January 2010
1 post
1 tag
CHECK IN FOR A DAY, STAY FOR A LIFETIME.
I was riding up the elevator at the Jane Hotel in New York and remarked to the elevator bellhop guy that I was looking forward to the hallways breaking into flames. He looked concerned and expressed his wish that such an event wouldn’t happen. I realized that he hadn’t seen the movie and that it might be a good idea to come back (to the hotel) and screen the Coen Brother’s Barton Fink and brief...
December 2009
1 post
Collages, models, graphic novels, board games, (including Scienopoly) wood carvings, knitting and sewing, fashion designs, journals and haikus. Letters, playing cards, graffiti, installations, dioramas, stuffed animals, sculptures, drawings, furniture, sketches and papier-mâché. Polaroids, photo albums, posters, puppet shows, pastels, paintings, protests, pottery, poetry, plays, postcards and...
November 2009
3 posts
5 tags
I was swept up in Barack Obama’s election and all the hope and optimism that was in the air and that was articulated with the proclamation of “Yes we can.” Around this time I was approached by a student and filmmaker, Jamie Tanner, who had made a beautiful and disturbing video about the effect of fish farms on our indigenous salmon stocks, and who asked me to write some words to reinforce his...
3 tags
EVERYBODY SEEMS TO BE BUSY SHOWING WHAT POLISHED...
I’m listening with interest at a back table in a busy coffee shop in Chinatown. My former student is talking passionately about a new screenplay idea that came from a dream he had about the end of the world. This is the tail end of Reading Break and I’ve been averaging two coffee shops a day. Talking about marking free-range film essays with my TA at Moka House. The intricacies of the long poem...
5 tags
I BELIEVE THAT IF WE SURRENDER OURSELVES TO THAT...
All the leaves were gone and the sky was grey. Faces were illuminated by the bluish glow emanating from the televisions in the suburban windows. Rows of discarded and dying pumpkins lined the road as I drove through the island’s rain forest on the way to my office at the university. Manu Chao’s anthem song, “Clandestino”, sparked my soul and my thoughts wandered to Buenos Aires and the magical...
4 tags
Like so many adventurers and travelers before me, I want to write a love letter to New York. Or write a poem, compose a song, make a film or music video, a short story, an essay, or I suppose a blog entry. I wonder if the words, poem, story, film, or video, sounded as awkward when they were first introduced as the word blog sounds now? I imagine a future where blog will be uttered with the same...
October 2009
2 posts
1 tag
IN THE LONELY NIGHT, IN THE STARDUST OF A PALE...
Four months have passed. I had left San Francisco and headed north. I had become obsessed with a Bob Dylan song, “Born in Time”, and I listened to it over and over again as circumstances brought me back home to my island in British Columbia and then onwards to Dawson City in the Yukon Territory; the land of the midnight sun, where visitors and locals ascend “The Dome” on summer...
June 2009
2 posts
1 tag
The goal in life is to discover you’ve always been where you were supposed to be. I believe that. Especially now. This is where I’m supposed to be. This is the right place to start writing again. Or blogging. I guess I’ll discover the difference soon enough. I open the Borges I bought at City Lights last night and read: A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an...
1 tag
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