Category: art

Whores, pimps, gamblers, sons of bitches

Poking around in the library this morning, i came across John Steinbeck short but wonderful novel Cannery Row, which i’ve never read but always meant to, and now shall (it’s only about a hundred pages). Check out this stellar first paragraph, one of the best i’ve ever read:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.

What a stab of homesickness! If those words don’t evoke Tofino and Ucluelet, i don’t know what does. (No offence, friends.)

tARTing around

Marathon yesterday seeing the Queen City (Regina) sights. Saskatchewan, with just over a million people, seems to have artists up the yin-yang, and apparently 80% of them are heavy into ceramics. Tons and tons of artfully executed cups and bowls and vases — some real beauts — but i couldn’t help wondering how many more cups, bowls and vases the world needs. I wonder that about a lot of what comes across as “art.”

On the opposite hand, at the sizable MacKenzie Gallery (civic owned, free admission, all Sask. artists), i checked out with glee Kent Monkman‘s multimedia exhibit Miss Chief Eagle Testickle’s GROUP OF SEVEN INCHES — A titillating taxonomy of the customs and manners of the European male, turning the 19th century European documentation of North American Indian culture nicely on its head.

Another First Nations eye-popper was Wally Dion‘s multipanel, oversize paintings in his Red Worker series, and the 3D constructs of his Starblanket series (all beautifully made of circuit boards). Worth checking out if the show travels!

Unmugged in Medicine Hat

Arrived at Medicine Hat 8:30 p.m. with a plan for the all-night layover. I asked a cab driver where the movie theatres are: Medicine Hat mall (where else?), about a $13 cab ride. Could i walk there? Oh no, you can’t walk that far. Categorically impossible. So i wandered instead, and immediately stumbled upon a bus loop, and caught a bus to the mall, which turned out to be about an hour’s walk away. What’s wrong with these old folks that they can’t remember life before the almighty car?

To my surprise films were showing till 10 p.m., even on a Thursday, so i caught Wanted, with Angelina Jolie and one of the nondescript male stars i no longer keep track of. I’d read Christy Lemire’s positive review on CBC that made me want to see it.

Underwhelmed. Neat effects, interesting idea (if a bit of a stretch), but the male lead was annoying and the camera work was MTV and A.J. was, well, A.J., as always. Another dozen over-the-top stunts involving people killing people in ever more novel ways: when will we get to the end of that road, i wonder. (With time to kill beforehand, i snuck in to see the first 20 minutes of Hancock, with Will Smith as a down-at-heel superhero in need of a PR makeover, and that one looked better all round.)

Got out at midnight, with 4 hours to bus time. I walked mostly back via the city network of unlit, winding trails through forest and green space — a highly unnerving three hours of pausing to listen for lurking muggers or drunken youth gangs, scouting out flight opportunities into the bush, and berating myself for stupidity in inviting disaster. One hand on my little LED flashlight, knife at the ready in my pocket, stealthing along on the gravel path … i met exactly four living creatures in the whole three hours — two amorous teens, a doe, and a cat — and they all startled the shit out of me.

In my dubious dark-path wanderings i found the very spot where Sylvia and i launched our punt in our 2004(?) row/drift down the South Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan River system, ending up in Lake Winnipeg 6 weeks later. (I’ve got to get that page posted again.) Aty least i think it was the same spot — it was 2 a.m., dark, and the river was quite a bit higher than i remembered.

It was a huge relief to get back to lit streets again, then the sanctuary of an all-night Tim Horton’s. But the layover time flew by like the snap of a finger.

The 4 a.m. bus from Medicine Hat was packed full, to my surprise. People like to travel all night? I barely got a seat, and all but wrecked my neck trying to sleep for the next few hours — it’s not humanly possible — but slid into Regina happy under the sun and eager once again.

Art last!

This walkabout has turned, for reasons unknown to me, largely into a search for local, homegrown art endeavours. I haven’t had much success so far — it takes a while to get into the loop, so it doesn’t happen easily when you’re travelling — but i did manage to get to a couple:

  • An open stage event at Finley’s Irish Pub. Billed to start at 9 p.m. (why i believed that is a wonder), i sat around in a virtually empty bar till 10, when people began trickling in with instruments. We eventually had the requisite first-timer who sang out of tune and forgot half his first song; the regular whose confidence overshadows his talent; and the woman-with-a-great-voice duo marred by bad sound and too many songs. I’m only being slightly glib here; they were all worthy efforts and i wouldn’t have done any better.
    I considered signing up to recite my poem The Battle a Abby’s Butte, which would have gone over well because Abby now lives in Nelson. But i had no local supporters and i didn’t know the protocol, so that wasn’t to be.
    I left about 11:30, overtired, as a 4-piece reggae band (lackluster but for the lead singer’s hat) started up.
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  • Abs and i were set to see a play, but she had a rerun of her summer cold so i went alone. Livingroom Theatre inhabits a converted garage off an alley, and seats maybe 30. The twin fish theatre show, well into a 3-week run, was sold out. Written by Bessie Wapp, one of the four performers, it was impressive, much better than i expected in a town like Nelson — rich, nicely crafted, well acted. Loco Phantasmo — go see if it comes near you.
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  • In my perambulations i happened upon Craft Connection, a most impressive co-op gallery owned and run by several Kootenay artists. Beautiful big space full of high quality work. I had a long chat with one of the staffers about the long, painful process of getting the facility up and running.
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  • I didn’t get to, but at least found out about, the Cottonwood Market Saturday drum circle, which has been running for over a decade. It takes place iin the Japanese garden adjoining Cottonwood Falls, during Saturday summer markets in the park. Sounded great, but the hostel was full up Friday and i had to leave town.

The art of Nelson

i have been remiss in my reporting duties. The meditation retreat summary has been weighing on my mind and, as usual, having something already in the pipeline jams up everything that’s coming up behind. So, for the record, my first impressions of Nelson:

I arrived on Sunday last, after a delightful drive with young Jessica, a co-meditator. Normally i dread long drives with strangers — the burden of six hours ofconversation is crippling — but i surprised myself by not just holding up my end, but enjoying it as well. Thinking of it, that’s something that has atrophied in Ukee all these years: the interest in and ability to swap liives and stories with strangers. Sometimes it’s good to get outta town.

The town itself seemed to be … closed. It was a novelty to see almost everything shut up for the Lord’s day. The few people who were out and about seemed busy and unhappy — fast walks and frowning faces, which surprised me. The impression i was expecting, based on the effusions of WestCoasters who have moved here (and there are several), was the opposite.

Another thing I was looking for is evidence of Nelson’s rep as an arts town. It bills itself as the “#1 small arts community in Canada” (which does beg the question of what “small arts” are). I’m not sure what i expected — opera singers practicing from top-floor apartment windows, impromptu improv on street corners — but the only evidence of arts i could see were a pretty healthy poster boards of events, mostly festivals held somewhere in the region. Still, it’s early days.