Art Event: MFA Party

Sheila Heti presenting How Should a Person Be? / Margaux Williamson presenting Teenager Hamlet / Tomboyfriend presenting Don't Go to School

Stone's Place. Thursday, October 14, 2010.

Declaring the completion of their respective long-gestating projects to be their matriculation from a DIY art school where they used each other as teachers and subjects, this was a triple-headed project launch party. The night was being held at Stone's Place, a Rolling Stones-themed pub in Parkdale. I'd never been inside before, and truth be told I'd always assumed it was for people who wanted something less edgy than, say, the Cadillac Lounge across the street — to say nothing of Wrongbar a couple doors down. And maybe it is, but it was actually rather cozy inside, with lots of couches gathered into intimate zones. Perhaps a bit decentralized for an event where you'd want everyone to pay attention to the stage, but well-suited for a crowd that was decidedly on the familiar-with-each-other side.

I found a couch to sit on against a wall perpendicular to the stage, which was comfortable enough, but poorly situated relative to the blinking lights flashing directly at the wall behind. I pondered whether my grand mal seizure would be an awkward bringing-people-together moment, and got back up to wander around amongst local celebs (and semi-celebs) that I recognized as people that maybe I should accost and start conversations with, though my will to mingle was not, on this night, particularly strong.

In between rock'n'roll oldies playing over the house system, Misha Glouberman, MC-ing in his inimitable style, stepped up to the stage to announce that things would not be starting on time but, in fact, at some subsequent time. No problem for the bulk of the chatty crowd on hand, which skewed older and, natch, artsy-ish — the sort of scene where people can be overheard talking about their "projects". And while it was getting crowded along the bar, there was also more than a few people in sight killing time by reading a book.

Once things got going, the night was presented in a two-part format — first a chance for each of the artists to present a sample of their work to the crowd; and then, after a break, a full set from Tomboyfriend. Margaux Williamson led off, showing a short clip from her movie Teenager Hamlet. In this situation, it was harder to get a grip on what the whole thing might be like, though even in what we saw the night's hallmarks of collaborative DIY self-referentiality were on display.

That was followed by Sheila Heti reading from the beginning of her novel How Should a Person Be? It sounded like a good ride, and though based in a version of her own actuality, also not entirely unlike the fables of her Middle Stories. Perhaps it's that in both her voice comes through so strongly — which I mean literally: I've heard Heti reading before, and after the fact could hear her as I read her work, almost as if it were an audiobook. I haven't tackled the novel yet, but do look forward to it.

And then a one-song sample from Ryan Kamstra's Tomboyfriend, playing "Almost/Always", one of the more wordy/literary songs from their album Don't Go to School. And then a break to mingle and cruise the merch table and consider what had just gone down.

The most striking thing about all these works of art is how closely intertwined they are. From Heti's reading: "Margaux complements me in interesting ways: she paints my picture and I record what she is saying. We do whatever we can to make the other one famous." These cross-connections go all the way around — Kamstra is in both the book and movie, while he in return writes songs about his friends. I'm sure far more thoughtful people than myself have put more thought into this, but I found myself musing on what it means for the glamourous people to gain that status by virtue of self-declaration and what the boundaries are between mutual reinforcement and mutual masturbation, and between creating mythologies and telling in-jokes. Handicapping the merch race, it looked like the book was winning — though it was also the bulkiest and hardest to conceal on one's person.

And then, once the band started getting ready, I looked upon the awkwardly-shaped stage (long and narrow, presenting the short front to the dance floor) and had a momentary Seeing Things-like vision of mediocre Stones cover bands cranking out rehashed Keef riffs. The crowd was a little thinner now — obviously some people didn't stick around to rock'n'roll, but there were plenty of vocal supporters on hand.

Showing a sense of occasion, bandmembers were celebrating the "don't go to school" theme, sporting uniforms marred by various school supply impalements.¹ The choir, who would join the band on several songs were wearing graduation gowns. For the full set, the band led off slowly with "Romantic Shut In", just Kamstra accompanied by Sholem Krishtalka's piano and backing vocals, and then flipping to the other pole of the band's sound with the scrappy glam of "The Swan". Kamstra's musical vision is based in a synthesis of some disparate elements — the sexual chug of rock'n'roll against the narrative scope of showtunes, to name a couple.² That murky mix reflects the fundamental ambiguities of sexuality and identity that Kamstra is expressing in his lyrics, blown up larger-than-life with his theatrical (and sometimes wilfully over-the-top) delivery.

