entre as ondas

Full Circle

2009-04-15T11:52:00.009-04:00

Late on April 6th, 2009 - my birthday - my father passed away.

On the surface, this would seem like a shitty thing to have happen, but in the context of my life, it actually makes perfect sense.

I was born on April 6, 1973; my brother Danny, April 6 1961; my father-in law Gurmit, April 6, 1943; my brother-in law Raj, April 6, 1973. Between our two immediate families, Nrinder and I have four people that share the same birthday. So if you can accept the impossibility of that, then my father dying on my birthday has some kind of cosmic circularity to it. The man who helped bring me to life transitioned into his new life on the anniversary of my birth. What a gift.

The days leading up to my birthday were hard ones. By the time I got to Napanee, where he lived, on Thursday, Dad was pretty far gone. He hadn't eaten in close to a week, he'd lost a substantial amount of weight, and he was barely able to get up, much less walk anywhere. I knew that he wanted to die at home, away from doctors and hospitals, so I cancelled all my plans for the next four days - including my birthday party - so I could help him do that. Dad's wife, bless her soul, was having a hard time keeping up with him. Nrinder and I knew that by being present we could extend the time he had at home and possibly help him achieve his wish.

But he was a stubborn bugger - a trait that comes directly from being the youngest male in a family of farmers. He's been independent since he was able to walk, working since he was strong enough to shovel earth, aerate wine or stomp on grapes - as if he was going to let anyone 'help' him. Since he retired at age 55, he'd been the picture of health: lean, strong, able, sharp, and tireless. But the cancer - and particularly all the goddam treatments - did a number on him. When it was clear the chemo wasn't working, my father made a very conscious decision to go. But in spite of his wishes, his body soldiered on. Life, it seems, is a difficult thing to loose, even when you want to.

So for four days I helped keep him comfortable, keep him company. I cried a lot those days, knowing that there wouldn't be more of them and feeling bad that he had to go in such a miserable way. "You don't ever want to go through this," he whispered to me. And he's right. With the cancer spread to his stomach, liver, lungs and kidneys, 'living' had become reduced to lying in bed, too weak too move, to parched to talk, too dehydrated to cry.

I didn't have anything burning to tell him, I just took his hands and felt their heaviness and warmth, noticing for the first time how elegant his hands were. I'd always imagined them as a bit stubby, but up close his fingers were long and his skin soft. Hands that once picked me up by my ears, to my squeals of delight, were still strong and gentle, even after all the sickness.

By Sunday it was clear to us that we couldn't keep him at home anymore. He'd already tried to get up a couple of times on his own, and fallen, and the stress of this had gotten to be too much. We explained to him that we thought he'd be better served in a hospital, with round-the-clock nurse care and better facilities, and once we were sure he understood, he agreed to go.

As we waited for the paramedics, I took a few moments alone to tell him that I loved him, that I appreciated him, that I forgave him and that I would treasure his memory, and that I was sorry he had to go this way.

After four days of being inside, surrounded by death and sadness, I stood with Nrinder on the front steps of his house and witnessed the first signs of spring. As the paramedics carried my father out of the house, the sun shone warm and brilliant, the finches and blackbirds filled the air with beautiful songs as two doves cuddled in their tree.

For all the fear of hospitals and doctors, the people at the Lennox and Addington hospital in Napanee treated him like extended family. They forced no more pills on him, hooked him up to no more machines, and moved him as precious little as they had to. They knew they were giving him a comfortable place to go, and treated him with all the respect and care that he could have ever got at home. In fact, the home care nurses were wonderful too - caring, sensitive and quick to respond. It gave me a whole new appreciation for our health care system and how wonderful and precious - and privileged - it is to have so many resources so close at hand and totally independent of an insurance plan. For all the ninety-something visits to doctors and specialists that my father had and all the hundreds of visits to home by nurses, all the equipment that was installed in the house and leant out to make things easier, none of it cost an extra dime.

The folks at the hospital let us use an emergency room, privately, as they waited to bring him into a room in the ward upstairs. It's there that I said my goodbye. It was Sunday, and my birthday was the following day. I decided to go home because I wanted to be with my mother on my birthday and I didn't think there was anything more that I could to do to make him comfortable. I had planned to come back on Tuesday if necessary, but I knew this time that I wouldn't see him again.

Before leaving, I asked for a few moments alone. I took his hand and told him again that I loved him and I thanked him for being the man that he was. I told him that I would see him again. And his final words to me, whispered through his sore, parched mouth, were, "you will."

And I did.

Driving home that night, Nrinder and I saw the most beautiful sunset, orange and purple rays streaking across bands of clouds and flocks of Canadian geese, returning from the south. And I felt a great peace come over me. Though letting go is a sad business, spring is always around the corner.

The following evening - my birthday - I went to visit my mother. After chatting with her for a little bit, I went upstairs to use the washroom. While taking a pee, I distinctly heard a child's voice say my name. I looked behind me and of course found no child, but I took note of the experience because I'm not one for hearing things. Moments later, while sitting on the couch with my mother, I got the call that my father had passed in the company of his wife and her sister-in-law. It happened a five minutes ago.

After seventy-four years of life, and three long years fighting cancer, my father decided to let go of his dying body on April 6th - Danny, Gurmit, Raj and my birthdays. And now, appropriately, his birthday too.

Love beyond sentimentality

2009-03-23T21:06:00.002-04:00

The back is bright white, like some fine, unfired porcelain, and it makes a dense, glassy sound as I run my fingers along its ultra smooth surface. The front is a dull, off-pink colour chosen from the muted palette of 70's kids paints. Like some fossil from another time, a child's handprint is embalmed in the plaster, sunk into the middle of the six inch pie plate that molded it. On the back, 'David' is printed in pencil by some unknown adult, but the date is my father's scrawl: 16-06/79. I was six years old.

My father brought it up from his basement last week, his cheeks already sullen, his clothes baggy, his speech slurred from the morphine. "I want you to have this," he said matter-of-factly.

It's a reminder that we lived together once, before the marriage broke up, before he left – before things got complicated.

We lived close to my elementary school, St. Anthony's. I could walk there in about a minute and would come home for lunch daily, tearing across neighbours' lawns and leaping off the small hill next door; peanut butter and banana sandwich with a side of the Flintstones on channel nine.

When school was done, I would play for a bit, anxiously awaiting the return of my father from work. In those days he managed the LCBO store at the top of our street. Whenever I heard the car pull up, I would run to one of my two hiding spots, between the back of the front door, or inside the closet, and then scare the piss out of him as he entered the house. I got him every time.

