elsewhere - Lisa Pasold

Millard's Rat

2011-12-31T11:32:00.003+01:00

a wonderful coincidence to end the year: I had no idea when I named my lead character Millard that there is an actual rodent named for her. The Millard's Rat, Dacnomys millardi, lives in Asia and is part of the rodent family Muridae. Like most rats, it is not currently endangered, but it is fairly rare to see one. All in all, highly appropriate for my Millard in Rats of Las Vegas.

Happy New Year...from all us rats!

(this rat is a detail from an art piece by Anthony Lister)

Marching bands

2011-12-09T20:49:00.005+01:00

horns and drums coming down the street - a specifically New Orleans feeling

for a reminder of what these schools have gone through, to march again, read this

(the Christmas parade down Canal street last weekend)

Confederacy of Dunces

2011-12-08T21:47:00.002+01:00

i must reread the classic New Orleans novel by John Kennedy O'Toole. i even know where my copy is...in France, beside a yellow sofa. meanwhile, i will have to toast O'Toole and Ignatius by eating a hotdog at one of the ubiquitous Lucky stands.

Message to the Muse

2011-12-07T17:19:00.001+01:00

biking along Prytania thinking of a poem i heard last week at the Gold Mine's 17 Poets!

...nine muses,
all in all,
and four alone
are just for poetry.

The gods were telling us
it would be hard.
Or were they telling us
it would be hopeless?

from Daniel Reinhold's MESSAGE TO THE MUSE

Who to trust in New Orleans

2011-12-06T21:27:00.004+01:00

the tour guides are often looking in the wrong direction, reciting facts that tend more to creativity than history. i have more confidence in the mules, who seem to know what they're doing.

evening, New Orleans

2011-12-05T20:39:00.000+01:00

rain and horseshoes on the wet pavement, trains and long long boat horns, shouts for the Saints game and sirens, always sirens, a passing car with bounce blaring, and a calliope disappearing against the wind.

Algiers bonfire - FLOODWALL

2011-12-04T13:54:00.001+01:00

as the fire took hold last night of the cathartic bonfire installation by Jana Napoli - a structure of drawers retrieved from Katrina-decimated homes

New Orleans vs the cockroach

2011-12-03T18:50:00.005+01:00

winter or summer, the occasional bastard-bug pauses to adjust its top-hat and continue along a French Quarter sidewalk.

postcard by lee kyle

Cafe du Monde

2011-12-02T02:04:00.004+01:00

after the beignets have disappeared - the tell-tale icing sugar trails out of the Cafe du Monde and into the night

Cafe du Monde, after the beignets

Frenchmen Street

2011-12-01T01:52:00.002+01:00

washboard percussion played with thimbles on all fingers - heading out into the cold night i couldn't resist taking a last photo

Wednesday night at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans

November New Orleans

2011-11-19T00:11:00.001+01:00

Only hours after I moved into this apartment on the edge of Tremé, a 'Second Line' marching band went past my door, taking flowers to the cemetery for All Saints' Day.

I feel a bit like Colette in her Palais Royal apartment--she called the place "the tunnel" because of its shotgun layout. I spread books and various cooking ingredients around the kitchen & work there, because the kitchen door gives onto a sunny courtyard.

The tattoo parlor down the street has its air conditioner running. Four entirely black feral kittens peer out from under the fence, tropical flowers are blooming, and the palm trees rattle in the wind.

I woke up to the roving fruit vendor who drives past every morning around 9am. Her megaphone makes her sound like a muezzin, except her call to prayer is "I have pine-apples, I have cante-lope, I have sat-sumas..."

Last week, the mayor finally reopened Louis Armstrong Park, with the Tremé Brass Band playing, Congo drumming, dancing, sacred smudging and Mardi Gras Indians in blindingly-bright embroidery & feathers.

Now, to cycle across town, avoiding the worst of the earthquake-fissures that linger six years after Katrina. Collecting details, trying to understand a little bit about this city so thoroughly inhabited and worn by its past but also determined to be present. I'm more awake here than in so many other cities where life is definitely easier (what a misnomer, 'the Big Easy') but less alive.

LAS VEGAS PATKANYAI

2011-10-26T03:35:00.006+02:00

RATS OF LAS VEGAS now exists in Hungarian, in real & virtual/e-book form. i wish i could read Hungarian, but maybe that's the mysterious beauty of the translator's art...the author will never know exactly what the book means in the new language. honestly, sometimes i think the author is the last person to understand what the book means, even in the original language.

so the Hungarian edition is now out in the world, with a cover that makes me feel like a Raymond Chandler-era pulp fiction writer...a great honour, as Chandler is one of my literary heroes.

at first, the Hungarian publishers considered a cover that seems closer to the Canadian concept for the book. the back image on this proposal delights me--the car, the flamingo neck--

but in the end, the Hungarian editors went with a more visceral look. and i admit, if i ever get a tattoo, it will probably be the upside-down Ace of Spades at the bottom of the current cover.

dare your next mistake

2011-09-21T10:32:00.005+02:00

i saw this at Mark Folse's blog Toulouse Street. some days, it's nice to know Ira's on your side... i also think this 'phase' happens every time I start a new project & i always need to fight my way through it.

a moment in Calgary

2011-08-11T19:59:00.005+02:00

drove into Calgary for an excellent meeting with my editor extraordinaire, Rose Scollard, at Frontenac House, and wrapped up the day over BBQ, discussing the new Poet Laureate position that the City of Calgary has created.

how interesting: while Toronto's mayor is attacking libraries & literary culture, good ole' redneck Cowtown is funding a new literary position with pride.

The Mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi, says "I think that these things actually really do matter...It helps us think of better ways to tell our story. And telling our story has value in and of itself." A very articulate retort to the Fords' recent blathering.

am looking forward to hearing who becomes Calgary's official poet--the city has a surfeit of excellent contenders.

2011-08-02T23:40:00.004+02:00

"Toward the end of the book, Otto and Sophie, the central couple, go to stay in their holiday home. Sophie opens the door to the house, and is immediately reminded of a friend, an artist who used to visit them there; she thinks about him for a page or so. The reason she's thinking about him is that she's staring at something he loved, a vinegar bottle shaped like a bunch of grapes. The reason she's staring a the bottle is because it's in pieces. And the reason it's in pieces is because someone has broken in and trashed the place, a fact we only discover when Sophie has snapped out of her reverie. At this point, I realized with some regret that not only could I never write a literary novel, but I couldn't even be a character in a literary novel. I can only imagine myself, or any character I created, saying"Shit! Some bastard has trashed the house!" No rumination about artist friends--just a lot of cursing..." -Nick Hornby, in his collection of reviews & essays, THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE.

Initially, I'm distracted less by the house-break-in & more by the idea that any artist would love a bottle shaped like bunch of grapes. But probably I'm a snob about grape-shaped bottles.

I'm reading this book in my friend Mari-Lou's fantastic garden, over various meals while I'm in Saskatoon. I'm going back to doing book reviews, and Nick Horby's musings about books are just right--cool and slightly fizzy, like really nice not-too-strong ginger beer on a summer afternoon. So I'm hoping he gets me into the right headspace to write intelligent book reviews.

the medium, the message, the McLuhan

2011-07-21T17:39:00.007+02:00

100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. the man who essentially invented the field of Communications grew up in Winnipeg. today i went by & photographed his very nice childhood home with my cellphone--seems a most appropriate anniversary nod to the man who said:

"When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body." - Marshall McLuhan

Which makes us all the more disembodied today.

To tell you the truth... (the writer's equivalent of stage fright)

2011-07-16T03:36:00.004+02:00

"To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish [Utopia] at all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable, and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts, or at least feel no gratitude for them."

wrote Sir Thomas More in 1515 (translated by Paul Turner & quoted by Fay Weldon in her novel, Letters to Alice.)

Richler gazebo

2011-07-07T18:50:00.003+02:00

SO impressed with Florence Richler's comments about the gazebo in Parc Mont Royal which is to be spruced up & dedicated to her late husband, Montreal's best-beloved literary curmudgeon, Mordecai Richler.

"Were the graffiti to be left, I think somehow that would have delighted Mordecai because...it would be critical and that was his nature." - Florence Richler

true, his critical nature didn't make this founder of the "Impure Wool Society" particularly popular with Quebec's powers-that-be. and some other powers-that-be feel the gazebo is simply too small a gesture for such an important writer. but i like the idea.

as soon as i'm back in Montreal, i'm taking myself over there with a small appropriate bottle & a copy of Solomon Gursky Was Here (my fave of his novels). the gazebo makes such a toast feasible...if they named a street after Richler, one would get run over.