Theatrical, too, in the sense of putting on a show. During "Hardboiled Wonderland" Kamstra took to the floor and danced like he was auditioning for an old-fashioned burlesque act. "I'm getting a little more comfortable with you," he said after, undoing his shirt to reveal a training bra underneath. The band, meanwhile, was getting into the giddy fun of it all, but definitely keeping things grounded with their solid playing. As I'd suspected after seeing them play some of these songs at an "open rehearsal", things were held together a lot more with a steady backbeat. Meanwhile Krishtalka and noted illustrator/cartographer Marlena Zuber gave vocal support as the songs lurched back and forth from cabaret to dive bar.

Now, I'm one who likes scrappy garage rock more than torch songs, so the fact that I'm more compelled by that side of band's work isn't too surprising. Thus, I'm drawn to stuff like the B-52's-on-poppers "Skank", with vocal parts passed all around and cowbell rhythms hitting on all cylinders. But I'm not blind to that other side, like the melodramatic hustler epic "Goldfinch Gluespoo", which arcs like a mini-musical. That one closed out the set, but everyone knew that there was going to be one more, and the band didn't wait long before plowing into signature song "The End of Poverty".

Afterward, Kamstra looked like he'd just played about seven periods of hockey and sweated out any evils in his system. As a communal dance experience, this was convincing — enough that one doesn't feel too bothered on the way out to fret, "but is it art?"

Check out a couple tracks from this set here and here.

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¹ I assume it's in that spirit that the album's title is mis-spelled "DON'T GO TO SCHOOOL" on the disc's spine.

² In their recorded incarnation, the band throws even more elements in the mix, including a couple flirtations with a more electronic/dancey sound, such as on the heavily autotuned "Big in Afghanistan".

IFOA 2010: Lynda Barry

Reading/interview: Lynda Barry

International Festival of Authors (Studio Theatre). Saturday, October 30, 2010.

Dag.

I saw Lynda Barry a couple years ago at IFOA, and it rocked so hard — calling it the "DIY gig of the year" captured my feelings well — that there was no way that I was going to skip a chance for a repeat visit. Barry, a mile-a-minute speaker, is an artist, novelist and teacher, but probably remains best-known for her long-running alt-comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. She was here discussing and reading from her new book Picture This — a collage-based work that serves as a practical education on how to draw while acting as a meditation on why creating art is so fundamental, and something we all do as kids, but something that we almost all tend to stop doing.

The book is a companion to, and extension of, her previous work in What It Is, which asked the same questions about writing stories. "The things we call the arts have an absolute biological function," is her constant assertion — creating or reliving artistic experiences makes you feel better. All of this is tightly wound up with Barry's central preoccupation with "image" and the "image-world". In her conception, in everything we call the arts, the image is fundamental.

To get closer to the heart of this perhaps it's worth quoting at length something that Barry, who is fascinated with the brain, returns to time and again in her talks, describing the value of the image-world with this metaphor about phantom limb pain.

A scientist named V.S. Ramachandran has done some astonishing work with neurological problems he's actually solved with a mirror. He had a patient who had lost his hand, but the patient's experience was that the hand was still there, and not only there, but it was in a really tight fist — you know, painfully tight. This guy was miserable; he couldn't get away from that feeling. Ramachandran made a box, tilted the mirror in there, and then he put a hole in the other side. He asked the guy to stick his hand in the hole, the fist that was still there, and look down. So what the guy saw was his fist and then the reflection of it, which was like his other hand. Then, he told him to open his hand, and what he saw was the reflection of his other hand opening, and it solved the problem.

