Book Review: Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand

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.

Another One Bites The Dust

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.

The Town vs. Animal Kingdom

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.

Guilt By Association

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.

Movies & A Book: Some of The Best Things I've Witnessed in 2010

Here's the best of what I've seen this year. I haven't seen everything. You may disagree with what I have seen. This is life.

FILM:

Inception

Go ahead. Try. Try disagreeing that this is one of the most technically (and perhaps conceptually) elaborate mainstream Hollywood productions released in years which also happens to work as a "movie" that a wide variety of audiences would enjoy watching.

There has been a backlash against Inception. I don't know how or why this is - perhaps it was over-sold as a deep "puzzle-solver" film, which it is not. And yes, the NYT's A.O. Scott has a point in his comment that the film's literal depiction of dreams are lacking psychological heft (outside of Marion Cotillard's performance as DiCaprio's wife). In any case, something has caused a revolt against this film and I say this revolt is missing the point.

Inception is, generally speaking, the most watchable, the most fascinating film of 2010. You are allowed to hate it.

A Prophet

I am a huge fan of Jacques Audiard, a French director who has always rewarded the viewer with films (Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped) that balance passion with style. With A Prophet, Audiard expands his canvas, creating a gritty, novelistic masterpiece on-par with The Godfather (yes). The story concerns a young incarcerated Muslim who slowly rebuilds himself from within the treachery of prison life, rising from under the thumb of a vicious mob leader to become his own person and create his own empire. Epic, patient, and in places extremely violent. People will be referring to this film for years to come even if it has not really made a mark in North America. Again, a masterpiece.

The Eclipse

I realize this Irish film was released in 2009, but it didn't get here until now. A compelling ghost story which eschews the two-dimensionality of ghost story films. It was around the twenty-minute mark that I realized it was a film which was going to confound my expectations (expectations based upon years and hundreds of similar plot lines): it wasn't going to squander what it was and fall prey to hackneyed cliché. A gorgeous, touching, ultimately humanistic film with a stand-out performance by Ciarán Hinds as a grieving father of two children who must swallow his pride to escort a loud-mouthed Aidan Quinn through the motions of a book tour of the small coastal city of Cobh, in County Cork. A sublime achievement by director Conor McPherson.

Notable: Winter's Bone - see it. It's on DVD now. Like A Simple Plan, it's a self-contained "rural thriller" (ugh) with a chilling undertone of barren hopelessness. Unlike A Simple Plan, it's uncomplicated which is what gives it more of an honest strength. Exit Through The Gift Shop is the perhaps best film made about art and the art world that I have seen - like Inception, it's not trying to be deep, just smart. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World blew me away because I expected it to be weak (perhaps because all the publicity photos inexplicably used a static image of Michael Cera standing against a fucking wall...imagine if you will, trying to sell Star Wars with a picture of Mark Hamill sitting cross-legged in the desert - sounds awesome, eh?). Not only was it not weak, it was the strangest case of "I don't know why I love this movie but I really do". Painstakingly, sublimely Toronto-centric (which, unlike the inexplicable promo photos of Michael Cera, shouldn't be factored into explaining why it didn't fare well at the box office) and wildly imaginative - those two things have never met before...oh but wait, I forgot the perfect companion piece: Kick Ass - also shot in TO, and also exceedingly expectation-defying (although the climax is kinda drawn-out). As far as performances go, Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Colin Firth (The King's Speech) stand out, along with Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, and Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (who, at 14-years, shows huge promise as an actor).

BOOK:

I would have said "BOOKS", but due to work and school I haven't read anything published this year (that I can remember), with the exception of John Vaillant's The Tiger. Lucky for me, since it is without doubt one of the best non-fiction titles I've read in years.

The Tiger is a meaty real-life tale of vengeance by the titular beast, in the winter hinterland of the Russian Far East (which the author calls, paradoxically, "the boreal forest"). Vaillant describes an environment historically, politically, and biologically unique, inhabited by hardened outcasts. The shadow of a predator male tiger, known never before to attack without cause, creates a wave of dread throughout the land, with only a small band of volunteers to figure out the mystery. Vaillant provides wave after wave of fascinating detail - examples of how man and beast have evolved throughout time, how human and animal behaviour have worked in similar paths - that by the end of the book you feel as if you should have a credit in Ethology. This is truly a page-turner and I cannot recommend it enough.

