Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The category, Heart, is for posts that make us feel.
Why has this calm stolen over mewhen I lost countless years, not to rage alone, nor to joy, but to both,jittering between the two like the lines on an EEG,the REM patterns of a cold-sweat nightmare”s sleep? Why have I found a stillness in this hourwhen waters crash on eastern shores bearing bodies out to…
Almost as if to illustrate my two previous posts that propose a new poetics of authenticity, the latest issue of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine came careening through my window. To bring you up to speed, I have previously described “authenticity” as the 21st century’s favourite yardstick for measuring the worth of a poem. The notion of “authenticity”…
I’ve noticed that as people age, they have more fun reminiscing with their peers than with their children and grandchildren. When my parents get together with their friends and start talking about people they knew in school or things that happened before I was born, it’s feels like I’m standing outside in the cold and staring through the window at the warmth inside.
I need to stop eating weird things before I go to bed, otherwise I wake up remembering dreams like this:
In June of 2008, I heard the Art of Time Ensemble perform with Steven Page at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. It was part of their Songbook series, an annual event where Andrew Burashko and the Art of Time Ensemble invite a well known Canadian artist to select a handful of favourite songs.
In grade seven, I started going to a new school, a junior high school which sat immediately north of the hydro field. I lived immediately south of the hydro field and could see the school from my back yard if I climbed on top of our tree house.
It gets better. At least that’s what Dan Savage says, and he’s persuaded millions of people to repeat it often enough that it sounds true. He—and they—and I—want teens and twenty-somethings who are struggling with issues of sexuality and identity to bear up under the burden of loneliness and hatred; we want them to look beyond the immediate fear of bullying to a time in the not-too-distant future when they will feel free enough to be themselves in the open.
I’m meeting a friend for lunch. She used to work for the city as an employability specialist. The way I understand it, her job was to help homeless people develop the skills they’d need to get back to work. My impression is that her job was overwhelming. A cup of resources. An ocean of need.
I journeyed to the temple,a pilgrim borne on the wingsof a promise that I live better.I did, I did, oh I did.Face pressed almost to the floor,I rooted out every last coin,snuffling into the corner, kneesworn, but blessed with my reward:a two-for-one on tube socksheaped like fishes in a discount binfor the credulous multitudes. John…
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ Abbey Road released on September 26, 1969. To celebrate, the Art of Time ensemble had performed a concert that went track by track through the album.
The stack, a vertical grey against the blue,flinging strands—smoke?—but they’re white.Let’s be generous and say its steam.Birds wheel in play or in anger:What I saw; what I saw. The chair creaks, the wood beneath it groans;on the back, a cashmere sweater,draped where it was hung, eggshell,a button missing, swaying with the chair:What I saw; what…
I have my own WOTS. It’s more literal-minded than the annual event that will return to our city this Sunday. I look for words on the street, or at the very least, words in public spaces. Words that don’t try to sell us anything. Words that don’t try to persuade us of anything. Words that don’t proselytize. Words that don’t regulate us: stop, yield, no parking.
The first time I read Sons and Lovers, I was the same age as Paul Morel, the main character of D. H. Lawrence’s classic novel. The chief difference between me and my fictional nemesis is that Paul Morel was carrying on with the married Clara Dawes and I was carrying on with … well … a reading list for an undergrad degree in English literature. He seemed to be having more fun than me.
Opened on June 21, 2007, Ireland Park is a small memorial to the 38,000 Irish refugees who fled the potato famine of 1847 and were received in Toronto (which then had a population of 20,000).
Culture is not an industry. It is not a sector of the economy. Culture is a condition. It is the social trailings of my solitary consciousness.