Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Times they are a-changin'


Hey Blog Reading Peoples,

Blogging Bastard back after a many month hiatus! I'm sure whatever readership I used to have has moved on to reading more responsible and coherent bloggers, one's who write frequently, post pictures and have some kind of thematic focus. You know, a Roger Ebert type, whose voice we trust to tell us fascinating yarns on 1930's cinema and give us a review on the latest Bradley Cooper film. With that kind of competition, how can I win you back? Well for one, this blog will now be written on a weekly basis. Yes, I know this isn't the first time I've promised to write on a schedule here but it is the first time in a long time that I feel that I have something to say. So every Wednesday, expect some bangin' blogs here at Youbloggingbastard@blogspot.com!

Now I realize it is incredibly cocky of me to think that WRITING a blog would be enough to get you to start reading it again, so I guess I should try to sweeten the deal. Ok, how bout this: If you read my blog, I will love you forever (or at least until my brain no longer functions and can no longer produce the necessary chemicals to concoct the idea of love). So if you are reading this, I love you forever!

This is hard to prove I guess. Forever is a long time and if it can easily morph from head over heals to a barely present throb in just a few short hours....I could send you love notes to remind you, but why would you even believe them? People promise to love us all the time, I mean it constitutes a whopping 70% of a man's efforts to get laid.

Hmmmm....I wonder...

How does Deepak Chopra convince us that he loves us? Or Jesus? I mean they say it, but I've never met them before. Is it repetition? If you say something enough times it sorta becomes a reality, right? Like Rob Ford saying he's a politician instead of a mutant hog. After all this time, does anyone remember those pictures of him as a small piglet eating slop on his quaint Orillian farm? Or his surprising star turn in the movie BABE? No, we just think of him as a sweaty, sharp tongued politico, wearing Hawaiian lays and ruining a once great city. Smart marketing works I guess, so maybe that's what I need. Start wearing flowing robes, a heart pendant on a golden necklace, writing forewords in a best selling books, getting a full episode interview on Oprah... now that's the stuff of legitimacy! Interestingly, I just don't think I have it in me to convince you of my love for you. Just read this blog and I promise that somewhere on the back shelves of my dusty heart sits a mantle place with your picture.

So I haven't written here in a long while. I've been busy performing, which is a nice departure from 2010, which was a very difficult year for me and as a result, a very poor year creatively. I did work at two of Toronto's largest performance festivals: Luminato and Fringe. It was a time of much line study, late night pint drinking, shilling my work like a polyester wearing car salesmen, and (in the case of my Luminato show HABIT) alot of showering naked in front of a crowd of leering arts aficionados. During this period I was in what I have dubbed "The Happy Zone", a place where I feel validated with who I am through the things that I am doing. For much of this summer I was an artist and like an artist, ate poorly, drank profusely, and struggled with anything that the suits would consider "reality". And that worked for me quite nicely.

But now I'm here in late August, dealing with a number of big changes at my theatre studio UNIT 102 (changes that will be revealed in an upcoming blog!), busting my hump trying to make my bills, rent, Actra dues, debts, and that $200 I still owe my dad. (sorry pops). In short, things are back to normal.

Or are they?

It would seem as of late things are getting....weird. Well, not weird. DIFFERENT. Perhaps its the turn of the season, when the sustained pressure of heat breaks with the cool autumn breeze. Or it's that I've been so busy schmoozing at Fringe tents, or chugging last call pints that I simply haven't kept my eye on my biological radar (desperately in need of a tech update but their isn't the budget). But things feel like they are changing, for what purpose I am not qualified to say. All I know is that I have a feeling. I can't really put this feeling into words but I would like to share with you a few things that got me feeling this way:

-Jack Layton- So the smiling mustachioed face of the NDP has died, falling victim to a battle with cancer he seemed to be winning. As an NDP supporter and a proud Canadian, I have nothing to say on the subject other than it is a sad loss to the political sphere. What strikes me as disingenuous, is our reactions to his death. Here was a man who never held much legitimacy as a potential Prime Minister until our last Federal election when Quebec changed the political landscape by flatly rejecting the BQ and thrusting their left leaning votes to a bunch of NDP candidates who seemed to be picked out at random from a bar washroom lineup. And suddenly the NDP, and by extension Jack Layton, were thrust onto the world stage as contenders. Jack did his best to sound like an emerging force but to my ears, was just chirping off sound bites about "change" and "brighter futures" with really no actual substance to convince me we were heading towards a progressive future. While people rejoiced, I could only focus on the actual ramifications of that election, that the Conservatives had won a majority. Prior to this upheaval, there was a lot of talk of Layton being a joke candidate, kinda like Parkdale/High Parks Christian Heritage candidate Andrew Borkowski, who no one expects to be elected but love to see struggle with the futility of fighting in a battle that can't be won. But then Mr. Layton tragically died, and wrote a letter before he did, and suddenly everyone is quoting him and posting inspirational status updates on their Facebook. I don't know. I voted NDP because of their local impact to my community, not because I saw Jack Layton as the savior of our fragile National framework. Had that poor man been elected, he would have suffered Obama's fate, handed down a frightful mess from a previous regime who did everything in their power to line their own pockets and in the ensuing struggle to right the ship, get vilified for making any call that would have made transition even remotely uncomfortable. When anyone in the public sphere stands for something even remotely progressive, we scoff at them until they die and then suddenly there are a lot of sad sentiments, quoted bodies of text and some really cool T-shirts. I am saddened by his passing but Jack Layton wasn't the answer to our problems. To fix those we should turn the focus inward to our own apathy and lack of political will. We are a society desperate for hope, and for this blogging bastard, that is what is most apparent in this tragedy.