Book Review: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes things just line up in such a way that you can't help feeling they were put there on purpose. Early this month, as part of a course I'm taking, I went to a weekend retreat, held at a secluded compound by the Credit River. It was a bit eerie, because many of my dreams take place in expansive compounds: wherever I go, even if it seems I'm outside, I just have to look up to see that there is a roof, or some sort of enclosure to remind me that I am not free. So, what book from our library did I take with me at the last minute? Why, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, of course. What I didn't realize is that much of it takes place on a compound...but I'll get back to this.

I've not read any books by Ishiguro - I haven't even seen the movie adaptation of Remains of the Day. That said, I did work on Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In The World, an adaptation of one of his short stories. I'd heard good things about Never Let Me Go, and had always meant to read it. With it being released as a film recently (I don't think it did that well, despite the critical praise), and since I needed something to read during my time away, I thought it would be a good pick.

Never Let Me Go concerns the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. It's told from Kathy's perspective in the present. She is a carer, who drives from centre to centre, visiting those she looks after. Very soon we are introduced to their beginnings, as children, in a place called Hailsham. It's an isolated educational enclave, somewhere in England, where the students live, go to school, and grow up. But there's something a little odd about it all. Perhaps it's the isolation from the rest of the world. Something in the way some of their guardians regard them. All too soon, their sun-dappled childhood in Hailsham becomes something which haunts them as they grow into young adults. It's practically all Kathy can use to mark the passing of her time.

Within these reminiscences, we are introduced to Tommy and Ruth, who become the foundational friendships Kathy clings to through adolescence, regardless that Ruth oscillates from friend to enemy - a colourful rather than careful individual who becomes a voice of danger in the fog of their relationship.

The magic of this book is the skill with which Kathy's perspective is written. There is a purpose for Hailsham, for their being there. There is a reason she is a carer. Never Let Me Go is a capital-H haunting novel, inhabited by people who are slightly cold but reaching out, never quite managing to touch a meaning they hope is there. I can't say much more without spoiling things, not that it's a book laden with surprises, so much as layered with subtle, sad observations. A beautiful book for a rainy day.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (ISBN: 978-0-676-97711-0) is available at an independent bookstore near you, or at various online retailers.

I Don't Want To Know

As a writer, even though I am not part of any sort of literati, I am still plugged into the lit scene. You need to be if you want to understand the general to-and-fro of any industry you are interested in becoming a part of (same goes for TV, music, theatre, etc..). That said, I must make an admission. I am making this admission because I think there are a lot of people like me out there who feel the same but are reticent to admit it.

Here goes: I don't take any particular interest in the life of the artist outside of his or her art.

When I read a book, I don't care if an author comes from the East Coast and studied journalism, had a drug problem and now lives in a shed with a mastiff. It's not that I don't care about this author personally, it's that these facts shouldn't have anything to do with the book that I am about to read. I should be able to pick up the book, knowing nothing about said author, and be able to read it, enjoy it, be fully affected by it, without substantially missing something due to a lack of familiarity with the author's biography.

And yet, when you are culturally plugged-in (and by this I mean, you check out industry blogs, trade mags, etc.) there is so much white noise about the artists themselves that it seems divergent from what it is they are supposed to be doing: their work. We can talk about Picasso's passions, but 100 years from now there will probably only be discussion of his work - your work is the only thing left after you and everyone who knew you has died. And if people are still talking more about you than your work after this point, then I would think the quality of your work was overstated.

Would knowing that Stephen King battled drug addiction offer an insight into some of his writing? Yes. But, my point is that if that insight is necessary in order to fully appreciate a piece of work then there is a problem. The work doesn't work if you need a biographical cheat sheet to inject context into the material.

I think Bryan Ferry is an fantastic vocalist - and I don't want to know anything more than that. Nor the details outside a director's films, nor what inspired the playwright to write her play. I've got my own shit going on, thanks very much.