Strangers in Paris

2011-06-25T22:43:00.007+02:00

am so pleased to be part of a new Paris anthology, edited by Megan Fernandes & the illustrious, frequently top-hatted David Barnes.

Strangers in Paris is a museum of experience and objects that is anything but iconic; the collection establishes a new hunt for language worthy of a changing city. It is possible to find Paris in these pages, but it is just as possible to find everything else.

Launches have been happening in Canada & Paris & New York, and i've somehow managed to be in the wrong city at the wrong time to miss each & every one of them so far...but hey, it's amazing technology, this book thing, possible to experience even if one misses the launch.

in the official blurb about the anthology, Tightrope says: The stunning variety of writing in this volume addresses the city of Paris in all its complexity, while challenging the mythology of expatriate Parisian literature. The anthology contains entries as diverse and disparate as an excerpt from John Berger’s novel, Here is Where We Meet; Suzanne Allen’s ekphrastic poetry, a tongue-in-cheek take on the nineteenth-century novel by Helen Cusack O’Keeffe; Canadian writer Lisa Pasold’s story of a forced extended stay in Paris; and an interview with the celebrated American poet Alice Notley.

i'm so pleased to be part of the book...and i'm particularly sorry i missed the KGB event, as it was one of my favourite literary booze locations when i lived in New York back in the dark ages (ie. the Giuliani years). i wonder if KGB (above) still has the series of Stalin's official photographs--where Stalin's colleagues were mysteriously air-brushed out over the years, very creepily.

order info for the book here...or find it at Shakespeare & Co in Paris.

Montreal street corner

2011-06-20T05:11:00.007+02:00

standing at the corner of Saint-Laurent & Laurier, i notice this plaque by Gilbert Boyer. i've only walked past this corner a thousand or so times since this was installed in 1988, to notice it for the first time on this appropriately hot lazy Montreal day. perhaps i've just never before waited for the light to change...

this corner is part of a larger project--the whole layout of the art piece is here, but i'm going to keep Boyer's words in reserve, to stumble across serendipitously when the weather's just right.

eating & reading Savannah

2011-06-05T19:13:00.008+02:00

The sidewalk in Savannah, Georgia, shines with mother-of-pearl from the old oyster shells buried in the concrete. Forget streets paved with gold...i'll take oyster shells any day. Mostly to eat (because there is no better town for food in the whole USofA). But the streets are also wonderful for book-browsing, as i discovered when i stumbled upon the marvellous indie bookshop E. Shaver Booksellers, which nestles beneath the Spanish moss of a live oak.

I expected a shop dedicated to tourist books & innumerable editions of Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil (which kicked off the historical district's relentless walking tours). But Esther Shaver's bookshop is much much more, a real resource for readers and writers. See what i mean by checking out their current recommended reading list--the kind of bookshop where you can throw a dart & know you'll hit something interesting. (no, don't actually DO this or you'll stab the bookseller.)

After Shaver's, i walked around wondering what Midnight author John Berendt is working on these days. His follow-up to Midnight was a book about Venice, which didn't suit him so well as the lazy hot streets of Savannah. I tried to be positive when i reviewed his City of Falling Angels for The Globe & Mail in 2005: 'Berendt's charm as a raconteur suits the narrow Venetian streets, but some of his stories lead straight into a dead-end calle.'

Later, i read an even more cutting review by Jan Morris, travel writer & Venice expert extraordinaire. Reviews are hard...should you always be honest? Well, yes... But i still love Midnight in the Garden. And wandering around Savannah as a tourist, it's hard to imagine the city without Berendt's book.

ps. here's a full list of bookshops in Savannah, including Shaver's address

inspired Orlando

2011-05-22T00:25:00.002+02:00

a big thank you to everyone who made the 'Don't Just Sit There' workshop happen in Orlando! i had a wonderful time talking writing with people today. such a gorgeous day, too...i felt honoured that people spent their beautiful Saturday cloistered in a room with me, discussing the writing life. it was especially interesting talking about WHERE we write best...and it's not always the most beautiful and comfortable chair in the house...

taking a bite out of malaria

2011-04-25T19:22:00.004+02:00

today is the 4th annual World Malaria Day. for the first time in 50 years, we might actually be able to defeat malaria--which killed 781 000 people in 2009. take a second to digest that number. it's a crazy number, especially when a simple mosquito net can vastly cut the infection rate.

what's inspiring about this? we're actually making progress--a rare & wonderful reason to celebrate this day.

hot chocolate, writing, and Belarus

2011-04-08T16:24:00.006+02:00

very flattered to be included in Janet Skeslien Charles' interview series with writers in Paris. with the gorgeous weather, we sat outside at Place Colette & talked writing... check out Janet's blog here

weirdly, we realized that we've both been escorted from a train in Belarus at gun-point. Janet managed to get a temporary visa, whereas i got sent back to Warsaw--perhaps the regime had simply gotten harsher over time. my original goal was Moscow, where i was hoping to arrive at this lovely train station.
i did eventually get to Moscow, and ate a memorable breakfast across from the train station. but i wonder if either of us will ever really visit Belarus? the new national library is vast and sparkling. very Orwellian--a huge symbol of freedom of expression in a country known for censorship.

zeppelin over Paris

2011-03-24T19:15:00.013+01:00

now i know i wasn't hallucinating when i saw a huge football-shaped airship hovering over Gare du Nord. there really was a 75-metre long zeppelin floating around Paris last week.

normally, massive zeppelins do not crisscross the sky above the Paris train stations--though they have been seen, historically (the Prussians used one to bomb the city in 1916 & killed 17 people).

last week, there were sightings all across Paris as the airship cruised around measuring the radiation in our skies. this wasn't because of the tragedy in Japan, but simply a routine annual operation, to keep tabs on normal air quality and radioactivity in the French capital--or at least that's the government line, and they're sticking to it. the zeppelin hovered at around 100 metres up--roughly the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower, so really not very high. other cities have apartments with balconies higher than this zeppelin.

the zeppelin over Paris was very plain & utilitarian-looking. [take a look, here] but since spotting it, i've been thinking of Thomas Pynchon's novel, Against the Day. i really admire Pynchon--I especially loved Mason & Dixon, and i wanted to love this hodgepodge airship crew, but by the end i just felt annoyed, as if five different novels had jumped into my head at once, with all the characters running around waving their arms in the air yelling 'look at me! look at me!'

and yet it starts so promisingly... (excerpts from the first pages of the 1120-page novel):

“Hurrah! Up we go!”

It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind. […]

At one end of the gondola, largely oblivious to the coming and going on deck, with his tail thumping expressively now and then against the planking, and his nose among the pages of a volume by Mr. Henry James, lay a dog of no particular breed, to all appearances absorbed by the text before him.”
[intrigued by Against the Day? visit its wiki. And don't say I didn't warn you.]

2011-03-16T17:56:00.005+01:00

if i ever get an iPad or kindle, i’m making it a cover that says DON’T PANIC. there's even a site with instructions for various designs.

“...he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million ‘pages’ could be summoned at a moment’s notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON’T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters.
[…]
Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands. ‘I like the cover,’ he said. ‘Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.’”

– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

book covers, according to Chandler

2011-02-24T18:12:00.006+01:00

"Some day someone ought to explain to me the theory behind dust jacket designs. I assume they are meant to catch the eye without offering any complicated problems to the mind, but they do present problems of symbolism that are too deep for me. Why is there blood on the little idol? Why is the idol there at all? What is the significance of the hair? Why is the iris of the eye green? Don't answer. You probably don't know either."
- Raymond Chandler, writing to his editor Paul Brooks in 1954

for the record, i like the cover, though it has pretty well nothing to do with Chandler's storyline. i can't decide if a cover is obliged to relate closely to the contents.

Happy Groundhog Day!

2011-02-02T10:16:00.004+01:00

waiting to see if the groundhog sees his shadow in North America...i've been watching the mice in Paris metros & they seem to think it is @*#$& cold.

happy endings

2011-01-11T20:57:00.005+01:00

now this is a great honest way to wrap up a novel, i say...

"But, truthfully, these glorious pauses do, sometimes, occur in the discordant but complementary narratives of our lives and if you choose to stop the story there, at such a pause, and refuse to take it any further, then you can call it a happy ending."

from the last pages of Angela Carter's fabulous (and tragically, last) novel, Wise Children

(cover illustration by Roxanna Bikadoroff)

the riotous Theatre des Champs-Elysees

2011-01-06T09:56:00.006+01:00

went out last night into rainy Paris to see Robert Lepage's Eonnagata...the show was very flawed, but it was a wonderful excuse to visit the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, built by one of my favourite French architects, the often-radical August Perret.

in 1913, his newly-opened theatre was the site of one of the more interesting riots in Parisian history...because this is where Stravinsky's Rites of Spring was first performed.

