/Blog

Spent the early afternoon reading, thinking, writing, in Nanny’s bedroom. It’s too bright though, and the inside of my eyeballs are lit up like lamps, and the floaters are really distracting. Around 2 ATL I put on my new red hat and go for a walk - up the treacherous hill, past the Catholic church, and turn left into town. Go to Tim Hortons, have a double double (the second for the day, since Michelle delivered some to us earlier) and sat and thought. Two memories came to mind. First, as I sat at T.H., was the dream I had as a child in the 80s. At that time I dreamt I was in Campbellton, and bombs were falling from the sky. Soviet planes flew overhead. The explosions caused the sidewalks to come apart in their square sections. This had been a nightmare, not terrifying as I recall, but anxiety causing. I told my Dad about it the next day and he told me not to worry, we wouldn’t be bombed (this was equally true of Clare as it was of Campbellton). My thought sitting at Tim Hortons and looking over the town was that it would survive a nuclear war. There’s no reason to bomb it at all. This also means it would be a good place to hide a war criminal (though in a town like this, one would have to be careful about rumours).

As I walked back, approaching the playground by the school, I remembered the time (again in the 80s) that the plow had created a great mound of snow in the front of the school (Jean Marie-Gay) we played on that mound at recess until in melted. I lost my mitten playing on it. We would climb to the top and then jump down, and also slide on our bums, since we were all wearing snow suits.

Having been watching as this decade unravels, this time without a name (people do not speak of the decade the way they said “the 80s” and “the 90s” since no one knows what to say —> I find this quite odd, since it’ll be another 20 years before it’s truly applicable again, and thus will go out of fashion —> but then again, every century has delt with this haven’t they, and Beckett wrote in Waiting for Godot about being the first to climb the Eiffel Tower, “a million years ago, back in the 90s”. That is, the 1890s, which brought a smile to me when I first heard it in the Shakespeare by The Sea production of 1999).

Having been watching the decade unravel, watching the style of the 80s turn to the style of the 90s, and now, the style of the 90s turn into this decade, my feeling is that this time is both more prosperous and stylistically appealing, but that it is also far more vacuous. One could almost compare it to the screen of a laptop (upon which this is being typed at the moment). The liquid crystal display fades in and out depending on the angle, but also presents a rich colour when viewed dead on. But it is only an inch or less thick. The increasing defeat of those who believe there is something more than buying things, and the increasing presence of the “inauthentic” in all ways, creates a shiny mirror of what? A mirror too shows a world without depth, a world reversed from what we’d consider the actual.

At least I have this laptop here —> now with cd in the drive, headphones on, and Fischerspooner singing about hypermediocrity.

The old classic I’ve been thinking about for the past week and half:

Conversation Concerning Life and Death

MARAT:

[speaking to SADE across the empty arena]

I read in your books de Sade
in one of your immortal works
that the basis of all life is death

SADE:

Correct Marat

But man has given a false importance to death
Any animal plant or man who dies
adds to Nature’s compost heap
becomes the manure without which
nothing could grow nothing could be created

Death is simply part of the process

Every death even the cruelest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature

Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race

[rising]

I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable ice-berg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts

[breathing heavily]

Haven’t we always beaten down those weaker than ourselves

Haven’t we torn at their throats
with continuos villainy and lust

Haven’t we experimented in our laboratories
before applying the final solution?

[...]

We condemn to death without emotion
and there’s no singular personal death to be had
only an anonymous cheapened death
which we could dole out to entire nations
on a mathematical basis
until the time comes
for all life
to be extinguished

MARAT:

Citizen Marquis
you may have fought for us last September
when we dragged out of the goals
the aristocrats who plotted against us
but you still talk like a grand seigneur
and what you call the indifference of Nature
is your own lack of compassion

SADE:

Compassion

Now Marat you are talking like an aristocrat

Compassion is the property of the privileged classes

When the pitier lowers himself
to give to a beggar
he throbs with contempt

To protect his riches he pretends to be moved
and his gift to the beggar amounts to no more than a kick [lute chord]

No Marat
no small emotions please

Your feelings were never petty

For you just as for me
only the most extreme actions matter

MARAT:

If I am extreme I am not extreme in the same way was you

Against Nature’s silence I use action

In the vast indifference I invent a meaning

I don’t watch unmoved I intervene
and I say that this and this are wrong
and I work to alter them and improve them

The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes

- Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (1964), translated by Geoffrey Skelton

book here and DVD here.

Happy New Year everybody.

I, like many, have been hungover today, because I went to the Mercer Union “Dirtier New Year’s Eve Party” last night, the poster for which featured two humping bunnies outside a car wash. Which was apt.

