Viewership’s blog

I'm here
and this is not who I am
I have no more incessant chatter
to fill the void between our humanities

try as I
might, I cannot
join in

ended
prematurely, I forget what
made me begin

I'm here
and this is who I'm not
I can't go with you, my part-time friends
to the places you've been or have dreamt of

I'm not there

Do you ever take time to just sit and be quiet?  I mean really quiet.  Not watching tv or playing on the computer.  People listen too much to their brains all the time.(I'm sure this all sounds silly or new-aged to some--I'm neither so I don't care.)  Our brains are a great tool but the problem is they can be trained or fooled.  Our bodies don't lie.

Do you ever just sit and let your mind be quiet and try to listen to what your body has to say?  Try it.  Have a seat(or lay down) for at least 10-15 minutes and do nothing.  Try and let go of all those nagging, every day thoughts about tasks and what-not.  See if your body has anything to tell you.  Maybe it doesn't, that's fine--just have a (real) rest then.  But maybe you notice a tense or twitchy muscle, a feeling of tension or unease in your gut.  Concentrate on that, listen to what it's trying to tell you.  Maybe there's an issue you need to deal with, or you're too stressed or maybe it's saying that you should be doing this, or stop doing that.

It's not easy, I know.  We tend to feel that if we're not doing something we're just wasting time.  But taking time for yourself--rejuvinating--is certainly not a waste.

I work at a hotel where each guest recieves a Globe and Mail so one of the pleasures of my day is perusing the paper during my break.  I start with the letters to the editor--for some reason I find I learn more from them than the actual articles.  Then I see if there are any interesting op-ed columns and usually move on to the Review section(play-by-play of my newspaper reading--isn't this exciting).  But each Friday, I can't wait to open up the paper and read my friend Rick Salutin's article(I don't actually know the man but he's my Friday buddy).  I love his articles because they seem so un-filtered, like you're observing his thought process and most often I can understand or have gone through the same thought process.

This last Friday, he wrote an article in response to the Toronto high school shooting where he attempted to get to the heart of the problem, within our society, instead of talking about guns or "kids today" or the "monsters" who do such things.  He hit on many points that I've often thought about.  About how teens(among others) have a hard time connecting to and being apart of a(the) community.  If you've read this far and aren't thouroughly bored, you should read the article, it's quite good...

The most eloquent response to Wednesday's gun killing at C.W. Jefferys high school in Toronto may be to keep it in perspective. It wasn't Columbine, or Virginia Tech. (One news report had parents streaming to “the campus.”)

Stu Auty of the Safe Schools Network often hits the right note. He doesn't scream for metal detectors and cops in the corridors. He talks about prevention and trying to identify the kids most at risk in a crisis that seems to involve a loss of respect or authority, along with a turn to violence. But how to do that?

Youth is always in crisis. Youth is a crisis. Childhood is gone, adulthood looms, with ever-changing prospects. These centre on what you can offer your society, and what it will give you in return. So it's about work. In the olden days in Ontario, that often meant farming. Now, after globalization, we no longer provide or even monitor most of our food; it largely comes from abroad.

But what has also been lost in the process is a sense of dignity that came with farming. Farmers know they're the butt of jokes, yet they carry an inherent pride through feeling that they provide something everybody needs. Here in the city, you still see that in the way farm kids show their prize sheep and chickens at the Royal Winter Fair. I've been at meetings where the farming representatives arrived late because they had to do the winter planting. Everyone else sighed at the very thought of such useful work.

In the past century, the work prospects for youth often lay in manufacturing. It wasn't the same as working the land, but it still had a dignity: You were “making” things needed by the rest of your society. There was also a moral dignity, based on a deep sense that got built into the left-wing ideologies and working-class parties of the era. It was the “workers” who produced the goods used by all. Then the “bosses” swiped those products and “exploited” the workers.

Whether you see this vision as noble or whiney, it at least helped make sense of the world of work into which youth had to move. That reality is on the way out, too, due to globalization. Canada has lost 250,000 manufacturing jobs in the past five years.

Grim as agricultural or manufacturing work could be, it linked you to the real needs of others around you. They all required food, shelter, clothing, transport etc. So the world of work provided an underlying sense of purpose and value, along with its many negatives. Perhaps that helped people maintain a certain equilibrium, which kids may be less likely to find today, working in hazy realms like finance, hospitality, IT — or standing around a film set talking into a cellphone and scratching your bum. (I hate film crews on my street.)

C.W. Jefferys, after whom that high school is named, was a Canadian painter and illustrator. One of his famous sketches shows the farmers and “mechanics” of the time, heading to Toronto during the failed rebellion of 1837 (32 years before the artist was born), carrying guns and pitchforks to demand justice and right the wrongs of their society. Many were jailed, hanged or exiled. Still, they had a way to try and make sense of their plight, and some hope for fixing it, along with a plan.

What's the work world into which teenagers today project themselves? The apex might be a regular gig on TV: a veejay or journalist.

Well, the shabbiest job on Wednesday's sad news was done, for my money, by the on-air people at CITY-TV. We had host Ann Rohmer, dolefully proclaiming, without evidence, that the words, safe and schools, no longer go together. All night, they kept repeating excitedly that many people at the school were getting their information “from us!” They interviewed each other and asked how they were doing after a hard day of poking mikes in parents' faces and saying, “How do you feel?” (Please, CRTC, ban this question.)

