Monday, July 31, 2006

pushing poems at the urban silence


{spiderweb in the hawthorn, with sneaky self-portrait}

On Friday night, I went to the Ani diFranco concert at the Winspear (lovely, luxurious, inside-of-a-birthday-cake concert hall = atmosphere) & it was sublime. For posterity, I recorded that she played:

god's country
manhole
studying stones
not so soft (!)
decree
napoleon (!)
coming up
gravel
sunday morning
animal (!!)
half-assed (!)
reckoning
firedoor (!)
78% water
"all of this" (a new song not on the new record...)
recoil (!!!)
shameless (!)

***encore***

evolve (!)
hypnotized (!!)

I've seen her play twice before at Folkfests, & both occasions were certainly impressive... But this time seeing her I felt especially grateful, & so wholly inspired by her -- to go out and MAKE things, DO things, to create as freely & as unapologetically as she does, to always remember to do this.

Thinking of what she has accomplished and created over the past 18-ish years always impresses me. & her eloquence, even when she is confessing selfdoubt/fears/feelings of worthlessness, is inspiring & comforting. I love to see how she can spite those negative feelings by making such beautiful things.

'Cause I don't care if they eat me alive
I've got better things to do than survive

-- Ani, "Swan Dive"

This is the sort of thing I need to remember -- to just make things regardless of anything else, to create for the sake of creating. & not worry about whether what I make will be liked, disliked, accepted, or even noticed. It fuels me to spite my own anxious, paralytic feelings & just do things anyway.

& as for the importance of DOING -- on the train ride home, Bryna & I were rather overcome by the contrast of the place we had just been (a concert hall full of good music & generally friendly, feminist-sort of people) & the vehicle upon which we were travelling (a packed LRT car full of inebriated, loud, homophobic misogynists sorts, extra-annoyed because their home team had lost the football game. blaaah.) The juxtaposition was rather overwhelming, but it did make everything I was feeling about the concert infinitely more acute, more urgent. The process of mindful creation is so vital, so important, in this culture of mindless consumption. It is unspeakably important.

In attempts to distract ourselves from our fellow passengers, Bryna & I were also talking about the band Do Make Say Think, & somehow we came to the conclusion that the meaning of the band's name must be priority list of verbs -- that in creating something, it's most important to just do/make. Not that I advocate not thinking before doing, but I do know very well that it's certainly possible to think too much. Better, when you have an idea, to just do/make it, before you stifle it in overanalysis & prevent it from being created.

Ani will have a new album out on August 8th. Visit the audio section of this site for 'Reprieve' & listen to new goodness. Especially 'Hypnotize' & 'Half-assed'.


Thursday, July 27, 2006

down from the mountain


{sunset at highwood pass, mt. arethusa, opal range, kananaskis}

I think my blog is slowly starting to diversify, & metamorphose into something resembling a mlog; a music blog, that is. I still have no file-hosting space for my own mp3s but I can certainly use it as a place for linking to other delicious musique that is hosted elsewhere.

I had two little random epiphanies today while working. The first was linguistically related, in that my writing-in-french capabilities have come back to a point where I'm feeling (somewhat) fonctionellement bilingue! The other came whilst wandering in the fields of other mlogs, when I came across the news that Banco de Gaia has a new CD out. & so I wandered over to the website & found audio aplenty... realizing also that in fact there were two CDs of his that I had no idea existed.

& so listening to the tracks from the albums I'd missed, I remembered how much I enjoy Banco. It's beautiful, expansive & intelligent electronica that is heavily influenced by Middle Eastern, South Indian & Central Asian instrumentation, rhythms & vocal melodies.

I feel very spacious & powerful listening to it -- there is a certain topographical feeling to it, a texture that evokes travelling, moving through mountainous areas, there are sweeping valleys & slopes & very dark starry skies, sunsets over arid ridges. The build & the flow of all of his pieces can also be quite emotional -- there also is a socio-political consciousness to his music evident in his themes & titles -- read Toby Marks' (aka Banco de Gaia) writings on Tibet and his inspiration for 'Last Train to Lhasa', the album that was my introduction to his music.

And now, his new album focuses on the concept of 'Ferengistan' -- a 'place' caught up in war & materialism. (I also was amused to learn the etymology of the term 'Ferengi' especially considering there is a Star Trek species by that very name... & it is so very apt)

So, yes, enjoy! Do download the edit of Kara Kum (that's 'Black Desert' in Kazakh!) from 'Farewell Ferengistan' Kuos is an integral part of the 'Last Train to Lhasa' album, and I found that I quite like Down from the Mountain from 'You are Here' especially around 5:20., when it turns all swirly & delicious.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

this is very apt.