That's a perfect example of what images do. My feeling is that in the course of life there are certain things for us that are like phantom limb pain, like a horrible, horrible parent who dies before you ever work things out with them. And I think the only way that those things can be worked out is through something that's akin to that mirror box — except it may be a fairy tale, or it may be a painting, or it may be a song you can remember from when you were 14 and you had to play the same song over and over and over again, like 400 times in a row. Yeah, what are you doing there? You're opening your fist. You're looking at a reflection.

The image-world is "an immune system and a transit system". Barry proceeds from the notion that everyone is interested in images and interested in making images — or just wordlessly interested in making images but blocked somehow. Once you understand what the image is, the form that it can take is up to the artist — there's no difference between making a piece of music, or writing a story, or creating a dance, or having a very good conversation.

With regard to drawing, this is what she is offering in her book — which she read from in a lively start to the session, asking questions both in the guise of the near-sighted monkey (her stand-in in the book) as well as beloved long-running characters Arna and Marlys.

Just as with What It Is, the book starts from looking back to childhood — "there was a time when drawing came easily" — before something happened to make us stop. So she proposes simple exercises like scribbling or doodling — physically creating at even the simplest level and finding the links between the mental activity of creation and the physical acts that correspond. The physical act of drawing provides the rhythm and creates the inspiration. Beyond drawing, Barry's art-making is supremely approachable to all: a bottle of school glue, toothpicks and paper scraps are all that's needed to get started.

That reading, plus an interview with Peter Birkemoe (owner of local comic-book heaven The Beguiling), were the formal pillars of the event, but the real magic came from the tangents and notions that Barry veered off into. An unpretentious and supremely engaging personality, Barry has the gift of imbuing her ideas with a spark of enchantment, a sense that even in a world full of cruddiness — especially in a world full of cruddiness — we all have the gifts to share in the fundamentally human and biologically indispensable worlds of images and stories.

Along the way, she talked about the beautiful art that could bring a person to tears — and that the artist that happened to bring her to tears was Jeff Keane, of the Family Circus. And about the mysteries of doodling and how even the simplest drawing connects us to the part of the brain that less aware of time — essential for getting through dull classes or meetings.

Birkemoe left more room than usual for questions for the audience, leading to a wide-ranging series of digressions, including hula ("hula saved my life," Barry said, completely seriously), the joy of ruining paper and what it was like to write a play. She even ended with her favourite party trick, which I shan't ruin for you if you haven't seen it, but was guaranteed by Barry to take a year off the life of everyone in the crowd.

In short, a totally delightful time, and I left feeling unusually buoyant. I headed out from the York Quay centre and walked down to the water's edge, the evening sky in its last moments of a brilliant orangeness turning to a stirring fuchsia melting into darkness. As I watched the surface of the water reflecting the sky back in jangling shards, I thought about how much I feel disengaged from the image-world, and I thought about that clenched fist, and I wondered to myself, given all the frustration and self-imposed limitations that I feel about [deleted], what is that mirror that would allow me to unclench?

And I walked past the wave deck, and I walked past the park with the muskoka chairs and I walked past the Music Garden. I watched the water under a now-dark sky and listened to the streetcars behind me. And I felt pretty happy about things, regardless.

IFOA 2010: William Gibson & David Mitchell

Bridges Over Time: William Gibson & David Mitchell in Conversation

International Festival of Authors (Fleck Dance Theatre). Wednesday, October 27, 2010.

A big crowd for this one, with the lower seats filled up and some people even sitting in the balcony. I was here to see William Gibson, author of many novels of speculative fiction, and a canny observer of technology and the way that people interact with it. He read a chapter from his new Zero History, set in the same universe as his previous Pattern Recognition and Spook Country — a universe not too different from what next week might be like in our own. Choosing a passage that was mostly conversation-based and expository, his prose was filled with the vividly specific textures and bits of stuff that fill his work. Standing slightly stoop-shouldered, the gangly Gibson had a folksy sort of quality, speaking unhurriedly and with a hint of twang revealing his Virginia upbringing. As he read, he was clearly enjoying himself, almost laughing along with the audience, as if he were letting us in on a code-cracking conspiracy. Very enjoyable.

