MONDOmagazine

September 21st, 2007 @ Bloor United Church, 300 Bloor Street West
7:30 PM

by Stewart Byfield

Sure enough, it starts out with a reading. This is fine by me, as I haven’t had a chance to read Gibby’s latest novel, Spook Country — his eighth by my count. Once again, it appears to be about a hapless, conventional protagonist who finds himself present for the emergence of a new and revolutionary technology. I would like to say that Gibson’s reading interested me enough to go out and buy the novel, but sadly I had to strain real hard just to extract a few precious words from the pulpit. Where have all the competent sound engineers gone, anyway? It seems that, in the past few years, the number of potentially great shows, readings, lectures etc. that have been denied their full impact due to shitty sound has risen dramatically. And fair enough, a huge church is a pretty tough acoustic monster to contend with, but really! The entire presentation: the reading, the ensuing interview, the question and answer period from the audience, was unintelligible. I spent the bulk of it sitting with gritted teeth as the whole PA system threatened to implode our heads with shrieking feedback. So yeah, I think his new book is about the global positioning system and rogue artists chasing virtual artifacts across the world, but as far as I can remember from the presentation it’s actually about a totalitarian government that controls dissenting voices with a crack cabal of incompetent sound guys and emergency vehicles.

Gibson closes his own book after reading the entire fourth chapter and settles into a chair opposite the MC/interviewer. The pulpit mic peels out with one last high pitched squawk and then goes dead, then the new lapel mics on Gibson and his inquisitor click and a new type of sonic mischief ensues. I think I can almost make out what they’re saying this time when a parade of sirens begins to strafe the church along Bloor Street, although they seemed to be coming down at us from the sky. Apparently, the whole emergency force of Toronto was out joyriding that night and had decided to circle our location, effectively massacring any thoughtful thread we might have gleaned from our new author friend. It’s actually a funny image watching three-hundred cyber nerds and literary fans perch their eager faces on their elbows, which in turn are perched atop the railings of their pews, perhaps not realizing how much they resemble a solemn catholic mass.

Thinking back to his novels and short stories I do think Mr. Gibson is a dissenting futurist of sorts, or at least a cautionary one. Here’s what I did manage to decode from Mr. Gibson: On Google:
“Google helps me remember things… universal prosthetic memory.”
On eBay (apparently the Gib just loves it!):
“…a vast and complex system of whittling down the world’s additives.”
And on his own writing process:
“When I discovered what the McGuffin was it was a very lovely day in the basement.”
My apologies to you, reader. Perhaps if you didn’t know anything of Gibson’s work, you were hoping to learn a bit about it here. No such luck, I’m afraid. He is one of the most important writers of this century (and the last) and if you are really curious, you should pick up one of his books. Any of them in fact; they are all quite good. And if you do know William Gibson well, then you already know, don’t you?

I also managed to get the last question asked of him from the congregation that night. A slight, energized young woman sauntered up to the mic and with regards to his body of work, asked if she was reading it right.

My Adventures with The Scream Literary Festival

By Kerry Wright Zentner

Ironically, after a week full of amazing literary events I am finding it very difficult to find words to describe it. They have all either been exhausted or their meanings commandeered by poeticism to such a degree that they no longer function in the organization of ordinary thought. Maybe that’s okay. To describe poetry in non-poetic terms is a self-defeating exercise. That, to me, is the beauty of poetry: it’s a singular entity, the effect it has on the mind cannot be matched by any description of the effect. Description is simply inadequate. This notion was driven home to me repeatedly over the course of the last week or so. Sure, I could tell you that I sat in the abandoned Don Valley Brickworks and listened to Christopher Dewdney read A Natural History of Southwestern Ontario in its entirety while sampling some of the finest gourmet food I have ever eaten and watching the sun set, but it doesn’t do justice in conferring to you the feel of the experience itself. You might instead feel a sense of loss at not having been there yourself. Perhaps a momentary strain of second-hand beauty will awaken within you and you will remind yourself to be more observant. Yet, for whatever reason, I will now attempt to describe that which has already gone before. Maybe you will decide to join us next year.