When he left home he didn't take much with him, grabbing his tools, wine-making gear and a couple of antiques he'd refinished: a pull-down desk, and a tea cart, both relics from the school teacher my parents bought their first house from. He wants me to have them now.

They're beautful old pieces, but the desk – the desk is evil. Whenever I got a fever as a kid, I would hallucinate. The oval patterns on my curtains became eyes. I'd see a mouth opening and closing in the air, or feel like I was in the booth of a vast court, being judged by some presence sitting at the top of an incredibly high tower. I felt small and vulnerable, perfect prey for the hungry desk in the next room. The desk with the animal feet, waiting patiently for a moment when my parents were asleep and it could waddle over to my room. Its mouth, the folding desktop, snapping up and down, swallowing me whole until my mother would burst in and pull me out.

The tea cart I found less menacing. I would insist on pushing it around when we had visitors, making as many trips back to the kitchen as my mother would tolerate.

This past weekend my father also gave me his ring, the one he's had since before time. His mother gave it to him as a gift, the day he left Madeira Island. It's a chunky thing with gold art deco styling and a giant red, rectangular ruby in the middle. My six-year old hand might have fit two fingers in it, but today it is snug. She gave it to him as a reminder of her love. And he gives it to me as a reminder of where he came from, and as a hint that he won't be here for much longer.

The hand it once fit is old now, spotted with age and discolored by jaundice, swollen with fluids from a number of medical complications. His organs are struggling as his body eats itself for food.

I cried on the car ride back this time, not knowing if it's the last time I'll see him. Not sure if there's anything I need to say or want him to know. I've always been a bit quiet around him, but I don't think there's a lot left to say. I'm happy just to be there as much as possible, watching him while he naps, getting him a glass of water, accepting the trickle of gifts as he takes inventory of his things and finds new lives for them.

A desk; a cart; a ring; a plate: worthless things without the memories that give them purpose, give them meaning.

My hand dwarfs the imprint I left, but my father returns it to me now not because it was mine, or even because it was made by me. Despite its age, the plate with my six-year old hand print looks new, like it was kept in a vault. There is no dust, no dirt and hardly a chip. For thirty years he treasured it, kept it safe. And more than any sentimentality its return conjures up, its condition shows me something else, so simple and so powerful.

He loves me.

Healing the heart is an afterthought.

2009-03-10T11:47:00.000-04:00

I'm having de ja vu.

When I was 11, the same year my dad left my mother and me, my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was twenty-three at the time. Although he made a good go of it, the cancer caught up with him, spreading to his liver. The final few months were terrible. His muscles wasted away along with his patience and joy of life. His belly swelled up like those of the kids you see on TV - he literally starved to death. My brother Danny, who for my whole life was a large, loved-filled, creative and nurturing man, transformed into a living skeleton in front of my eyes. We shared a wall between our bedrooms and I remember coming to hate the sound of his knocking. No longer loving and gracious, I watched chemotherapy suck the life and joy out of him, and morphine render him irritable and spacey. In my final words to him, I made a confession: I *did* eat the extra piece of cake that he suspected me of. But he was already gone. Comatose. Brain dead.

It took me quite a while to work through that experience. I was thirteen at the time and I turned the next five years of my life into a hazy binge of drugs and alcohol. By the time I was eighteen I had partied so hard that friends and family alike were worried about my health and future.

Then I found the drama program in my high school, and like some kind of unintentional group therapy, I found an outlet for all my pain. I started writing and performing in earnest, and spent a good deal of my time playing guitar and writing on my little Mac SE, which my dad helped me buy.

I'm at my dad's house now, 22 years after my brother died, and I'm watching someone else that I love waste away. I wrote in this blog earlier about how he had cancer in his prostate and how our trip to Portugal together was timed so that we could do that together before he got any worse, god forbid.

While we were in Portugal, he showed me a large, death-looking black mole on his arm. He was waiting for test results, but I knew what it was instantly. I let him believe it could be a cyst or some other benign skin thing.

The day we got back to Canada, dad heard back from the hospital - the mole was in fact an aggressive melanoma skin cancer tumour, and its immediate removal was needed.

Almost two years later, a dozen surgeries, radiation and chemo, the cancer has spread to my father's liver. Doctors give him a few months to live. Already he's lost a lot of weight, is weak, irritable and spacey. This, in contrast to the workhorse he normally is - happy really only when he's outside moving rocks and hammering things. Dad has always been in his element working eight hours straight in the beating sun with no sunblock. He has said repeatedly throughout that the hardest thing for him to deal with was not being 'sick', but being stationary.

There's a lot of things going through my head these days. I wonder about all those sunblock-less hours in the hot sun and whether that had anything to do with it. I wonder about his diet, which is rich in fruits, but also in packaged foods and artificial sweetener. I wonder about all the stress he took on as a senior manager at the LCBO in the 80's. I wonder about all the wine he drank and the supposed miracle effects of the red pigment. I wonder about how someone so healthy could become so ill, so quickly.

And I especially wonder about this triple-edged sword of surgery-radiation-chemo - the standard weapons of cancer-fighting the world over: How was my father supposed to get better by having his lymph nodes (which aid the immune system) torn out, his body blasted with cancer-causing radiation and then pumped full of highly toxic chemicals? I know this system works for a lot of people, but I wonder what role your outlook plays in your ability to survive it.

For my father, the surgery-radiation-chemo cycle may have extended his life by a few months, but it has also sapped him of the will to live. The 100 or so visits to doctors, the endless tests, the painful recoveries, side-effects, blod-clotting, and the terrible, soul-sucking effects of intense radiation and chemo treatments have left him broken and miserable. And after all that, guess what? He's still going to die.

I did try to offer some alternatives. I offered to go with him to a sweat lodge, or put him in touch with a dear friend who is a holistic nutritionist that specializes in cancer care. I offered to fly out with him to Canada's only holistic oncology centre in Vancouver. In the end though, my dad's faith in the medical system was unshakeable.

I obviously don't have any answers here. Who knows if a different diet, lifestyle, sunblock or anything at all could have avoided the fate my father now faces. But I have to think that an approach to healing that focused on the spiritual and mental dimensions of disease - in addition to the physical - that helped him to cope, and gave him hope, even if it couldn't save his life, might have at least made his final days more bearable.