{scrabble in the park}

I've been meaning to post the link to this article for a while now. It makes me rather happy to read about other people who feel similarily about the value of dedicated, creative & supportive friendships, and who realize that these relationships are just as important, profound, & fulfilling as any marriage or conventional 'romantic' relationship.

With a few strategic word changes, many paragraphs become strikingly applicable, indeed.

"With ink-stained fingers, the Edmontonian roommate-friends would smear cream cheese on thick slices of bread and then lounge across from each other on the bohemian-shabby pheasant couch to discuss a poem-in-progress or a radio show proposal they'd just drafted. Their brains beat as passionately as their hearts."

Saturday, July 22, 2006

sidewalk & postbox graffiti.


{stencil on the sidewalk, 76 ave near 105 or 104th st, near rollie miles park}

Focus is something that I have been lacking lately. It's nice that there are stencils on the sidewalk to remind me. The oppressive heat has melted my attention span for most things, especially summarizing linguistics articles in French. The sidewalk stencils (within the span of a block) also reminded me to try, love, and trust.


On our gelato obtaining expedition yesterday evening, Bryna & I had the opportunity to peruse the neighbourhood graffiti... I'm finding a lot of linguistic graffiti I'd like to investigate -- I've seen the word 'keverz' scribbled over a number of places, and also the strange bilingual phrase 'oui-knee'. (Weeny?) Edmonton also has a vibrant, eccentric post-box stencil scene, as evidenced by a double rendering of our favourite Klingon, seen above. This one is about 2 blocks south of my house.

Here are some 'listen' birds, roosting on a box on 82nd avenue and about 112th street, I think. They're the only pigeons I've seen around. I also saw a sketchy-looking 'listen' bird sprayed on bus-stop bench on Whyte Avenue that was advertising French bilingual school programs. It said 'ecoutez' instead. & that made me happy.

Yes. I should focus.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

smells like rain today

{sunset after the rain, belgravia}


{tree reflections in a puddle}


"Stand in the shade of me
Things are now made of me
The weathervane will say
Smells like rain today."

I am in love with Tom Waits' song 'Green Grass' as covered by the splendid Brazilian singer Cibelle. If I were very technologically adept, I would somehow link to it, like those nifty mlogs (mlog = music blog). But alas. Do attempt to download it. Or really, anything that she sings.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

creation is soundful. (r. murray schafer)

{this is a calico cat that lives a few houses down, who likes visiting us & sleeping on our porch. his meow is very plaintive & sweet & yowly.}

I have been thinking a lot lately about sound, & how we remember sounds, how we store aural memories. Not so much the process of how we remember the things we hear, the songs or facts or stories, but how we recall the quality of sound, its texture, resonance. How we conjure up the particular tone of someone’s voice, the sound of wind moving through lodgepole pine trees, the scratchy squawk of magpies in the morning – how we remember the details of the soundscapes we inhabit.

I was having a nap this afternoon & was awakened quite definitively by a bagpipe medley, coming from the church across the street. Bagpipes have the timbre of geese (in a good way, not a dying-goose-in-pain way), make me think of the sound of water moving over rocks & grasses, makes me think of the sound that sunlight would make when it shines on green pine trees, or makes long november-ish shadows over wheat & dead grasses. So I lay in my bed & listened to the streams of music, hoping it was a wedding, not a funeral. & indeed it was a wedding, because when the bagpipes ceased, there was a small roar of cheering, the sound of an old car’s motor sputtering & vrooming, & then the sound of a garland of tin cans banging & clattering over the warm asphalt.

& I thought about how the visual is more valued in our culture – Bryna wrote a super-excellent paper on gendered sound, the visual vs. the oral/aural, which discusses (among many things) the celebration of the visual, the visual primacy so omnipresent in western industrialized societies. This is no better exhibited in the way we take so many pictures – that photographs are the way in which we preserve memories of any important event. (That there is so much advertising based around this – photo albums as ‘memory books’, ‘preserving your memories’, etc).

The wedding participants & guests will undoubtedly have taken many photographs. They will remember the wedding attire, the light coming through the stained glass in the church, the old turquoise car with the shiny cans glinting in the sun. But how well will they remember the clank of the cans, the tremulous slide of the notes in the bagpipe melodies?