David Mitchell, the evening's other author was unfamiliar to me, although being twice-shortlisted for the Booker, he obviously has some cachet. Although here promoting his newest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (set in 18th century Japan) he instead read a new short story — very new, in fact. "I'm still working on it, so I need you to be friendly, Torontonian guinea pigs tonight," he told the crowd. The story had a science-fiction basis, but with a streak of folk tale and social realism, Mitchell relating it to "Gordon Lightfoot, guesting with Rush, singing a song by The Smiths". The tale cross-cut between two stories, each hinging in a different way on the value of the elderly in a society defined by scarcity. Mitchell was even editing the story in real time. On hitting the sentence, "there was a fierce glint in his look." he stopped. "That's a rubbish sentence, isn't it — 'fierce glint in his look'?", crossing it out before moving on.

And then the authors were interviewed by Mark Askwith. Gibson was placid and unruffled on the stage, cool in the McLuhanesque sense. Mitchell, meanwhile, gave the impression of a clever seminar student trying to impress a professor, taking notes and visibly thinking on stage. The interview revolved around, as Gibson characterized it, how "everyone's present is always some else's future and someone else's past" — the means by which fiction can give us the gift of atemporality, "of not being too now-centric." This would serve as the link between the two books, Mitchell's set in the past and Gibson's in the near-future, both agreeing that ultimately imagining the future and past are equally speculative — although the ways that the author could get each of them wrong is different.

There was some talk about writing strategies, and of the narrative value of outsiders — and in both of these books, translators — as protagonists. Askwith, fascinated with both authors' neologisms (Williams' story memorably featured a character being issued tic-tac-like "mercy beans" as a last option) enquired about the drift of language and the need to have new words to describe things in the future.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation came around the topic of what we might call ubiquitous intertextuality. Gibson discussed how he now takes it for granted that readers will automatically google unfamiliar names or phrases, and how "every published text today is surrounded by an invisible virtual cloud of hyperlinks" — a radical game-changer for how authors handle exposition. He further proposed that in a couple years, every e-reader will be connected to Google, and the reader could click through on every word to wikipedia — meaning that an author could slip in relatively obscure references and assume that the reader will get some pleasure out of googling it, working their way through the same websites that the author found.

Some questions from the audience were answered with thoughtful paragraph-length answers, and not just quick sentences. On literary influences, Gibson observed that although he always mentioned William S. Burroughs at the top of his list, he realized with age that that was partially because he thought he'd be seen to be cool to name Burroughs, where, in reality, the spy novels of Len Deighton might have been just as formative. Thought-provoking stuff throughout.

Recording: DBC Pierre

Artist: DBC Pierre

Song: Date with Ikea [excerpt from Lights Out In Wonderland]

Recorded at the International Festival of Authors (Brigantine Room), October 23, 2010.

DBC Pierre - Date With Ikea

In the spirit of my music-augmented reading by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, I thought I'd do the same with this brief reading from DBC Pierre. I didn't have anything specifically Ikea-related, but this looped-guitar improvisation by Svarte Greiner has a suitably icy Scandinavian edge, I think. (You can read more about that show here.)

My discussion of this reading/interview can be found here.

Recording: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

Artist: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

Reading: A Shining Flood, A Wall of Water [excerpt from Ghosted]

Recorded at the International Festival of Authors (Brigantine Room), October 23, 2010.

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall - A Shining Flood, A Wall of Water

Something a little different here. The interview included this brief impromptu reading by Bishop-Stall from his novel Ghosted. Now, I haven't read the book yet, but I hear a lot of it takes place in the College/Spadina neighbourhood. I don't know if the characters drop into Comfort Zone, but I sort of get the impression they might be at home there. So I decided to augment the reading with a recording from that venue, in this case by Ostrich Tuning — a show that you can read about here if you are so inclined.

My discussion of this reading/interview can be found here.

IFOA 2010: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall and DBC Pierre

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall and DBC Pierre

International Festival of Authors (Brigantine Room). Saturday, October 23, 2010.