-The other night I woke up from a horrible nightmare. In it, I sat with a my family gazing at the Toronto skyline, awaiting for the end of the world. The radio spoke of an imminent attack and as the streets erupted in panic, my family huddled close. Without warning, the sky flashed bright and I closed my eyes as the light tore through me and brought with it nothingness. Yes, I read Douglas Coupland's LIFE AFTER GOD and I'm aware that this nightmare is a bit cliche in our post-atomic bomb world. But as with most visceral dreams, it wasn't about the events depicted but rather about how real they FELT. I have had dreams of being in a zombie apocalypse and dreams of being in a city getting crushed Godzilla-style by a gigantic creature and unlike movies of these scenarios (which are often quite campy and goofy) the experience of actually being in them was a great deal scarier. For example, the zombie scenario was scary not so much because the living dead were walking around Dunn avenue but because of the futility of trying to live in a world where the horror would never end. Sure, we were safe in a boarded up apartment, but what about tomorrow, or the next day? Was EVERY SINGLE DAY to be lived with the knowledge that they were coming to get us? That as soon as we stepped out for food or water we could be ripped into fleshy strips? That no matter how long we survived, we would always sleep with one eye open and a unsheathed knife gripped tightly behind our backs? Given that type of anxiety, death seemed almost a reprieve. But I digress. On this particular night I woke up to a dream of nuclear holocaust. My lover, startled by my sweaty screams, asked me what was wrong:

Luis: I just had a dream the world was ending.
Lover: It was just a dream.
Luis: I know. It just felt so real...
Lover:It's ok. It's over now.
Luis: I know. The world ending. What a scary thought. Do you think we'll see that in our lifetime?
Lover: The end of the world?
Luis:Yeah...
Lover:...
Luis:....
yeah. Yeah I think so.
Luis: Me too.

After that she revealed that she saw the end of the world as part of Christ's plan. That it didn't scare her because she knew it was meant to be and would cleanse humanity of our sins. I disagreed. Being Agnostic, I saw the world ending as a sign of our human negligence, a result of our collective stupidity. What stayed with me most of all was that even though we had vastly different opinions as to the meaning of the world's end, we both agreed with some certainty that it would. I wondered what this meant as I went uncomfortably back to sleep.

-I was walking down the street in Parkdale, right around Capitol Espresso. Next door a Public Mobile opened and outside on that particular day, two students were paid to stand outside and hand out promotional flyers. It was an odd sight to see them in Parkdale, young girls handing out corporate literature outside the trendy independent shops and amongst the tattooed hipsters and city project dwellers. Sure, at Queen and Yonge this would be common sight but not in gritty west end Toronto. Just as the thought crept across my mind, the girls attempted to hand a flyer to an elderly black gentleman with a long white beard and cane. As they thrust the bright laminated orange flyer in his face, he turned to them and bellowed, "WHERE IS THE MONEY! HUH!?! WHERE IS IT?". He turned away and grumbled curse words as he continued along his journey. The two girls gave each other, "what the fuck was his problem' looks and continued to go about their thankless job. I sat and thought about how different my neighbourhood was becoming as I passed by the newly minted Tim Hortons and the man panhandling shirtless in front of it.

Writing this and looking it over, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the world is like it has always been. Surely, we are not the first generation to think the world is ending, or take inspiration from a passing statesman or watch gentrification turn a new page in their given neighborhood. I am certainly not the first financially struggling writer to pick up a pen (or in this case turn on their laptop) and speak on it. But change is as inevitable a thing as our human attempts to comprehend it. I guess I just wanted to let you know that I'll be blogging again and that I love you very much for reading it. And that somewhere sits a portrait of you covered in soot, sitting amongst a growing collection of things that I have loved far too easily.

To end, let's give the floor to our good friend Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (playing this Saturday at the Cameron House!): Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Alright kiddies, see you next week. (seriously)

With lots of misguided love,
That Blogging Bastard

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