Hi everyone,
As I've hinted at previously, this blog is moving. Please direct your keen interest toward http://imagitude.com. I've successfully imported all of the material from here, though I will still be tinkering with the new format over the next while. Switching from Blogger to WordPress is like switching from Mac to Linux - more user options, but less user coddling.
Thank you to everyone who has visited Imaginary Magnitude. I hope you continue to visit at the new site.
I am spending the summer immersing myself in reading all things psycho. I came across a statement which, if you can get past the academic tone, provides a key interpretation of how the relational approach (which is what I'm studying) is divergent from classical psychoanalysis' emphasis on a one-person psychology.
"The relational-perspectivist approach I am advocating views the patient-analyst relationship as continually being established and reestablished through ongoing mutual influence in which both patient and analyst systematically affect, and are affected by, each other. A communication process is established between patient and analyst in which influence flows in both directions. This implies a "two-person psychology" or a regulatory-systems conceptualization of the analytic process. The terms transference and countertransference too easily lend themselves to a model that implies a one-way influence in which the analyst reacts to the patient. That the influence between patient and analyst is not equal does not mean that it is not mutual; the analytic relationship may be mutual without being symmetrical."
- Lewis Aron, A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis
The author proceeds to develop this distinction between relational and classical (two-person vs. one-person psychology) as it pertains to intersubjectivity (the mutual awareness of what the other is thinking/feeling in a therapeutic environment and how this field of awareness affects both the patient and analyst). The quote above is a brilliantly distilled proposition which may seem commonsensical on first reading, but with a broader understanding of the history of psychoanalysis I can see how revolutionary a statement this is.
It was with considerable surprise when, browsing the shelves of our favourite used bookstore, Balfour Books, I was handed a book by my wife. "Did you see this?" It was purporting to be about a massive psychoanalytic commune which had its roots in downtown Toronto during the 60s and 70s. I was surprised because I'd never heard of it before - the group was called Therafields. I was immediately struck by the communal angle, the era, the emphasis on psychological investigation - it was like being handed a screenplay by David Cronenberg. The fact that I am studying psychotherapy and its theoretical/historic development made it irresistible.
Subtitled The Rise And Fall of Lea Hindley-Smith's Psychoanalysis Commune, Grant Goodbrand's Therafields is just that. From the mid-60s till the early-80s, what was eventually coined Therafields, became one of the largest active communes in North America (significant considering both the era and that it happened with virtually no physical or cultural traces left in this city), owning as many as 35 houses within, and 400 acres of farmland just outside Toronto. At its apex it had over 900 members.
Starting out with a modest practice in the Annex, Welsh émigré Lea Hindley-Smith began by seeing people in her home. Her open embrace of students combined with an uncanny ability to get to the bottom of her clients' problems (not to mention her real estate acumen) conspired along with the socially progressive ideals of the 60s to develop a remarkable experiment in psychotherapy: a live/work environment which operated also as an ongoing group-process for its members, all under the auspices of Hindley-Smith who became their professor, CEO, and den mother. More houses were bought so that more living spaces could be added to accommodate new members, and new groups were developed. The story of Therafields is an account of how this creative hive eventually became an unmanageable empire. It is also an invaluable reflection of the changes happening at the time, guest-starring those stranded by the revoked promises of Vatican II, the back-to-the-farm movement, and the idea that psychotherapy could be about society rather than the individual.
I am a child of the 70s. Nothing could possibly be less meaningful than that statement. However, culturally speaking, I was surrounded by the 70s. The mid-70s to mid-80s were a formative time in Canadian television. In other words, we saw a lot of ourselves. And what we saw was produced and inflected by those who came of age in the 60s and early 70s (that's the way it always worked until recently, by the way - the older generation helped the younger generation identify with their own generation). In other words, I can imagine Therafields, while reading about it. Goodbrand has done a good job of contextualizing the era in which his book takes place. It also helps that Goodbrand was a key member of Therafields himself, and as such is gifted with a familiarity which an outside author would struggle to develop. The flip-side to that statement is that an outside author might have had a better chance of keeping the rhythm of the book's story consistent: there is a habit of temporal back-and-forth which does not make for smooth comprehension at times.
Considering Goodbrand's credentials, Therafields unfortunately suffers from a detached perspective. He is as qualified as anyone to write about Lea Hindley-Smith and those who were key to the group's skyward development - like esteemed poet bpNicol, for example - yet it seems only an accumulation of actions, the plotline of a biography, which gives us clues to the hearts beating behind the cast of characters. Goodbrand's book sometimes reads like an account rather than an experience.
