9:48 PM: On a Bus Bound for Toronto

I am living up to my "postmodern vagabond" nature: flitting between Toronto and London (Ontario), a few days in each place, living out of suitcases and backpacks. Much to my delight, each time I travel I feel compelled to bring fewer items with me.




Years ago, I could not "travel light." I carried thick binders of creative notes: sketches for paintings... new stanzas of poetry... pages of in-progress theatre scripts... collages and mixed-media journal entries... and sentimental relics from people I'd met during my journeys.




And now: an electronic revolution!

A modest library of music CDs (and a series of French-language lessons) fits onto a player the size of a deck of cards. My photographs (and some raw video footage for a short film I'm brainstorming) fit on a tiny memory card in my camera; most of my other creative projects are on a laptop computer. With the exception of a bulging folder of random text (scrawled on coffee-splotched napkins and the thin white borders of newspapers), most of my creative life is now digital. As a result, the weight of my creativity is a mind-bending eight pounds...

Pigeon-feeding, Popular Culture, and Echoes of the Freemasons

I intended to take a ballet class tonight -- but as I was stuffing my workout clothes into my backpack, a friend called to invite me to dinner. With my calves already sore, and already feeling a bit hungry and rushed, I pulled the workout clothes out of my bag and hopped on the subway to meet him for Thai food.

Emerging at Yonge and Bloor, I found a strange woman with a shopping cart piled with buckets of birdseed. As she sprinkled seeds on the sidewalk, she cooed at the pigeons and began speaking to them -- affectionately, it seemed -- in a language I couldn't understand.




Then -- with bellies full of mango chicken and green curry, I walked with my friend to a building on Yonge just North of Bloor: the headquarters of MTV Canada.




It's quite an exceptional space -- a former Masonic Temple that has been converted to various small TV studios. My friend (who runs lights for a few of the MTV shows) gave me a tour, and I snapped a few photos -- with a strange degree of trepidation.





Despite its conversion to a pop culture mecca, the building retains many original details -- which lend the space an incongruous sobriety. I felt like an interloper...

To see abandoned fragments of the masons' rituals, out of their formal context, felt surreal -- and perhaps even disrespectful. What right do I have to photograph the relics of the freemasons -- and to document something I do not understand?



So I've decided to do a bit of reading about the masons... and to go back again in the next few weeks.

I hope that a deeper awareness of their rituals may let me capture something I felt I couldn't really see tonight.

Iran, Afghanistan, and Remembered History

I wasn't looking for conversation; I just stepped into the Persian carpet store to pet the cat that was sleeping on a stack of wool rugs.



But as I hoisted myself up onto the top of the rug stack, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between the store's owner, Ali, and an articulate woman with a British accent. They were talking about Iran -- and Iraq -- and Afghanistan.



I quickly shifted from a shy eavesdropper to an active participant. I learned that Ali had been born in Iran and spent most of his younger years in Kuwait; the woman (named Joy), had lived in at least three countries before immigrating to Canada. Their sense of history was impeccable, and they guided me through some recent history of the Middle East: the 1979 Iranian Revolution, various invasions of Afghanistan, and some information about oil reserves in Iraq. Joy recommended two books by Jason Elliot: An Unexpected Light and Mirrors of the Unseen -- Journeys in Iran.



In the most chilling part of the conversation, Ali described being pulled off the streets of an Iranian city for interrogation. Over the course of two hours, he was interrogated by 12 officers -- all under the (specious?) premise that he resembled a man who had passed a counterfeit travelers cheque...



As I left Ali's store and continued wandering through the market, I felt a wave of gratitude for my safety. Few can claim that the United States lives up to the democratic ideals of its founding (the US-led School of the Americas, also euphemistically known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has been a training centre for some of the most brutal Latin American dictators of the past forty years -- and who can hear of the Patriot Act without supressing a wary twitch?), but when I compare my safety in the US to this man's insecurity in Iran, I can't help but feel gratitude for my home.



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All of the photographs in this post are from Kensington Carpets (193 Baldwin Street) in Toronto.

"His Eye is on the Sparrow"

We intersect at Bloor and Yonge: an accident on the corner. We watch medics pull bodies from broken glass. I try not to stare.

