Other Voices, Other Rooms

In the past couple of weeks I started doing some internet research on the artwork of northwest native Canadian culture. I don't really remember what started it. Oh, I guess it was a section in The Gift about the potlatch ceremony in Haida tradition and the copper engravings they would make and trade as gifts. (The book, by the way, is a fascinating piece of prescriptive sociology wherein the author compares systems of gift exchange with those of commercial exchange and then goes on to show how useful it would be, for both artists and their audiences, to think of artworks as gifts rather than commodities. Check it out if you have any interest in art or economics or anthropology.) The engravings reminded me about those interesting repeated shapes in totem poles and other artifacts of the Pacific coast, how they fit together like psychedelic poster artwork of the 1960s, and how they often depict mystical animals inside of or attached to other animals.

So that got me all excited for awhile, and then while I was looking at some mind-altering Haida comics online (who knew such a thing existed? The Japanese, apparently.), I remembered a really great Dover colouring book I had as a kid, of North American Indian art. And then I recalled also having a calendar of black and white Inuit art prints. I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and the pieces I could picture from it struck me as weird and magical.

So, soon I was at the library, borrowing a book called Dorset 75, a 1975 annual collection of graphics from Cape Dorset in what is now Nunavut, and it was just the stuff I was looking for. I didn't know it before, but the Inuit began printmaking only in the late '50s after being shown how by a guy named James Houston who was trained in the Japanese style. That partially explains the look of a lot of this stuff, but the Inuit also have this inimitably naïve style that is elegant, childlike, and otherworldly all at once. I soon fell in love with the work of Pudlo Pudlat and Peter Pitseolak. I also have to show you this piece, because it just happens to be titled "Our Igloo"!


And then I discovered that the National Gallery of Canada's website has tons of fantastic prints you can look at online, with plenty from the golden age of the 60s and 70s. I've made a little video here of my favourite stuff from the two sources. There are a couple of black and white pieces whose look I'm hoping to somehow adapt for my alleged comic-in-progress. Also see if you can pick out "Thoughts of the Walrus" by Pudlo Pudlat, "The People Within" by Jessie Oonark, "The Woman Who Lives in the Sun" by Kenojuak Ashevak, and "Joyfully I See Ten Caribou" by Pootoogook.



Last weekend Alison and I travelled to Fredericton to attend, with my family, a memorial for my aunt Chooch. I told you about her in November. We were kindly driven there and back by my dad's cousin and her family. The memorial was held in the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, a large school that has been converted into studio and gallery spaces, largely thanks to Chooch's long and relentless pushing for it. I'm not sure how many people were there, but it must have been over 500. It was quite inspiring to see the great effect she had had on the entire arts community there. Many many people had thanks to give and stories to tell, including the local MP and New Brunswick's lieutenant governor. My dad also did a great job with the closing words. Ali and I returned home determined to get our asses in gear and consciously connect with our own community, rather than just enjoying our lovable but insular igloo.

The Shape of Your Absence

Bring me the bitter and frightened tears
of those who loved you best;
replace my own, too subtle in their flavour
ever to toast you fittingly,
full as they are of opportunity
lost and memories of your dog.

Even the friends and artisans
whose works and lives you still inspire
with an honesty and love that already survive you
(and, yes, the voice I suddenly remember)
can't parallel their view with them
who now must look ahead
into a brutal world more sad and alien
than anyone's mother should contemplate
or any husband dare consider.

Let me just observe them in a spoon
if I might not taste their salt,
that sympathy may train my palate's grief
and pain expose my heart —
I will not shrink from the gift
of their pure sorrow.

- Andrew

The Life of a Consumer

Listen, I'm sorry to keep writing about pop cultural stuff, rather than more important things like what's actually going on in my life. I can see that it's not winning me any admirers. But I have a bit of a dilemma in that I'd like everyone to be kept regularly abreast of the fact that I continue to exist, while at the same time there is really nothing going on here worth telling about. Seriously. Alison and I are watching a lot of movies, listening to a lot of records, and reading a lot of books. Besides working at our jobs, that is, where you'll have to take my word that even more nothing is going on. It's winter; what do you want?

