon filled with a breathable atmosphere so that people can live there full-time.
!!!
I can’t even begin to explain why I thought that was true, or why I am now so sad that it isn’t. It’s not like I wanted to spend my retirement on the moon…I just thought I’d have the option.
I’ll keep drivin’ / you keep sleepin’
RR
PS–But the good news is that I’ve had new horoscopes for the past two days–hooray! Of course, today’s includes the line, “This is a powerful move that will make you feel powerful…”
August 29th, 2008
Narrative Dream
I am, in general, against talking about dreams (you always get that sentence when someone is about to talk about his or her dreams). Most dreams that I’ve heard narrated are very boring, and mine certainly are. They are actually often textbook anxiety dreams, about forgetting I registered for a Spanish class until I am forced to take the exam. And I’m not wearing a shirt. Blah blah blah.
About once a year, I have a cool dream, in a narrative format–a tv show, a movie, once a magazine article (the whole dream was text), or else just a series of events that *could* form a narrative, if I wrote them up properly. Often I *do* write these dreams into stories, though honestly, it never really works out. So I thought I’d spare myself the disappointment, and just sketch out the dream here. Feel free to quit reading now.
So I found myself in need of a place to live (though much less discomfitted by this than I would’ve been in real life) and took a room in the house of a middle-aged couple who had two teenaged daughters. The ethnicity of the couple kept shifting between white and Chinese, but the daughters were both adopted Chinese orphans. Them being teenagers would put their adoption somewhat before it was easy to get babies from China, I believe, but my dreams have never been long on historical accuracy.
The man of the house was the butcher at a No Frills, and the woman’s job was unclear, but she was somehow heavily involved in political activism. I seemed to be going through a tough time in my life, not only because I was homeless but for other reasons that weren’t really mentioned in the story (this dream is so obviously a short story). Anyway, I was out of the house a lot, but when I was home I mainly hung around with the guy, who was short and heavily muscled and *smoked* (what year did I dream?)
He really liked his job and enjoyed telling me about the ins and outs of butchering for mass sales (I don’t actually think that goes on at No Frills). The store was, oddly, owned by Mel Gibson, who was apparently an all right guy. The daughters were fascinated by him, and their father would bring home candy wrappers that Mel had discarded, which enthralled them, though I think they also might have been selling them (on eBay?) The wrappers were made out of silk, delicately embroidered with Chinese characters in blue thread.
For a while, something kept me very busy and I wasn’t interacting with the family much, and then I realized that the girls and the wife didn’t seem to be there at all. I asked the man, and he said the girls had gone to summer camp, and the wife was just busy. We were sitting around late at night in the living room, him sitting on the couch and smoking, me lounging on the floor. It was very comfortable, but somewhat forlorn. He confided to me that his wife was a lesbian, but it had been necessary for her to have a husband in order to adopt the two girls from China (that’s not correct, actually, is it?) and she had felt it important politically that she take them. The marriage was ok, more or less, she just had her focus mainly political activities. It was not clear to me whether this was a euphemism for affairs, and I wondered if it was to him.
The man related this to me more or less easily, considering the emotional import of what he was saying. I was sad for him, but he didn’t seem to register his marriage of convenience one way or another. He loved the daughters, and seemed to have a good deal of respect for his wife. We sat in silence for a while in the living room, and then I woke up.
I was wide awake in bed
RR
August 28th, 2008
Talking Salon (again, still)
Thirsty (in response to the Globe)
Resurrected / livin in a lighthouse
RR
August 27th, 2008
Sadness, but…
The IV Lounge Reading Series has ended. It was great while it lasted, and since it’s not ending due to some Cyril Sneerish corporate takeover but simply the need for extensive building renovations, it seems tacky to complain. I guess we can all just reread the IV anthology and remember the good times.
We never saw the sights
RR
Everybody blog!
At That Shakespeherian Rag, Nigel Beale refuses the Salon de Refuses, and at Thirsty, Dan Wells refuses back. Intersection is blogging again, but I just found out. My Tragic Right Hip has been blogging for a while, but I just discovered her existence and coolness.
My friend C. has no personal internet presence sadly, but does have a very cool iPhone. I have nothing new to say about anything, but I was happier about being photographed with an iPhone than this photograph would lead you to believe. On the positive side, I no longer hate my hair. On the negative side, my horoscope continues to advise patience. Hence the eye-roll?
Does he get lost / hey what are you reading?