Fingers light on my wrist, you guide me down a quiet street. The barista greets you by name; you carry our lattes out the back, smiling over your shoulder from the fire escape.

I lean against the café wall beside the vent from the roaster (gentle smoke, deeply aromatic, arousing as any scent) and watch you pull a moleskin journal from your bag.

I am squinting in the sun as you recite Catullus – a translation you wrote this morning. Two millennia incarnate in your voice: gentle as the sparrow you tease from my breast, pecking wistful hands…

In your measured cadence, your sonorous voice, I hear us make love: rhythm of tides… ductility of gold… spinning of stars over hemispheres...

(I hear you moan, one octave below: content in my taste and your sweat.)

You’re closing the notebook, your hand touches mine, and we fly.

Sunjye on Bloor and Brunswick: A Healing Ritual and a Delicate Balance

Walking toward the subway last night, after finishing a dress rehearsal with Perpetual Motion Theatre Company, I wandered around Bloor Street: tired but happy, a particularly delicious beef shawarma in hand.

When I reached the corner of Bloor and Brunswick, I stopped, curious; all along the sidewalk, someone had stacked bits of concrete, transforming utilitarianism into art:




Soon, Sunjye appeared. He was just starting to dismantle the sculptures for the night, loading chunks of concrete into a metal shopping cart:




I asked him to stop for a few moments while I took photographs. He was kind enough to oblige...




He said he'd be in the Bloor/Brunswick area frequently for the next two weeks (since the Fringe festival headquarters is nearby). If you see him, please stop and admire his artwork. (And then, if you're able, please toss a bit of change his way...)

Through a Small Glass (Brightly)

David Duclos: are you reading this?

~ * ~

No?

Good...

~ * ~

Yes?

Then please stop now -- and please return after July 13th. :)

~ * ~

I am working on a stained glass piece: a gift for David and Manjit -- to celebrate their wedding. I've been thinking about it for a couple weeks, and yesterday I sketched out a preliminary design.





This morning and afternoon, I started to add detail to the sketch (and remove some detail from the dress):




Then I added colour:




(There's much more to do, of course -- but I thought I'd share the progress here. I'll post an update with new photographs in a day or two.)

A Flowering Summer Squash, Accompanied by Georgia O'Keefe

"Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time -- and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.

"If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see -- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it -- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

"Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower -- and I don't."

Georgia O'Keefe

Three Days of Rain

When I woke this morning, the sun had just begun to burn the fog away. I dashed outside with my camera and captured this:




And this:




Three days of rain -- and the sunflowers have grown to my thighs. The desiccated earth is moist again. The leaves are vivid green... The lake is high.

A Martha Graham Moment

This morning, still feeling a bit fatigued from last night, I showered slowly: feeling the heat of the water dissolving points of tension in my neck. Then, after toweling dry, I stood before my closet, looking for the path of least resistance.

I found a pair of (khaki) linen pants and slipped them on. Then I pulled a stretchy green blouse over my head and paused as I twisted to the side to stretch my back.

It was there -- spine twisted left, eyes cast down, elbows stretching the fabric in unnatural angles -- that I caught a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror. There was something surreal about that moment -- a resonance that took me a moment to identify: in some small (and accidental) way, I resembled Martha Graham.




_________________________

(Photo credits: Top image is from Graham's "Letter to the World," photographed by Barbara Morgan; bottom image is from "Lamentation," photographed by Herta Moselsio and displayed on the Library of Congress website.)

This is What Inspiration Looks Like

Earlier this afternoon, intending to continue editing Fragments, I pushed the novella away (for what I imagined would be just a few minutes) so I could organize a nearby stack of poetry into the table of contents for another book.

I had been contemplating this second book for several weeks, because although I have occasionally written fiction, my primary literary conduit is poetry -- and has been for most of my life. Each time I've mentioned Fragments to someone who has known me for years, they show interest -- and invariably, they also ask when I'll publish another collection of poems. (I self-published my first chapbook, Candied Nothings, in 1999.)