Stravinsky's music was booed, and Nijinsky's choreography infuriated the crowd--one elderly Duchess apparently thought the whole thing was some kind of hoax. (here's a great description) But the producer, Diaghilev, was serene... Stravinsky later wrote:

"After the 'performance' we were excited, angry, disgusted, and . . . happy. I went with Diaghilev and Nijinsky to a restaurant... Diaghilev's only comment was 'Exactly what I wanted.' He certainly looked contented. No one could have been quicker to understand the publicity value, and he immediately understood the good thing that had happened in that respect. Quite probably he had already thought about the possibility of such a scandal when I first played him the score, months before, in the east corner ground room of the Grand Hotel in Venice.”

for a great recreation of this moment, there's the film 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky' --check out the first 27 seconds of this promo video, below (and then go see the movie! it's gorgeous.)

last night, it was a thrill to look down from my seat in the gods, to see the old fauteuils--because this theatre has small armchairs on its main floor, not fixed theatre seats. And whenever my interest in Lepage's performance waned, i thought about Josephine Baker, who made her premiere here with the Revue Negre in 1925. Baker took Paris by storm, from this very stage. showered with jewelry & marriage proposals after every performance. she wryly said, "Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest...beautiful, no. Amusing, yes."
interesting quote--because watching the few remaining early clips of her Revue dances, what's really surprising is her great comedic timing. she's a real live wire on stage--making crazy faces, laughing at herself, goofing around--and yes, dancing & singing. no wonder Paris was amazed.

so, yes, Eonnagata was disappointing (Lepage was interesting on stage, as were the two dancers, but the overall concept just didn't work. everyone seemed under-utilized, the movements were predictable, and even the late Alexander McQueen's costumes were dull), BUT i still had a great evening thinking about performance & art. maybe part of the point of performance is to risk failure--or at least, to risk being ridiculous, at least some of the time.

Snow day!

2010-12-08T16:50:00.004+01:00

Les jardins du Luxembourg, today in a rare Paris snowstorm.admittedly, i work at home, so technically the weather shouldn't impact my ability to sit at my desk...
but i couldn't resist going for a walk.

Deserting Detroit

2010-11-14T19:37:00.007+01:00

i have a whole new outlook on the life & death of American cities now, after spending 4 days in downtown Detroit. so much has been written about the ruined core of this once-great city, and i knew i would be impressed by the grand, though largely abandoned, architecture.

i didn't realize HOW deserted Detroit really is...notice the empty street...this is a normal weekday morning downtown! i expected the vast empty buildings to be colonized by squats, by artists, by anyone needing room to breathe and work.

but strangely, in Detroit, that isn't the case. nearly half a century after the worst riots occurred, long after the manufacturing & auto jobs were packed up and shipped overseas, the city of Detroit remains a ghost-town, seemingly incapable of a new start. maybe it's the violence (but New Orleans is violent, yet its soul somehow survives tragedy after tragedy.) maybe Detroit's soul left sometime in the 70s, leaving beautiful empty skyscrapers behind, like this one below, where one mysterious light glowed in a room beneath the roof, night after night...

i spoke with some great people in Detroit. bartenders and arts workers and academics who are fighting the good fight to make Detroit honour its heritage. they told me stories of two heritage skyscrapers--one now demolished, the other well on its way to collapse--where the landlords consciously forced out their successful tenants by refusing to heat & maintain their buildings. an empty lot is worth more in this city--or at least, the empty lot might be worth something in the future, and the real estate mavens are simply going to dig in their heels and wait. meanwhile, the streets seem empty even of ghosts, most nights.

where other cities have found that artists are a powerful positive force in urban renewal, Detroit's powers-that-be don't seem to be interested in that route.

But there is a bit of good news, slim but shining. Detroit has forward-looking people, inspired by its intense history, with a peculiar potential to reimagine what a city should look like. one of the most interesting thinkers on this prospect is John Gallagher, who quotes the Japanese poet Masahide: "Barn's burnt down / now / I can see the moon."

the time is long overdue for politicians & planners to see that moon, and put their backs to the wheel in Detroit. they should spend some time at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, in front of Diego Rivera's inspiring mural about labour: Detroit Industry.

Maize

2010-10-22T03:32:00.007+02:00

and so i finally found myself near the amazing, the absurd, the astonishing GREAT VERMONT CORN MAZE, which is exactly what it sounds like: a lot of very tall corn, arranged in an intricate pattern.

i first read about this place five years ago, while living in Paris. seemed like a perfect example of old-fashioned American weirdness, and i immediately added it to my "must-see" list. there are in fact all kinds of corn mazes in the U.S.--who knew--but this one caught my imagination. last week, we managed to get there on a perfect day...after stopping to ask for directions at this wonderful gas station. (note their nice Canadian flag)

now, you would imagine that finding a giant corn maze with 2 miles of labyrinthian passages would be fairly easy. mais non. in fact, we drove in circles for about an hour, up small dirt roads, down small gravel roads, through lovely Vermont farm mud & around forests, looking for the maze.

but eventually we found it, paid the very reasonable admission, and spent 90 wonderful minutes walking around in the corn fields. for you non-farm types (uh, like me), corn at this time of year is well over 8 feet, up to 12 feet in places, rustles dry in the wind, and it's really difficult to see over. if you stand on a ladder in the middle of the maze, you can't make out the pattern or even figure out which way to go. it's only in the aerial photo that you get a proper vision of the maze (and they don't post this year's photo until after the maze has been turned into silage for the cows at the end of October.)

this particular maze is the inspired creation of one obsessed guy who married into a farming family, and decided he needed to save the family farm. so now he spends his summers standing on a small bridge, giving people advice on how to get out of the corn. it's a strange job, but he seems truly delighted by it. and he got me thinking about the nature of creative inspiration...whether it's writing a story or planting a field of corn...planning, plotting, imagining how it will intrigue & delight people...

nuit blanche Toronto-style

2010-10-10T17:13:00.002+02:00

finally catching up with my blog. i'm still impressed with the latest Toronto version of Nuit Blanche. i don't know how the numbers compare, for this year versus earlier incarnations, but i think the work this time round was so much better than prior years! i was lucky to drop into some especially great musical pieces for the 'white night' project.

first up was Daniel Lanois' Later That Night at the Drive-In in front of City Hall

we got a bit cold, so we didn't stay for the full performance. instead, for something completely different, we went down Bay Street to check out the performance of Erik Satie's -hour piece, Vexations, written in 1893. i'm a big Satie fan (and in Paris, i live five minutes from his old tiny Montmartre apartment) so i was thrilled to hear and see this installation.

as the pianists finished playing a page of the score (which repeats 840 times, each page being identical), a folder retrieved the page and the people seated at this enormous table turned each page into a careful origami section. by the end of the night, that whole table must have been filled with jagged blue pages. it was a spectacular way to visualize the progression of the piece.

ideal cities

2010-09-19T23:04:00.002+02:00

"On trash night in ideal cities your other neighbors
swap stories in the alleys. Ideal cities

have margins that aren't pretty or bleak
and are without proper representation

but have no grievances. My ideal city
has a wish list written on the back

of an envelope scrap, an ATM slip.
My ideal city is peripheral and claims

uneven sidewalks."
- Erika Meitner
for the complete poem, go here to Poetry Daily

the fishing (aka writing) shack

2010-09-09T03:04:00.002+02:00

quiet enough to hear the dragonflies.

Vegas in Victoria

2010-08-28T01:55:00.005+02:00

must be the end of the tour...arriving on the far western edge of Canada! (photo taken through the windshield as we drove in)

first thing, arriving here, i unpacked my lucky metal rat (the cat where i'm staying didn't seem too bothered.)

we opened "Breakfast in Vegas" yesterday at the Victoria Fringe--I was the very first show at the fest. i'm lucky to have a fantastic venue, Cabin12...it's a diner, and it's perfect for the "Breakfast" show concept. Victoria itself is so beautiful, i had to really force myself to stay inside for two days, working on the show. but now it's the weekend & i can explore...

steampunk computer lust

2010-07-27T00:14:00.000+02:00

have recently spent too much time in big box stores looking at ugly computers, as my current laptop limps towards purgatory. but even the most design-sensitive laptop in these stores really lacks aesthetic interest. i spend so much time doing creative work on these ugly shiny things, it would be nice to find inspiration in the physical manifestation of the wires (ok, you Mac-phreaks out there, don't let me keep you from enjoying your perfectly smooth iThings. they don't do it for me but i'm glad you're all so delightfully happy.) i'd rather have something along the lines of William Gibson's descriptions in his novel Idoru, laptops remodelled into artworks of turquoise, recycled aluminum, and glass. which almost nearly exists...the laptop that i would REALLY like to buy next looks more like this...or this...

