From Clay to Stones

When I was a boy, my mother always made sure I had something to do. If it wasn't Cub Scouts at St. Mary's Church, it was whatever was on tap at the Kerrisdale Community Centre, where I swam, learned to cook, took golf lessons and, when I was eight, attended a ceramics class led by a hippie named Victor.

Because most of us were under twelve, it was felt that the potter's wheel would be too demanding on our childish frames. So while Victor sat at the wheel and made pots, we made the coiled version.

At the other end of the room from the wheel, away from the sinks, slips and glazes, was a turntable. After Victor helped us get started on our assignments, he would put on a record. Of the records he brought in, the one I remember best was the U.K. version of the Rolling Stones 1966 album Aftermath.

To this day, every time I hear Side Two of this album (my favourite Side Two, ever), I am returned to the basement of the Kerrisdale Community Centre, where my most enduring visual memory is sitting at a table equidistant from the turntable, to my left, and Victor's wheel, to my right. Spinning, spinning, spinning...

Here is a link to the U.K. version of Aftermath (Side Two begins at 26:40). At bottom are the songs from Side Two, performed (or contributed to) by others (except the last track, because I couldn't find a cover). None of these songs are considered part of the Rolling Stones canon, but songs that run the gamut, from 12-bar blues to off-beat ballads, from experiments in instrumental composition to lyrics dumb and stupid. 

SIDE TWO

"Flight 505"

"High and Dry"

"Out of TIme"

"It's Not Easy"

"I Am Waiting"

"Take It or Leave It"

"Think"

"What To Do"

The Perils of Description

Introducing Carsten Barchmann.

Three Jugs Full

On the topic of "thingness", Heidegger gives the example of the ceramic jug -- how the jug shapes the void inside it and how the void in turn shapes the jug.

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Atop my table is a hollow rock that I keep meaning to smash open so I can see what it looks like inside. All I know is that it is a geode, and its mother is a volcano.

Rocks are not supposed to be hollow. What is the expression -- solid as a rock? But even "hollow" is not nothing. Or so says Hiedegger's jug.

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Blame Government

Back in January 1990, a videotape surfaced of then-Washington DC mayor Marion Barry smoking a crack pipe. As a result, Barry was arrested by the FBI on drug charges.

An arrest such as Barry's would never happen in Canada (or to Toronto mayor Rob Ford) because, as Barry suggests, videotape carries no evidence of drug substances, only drug behaviour.

As for the contents of Barry's crack pipe, all we know is that it was, in Barry's words, "not factual" but a "set-up" by "the United States government."

Comparisons between Barry, a Democrat and prominent 60s civil rights activist, and Rob Ford, an unapologetic libertarian, have been making the rounds of late. Something missing from these reports, however, is how both men, regardless of their political stripes, have used government to extricate themselves from their situations -- with Ford wanting to get back to work so he can cut more of it, and Barry blaming it for his disgrace.

The Lost Weekend (1945)

We are given superlatives plucked from reviews of the book upon which this film is based, but nowhere in its trailer are we told of the substance that motivates this lost weekend, nor of the disease behind it. A case of a promotions department building interest, or one where certain words could not be spoken?