Ephemera is for journalists, fanzines, and those working on their Ph.D. The general public should not feel inadequate if they pick a DVD or book off a shelf, sit down in a theatre, or load a song without being prepared with supplemental information not contained within the medium which contains the work. The work inevitably has to stand up for itself. I write this for two reasons: first, with the likes of the AV Club and traditional print/TV media clamouring to add as much web-based context as possible to every article, there's a growing sense that - for the everyman - if you aren't savvy to the smallest details of each artist's passings and goings, you are nothing but a tourist. Secondly, embracing social media to a claustrophobic degree, we can now read endless commentating on authors reading their work for a live audience!...something no one really asked for outside the publishing companies themselves and perhaps the authors' parents. Let's face it: most authors can't read aloud to save their lives - it's not their specialty.

There are reasons for digging deeper, but that's up to the individual. It was interesting to learn more about HP Lovecraft when I reviewed Michel Houellebecq's quasi-biography of him and his work. What's funny, however - using that same example - is that when I proceeded to read the two works by Lovecraft contained in that same book, I don't recall thinking to myself "Ahh - this is where his uncomfortable relationship with women takes shape!". That's because the stories were two of his masterpieces, and when you witness a masterpiece, peripheral biographical information is going to gunk-up your enjoyment.

The medium may be the message, but the work contains the words. Outside of this we are left with cultural "bonus features". Nice to have, but not necessary.

Ticket Stub: Spalding Gray

I have this ticket stub (above) from a one-man-show - Spalding Gray at Massey Hall. It was good. I don't know how to describe his "show" in practical terms: he didn't sing, he didn't dance, he didn't perform in the traditional sense. He talked. About himself. He was a monologuist. And his stories would encapsulate, in ever widening circles of narrative, the great many wonderful and (more often) terrifying things going on with his life.

He was an actor/playwright whose home was primarily New York. I'm not sure if New York makes people like Gray anymore. These performances were not "actor/playwright" shows - these shows were, in retrospect, a form of therapy. Gray talked about the things - worries, revelations, lost epiphanies - which affected him as a regular human being; the things which happen around the things we do with our lives.

His best-known performance, captured on film by Jonathan Demme, is Swimming To Cambodia. In it, with a desk, chair, and glass of water he discusses the events which surrounded the time he played a small role in the critically-acclaimed film, The Killing Fields. He talks of his research for the role in the film, of what actually happened during the reign of terror in Cambodia during the early-to-mid 70s.

Gray was a man given to self-exploration, perhaps painfully so. His mother committed suicide while he was in his 20s, and he exhibited symptoms of bipolar depression himself. Her death held an eerie fascination for him. In subsequent performances (also made into films), Monster in a Box (about writing a novel) and Gray's Anatomy (about his fear that he was going blind), he explored his neuroses and anxieties and how they filtered through his relationships with those close to him.

The key to Gray is that he was funny as hell, which turned all of his painfully honest accounts, his public descriptions of private contortions all the more enlightening for the viewer, as opposed to merely sympathetic. Gray was neurotic, but he wasn't looking for sympathy from the audience, and I think this is the second key to understanding him (as a performer, at least). When I saw him at Massey Hall in November of 1996, I don't remember a lot of details (it was his It's a Slippery Slope tour), with the exception of his description of sitting outside, trying to have a soulful discussion with his distant father while a fog horn sounds in the distance. I remember this because I was laugh-crying throughout most of it.

When I heard in 2004 that Spalding Gray was missing, that it was suspected he had jumped off a ferry into the East River, I was not shocked. Suicide - as an objective event, as a subjective idea - was something he had discussed since Swimming to Cambodia. Add to this that he had been in a terrible car accident a few years earlier which had left his right leg partially disabled (not to mention having a fractured skull), and you could see (in retrospect, of course) how, given his frame of mind, it might have pushed those dark thoughts further toward the limelight of contemplation.

It is a shame.

Swirl

I am trying (desperately) to avoid a "boy, it's been a wacky ride these last few months!" post. It certainly isn't for lack of things to talk about, news to update you with, opinions to confess/shout.

Thing is, I don't know who you are. Sure, I know there are some of you who are semi-regular visitors. There are others who happen upon this place by accident (via Blogger or StumbleUpon). There are also those who come here via Google searches, either via my name or - most likely - a book review (which admittedly I haven't done in, oh, a year or so *). And no, this isn't going to be a "Matt wittily evading accusations of being a lazy bastard by turning the camera on the reader" post.