(this photo from computer re-Maker Jake Von Slatt)

poker at Yellow Dog

2010-07-22T17:29:00.004+02:00

A great evening organized by Rats of Las Vegas publisher Enfield & Wizenty (the literary imprint of Great Plains), at the most excellent Yellow Dog in downtown Winnipeg. Kudos to poker queen Susie Moloney for winning the evening's 7-card stud game--her prize was an enduring reputation at the card table & a serious bottle of booze. And many thanks to the other players, who were a treat to deal for: crime authors Michael Van Rooy and Mike McIntyre, McNally Robinson's David Lawrence, and Great Plains publisher extraordinaire, Gregg Shilliday. (photos courtesy of a cellphone...nicely atmospheric, i say! and for further multimedia, imagine the really marvellous selection of whiskey at the Yellow Dog)

art, process, portrait

2010-06-13T00:46:00.005+02:00

visual artists are often good at talking about their work-in-progress; writers, often less so. so while i was in Banff, i decided to listen in on as many art talks as i could, to see how people talk about their work. in the process, i discovered some fantastic art. AND as an extra bonus, i was even recruited for some art projects-in-process--probably because it's cheaper to use writers than models or actors. one of the projects was a video by Michele Provost, which involved getting dressed up in historical costumes (i ended up in a blue satin robe that made me look like the Victorian Hood of Death...in a good way, right?) and the other is a series of photographs that are equal parts contemporary portraiture & 15th-century chiaroscuro.

this is work-in-progress from Petra Stavast, the Dutch photographer who was in residence at Banff & who is working on a long series of portraits taken with a cellphone. considering how unenthusiastic i am about cellphones, i was surprisingly happy to sit still for the shoot... probably because Petra was really charming & her studio is in the woods, about as far from the mad shouting of cellphone beeps as you can get. and i like the idea of using cheap nasty contemporary technology to make something slow & sometimes beautiful.

Banff compatriots

2010-05-26T22:48:00.007+02:00

ground squirrel - elk - ground squirrel - elk - deer - deer - deer - ground squirrel (multiply x 100) - elk - swimming elk - deer - deer -deer- wolf - chipmunk - red squirrel - red squirrel - black pine marten - big-horned sheep - ground squirrel.

Pine Siskin - tree swallow - cliff swift - many Robins - sparrows (innumerable) - crow - raven - magpie - mallard- Merganser - Canada geese - one solitary Harlequin duck - Gray Jay (also known as a Whiskey Jack)- several osprey (or the same one, flying about?) - Ruby-crowned Kinglet - Dark-eyed Junco (innumerable) - two Mountain Bluebirds.

And one bat.

scrapbook

2010-05-25T01:12:00.004+02:00

reading Robert Kroetsch's A Likely Story, i'm thinking that blogs are much more like scrapbooks, open to the public, rather than private journals, secret diaries. we collate present-day links with ideas, magpie shiny images, and somehow this

"implies a larger whole, an organized universe, an explanatory mythology, from which the scrap was taken... A scrapbook is made up of stories--and of gaps and silences. A scrapbook is a kind of code; the code allows us to bring into play whole areas of memory." - Kroetsch

two shiny scraps that caught my eye this past week: first, my friend Sue Chenette writing about Paris, specifically the city's relationship to language

and, thinking about books, a rather brilliant tank re-purposing:

anthill

2010-05-14T20:07:00.004+02:00

turns out this anthill is a well-known landmark on the Hoodoo trail...the ants have been building this pile of dry spruce needles for several years. being right near the arts centre, the hill has been featured in a number of videos etc. Hard to see them in these small photos...but trust me, the needles are completely covered in black & red patterned ants. they're quite nifty-looking ants, actually, and apparently they eat other more destructive insects, so i am trying to like them.

they didn't swarm out and attempt to drag us into the anthill when we walked by...so i conclude that they are friendly. or at least, indifferent. which is fine with me.

more birds

2010-05-10T19:58:00.003+02:00

seems like every day brings more birds to the Bow River area...blue birds, siskins, swallows...and i also spent some time watching two crows gathering dead weeds by the river, presumably to build or repair their nest.

which got me thinking about crows. i love this video, even though it is a group of caged crows, being studied. but still, the way the bird perfects the tool, clearly figuring out how to improve the wire it starts with...

Virtual Banff

2010-05-09T21:44:00.007+02:00

This morning over breakfast i asked the guy across the table from me what he was working on, here at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

"Repairing the virtual cave, in the basement," he said.

Uh-huh. Mental note: never ask anyone what they're doing before having breakfast.

But he really is working on the virtual cave...i plan to drop by later in the week when it's operational again. not sure what to expect.

I've already visited the real cave, created by the mineral springs which are the reason Banff exists. (the sulfur springs gave this place a quasi-medicinal purpose and in order to protect the springs--or, to protect the potential profits they could make from the springs--the government of Canada created the very first national park here in the late 1880s. & soon after that, the Banff Springs Hotel was built...

not bad for a hotel built because of a cave.)

a raven for Dickens

2010-05-04T14:33:00.001+02:00

i saw a very tame raven while hiking near Banff. i used to be dubious about the idea of taming ravens...they seem so sure of themselves & sensibly wild. but on the trail, a very stout raven marched up and down beside people eating lunch. i suppose he was waiting for the humans to drop their food. though very tame, he was very much aware of his obvious superiority to us.

he made me think of Dickens and his pet raven, Grip. (above photo is Grip, stuffed--now owned by the Free Library of Philadelphia) i always associate ravens very much with Canada, especially British Columbia & the Yukon...but in fact a variety of raven exists all over Europe, and Dickens' raven is probably the most famous.

Dickens described the death of Grip, his tame raven, like this: "On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed `Halloa old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died."

for the record, Edgar Allen Poe apparently felt that Dickens' fictionalized raven in Barnaby Rudge deserved a more important role in the plot.

having seen the enormous glossy raven on the path here, I agree with Edgar: if you introduce a talking tame raven into a plot, you'd better give it all the best lines.

Writing mountains

2010-05-03T19:22:00.000+02:00

i'm in Banff, at the fabulous Arts Centre here, working on a new manuscript. and lo & behold, today it snowed. quite a bit...in fact, it's still snowing just a little, and maybe it's because i'm originally from Montreal, but really, i find snow is very good for writing.

the view from my window...today:

...and the evening i arrived:

Jane's Walk

2010-05-02T03:55:00.000+02:00

was this weekend...around the world, from Saskatoon to Mumbai, from Toronto to La Paloma, Uruguay.

for some links & photos http://www.janeswalk.net/

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”

— Jane Jacobs, ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’

Dektet in Calgary

2010-04-28T18:54:00.004+02:00

heading to Calgary to celebrate my amazing poetry publisher's latest crazy accomplishment: ten books of poetry are out this month to mark the tenth anniversary of Frontenac House...10 books in 2010. the dektet was chosen by jury--bill bissett, George Elliott Clarke & Alice Major (now that must have been an interesting discussion!)

Attenuations of Force, Lori Cayer
Children of Ararat, Keith Garebian
Confessions of an Empty Purse, S. McDonald
Ex Nihilo, Adebe D. A.
Fallacies of Motion, William Nichols
Falling Blues, Jannie Edwards
Learning to Count, Douglas Burnet Smith
[sic], Nikki Reimer
Standoff Terrain, Jocko Benoit
White Shirt, Laurie MacFayden

i haven't had a chance to read them yet, just take quick skims & dips...

why i love roulette

2010-04-14T20:19:00.008+02:00

i'm working on organizing the June book fair for the Small Press of Toronto. i was recently talking with a couple of the interns (who fabulously are helping with the Fair, thank you!)...and i realized my first real connection with the small press was in Vancouver in the 90s, when i was starting to seriously write poetry, and i wrote 21 poems about blackjack.

one night, i was at one of the nondescript downtown casinos--a very tame enterprise, in Vancouver, because you couldn't drink in the casino & mostly the clientele was made up of elderly men wearing cardigans. i'm not much of a gambler, and roulette was the only game whose rules i understood back then...so i sat down at the roulette table and played around with $20. i lost most of it, and was down to the last couple of dollars, which i placed in a single chip on the central number...the 20. because it was in the middle.

the weird thing is, my number came up, winning me a couple of hundred dollars. and then i tried another $20 bet & won a bit more. and then i cashed out, because even though the elderly Chinese guys at the table were encouraging me to keep on the winning streak, i wasn't convinced it was going to last.

so i left the casino & logically thought HEY i can put this money into producing a chapbook! because that's what everybody thinks when they win "big" at roulette, right? surely that was Sean Connery's first thought, too, when he used to win in Monte Carlo. (okay, maybe not.)

so that's how i initially got involved in the small press...i took my $320 of roulette winnings and spent most of that money on paper & printing & staples, and then my long-suffering gambling partner and i spent several rather lovely hours folding and trimming and stapling chapbooks on the kitchen table. those 21 poems about blackjack, titled 'green as the three of diamonds', had found a way into the world.

and i thought HEY this is fun. i like this. this is WAY more fun than roulette.

