Sunday, March 20, 2005
A Governer General's Award winning literary work about a famous American outlaw written by Sri Lankan born author whose nationality is Canadian. From Canada to America and back again. From outlaw to hero to lover to artist to exile. From poetry to prose. All movements in one. They are an artist, an outlaw, and an exile hounded for flaunting and circumventing the traditional restrictions placed on them by conventional forms. He is him, they are him.
Bill Lee, a former baseball player, once ran for the presidency of the United States of America on a platform that if elected he would not accept office. He referred to the world as a one celled organism and pronounced that it should be treated as such. The natural world may reflect the nature of a one celled organism, but the political and literary world certainly does not reflect that notion. The world as we know it and experience for the most part resembles the globe that sits in my father's office. It was a gift for subscribing to MacLean's. It is a wonder to many of us that when we cross the 49th parallel that we do not notice a distinct change in the colour of the dirt, from a pink to a distinct aqua tinged green. Arbitrary rules surrounding divisions have been driven into our heads over and over again. We accept our divisions as easily was we accept the imaginary borders carved into its landscape. Borders that rise up out of nothingness stymieing your every move.
Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, according to his passport he's Canadian, he has written about Canada, the United States, The United Kingdom, Sri Lanka. He has written poetry, he has written prose, he has written fiction, and he has rewritten histories. Who or what is he? Where do allegiances lie? And what laws and oaths if any does he uphold and place close to his heart?
A very rudimentary understanding of language would show that in naming, words have meanings, those words are attached to objects, and the meanings of those words or 'names' accurately reflect the nature of the object it is naming. In naming oneself as a Canadian or as a writer of prose fiction one would assume that that person, that object, must be in possession of traits and characteristics that are inherent in the word 'Canadian'. Is there a tangible quality or even a group of qualities that represents 'Canadian'? Perhaps, for the sake of argument, there is a core group of qualities one must be in possession of in order to be 'Canadian', perhaps then, for the sake of continuing this argument, I am in possession of those qualities, I am in short representative of the word 'Canadian'. A problem arises if my possession of one of those qualities comes into question or I outright lose one of those qualities. Lacking in something I therefore cease to be Canadian and I lose my identity. What if the qualities are weighted, what if one quality is more important to being Canadian than another? Who is the arbiter of such a decision? Who decides who I am and what I am? Borders are suppose to represent the divisions between peoples, but over time it is discovered that borders possess no flexibility and people have abundance of it.
What happens when one decides that identity is more fluid than borders allow? What happens when one decides to throw off the restrictions imposed by borders, labels, and conventional laws? What happens when one declares themself an outlaw?
Michael Ondaatje as Billy the Kid and Billy the Kid as Michael Ondaatje neither of them distinguishable from the other, narrates
Two years ago Charlie Bowdre and I criss-crossed the Canadian border. Ten miles north of it ten miles south. Our horses stepped from country to country, across low rivers, through different colours of tree green. The two of us, our criss-cross like a whip in slow motion, the ridge of action rising and falling, getting narrower in radius till it ended and we drifted down to Mexico and old heat. That there is nothing of depth, of significant accuracy, of wealth in the image, I know. It is there for a beginning.
When someone becomes an outlaw they choose their own beginnings, they decide where their existence begins and ends, they decide what boundaries they wish, for their own purposes, to place on the world, their environment, their experiences. Effortlessly criss crossing, they exist both in the here and in the there. They are everywhere, they experience everything regardless of its geographical location, "we (I) take in all the angles of the room" (Ondaatje). They are all Michael Ondaatje, Billy the Kid, Charlie Bowdre, Pat Garrett, Sally Chisum, and Dionne Brand. They exist in the space and they exist in the spaces in between.
Dionne Brand writes "I've tried to make the world over in the poems", "I wanted to fill every silence with a word and every word with a silence. Since there are so many silences to fill and so many words to silence, the poem continues". Fluctuating from from silence to shouts, things are done and undone. What is done isn't seen, but what can be undone. In this (new) world that is remade, the makers choose the language communicated in, they imagine the world,
In another place, not here, a woman might touch something between beauty and nowhere, back there and here, might pass hand over hand her own trembling life, but I have tried to imagine a sea not bleeding, a girl's glance full as a verse, a woman growing old and never crying to a radio hissing of a black boy's murder
Confines are not determined by another's language. Nothing imposed.