I've been posting artsy stuff, writerly stuff, industry opinion stuff. I don't mind the randomness, so long as there's no fluff. I do mind the lack of output. I wish, for one, that I could post more photographs (which is to say, I wish I had a better selection of photos to post **).

It comes down to the fact that I've been working like a dog since May (note: this happens every year that I'm working on a SAW film). When I come out of these periods, I feel like Rip van Winkle: a little dazed, slow on the up-take. Whereas last year this time I started teaching, this time this year I am a student (part-time) †. I have a small (but good) feature and a small (but good and potentially controversial) TV show on my plate from now till February. If funds allow, I also hope to have an editor working with me on my novel, with an eye to approaching a publisher or self-publishing if that doesn't seem feasible ††. I'm collaborating on a musical.

My plate is full.

- - - 

* which isn't to say that I'm not reading or that I don't want to do any more book reviews. I'm reading a lot of non-fiction, thank you. Much of it either out of professional or academic interest. However, if only to improve my Google ranking, here's a quick book review of Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño: What the fuck was that? (ISBN-13: 978-0811217170)

** another casualty of working so much is my photography. I still have the same roll of film in my camera that I'd loaded in June. I think I've only taken 4 exposures since then. Of course, my cellphone camera gets all the fun these days, unfortunately.

† I will be continuing teaching, but for only two terms this year as opposed to three (which was exhausting and... exhausting)

†† It needs a new name, for one thing. And I know this is going to drive me up the wall more than any changes to the actual content of the book.

A Life For Abandoned Chairs

I had a lovely interview with Ellen Moorhouse from the Toronto Star about my low-fi photo project, Conversations With Abandoned Chairs. It's now online, so please have a look if you're interested.

More posts coming soon, I swear!

Ryeberg

I should note that I've contributed a few pieces of work to an innovative website, called Ryeberg. The conceit of the site is user-contributed curated YouTube videos, narrated by personal essays on a variety of topics. I am in revision-mode currently, but when my stuff gets posted, I'll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to visit.

Conversations With Abandoned Chairs

I'm not sure why it hasn't occurred to me to post this here yet, but perhaps this gives an indication of how stretched my resources are at the moment. Over the last year, whenever I've come across an abandoned chair on the side of the road, I've taken a picture: a photo which does the abandoned chair justice. This has grown into a small collection of photos (with people submitting their own finds recently). I thought I would share. You can see the collection on my (ugh) Flickr site - just follow this link to see the set Conversations With Abandoned Chairs.

I'll Show You Stupid

Possibly the worst tactical mistake you can make, politically, is to make fun of an opponent's lack of intelligence. I say this because not only is there an influx of politically active people on the world stage who fall under the category of "lacking intelligence", but there is an absence of memory about how publicly scorning such people only empowers them (and, most importantly, voters).

It's hard. When someone says something completely false - and stupid - the well-educated person's knee-jerk instinct is to say "You're an idiot". Fair enough. But, it's the taunting that backfires. For example, look at Sarah Palin. I think she represents a necessary evil in American politics: a self-elected Voice of The People who campaigns on the rather wispy argument that the US is run by a bunch of elitists who don't understand "real Americans". It's all a bunch of crap (by elite, do you mean they have an education? don't you want the people running your country to have an education? to have seen something beyond the borders of your own country for sake of perspective? who the hell are 'real Americans'? does this imply 'false Americans'?), but it serves its purpose. And what do her critics - who, to be fair, constitute most of the people on the Earth - do? They make fun of her.

She's an idiot. A moron.

The problem is, she's a moron who appeals to a growing number of disenfranchised people who are looking for a proud, politically and morally uncomplicated banner to wave proudly over their heads. And yes, we can argue about why this is and who the supporters are, but - not to say that history is a 1:1 reflection of the future, because it's not - history has shown that history doesn't give a shit about those questions. Reflection happens in the future - that is, after we politely chortle to ourselves at all the nonsense of Palin, her "Tea Party", and her scads of uncivilized minions. That is, after they take the next election.

