I don't qualify myself as belonging to either the left or right side of the political spectrum; if the spectrum had a third dimension I would probably have a better time finding my alignment there. Regardless, while I didn't subscribe or agree with Mr. Buckley's politics, I admired his mind and the forthright intelligence he brought to televised debate.
By local standards, this post is coming late. Newspaper articles have been written. Photos have been uploaded to Facebook. Donation jars have been installed in our local bars. That said, I've never promised to be bleeding edge.
Last week, on Wednesday the 20th, a fire broke out on a patch of historic Queen Street West buildings. If our morning paper had been delivered, I wouldn't have known until much later, but as luck would have it I found myself walking to the corner store at Queen and Shaw and saw a massive plume of black smoke not far in the distance. I trotted home, told my wife there was a fire and switched on the local TV news. Before our eyes, we watched a 6-alarm fire gutting three businesses that were stalwarts on Queen West: Suspect Video (one of the best DVD/memorabilia stores in the city), National Sound (one of the few places which stocked turntable supplies - I bought my stereo there), and Duke's bicycle shop (itself an institution). Gone. Wiped off the map.
It wasn't until yesterday, when I came upon a couple of friends on Ossington, that I realised I'd been avoiding seeing the remains. I told them I was going to take some snapshots around the neighbourhood (a habit I'd all but stopped in the latter part of 2007) and they asked if I was going to go to Queen and Bathurst - where the fire struck.
"I can't." I said.
I mentioned how it had broken my heart to see it on TV, to know that these stores (and others) were forever gone. It wasn't just the stores themselves - it was the location which mattered just as much. Queen West has been fighting a losing battle against gentrification and with the loss of these three historic buildings it just seems inevitable that something rich and ghastly will step into their place, without credentials or care for such. The street which launched a million inspirations, a thousand bands, which housed countless artists of a myriad disciplines is being swallowed by real estate speculators, generic retail chains, and the sort of brazen cultural co-opting that wouldn't sound convincing if it were fiction.
Last night, after band practise, I walked down Bathurst to Queen. It was evening and the sides of Queen were fenced with black security gates to protect what was now a scene of investigation. I walked east for a bit until I stood across from the charred carcases, obscured by bulldozers and demolition equipment. I pressed forward until my face nearly touched the fencing, staring at the remains in the night, lit indirectly by street lights. Behind me, people kept walking past. I was in their way. These are the same people, I thought, who will welcome the Pottery Barn, who won't think twice about the Tim Horton's and American Apparel outlets which inevitably take the place of independently-owned businesses. They are impatient for convenience and similarity - they don't trust those thorny things which can't be slickly marketed to their lifestyles: video stores with semi-pornographic gore magazines, audio stores which aren't driven by underpaid commission sales staff, clothing stores which don't produce the same uniform styles and colours that you see at the mall.
I love Toronto. I hate Toronto. And when I stood there in the night, staring at the wreckage, I wondered whether I was long for it. Whether some day I will simply say: "I'm tired of waiting for my city's soul to come back.".
In the meantime, I will give. I will donate to those who lost their businesses and their homes, their livelihoods (thankfully not their lives). Everyone I know - friends who matter, at least - care about this loss. They care, not as consumers, but as citizens and members of the community. My hope is that this tragedy will inspire more like them.
"Unlike straight satire, which exposes an era’s triumphs as its defects, dystopic science fictions imagine the rise of such defects to dominate a future that’s even further along in its accomplishments (and ruin) than the past that birthed it. Such novels matter to the extent that they are capable of effecting shocks of recognition about worlds only partway distant from our own."- (Randy Boyagoda in The Walrus magazine, on Michel Houellebecq)
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."- Richard Feynman (from the Appendix of the Rogers Commission, investigating the Challenger shuttle explosion of 1986)
An eclectic stew for you today, the reader.
Last night's show at Mitzi's Sister (see previous entry) went very well. The band was tight, though I found myself slightly disappointed overall in the experience. Part of it has to do with the fact that, when you step onto a stage to perform (whether it be reading, acting, or drumming), particularly when you don't have the opportunity to very often, time passes like a buttered bullet. You find yourself walking off the stage, seemingly five minutes after you got up there when in fact it's been more like forty. As the glare of the stage lights leave your eyes and you join the ranks of the audience, ending your turn as it were, you feel as if you could've done more - either in your performance or in your enjoyment of the experience.
The last time we played (same place, nearly the same date), the situation was reversed. I had a blast and thought we did a great job (also the crowd was bigger and they defied the typical "Toronto audience" behaviour, with one or two actually dancing), but when I talked to the band they were less than thrilled.
Methinks this disconnectedness is a drummer-thing. Or a writer-posing-as-drummer-thing. Someday I'll know what I want to do when I grow up.
- - -
Yesterday there was school shooting in Illinois at a university. Five dead and fifteen wounded. While this left me numbed - what really can I or anyone else do about it after the fact? - what I found staggering was that this was the fourth shooting at a U.S. school in the last week.
In the (normally poisonous) comment section on the Globe & Mail, someone noted how this phenomena (of which we are certainly not immune in Canada) seems to be applicable only to wealthier Western societies. In other words, for no apparent logical reason, given the superficial socio-economic circumstances of the communities in which these acts occur.
