When I think of some of the things I was made to read at school, instead of Miss Lonelyhearts, I have more patience for the endless debate about The Canon.

I kicked off my camping season this weekend, and inexplicably, I brought with me the little paperback Miss Lonelyhearts and A Cool Million, which I have packed and unpacked in numerous changes of residence, yet somehow never read. I do respect the Buddhist precept about consuming only items that preserve peace in body and consciousness, and while my practice of it would not by any means be considered thorough, I do generally avoid depictions of extensive or graphic violence. Maybe that was the hold up.

In any case, I now know that in future, should I wish to consume some harshness, I should do so in solitude, in nature. Sitting and hiking and sleeping and sitting in the woods or at the shore tops up my peace…it may even create a surplus.

Of course, West’s story is a bit of a paradox for sensitive souls such as mine, as it is the story of just such a sensitive soul and the madness brought about through his consumption of depictions of rape, gang rape, gay bashing, and wife beatings which result in dental work. Tricky.

But it is a short work, a one-sitting read, and the sufferings are surrounded by astounding passages of philosophy, surrealism and humour. Its masterful and strange presentation of big ideas is moving, and while ultimately disturbing, it can still be peacefully consumed provided the reading environment is sufficiently serene and beautiful.

Given the impact each viewing of Tarkovsky’s work has had on me, I cannot explain why it’s taken me ten years to watch four films. Maybe part of that can be attributed to watching The Sacrifice repeatedly. Maybe not.

Anyway, I need to take a little webspace to genuflect right now. Not to prowess, or achievement, or mastery, although I assume all of those must be present to create this kind of Stendhal-inducing work. Masterful filmmakers are not in short supply. However, from everything I have read, few if any have been able to create the particular experience Tarkovsky creates. I am admittedly prone to hyperbole, but on this topic, I risk writing stale if I employ concepts like spellbound, otherworldly, euphoric, and transcendental.

Of course, there are as many who have an experience of boredom, confusion, or impatience. Which is why my genuflecting webspace will be devoted to proselytizing thusly: many things which are good for you do not feel so good going in. If you are determined to reap the goodness, you must learn to find your way beyond the not good feeling. Tips:

• “slow” can be good. Think food, think sex, think Tarkovsky. It’s a feast.
• engage. Tarkovsky preferred mise en scene to montage, feeling that cuts are tricks. Instead of a steady conveyor belt of bite-sized meaning, you get an open field in which to wander, and joining you in the field at unpredictable intervals and angles will be various-sized meanings.
• you think you are reading it, but you will read it differently as you go. What at first seems spooky will become romantic.

And what is the goodness to be reaped? Contemplative travel to some very rich and mystical ideas about life and death. Time distortion. Dreams, memory, magic.

But maybe you’re not up for that tonight. That’s cool too, you can totally just dig on the crocheted ponchos and the sound of the Russian language and the inexplicably floating chandeliers.

Oh, yes, the one that prompted this was Solyaris.

I bought Don Domanski’s book All Our Wonder Unavenged about a year after it had won Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General’s Award, at the end of 2008. Last night, a year and a half later, I finished it. I had loaned it mid-read, impatient to share its joys, and then it took a while to come back to me.

It was only the second book of poetry I’d read. I’ve enjoyed poetry as much as anything, but almost always in an anthology or periodical. I don’t know what possessed me to buy it, but I bought two – one for me, one for my Dad. Turned out they were the last two in the store, and signed.

I’ve been googling around about this poet today, as I always do when something moves me, and have reached the conclusion that Don Domanski is succeeding. Sure, I could have concluded this from the GG, but hear me out.

As I contemplated my experience of his poetry, I identified various sources of enjoyment. The subject matter – explorations of existence in pastoral settings – would tend to appeal to me. The accessibility of the language and structure welcomes the relative neophyte like myself. But what was lighting it up like transcendental truth? For these poems were fully true, true in every way they could be. Not just “I recognize the metaphor” true, “I agree with the observation” true. The magical property of the poems is that they seem to communicate the full essence of a thing.

Now, my point about succeeding. Here’s Domanski talking to the CBC:

“What I’m doing is making my way to presence…There’s a very deep truth there that strikes well below the thinking level, a connection richer than language, which can give words a more inclusive depth and reach.”

C’est ça! The transportational quality of the poems – drifting you here, and here, and here – does seem to originate from something richer than language.