So, I'm here doing what I can, which for the most part is just being present. I've seen this all before. And unlike with my brother, my dad's knocking isn't making me angry, I don't need drugs and alcohol to cope, and it's not going to take me years of pain or drama classes to work through it. My father and I mended our relationship years ago. I don't have a last confession to make this time. Just a little lament that what we call 'health care' so frequently misses where the real healing needs to happen: in the heart.

When push comes to shove, what would YOU do?

2009-02-26T16:33:00.001-05:00

You're just sitting on the streetcar, passively people watching, phasing in and out of daydreams, and next thing you know, two woman are bashing each other's faces in, right on top of you.

In the moment, you don't really know what to do.

Today, without thinking, I got involved.

Rewind to a few minutes earlier, a young white girl, maybe sixteen or so, gets in a huff about how a late 30's east asian woman 'sat on her stuff', when she sat down at one of the few available seats on the crowded, rush-hour streetcar. The girl yells at her and starts pulling macho crap I've only ever heard come from young men before. 'Who said you could touch my stuff, you bitch? You wanna go right now? Me and you outside?'

Not taking any crap from a mouthy teen, the woman explained that the seats were for everybody and she couldn't keep her bag there.

Taking that as a taunt, the girl's friend (also white) jumped in to further harass the woman, chastising her and hurling out racist slurs.

The woman, now trembling with anger, told them they have no right to talk to her like that and refused to budge. Which led the first girl to physically shove her off the seat.

The next few moments are a bit of a blur as the woman got up and started punching the girl in the face, and then her friend joined in and they both started beating on the woman.

I immediately threw myself into the fray, and with the help of Janet (who I know and just happened to be in the seat behind them), managed to pull the two sides apart and appeal for calm.

They stopped fighting. My appeal for calmness, however, didn't get very far.

The driver, somehow unaware that people were screaming and fighting, kept driving.

White girl, now feeling victimized and sporting a swelling lip, ramped up her racist barrage. Myself and Janet told her off, but she kept going, emboldened by all the attention.

The woman, crying and red with anger, again asserted herself, telling the girl she needed to be taught a lesson. The girl went off on it threatening to get off the streetcar with her and beat her up. 'You better watch when you get of bitch, we're getting off at the same stop and I'm gonna fuck you up.'

I asked the woman if she was ok or needed anything. She decided to call the cops on her cell phone since the driver obviously wasn't going to do anything.

Even while the woman was on the phone, with the police, the white girl continued her tough talk, threatening her, calling her racist names. By this point, other passengers were speaking up and telling the girl to shut up. Her friend, worried about the police, took her aside and tried to calm her down.

I went up with the woman to tell the driver what was going on and that the cops were on their way.

A few passengers at the front expressed support for the woman and thanked me for challenging the girl.

The cops showed up and myself and another man about my age gave a quick statement. We were worried that the girls would lie and make it look like the woman just started wailing on them for no reason.

The streetcar left with the woman in the back seat of a cop car and the two girls getting grilled by two cops on the street.

Back at home now, the whole incident has me a bit shaken.

The two young girls will likely be charged with assault. It's not a good feeling to think that I helped incarcerate two young women, as absolutely obnoxious and racist as they were. Criminal justice isn't going to help them one bit - if anything, it will make them worse.

And as for the woman, having myself been the victim of bullying in the past, I totally understand the urge to strike back, to show that weak, insecure fool that you can't be messed with.

But I can't help but wonder if the whole fight could have been avoided if the woman had just gone up to the driver and asked him to call security from the outset. And heck, since I was sitting right beside her, and witnessed the whole vulgar escalation, why didn't *I* go up and ask the driver to call security?

The whole thing was disturbing on a number of levels. The race dynamics of two young white women bullying and taunting an east asian woman, twice their age. The woman beating on a girl half her age. The streetcar driver who did nothing and took no serious note of the major commotion. And the silence that most people kept during the whole incident.

What would you do?

Would you have challenged the girls earlier and weakened their perceived power over the woman?

Would you have offered to switch seats in order to create a buffer between them?

Would you have gone up to the driver and asked for security to intervene?

Or would you just move seats or do your best to ignore them?

In the future, I'm going to speak out sooner, and remove myself from the privilege of being a passive observer.

If anything, it might help avoid an ugly, unnecessary fight between strangers.

Reboot

2009-02-19T16:26:00.000-05:00

I started this blog in May 2007 as a way to share my thoughts about a trip to Portugal I was about to make with my father. I posted fairly faithfully for that trip, but then turned my blogging attempts to Facebook, rather than keeping this updated.

Following the Facebook privacy bru-ha-ha of this week, it's clear to me that posting content on Facebook is really not a great option. They have, on more than one occasion, changed their user policy in such a way that insinuated that they could, potentially, own the content that you as a user freely post to the site. They backed off, again, of course, but the ongoing threat is an important one to take note of. So I have. And I'm going to gradually stop using Facebook for posting new content. Particularly my writing endeavors.

Instead, I'm going to reboot this blog and try to update it several times a week. In it, I'll be sharing personal stories, ranting about politics and providing my own slanted analysis of ongoing local and world events.

'Entre as ondas' is Portuguese for 'between the waves'. For me, this is that moment of stillness between undulations, where a wave is neither crawling up the shore nor retreating: a chance to stop, think, reflect and share.

Self-defense VS self-restraint

2009-01-08T13:50:00.001-05:00

Israel has been under guerilla rocket attacks from the Gaza strip for years, but the number and frequency increased when Hamas took power, through elections, in 2006.

This 'security threat' is the fundamental rationale used by Israel and its defenders to justify the current military incursion into the Gaza strip. It is, they say, 'self-defense'.

But applying even the laziest amount of scrutiny to these claims makes them implausible at best, and probably more like complete nonsense.

1) Israel repeatedly states that its issue is with Hamas, and not regular Gazans. That this is a military operation, aimed at military targets, with the goal of destroying Hamas' ability to fire rockets at Israel.

But Hamas has no army, no fighter jets, no tanks, no bases. Hamas is a political organization that has a guerilla militant wing. So, when Israel says that it is targeting 'Hamas infrastructure', what they really mean is they are targeting pretty much anything at all - including hospitals, universities, a UN school, police stations, residences - nothing has been spared. The result, not surprisingly, is soaring civilian casualties. As of today, there are 700 dead, 3,085 injured with the majority being completely unaffiliated to Hamas. High numbers of women and children to boot. The cities are in tatters, hospitals are completely overrun, medical and food supplies scarce.

