This Blog Is Going Smash

This weekend, I found myself sitting at SALT, downtown Vancouver, suddenly engaged in an almost combative conversation about none other than good ol’ me.

To be more accurate, a friend of a friend who has recently become my friend, via the gift of none other than good ol’ Facebook, began asking me about my decision to lock down my public profile. Why, he wanted to know, did I keep my friend list hidden? My profile pics limited to only one visible 1.5 x 2 in bleached-out side profile? My wall, inaccessible?

I had plenty of excuses in response. Professionalism. Stalkers. Loose-lipped friends. None of them, however, seemed to answer his real question: what was I hiding behind my walled-up wall?

While the conversation quickly evolved into banter about donkeys and superegos, I left that evening feeling somewhat stressed out, and I’m not even quite sure why. It’s been a good few years since my philosophizing undergraduate days, when Friday evenings meant slipping about Sarah Weigum’s backwards-rental in backwoods Langley (not sure that I could ever find that house again) and slipping under the influence of a glass of wine or two, while names that meant nothing to me slipped from my mouth and back at me again: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and that wonky-eyed Sartre. I was looking for my Self, and am still not sure what I found instead.

Perhaps the stress came because I’ve just fallen out of fluency with such conversations, or perhaps I do fear I’m unknowingly hiding something deep inside—that despite all my attempts to ‘write it out,’ there’s something that’ll always feel stuck.

A few years ago, a close friend and I discussed how today we hide in transparency: that our over-photographing of ourselves, often in poses divested of any emotion, is symbolic of a cry that “I’m so out there, you’ll never really see or question what’s right here at the heart of me!”

Is that what’s going on?

Tromping through a field of clover, you spot it: four leaves. It’s your lucky day. This month, we look at luck–where it does and does not come from, how it does and does not affect us. Stumble upon the good fortune of good writing and art with us.

Here’s a teaser:

ARTS

‘First Photos’ by Magnolia Rush
“What surprises me is that her images are more emotive, more interesting than the ones we take.”

‘Elimidate’ by Caroline Weaver
“For a while I painted men simply as horses, but now I paint racehorses. They’re very celebratory.”

‘Feathers Found and Collected’ by Mark Gunderson
“My wife and I were on the San Juan islands when I came across a beach covered in driftwood, and I knew what I had to do.”

WRITING

‘Finely Distinguished Writing’ by Thomas Cairns
“The books are a fantastic web of complex language, defined by rhythm, cadence and peculiar obscurity that form a complete narrative world.”

‘That Feeling’ by April Chye
“the frame of a soul with fractures that / Might have stitched up at / another train stop.”

‘Seek, Find, Keep’ by Sheena Devota
“In the midst of talking about his cat, I realize that this is the most spectacular moment of my life.”

‘Milk Trees’ by Patrick O. Strickland
“He turns to start up the driveway and a carton of milk tumbles down, bursts on the concrete, splatters against the side of the car.”

CALENDAR WALLPAPER

This month’s fantasticly dark calendar wallpaper is from our nonfiction editor Linnea McNally.
See more of here work here.

PROPS

A big thanks to Joel Bentley and Linnea McNally for their illustrations this month, and special thanks to Jim for once again designing the cover and border illustrations, this time in the midst of planning and prepping for a wedding.

And a GIGANTIC congratulations to Jim and Veronica: We wish you all the best in your new married lives!

UPCOMING ISSUES

Accepting Contribution Pitches: We have a few spots left in our November issue – Technology. And we are also now accepting pitches for our December/January Double issue: The Great Outdoors.

Upcoming issues:
November – Technology
December/January – The Great Outdoors
February – Hearsay
March – Coasts

Enjoy!

- the Editors

poetry selection from “back at the vines” by linnea mcnally

slick beneath the lisping breath of an oxon morn,
poppy petals, unfurling up against peeled fences
behind a misses and mister’s back lawn; yellow faces
so grateful for God’s great grace to offer yet another day.

i’m here, alone, letting myself into memories of waking
upon this new life, entering into this dampened field
where dust is not bone of yesterday, but
materials for tomorrow, rocks
frayed clay for my hands to feel.

…

lilacs laughing. pages turning. i wrote it all down inside
my heart.

and here they are, this morning, still rolling their shoulders,
berries rubbing out bruises we’d gifted,
that day we left our heavy body
printed against their palms.

they held us as we saw heaven spelled out
in mulch,
in mud,
in all that joined us there,
alive and breathing
on our behalf.

i will say a thank you to them,
for they were good to us,
to you and to me.

Last night I watched some fireworks, and it ocured to me that one of the things that make fireworks so great is colour. Without colour it’d just be a lot of noise.