The elitist/commoner non-argument (it's a ploy, really) is as old as politics itself. We've had something very similar (and thankfully, tamer) happen in Canada. Our current government is a coalition of reformer factions who merged in the late 90s/early 00s to take over the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party (this would be the same as if the current "Tea Party" took over the Republican Party). They removed the word Progressive from the name and lead the country as a minority government. They too campaigned (and still do, whilst in power no less) as the party of the People, as an alternative to whomever stands against their policies (aka "the elites"). It's old hat.

Before they came into power, they - as the Alliance Party - tried very hard to unseat the ruling Liberal government (tangent: can you imagine if the US had a party called the Liberal Party?). Their leader was a man named Stockwell Day, who rode onto the scene (quite literally) on a Sea Doo. He was all charisma and commonality. But as time wore on, people found that his reformist ideas weren't very deep and a lot of the people in his party were either yahoos or - elitists? - began distancing themselves away from him. The chrome on his veneer began to chip away and the man became a running gag; the Prime Minister of the day, Jean Chretien, joked openly that he preferred having Day in opposition (as to suggest his chances were that much better to win elections against the Alliance). Long story short, all it took was a few years, a "unite the right" movement, and a new leader who could streamline (that is, squelch) internal strife and you had a winner. That is to say, the toppling of a government.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: making fun of people like Sarah Palin because she doesn't come across as polished, or sophisticated, or well-educated is ineffective. All you manage to do is inflame the passions of people - many of whom may have been too lethargic or apathetic to vote in the first place - so that they start creating local campaign offices. There is nothing like being intellectually offended to raise someone's ire - anyone's, no matter where or how they were raised. Raise the ire, that is, so as to make them active agents on behalf of those scorned by the "elites". Agents of "change".

George W. Bush was publicly derided by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike in almost every conceivable medium and venue, yet he served two four-year terms as President of the US. If you want to take down the likes of Palin, take her down as you would take down Reagan or Thatcher - that is, as an opponent worthy of debate, worthy of your concern. To do less would be to knot your own noose.

The Sky is Falling (Very Slowly), or, Will The Real Science Please Stand Up

The problem with having a belief in something which happens to be provocative (and by provocative, I mean something which is not embraced by the whole and which may be a bit thorny for some) is that, like in most aspects of life, all it takes is a few zealots to make you look like a fool by ideological proximity.

As I pointed out many moons ago (December of 2006!) when it comes to climate change (as opposed to the slightly misleading term global warming), outside of blind ignorance our greatest liability are people who jab an accusatory finger at every natural disaster and scream "You see! It's global warming! Climate change caused this! If we don't do something NOW we are doomed as a species!". For me, it started with Hurricane Katrina, when people (a fantastic percentage of whom had no scientific accreditation) began to suggest that it simply wasn't an old-school "act of nature", but rather something to be blamed upon worldwide environmental collapse (as if New Orleans didn't have enough problems to contend with). It fed into a grand conspiracy theory which gave certain people a quixotic reason to exist: that mankind was the chief culprit all along, and that it was only a question of years to fix it. Cue epilogue of Planet Of The Apes.

On the other (self-evident to the point where I wonder whether it's worth mentioning) end of the spectrum are the usual assortment of deep-pocketed corporate "carbon monoxide is good for you" state polluters, and knee-jerk libertarian radio hosts who feel that idling their cars is akin to patriotism (and, as an aside, the whole libertarian-patriot thing seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).

The thing is this, panic aside: I do believe in climate change. All that shit turning to water north of us (that would be the Arctic ice) is a sign. Much less lachrymose is all that science, provided by all those scientists, which pretty much confirms that, yes, climate change is real, and that, yes, human industry is a variable in its occurrence. The issue of how the future is looking as a result of climate change is less clear. The problem is this: remember those largely non-scientific people blaming Hurricane Katrina on climate change? The ones telling us that if we don't do something NOW then the world's a goner? They got a lot of attention; the cameras kept rolling. This was probably just a knee-jerk reaction of mass media which was (and is) delighted to scare the public any chance they get (it keeps ratings up). Well guess what: some scientists found that if they used the same sort of seismic analogies and kept the ticking clock of doom just a few minutes away, not only would they get attention, but they could get funding.