Israel is essentially waging a full-on military WAR - with the largest, most advanced, US-backed military in the middle east - against an almost totally defenseless, poor, over-crowded, malnourished, civilian population.

2) Israel says that Hamas is using civilians as a 'shield' and that's why so many are being killed.

The reality is that Gazans are not killing themselves with Israeli bombs and missiles - it's the Israeli Defense Forces that are doing the killing. Israel plans its attacks knowing FULL WELL that there will be heavy, heavy civilian casualties. Unless they've invented a 'terrorist-seeking' missile that can somehow distinguish a mother from an armed combatant, when a bomb drops on a house, chances are everyone inside it is going to die. This kind of blatant disregard for human life is not only cold and callous, it is a war crime.

3) Israel insists that it wants peace with the Palestinians and looks forward to a day when they can live, side-by-side, in peace.

But how could this possibly be? If the goal was to stop Hamas 'terrorists' by wiping out 700 mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins, friends, lovers, wives, husbands, grandparents and leaders, sorry to break it to you Israel, but you're only adding fuel to the fire of hatred. What kind of lasting peace can be brokered with so much innocent blood taken so brutally?

4) Israel insists that it is defending itself legitimately and is quick to cast-off international criticism as 'anti-semitism'.

The fact is that Israel is a state - a country. And although they are the world's only Jewish state, the Jewish religion has absolutely nothing at all to do with the running of the state of Israel or its military - thank God for that. Instead, the state of Israel uses the very real existence of anti-semitism as a shield to protect itself from scrutiny.

It should come as no surprise to Israelis that when their government and military do terrible things in the name of security, and at the expense of hundreds of lives, that people are going to get angry and are going to criticize them for it. Taking that criticism seriously, and changing actions accordingly, is a fundamental aspect of participating in a global diplomatic community. And if Israel can't take criticism from anybody, then really, why should anybody support them?

5) Israel claims that it does not have genocidal ambitions. I believe this is true. I don't believe the state of Israel wants to systemically exterminate millions of muslims or arabs the way the Nazis systematically destroyed jews. The comparisons to Nazis and the holocaust are highly disproportionate as well as offensive.

But there is validity to the outrage that people feel about how Israel has come to cheapen Palestinian lives. That a democratic country, formed out of the terror of World War Two, and claiming to have ambitions for peace can, in the name of 'security', act with such impunity. The Gaza situation amplifies this total disregard for life because the scale of the destruction and loss of life is so completely disproportionate to so-called instigating incidents of rocket attacks on Israeli towns, which as far as I can tell, have killed fewer than 20 people.

Israel is not genocidal. It is paranoid, fearful, overzealous and wildly, widly out of control. And if it really does want peace and security, then perhaps its time that it learned a hard and fast lesson in self-restraint.

1) Reign in the army. The more Israel tries to fight guerilla groups like Hamas, the more those groups will grow in power. To continue pretending that the state of Israel is under any real danger from a bunch of angry, in-fighting, disorganized, undisciplined mobsters makes Israel look like a ruthless joke.

As Israel is the real power broker in the region, has the only nuclear weapons and an army powerful and large enough to take on all of its neighbours, it is in a sense, a regional super-power and needs to reign in its wild escapade. Its army and weaponry should be used only when a real army shows up, seeking to mass-murder its citizens and lay waste to its civil infrastructure.

2) Let in the UN. If the real intention of the state of Israel is to live in peace with its neighbours, then it better start figuring out how to stop the petty fighting with militant groups and start working with the international community to help broker a mutually acceptable deal for a free and sovereign Palestinian state. They must allow the UN to take over the security of Palestinians and they must be willing to make concessions in order to move the process forward.

3) Take down the apartheid wall. Call it whatever you want, but Israel must stop the total strangulation of economic and people movement in and out of the West Bank. As long as the wall remains standing it will continue to be a poignant symbol of repression.

4) Let the response meet the deed. If the problem is guerilla rocket attacks from inside Gaza, then Israel needs to rethink how it can bring those responsible to justice in a court system, and if it can't do that, then it needs to accept that until a lasting peace can be brokered, its border towns are going to be dangerous places. Reigning death and destruction on innocents will bring no terrorists to justice, it will only give them more fodder.

As long as Israel continues to bomb, murder, and repress Palestinians, extremist groups will have all the anger and hate they need to continue their vengeful campaigns. Israel must recognize that it can not win a war against a guerilla group and it must do everything within its immense power to show restraint and to prove that it respects the Palestinian people enough to help foster the atmosphere that will lead to a truly independent, Palestinian state.

And when that statehood is achieved, those responsible for attacking Israeli civilians will have to pay a price for sabotaging peace and spilling innocent blood. They will do so in Palestinian courts, under Palestinian laws, set by Palestinian people. As it should be.

If Palestinians were Irish

2009-01-03T16:10:00.000-05:00

Back in the 70's, Britain cut off all of Northern Ireland by sea and land, allowing nothing to get in and no one to get out. What followed were months of food shortages, power-outs, and deaths due to lack of even basic medical supplies. The stated intention was to strangle the resources of the terrorist IRA, who were increasing in power and winning legitimate elections through their political wing.

Ships with humanitarian aid were sent back. Foreign aid workers were detained and humiliated by British police before being deported.

The IRA, emboldened by the sense of outrage, launched a campaign of bombings in London and other UK cities and Northern Irish border towns. A dozen or so people were killed, mostly civilians.

Britain, outraged by the bombings, decided to wipe out the IRA for good, launching a seven day air strike on Belfast. In the process of targeting IRA 'militants', they launched rockets into the Belfast Cathedral on a sunday during prayer time, killing many and injuring dozens. They bombed most of Queen's University, destroyed every police station and several hospitals. For a week straight, Britain launched some 700 sorties, bombing every last bit of civilian infrastructure in Northern Ireland, killing 400 people including whole families, children, women, protestants and catholics alike.

The world was outraged. Millions of Irish emigrants in North America took to the streets, labour unions held general strikes, images of the queen and the union jack were burned. It became known as Bloody December. Movies have been made, and dozens of songs written. Irish Rockers U2 put out a whole album in remembrance.

Of course, none of that happened in Ireland in the 70's. It's happening now in Gaza.

How will the world remember the actions of Israel this past week? And who will write the moving ballad to remember the 400 people who've already lost their lives?

Ten arguments against a coalition, and how to debunk them.

2008-12-01T13:40:00.000-05:00

1) The Lib-NDP coalition is a 'coup'.

Actually, a coup is an illegal seizure of power. A coalition government is not only legal, it's constitutional, has happened before in Canada and is commonplace all over the world.