A double-header interview, I was keen for this one to check out local writer Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, whose 2004 memoir Down to This, telling of the year he spent living in Toronto's Tent City, has now been followed up with his debut novel Ghosted. I haven't read the new one yet, but I was intrigued by what I'd heard about the hyper-local nature of the story, which is largely set in the College and Spadina neighbourhood. I'm always a sucker for fiction set in places I recognize, where one's own familiarity feeds into the vividness of the prose while at the same time adding new layers of resonance to the places themselves. He was joined by DBC Pierre, a Booker Prize winner in 2003 for his first novel Vernon God Little, and here at the festival presenting his new Lights Out in Wonderland. Pierre, with a mildly scruffy appearance, presented as the hard-living author type from whom any literary accounts of debauchery or hangovers might not be wholly invented.¹

The session was hosted by Brent Bambury², who showed great keenness for both books and structured his interview around teasing out some of the similarities in the two works. He began with examining the iconic structures that play a part in each of the books — the Bloor Viaduct in Ghosted and Berlin's Templehof Airport. Regarding the metaphor-value of Templehof, Pierre was articulate in discussing how the location underpinned his allegory on decadence and the collapse of ideologies (fascism, communism and now capitalism) that Berlin has witnessed in the past century.

While Pierre portrayed Lights Out in Wonderland as a contemporary Satyricon — an illustration of a decadent society — Bambury pried into some of the deeper layers as well. Both books have a dark heart, concerned with the enigma of suicide and other forms of self-destruction — Bishop-Stall said his book was about "the line between people who are truly suicidal and people who will just end up probably killing themselves." Along the way there, there were also some amusing coincidences in the books, such as a large amount of cocaine consumption³ and memorable scenes involving aquariums.

Enjoying that imagery, Bambury pressed Bishop-Stall into an impromptu brief reading of one his his aquarium scenes, while a little later also prompting a short selection from Pierre, in a passage illustrating his thesis that capitalism is an escape-proof trap — in this case illustrated with a hungover protagonist lost in an Ikea.⁴

Closer to home, on the very local nature of his work, Bishop-Stall talked about how although Toronto is a vivid character in his books, it the city he knows the least, especially in its usual literary incarnation. His Toronto is one that most people don't know, the hidden underworld of after-hours clubs and the desperate efforts of the dispossessed. After talking a bit about Down to This and its echoes in his new book, Bishop-Stall talked about the "one equals seven" rule — the notion that it takes seven years of settled life to recover from one year on the streets, a period that he has now passed out of. In an echo of that, talking about his Booker prize Pierre noted it has been seven years since he won that ("good for getting published, but bad for writing") and those after-effects might be out of his system as well.

After the Q & A, as the audience began filing out, I actually saw something that I don't think I've ever seen before. Before heading out to sign books for the audience, Bambury held up the two authors got both to sign his copies — a further sign that the enthusiasm that he brought to the interview wasn't a front. Illuminating stuff, and if the goal of something like this is to whip up interest in these books, it certainly worked on me.

Listen to Bishop-Stall's reading here, and Pierre's here.

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¹ When asked, "How was your Friday night?" Pierre dryly responded, "I"m still having it."

² Who is well-known — if not revered — by Canadians of a certain age as the former host of Brave New Waves, the pioneering late-night radio show that disseminated non-mainstream music of all sorts in a pre-internet age. For those so inclined, apparently Bambury is now hosting the new Day 6 on Radio 2.

³ Bishop-Stall: "from a narrative point of view, if you like books where a lot of exciting things happen, a good way to get that done is to have your character as a cokehead — a lot of shit will then happen."

⁴ There were some other parallels, too, like Ghosted's lists of some Nuit Blanche-esque monumental public art echoing Wonderland's decadent recipes made from endangered species.

IFOA 2010: "In Graphic Detail"

Round Table: "In Graphic Detail" (feat. Charles Burns, Dylan Horrocks and Seth)

International Festival of Authors (Brigantine Room). Saturday, October 23, 2010.