From Chaucer to Marlowe to Bryon to Eliot to Byatt and Doyle, the standard of Albion English has been changed, accepted, and then changed again. We never hestitate to call it English. The dialect may change, but it remains the Queen's English. The moment we, outside of the confines of England, attempt to take the liberty with English that the favoured sons of England take, "I was she favourite, oh yes" (Brand), we are reminded of the borders we live and speak in. They speak pidgin English, we speak the Queen's English, we speak the standard, they speak in voices that must be hushed, they write in words that are better left in the margins. "This is uur space, the only space you can occupy" that is what they are told with the hurriedly thrown up divisions, pidgin/Standard. One a favoured son, the other a bastard. The liberties provided to one are not provided to the other, a door is slammed shut, a fence is thrown up. We are forced from the family. We may never criss cross this border again. They are silenced. That is why the silence must be filled with words so that it may be remembered that what is said in any language, "does not burn out or waste and is plenty and pitiless and loves." (Brand)
The first wave of immigrants to North America 'discovered' and divided up a land that was previously inhabited. They were Canadians and they believed they were remaking the country in their own divine image. They settled up the country along arbitrary lines with little to no regard for what had previously existed. They came and erased what the land had been and reworked on the chalkboard what this land would be. They like an army of bulldozers came and reshaped this land, placing fences where there had previously been none and marking up their maps with penciled lines. Who is to say that a new wave of immigrants to this land can't pick up the discarded chalk brush and erase what is and rework what will be? Who's to say that they can't come and uncover their own Canada and rework it in their own image? It is as an outlaw that someone may decide for themselves not only what spaces they will inhabit, but who they are and what they will experience. The arbitrary values must be discarded. Standing not by countries, but by the people.
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The Innu of Natuashish are derided by the public and the media for not accepting the blame for the problems of Davis Inlet and their current community. The Newfoundland government is petitioning the Federal government for a full blown inquiry into the misuse of funds by the Band Council. I can't believe it. I can't believe what a mess this is.
In 1993 education was designated a problem area for the Innu of Labrador. Though the Innu of Davis Inlet were isolated and well over 80% of the population spoke their native language, they were still participants in an educational system whose content mirrored that of the rest of the province. 35% of the children of Davis Inlet didn't attend school. Studies were commissioned and suggestions made. The Innu needed more control over the curriculum of their schools. Studies had to be relevant to the community. Recommendations were made.
Flash forward over 10 years later, another study, and only 3 students have graduated from high school in that time. Nothing has been implemented. Education remains vested in the hands of the Newfoundland government and out of the reach of the people of Natuashish. Teachers have problems communicating with the students, there are interpreters, but none are used. Two-thirds of the students hear only the Innu language at home.
It's been advised that the curriculum change, that Innu teachers be trained, but another generation of students is lost in the meantime waiting for these changes to be implemented. I guess that's just chalked up to an acceptable loss.
You can't build a new community on this rotting fucked up foundation.
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Fuck Albion
Faux Britannica: Lingo No Longer Belong Mrs Queen
"This country makes me say/too many things I can't say"
Bill Lee, a former baseball player, once ran for the presidency of the United States of America on a platform that if elected he would not accept office. He referred to the world as a one celled organism and pronounced that it should be treated as such. The natural world may reflect the nature of a one celled organism, but the political and literary world certainly does not reflect that notion. The world as we know it and experience for the most part resembles the globe that sits in my father's office. It was a gift for subscribing to MacLean's. It is a wonder to many of us that when we cross the 49th parallel that we do not notice a distinct change in the colour of the dirt, from a pink to a distinct aqua tinged green. Arbitrary rules surrounding divisions have been driven into our heads over and over again. We accept our divisions as easily was we accept the imaginary borders carved into its landscape. Borders that rise up out of nothingness stymieing your every move.
Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, according to his passport he's Canadian, he has written about Canada, the United States, The United Kingdom, Sri Lanka. He has written poetry, he has written prose, he has written fiction, and he has rewritten histories. Who or what is he? Where do allegiances lie? And what laws and oaths if any does he uphold and place close to his heart?
A very rudimentary understanding of language would show that in naming, words have meanings, those words are attached to objects, and the meanings of those words or 'names' accurately reflect the nature of the object it is naming. In naming oneself as a Canadian or as a writer of prose fiction one would assume that that person, that object, must be in possession of traits and characteristics that are inherent in the word 'Canadian'. Is there a tangible quality or even a group of qualities that represents 'Canadian'? Perhaps, for the sake of argument, there is a core group of qualities one must be in possession of in order to be 'Canadian', perhaps then, for the sake of continuing this argument, I am in possession of those qualities, I am in short representative of the word 'Canadian'. A problem arises if my possession of one of those qualities comes into question or I outright lose one of those qualities. Lacking in something I therefore cease to be Canadian and I lose my identity. What if the qualities are weighted, what if one quality is more important to being Canadian than another? Who is the arbiter of such a decision? Who decides who I am and what I am? Borders are suppose to represent the divisions between peoples, but over time it is discovered that borders possess no flexibility and people have abundance of it.