2) It's an 'unholy alliance' because it relies on the Bloc for support.

I'm curious as to what a 'holy' alliance is? The Bloc is a federal political party that advocates for Quebecers in the same way that the Conservatives are a federal political party that advocates for rich people. The Bloc is left of centre and so is the NDP. Occasionally, when opportune, so are the Liberals. It is a strategic alliance, not a religious one.

3) The coalition is a cheap power grab by sore losers.

Political parties exist for one reason: to enact legislation that they believe is in the best interests of their constituents. Harper certainly tries. If one or more opposition parties decide they can agree on enough things to run the government, then power to them. Grab it. Both hands.

4) This is a 'socialist' / 'communist' plot to take over the country!!!!!!!

There's a great movie from the 80's called Red Dawn. Watch it. It all came true. The USSR parachuted in millions of soldiers into your neighbours' living rooms, and they all voted NDP, Liberal, Bloc and Green - well, ok, only 62% of them did. Lock your doors. They look just like you.

5) We need Stephen Harper right now because he's an economist

He's an economist that thinks that selling your country's public assets, bullying its employees and silencing its opposition are plausible 'ways and means' to run a country in the face of the largest economic crisis since 1929. They have provided nothing in terms of economic protection for Canadian home owners and renters and nothing to Canada's largest employing industries - manufacturing and automotive. So, if that is the type of economist Harper is, I would much rather have a lawyer and a professor running the country. And if they can figure out how to work with a separatist party, in a framework that is stable and progressive, than all the more power to them.

6) Ha! I knew it! The NDP-BLOC planned this all months ago - Jack Layton said so! It's a 'backroom scheme'.

Layton and Duceppe speak regularly as opposition leaders and made contingency plans like any other opposition parties do in a minority parliament. In fact, in 2005, the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP were signatories to a letter to the Governor General asking her to consider all her alternatives in the event of a dissolution of parliament - IE, the possibility of a coalition. The only 'scandal' here is that the tories illegally recorded and broadcast a private conversation, when they knew they were invited to it accidently.

7) The people voted for Stephen Harper! You are trying to overturn the election results!

Actually, the people voted for political parties. They gave the tories a minority, which means the prime minister must work WITH the other parties in order to pass as little as a fart. In Canada, our parliament has a sort of checks and balance system called 'responsible government', which means, the ruling party - the party that gets to form the government - must enjoy the 'confidence' of the house. Usually that means they need the majority of the votes to stay in power. The Conservatives do not have a majority of the seats and have shown unprecedented (even for them) callousness and shortsightedness in their economic update and have lost the confidence of the house. Therefore, the GOVERNOR GENERAL must decide whether to call an election, or to give power to another group of parties.

8) Canadians did not vote for a 'coalition government'.

No one voted for Harper to act like a demagogic jackass either. The opposition parties, representing 54% of the seats in the house - the majority - have every right to try and form a government. They will do so with a formal agreement that outlines how they will work together, and what legislative priorities they will have. Those priorities were voted on by Canadians and in fact more Canadians voted for the policies of the Bloc, NDP and Liberals than did the Conservatives. Furthermore, those priorities will have to be a compromise of sorts between the three parties. This kind of negotiating ensures that policies that Canadians DID vote for DO get enacted.

9) The Bloc is a SEPARATIST PARTY!! THEY WANT TO DESTROY CANADA!!!

The Bloc is a FEDERAL political party that operates only in Quebec. And although they are separatist, there is no way at all they could 'destroy Canada' by voting in the Canadian parliament and no way that the Liberals or the NDP would support a Quebec separation motion. Furthermore, the Bloc represent 65% of the seats in Quebec and have always been strong advocates of publicly funded and delivered social programs for all Canadians and Quebecers, peaceful use of our military, pay equity and a long list of other progressive legislative ideas. A coalition would work with the Bloc to identify progressive ideas that they could implement for a 2.5 year period. Sounds pretty constructive to me.

10) The NDP should not enter an 'unholy alliance' with the Liberals because it will weaken their policies.

As it stands right now, the NDP is the fourth largest party in the parliament with 37 seats. Entering into a coalition with the liberals would give them 6 of 24 cabinet positions and would guarantee that at least some of their platform is implemented. The NDP could never accomplish this sitting by itself in opposition and frankly, it is high time the NDP start acting like a real power broker in parliament. That's why we elected them. And heck, what better proof of your ability to govern is there than governing?

Well, that's all folks

2007-06-06T09:32:00.001-04:00

Yep, last day. I'm sitting by the Marina again, having a beer and waiting on a Tuna salad (it's an actual salad here).

Dad went home yesterday, I went to the airport with Chico, a cousin who has a cab here. Nice guy - he's quite young, like 25 or something and speaks English quite well. His girlfriend Regina, Chico and I got to hang out a tiny bit while I was here, though we didn't end up going out dancing. I seem to have forgotten to give them my cell number. Doh.

So, the trip is almost over. I spent most of today running around with a video camera, capturing little slices of life here, my aunt's house, the long, steep walk down to the street, the thruway, scenes from downtown, the fish and fruit markets, the marina and about 20 minutes of ocean and waves - mostly for the audio. I ended up getting all the shots i wanted to get - 7 hours of video to wade through now. My family here all think I'm crazy and take way too many pictures and video. Everyone with the exception of Ana and Hernando, who I spent my last night here with.

Hernando, who I've spoken of before in this blog, is also a musician, in addition to a sculptor, painter, graphic designer and interior designer (man I am humbled). He showed me this crazy drum pad he has called the Handsonic - it's sort of a drum machine meets electronic drum kit, but the sounds it produces are simply stunning. It has an infared sensor in one area to recognize the waving of a hand over it - this, depending on what kit is active, will produce something like brushing your hands across a row of bells or chimes or wood blocks, etc.. Watching and listening to him play it was amazing. I want one. haha. I've wanted a drum kit for a long, long time, so this would be the extremely compact version with like 600 drum sounds, sampled from a truly global variety of drums. Blown away.

Dad and I had a great trip. His wife Jeanette was a bit sick and, I think, was eagre to get home. I feel like I know him a little better than i did and I've also recognized some bad habits I still have with him, namely frustration and impatience. It stems from my disappointment with him over my life, and particularly as a child, but yeah, I'm committed to changing my behaviour. I got to see his familial homes and meet his side of the Madeira families. Can't put a price tag on this trip. It was really once-in-a-lifetime.