Inevitably, it had to end - the speculative bubble that is. You can only say that we have five more years to change the world for five years until people start asking why societies haven't collapsed like the finale of an Irwin Allen movie. And then someone or some group hacked into the records of some climate scientists and found that some of them were acting like jerks, that some of them didn't want to play nice with their facts (unlike all those journalists and columnists we read). To me, this was heart-breaking, because it allowed both honest sceptics and partisan political hacks alike to pull a j'accuse and call it Climategate (seriously, I look forward to a world without the silly and dated gate suffix) and call the science itself into question, as opposed to the questionable actions of a few. Some have hinted that the bad publicity fall-out could set climate science back by a decade if increased public persecution gets worse. However, I feel this is as likely as, well, the world ending in five years.

The good news is that the world hasn't ended; neither our world, nor the world of science. If anything, reading today's op-ed by Margaret Wente in the G&M, even people who previously took every opportunity to deny the existence of climate change are now looking at things plainly: no pro trumped-up worries about imminent global catastrophe, and no con lefty/green/hippy bullshit stereotypes. If anything, perhaps bringing those few scientists into the spotlight has, post whatever-gate, calmed everyone down a notch. Perhaps enough so that we will be able to parse our language into something which does not use fear as a means of persuasion. Perhaps so that we won't dilute the meaning of words like green and sustainable to homeopathic degrees.

I believe (or at least I hope) we can find an entry-point where we can use science and research rather than propaganda and fear to motivate ourselves to improve our prospects (that is, both human prospects and business prospects, two things which have not always shared mutually fulfilling goals). It is heartening to see that there may be an X-Prize for fuel/energy production, similar to what was done for sub-orbital exploration. I'd also like it if we could reboot the message of environmentalism with a good 'ol back-to-basics mantra of: use less (as in packaging, unnecessary products, natural resources). I will be happy, even if it is all a hopelessly lost cause, that we go down working on something together as opposed to a Purgatory of scoring political points against ourselves.

Tripping

So we went on a trip, an idea first posited by Ingrid which we polished (oh who am I kidding, she polished - I was just a witness) into an eleven-day, three-city, three-country vacation at the end of 2009.

London was the primary location seeing as our friend Shannon (member of the Z-Rays and now a music teacher) had moved there a couple of years ago - it's always easier when you have a friend in a strange town, especially when it's a massive place like London. Ingrid had gone there for a visit in late-Spring (it was during this time that we bought our first house...without her ever having walked into it). In the summer, Shannon came over and stayed with us while we renovated and had the electrical pulled out. It only seemed natural that she be the person we see to end the year (and decade) and since I'd never been to London, it was the perfect choice.

Thing is, it was also an opportunity for me to visit relatives in Holland - and when I say "relatives", I specifically mean my second cousin who lives outside the city of Leiden (notable, aside from its aged beauty, for its university - the second oldest in Europe).

Seeing as how the Eurostar train made its way from England to the continent via Brussels, Belgium, it occurred to me that it would be an excellent reason to check out a city I'd always wanted to investigate: Antwerp. Why Antwerp? Well...it's between London and Leiden and neither Ingrid nor I had ever been there, with the exception of a couple of instances in past visits when I had to switch trains at Antwerpen Centraal station. The city always looked like a gothic gem from the station, which is quite a complement seeing as Antwerpen Centraal is one of the most beautiful train stations in the world - seriously, it's dubbed "The Railway Cathedral" and worth the trip, if only just as a stopover.

The plan was set. And, regardless of the various chaotic things happening around (thankfully not to) us (the halted airline terrorist attack on Christmas, the stranded Eurostar trains just before then, a snowstorm in the UK just as we were leaving) it all went remarkably well, save for one missed train to The Hague.

Antwerp is a wonderful place to visit, with a mind-blowing mix of architectural styles, including some stunning Art Deco neighbourhoods. We stayed at the Mabuhay Lodgings, a conveniently located and very comfortable B&B with two very gracious hosts (and their two very cute cats). It's a gorgeous city with much to offer and I look forward to spending more time there. I tried speaking Dutch, but between my elementary knowledge of the language and the dialect spoken in Antwerp, it was easier just speaking English.