Rather than just rows of chairs as I remember in the past, the Brigantine Room was set up salon-style, with small round candle-lit tables filling most of the room. That created a nice atmosphere (though the setup also might get a bit awkward in a packed room, where people would be struggling to position themselves so their backs aren't facing the stage). As it turned out, there was a decent crowd, but not a full house for this one. The event was a round table discussion featuring three noteworthy graphic novelists: local artist Seth (as nattily meticulous-looking as one of his creations, slightly dandyish in a suit and argyle socks); American Charles Burns (looking more like a high school teacher or someone similar that you'd run into at Costco); and Dylan Horrocks from New Zealand (sitting in the middle, he also split the difference sartorially, looking perhaps like a young professor in a sweater and sneakers combo).¹

The discussion was hosted by CBC's Bob Mackowycz, who did a good job of not over-injecting himself into the discussion — he pushed things along as necessary, but as often as not the three artists prodded each other with questions, keeping the whole thing flowing like an actual conversation. The discussion started by talking about the creative process — all three agreed that the meticulous nature of their craft required scheduled regularity more than bursts of inspired passion (cartooning is "more plodding" than painting, as Seth commented).

The conversation turned to the differences between commercial work and their own art, and Burns and Seth agreed on the usefulness of "busywork" to fill the time and keep the work routine going in creatively fallow periods, while Horrocks' experiences were coloured by a spell of commercial work he did (writing for Batgirl, of all things) that eliminated any lingering romantic notions he held about working in "the industry".

There was an interesting discussion on the necessity and limits of plot, Horrocks calling it, "the least interesting part of the story".² Seth added that while plot is conflict-based, the stories with little conflict are most interesting. While our culture has a limited notion of storytelling, obsessed with incidents and conflicts instead of situations or places, all three of these artists' works are strongly situation-based, with strong sense of place.

Meanwhile, there was talk on the possibilities of working in other media (all three would find it awkward, although Burns has done some work in animation) and the possibilities of adaptations — Horrocks, for one, would welcome an adaptation of Hicksville that wouldn't be beholden to the exactness of his book's plot. Burns talked a bit about the possible adaptation of Black Hole and his realization that for him it would have to be a hands-off process — the book is his work, a movie would be something else.

There was also a fascinating discussion on the value of scarcity for imagination — like reading comics in foreign languages as a child and coming up with one's own dialogue to fit the visual language. Burns recalled reading Tintin as a kid and seeing the listing of other books on the back cover, ones you couldn't always find in your local store and that in some way existed only in your own imagination. This resonated strongly with me, reminding me of my own childhood. It's something that is increasingly disappearing in our online age, and one wonders if easy access to seemingly everything will have an adverse impact of the generation who are growing up now.

There was a lot of other ground covered in the hour of discussion and short Q&A session. Being familiar with these artists' works, it was easy to see how their personalities are woven into their art. An engaging time.

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¹ For those unfamiliar with these artists and perhaps looking for somewhere to start, I'd recommend Seth's Clyde Fans, Horrocks' Hicksville and Burns' Black Hole, all of which are available through the Toronto Public Library.

² Horrocks would later comments that he was looking for novels with a similar unconcernedness with plot, preferring a less-structured daydream-drift — something like "Moomins with sex," he said, half-jokingly.

Recording: John Waters

Artist: John Waters

Talk: Advice on Fashion

Recorded at International Festival of Authors (Fleck Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre), October 22, 2010.

John Waters - On Fashion

My notes for this event can be found here.

IFOA 2010: John Waters

John Waters

International Festival of Authors (Fleck Dance Theatre). Friday, October 22, 2010.

A reliable (if pricey) annual autumn celebration of all things literary, the International Festival of Authors gives cause to head down to Harbourfront after outdoor concert season ends. I figured it would be a good start to a Friday night to spend some time with John Waters. Heading down to the Fleck Dance Theatre — which I've been to for a concert and a couple IFOA things, but never for dance — there were a decent number of keeners out waiting in line before the doors opened. Looking over the crowd, there were a handful who clearly looked like superfans but otherwise a pretty mixed bunch, 30's to 60's, that didn't fall into any overt niche. Some punk hairdos were apparent, and looking around it appeared this was widely thought to be a good place for guys to take their beaus out on a date.¹

For a crowd that was, presumably, united in some sort of affinity for things outside the mainstream, the bland smooth jazz playing over the PA before the show wasn't a good fit. The theatre is a pretty big space, seating about 450. There was a good crowd for this one, though I don't think there was anyone seated in the balcony.

