nouspique.com

About

What’s going on here?

You may have noticed there’s a category “From the Drainpipe.”  That’s because a lot of what you and I encounter in this world is raw and unfiltered.  That’s not to say it’s bad or good.  It’s just unfiltered.  For example, I post remarks by Sarah Palin alongside poems by Ted Hughes.  One of these people uses language more skillfully than the other, but I don’t say which.  Instead, I present them raw, unfiltered, straight from the drainpipe.  It’s up to you to figure out how to filter them.

Then there’s the “Half-Filtered” category.  There, you get the stuff raw, but you get a little bit of my filtering – a few personal comments scattered here and there.

Then there’s the “Pure Water.”  This is what happens when I give the raw stuff some serious thought.  I filter it through things like my own education and experience, other people’s wisdom, and whatever I happen to glean in my travels.

There are also “Scribbles,” “Stories” and “Verse.”  Our more prosaic, discursive efforts are only the beginning.  Filtering is never complete until the raw stuff has run through our aesthetic sensibilities.  (I hate the word verse, but the categories are alphabetical which would put “Poetry” before “Scribbles” and Stories.”)

Finally, there is the Image Gallery.  Sometimes, it’s useful to shut up and simply stare at the world around us.

Who is Nouspique?

David Barker.  If formal education matters to you, I have degrees in English, Law, and Theology, all from the University of Toronto.  There is a thread running through these three disciplines:  each seeks to engage the power of words as a force in the world.  There’s also an A.R.C.T. in piano performance.  And let’s not forget the year studying multimedia design so I’d be able to do fancy things with images, audio and video.

But school notwithstanding, I’ve learned far more from marriage and having two teenagers.

Why Nouspique?

This blog began in 2004 as theoblog.ca.  With a name like theoblog, you’d expect a few posts here or there that have something to do with religion.  And that was my focus.  But as time went by, I couldn’t help but think that what the world needs is less, not more, religion.  So I packed up the religion soapbox.  Time for something new.  Or is that something nou?

The problem is:  when people leave something, they tend to talk about where they’re going in terms of the place they’ve left.  Ex-evangelicals spend a lot of their time ridiculing altar calls and bible studies.  Anarchists spend a lot of their time complaining about government and corporate power.  The freshly divorced spend a lot of their time bitching about the ex.  When we’re in transition, we define ourselves by reference to the things we’re not.  It’s hard to define ourselves positively when we don’t know what we are yet.  So we say:  “I’m a recovering alcoholic” or “I’m an atheist” or “I’m the Ex Duchess of York.”

But what if you’re leaving the center?  What if all the things you ever used to construct your sense of self are nice middle-of-the-road compromises?  Where is the spice in average?  How is it possible to react angrily against bland?

Take me for instance.  I’m white – OK maybe a bit off-white.  Kind of pinko-grey tending to light brown in the summertime.  I speak English, just like half the rest of the online world.  I live in suburbia.  I’m married, have a dog and 2.4 children.  My political views have been wildly moderate.  I’m straight but don’t mind it when my gay friends tell me my clothes are all wrong.  I like to think of myself as an activist but don’t like to make waves (because I’m Canadian).  I try to make careful choices when I buy stuff.  I like to listen to indie bands and buy books from the local indie booksellers.  And when it comes to the religion which my parents handed down to me, and their parents before them, I don’t really believe any of it, but I’m too polite to say so.  In other words, like millions of my Western confréres, I lead a life of quiet banality.

But there’s a catch.  This life of quiet banality, this life we’ve idealized in the smiling faces and day-glo colours of our TV ads, this wonderful life of ours is killing us and all creation with it.  We may have no notion how to react against something so moderate and so bland as our culture of banality, but we have no choice.  This is the categorical imperative of our age.  And so I stand strangely conscientized and aching for a better world.

Here, it does no good to express myself in negative terms:  ex-banal, anti-nice, non-bland.  I choose instead to express myself in positive terms.

I choose to express myself in nouspique.

What is nouspique?

It could be nou (new) and spique (speak).  A new way of talking about ourselves and our world.

Or it could be nous (we’re all in it together) and pique (pique your conscience, pique your interest, pique your ire).

nouspique

I spique, you spique, let’s all spique nouspique.