Excerpts from The Scream Literary Festival #15, 2007:

July 6th
The Dewdney Principle: A Book-Length Dinner Reading

Crossing under the immense and beastly body of the abandoned building I approach the dining area. The sky is singing, the way it often does in actual unfiltered nature. I sit down directly across from the sun. I can see that it is tired of trying to communicate the day to us. We do not really understand what it means. The building observes us. It is listening with absurd silence to our conversations, waiting for a book to be read into its crumbling body. Eventually a man comes along to negotiate our own silence. Behind him stretches a large, murky pond. He tells us to gaze into the endless present, to watch the burnished, luminous sky whilst the birds and eventually the bats skim its transformative catacombs. The man begins to read. Immediately everything around me is relevant, everything is well placed. The ground, the brick, the insects, all vibrate with delicate and sexual necessity. I notice that every surface is ringing with sound. The alcove of the building is humming along with the man. It has been waiting to hum again since its death. I get up and climb around it. The I-beams holler inaudibly through the rubble at the crumbling frontispiece, unconcerned with their own rusted extinction. Raccoons clamber around like maggots in the great distended head of the building, the unstoppable progenitors of decay. The frogs, owls, and spiders have all allowed us to be here, to read to them in their unrestrained natural sanctum. The building now knows that, in actuality, it is teeming with life, and beyond that, it is also teeming with existence. The man finishes reading. I am back in my seat, the taste of music fresh and honey-like on my tongue.

July 7th
Poets in Their Natural Habitat: A Field Trip

The two of us stand opposite each other, reading out our poetry as a dialogue, one sentence at a time. Angela radiates beauty and energy. My father approaches, leading a group of poetically-inclined adventurers. They encircle us, listening in to what we are saying. Their laughter frightens me and I camouflage myself as a rock, tucking my head down to my knees and dropping to the ground. Simultaneously, Angela hides against a tree, implementing a leafy tree branch as concealment. My father and his safari-conducting accomplice, Nadia Halim, begin to talk excitedly about us, our habits and predilections. It is, after all, quite a thing to discover poets in their natural habitat, unconfined to the stage. And it is not often that so many of them are spotted in a single day. As the tour continues we are treated to many poet sightings, including not one, but two encounters with a William A. Davison (one of whom was poeticizing from a small aperture in the ground). We capture and tag a live Hugh Thomas, whereupon we convince him to beguile us for a short time with his writings. We see the Myna Wallin strutting her plumage at an ice cream shop, while nearby a passing Nicholas Power invokes his mating call. We observe the congenial Luciano Iacobelli elucidate his childhood from the patio of Dooney’s Café, a territory which indisputably belongs to him. So many poets are encountered and in such quick succession that it defies me to recount. The expedition comes to a close at the Victory Café, where many of the poets we have seen join us to scavenge for food. After all is said (and done), new bonds are formed amidst a cornucopia of intriguing thought. I will cry if this does not become an annual event.

July 9th
Behold What We Have Wrought: Welcome to the Laboratory

My artistic collaborators and I descend into the basement of Type Books. We are suddenly in a sarcophagus. Strange masks dangle ribbons of literature from the walls. The communist manifesto weaves, bloody and outstretched into the dead space. The lights go off and we listen to Dr. Frankenstein recount the formation of what was his highest achievement and, simultaneously, his greatest blunder. It’s a tale of scientific knowledge used for disturbing ends in the creation of a monster, which, aptly, is the very thing we have all assembled here to accomplish on this humid July evening. The term Exquisite Corpse was happened upon by the surrealists and without any direct reference to Mary Shelley’s infamous monster, though he does embody the idea (and the term) in many different ways, including literally. The idea here is for multiple participants to compose a work collaboratively, using many distinct and separate elements, placed together in an order, to form a continuous whole. In this instance we are given several tomes of science text to carve into, neatly adhering to this year’s “Science” theme at the festival. I’ve done this sort of thing before (quite often, as a matter of fact) but never with so many people. The room is soon filled with the sound of twenty-some clacking scissors and, a short time later, our monster is constructed: a three-part opus as envisioned by our evening’s host, Mark Higgins. The thing is a gnarled and ungainly scroll and reads as if a malfunctioning robot had decided to spew out its most arbitrary articles of science trivia in one long entreaty, requesting…god-knows-what. These collaborative efforts are usually a hit-or-miss endeavour, and the result of this particular experiment is surprisingly good for the amount of people involved. It serves to illustrate the interesting types of people who attend the Scream Literary Festival every year. This type of collaborative activity and exchange of ideas is a near necessity when a bunch of neat artistic people are gathered together and I’m severely glad that it has happened. I leave just as “the Squirm” begins, and stumble home like Frankenstein’s monster.

