Downer

From the entrance of the exhibition space at Catriona Jeffries Gallery are four of the six works in Liz Magor's Downer -- three on the floor (Shaved, Coiffed and Dressed, 2020), two hanging from the ceiling (Delivery [red] and Delivery [brown], 2018) and a wall work (Migros Shopper, 2020).

The floor works attract me, particularly the first one, Shaved. A "space" machine, as evidenced by its constituent parts: a skirted (curtained?) platform that brings to mind a bed, on which sits a "cast" of packaging materials (wrapping paper), a silicone rubber dog (pet?) on a faux fur blanket and the remains of someone's lunch (a cake box and a cardboard coffee holder). A "space" machine in the way a bed, not a dining table, becomes the surface on which a production (gift wrapping) is staged.

Our world is accelerating, though Covid has us slowing down. Our world is expanding through a de-centralization of symbolic power, yet shrinking because more and more of us are forced into economies where we can afford less and less room in which to live. That Covid has us spending more time at home has us experiencing this shrinking feeling in ways that allow certain of us to identify with a work that has one activity overlaying an object we associate with another -- rest. If there is an art work that best exemplifies Byung-Chul Han's concept of "auto-exhaustion", Shaved might just be it.

The Odd Woman and the City (2015)

Two years ago I went Christmas shopping for a friend who writes well but who doesn't identify as a writer -- someone who was entering a program that required writing from her. I thought I would get her some books by non-fiction writers with whom she might identify, stylistically.

I had a couple books in mind, but I also thought to ask J.P., a bookseller I have come to know and trust, to recommend a book he had read recently that I could add to my pile. The book he recommended was Vivian Gornick's unfortunately titled The Odd Woman and the City: a Memoir (2015).

Turns out the books I gave my friend for Christmas were returned and exchanged for others. Which was fine, I didn't take it personally. But I remained curious about The Odd Woman and the City, so when I saw it at the Victoria Drive Value Village a couple weeks ago, for a tenth of what I paid for it, I added it to my latest haul of DVDs.

I am now on Page 53 of The Odd Woman (notice how I keep shortening the title?), and I have to say, this is one of the most honest and nicely-written books I have read in some time. Gornick, now 80, has lived a remarkable life, and yet it is by no means over. I expect Gornick continues to walk the city she has lived in all her life, commenting on what she sees, what has dogged her, and what of the future she is most interested in.

Here is a paragraph that comes early in the book, where Gornick writes of the bond between her and her walking mate, Leonard:

We share the politics of damage, Leonard and I. An impassioned sense of having been born into preordained social inequity burns brightly in each of us. Our subject is the unlived life. The question for each of us: Would we have manufactured the inequity had one not been there, ready-made -- he is gay, I am the Odd Woman -- for our grievances to make use of? To this question our friendship is devoted. The question, in fact, defines the friendship -- gives it its character and its idiom -- and has shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than any other intimacy I have known. (p. 4)

"Like a Hurricane" (1975)

You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer where the feeling stays

                                            -- Neil Young

I, Tonya (2017)

A recent haul of Value Village DVDs included I, Tonya (2017), a relatively recent film that, for some reason, was WITHDRAWN from the Burnaby Public Library. What accounts for a DVD, CD or book to be withdrawn from a public library? In the case of I, Tonya, it couldn't be the condition of the DVD, as it played perfectly.

Was it the content, then? You would think that the story of a poor kid from Portland, Oregon, who endured a lifetime of mental and physical abuse to achieve her dream as a figure skater, would be supported by Burnaby's librarians. Was the depiction of abuse in the context of a mockumentary too much for some borrowers, and one or more of them complained? If so, is there a mechanism for such complaints, or is the offending material simply (and quietly) withdrawn? 

Did I read somewhere that the placement of a comedic moment too close to a tragic moment scores poorly in movie test screenings? I never know what I know anymore, whether I lived it or dreamed it or read it on social media. One thing I do know is that the Tonya Harding story is complicated and, as with many stories where gender, class and race intersect, goes to the heart of the American experience.

I cannot say enough about I, Tonya. And yet I've said nothing, really. But if the availability of books, music, film and television is being overtaken by the interweb, might we expect libraries to function as places where controversial or "withdrawn" materials can be discussed in open forums? Some might see Value Village as the perfect place for anything to do with Tonya Harding, and leave it at that. I'm just glad to have seen it. 

Tuesday's Walk

Across the street and slightly further south than yesterday's picture is the official entrance to Clark Park. Those first steps from the street into the park are steep for a path with neither traction devices nor stairs. In winters past I have seen young and old slip on this asphalt path, which can get icy.

Funny how taking a picture of something can bring out something you might not otherwise notice. For example, the square made between the two trees and the ground at the centre of this picture. Something about the bouqueting branches of the tree southwest of the tree to the left that brings out that tree's hard edge.

When I see squares like these I think of doors, gateways, but to pass through this door is to leave its referent behind, and then where are we?

Buckling Sidewalk

Walking south on the east side of Commercial Drive, between 13th and 14th Avenues, just before it turns into Victoria.

The tree up top is about time. Ringed with years, it casts the hour of the day (1:03 p.m. when I took its picture). To determine its exact age, you'd have to cut it down.

Hastings-Sunrise (2015)

Another poetry collection I purchased recently at Pulp Fiction Books: Bren Simmers's Hastings-Sunrise (Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2015).

Named after an East Vancouver neighbourhood whose name was deemed too unfriendly by its BIA, Simmers's poet walks us past houses, parks and businesses, "[l]earning new streets by foot," mapping, logging, wondering aloud the difference between what is looked at and what is seen. 

Like so much of what was written pre-Covid, I check its imagery against our current moment. A trip to the race track -- imagine that!

Here's the opening stanza of a poem on Page 28:

Friday night at Hastings Park.

Our beer in plastic cups. Pre-race,

the announcer tells us to look for

     a big ass, a line of muscle along the abs

     as horses bounce and prance past

patio tables, retirees with circled stats,

hipsters in fedoras, weekend warriors,

families and first-timers craving novelty.