I suppose now many people do make audiovisual recordings of events, where together both elements are important. However, I would still argue for a favouring of the visual, because it is much rarer to have a solely audio recording of such things.

Audio recordings (that are non-musical) sometimes don’t go over so well with the general public sometimes. (Poor audio-(w)hereabouts!) But I still believe that they are essential & incredibly important, and evocative in ways that the visual masks. When I listen to Bryna’s recording of her family’s Easter dinner, when I listen to the recording we made skiing in the woods – you pay attention to so much more without the visual. It’s easy to be distracted by what we see. Different elements emerge, become salient – things like voice quality, little movements & fidgets around a table, & the precise layers of sound, train whistles, frosty breathing, the crunchy squeak of snow beneath ski & its changing tone moving over the dips of the trail.

Bryna is about to start on a writing project with an audio component, where she will incorporate found sounds with sound clips & text that she will read. I am so excited to have our neighbourhood, places we know documented. I think this is very, very important – to create these records, to document & highlight the sounds around... like R. Murray Schafer did with his soundscapes and soundmarks

Because I worry about losing sounds, forgetting them. I don’t think it’s that our visual memory is inherently stronger than our aural memory, but I think we do tend to develop it more in this visually-prime society, & we have such a plethora of visual aids to help us, like our photos & such. This is unlike a society such as that of the Kaluli (see Stephen Feld’s very good book, Sound and Sentiment) – where sound is the focal point of everything.

To think of forgetting the sound of my grandma’s voice makes me inexpressibly sad. Her voice is such an integral part of who she is – it carried her kindness, her humour, her weariness, her wisdom. I am so glad that I have those four little songs I have recorded us singing, so I can always remember. I probably won’t forget the songs themselves, I can’t even really imagine forgetting her voice – but it’s nice to know that I can even put them in my new-fangled technology like my mp3 player & carry them around in my pocket & have her voice singing to me kazalo divchatko, or sumno meni sumno, anytime I like.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

neighbourhood botany lesson


{pineapple weed -- matricaria discoidea}


{larkspur -- delphinium}

After it rained last night, I went traipsing about the neighbourhood with my camera... I noticed how that while suburbia has one uniform smell after the rain -- that of slightly sweet grassy peppermint -- Edmonton, or at least the Belgravia neighbourhood, smells like a complex blend of that same mint, with notes of ripe compost, pot, campfire smoke, & bus exhaust. When I arrived home, Bryna said I sounded like a dog recounting all the scents... "& then I smelled this! & a bit of this! & then some of this, & then & then..." So yes. My olfactory memory is expanding...

I also took pictures of plants -- the top one seen here is pineapple weed, & is a relation to yarrow & ragweed. I remember it from my childhood -- it grew along my grandma's garden path, just like it does on my street, cracking through the pavement like a furry green backbone... We used to pick the small buds & mash them between our fingers to release the sweet, tropical scent. I had previously thought it was an introduced weed, but it's indigenous to North America & has been used for thousands of years for many purposes: a insect repellent when mixed with fir & sweetgrass, mixed in salads, or brewed a chamomile-like tea to aid menstrual cramps, heartburn & indigestion, & fevers. Again, another nutritious weed rendered inedible by urban pollutants...

The second picture is of larkspur, or delphinium. It grows everywhere here, lining the gravelly alleys & the sides of houses, all elegant & sentinel-like. Traditionally in the Carpathians it was sacred to the feast of Ivana Kupala (John the Baptist), & was used to repel lightning & vampires. However, its gorgeousness is deceptive. In Ukrainian it is called sokyrky, or 'little hatchets' -- it is also related to the adjective sokyrkuvatyj, which means bitter, malignant, & caustic, which is very apt considering that all parts of the plant contain the extremely poisonous, paralytic alkaloid delphinidin. Thus, as lovely as it is, its terrible purple vertebrae make me uneasy. Even the sap of the plant burns, so I give it a wide berth on my way to fetch my bike in the mornings...

(Up next: Russian Sage, Asters, & other good things)




Wednesday, July 05, 2006

poetry is not a luxury (audre lorde)

{tree stumps below sarrail falls, kananaskis}
I recently stumbled across this webpage (http://www.goodreports.net/) and read a few essays by the author, Alex Good, that critique the current scene of published poetry in Canada. He primarily writes book reviews (see Carmine Starnino’s ‘The New Canon’), but I found a few rants as well under the essays and reviews section. (See: “The Morning After”, an essay from 2001 dealing with April as National Poetry Month, etc)

Now, currently I am debating whether or not to send him a little note, because the more I think about what he has to say about poetry, the more I wonder if he has actually read any recent poetry...