And here we come to a marketing dilemma: I'm not sure who the intended audience is. I am thankfully, luckily, well-suited to read, understand, and enjoy Therafields. Yet... With its insistence on differentiating what Hindley-Smith practiced (Kleinian) from classical psychoanalysis, without necessarily providing a debriefer for the reader on what makes Kleinian psychoanalysis different from it, I cannot imagine the "average reader" walking away knowing what that all should mean. Perhaps that won't matter if they are keen on digging into a prime slice of Toronto history - complete with addresses, one could conceivably operate a motor-tour of where Therafields took place.
It is, nonetheless, an insightful read and an invaluable chronicle of a peculiar social/cultural phenomenon. Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand (ISBN: 978-1-55022-976-9), is available (evidently) from a used bookstore near you, and also online.
I don't know when exactly, but this tract of land is going to change soon. Move, to be precise. How (as in format and content) I am not sure. Where, I'm pretty sure but without knowing how I don't want to make any promises.
When I started Imaginary Magnitude, it was a means for me to explore and share ideas on a variety of things: things philosophical, things artistic, things writerly, sometimes things political and social. There were (and are still) essays, book reviews, shitloads of photography, thoughts on film, thoughts on me and my direction (or lack thereof). It is this last point which has become topical, if not online then off.
Back in 2006, when I posted my first "Hello World", I was an employee for a film/TV production company, in search of independence. Within the following year, I found that independence as a freelancer. It was a successful decision. On June 12th, I will sit on a specialized panel at the TIFF Lightbox in downtown Toronto to discuss stereographic 3D filmmaking. Last year, I presented my thoughts on digital post production workflows at Pinewood Studios. Over the course of my career, I've supervised at least two feature films which have opened at #1 in the North American box office. I have an honorary Emmy Award for my work in the edit room. I also got to sit in on a recording session with producer Hal Willner, and had the honour of witnessing Mary Margaret O'Hara lay down the vocals for her chilling rendition of Blues In The Night. These are all good things, and I put them out there not to boast or chest-thump, but because I often get so wrapped up in the day-to-day details of my profession that I overlook the significance of certain plot points.
Thing is, what I'm doing is not creative work. It's loosely collaborative and, if anything, I've most enjoyed the parts where I've been a voyeur. As regular readers will note, I'm a fiction writer. A novelist who, at 39, needed (note past-tense - I am 40 now) a career which did not consume every moment of the day (and/or weekend) with the flotsam and jetsam of other people's creative (and logistic) stress - or, put in a better way, something consumed by the right people and the right stress, for the right reasons.
After long consideration, I decided in 2010 to pursue an education in psychotherapy, with an eye to practice as a therapist. Psychology has been something I've always been pulled towards, and psychotherapy seems a fitting combination of my skills and interests. Last September was my first class and the first year has raced past me: a lot of writing, a lot of reading, a lot of listening, a lot of talking and feeling. So far, so good. I've got two more years ahead of me, but will begin seeing clients as early as November of this year as part of the training program.
I've had to reconsider many things lately, this blog being one of them. Since contributing to the post production diary on Guy Maddin's film (via Tumblr), the Blogger interface seems a little clunky and not as receptive to throwing paint on the wall. I also don't know what this is about anymore: this blog. So, I may abandon it and start something new...or I might simply import this sucker elsewhere. I've got a couple of domains held, and a cool webhost, so the rest is really up to me (and time, and Fate, and my patience with coding). Besides, five years is a long time to do anything.
This is not my last post, but by September I'm sure I will have put a new site together. A new address as well. I will let you know when that happens.
[June 3rd: edited for clarity and accuracy of my age, in case anyone thinks I'm trying to pass myself off as 39]
ARG! One of my favourite literary blogs is ending its run! I encourage you all to visit Ward Six. I really appreciated their approach: to book reviews, to the art of writing. To art itself.
The reasons they give are sensible, yet I will be selfish and whinge that I am now left with oh so very few relevant, intelligent, knowledgeable literary blogs to follow.
Nonetheless, I wish John and Rhian all the best.
It's the 32nd anniversary of my uncle's murder. Details here: http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=44215.
Sad, numb.
I was in a mood when I wrote this - hard not to be, I suppose. However, I don't want it to come across as maudlin, so I thought I'd add some context.
I chose this year to make a statement about it, on social media especially (Facebook, Twitter). Why? Because, outside of the initial blog posts I published around the time of the America's Most Wanted episode, it's been a source of untapped grief. In making it public, I was unabashedly putting it out there - to friends and acquaintances, and strangers alike - instead of it being this twisted little secret which swims around my head.