For the first part of the night, Waters — dressed in a dapper black-flowered suit — read from his book Role Models. The book is a memoir, albeit one constructed in an unconventional way. Not directly an account of Waters' life, it's instead a collection of character sketches of people who have been important to him. The notion of how our characters are shaped by the people who influenced us was a central thread throughout the evening, as was hinted at in the first reading from the chapter on Tennessee Williams — in subtle ways, it's just as much about Waters as the playwright he never met. After stealing a "forbidden" Williams book from the Baltimore library, Waters learned, "I didn't have to listen to the lies the teachers told us about society's rules." And that one can be an individual even in an outsider subculture: "Tennessee Williams wasn't a gay cliché, so I had the confidence to try to not be one myself."

Waters also read from the satirical "Cult Leader", where he outlined his plans to build an "army of filth" before being interviewed by Richard Crouse. The conversation began with the usuals about the process of creating the book and the pair talked about some of the people in it, like "outsider pornographers" David Hurles and Bobby Garcia. The discussion ranged from fashion to politics and religion to hippies and punks, all served with Waters' wit. Less flippant was the discussion of Leslie Van Houten, the former member of Manson family fighting for parole — a cause that Waters has publicly celebrated, engaging in an real investigation of redemption and how people can change. He also talked about some of the changes in his own thinking, such as feeling regret now for, say, having used the Manson murders as comedic fodder as "boogieman against straight people" — something he now sees as youthfully irresponsible and insensitive to the victims' families.

There were a few questions from the audience before the night ended with the traditional retirement to the author signing — that part isn't really my thing. Overall, a fun time.

A key part of John Waters' career has become the selling the brand of being himself — his presence is perhaps most marketable "work". Given that his main vehicle for this has been his one-man show This Filthy World, it was interesting to see the differences in approach in this more highbrow sort of event. I think the tone of the conversation was a bit more introspective and probing than when I saw This Filthy World, but without losing Waters' irrepressible verve.

Listen to Waters speak here.

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¹ A good way to give the impression, "I'm literate, but still a little freaky".

Word on the Street

Word on the Street. Queen's Park, Sunday, September 27, 2009.

Well, I'm not the world's most literate guy, but I do feel a warm burst of affection in the old whatzit at the idea of Word on the Street. Sprawling in and around Queen's Park, there's a wide variety of booths for book-related organizations¹ and publishers and magazines and what have you, all in a massive arc around Queen's Park Circle and running up almost to Bloor. And the park's greenspace itself, colonized by a variety of stages catering to various tastes — the biggest one a CBC stage presided over by Start McLean, indicative of the sort of scrubbed-clean middlebrow sentiment that is WOTS' sweet spot. But there's plenty more inneresting stuff around the edges.

Arriving at noon, I had to pick between a couple options: Sandro Perri on the eye-sponsored music stage, or a reading from Ray Robertson. Figuring that, given my habits, I'd have more chances at hand to revisit the former, I went with local writer Robertson, someone who works I've followed pretty much since Home Movies, his first novel. Starting from there and through four subsequent novels, Robertson has written with a certain kind of attitude — rock'n'roll as opposed to folk, we might say, to pull out a music metaphor — avoiding our national literary tradition of fusty frontierism, that whole garrison mentality thing.² So it was with some surprise to me that Robertson introduced his new novel David, set in Chatham in the late nineteenth century. Ah, ye olde historical novel, that CanLit staple. Pretty aware of the sort of thing he could be lumped in with, Robertson cracked some jokes about how he left enough sex and drugs and general bad behaviour in the novel that he wouldn't have to worry about renting a tux for the Giller celebrations. He read some from the book and chatted with the crowd and left a pretty positive impression.