I am looking very forward to meeting up with Nrinder at the airport Tomorrow and getting a good nights sleep in my own dry, warm, snuggly bed.

See you all soonish!

ciao!

david.

Shiternet, more cousins, the mountain walk, dad and calmness.

2007-06-03T17:35:00.001-04:00

It's been a great few days, minus the annoying and ongoing problem of finding reliable, free hotspots here - they are supposedly everywhere, but there are only two places i can find where it actually works reliably.

I had a great visit with my cousins here, they have two young boys who are just hilarious, creative and frighteningly well mannered. I always think of young boys as insane little monsters (based mostly on the teasing and harassment I endured as a young boy), so I'm always happy to meet fun and creative ones - it makes me feel better about the world to know all boys won't grow up to be jerks.

My cousins Hernando and Ana, having lived most of their lives in Venezuela, have a really different outlook on Madeira than most - and one that I increasingly tend to share. Mostly that culturally, it's very conservative and gossipy, reserved and insular. As an outsider - even ones that DO speak Portuguese well - they find people are very friendly and welcoming on the surface, but don't really seem to care much about you in the long run. I kinda get that. I've felt that the last few times that people are really happy to throw down a wicked meal, but there's little follow-up and frankly, little interest in what I'm about or what I'm interested in past the normal formalities. I do try to dig a bit but I find people sort of not interested in talking more deeply about themselves or what's really going on in their lives. It's more than a language thing. One can go deeper with intention, even if the language isn't fully there to support it. So, hanging out with these cousins is a huge breath of fresh air for me here. I feel like I can almost be myself around them. Almost. Give it some more time I guess.

The walk in the mountains yesterday was incredible. Perfect day for a mountain walk as there were no clouds at all. You could see for ever. Stupidly though, I didn't wear sunscreen and then of course found out when i got back to town that the whole island is on red alert for abnormally high UV rays. If I come back glowing in the dark, you'll know why.

The walk was fairly long 13km of extreme ups and downs - but it was totally doable. I must be in much better shape than i was last year cuz I remember being way more fatigued. It's very energy intensive, but not really that hard. And my god, the views. Cameras just can't do it justice. It's like being on Mars in some places - red, volcanic earth with huge boulders and lines of minerals and rock kris-crossing the landscape, and then other parts are lush with small flowers and cacti and yet other parts that are like some old horror movie with gnarly heather trees, clinging to the hillsides. The whole walk took about 4.5 hours or so. I would do it again and again. Last year when I went with Nrinder, it was cloudy, which has it's own kind of beauty too.

Aside from taking a couple of days to do more of my own thing, I have been spending quite a bit of time with my father as well. It's been a process for me to just totally relax around him and accept him fully for who he is. I think I must have some lingering resentment somewhere and it comes out in being a bit impatient with him. And it's funny, because the thing that might annoy me the most about him is his impatience. So, figure that one out.

Even though I really can't afford to be taking this trip right now, and the whole thing came together so last minute, I am so glad that I am here, being present, trying to understand my father, my family, this place called Madeira and myself. I think that for the last couple of years I have really been mean to myself - internalized a lot of hatred and self-doubt, having had an almost absolutely horrible time at work and the whole process of cutting off the chains of such an enormously well-paying job. It's really good for me to take this time to just relax a bit and come to terms with a few things that have been nagging me. I do my best reflecting and growing on my own and I'm happy I've taken this time to do that. I feel like the last few months have been about that for me - I haven't been aggressively pursuing contracts or work - I've been lounging a bit and (burning through my savings) and trying to build a peaceful space in my soul that will last. In the last year or so, my heart rate has actually dropped almost 20 beats per minute at resting. Crazy. Quitting smoking was obviously a huge factor, but it's more than that.

I'm a much calmer person now. And I really, really like me that way.

The cousin from hell and then food poisoning, and more cousins.

2007-05-30T17:40:00.002-04:00

It's easy to run into people here, it being such a small island. And even without directly running into people, they still seem to hear that you're around and then sometimes even go looking for you. Such is the case with my dad's childhood friend Joao, who probably means well, but has this unbearable tendency to talk ALL the time and cut you off if you try and say anything. Against my protestations, we went on a car tour with cousin Joao, under the premise of taking the car to a friend's body shop to get the miniscule scratch fixed, and then going off somewhere else with him.

Joao, short, balding, chubby and three by-passes later, really is a work. With a thick South African accent, offensive views about ... well, everything, he's about the last person i would ever want to be stuck in a car with, much less thrashing around in the back seat as he whips his tiny car around winding mountain roads, loosing his attention at every corner as he tells his disjoint stories. My dad apologized on his behalf - he hadn't seem him in 50 plus years.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, I came down with food poisoning and had to drive the fixed car back to Funchal, literally on the verge of vomiting.

Anyway, I'll leave all the fun details out, I'm feeling much better now having been bed ridden for the better part of the last day. I did get a bit of walking around with my dad in, visiting an old neighbour (whose house is the last one standing among a seaside of concrete resorts), and walking along the ocean boardwalk in Lido, where he grew up.

I'm thinking that I need a day off very soon. Maybe a day to go hiking in the mountains or something - I do love my father and my family, but i'm really feeling like I need a little time to myself to sort of have some peace and quiet and just take the world in silently, do some writing and reflecting.

I'm probably going to see some younger cousins here soon - they're really cool, nrinder and I had a really nice time with them last year. Hernando is a sculptor/visual artist - originally from Colombia, and Ana, his wife, is my second or third cousin (I never understand...) - my mom's cousin and my dad's friend's daughter - originally from Venezuela. They were having a bit of a hard time adjusting to the relaxed pace of life here after leaving Caracas. ANYWAY. I really like them and i think we're hanging out on Saturday. Sunday is a BBQ over at another cousin's place. Basically, if you're not sure how someone is related to you, or you just like them, or you don't like them and are afraid to call them a friend, they're your cousin.

Madeira is a garden... with a lot of condos.

2007-05-27T18:00:00.001-04:00

There's a saying here that Madeira is a garden - it's even a lyric in the unofficial national anthem - and as much as it is a place of intense greenery, flora and beauty, it's also a place that is very quickly loosing it's soul. I'm feeling that on a really personal level these past two days.

Yesterday, my first full day here, I got to visit the site where my dad grew up (now a massive seaside hotel), the place where my dad's grandfather lived (still a banana farm, but about to become apartments), and also the site where my dad was born (now a half torched and rotting banana farm, soon to be massive apartment development).