Earlier this week, my wife and I finally got around to watching Gus Van Sant's Elephant. I'd avoided seeing it because, although I was sure it was going to be well done, I didn't want to see something that articulated such a heavy-hitting subject - the Columbine massacre of April 1999. The film surprised me, in that rather than meditating on the after-effects (ie. 2 video-hours of grief), it dealt with the event as it happened, mostly in real-time, from the perspective of several characters who are students in the high school, including the two killers. Neither glorifying the horror nor practising intellectual avoidance, I thought the film was very strong, though ironically I thought it could've been more meditative in the end - perhaps a more hands-on narrative was necessary. This is not to say that it was Peckinpah via Linklater.
Aside from the coincidental nature of seeing Elephant amidst a surge of related killings across the U.S., I cannot help but wonder what lies at the heart of this. I can tell you what doesn't, as far as I'm concerned: guns, videogames, and violent films. Each, in their own way, are massively influential on youths, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way a cause.
It's as if, more and more, there is a proportion of our society that acts as if it's had a frontal lobotomy, thus removing a moral imperative that, for most, would stop us from taking enjoyment from the random killing of others around us. I find myself looking for answers: is this a bio-medical condition (say, exposure to heavy metals), a psychological illness, or strictly speaking is this something that can be explained sociologically? All of the above?
But another part of me often wonders: when we removed Christianity from public spaces like schools (and I don't argue with the need to do so), did we replace it with anything substantial? I sometimes wonder if, in the removal of a code of behaviour (as corrupted, hypocritical, or out-of-touch as it may have been) are we thoughtful of what should be put in its place - something substantial and not generic, p0litically-correct lip service which ends up inspiring no one? Or, am I kidding myself, in that we are all really indiscriminate savages on the inside, holding on desperately to illusions of civilization?
- - -
I remember, as a kid and avid comic-reader at the time, reading a story called The Realists. A handsome high school hunk-type is lured by the "new girl", a beauty, back to her house after school one day. She tempts him with a special drink. When he drinks it, it's like he's under the influence of a drug - everyone around him is ugly and fat, food is rotten, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and sees that he's hideous. She tells him that what he drank is real water, and that what he and the rest of society consumes is laced with a drug which provides the illusion of a beautiful "normalcy". He runs out of her house, screaming, and as the "drug" wears off, he decides to treat the experience like a bad dream and forget the fact that what he thinks is reality is actually an engineered apparition.
- - -
These are fleeting thoughts, sufficiently scattered. Enjoy your weekend.
So, the band I'm in - Behind The Garage - have a gig this Thursday (Valentine's Day). We're playing at the venerable Mitzi's Sister (1554 Queen Street West, just west of Lansdowne). It would be a great thrill, boost, and gas to have one and all come out if available.
We don't play covers and we're pretty darn good (tm).
Allow me to spotlight one of those articles that is sure to disappear from the news as fast as it was posted. Andrew Carey, a journalist with CNN, posted the following:
Let me outline some relevant quotes from the CIA's Annual Threat Assessment, always a February ritual on Capital Hill:
"Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat."
Iran has shown a "willingness to use terrorism to pursue strategic foreign policy agendas…"
In Afghanistan, the "chaos here is providing an incubator for narcotics traffickers and militant Islamic groups."
In Pakistan, "Musharraf's domestic popularity has been threatened by a series of unpopular policies that he promulgated last year. At the same time, he is being forced to contend with increasingly active Islamist extremists."
The Internet enables "terrorists to raise money, spread their dogma, find recruits and plan operations far afield," and "acquire information and capabilities for chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear attacks."
Does any of this sound familiar? It should, they are direct quotes taken from the threat assessment as released on February 7th, 2001, a full 7 months before the U.S. 'homeland' was attacked. All of it was practically rewritten for the 2008 U.S. Threat Assessment.
The highlights of the 2008 Threat Assessment, as delivered before a U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday, are depressingly void of detail or anything that approaches real insight into the virulent threat now faced by the U.S. and its Western allies.
Skepticism is a good thing, cynicism is not. Unfortunately I confess to feeling much of both as I listened to what the best minds in the U.S. intelligence community had to offer on the state of the threat.
They seem unwilling to share any of their material "intelligence," the kind that would have potentially tipped off a few suspecting citizens as mass terror plots have unfolded around the world in the last decade. The intelligence community would doubtless argue that to do so would compromise operations and compromise important individuals. I would argue that without real and specific information to enhance their threat assessment, the entire exercise is essentially meaningless, as the 2001 assessment so tragically proved.
I don't think there's anything I need to add to this, other than (by-now-predictable) metaphors involving Orwell, the film Brazil, or the book I'm currently reading, We by Eugene Zamiatin.
For those of you living in the south (south of Canada, that is), I hope to see some changes come November, eh?
Okay, so I made the decision that this blog shall display my real name and not the (admittedly appealing) pseudonym I've used since I started this blog 171 posts ago.
I've been playing with the idea for a while and realised that, while it's not a question of having 'nothing to lose', I don't have a shitload to gain by hiding my identity. It's not like there's a Bruce Wayne/Batman thing happening in my life...well, not outside my imagination.
Posts
All Comments