After that, wandering across the park, I did manage to catch the last couple songs of Sandro Perri's set, including a new song written from the werewolf's point of view. And then I had a few minutes to wander round and decide my next move. Tho I was tempted to check out Masaisai at the world music stage, I decided again to go with books over music. Or at least panels about books about music. Formally a discussion of Stuart Berman's BSS biography This Book is Broken, ("Dave Morris from EYE WEEKLY will be leading an onstage interview with Stuart and members of Broken Social Scene," crowed the event website, which turned out to be somewhat overstated) the panel turned out to be Jonny Dovercourt, Dalton Higgins and Sarah Liss.³ More of a chummy retrospective chat about the history of the local indie rock scene than anything too hard-hitting, the conversation mostly played out between Berman and Dovercourt, with Higgins and Liss dropping in from time to time like kooky sitcom neighbours. In fact Higgins⁴, as someone coming into this discussion at more of a tangent, scored the most stinging point by noting that for all of the complaints the indie rockers had about the difficulty in building up their scene, they had, in fact, all kinds of infrastructures and supports that weren't available to, say, reggae or hip-hop groups, who are no less "independent" in its most basic sense. I perhaps didn't learn much that I hadn't read about in Berman's book or otherwise experienced on my own, but there is a kind of basic thrill in seeing something you can relate to as real, actual history.

Stuck around to check out Bruce Peninsula. Although highly-praised by many music authorities around town, I was more reserved in my appreciation after the last time I'd saw them. Playing as a relatively compact seven-piece (still enough of a crowd that drummer Steve McKay was consigned to a spot on the ground to the left of the stage) the band managed to fill the tent with sound quite nicely, despite the fact that other stages on both sides were also blasting competing music. One of the "hooks" of the music stage at a literary festival is a mandate for the artists to talk about their writing process, and although Matt Cully and crew seemed a little shy and reluctant, their banter did a nice job of unpacking how they use old ways of singing to explore the world around them, and to find their voices in a community of song. Cully and Misha Bower also talked about the yin and yang of their music, how it can be effective as either a raucous shout directed outwards or a quiet, self-directed lament — which they then put into practice with the juxtaposition of "Weave Myself a Dress" and "Crabapples". Enjoyed the thirty-five minutes with the band on this occasion more than I had previously.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Went for a walk after that, both to poke around in the stalls some and to keep an eye out for some friends I knew'd be wandering the area, and indeed came across them and that turned into a pleasantly strolling visit.⁵ And after, J. stuck around as we headed back to the eye tent to catch Joe Pernice, reading from It Feels So Good When I Stop, his first novel. A noted musician for his work both under under his own name as well as with the Pernice Brothers and the Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice has turned the narrative and observational gifts apparent in his songcraft to the page. He read a selection from the novel that was fairly satisfying, but commented after that it wasn't so much the passage he'd most liked to have read as much as the one passage he could find with the least amount of blue language to read at a family-friendly event. Still, it was filled with grim humour and sounds like a book I will get my hands on. It was followed by an interview distinguished by lengthy, detailed questions from the interviewer that set up short, curt responses from the author — about the exact opposite ratio one'd like to see in a situation such as this. But good fun, all the same.

Coulda stuck around the music tent to catch Ghost Bees, but not only was I worried that the noise from the surrounding stages would overwhelm their delicate songcraft, I'd also told A. that I'd meet up with him. Found him in the Proud Voices tent catching a poetry reading by Billeh Nickerson. The bit I caught sounded fairly amusing. We walked over to the author signing tent after so A. could get Nickerson to sign his book, and spotted Margret Atwood down at the other end of the tent, looking bright and friendly as ever at the end of what must have been a long line of enthusiasts queueing up to meet her.

All told, a pretty solid afternoon. Another one of those events that make me feel like a citizen, and glad that I live in this city.

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¹ Everyone is pro-literacy, it seems — who's taking up the opposing viewpoint on that?

² This about exhausts my theoretical wellspring of literary knowledge.

³ As it turned out, everyone on stage was wearing sneakers. Utter coincidence? Trenchant meta-commentary? You decide!

⁴ Higgins had his own appearance on the same stage following this panel, bringing up some rappers & DJ's for something more involving than a mere discussion on his book Hip Hop World. Based on his engaging personality, were I not called elsewhere, it'd have been inneresting to stick around and hear more from him.

⁵ Celebrity sighting: Bob Rae, taking a break from the machinations of power politics (and possible internecine scuffles) and relaxing with some street food, leaning against the concrete entrance to Museum Station.