The Library of Congress has some colour photos from the Great Depression. You can see them here. This is a pretty good example, it’s from 1943:

Of course, Russians do everything before the rest of us, so here’s a photo from 1910 by Prokudin-Gorskii (he’s the one trying to look casual). There’s a lot of his colour photos here. And a colour photo he did of Tolstoy here.

The French write good books too. This is what they looked like in 1917:

Spain also made a couple good books. They made the fireworks I watched last night too; which is fitting because I think of Spain as somewhere that makes great things to look at – like this (colour) painting of Miguel de Cervantes who wrote some really good stuff in Spanish and died before anyone took his photo.

The sun’s out. I’m going to go enjoy it. Have a great day.

-Jim

I’ve been obsessing over Mikael Kennedy for years. A traveller, a vagabond, an artist through and through. He’s been traversing the continent and the world at large with a Polaroid SX70 and packs of expired film. He has a stellar photoblog called Passport to Trespass, and is making his Vancouver debut this weekend at the Catalog Gallery in Gastown. The series, entitled Pieces of the Moon, is a selection of 50 female portraits from his larger body of work. The opening reception is tomorrow night at 6pm, and the show runs until July 17th. I won’t be able to make the opening, but I will definitely be checking out this exhibit.

Catalog Gallery – 56 Powell St, Vancouver
June 30th to July 17th
Curated by The Jealous Curator

- Joel

Instagram love.

- Joel

I love you, summer weather. Please stay and be the balm that heals us from the mean-spirited spring. When Vancouver’s sky shines its bluest, I am transported to a place where nothing matters. Not even my Monday morning alarm clock can wipe the smile off my face. Dining al fresco, pints on the patio, long weekend mini-breaks and summer festivals. What’s not to be gleeful about? With that in mind I share my list for the week:

- Canucks, Canucks, Canucks! Although I think we can get ‘er done in 4, there is a chance game 5 is on the day of my sister’s wedding. How do you convince the bride to have a projector or a computer streaming CBC live at the very least? Tips please! I would prefer to not be the maid of honour checking out her Canucks app under the head table.

- Dave LeBlanc has it right when referring to the current “decay fetish” scene of architecture appreciation. As pleasing to the eye as these photos may be, it’s the story behind this relic of a house that rings out. Makes me think of our turn-of-the-century brick farm house, and how as kids we used to come up with elaborate stories about the original owners (my dad egged us on with town myths about piles of gold buried in the earthen basement).

- My favourite meal at the moment is what I affectionately call our quinoa-kitchen sink: quinoa topped with sauteed asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, garlic and grape tomatoes and a sprinkling of fresh basil, chopped Moroccan dry-cured olives and black pepper goat cheese. The secret ingredient is a teaspoon of sambal tossed with the veg. Try it! I would pair it with a good Gewürtztraminer.

- Finally, Bumbershoot 2011 has been announced and it looks like they are trying to go back to their roots as the trifecta of music, visual art and comedy. Although I can’t really blame the outcries against removing major mainstage line-ups (I can’t complain about seeing Stone Temple Pilots, Beck, Death Cab, Neko Case, Blitzen and Sondre Lerche back in 2008), it is warm and fuzzy to know that Broken Social Scene is leading the line-up this year alongside hot-to-trot Fitz and the Tantrums and the likes of Mavis Staples. It’s called bumbershoot for a reason, folks! On that note, I plan to shake it.

- Laura

With The Cheaper Show less than a month away I find myself looking up the work of this year’s contingent despite the fact that I am boarding a flight to Whitehorse the morning of the sale. I have never successfully scored a work, the lines are always so concentrated. But if I had the chance to this time around I would be zeroing in on Justin Tyler Close. I am sure I am not the only one, his gorgeous cinematic compositions have attracted a lot of attention over the last few years. And now he is stepping into the big-time world having just completed his first feature film, the screenplay by his older brother and the film starting Selma Blair. Oh and he does some pretty fine work for The Lab magazine. No big deal. Take a peek at his portfolio, there is no denying the sensuality of his subjects. And let me know if you are going to The Cheaper Show. I’ll pay you to stand in line to fight for this work while I convene with the giants of the northern forest. Buy it now.

- Laura

Some things you should know about The Vancouver Art Gallery:
It’s in a beautiful old courthouse building and, like all beautiful things, it’s too small to be of much practical use. Most of Vancouver’s art is sitting in the basement in what used to be drunk tanks.

If you want to read about their proposed move to a bigger space in the middle of a parking lot on Georgia and Cambie, you can click here for a website – and here for a news release.

About once a month I’ll be photographing at both locations.

At the VAG until September 5: Walking + Falling: Jim Campbell, Chris Marker and Eadweard Muybridge

_If anyone is having a slumber party and watching La Jetée invite me, I’ll bring popcorn so we don’t feel too pretentious.
Thanks,
- Jim