Basically, all the places my parents and their siblings grew up are now or are in the process of being resortified. This is beyond gentrification, this is wholesale demolition and reconfiguration of the whole landscape, to a point beyond recognition. It's actually quite shocking. And it's all made more poignant since I am staying with my mom's sister - my Tia Rita (a true gem) - who's home is a window into another era - worn down and original in almost every way, with no way to access it but a very steep, winding footpath.

Like in Cuba, tourism has become a really major industry here, and as a result, anything at all seems to go. Massive concrete hotels owned by English, German and Dutch chains are eating up the coast of the cities here, and on an island that is only 55km long, with a population of 350K - it's having a big impact.

So, I'm feeling a bit torn. I'm so happy to be here and to get to see these places and meet these relatives before everything turns into condo-resort-land. But I'm also feeling a real nostalgia for a past that isn't even mine and maybe isn't even my place to be holding on to. The things I personally find beauty in are the old places, the crumbling shacks, cracked walls, clay roofs, old people and stories about a much more rural, simpler time. That's the Madeira of my parents' generation. But the old people are dying out and the children are selling the farms.

It's all very strange. I get the sense that average Madeirans resent all this development, and yet, it's average Madeirans, with inheritances, who are selling off their heritage to develop them as condos and hotels. And there's plenty of money in it. They're selling a crumbling old banana farm and turning that into a fortune. Can I blame them? Are young, well-educated, english-speaking Madeirans really gonna toil on a banana farm in an age of online shopping and 24h satellite TV? Would I?

It's bittersweet. I love being here and spending time with my father and getting to physically experience where he grew up - take tonnes of picture and video to boot. But it's kind of like taking pictures of ghosts - these places and people are going to disappear very soon and then all any of us will have to remember them are words and pictures.

I've taken hundreds of photos and hours of video so far. I'm feeling extra motivated to document things, preserve them in some form - ANY form - because i know i won't get another chance. My dad's immediate family don't own anything here anymore, so what's left is in the hands of cousins and great aunts. It's really all quite futile though. I'll never capture everything, and I know that i can't. Maybe I'm feeling inadequate with just pictures and video. I want to be able to come to these places 20 years from now and show my kids or something. It's a selfish thought, for sure.

Anyway. Weather is great, island is as beautiful as ever, and I've learned the hard way that one should absolutely NOT, EVER, park a standard transmission car facing uphill at a 40° angle and expect to go anywhere but backwards. Um, oops. No one got hurt. And the tree is ok too. The bumper on the other hand...

Roots, memory and stories

2007-05-25T04:36:00.001-04:00

So, I'm off to Madeira today. It's a sunny and warm day in London. Busy place, kind of like new york, except vaguely more polite - friendlier anyway. I can't say I'd want to spend any extended time here. If I came back I'd check out a few galleries and bookstores, but otherwise it's just another big, crowded, expensive city with probably too many very well dressed people in too much of a rush.

I didn't manage to go out last night, choosing instead to catch up on sleep and write a bit. I did take a stroll through Soho right around the beginning of bar hopping time (which is the second work is over, apparently) - it was already rowdy.

I started thinking about roots and what it really means to be *from* somewhere. I was born in Canada, but I feel a connection to Madeira through my parents and family who were all born there and lived a solid chunk of their life there. I'm thinking about how I know Madeira mostly as a picture, painted by many overlapping, conflicting, and incomplete stories that my mother has told. I don't know it as much through my father, so this is gonna be really interesting for me how much the picture changes.

I was also thinking about how when people in our lives die, we really aren't left with much - some pictures, some documents that claim they existed, and maybe if we're lucky, an old 8mm film or a video or two. And the memories we have change over time. They become less detailed. A little more like feelings and ideas than anything precise or vivd. I feel that way about my brother, who died when i was 13. Luckily i have some audio recordings of him singing and playing music, so I have something to recall his voice by - i think things like that help keep memories more vivid. But mostly he's a fading ghost for me. I was a kid when he left. And largely, I remember him through the eyes of a kid. He really took on being a father figure when my father left us. He came back from BC and made sure he was present in my life when my father wasn't. My strongest memories are of playing frisbee in the park or watching him play guitar. He introduced me to music, to art and to nature. And 21 years later, it's hard to remember all that - events kind of blur into each other, the story changes, I probably make some things up. I remember the things I want to and interpret them in ways that i like.

Anyway, I've been thinking about memory and story-telling and how the further away we get from something, the more the story changes - I think about that in terms of my mother and her non-stop stories - no narrative - just bits and pieces interconnected like some hyper-active web page with too many links. And I think about that too in terms of documentary and interviewing people about their past - about how people tell the stories they like to tell and avoid ones that conflict with the picture they want to paint. I think about how fallible memory is and how ultimately we tell stories because we have to - it's the only way we know how to interpret our lives.

Anyway, I'm pretty intense today, but still finding moments to look around and just take things in. It is a very beautiful day.

Who Shrank London?

2007-05-24T08:49:00.001-04:00

Wow, for a city with such a long and storied history as imperial centre of the world it's pretty amazing how compact this place is. Maybe after having been to New York so much I'm expecting the same kind of viral sprawl. The core is a lot smaller than i had realised. I have been here once before, but not for long and didn't do much other than walk around.

Anyway, Bristol was great. Small, green, pretty, nice architecture - new and old - tonnes of parks and public spaces, small enough to walk most places. I spent all of yesterday checking out 8 more BAFC films - it was truly a marathon. I thought I'd loose steam by the fourth one, but it got really interesting around then. The Last Angel of History, in particular, really woke me up - it's a bit dated, but it was an interesting retrospective on the history and influence of western black music and culture making links between blues, jazz, funk, hip-hop and science fiction. Well executed, narrated, etc, and maybe the first real foray the BAFC took into digital filmmaking - this was 1995 (Clearly someone stumbled across after effects). The sound scores in all the films, by BAFC members Trevor Mathison, are truly remarkable. All the films are neat, but the Last Angel and the Martin Luther King biography are really innovative. I have the curator's email, from the arnolfini, and I'm hoping to somehow get a few of these on video. Unfortunately, nothing is available commercially. So sad...

Having fried my brain indoors all day, i took a couple of hours to actually walk around Bristol. Later, I went over to Nicky's sister's place for drinks and a late dinner. All-in-all a lovely day.

I'm not really sure what i'm doing in london today, I'm taking it easy, walking around and stopping for the occasional pint refresh, criss-crossing the Thames and taking the odd picture. I'm not in super picture-taking mode right now, though there is plenty of pretty scenery around here.