The festival is in its fifteenth year, and continues to grow in scale with each one that passes. This year’s events yielded some legendary new classics which are sure to become future staples. In addition to the three here detailed (which are but a small sampling of the activities), I attended several other events including the one that incited the whole festival: The Scream in High Park. I can now earnestly say that the Scream is easily one of Toronto’s most interesting and intelligent festivals. It stimulates, indeed activates, something within us which is too often neglected: The Poetic Mind (cue spooky, Twilight-Zone music). It has renewed in me a romantic sense of nature and exploration inside the mind and out. Moreover, it has instilled in me the importance of participating in these beautiful and unusual moments and events that make Toronto such an interesting place to occupy. Next year, you will join me.

Reasons why telling secrets online is a bad idea.

By Sarah Murray

On a fairly regular basis, I, like countless others, visit the PostSecret website. You may ask, “but why?” Well, I shall tell you.

Mainly, it is a good way to judge others, and to console myself that I’m not as badly off as some miserable bastards out there. But inevitably, there may be a time when all of us can be lumped in with said miserable bastards. On these occasions, and when solitary drinking and writing bad poetry does not suffice, a quick trip to PostSecret may just help. You can identify, you can wallow, and you can even curse out your lack of creativity, your total apathy, and the knowledge that your (theoretical) postcard would never be as witty, or as compelling/shocking/gut wrenching as one of the 20 or so cards that earn a coveted weekly spot on the site.

All of this can be accomplished online. But on one very special night, I was give the chance to indulge in all of these activities live and in person, with the brains behind the project, Frank Warren, and an audience of roughly 200 people.

So, on a sunny spring evening (Thursday May 31st, 2007 to be exact), I sat back and celebrated my lack of shoes and socks, relaxing beneath the pencil crayon pillars of OCAD and waiting for the secret pleasure and pain of countless souls to be discussed, displayed, and dissected.

And they were. It was a crowd as carnivorous as a gathering of hipsters could be, and everyone was ready to gnaw at the bones of human nature. I was excited. I generally like events that light up the creative spark, or foster some kind of sense of understanding.

“Disappointed” is the easiest way to explain what I felt. Disappointed in the fact that the whole thing left me feeling so blah, totally uninspired, and a little bit dirty.

Frank Warren — bless the man and his community art project — has the appearance and understanding of that favourite high school teacher that everyone, at one time or another has had. The one you were allowed to call by a nickname, crack jokes with, or ignored the occasional skip day. To be more specific, he reminded me of that teacher that is called in to mass assemblies to talk about reasons why killing yourself is generally a poor idea.

Pinstripe shirt, friendly face and soft voice in tow, he cracked jokes, showed off favourite postcards (many of which didn’t even make it onto the site), and shared some non-secret “secrets” of his own to boot. Sat perched atop his stool, he gave an earnest talk about everything PostSecret, and undoubtedly carried a message that truly had an effect on some of the people present.

Everything about the show was earnest. Warren earnestly wanted his earnest audience to enjoy the earnest emotions put up for display. It was something akin to a mellow, audio-visual, affirmation-chanting love-in, with the distinct smell of cheese in the air.

I earnestly felt like a bit of a voyeuristic perv, and I am still wondering if I was the only person who felt that way.

The beauty of PostSecret is its anonymity and intimacy (despite the chosen medium). It is something solitary and melancholy, riddled with hidden jokes and irony that leaves the reader lost in thoughts about their own experience.

But bringing it to light (and to a blatantly public place) kind of killed it for me. It turned something beautiful and personal into a multimedia, mass marketed, overproduced experience, despite what Warren’s best intentions probably were.