Last weekend, for instance, I spent a perfect Sunday with Ali which consisted of reading in bed with coffee for a couple of hours, getting up to do some yoga, having breakfast made for us by Krista upstairs and eating it with her while watching some weird and/or hilarious short films collected on the second issue of Wholphin ("Sour Death Balls" = genius), going out for a walk in the sun which led to a secondhand record store downtown where we purchased an armload of stuff including two Eno records I was missing and Closer by Joy Division, coming home to watch a documentary with Meg about a profoundly deaf female percussionist who "hears" with her whole body (and by whom Alison's parents saw an apparently astounding performance in Toronto), eating some of Ali's famous potato and carrot gumbo, and finally heading out for a band practice wherein we completely nailed two of the songs we've been working on. Boring to tell, maybe, but the actual living makes up for it tenfold.

So now I'll tell you that I'm in the middle of:

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman,
• The Gift by Lewis Hyde,
• Making Comics by Scott McCloud,
• the latest (50th!) issue of The Believer,
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (only a regular-sized novel's worth left to go!),
• Time and Again by Jack Finney,
• Ruling Your World by Sakyong Mipham, Rinpoche, and
• Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills,

and loving it all. I'll leave it to your imagination what that's like.

OK, OK, and I'm getting a haircut tonight. There.

- Andrew

Sorry, Jack & Meg.

In response to the overwhelming number of demands to know how The White Stripes' Icky Thump could possibly have been left off my list of 2007's best albums, let me just say that it is, in fact, a pretty good record. Right up there with their best work, in fact. Unfortunately, they chose to make the second track a complete and obvious ripoff of my own jingle for a car dealership, and are therefore automatically disqualified from the race. Better luck next time, Stripes!

- Andrew

Quick Inventory of Brain Contents

So far this year I'm tired and don't really feel like doing anything. Does anyone else feel this way? I'm hoping it's not from the furnace fumes coming out of the incongruous box that rises from the floor in our living room.

Lowlands are gearing up to play a show soon. We've been putting this thing together for over a year now. Stay tuned for details. I'm still not sold on the name, but am glad that the ten or eleven songs we've been working on are pretty much ready.

I didn't mention before that we saw Juno over the holidays. It was pretty good, but not great. The director relied a little too heavily on his indie rock soundtrack and hip pop-culture touchstones. And there wasn't enough of the hilarious Michael Cera. But Ellen Page, who's from Halifax, was really great. Very believable as an intelligent but self-absorbed and not entirely likeable teenager. We saw her dancing at the New Year's Eve show, by the way. She is tiny.

Because it was due back at the library, I quickly finished a book of Krishnamurti writings I'd been reading last week. I find him incredibly inspirational, but I guess not very uplifting. He was appointed head of some religious organization in India as a young child, supposedly the reincarnation of some great teacher or other, and went through all sorts of crazy spiritual training and saw weird visions and generally became highly enlightened, but then later renounced his position, as he came to realize that all organized religion is a waste of time, based as it is on tradition, which is the past, and therefore incapable of seeing the present in all its newness, which is what spirituality should be all about. Most of his teachings are about what NOT to think or do, i.e. follow any method or technique for self-awareness; believe in time; believe in yourself as an independent being; have any beliefs at all, really. Of course he has no advice for how to achieve this non-achievement, other than a Nikean "just do it," but still I think he has a lot of important things to tell the world about living in modern human society as a socially and emotionally adult being. His "teachings" mesh pretty well with both Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts.

Now I've got the latest issue of McSweeney's (as mentioned in Juno) out of the library. It's a very happy surprise to me to find that they carry it, as I've missed every issue since the comics one, however long ago that was (a couple of years, I think), and they're pretty expensive. But they're also always full of great contemporary fiction, so I'm going to have a fun time catching up. Plus, we rented an issue of Wholphin, the filmic arm of the ever-growing McSweeney's literary hodgepodge, and it's been just as enjoyable as their other stuff.

- Andrew

So Long, Oh Seven.