I'm off to Madeira island tomorrow. And i'm thinking a lot about the trip and how I'm going to balance spending quality time with folks and also getting all the shots i want to get for this little film i'm making. I haven't pulled the video camera out yet - I've barely used the still. I'm kind of enjoying just taking things in and walking around. I'll be doing plenty of shooting in Madeira.

Ok, back to being a tourist.

Where the hell is Bristol?

2007-05-22T14:57:00.001-04:00

Way more west of London than that silly Google maps thingie let on, that's for sure. And there's way more farm land in England that I ever imagined. In this part of the country, it seems like it's either rural or city, with very, very sparse suburbs. That's the impression from the train anyway. Quite a contrast to southern ontario, which is basically all suburbs with a bit of urban and rural thrown in for some flavour.

It's a small, compact city with lots of character, tonnes of young people, and some incredible musical lineage, not the least of who are Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky. This little city pretty much programmed two solid years worth of CD player for me (unknowingly) in the 90's.

Despite falling asleep about 18 times on the train ride from Gatwick to here, I was too excited to rest and headed straight out to the Arnolfini to check out the Black Audio Film Collective retrospective. I also subsequently re-confirmed my suspicion that i won't be doing anything else tomorrow but watching the other 10 films i didn't get to see today.

The three i did were fabulous: Handsworth Songs, a long-time favourite and then two more I haven't seen: Twighlight City, about gentrification, thatcherism and diasporic displacement in London, in the late 80's, and also Signs of Empire, essentially a slide show juxtaposing images of British colonialism/nationalism with images of the labour slavery and servitude that empowered it.

I am totally spent, reeling with enthusiam, and drinking a dry cider - a nice mix of contrasts for a day of contrasts. (And shit, dry cider on tap!)

My plan is to sleep very soon, wake up early tomorrow, take a few pics of this pretty little city, and then binge out on BAFC from 10am until close. I intend to take one break, but this really is my only chance to see these films, as they STILL haven't been collected for resale. (One of the friendly staff at the gallery is trying to put me in touch with one of the curators so i can beg them to put a compilation out).

I am dumbstruck by the works i saw today, particularly Twighlight City since it is new to me and was effective on so many levels: Incredible soundtrack/sound mix, a personal and yet also partly fictional narrative and lots of haunting imagery of gentrification, decay and re-'development'/displacement. The soundtracks on all their films are pretty amazing – super dub inspired and also very expressionistic – they add this dischordant tension and anxiety, it reminds me of how important sound and score are to the emotional feel of films.

Anyway, great day, I'm beat. And running out of laptop power as i mistakenly thought all of europe hade the same AC prongs - apparently not so. I need to find the UK version.

A mini-rant: the Arnolfini is funded mostly by lottery money and the BAFC show, spanning three floors, three theatres and many galleries - is all free.

Um... where does Ontario/Canadian lottery money go? (Just asking, no idea.)

Also, the BAFC work, as mind-bending, controversial and challenging as it is, on many levels, was largely funded through a system of public grants. Like, wow. Here's to public arts funding. wow.

david.

Ok, first time

2007-05-19T13:36:00.000-04:00

I'm totally a late-comer to this whole blogging thing, but i'm gonna try it out for a bit, mostly because I'm heading to England and Portugal next week and i want an easy way to share thoughts about the trip. It's an important one for me.

Sometime last fall, my father called me at work looking to chat for a bit. I was way too 'busy' to speak with him - having several other things i'd procrastinated on that day. I had also conjured up my favourite explanation for why he ever calls: he wants to guilt-trip me for not calling enough.

I did finally get back to him several days later, on a saturday. Turns out the reason he called me at work, during the day, was not to guilt-trip me about how much i don't call, but to let me know that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and needed to go for treatment.

Driving back from Toronto that weekend I spent the whole four hour car ride beating myself up for being such a selfish asshole, and realising that the cancer curse in my family had finally hit one of my parents (after taking my brother, 2 cousins, several aunts and uncles, etc...). And the idea of my father with cancer - the guy who at the age of 73 is out in his backyard in the middle of an ontario summer for 8 hours on end, building decks, moving rocks and cleaning up his riverbed - the guy who surely has some mule genes in his blood somewhere (if not for his stubbornness, then for his remarkable stamina); the thought of my Dad being sick with anything other than a little cough - that was pretty fucking shocking.

Fast forward a bit, he opted for radiation treatment over surgery and has just finished his grueling 3-month treatment schedule. And now he's decided to go home to Madeira Island for a bit, visit some family and collect a well-overdue pension.

He'd asked me if I wanted to go with him earlier in the winter, but that always seemed predicated on an unpredictable and successful completion of his treatment. When he decided to go for sure a couple of weeks ago, I was hesitant mainly because of the speed at which I've been burning through my savings - buying new appliances, stuff for the house, computer equipment I need now that I am a freelancer and don't have a fully flanked studio anymore. I was going to opt out because of money and timing.

And then I spoke to Nrinder, who lost her dad in 2001, and I realised that not-going would become one of the stupider things i do in my life.

So, I'm going. I leave on Monday. Like, 2 days from now.

And I'm taking a video camera and some photo equipment and I'm going to make a short, personal doc about the experience, looking at roots, identity, family and feeling a connection to a place simply through story and lineage without ever having lived there. I'm really excited about this whole trip. I think it's going to be a pivotal moment for my relationship with my father, who for most of my life I've kept pretty arm's length.

I'm also excited about taking a pit stop in England to visit Bristol, not because I know ANYTHING at all about bristol (but assume there must be a good story about bristol board) but because I am going to see an exhibit at the Arnolfini: the very first time the entire work of the Black Audio Film Collective is on display. It's a travelling exhibit and it's currently in Bristol, so, Bristol, here i come.

I was exposed to the work of the BAFC while in Cinema Studies at U of T in the 90's. I remember seeing Handsworth Songs and being totally touched and moved by the film, which is about 'riots' that happened in Birmingham in the 80's, but is really about race, identity, anger and poetry. The film really breaks a lot of boundaries in documentary film, blurring the lines between poetic reflection and reportage. Anyway, their work is amazing and I am so stoked i get to spend a couple of days soaking it all in. I've been looking to buy a couple of their flims for years now and it's like, no chance. NOTHING is available. (I'm secretly plotting with some mysterious all powerful forces in toronto to get at least the films brought here for a show).

Anyway. Voila. My first, rambling blog post.