Maybe the secrets behind Post Secrets should have remained tucked away.

A Journey into the Heart of Darkness that is the Distillery District

June 1st, 2007
Toronto’s Historic Distillery District

By Stewart Byfield

Page one of the Luminato schedule of events has four bright, smiling corporate faces on its high-gloss surface. The abstract beneath describes the festival as “an extraordinarily ambitious multidisciplinary artistic Endeavour.” The program then goes on to mention the sponsors, the artists, and you, the prospective audience, in that order. Perusing the events listed, one might notice that most of the free stuff seems to be happening at the Distillery District and that most of the paid events sound lame. Thus the decision is made. The bag is packed and I’m off to Front and Parliament to rap with my fellow ambitious, multidisciplinary artsy types. There are also a few vague words about multiculturalism and diversity in this, the shining paragon of inclusiveness and tolerance that is Toronto. Or something along those lines — I just want to grab a beer and meet some bohos.

And sure enough I’m in through the north gates and first thing I see is a bevy of multimedia kiosks with bright red parasols and friendly facilitator types manning laptops. These kiosks are scattered throughout the whole of the Distillery grounds and I am eager to see what kind of fun art thing they are all about.

Step right up folks!

(I’m in a line, so this must be good)

Red banners with the word ‘Scene’ on it.

Great!

(I am smiling at those around me)

I dig scenes.

But red is apparently the colour of a dour herring rather than the rose of creativity. “Scene” is a credit card. These are computers to which you are expected to feed your secret numbers. And the friendlies in matching casual wear are bankers. They want to sell me debt.

My wide smile of fun is replaced with the even wider smile of irony. I sidestep out of the line and head towards the thick of the crowd. Ok, ok, see the sponsors, then the artists and then reflect upon it by myself, in that order. It’s behind me now and I hear samba music.

All South American music sets my toes to tapping, samba and salsa in particular. There have been times when I have imagined myself in a room or on a patio or even in the streets with a hundred other sweating lunatic feet demons. Then shoes come off somewhere before the exhaustion point and everyone is dancing recklessly with hot, mad eyes, hooting and screaming. These impressions and the muscle memory in my arches are leading me towards a stage.

There are three pairs, six people dancing at full arms length in safe wide circles across an air-conditioned tent floor. Two of these pairs seem to be of the daughter-on-father’s shoes kinda deals. There is no sweat or madness. I look to the band imploringly and I see the type of restraint that comes from knowing who signs the cheques and exactly how they want the music played. And then I am hit by a curious observation. I am utterly surrounded by the J. Crew catalogue. Some vague words about multiculturalism and diversity and —

Let’s tighten up on the particulars for a moment here, this is the long story made short:

Stage one: Latin dance band on laudanum. Spectators milling around in expensive, casual summer clothes. Stage two: Wallpaper female vocalist with major scales and melisma. People drinking six-dollar half pints in plastic cups with expensive, casual summer tapas on black linen.

Stage three: African men winding cables and setting up mic stands in preparation for inoffensive sub-jazz which is in turn a preparation for people drinking six-dollar half pints with expensive summer haircuts bobbing (a)rhythmically in the manufactured breeze, which is in turn preparation for the off-chance to appear philanthropisty.

Stage four: “Scene” parasols and friendly blonde faces holding applications for immediate financial dependence. Save enough points and you can buy a TV to fill your entire field of vision at fifty yards. Vanishing point.

I check the schedule again. Right day, right time, right place. Wrong expectations. I decide I need a minute without, and head towards the familiar honking of Parliament.

Herein lies the true genius of Luminati (sic); they attract the obviously money’d with the golden apple at the centre of the trap and they get the sophists and cynics (namely me) on the way out the door with a shrug and the great Canadian caveat: “Sorry man, it was like that when I got here.” For suddenly, around a corner and half way down an unmarked alley I see two young women on a scaffolding slapping brushes to a huge wall mounted canvas. There are a dozen such canvases lining the industry walls of those oh so distinct Distillery type warehouses. All are blank save the one that is occupied by Beata and Hanah, the first artists I have seen. Having only just started their work I am amazed to see that they are covered in paint. I would have missed them if I’d decided to stick around.