Hope everybody had a New Year's Eve as fun- and friend-filled as ours was. I played a show with Al Tuck at the Bus Stop Theatre on Gottingen, opening for the Zumbini Circus. Our part of the show was frankly awful, what with nightmarish sound problems, no set list, and some very non-standard tunings, but luckily they cut us short after about five songs so that the great Zumbinis could make their spectacular appearance. They're a fairly large band who play Brazilian and afrobeat music, and they started their set by marching out through the audience thumping and shaking various percussion instruments. By the time they got onto the stage and really got down to it, the whole crowd was on their feet dancing. And they kept it up until the show was over at around 2:00 or so. Actually, I think there was even another small set after that, but Alison and I went home at around 2:30, getting to sleep by probably about four.







I'd like to offer some kind of 2007 retrospective roundup of personal themes and experiences, but all I seem to have come up with is my top ten music albums of the year. Very nerdy, I know. But anyway, you already know what happened to me all year, so why not find out what was playing in my head while it was going on? Here's my favourites, in no particular order.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
This band can do no wrong.

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Nor this one. For some reason, I put off buying this album over the internet, paying whatever I felt like paying, and when I finally got around to it a couple of weeks ago it was no longer available. I had to procure it by other, less ethical means, which was kind of ridiculous since I could have gotten it for free to begin with. Once I had it, I loaded it on the old iPod and Alison and I walked to our friends Charles and Kelly's house in the deep north end while listening to it in its entirety. A fantastic soundtrack to melting icicles in the late afternoon sunlight.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Impossibly, even better than Funeral. More coherent, I guess.

Caribou - Andorra
He sings on pretty much every track, and it's weirdly pretty. Sometimes he sounds a lot like that guy in the Silver Apples.

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
Quirky and frantic and constantly changing, but somehow really catchy. Like it makes you mad that there's no way you'll ever be able to sing along to a whole song, no matter how hard you try. It must be terribly difficult to make a record that gets more enjoyable every time you listen to it, even after twenty or so times. And my friend Ron tells me they record all their albums using the free version of ProTools that you can download but you have to switch your computer over to an older version of the operating system and there are no plugins available and only eight possible tracks. Just like me! Choo choo choo choo, beep beep!

Interpol - Our Love to Admire
OK, even though these are not supposed to be ordered, this one's my number one favourite from the year. Critics didn't like it as much as their last one, but I think it's better because they've gone back to the dark Joy Division-derived sound that made the first album so great. I wish I could write basslines like Carlos Dengler.

Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
Call me an impurist, but I like some orchestration with my wimpy folk.

Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971
I don't know whether this should actually count as a 2007 album, but that's when it came out and I'll be damned if it's not making it onto this list. It's just too good. Neil explains to the audience what "Old Man" is about, because they've never heard that song before! A fantastic solo acoustic show from the top of his game.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
Just really, really fun. No one makes soul music like this anymore. Well, maybe Amy Winehouse, but Sharon's the real deal.

Blonde Redhead - 23
I missed seeing Blonde Redhead when I was on tour in Europe with Buck 65, because I'd slept through the alarm that morning and been rushed onto the bus in a groggy and foul mood, and we'd seen a ridiculous number of rock shows over the past few days and I just wanted some time alone. Everyone thought I was crazy going off into the woods surrounding the festival location somewhere in France while they all checked out these incredible Italian twins with a Japanese woman for a singer, and maybe I was in retrospect. But I could hear the music drifting toward me while I sat quietly under a tree, and I don't know if seeing them onstage could possibly have made me feel any better than that did. They've held a special place in my eardrums ever since.

Back to work tomorrow, and a regular schedule. I think I kind of need it. I'll be doing some recording with Skratch Bastid in a couple of days, and then my big resolution is to get Lowlands playing some shows. We've been working on this for a year now — time to spit or get off the cuspidor. Also, I'm going to more regularly do the things that are supposed to be done regularly, such as exercise and blogging, try to have fun doing the things I don't like doing, and eliminate distractions as much as possible. Ali says she's going to get her driver's license before the summer so we can go on a road trip. How about all a' y'all?

- Andrew