The fact is, my uncle's death has nothing to do with me. I never had the chance to meet him. I am involved in the sense you would be involved if you were researching a stranger from another age, another country, who just happened to be related. And yet his story is woven into mine, distant though our two lives were. I am older than he was when he was shot. I wasn't even 9 years old back then, and I didn't learn about it until I was 17. The tragedy was delayed for me: time-released.
In any case, this is my sorrow, shared briefly with you. It is, I should add (in all fairness), a necessary exploitation of a crime, in the faint hope someone will happen across an old Guild D40 guitar, or know what happened to a burglar with a Leica fetish. Faint hope, for sure, but it's part of the process of grief.
First off, things are going very well on the Keyhole blog. If you haven't checked it out, please do. Yes, this is me, shilling for myself (and the film).
It is a departure from Guy's previous works, which tended to rely on the aesthetic of film itself as a language; Guy has been very upfront about his love of tropes from the early days of cinema. The difference is that in Keyhole these elements are reordered in priority, toward the background as mise-en-scène and not a character in and of itself. Keyhole is subliminally deeper and more purely emotional than his earlier films; a drawback is that I'm not sure how much people will be able to absorb in one viewing. If there is one challenge that I am experiencing, it is balancing the educational, editorial, and entertainment-oriented components of the diary/blog.
Aside from this, teaching, student-ing, writing are going well. I am working on a submission letter to a literary agent for my novel. The weather is getting warmer. I can't complain
Well, I will complain: we have a federal election coming up May 2nd. I don't mind the election per se, but we have exceeded three weeks of campaigning already and not one word of either Afghanistan or Libya - two wars which require a position, regardless of whether you are the sitting government or one of the contenders. Oh, and health care. It's the weird-assed priorities which bug me - who are they trying to appeal to? Swing voters and pundits, it seems.
Good news #1: I'm supervising the post production on the new film by Guy Maddin, Keyhole.
Good news #2: I've been asked to do a blog/diary of its progress. Sweet!
Here's the link to my Keyhole post production blog. Don't be surprised if it takes my attention away from here for the next while. I will endeavour to keep Imaginary Magnitude updated.
I love looking at The Onion's "Weekender", their satirical take on the weekend magazine that comes with your major newspaper (a la The New York Times' Sunday magazine).
They're brilliant when, behind the jabs at fluff/news magazine inanity, there's a "meta" quality. Their satirization of the way fonts and type placement are abused, for example.
They've even gone so far as spoofing the NYT fashion magazine
My recent favourite:
I am beginning a small bout of learning, if that is possible, into what is called "string theory" (there is a nice article here, which summarizes the basics at the bottom). I'm learning about it, because there is so much controversy directed at it. On the one hand, it is a contender for The Theory Which Explains Everything (Ultimately). Yet, there is (after over 40 years of theorizing) no documentable proof of its existence. This would be a question of trivia were this theory not so heavily influential - and invested into - within academia (particularly in America's most elite universities), where there is growing concern that this theory has become a self-propelling conceptual vehicle which is capable of using unanswered questions of its existence to justify its existence.
I once chatted up someone who revealed himself to be a retired physics professor, and the subject of string theory came up. He smirked and said dryly, "String theory is a cult, waiting for its Jonestown."
How could I not take that as a cue to learn more?
When Ben Affleck's The Town came out, many praised it as a powerful crime drama/action film. And yet, the shine seems to have come off of that project, probably as a result of people chasing the hype and actually watching it.
First, let's discuss its poster. In recent years, I've become sensitive to bad marketing. A good example of this is the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall: the ad campaign (in Toronto at least) consisted of anonymous black and white bus and streetcar ads, with hand-scrawled "I HATE YOU SARAH MARSHALL!" (and the like) written on them*. In short, the campaign was cheap-looking, lame, and soured any potential expectation I had for the film - it wasn't until much later, at my wife's urging, that I caught it on DVD and found it to be one of the comedy highlights of the year.
Similarly, the poster for The Town (displayed here) is a marketing mystery to me: it looks like a horror movie. It's directed by and stars Ben Affleck, yet the poster is covered in evil nuns with automatic weapons. In short, I don't get it: sure, it's a "serious movie" but what were they thinking? Was it reverse psychology? Who knows. If it were me, it would be a close-up photo of John Hamm licking Ben Affleck's unshaven face, with the caption: "Holy shit! It's the guy from MadMen with Ben Affleck! (They also shoot weapons!)"