“It’s about immigration.” Hanah has come down from the scaffolding to answer a few of my questions. She shares some much less vague words about multiculturalism and diversity and how she is glad to be a part of the festival. She says that she and Beata (who nods once and then gets back to her brushing) are toiling in the spirit of collaboration. They are each responsible for half of the perhaps 15′ x 15′ foot canvas before them. Wordlessly, Beata shows me the draft she has made of the final work. It has been cobbled together from complete sketches and almost abstract line drawings. It is a bright daytime agricultural landscape inhabited by cartoonishly large roosters. This early in the game, however, they have only managed to transfer the basic underpinnings of the scene. The colours are vivid and I like the lack of brick red. I promise myself that I shall return towards the end of the festival to see the completed work. There is a largely undefined mash of yellows, greens and blues. Hanah says other artists are expected to consume their own enormous canvases over the next ten days and that ultimately the works will be on display… somewhere… she thinks. I thank her and Beata (who nods once and then gets back to her brushing) for taking the time to talk to me. I stroll back from whence I came noticing another crimson ‘Scene’ box that hadn’t seemed to be there before. I suspect that such things are fully capable of just popping into existence whenever our backs are turned.

I idle around the BBQ at the centre of the party. Once again, a quick look around confirms that I am still wandering blindly through the most boring Gap ad of all time. Sure, the music is banal, but my Dad rocks real hard to Andrew Gold, so what prevents these mostly young, mostly affluent folks from at least looking at the performances? I see a lot of six-dollar pints in plastic cups being tipped down aerosol-tanned gullets. I overhear a great deal of chatter about the expense of such a gathering. I overhear the lascivious sputterings of old men upon the younger wait staff. I see bored wealth. I see no multiculturalism. Blue blazes! I see no culture, period. Certainly no art. Where are the galleries? Apparently in Distillery land, a gallery can be an over-polished Williams and Sonoma type accoutrements boutique. All things teak and stainless steel for only twice your next mortgage payment. Did you know that you can own a Segway now for a paltry $6,995.00? Or perhaps you’d like to buy a leather chair that resembles a vagina in a gravity well?

But wait! There’s less!

I end up having a smoke with this dude named “Pupi.” He is a dance instructor. We lean against a rain barrel and enjoy a smoke together. He tells me he runs a workshop on the festival grounds, giving cursory dance tutelage to those in attendance. He tells me it has been a slow day. (Three pairs, six people dancing in slow safe circles always at full arms length.) I ask him about the theme of the festival and why he wanted to participate. “Oh, I’ll get you my flyer.” He butts out on the barrel and rushes off through a door marked “staff only.” Nearly a full minute later he re-emerges, handing me a copy of the same Luminatus program I have stuffed into my bag. Inside he points out the listing for the Inaugural Shin Dig at the Historic Toronto Distillery District. There I find a few vague words about multiculturalism and diversity. “I am eating now!” he says, clutching his stomach. Did I not just then hear a bell? I notice that he is not going to the BBQ area.

Pupi is the last person I speak with.

Except for the two Distillery employees who are operating the “Enormous Multi-Lingual Scrabble Game”. I ask them what the game represents. They shrug. People will walk past on their way to the exit. They will stop and inquire as to the nature of the game. They will comment lightly on the “cleverness” or even “cuteness” of such an idea. They will continue on their way to the exit. Scrabble has been relegated to a dark corner far from the meat of the action.

I have just tipped a six-dollar half pint in a plastic cup down my throat and the music seeping out from the restaurant behind me is starting to melt my head. It is major, triumphant, uplifting, and totally forgettable. I must flee. I cannot afford to have my head petrify in this place. It might be mistaken for art. So I start to walk blindly towards the comforting sounds of traffic. When suddenly…

There is a long, slender, horizontal maroon poster on the red brick wall before me. Across it there is a quote:

“Most Human Beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

The quote is credited to Aldous Huxley.

Twenty-three short minutes later I am looking at a billboard of Queens Quay. It says: “Look great in the photos and all else will be forgiven.”