RR
August 26th, 2008
There was a Bill Murray movie like this
My email homepage provides a horoscope, so while I’m not wildly into astrology, I’ve taken to checking it every day with mild curiosity. Even though these things are just vague enough to suit everybody, they are also filled with very vague good advice that it would do no one any harm to follow. Like this:
Gemini
You’ll be working with a lot more energy than the people around you will have today, so you need to be prepared to wait for them — a lot. This is not good news if you’re dependent on others for your own progress, but you won’t be able to speed anyone up — so don’t waste your time trying. Even though patience doesn’t always come easy for you, you’ll find that as the day goes on, you’ll get more and more comfortable cooling your heels while other people try to catch up.
Be patient–sure, why not? It’s usually something cheerful and zen like that, something that makes me feel better heading into the day. Unforutnately, the system at the website use seems to have broken down, and the above has been my horoscope for the past week now. I’m beginning to feel that this is affecting reality, thatI am in fact living the same day over and over again. I’m TIRED of being patient. I want to move ON. Is that too much to ask??
Um, there may have been other problems recently that the random zodiac machine at excite.com had nothing to do with. Either way, this is bad for morale.
Love love love
RR
August 25th, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire
Writers are obsessive creatures, many of them (us?) worse than footballers with their lucky rabbits and left-shoe-firsts. I’ve seen many acknowlegements pages that thank a particular brand of pen, a restaurant owner, someone who leant the author a lucky sweater–anything in the writing environment that seems like it might have leant a charm to the process. Nothing is so common among these gratitudes to atmospheres as those to bands and albums listened to obsessively in the background while typing. The repeat button is a creative security blanket, and unlike a hunk of fur or crossed fingers, music is at least good company.
I say that all by way of making myself feel better about the fact that it’s a strange day in 2008 if I don’t listen to Intervention by The Arcade Fire six or seven times. I’m a sucker for the strings and the soar, the intensity of Win Butler’s histrionic vocals, the organ music… That is perhaps my perfect song.
I know, I know, I like a lot of schlock (full disclosure: the symmetrical purchase to Neon Bible in the twofer record-store deal was Metro Station by Metro Station). But I think I can recognize the good stuff when I hear it, and Arcade Fire seems to me to be making sonically complex, lyrically fascinating songs.
Some people find this band a little intense, and I believe Sasha Frere Jones thinks they’re one of the whitest bands ever (not touching that one)–so, not for everyone? And if you don’t like their music, I imagine you’re *really* dislike it: Arcade Fire are notable as much earnestness of message as they are for pyrotechnics of medium; the vocalists tell stories and embody characters within them, and those characters believe their stories. If you dig that sort of thing, this is a nice change from pop music (ie., Metro Station), who only ever embrace sincere emotion for romantic (“Kelsey, I’d swim the ocean for you / the ocean for you / the ocean for you / Oh, Kelsey”) or erotic (“I know you’re dying / to take off your clothes”) declarations.
Arcade Fire has a much much wider range of material. Their last album, Funeral seemed to me to about the dreamspace of the suburbs, the fantasies and nightmares of snowdays and boiling kettles, lonely children and lonely marriages. It was fascinating to see them build a world with these songs–Funeral is not a concept album, it’s not a linked narrative, but it is a creation larger than the individual songs. After you listen to the whole of it, you feel of that place, and partways in it.
*Neon Bible* really does take on the bible and relgion, particularly revivalist (is that a word? I’m trying to write this review with as little recourse as possible to outside opinions) Christianity, throughout the ages. One of the best pieces on the album is (Antichrist Television Blues) (no, I don’t know why the title is in parentheses). It’s the fairly straightforward story of a guy who hates working downtown parking cars and wants to serve God, so he grooms his young daughter as a singer of religious songs. She is successful, and he gets what he wants (whatever that is.) You feel like this is character who told himself lies and believed them, who really never got the exploitation in one he did, until the last line of the song, where he snaps, “So tell me how am I the Antichrist?” Like the endings of all my favourite short stories, this song ends with insight into both what came before and what might come next, but not nearly enough to feel you’ve got it fully nailed down.
Some of the less rocking songs are a bit dirgelike, and I actually dislike the first single, Black Mirror (I *think* it’s the first single). They do better on the soaring line than the sinking one, I can’t really repeat that enough. But they do do dreamy pretty well in most cases, though you have to listen a number of times to really get it (the title song) or perhaps never will (“Windowsill”). The music is still hyponontic, even when the song doesn’t make *total* sense.
Even when they don’t make sense, the lyrics are still strangely effective at being affective (“We can reach the sea / they won’t follow me”–what sea? who are they? why would they follow you? Well, I guess I’m into it now). For me, despite the strings and the soar, it is the lyrics that puts *Neon Bible* above the merely very cool. But I do think it’s that, too (organ music? hooray!)
I’m free today
RR
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