Leiden, in the province of South Holland, is a spiritual home-away-from-home for me. 15 years ago I had stayed with my cousin and her husband, just outside of Leiden (in the village of Zoeterwoude), after I'd graduated from college. Like Antwerp, we were a little rushed for time (the aim was to celebrate New Year's with our friend in London), but it was great to see the city again and spend time with my cousin (not to mention introducing Ingrid to her and her friends in the neighbourhood). We both look forward to returning, particularly when it's warmer. If there was one drawback to our trip, it's that it was unseasonably cold at times (and one can only flex one's Canadian-ness in the cold so often before you just want to wimp out and stay inside all day).

London surprised me. It was the one place I had no ideas or preconceptions about - I never had anything against it, but alternately never had much of an understanding about it beyond the clichés. It's a big, bustling, maze-like place which still somehow retains a convivial vibe; facing colder-than-normal temperatures while we navigated from place to place, I never felt the "silent sneer" you get from people in Toronto. I loved the pubs, I loved the beer, I loved Brick Lane (which reminds me of Kensington Market), I loved (again) the architecture, and was happy to have visited the Tate Modern (which had - coincidentally - curated a retrospective of artist Theo van Doesburg at the Stedelijk Museum in Leiden while we were there) as well as other sites and sights of interest. And yes, we even managed to hop onto one of the few remaining Routemaster buses in operation. We also met some of Shannon's friends and enjoyed a lovely Sunday roast with them at the Carpenter's Arms (a pub the notorious Kray brothers had bought for their mother). So much more to say, but that's it in a nutshell.

Not bad for eleven days (mind you, at least one full day was spent travelling). Photos to follow...

The Dark Side

I was flipping through the NYT last Sunday and came across a short collection of riffs from filmmakers about their favourite "Holiday Movies". The following, submitted by screenwriter David Benioff, was regarding Planes Trains and Automobiles by the late John Hughes:

Hughes once wrote: “I understood that the dark side of my middle-class, middle-American suburban life was not drugs, paganism or perversion. It was disappointment. There were no gnawing insects beneath the grass. Only dirt. I also knew that trapped inside every defeat is a small victory, and inside that small victory is the Great Defeat.”

I immediately caught the reference Benioff (via Hughes) was making and it struck a chord. You see, when we (in filmic terms) discuss the "dark side" of the middle-class in America, who else is this synonymous with? Correct: David Lynch. And was it not Lynch's seminal dark-side-of-middle-class-America, Blue Velvet, which features - literally - gnawing insects beneath the grass at the beginning? Oh, and the drugs and sexual perversion? Still don't believe me? Try this: Blue Velvet came out in '86. Planes Trains and Automobiles? That was 1987.

When I read Hughes' quote, I knew he had more to say about it. I could tell that he thought Hughes' film (and perspective on America) got short shrift.

In any case, what I'm saying is Hughes was picking on Lynch, perhaps more so picking on all of the cineastes and self-styled torch holders of American Surrealism. Look, he's saying (or I'm paraphrasing), why does any intelligent discussion of the "dark side" have to fast-forward to the Devil? Why are we in such a rush to point to the murkiest common denominator?

I think Hughes' perspective is more realistic. Perhaps even more frightening because it is anything but abstract. If there's anything which immobilizes the positivism of American  can-do - an adult Boogeyman if you will - it is the spectre of defeat. It is, after all, failure. There is nothing which cuts to the heart of our civilized fears with more power than failure, pure and simple. We do not want it infecting us. We do not want it living beside us, dying slowly.

I like the drama (nee opera) of Lynch's perspective. But it is only that: one perspective. I feel we cheat ourselves by claiming that one perspective as definitive before we've truly allowed ourselves to look at the whole landscape of the human psyche.

I also think John Hughes had a good soul.

For *'s Sake

It's been one of those battle-cries of mine the last while. Everything in the world, culturally-speaking (and I don't necessarily mean high culture) seems to be evaporating into mindless bullshit.