Last year Mercer Union went out a limb and held this party at Studio 99 as a fundraiser. They called it the “Dirty New Year’s Eve Party” then. I say ‘out on a limb’ because they weren’t really sure how successful it would be, and they were going to invest a lot into it. Well, it turned out really well and the gallery made a killing, although there was nothing dirty about it. This year seemed much more successful. At 6am last year, the light’s went up and the place was pretty sparse, with the usual crowd of people such as myself who stay up until there’s nothing left to do (i.e my friends). This year, 6am came and there was still a crowd dancing.

Now let’s get back to the humping bunnies, because I want to tell this story. First, if you haven’t seen the poster, it’s two folk in bunny suits simulating a rear entry, or, as it could be called, “a backward hug”. It’s certainly more cutesy than erotic, but I guess that’s because of the fur. It’s very apt because it’s a bit of an inside joke. It refers to how much dry humping has been happening at art parties this past year, all because of Instant Coffee.

Like I said in my year in review, the Instant Coffee make-out parties began in November 03 in collaboration with Darren O’Donnell, a local playwright who’s interested in sociality, and the different ways strangers can interact. He’s been following a line of research over the past few years that basically involves getting strangers to meet one another and talk and whatever … and it’s always some example of friendliness that emerges. So anyway, the make-out parties was another example of the folk going out on a limb … as a member of Instant Coffee at the time, I can say that we weren’t really sure if it was going to work, or if it was going to make everything awkward. What ended up happening was that couples were more than willing to get it on in Emily Hogg’s ‘make out fort’.

Emily is an architect, and as I understand it, she began re-doing the couch forts that we’re probably all built as kids with blankets and cushions while she was still studying architecture. So Emily’s fort wasn’t considered gimmicky as much as we saw it as an art/architecture project. The thing with Instant Coffee is that you become a collective member through collaborating with them, so over the past year, Darren and Emily became members.

At the same time, Instant Coffee formed a relationship with Hive magazine, because Hive’s publisher really liked them/us and wanted to promote what I.C. was doing. So at magazine launches, I.C. was involved in helping to throw the party. Jinhan Ko, one of the collective’s founding members, had a old camping trailer that was known as “the Urban Disco Trailer” and over the past several years, went through various manifestations of what I think we can safely call pimping. I.C. pimped that ride over and over again. But since Jin moved to Vancouver last the summer, I hear the trailer’s in storage somewhere. So basically, the trailer became a make-out venue last spring, and by June they had installed the ‘bass bed’ which I think had sub-woofers built into the frame, but by that time I was no longer working with I.C. so I’m spotty on specifics. As I said in my year in review, I have fond memories of slow kisses at 4 in the morning at the Hive launch, which all happened in the trailer. My favorite kiss that night came when I walked into the trailer looking for my friend, and I was suddenly pulled into a very sweet make-out session. In the morning’s early hours, the trailer became a socially liminal space where being there meant you were only there for one reason.

Well, with the trailer out of the picture, and with Instant Coffee’s relationship with Mercer Union (which I know I haven’t clarified, but basically the whole art scene here and anywhere is incestuous, and I’ll tell that story some other time) it made sense that I.C. would have a presence at Mercer Union’s party. With the trailer out of the picture, the bass bed was re-invented and installed against a wall of the dance floor, and, as Mercer’s co-director Dave Dyment wrote in a last minute reminder/promotion email yesterday, “The Instant Coffee Make Out Bass Bed is a 12 foot by 12 foot bed with sub-woofers built into the frame, connected to the soundsystem. It’s gonna be incredible.” Standing on the platform next to the bed, you could really feel the sub-woofers, but the effect didn’t really carry over on the bed, as the mattress cushioned the effect. Nevertheless, this was designated make-out space.

Early on, to get the action started, there was lazy-susan in the middle of the mattress with a bottle on it, and I ended up having to kiss Darren. Because I’m straight this was my most awkward kiss of the whole night. But, this night is memorable for me because I sat down around 5 and started chatting with this girl next to me, and I asked, “We’re sitting on the bass bed, does that mean I should kiss you?” And she said, “Yes,” and so I began to make out with the pretty brunette for a good while. That was totally the highlight of my night.

I can’t say how much I love the fact that just by being in a certain spot means that everything is straightforward with no guessing game and risk of misinterpretation. It also becomes this way for couples to stray in a totally legitimate way. Playing spin the bottle, I kissed a girl who was engaged.

Like the first make-out party, in which lots of couples took the opportunity for public displays of affection, which did include lots of dryhumping, the make-out spaces become a venue for couples to make out, kiss other people, and for strangers to meet and kiss.

So, unlike last year, in which the moniker “dirty new year’s eve party” was simply rhetorical, this year it was aptly called ‘dirtier’ and the humping bunnies made lots of sense. I left shortly after 6, but it probably went on for another hour. So far I’ve had an memorable 2005, and if they do it again next year, that’s what I’ll mark on my calendar.