'Are you absolutely, positively, and wholeheartedly ready to publish your novel?'

2010-04-12T02:58:00.006+02:00

a rather funny dark poster by Anna Hurley (brought to my attention by the good folks of the Afterword)...click on the image to see a larger, more readable version on her site.

note the poster goes on sale April 13 to benefit 826 National

really it was a gorgeous day today & all i wanted to do was take pretty pictures of spring flowers, because i didn't feel absolutely, positively, and wholeheartedly like doing anything at all literary whatsoever...

gambling on trains

2010-04-07T19:13:00.007+02:00

i recently was asked if people "really" played cards on trains (because my novel features a fair bit of that)...in response, here's a great weird tidbit from The New York Times, Nov. 15, 1871:

We hear a good deal of complain that gambling should be allowed on the passenger-trains in this State. A few weeks since a man was swindled out of $50 in a Maine Central smoking-car by a blackleg, who introduced him into the beauties of "three-card monte." To be sure, it is strange that any man is so green or devoid of common sense as to be inveigled into card-playing and betting with strangers on railroad-cars--but such people there are in the world, and we do not think our railroads should be in the field for such knaves to ply their pursuits in. We have recently noticed warnings posted up in the Eastern Railroad cars, like this: "Beware of strangers who ask you to play cards." That is a very useful placard, to say the least."

in Paris, i used to walk past a three-card monte game every weekend, near the Clignancourt flea market, where there seemed to be an endless supply of people 'green or devoid of common sense' enough to be inveigled by the older dude running the game. Because hope springs eternal. Or something. photo by Nelson Minar, 2006

on literary analysis

2010-04-02T15:37:00.005+02:00

or, how not to take advice, as seen by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. she wrote the following as part of a brief preface to her famous long work 'Poem Without a Hero':

I have even been advised to make it more clear.
I will refrain from doing this.
The poem does not have any third, seventh, or twenty-ninth meanings.

...i feel as if i can almost hear her distinct St. Petersburg accent, annoyed, saying this. i wonder what she would think, to find her lines as they appear in my copy of her collected work--which has so many notes for every poem, the book is 947 pages long.

carrying this tome around with me, i really wish some of the scholars had taken Akhmatova a little more literally.

One-eyed Jacks

2010-03-31T18:22:00.004+02:00

no trip to Florida would be complete without a bit of weirdness...so i went to the greyhound track that is just down the street from my grandfather's place. (for the record, he does not bet on the dogs!)
i didn't even know dog racing was still legal in the US until i drove past this track. and although i had the worst of expectations, when i went over to the inspection kennel, the dogs were less crazy in the eyes than race horses are.

so the fluffy stuffed animal is sent along the track on a wire...notice the white blur at the guy's feet in the photo...and the dogs chase it. and when they reach the finish line, they get dog biscuits.

overall, though, i still agree with my character Millard, in my novel: "Isn't fair," she says, "betting on a game the horse runs for you. No game in that."

change however flawed

2010-03-22T04:00:00.001+01:00

...is still a change to the good.

my god the empire to the south has actually passed the health reform bill!

Canada Also Reads live

2010-03-08T20:09:00.005+01:00

just finished a live chat...which scared the bejesus out of me but actually was fun (kind of hard to stay nerve-wracked in my pyjamas)

i got to talk about CanLit with a great panel of people--Jocelyne Allen, Steven Beattie, Cathy Marie Buchanan, Tish Cohen, Terry Fallis, Stacey May Fowles, Jessica Grant, Mark Anthony Jarman, Andy Maize Jacob McArthur Mooney,John Mutford, Neil Smith, Zoe Whittall, & Steve Zipp, moderated by Mark Medley & Brad Frenette for the Canada Also Reads contest at the National Post. Apparently some of it will reappear in the paper, at some point...but meanwhile, check it out online at the Afterword.

we talked writing, marketing, locations, language...and small verus big presses. i was defending Jocelyne Allen's book YOU AND THE PIRATES from the excellent small press The Workhorsery. there's still time to vote for the book (go to the Afterword.)

read the Afterword's chat here

the Owl & the Sparrow

2010-03-06T02:37:00.000+01:00

had a great time in Montreal the other weekend...my olde home town & all, even rolled out a Nuit Blanche, February edition, so i could celebrate being in Montreal by going to galleries all night long. okay, some people like dancing in nightclubs, and i like watching conceptual art videos at 2 in the morning. followed by hotdogs with coleslaw at the Montreal Pool Room. i only wish i'd had time to go out to the biosphere, to watch the night birds...including, i suppose, this preternaturally-glowing blue owl...

i got to do two very different readings while in Montreal--a Friday lunchtime reading at the venerable Atwater Library, accompanied by the very fun & cool sax player Dave Turner, and the second at the Pilot Reading Series, which takes place every month or so at the Sparrow, a bar which is now on my all-time favourite top ten bar list for the planet earth. this, based on three essential facts: it has excellent Quebec beer; it has a beautiful staircase that goes nowhere; and it is conveniently close to an all-night bagel bakery. it also has some of the most beautiful wallpaper i have ever seen, in a bar or elsewhere.

a big giddy bisou to all who made the readings happen...

Pteros Tactics

2010-02-15T17:18:00.007+01:00

Pteros Tactics is opening at Harbourfront, just in time to help us recover from Valentine's Day. the unusually-named work is a newly-created dance piece from the marvellous Toronto Dance Theatre choreographer Christopher House. it's inspired by an essay by Anne Carson (one of my favourite poets).

A few lines from her essay leap out to me, looking at them now: "mere space has power," Carson writes in Eros the Bittersweet. "The separating power of space can be marked with various activities; by racing through it, for example..." The lines seem purposely written for dance. "Eros... exists because certain boundaries do."

i had a lovely conversation with House about inspiration and the rehearsal process last week. and the resulting article is now up at Toronto's cultural site, Live With Culture, here.

writerly vengeance

2010-02-13T18:50:00.005+01:00

after a week of fidgeting with computer stuff, i find this voice mail recording especially satisfying: Hunter S. Thompson is, ahem, unimpressed with some new technology.

hang in through his routine curses to the last 30 seconds...ahhhh, much dreamed-of writer revenge! (note--it looks like a video but it's simply an answering machine recording)

(thanks to Bookninja for a perfect way to start my Saturday)

Canada Also Reads

2010-02-09T23:33:00.003+01:00

The National Post's literary blog THE AFTERWORD just announced its 'Canada Also Reads' discussion/competition/kinda-bookclub, and i'm thrilled to be in the ring, representing Jocelyne Allen's You and the Pirates. stand by...we start talking March 1st...