Then there's the film itself. From a technical point of view, it's very impressive. Affleck's direction is solid. The performances are gritty and engaging. It's free of stunt-casting. Camerawork, editing, sound: great. But when the credits rolled, I realized what was wrong. What's wrong is that the story's been done a hundred fucking times before - and at least once by Michael Mann. So, for me, there was nothing being risked as a viewer because, having watched more than one crime drama in my life, there were no surprises in the script. Believe me when I say that I wanted this film to be as good as it promised - and, in fact, it is good. Just not as good as it clearly could've been when you take into account all that it has going for it.
So what did I want The Town to be? I wasn't sure...until I saw the Australian crime drama, Animal Kingdom on DVD. It has all the grit, tension, and complexity of The Town, with less overt style, and no actors recognizable to North American audiences (outside of Memento's Guy Pearce). It's poster? Have a look:
It's like a Jeff Wall photograph. And in the middle of it all is the crafty look on the face of actor Jacki Weaver (nominated, it should be noted, for Best Supporting Actress at the upcoming Oscars).
Animal Kingdom is a film fluent in the crime drama language - it even shares some of the tropes of The Town (the nervous druggie robber, the dutiful police detective) yet never once feels as if you are watching a re-treaded story. It is unpredictable and the performances are naturalistic and nuanced. It is its lack of artifice which keeps us watching, whereas with The Town, each successive car chase weighed it down with Hollywood cliché. Where the latter certainly carries legitimate tension, the former is quietly disturbing and takes a more nihilistic view of the cops and robbers game.
The good news is that both are available for your perusal on DVD, and both are extremely watchable. Neither will ultimately disappoint: it just depends on where your expectations are set. I feel that Animal Kingdom is the film The Town wanted to be.
* I admit I'm particularly sensitive to ads which don't make it clear that they are ads, especially if they look like actual public messages of hatred.An article I wrote back in March of 2010 ("I'll Show You Stupid") is getting a lot of steam, it seems. Nice to see new visitors. It's nice to look back at something I've written in the past - the good stuff at least - and see that my instincts were well targeted. In the case of this particular article, it was about the dangers of denigrating (political) others on the basis of how intelligent they come across; the danger was that such actions back-fire more often than not. It mentioned a certain former governor of Alaska.
I've been thinking and discussing the subject of elitism quite a bit lately. There are many subtleties in the way we use the word "elite", but when used in its current populist political form, what people are particularly referring to are those who are educated. Plain and simple. I've spent many an hour, day, year, working with and speaking to people who are very educated and worldly, and I must say that they desperately need to get organized if they are to live up to the hype of being the human whippets they are made out to be.
This last October, Toronto voted for a populist mayor - a champion of the surrounding suburbs - who played the "elite" card quite a bit. Regardless that the man is a millionaire from a millionaire family, that he went to Carlton University, he was able to parlay the us-versus-them thing quite well. Helps that he coaches football and is built like a linebacker and probably looks exactly as he did in high school. Thing is, by all rights, he is an elite. Meanwhile, the target of his vitriol, the downtown intellectuals that I hang with (I swear I don't do it for this reason) - the people who think bike lanes are safe and that public transit is important - are positively victimized by the very thing they are accused of. You see, I think the intelligentsia failed Toronto, just as they typically do most civilizations: where were they (hell, we) during the ten months of the pre-election hype? Where were they when a candidate capable of beating Ford needed to be picked (I don't think anyone really supported Smitherman - for *'s sake, he adopted a child six months before the election, how responsible is that?). Well, the "elites" were chattering amongst themselves, refuting Ford's populist bullshit as just that. What everyone forgot is that elections are competitions and without a competitor we ended up with the bully from high school as our hall monitor for the next four years.
The point I'm trying to make (casually, and without credentials because this is a blog and I'm not a journalist) is that the so-called elitists are too busy looking at subtlety, too busy drawing examples from the history of civilization to actually stick their necks out and actually pick a candidate. In short, intellectuals hate making decisions and would rather prefer to show off how much they know about things. That's how we end up with Rob Ford as mayor. That's how we ended up with Stéphane Dion leading the Liberal party, or allowing members of the Reform Party to vote twice (if they belonged to both parties) in the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Reform Alliance parties. The intellectuals - the so-called elites - were busy sitting on the sidelines trading notes, impressing each other with witty barbs.
And this is why I have a stake in the whole "elite" argument. In a sense, yes, they are the enemy. Not because they want anything, or that they are organized enough to have an agenda in the first place, but rather because they don't know what they want for anyone other than themselves and most of them are too afraid of being politically active. In other words, they should know better, should do better, but they don't. And as a result they doom the viability of the very life they live.