This experience grows out of reading the poems for a little while, so I don’t want to include an excerpt or single poem here. But here are a couple of links to Domanski and his work:

All Our Wonder Unavenged on Amazon

On the Governor General’s Awards site

The CBC interview I reference

Today I will be listening to my new WEBCRUSH. I’m downloading Preslav Literary School’s album Pretext/Context right now, and I think it’s going to sound marvelous in headphones later. I see on the site references to musique concrete, Basinski, and reconstruct/deconstruct. All informative descriptions. The broadest, simplest idea I would tag it with is “accessible experimental”. The accessibility stems from the human hand recognizable as author of the work, and the very earthly soundscapes created. Preview the work here.

Preslav Literary School is Adam Thomas, whose work you may have encountered at various European festivals, where he performs live tape collage. Or you may have encountered his taste in the work of others if you enjoyed transmediale.10, as he was involved with its curation.

His website, in addition to hosting recordings, contains creative writing both journalistic and fictional. I read without surprise that he was reading Gravity’s Rainbow in 2009, and of course I wondered if he completed it (observant readers of Even More Legendary may recall my confession that I have repeatedly failed to do so). The site also reports on projects he’s involved in, like the Berlin Tape Run, whereby a tape changes hands repeatedly over four months, resulting in a collaborative audio document; and Echolalia, featuring a live tape orchestra, a workshop, and a publication of speculative fiction.

Recently at a busy opening, filled with illustrations, installations, and videos, I sat still, under headphones, for 29 minutes, while friends and strangers circled about intermittently, curiously, impatiently. Normally I would have returned at a quieter time to view the whole piece. But I could not interrupt the program, I tell you. I was mesmerized by Barry Doupé’s magical media potion, At The Heart Of A Sparrow. I contacted Mr. Doupé about sharing the mesmer here, and he kindly pointed me to a stream of the complete work at Lumen Eclipse, linked below.

UPDATE: Barry just sent along this link to an interview he gave in 2008 talking about his process and other sagacities (I hope I made that up). Thanks Barry!

I find myself talking about the Kindle more often. At this stage of the game, the conversations still always mine the idea Paper Vs. Electronics. I have heard, and offered open-minded considerations of this comparison. Although as one who resents the increasing time required to maintain an operating charge in the increasing number of devices which require it, who has spent unacceptable amounts of time and money rehabilitating damaged electronics, replacing stolen electronics (and taking extra measures to prevent further theft), downloading and installing new versions (at other times wishing I could download when some wrinkle between me and the internet is preventing it), who worries about the growing mountains of discarded electronics, I naturally enjoy the Neo-Luddite position in these conversations. Fanciers of coffee table books and cookbooks often join me, and I appreciate those perspectives as well.

Increasingly, however, this has felt like an exercise, like insincerity, and I have finally had opportunity and inclination to investigate that feeling. My conclusion? Debating paper versus electronic books is like debating roast turkey versus roast turducken. You can only take it so seriously. In a reductive mood, you start to hear it as “’but I love it as it is’…’yes, but this is MORE of it.” And you realize you are really debating whether or not more is automatically better. More books, and simultaneously more freedom from their physical burden.

Will you gain more physical space as you replace paper books with ones and zeroes in the clouds? Yes. You would also gain that space by reducing your furnishings to one bed. It could serve for sleeping and for sitting, and could seat several people for entertaining. But the number of people who actually need to reclaim the space taken by either their furniture or their books is much smaller than the number of people who argue that this is a benefit of e-readers.

Will you have access to more reading material in mobile or remote situations? Yes. How long is your commute? How brief is your attention span? How long are your vacations? How little do you have to fill your vacationing time? The number of people who have been inconvenienced by a bulky burden of reading material, even after including students, is much lower than the number of people who argue that this is a benefit of e-readers.

And yet these are the conversations we cordially entertain, without even a hint of the ridiculous. I, for one, am committed to greater Kindle-honesty in 2010, and I invite you to join me. Let us admit to its superfluous, gratuitous nature, and get on with some lively discourse on gadgetphilia or marketing or planned obsolescence.

I tried to reconnect with the Sigur recently, after the third or fourth time seeing them on a “best records of the decade” list. I have done this before. It’s because they are routinely described in ways that draw me in, with words like experimental and otherworldly, tales of fainting audience, comparison to bands I love, like Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Stars of the Lid, and hypotheses on the complete reinvention of music.  So, as I tend to do in the face of unanimous recommendation from peers, I try again.