Building Storeys 2010

2010-02-05T02:55:00.006+01:00

at the Gladstone tonight for the opening of the photo exhibit Building Storeys--fantastic shots of interiors of the R.C. Harris water filtration plant, the John Street Roundhouse, the R.L.Hearn Generating Station (some of my faves in the show)...and other industrial buildings we don't admire enough as aesthetic contributors to our cityscape. since most of the chosen sites are public buildings, Mayor Miller turned up to talk about his belief in public buildings' greatness, and his hope that future Toronto construction can be as memorable as the Art Deco suavity of the R.C.Harris water filtration plant.

and why shouldn't our public buildings be grand, impressive, mysterious, beautiful... like these photos, taken by members of the Shadow Collective & D.K. Photo Group, supported by Heritage Toronto. photographers Olena Sullivan has a great description of the project, over here.

the show is up for the rest of the month, noon to 5pm daily on the 3rd & 4th floors of the Gladstone Hotel. with photos from  Robert Dyke, Sean Galbraith, Rick Harris, Mathew Merrett, Timothy Neesam, Olena Sullivan & Toni Wallachy

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T17:41:00.002+01:00

wave to the shadow...

and...back at the Toronto desk

2010-01-28T17:06:00.000+01:00

catching up...last night was the launch of Toronto's Neighbourhood Arts Network which (if you believe the bumph) will revolutionize arts education in this city.

can't knock their goals: administration & networking to make art classes and activities accessible to kids and older students across the GTA. fabulous, and crucial. but when i go to an arts event and listen to feel-good educational stories from administrators, i get bored. fast. i would rather hear from the kids involved--what did they actually create, and what do they think about these new art skills?

last night's celebratory launch seemed to treat education in art as a spiffy extra that we can throw into the pot only when we have surplus funding. shouldn't artistic play be an essential part of educating the next generation? and if so, why isn't it important for the education minister to show up?

instead, we had Ontario's new Minister of Tourism & Culture, Michael Chan, who didn't address such questions--mind you, no one really expected him to (he's only had this portfolio for 9 days, so he's still looking a little shell-shocked, discovering all the cute artsy songs he now has to listen to). his speech emphasized that the new network is predicated largely on encouraging business to invest in the neighbourhoods in question. hopefully the network is going to spend some time talking about what kind of business these neighbourhoods actually need...or want...and where art fits in all this.

the idea of culture & arts education as a stimulus to animate the urban environment isn't new; the idea of capitalizing on the arts to revitalize the city isn't new either. but so far, Toronto's new network just seems likely to emphasize the divide between the people who talk about making art and the people who actually make the stuff. because playing with the idea of creativity, with cute little ditties and matching aprons, is all very well. but art, if it's actually art and not therapeutic crafts, isn't only a marketing tool and shouldn't be treated as such.

yes, the people involved in this new project seem very enthusiastic, and i do wish them the best. but just the same, it was an evening of Toronto administrators talking about art...even free food can't make that interesting. i left the event a bit down-hearted.

and then, art saved me.

i walked down the glass corridor of Harbourfront and noticed the gallery space was still open, with no one there apart from the woman at the desk. the thread installation by Amanda McCavour is what drew me into the space--because i could glimpse the work as i walked away from the launch (my photo doesn't do it justice at all). inside the gallery, i discovered Shuyu Lu's equally fantastic embroidery of small meticulous scenes of Chinatown & Kensington Market...detailed, thoughtful, mysterious, a real conversation with the city and with the viewer.

the work was gorgeous. complicated. technically demanding. and committed to considering Toronto through art.

while i was there, none of the arts administrators stopped in as they left the party. which seemed a pity.

Small Press of Toronto Dec 12

2009-12-10T19:35:00.004+01:00

my co-organizer Sang & i are madly finishing last minute details for the BOOK FAIR this Saturday at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel. over 60 presses with books, comics, graphic novels, zines, fantastic readers, workshops...come on down & check it out, for free!

rob mclennan's 12 or 20 questions

2009-11-27T01:54:00.003+01:00

rob mclennan runs this excellent question series on his blog & i was so pleased to be invited. my favourite question was #5...

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Essential part of the process—you can immediately see what’s going over, what’s not. Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? Readings are wonderful—a way to connect to readers, to hear what they think, listen to other people’s stories. I love doing readings, even though they make me so nervous I can barely remember what I’ve said.

which reminds me...must decide what to read from RATS OF LAS VEGAS tomorrow night in Ottawa.

heading to Ottawa for the Small Press Fair

2009-11-23T20:44:00.001+01:00

later this week, i'm off to the Ottawa Small Press Fair. i'll be reading at the pre-Fair soiree that's (to quote ze man himself) lovingly hosted by rob mclennan, with Michael Dennis, Spencer Gordon, Michelle Desbarats, and Garry Thomas Morse. looking forward to it!

Friday, November 27, 2009; doors 7pm, reading 7:30pm
at The Carleton Tavern (upstairs)
Armstrong at Parkdale, Ottawa

meanwhile, i've been watching rat videos, and i've finally decided that this particular rat is my favourite. it was thought to be extinct millions of years ago. you can practically hear this existentialist Laotian Rock Rat thinking to itself, "If i sit here perfectly still for long enough & pretend you don't exist, voila, you will no longer exist."

lovely first review for RATS

2009-11-22T00:00:00.005+01:00

The Winnipeg Free Press says:

Toronto-based Lisa Pasold's debut novel is as enticing as the lit-up Las Vegas strip and as satisfying as a winning hand at poker.

for the rest of Kathryne Kouk's lovely review of RATS OF LAS VEGAS, visit the Free Press here.

Remembrance Day

2009-11-11T13:53:00.002+01:00

Creative Places + Spaces: collaborate or die

2009-10-31T17:23:00.003+01:00

BlogTO has my summary of the conference...i'm still thinking hard about some of what was discussed, and the artists involved...more soon!

Scribbling Creative Places + Spaces

2009-10-30T00:33:00.007+01:00

this is the first time I’ve been involved in writing about an event that was being live-blogged & twittered via a Scribblelive screen. extremely interesting & distracting. reminds me of a study of GPS & its impact on our cognitive ability to navigate. we seem to be physically changing our brains with our new technologies; a study of London UK taxi drivers indicates that all the cognitive map-making necessary for cabbies actually alters their brains, making the back part of their hippocampus grow larger. and similarly, people who use GPS all the time are losing their map-making skills. (see further The Walrus, Nov/09).

surely we’re doing something similar with this constant hum of low-level multi-tasking—watching/listening to an event while making notes & comments about it. our media platforms that require us to look away at least occasionally from the person talking or performing. today, the huge projected scribble screens are distracting, like having a really chatty neighbour during an interesting speech. Sir Ken Robinson mentioned this today, “I sometimes wonder if tech doesn’t get in the way of the experience you’re trying to have at the time.” we all pondered this for a moment, then Sir Ken proposed: “Technology should be supplementing our lives not supplanting them.”

mind you, Sir Ken points out that technology, if it has always been there for you, no longer seems like technology. it’s just reality. (whereas I can actually remember a time before email, back in the dark ages when we were domesticating the tyrannosaurus rex, so the live-blogging definitely qualifies as technology for me!)

all this twitter-berry-ing is highly appropriate for the conference, because the ‘Creative Places + Spaces’ focus this year is collaboration.while Scribble produced a scattered dialogue today, all too often a 140-character series of micro-monologues, some of the Scribblelive board entries really did trigger further thoughts as the lectures went on. so conversation & collaboration can come out of the hubbub of twittering--something of a revelation to me. and most revealing, when the Scribble went dead for a brief period, i was disappointed, I felt I was missing something in the discussion & the conference.

the trick is getting tech such as Scribble to work with the cognitive diversity that today’s keynote speaker, Richard Florida, emphasized is crucial to creative discussion. “If you take people who are demographically diverse, you get cognitive diversity,“ he says, rather than taking a bunch of people who already think similarly—which just produces group thinking & isn’t getting us anywhere.

Florida’s talk was all about how complexity, creativity, and collaboration result in a resilient city. “At the very bottom of the struggle of our time is control,” says Florida. and he thinks Toronto is perfect to wage this struggle. “This is the great battle of our age, the battle between creativity and control... The world needs an example of a city that works. ...if we’re going to build creative places & spaces, we need to do it here [Toronto]. There are very few places on earth that can make this happen."

which brings me back to Sir Ken, talking this morning about our need to DISENTHRALL ourselves… if we're going to create a city that works...if we're going to even THINK about collaborating on a city that works...we need to think afresh. We need to disenthrall—it sounds like a new word, but in fact Abraham Lincoln used it. Sir Ken argues that we must disenthrall ourselves from what we take for granted. To innovate, to think creatively, we must shake off the bonds of common sense—disenthralling is crucial in this battle against control.

so can I disenthrall myself from technology while finding ways to use it? not sure. but I’m heading back to the conference tomorrow, to keep thinking about all this.