So -- this afternoon -- intending only to select my favourite poems, I soon found myself laying them out in a possible order -- and simultaneously matching them with photographs I've taken over the past decade. Working on the graphic design, each facing spread became a post-it note scribbled with poem titles and quick sketches -- all arranged (and rearranged) on a window beside my desk.

Then: thinking about the trajectory of the poetry, as well as my intent to somehow use this work a symbolic companion to the novella, I brainstormed titles... and found that three titles obliquely reference rituals of the winter solstice. (Since I am still contemplating, I won't list the options here -- though I may announce a working title sometime in the next few weeks.)

Now, after a couple of delightfully-productive hours, I have the foundation for another book. It's time to turn off my laptop -- change into a flowing skirt -- and celebrate!

Status Update on my Fragments Novella -- And a Dash of Cinematic Aspiration

Tonight, I began reading Fragments from the beginning, continuing through the halfway point.

(I was startled to discover how objective I could be. I didn't feel like the novella's writer; I felt like its editor.)

At times, I was brutal with my cuts and revisions -- and deservedly so. But the process was also quite heartening; I have a couple stylistic issues to resolve -- and I'm aware that many vignettes must still be written to create a satisfying narrative -- but overall, I like the form and content.

Something I have not mentioned before (but that seems worth whispering now) is that while most of the sections are written in first-person narrative form, some feel better suited to a cinematic rendering. So -- a few of the vignettes are now emerging first as film scenes (with suggestions for camera angles and cuts) and are then being "translated" to fit the novella's structure.

I have never worked this way before, though my writing has always been imagistic. It seems to mark a distinct shift in my creative and professional focus: perhaps an extension of my rising interest in visual art that began a few years ago when I worked on performance installations at DNA... and then shifted away from theatre, into dance.

I don't know what will come of all this.

I've never written a film script before, and it sometimes feels a bit daunting to learn yet another lexicon. But I had never written a novella, either, before I began Fragments a few months ago... and Fragments seems to be progressing realatively smoothly -- so why not?

I Wrote "I Love You" in the Sand (as Titania Watched and Faeries Frolicked)

I wrote "I love you" in the sand.

You built our castle.



This is no crumbling edifice -- no dreamt midsummer night -- no tempest in a cup of herbal tea.

This is simplicity -- divinity -- instinct manifest.

This is the innocence of swing-sets by the slow rise of a waxing moon.



This night is a white kitten on the sidewalk by the park...

tofu and bean sprouts on the pavilion steps...

and an orange tiger lilly in a water-bottle vase.

Thoughts on Artistic Inspiration -- and Hunger -- and Advocacy

I am writing a series of articles about the sources of my inspiration: the people and companies that have shaped my artistic vision.

I have a rather eclectic aesthetic... so writing about inspirations is an inherently interdisciplinary task. I intend to touch upon contemporary dance, interdisciplinary text/image collaborations, performance art, writing, and film. Geographically, I intended to focus on two of the cities where I recently lived and worked: Toronto and New York. (Occasionally, I will venture outside of these geographic boundaries -- especially when writing about film, which is a migratory art.) For the most part, I'll omit high-profile influences who have well-established funding structures; I'm more interested in writing about early- and mid-career artists: people whose work I have seen live (not just in photographs or archival videos), and many of whom I have been fortunate to work with in some capacity.

~ * ~

I feel it's important for me to articulate what inspires me -- and then distill that inspiration -- to see if I can apply my passion for the arts to another field -- perhaps one that will place me above the poverty line (for the first time in my adult life). I am thinking seriously about graduate school in 2008, and there are several fields that interest me; I think writing may clarify my choice.

But I also have a pragmatic motive, and I want to make it quite overt. I want to celebrate gifted artists who -- despite pathetic underfunding -- manage to create inspiring work. While I lack the financial resources to be a "patron," my voice is unfettered; I hope (perhaps naively?) that my advocacy might increase awareness of their work. And even if the impact is negligible, it is still an impact. And if someone reads about a choreographer in my blog and then supports her/him by attending a performance (or slipping a small donation into an envelope for any of the artists who so desperately need the support) then my words will help a hungry dancer afford to eat.

~ * ~

I'll begin with a post about Susanna Hood, a very talented Toronto dancer/choreographer.

(Posts about other artists will gradually follow, over several weeks.)