The AV Club - a site I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with already - just posted an interview with actor Paul Giamatti. In the opening summary, the interviewer describes the plot of his latest film, which reads like a counterscript of 1999's Being John Malkovich and yet there is no mention of this parallel anywhere in the article, something even Entertainment Tonight would do. The interviewer talks about this upcoming film with Giamatti as if it and his role - the John Malkovich role, if it were Being John Malkovich - were just soulless objects to be discussed out of necessity. In other words, it's just like any other media-junket interview, like something you would read in InStyle or Chatelaine. Not that those examples are b-a-d, but when you pride yourself as better, especially savvy, tongue-in-cheek better, you shouldn't even be in the same postal code as InStyle or Chatelaine if you want to retain your reputation.

The Motley Fool - again, a site previously known for being savvy, even though they deal with the stock market - now reads like Ain't It Cool News, complete with arguments which, under rational analysis, seem completely idiotic and antithetical to what one would assume is their mission statement (ie. being different than the rest of those brain-dead-and-short-sighted Money sites).

Oh, and CNN. Not that they've ever been more relevant than a Reuters news ticker, but they've gone from mediocre to stupid by allowing one of their show hosts, Lou Dobbs, to continuously question the origin of Barack Obama's citizenship, a paranoid suspicion virulent in the libertarian/right-wing fringe of the U.S. that has been repeatedly disproved (read: he doesn't want Johnny Foreigner running and ruining the most-possibly-greatest-country-ever-in-the-world).

Now, one of the arguments I can imagine hearing is: well, Matt, in a 24-hour newsday (whether on TV or the Internet) when people expect constant information there inevitably has to be weaker material. To which I say: I understand, but I'd settle for less information over less hours (if need be), if it means the information will be consistent and better. After all, you are what you eat, and in this day and age we feed on media in an astonishingly unconscious and voracious manner.

The Happiness Project

My friend, Charles Spearin, has released an innovative CD he calls "The Happiness Project". The gist of it is that he began to interview his neighbours and recorded their conversations. Attuned to the tonality of how people expressed themselves he got the idea to replace the voices of his interviewee's with musical instruments which mimicked each person's voice pattern. The result is a unique (and very approachable) experiment which weaves voice, instrumentation, and environmental background sounds (birds, etc..). You may know Charles' other projects, namely Broken Social Scene or Do Make Say Think. If you're interested, please check out the site for "The Happiness Project" and see what he's up to.

Miscellany: November 18, 2008

• Ingrid is approaching world domination. Her plaudit-winning reinterpretation of the cover for Cormac McCarthy's The Road has not only received international online acclaim (Bookninja, The Guardian, Boston Globe), but her work was featured in Sunday's New York (bloody) Times Book Review. Print and online editions (with the unfortunate misspelling of her last name in the print edition - needless to say this took a little of the shine off of the accolade. They will, however be printing a correction in an upcoming edition and the online version has her name spelled correctly).

• I've sent the first revised draft of my novel to a few selected readers. Unofficially looking for feedback and consensus that what I'm doing is worthwhile. Nervous. Anxious. Perhaps as a result of this and other things, I've been struck by some interesting what-if's regarding a new book idea. I must be a masochist. At least it doesn't hurt.

• I turned 38 on Saturday. I share that day with Ed Asner and Tilda Swinton (they were not in New York, unfortunately - I tried).
  

• Two films I worked on opened within two weeks of each other. One is a franchise horror film (of the "moral error leads to violent suffering" kind) which traditionally draws massive audiences and box office gold (if not good reviews). The other is (wait for it) a gore-Goth rock opera which is only receiving an eight-theatre release (if not good reviews). They represent what I've been working on for the last twelve months. Working in film/TV is "what I do for money", a distinction I wish I didn't have to make, save for the fact that the quality stuff (often Canadian) doesn't pay my rent. It's a quandary punctuated by background horror-movie funhouse screams.

Art in the City

Ingrid is having an art piece presented as part of the Gladstone Hotel's 3rd Annual "Hard Twist" show. Opening night is November 7th (this Friday). She put a lot of time, energy, and commitment into this work and I hope it is received well. For all of you local visitors to this blog (or out-of-towners who find themselves in Toronto this weekend - hey, you never know), I encourage everyone to make it out.

You should also check out her unique photo blog, Unbought Stuffed Dogs.

Go, Ingrid!