At last, they had their own Columbine. What a template, to offer the young.

I went to bed last night and wondered if the sun would rise again in the morning.  I asked myself if I even wanted it to but was too apathetic to answer.  In the morning, I awoke before the sunrise--or was it true that it would refuse to come up again, that it too was too tired to begin yet another day?  As I layed there with my eyes shut, half asleep, I contemplated my life with or without our closest star.  I then felt the warmth and light of a single ray of sunshine caress my face.  "Get up," it said.  "And begin your day.  There's a life out there for you--you just need to live it."

You could say I'm a bit of a cinephile.  It's not to the point of obsession like some but when I love a movie I like to learn everything I can about it(the same goes for music or any other art really).  I have a collection of about 35 DVDs or so and nearly every one is a personal favourite.  No more VHS.  I balk at VHS.  I can't believe we used to watch this archaic medium!  It's not just the massive improvement in quality but all the little extras that I love.  Oh, how I adore the extras.  Commentary tracks, "the making of's", interviews, deleted scenes... gimme gimme gimme!

I also tend to go through phases.  Right now it seems that I'm entering a Terry Gilliam phase...

It all started when I saw a copy of 12 Monkeys for sale at Blockbuster.  $8, how could I pass it up?  Then that got me thinking about Brazil again(what a brilliant fucking movie!).  I had looked for it on Ebay before but, for whatever reason, didn't decide to bid on it.  And, I'm talking about the super-fabulous 3-disk Criterion edition here(am I the only one turned on right now?).  Anyways, I looked on Ebay again, and this time found a decent deal so I put in a bid and won it.  Then, looking through the dealers other items I noticed the Criterion edition of Time Bandits, another Gilliam film, for pretty cheap.  Sweet, so I scooped it as well.

Almost forgetting that I had them coming, I come home today to see them sitting on my doorstep--what a lovely surprise.  The problem now is, when will I get a chance to watch them??

When you were younger, did your parents ever send you away for the summer?  What was the experience like?
Brought to you by the movie Georgia Rule.

I must have been about 10 when I went to Bible Camp for a couple of weeks during the Summer.  I really don't know why since neither of my parents are very religious and I had never been to church a day in my life but it was a lot of fun none-the-less.  Lots of activities with a nice forest on the shore of a big lake(or was it the ocean?).

In case you were wondering, no, I wasn't converted.  There actually was little bible in the camp which was good.

I was just looking through some of the most "interesting" photos in Flickrs Explore page and it was kind of sad how over-produced almost all of them are.  They're flawless--saturated to the extreme, removed of any "distractions"--which, to me, is their major flaw.  To me photography, and art in general, is about truth.  And that's where the beauty lies... in the truth.  If you take away all the noise and boost all the astetically pleasing features, you're left with nothing but a cheesey gift store painting.

This line of thinking always makes me think of one of my favourite artists, Buck 65, who embraces the flaws and the rust and the dirt.  This song captures the essences of my argument probably better than I've tried to above...

10 50 Gallon Drum

Buck 65

Show the world what fuels you!
Submitted by Cindercone.

Photo 88

1 comment

I've lived here for over 10 years now and it is most certainly my home.  I love that it's not a big city.  I love that it's pretty laid back.  I love it's history.  I love it's weather.  And I just love it's beauty.  But my city is in a crisis.

Victoria has been growing rapidly for the past 5 years--along with the surrounding regions.  I'm definitely not against growth.  I'm all for it, especially when it involves greater density and revitalizing(or creating new) communities.  All of this, though, takes a great deal of planning, co-operation and ingenuity.  Each of which is severely lacking in Victoria and the surrounding communities.

In spite of the fact that the current mayor has been in place for the past 10 years, there is no concrete vision for what we want Victoria to be.  People here are just now waking up to a number of problems this piecemeal approach creates.

The greatest one being the increasing poverty and homeless problem affecting those unable to get a piece of the growing prosperity.  Even with the 100's of new housing units created by new condo buildings popping up all over and a population growth of little more than 1% a year the homeless problem has become more and more visible to the point where it affects people's(and business') day to day lives.  It's an unfortunate part of politics but problems rarely get attention until they begin to affect the middle class(i.e. voters) or business(i.e. revenue).  And with the massive increase in housing costs--which finally seem to be leveling--it hits even closer to home when the average person has trouble finding a decent place to rent, never mind saving up to buy a home.

The other big issue in the news these days is transportation.  Too many cars, not enough road, not enough public transit.(I won't even get into the ridiculous North American car culture)  The underlying issues of this problem are, again, a serious lack of planning and willingness to get things done.  When something actually does get done, the projected usage number are usually for 10, maybe 20 years down the road and then it takes about 5 years for the project to be completed.  So our money(and we're talking substantial amounts) is going towards a band-aid solution that may last a few years before we're back where we started.  And what are the solutions that they usually come up with?  Adding another lane, traffic calming, etc.  Where is the vision?  Where is the plan that looks at the region as a whole and takes into consideration where we'll be in 50 years from now and beyond?

It's sad that people(myself included) don't take a greater interest in the issues that affect us on a day to day level.  Civic politics is where we are able to make the greatest impact.  Your voice probably couldn't reach the Premier or the Prime Minister but the mayor and, most certainly, city councilors are going to listen because your vote actually counts to them.  A good place to start?  Next civic election, learn a little about the issues and where the candidates stand on them.  Then actually go out and vote!