(images courtesy of Artscape's conference Flikr page, with the liveblog balcony today at the Carlu, and Richard Florida just before he hit the stage to praise Toronto & Mayor Miller)

how Vegas is a city of creativity

2009-10-29T16:37:00.004+01:00

at the Creative Places + Spaces conference, am completely astonished to find Sir Ken Robinson talking about Las Vegas. he was speaking about allowing ourselves to be passionate about what we do, about how we need to make innovation a habit. And he brought in Vegas as an example of creativity, of the imagination...mirroring what i've been thinking & writing about Vegas, much to my delight. Here's Sir Ken's view, from the Venetian casino: "There is no strategic reason for Vegas to be where it is... Vegas illustrates one of the most distincitive features of human intelligence...the power of imagination. Las Vegas began as an idea. But human beings find ideas contagious. And imagination is the wellspring to everything we’ve ever done as a species...the capacity to stand outside our current circumstances & bring to mind alternatives."

creative places + spaces

2009-10-29T02:02:00.009+01:00

i'm thrilled to have a media pass for tomorrow's Creative Places + Spaces conference. Richard Florida is the keynote but i'm especially looking forward to hearing from some of the artists involved this year--like Katerina Cizek, the documentary-maker currently Filmmaker-in-Residence at St. Michael's Hospital, and Spencer Tunick, whose well-known photographs of naked crowds around the world seem perfect for "creative spaces & places", no? there's even local poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, whose best work focuses on the question of sustainable cities, and our city, in particular.

'sustainable' is such a peculiar term, used for so many things, appropriate & less so, and tomorrow will probably bring some interesting discussion on that topic, even as the sessions focus on collaboration & change.

as a secret thrill for me personally, the conference takes place tomorrow in my very favourite Toronto location: the Carlu.
i am seriously considering wearing fingerless gloves as a tribute to Glenn Gould, who wouldn't have been out of place on tomorrow's speaker roster.

350 Poems

2009-10-24T19:54:00.006+02:00

today, pleased to be part of the 350 poems project, as part of the international day of climate action.

of course, ask poets to write 3.5 lines & the resulting line breaks can be open to interpretation, but the symbolic structure holds.

(my contribution to the collaborative project is entry #204)

and RATS is launched!

2009-10-05T19:00:00.010+02:00

wow, it's been a week since the RATS OF LAS VEGAS launch party, hosted by This Is Not A Reading Series at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel, and i've mostly gotten the feathers out of my hair...

that's me, in the dress, and Craig Davidson, on stage, hoping i answer his question coherently...

Bremner Duthie sang the crazy Dyin' Crap-shooter's Blues (my special request) and then burned up a set of lounge lizard standards with his jazz trio...

a blurry photo of the divine Alejandra Ribera singing a knock-out Stormy Weather

the burlesque grrls waiting to do their tribute to Vegas...

Skin Tight Outta Sight had a little somethin' for everyone in their Vegas-inspired end-of-the-evening show...

getting into the spirit of things before the poker game (no cash, just points) organized by Joe LaFortune...yes that's really his name...the problem with fiction is, if i used a name like that for a poker player in the novel, no one would believe in him!

lounge singers, poker chips, burlesque dancers, and an audience that actually laughed at my jokes...it was one helluva launch & i owe BIG thanks to everyone involved.

Urban design awards in Toronto

2009-09-22T17:10:00.005+02:00

Toronto's urban design awards were announced Monday night at the highly fabulous Palais Royale.

built in 1922, the Palais was originally a dancehall with a boat house downstairs. the building on the shore of Lake Ontario hasn't changed that much--though the view from the verandah probably has...
considering these awards focus on new buildings' context and the evolution of the Toronto's urban fabric, the Palais location seemed peculiarly appropriate--a gorgeous corner of the city's history, marooned by poor planning decisions. of course, the good people at the ceremony were far too polite to mention that fact.

no huge surprises at the awards. i was delighted to see two of my personal city faves being singled out for further glory: the 40R_Laneway house and the Spadina wavedeck.

and this is the Palais at the end of the rainy evening, when there was a special city bus to drag revellers back to Union Station. instead, i braved the crazy pedestrian bridge across the Gardiner Expressway (easier to get home, from there.)

for more about the Urban Design awards, check out my article for blogto.

RATS is here!

2009-09-19T14:40:00.007+02:00

my copies of the book have arrived...very exciting...

a really really BIG rat

2009-09-14T10:45:00.000+02:00

while i'm waiting for the first copies of my book RATS OF LAS VEGAS to arrive, i couldn't help noticing this great tidbit of RAT news in the world...

there's a newly-discovered giant rat in Papua New Guinea, living in the crater of a volcano. and the rat is quite friendly, as you can see on the BBC website's video. hopefully it won't meet too many humans who pull its tail (that might influence how friendly it feels towards us.)

and in case you think i'm exaggerating with the word "giant"...the rat is 82 cm long.

Rats of Las Vegas - the book trailer!

2009-09-07T18:25:00.005+02:00

i'm thrilled to be back in Toronto for the launch of my new novel, Rats of Las Vegas. i'm gearing up for the first Rats-related event, on September 28th...a cabaret at the Gladstone Hotel, hosted by This Is Not A Reading Series. curious about the book? Kit Pasold, a Toronto-based television producer & graphic designer (& by amazing good luck, he's also my brother), has created a fab book trailer, which is a great intro to the novel:

Summertime and the livin' is...

2009-08-20T19:58:00.003+02:00

Burgundy sun coming up on another gorgeous day with no internet & no telephone. just good company, a quiet writing room, and a lovely garden. aaahh...bliss.

i love Paris...in the air...

2009-08-14T21:13:00.002+02:00

this is a great ferris wheel--old & slow, it is set up every summer in the Tuileries Gardens. this is the first time i've actually taken the trip.

i especially like the pigeon sitting on the head of the statue, which is apparently "Monsieur Fery"--no relation, as far as i know, to the Ferris Wheel. and the "non non non" from a nearby passenger, whose chair was being set spinning. but most of all i like the view in all directions...

urban Paris apiary

2009-08-13T13:21:00.004+02:00

turns out bees are thriving in cities...and Paris has some great examples. despite the die-offs in working pollination bees (used for large-scale commercial farming), bees in urban environments are doing just fine.
maybe that's not so surprising: cities have a great selection of flowers for the bees' delectation (whereas so many acres & acres of our farmland is now mono-cropped & covered in pesticides, which is hard on the bees.)
in Paris, i like to visit the beehives at the Luxembourg Gardens (taking care not to walk on the grass, of course!)
but the most bizarre beehive location is on top of the Grand Palais, the immense glass-domed exhibition space. the bee-keeper has quite the view! and i'd love to tell the tourists, touring the Opera Garnier, about the bees...i like the idea of the Opera being haunted by bees rather than Andrew Lloyd Weber.

SummerWorks coming up...

2009-08-04T16:23:00.004+02:00

some great performances, starting this Thursday, at Toronto's SummerWorks. i'm especially intrigued by the Gladstone's Performance Gallery...i chose some upcoming highlights in the fest for blogTO, here.

(this mysterious photo is from 'The Art of Catching Pigeons', part of the fest)

Small Press Book Group

2009-07-24T13:24:00.002+02:00

i'm really thrilled to announce that i'm going to help organize the next Toronto Small Press Book Fair! the last event, last month, was a lot of fun, and i'm looking forward to an exciting autumn, setting up the next one. i'm lucky to be working with a fabulous co-organizer, playwright Sang Kim. the Fall Fair is in early November...stand by for exact date & location, coming soon.

the perfect how-to book promotion...

2009-07-18T02:23:00.004+02:00

ouch, how true...especially the moment around 2.30 minutes.

oh yes, livin' the dream.

e-publishing

2009-07-07T14:02:00.003+02:00

Sarah Sheard makes really interesting points about publishing, Kindle, and all that digital jazz in her article Brave new e-world in this past Saturday's Globe & Mail

Toronto Fringe

2009-07-05T22:28:00.000+02:00

i have to find time to see more at Toronto's Fringe, happening all this week

i'm planning to see The Universal Wolf later this week. some of my other picks, here at blogTO.

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T20:23:00.005+02:00

the country of the maple leaf is 142 today.along with the birthday candles & good cheer...i'll make a birthday wish: I'd like a better government than the one we've currently got, one that has more common sense about the environment, human rights, freedom of expression, and our international role.

but in the meantime, bring on the the fireworks, the poutine, and yes, our proud national rodent, the beaver. (you other countries with eagles & things, you're just jealous you don't have a national animal as practical & entertaining as a beaver.)

Back in TO...Mongiat's Lansdowne mural updated

2009-06-30T19:15:00.005+02:00

to distract us from Toronto's stinking strike...Richard Mongiat has completed the north side of his Underpass Project, the beautiful monochromatic mural on Bloor, at Lansdowne.

i love this project because it's a refreshing new take on what a street mural is supposed to be--Mongiat isn't trying to hide the wall or cover up the sometimes sketchy aspects of his neighbourhood. "I like working with what's here," he says.

the broken-up & stained surface of the concrete wall, the industrial feel of the railway bridge overhead, even the graffitti that has turned up on the south side of the mural (completed last year)--it's all part of his inspiration. for more about the mural, see my BlogTO article here.