But, as with oysters, I can’t seem to develop the palate for this. They sound to me like television drama montages. Correction, they sound like tv drama montages of today, which may be a hint that this is another bittersweet lesson in getting what you wish for, like when “alternative” became mainstream in the nineties. Nirvana on classic rock stations? Cool. Legions of grunge bands creating a sound so ubiquitous it blends into muzak today? Heartbreaking.

This time, however, I thought I would second guess myself. I went to the SR site where they give away a very generous collection of songs from various recordings, thinking that this author-selected sample would be the fairest representation of their music for my experiment. I then used roughly the same portions of the songs, more or less, to further eliminate subjectivity (ok, actually out of laziness.) I grabbed a fan montage of clips from the CSIs, NCIS, Without a Trace, House MD, Grey’s Anatomy, and Cold Case, fired up the Singer and sewed them together without regard for craft (more laziness…it’s not my thesis or anything). Just to get a sense, you know. The results are below. Try to ignore the shocking sameness of the clips, despite their origins in 8 or 9 different series. You already knew that. But listen to the safety and familiarity of this music, and for that matter the sameness of it despite representing 12 songs from six albums.

Not trying to be a hater. Just felt like having a little fun with a critique of the band’s typical reviews.

UPDATE: maybe there was some hatin after all. I can only assume that some kind of universal reprimand is at play here, since I know my way around online video pretty well, yet have been unable to find any format/third party/plugin combination to make this little joint go. So it’s now an exercise in imagination, loyal readers. Fire up your nearest Sigur Ros track, and dream up the drama.

I had thought that performances by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman automatically created, if not masterworks, then certainly exceptional, outstanding cinema. In retrospect, that’s crazy talk and I don’t know what I was smoking, great though they both are. I came to understand this watching Doubt. His performance seems flat to me, considering the story and his role in it. Good thing she presents as complicated and magnetic a performance as ever. Right? Well, sure, if you’re not all greedy about stuff like theme and plot.  Or at least not impatient about these things. Because Doubt always feels like it’s about to boil up, so you stick with it, focus on Meryl, second guess where it’s going to go. And then -- it’s -- over? Fast forward with me now past the anti-climax and disappointment and confusion, through to the surprising delayed engagement this story had planted in me. The movie is made from rich enough concept that you can work out all kinds of premises, subtexts and motivations, all on your own! (If you have a good chunk of time afterward which will make no demands on your mind.) It’s a tell-yourself-a-great-story kit.

Just saw this joyous collaboration of James Dawe and Fallon, wherein he has adorned their die cut cover of the re-printed One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich with his gleaming and exploding collage goodness. I was transported back to my first experience of the novel, during my eleventh summer: the summer of solitude and self-discovery. Solzhenitsyn’s depictions were so rich, I was romanticizing even *gruel*, hating Mom’s stew a little less when I was made to eat it. Now go check out Dawe’s stuff.

James Dawe.

Or if you want to know what I think about other books (actually it’s mostly lists, perhaps wisely. But there is some commentary) go here

Hurrah, I have finally seen Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s award-winning 2003 film based on the Columbine school shootup. If I’d written this post last night, it would have been passionate, maybe all caps. I was a little stoned. Today, I am still inclined to post on it, but with the knowledge gained overnight that it hasn’t had the impact on me that I originally thought it had.

Strangely, I think both the immediate impact and its rapid dissipation come from the same feature of the film’s design: shallowness. Watching the slaughter of characters you’ve been getting to know for an hour or so is called Everynight TV, right? The reason you can yawn around between that and decorating and dancing shows, at the same time as you’re in IM on your laptop, is the artifice. You can recognize a Benz from the grill, and you can recognize a cop show from the music, cinematography and script cliches. You can only be so drawn into those stories, when you are constantly aware it’s Season 4 Episode 9. With Elephant, however, Van Sant presents you an unrecognizable scenario, in part by working improv with non-actors. But also by withholding dramatic devices which could be recognized as tropes: character arc, plot progression. The parts of your mind that normally turn off once they recognize the tropes, don’t turn off. You are observing more keenly. When the shit hits, you feel it more. Thing is, you developed no relationships, and you contemplated few or no concepts, so it doesn’t stay with you, like, in your heart. It stays in your brain as a masterful cinematic exercise, certainly. But you are untouched, ultimately, once the shock wears off.

And here is Gus Van Sant cutting the bugger on a FLATBED EDITOR. Divine.