So I read these essays – he said some things I agree with (e.g. some poetry is pretentious), as well as some things I vehemently disagree with (which I will discuss in a moment). However, overall I just dismissed them as just another person who doesn’t like (hasn’t read??) much contemporary poetry, and I suppose I agreed with him in some ways when he talked about how pretentious some poetry can be, etc. It’s true. It can be.

But not all poetry now is like that, not by any means at all. Not at all.

Tonight I watched a film ‘Listening for Something’ that is all conversations between Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand, and is beautiful and thoughtful and illuminating in every possible way – it’s so fascinating to listen to them discuss politics and class issues in a thoughtful, respectful, yet provocative way, and then hear them read their poetry, in a way that is like collaborative storytelling... and immediately I thought back to these things that Good has written. And I just couldn’t understand the place from which he writes, I couldn’t understand how he could be missing so much.

In his piece called ‘The Morning After’, he writes:

“The dullness of today's poetry has become so pervasive, such a given, that we have to force ourselves to remember that poetry is not at all dull by nature. Donne is not dull. Blake is not dull. Browning, Whitman, Dickinson, and Pound are not dull. Reading new poetry, however, nearly always bores me to tears, and for many of the reasons we have just been canvassing: its sameness, the lack of imagination and energy in the language and verse, and the unalterable truth of human nature that it is never very interesting listening to people talk about themselves.”

Or, in his review of the ‘The New Canon’, he implies that most of the poetry being written is detached & irrelevant:

“But it has always been the long poem, the epic, that most directly addressed, allegorically or otherwise, our deepest political, religious, intellectual, cultural, and social concerns... The non-narrative, non-thematic, non-intellectual (indeed anti-intellectual) poetry of epiphany and observation, no matter how exquisitely crafted and brilliantly realized, is no replacement.”

And so, I can’t help but feel incredulous. He deifies Donne, Pound, all those past poets – but has he ever read Dionne Brand? Adrienne Rich? They are writing now, still writing, and I’d hardly call them dull or irrelevant – they both are the first to come to mind when I think of poetry that is deeply socially, politically, spiritually, & intellectually aware.

And he is so quick to denigrate the non-epic poetry – doesn’t he understand that all realizations, all powerful statements come from ‘epiphany and observation’. (Even the themes that find their way into epic poems begin here!) That’s the only way we ever come to understand anything at all. To be able to express your own moments of clarity, comprehension, emotion, idea is the most potent thing I can think of – I am so unspeakably, inexpressibly thankful for writing for inspiration. I truly am. Being able to express my feelings and experiences and thoughts in a way that even a few people find relatable and meaningful saves me.

He needs to read Rich’s “What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics” – perhaps after reading some of these essays he will finally see that there is a connection between poetry and everything. That a person who says ‘I don’t understand poetry’ is losing so much, that a person who reads two poems in junior high school and decides poetry is ‘dull’ because it doesn’t flash like a television & does involve thinking, and feeling, is selling themselves short.
In her piece entitled, ‘To invent what we desire’, she quotes Audre Lorde: “Poetry is not a luxury.” And that in itself, is so much of what her writing embodies. Poetry is necessary, and accessible, & can be created & understood by everyone. It is, as she writes, “activity and survival.”

So I am very close to writing a friendly little letter to this Alex character, suggesting that he go to his nearest library, rent this film, tell him to listen to these women discuss what inspires them, drives them -- issues of race and gender and sexuality, the politics of the countries in which they reside, dying, living, disease, desire, everything. And then he can listen to their poetry (full of striking imagery & delicious phonology), like Dionne Brand’s ‘No Language is Neutral’, Adrienne Rich’s ‘An Atlas of a Difficult World’ and be moved by poetry that is relevant, political, full of passion, anything but dull.

Monday, July 03, 2006

nova knyzhka! my chapbook is done.


I recently finished my second chapbook-zine; it is called 'waxwing cloud' & contains eleven poems written over last fall & winter & spring, as well as photographs i have taken mixed with collage-bits.

If you would like one, please let me know; I have 11 left. You can leave me a note here or via email, & I will send along a copy. They are all hand-bound with wool, & contain pretty papers (brown lokta from nepal & oatmeal-y coloured earth's general store paper).

'Tis all.

canada day fireworks (that resemble oceanic creatures)

{golden jellyfish}

{purple sea urchin}


{red tentacles reaching for a chrysanthemum}

{sunshowers & white fern fronds}