Theatre, brothels, vaudeville...welcome to London

2009-06-24T19:31:00.005+02:00

i'm stage-managing Bremner Duthie's show "The Barker's Spiel" at the London Ontario Fringe Festival this week. the show is happening at the Grand Theatre in downtown London, which turns out to be the oldest continually-running playhouse in all of Canada.

above, the interior of the main Grand stage; Bremner is performing in the downstairs black box theatre, which used to be a rabbit's warren of rooms for the vaudeville performers. very appropriate for the cabaret-inspired "Barker's Spiel"!

unfortunately, the exterior has been renovated, so you would never suspect the interior is so fabulous. the theatre is apparently haunted by the Grand's original impresario, Ambrose Small, who disappeared mysteriously in 1919. we haven't seen his ghost, as yet (and we had a late show on Saturday, so if he was going to appear, surely he'd have turned up then...maybe he can't figure out what happened to the outside of his theatre.) the various stories about him are quite fascinating. the theatre technician happily showed us the original basement wall of the Grand--where Small kept a secret office, to settle gambling debts & meet the ladies.

this kind of nefarious history seems to turn up all over London, even behind the most elegant 19th century facades that we walk past every day. we're staying in Woodfield, beside downtown; starting in the 1840, tobacco barons, a medical genius or two, and all kinds of business tycoons built homes here. (photos are two of my favourite "white brick" houses--the brick was quarried nearby & gives the streets a much brighter, lighter feeling than Toronto's red brick bay & gables.)

we're staying in a 19th-century Ontario cottage a block from here...and our first evening, while we relaxed in the garden, our host admitted that back in 1920s, the house was a well-known brothel. the immense claw-footed tub (since refinished) still stands proudly in the main bathroom.

for a theatre performance that's inspired by Berlin 1930s cabaret, by 1950s Vegas lounge, and by the vaudeville world of the carny, turns out London couldn't be more appropriate...

Swooning for the Simcoe WaveDeck

2009-06-12T21:15:00.009+02:00

Sexy...fun...unique...welcome to the WaveDeck! the latest addition to Toronto's waterfront gets my whole-hearted thumbs-up at its ribbon-cutting. More photos with my BlogTO piece, here.

of course, nothing is flawless: the curving steps of the city's new urban dock seems a little too inviting for skateboarders...and some grouches are worried that urbanites will slip on ice in winter (or the city will completely cover the bridge in salt, turning the fish beneath into gravlax).

but i'm excited about this new deck because it shows creativity and vision--rare qualities indeed. and i like the determined playful work of Adriaan Geuze, the Dutch landscape architect whose design won the Waterfront competition. at this Friday's opening, Chris Glaisek (vice-president of planning and design for Waterfront Toronto) said he hoped the WaveDeck's success would calm critics who are raging about the project's slow progress and cost. the deck was completed two weeks early, and under budget.

designing Toronto

2009-06-09T16:09:00.007+02:00

the PUG awards, Jan Gehl in town...last Wednesday was a busy day in Toronto for everyone interested in urban design.

i was lucky to attend a lecture by Danish urban planner extraordinaire, Jan Gehl, at the gorgeous Design Exchange on Bay Street. The former Toronto Stock Exchange room was packed, to hear Gehl talk about his projects, including his recent work with New York City's radical Commissioner of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan for the PlaNYC Initiative. Times Square for pedestrians, bike routes down Broadway...as Gehl said, "If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere!"

i'm sure i wasn't the only one in the room wondering why Toronto isn't making similar moves. For more on this, with some high-octane reader comments, my BlogTO report, here.

and the very same evening, the PUGs were handed out. Awarded by popular on-line voting, this year's winners weren't surprising--the gorgeous AGO came out on top in the commercial building category, and classy but safe One St. Thomas won in residential. the losers weren't publicly mocked at the ceremony, but things did get interesting during the panel discussion. my article focusing on the PUGs' impassioned panel, here (along with some more photos).

20 years later, Tiananmen Square Massacre

2009-06-04T07:25:00.000+02:00

June 4, 1989, tanks rolled through this square. Twenty years on, China is proving once again that memory and history depend on who controls access to information. Don't let memory be so mutable...remember.

Warwick Thornton at Cannes Film Fest

2009-05-25T17:27:00.005+02:00

the Camera d'Or has gone to filmmaker Warwick Thornton. i am so pleased! the line-up of big films at Cannes this year left me cold, apart from Aussies Jane Campion & Thornton. i loved his two short films at the Dawson Film Fest last month, and i'm just thrilled to hear that Thornton's Samson & Delilah has won this prize. hopefully this means the film will actually get released over here.
here's an interview that pretty well sums up his attitude about art & life.

live/work artist space: Wychwood Barns

2009-05-21T21:34:00.003+02:00

had a great time visiting Artscape's Wychwood Barn project last week, for my Habitats column at blogTO.

i dropped by a year ago & had doubts that the building would be ready for residency in November...
but in fact--despite a few changes to the architect's plan due to budget shortfalls--the Barns are great. with The Stop's food program, the Saturday market, LEED certification, and some good art events, they're really living up to their environmental & community commitments. my only quibble: the one-room live/work studios are VERY small.

Rats of Las Vegas - new cover art

2009-05-18T01:49:00.006+02:00

the cover for my novel is looking fantastic. the artwork is still in process, but this is the basic idea for the hardcover version of Rats of Las Vegas, coming from Enfield & Wizenty in the fall.

Snow in May

2009-05-14T15:09:00.005+02:00

en route to the subway yesterday, in the 19 degree sunshine, i was a little perplexed to run into slush & snow at the corner of Honest Ed's. a bit more on the film shoot, my post here at blogTO.

Ursula Franklin, scientist

2009-05-07T14:56:00.006+02:00

through the whimsy of wikipedia's daily entry, i stumbled upon Ursula Franklin, a Canadian metallurgist, thinker, and pacifist. she's a Quaker, has long been affiliated with U of T, and she's fascinating! she has written a great deal about technology & its impact on our lives. in the 1960s, she worked on analysing the radioactive isotope levels in children's teeth, which contributed to stopping atmospheric weapons testing. and she's just gone from there. i'm hooked by a few quotes i've found from her:

"Silence possesses striking similarities [to] aspects of life and community, such as unpolluted water, air, or soil, that were once taken as normal and given, but have become special and precious in technologically mediated environments."

which gives me something to think about, when next trapped in an elevator with piped-in music & overflow static noise from a neighbour's pod-like headphones.

"Today scientific constructs have become the model of describing reality rather than one of the ways of describing life around us… . Because the scientific method separates knowledge from experience, it may be necessary in case of discrepancies to question the scientific results… rather than to question and discount the experience. It should be experience that leads to a modification of knowledge, rather than abstract knowledge forcing people to perceive their experience as being unreal or wrong.”

a balance of knowledge & experience, of science & feeling. i have a feeling i'll be reading more from Franklin.

walking the 'hood

2009-05-05T19:24:00.004+02:00

i had a fantastic Sunday, walking through Beaconsfield Village, starting at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel...around 80 people turned out for my "Secrets & Lies" walk as part of Jane's Walk. which was wonderful for me because i had the chance to hear great stories from people who live or used to live in the neighbourhood. gorgeous weather, too, which always improves a walk!

Jane's Walk

2009-05-01T16:53:00.005+02:00

it's sunny & i'm heading out to walk around Toronto for the weekend. there are 117 different walking tours of the city, all free, all in honour of Jane Jacobs, the urban activist who spent the second half of her life in Toronto...just a few blocks from where i'm writing this.

No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at ... suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities. You've got to get out and walk. (wrote Jane Jacobs)

Jacobs died barely 3 years ago, but her legacy of passionate, intelligent interest in how we live in our cities continues. Jane's Walk celebrates her legacy...and this year, the walks aren't only in Toronto, they're international!

tomorrow, i'm leading a walk through the streets around the Gladstone Hotel--THE IMAGINARY LIFE OF BEACONSFIELD VILLAGE. we meet at 11:30, behind the hotel (at Gladstone & Queen West) so if you're in town, see you there?

on editors, again

2009-04-26T19:09:00.001+02:00

oh, the terrible woes of cutting work down to fit...CBC's "As It Happens" played the audio of this Rowan Atkinson & Hugh Laurie sketch, in honour of Shakespeare's 445th birthday ("Shakey" was baptised on April 26th, 1564.)