(I had done a mini-review of this on my end-of-the-year post, but thought it merited its own entry)
I found myself flipping through the Globe and Mail book section one weekend in the fall of 2010, and found myself staring at a review for a non-fiction book called The Tiger, by author John Vaillant. Let me begin by saying that I am a prolific reader, yet not someone phased by what's new so much as what interests me. To this extent, given my eclectic tastes, I will switch from Turgenev to Bukowski, from John Ralston Saul to Stanislaw Lem, and so on. I sometimes don't have a lot of time to read books, period, owing to a fairly full schedule of projects (which includes working on a novel). As a result, I sometimes feel a little out of touch with the contemporary world of books, especially when there are people on Twitter who are aiming to read fifty books this year.
Getting back to me and the review, I glanced at the synopsis and was struck by how meaty it was: the Russian far east, a vengeful killing machine, a dark exploration of our ties to nature. It seemed to be everything I was looking for (especially as a Russophile) and gave me an opportunity to actually read something published in the year that I was reading it.
It is, in short, a fabulous book. Fabulous, above all, because of the depth of Vaillant's research into his subjects and his skill at balancing this collective learning against the white knuckle tension that is at the heart of the story. The Tiger begins with the stalking and subsequent killing of a tayozhnik - a Siberianism for forest dweller - named Markov and the series of events it sets in motion against the backdrop of the merciless taiga (or "boreal forest") surrounding the little logging town of Sobolonye.
The tension is established early, not by Markov's demise so much as the complex relationship between humans and tigers in this paradoxical part of the world, much of the relationship predicated on the aboriginal teaching that a tiger will never attack a human, so long as the former respects the latter's spiritual and physical superiority. This superiority is laid out in full measure: from a zoological perspective, the tiger is perhaps the most sublime killing machine that exists in the world of mammals and Vaillant spares no time outlining how every inch of the beast exceeds any comparable hunter on the planet - both in physicality and mentality. The tiger thinks. The tiger learns. Most compelling of all, the tiger remembers.
It is this last quality which lends much tension, because, as the tiger is tracked by a team of professional hunters over the course of two weeks, the question is repeatedly asked: did Markov bring this on himself? And how?
The Tiger is a stunning combination of layered storytelling and educational insight into the evolutionary relationship between man and animal. Indeed, given the barren environment of the setting, it feels sometimes as if the conflicts between man and animal are staged in a prehistoric past rather than their modern setting in the late 90s. There are also some sad truths made about the aftereffects of the economic collapse of the former Soviet Union and the perennial designs China has on the taiga's natural resources - tigers included.
The Tiger, by John Vaillant (ISBN: 978-0307268938) is published by Knopf and is readily available in your local, independent bookstore.
There is a lot of anger these days being directed towards a group known as "the elites". I'm not sure who they are. Sometimes I am part of them. Sometimes I'm not, but standing apart from a crowd, with their torches, storming toward the castle gates which protect "the elites".
The elites are the rich.I keep hearing this term: the elites. And when I step back I think of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement, and how they ultimately targeted people who wore glasses. And when I say targeted, I mean murdered.
When I hear, in that angry, spittle-on-the-microphone voice - elites - I think of the ease with which we can take a non-specific swath of individuals from various classes, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds, and clump them together almost by magic. And they suddenly become something standing in the way of common sense, progress, Providence. Those fucking elitists.
I can take everything that makes your life hard - the year-to-year complexities of living in a society with others - and compel you to believe that if it wasn't for some small band of conniving intellectuals things would be better, simpler.
I can blame the elites.Doris Lessing:
There is a certain social process that is known and very visible, but perhaps not acknowledged as much as it should be. It is that one where a new idea (or an old one in new form) is accepted by a minority, while the majority are shouting treason, rubbish, kook, Communist, capitalist, or whatever is the valued term of abuse in that society. The minority develop this idea, at first probably in secrecy, or semi-secrecy, and then more and more visibly, with more and more support until...guess what? This seditious, impossible, wrong-headed idea becomes what is known as "received opinion" and is loved and valued by the majority. Meanwhile, of course, a new idea, still seditious etc. and so forth, has been born somewhere else, and is being cultivated and worked out by a minority. Suppose we redefine the word elite, for our present purposes, to mean any group of people who for any reason are in the possession of ideas that put them ahead of the majority?
If holding certain beliefs or regarding some aspects of life as being too complex to reduce to unconditional conclusions sets me apart from the crowd, and if this standing apart-ness is sedition, and if this is what it means to be an elitist, then I am an unrepentant elitist.
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