Self-Portrait in a Chromed Nail Clipper

 

"Maxwell was unable to explain a bruise above one eye that was noticed on Wednesday night when she saw her reflection in a nail clipper."                 -- Larry Meumeister (AP), Globe & Mail, April 30, 2021

Resonant Years

A few months back, when the pandemic wasn't as pandemicky, I was out walking with a much-younger friend when the topic of "resonant years" came up. I gave the example of 1967 because that was the year my country, Canada, celebrated its centennial. It was also the year of the Summer of Love, when the first North Americans born after World War II reached the age of majority (lowered in the U.S. from 21 to 18 in 1970 -- except in Mississippi) and were "free" within the bounds of the law.

"You were only five in 1967," my friend said. "What could you know about it?"

"I know it through memories, pictures, some of those memories linked to pictures, and vice versa." I said. "But I also know it as a student of history, through those older than me who made films and music and who wrote books during that time, about that time."

"Is it the same, though?"

"No, but when it's gathered together and examined with the same purpose it can be."

"The same?"

"Yes."

"What isn't a resonant year?" my friend asked.

I thought for a minute, then offered the year 1982.

"Funny," she said, "that's the year this book I am reading is set in."

"What's the book?"

"Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Have you heard of it? There's a movie version."

"Sure have," I said. "The main characters reached the age of majority in 1982."

"Do you recognize them? Are they for real?"

Yes, I told my friend. I recognize them. I was familiar with Los Angeles during those years, as well as its West Vancouver showroom, where I also had family. 

"Why are they so shallow, so hemmed in?"

"I've thought a lot about that over the years, and I wonder if it's because their lives have been so thoroughly unimagined for them, to the point where malaise becomes a kind of default affectation, a shaded place where one hides from the ever present sun, its heat, those Santa Ana winds --"

"Do you believe that, or are you just writing again?"

"It's all writing. Every word of it. Always has been, always will be." 

The Academy Awards

Did I miss the Academy Awards? CBC Radio convened an Oscars post-mortem panel earlier this week, so I guess I did. I didn't catch all of the panel, only enough to gather that the focus was not on the show's "cabaret" concept, but on the Academy's decision to award the Best (male) Actor Oscar at the end, in place of Best Picture, which traditionally closes the show. 

Panelists believed the decision to award the Best (male) Actor Oscar last was intended to honour the life of Chadwick Boseman, who was favoured to receive the award, and who panelists believed the show was structured around. But when the Oscar was awarded to Anthony Hopkins, panelists spoke of how shocked they were, and what a let-down it was that Hopkins was not "there" to accept the award in person. (Would Boseman have been there had his name been called? What was in place in the event that it was? A chorus line grieve-in?) In any case, it has been clear for years now (and certainly to a greater degree with the advent of social media) that the persona of the artist -- be they an actor, writer, director, painter, dancer, musician, etc. -- is greater than the artwork they make and/or contribute to. (On that note, it should be said that Boseman was nominated for his role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; Hopkins for his role in The Father.)

If I learned anything from Peter Manso's Brando: a Biography (1994), I learned that acting, for Brando, was greater than plays, films and TV sitcoms. For Brando, a play or a film was not so much a group activity, but a chance to take on a hierarchal -- if not hypocritical -- structure designed to subject the actor to someone else's words, direction, casting couch, etc. Brando applied this same critique to other aspects of his life -- but to none greater than his country's treatment of Indigenous peoples, something he addressed when he asked White Mountain Apache actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather (above) to represent him at the Academy Awards in 1973. By all accounts, Brando was harsh enough to take delight in the boos and jeers Littlefeather received as she declined the award on his behalf -- evidence, I imagine, of the white supremacist, colonial country he was at odds with, but also of Brando's own hypocrisy, his humiliation of those who did not have access to the power he himself took for granted. (Littlefeather has spoken recently of Brando's abandonment of her after her Academy Awards show appearance.) 

What is an actor without a play or film or a TV sitcom to showcase their talent? I should have an answer to this, given that I am a writer who believes that writing is bigger than books, scripts, journals and online postings. And I suppose I do. Years ago, as a child, I remember watching Jerry Lewis's MDA Labour Day Telethons, where for over 21 hours Lewis would host a cabaret designed not to give out awards but to receive them in the form of donations, of which the MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) raised in excess of $2.45 billon between 1966-2010 when Lewis hosted the show. Lewis's performance, if not his endurance, was astounding, even for a kid like me who knew nothing of the world and its many, many injuries. Is the telethon to American acting what blues and jazz are to American music? Is that what everything will come down to, as it did in that very strange, long-forgotten 1979 film Americathon? Whatever. The show must go on. And on. And on ...

Rear Garden Pizza Oven

A 40-degree counter-clockwise turn (west) from the first pic in Sunday's post, and there it is: the pizza oven, il forno per pizza, made of bricks and pavers, capable of reaching temperatures of +600F. Pizza in seconds. Come. Bring a blanket. Bring your distances. Chianti. Vinho Verde. The garden has lights now. The turntable goes on the bird bath. I still have the first record I ever bought. And the last one. Both -- and more -- in rotation.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The line is spoken seconds before the Tet Offensive, when North Vietnam launched a coordinated attack on a number of Southern Vietnamese targets, including U.S. Army bases and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. One soldier (the film's protagonist) declares he is "bored" and another more experienced soldier (pictured) implies he has no right to say that because he hasn't "been in the shit, man" (the "shit" referring to jungle combat). It is the more experienced soldier who says (at 53:36), "It's hard to talk about; it's like on Hastings," and yes, I thought of Vancouver's Hastings Street -- East Hastings between Carrall and Columbia.

I Never Promised You a Rear Garden

The rear garden, looking northwest. In order of prominence: the apple, its pink blossoms almost white now; the poorly-sited Pieris japonica, its sudden red growth just as suddenly an indifferent shade of yellow; the grape arbor; the "Miss Kim" dwarf lilac; the laurel hedge, flowering for the first time in over a half-century (but on my neighbour's side); and the marguerite-inspired paver path to the garage (see below, from April 18), which I wrote into the ground last week, a poem like the path beside it.

Raven Takes Vaccine and Waits

When I heard Prime Minister Trudeau was going to be vaccinated, my first thought was, Which arm? We tend not to be vaccinated in the arm we write or flip burgers with, for obvious reasons, which is why I wondered if the right-handed Trudeau would offer up his left arm, the arm that bears his Planet Earth/Haida Raven tattoo combo. Sure enough! Raven took the vaccine! But now what? There's no telling what Raven might do.