What happens when one decides that identity is more fluid than borders allow? What happens when one decides to throw off the restrictions imposed by borders, labels, and conventional laws? What happens when one declares themself an outlaw?
Michael Ondaatje as Billy the Kid and Billy the Kid as Michael Ondaatje neither of them distinguishable from the other, narrates
Two years ago Charlie Bowdre and I criss-crossed the Canadian border. Ten miles north of it ten miles south. Our horses stepped from country to country, across low rivers, through different colours of tree green. The two of us, our criss-cross like a whip in slow motion, the ridge of action rising and falling, getting narrower in radius till it ended and we drifted down to Mexico and old heat. That there is nothing of depth, of significant accuracy, of wealth in the image, I know. It is there for a beginning.
When someone becomes an outlaw they choose their own beginnings, they decide where their existence begins and ends, they decide what boundaries they wish, for their own purposes, to place on the world, their environment, their experiences. Effortlessly criss crossing, they exist both in the here and in the there. They are everywhere, they experience everything regardless of its geographical location, "we (I) take in all the angles of the room" (Ondaatje). They are all Michael Ondaatje, Billy the Kid, Charlie Bowdre, Pat Garrett, Sally Chisum, and Dionne Brand. They exist in the space and they exist in the spaces in between.
Dionne Brand writes "I've tried to make the world over in the poems", "I wanted to fill every silence with a word and every word with a silence. Since there are so many silences to fill and so many words to silence, the poem continues". Fluctuating from from silence to shouts, things are done and undone. What is done isn't seen, but what can be undone. In this (new) world that is remade, the makers choose the language communicated in, they imagine the world,
In another place, not here, a woman might touch something between beauty and nowhere, back there and here, might pass hand over hand her own trembling life, but I have tried to imagine a sea not bleeding, a girl's glance full as a verse, a woman growing old and never crying to a radio hissing of a black boy's murder
Confines are not determined by another's language. Nothing imposed.
From Chaucer to Marlowe to Bryon to Eliot to Byatt and Doyle, the standard of Albion English has been changed, accepted, and then changed again. We never hestitate to call it English. The dialect may change, but it remains the Queen's English. The moment we, outside of the confines of England, attempt to take the liberty with English that the favoured sons of England take, "I was she favourite, oh yes" (Brand), we are reminded of the borders we live and speak in. They speak pidgin English, we speak the Queen's English, we speak the standard, they speak in voices that must be hushed, they write in words that are better left in the margins. "This is uur space, the only space you can occupy" that is what they are told with the hurriedly thrown up divisions, pidgin/Standard. One a favoured son, the other a bastard. The liberties provided to one are not provided to the other, a door is slammed shut, a fence is thrown up. We are forced from the family. We may never criss cross this border again. They are silenced. That is why the silence must be filled with words so that it may be remembered that what is said in any language, "does not burn out or waste and is plenty and pitiless and loves." (Brand)
The first wave of immigrants to North America 'discovered' and divided up a land that was previously inhabited. They were Canadians and they believed they were remaking the country in their own divine image. They settled up the country along arbitrary lines with little to no regard for what had previously existed. They came and erased what the land had been and reworked on the chalkboard what this land would be. They like an army of bulldozers came and reshaped this land, placing fences where there had previously been none and marking up their maps with penciled lines. Who is to say that a new wave of immigrants to this land can't pick up the discarded chalk brush and erase what is and rework what will be? Who's to say that they can't come and uncover their own Canada and rework it in their own image? It is as an outlaw that someone may decide for themselves not only what spaces they will inhabit, but who they are and what they will experience. The arbitrary values must be discarded. Standing not by countries, but by the people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Innu of Natuashish are derided by the public and the media for not accepting the blame for the problems of Davis Inlet and their current community. The Newfoundland government is petitioning the Federal government for a full blown inquiry into the misuse of funds by the Band Council. I can't believe it. I can't believe what a mess this is.
In 1993 education was designated a problem area for the Innu of Labrador. Though the Innu of Davis Inlet were isolated and well over 80% of the population spoke their native language, they were still participants in an educational system whose content mirrored that of the rest of the province. 35% of the children of Davis Inlet didn't attend school. Studies were commissioned and suggestions made. The Innu needed more control over the curriculum of their schools. Studies had to be relevant to the community. Recommendations were made.
Flash forward over 10 years later, another study, and only 3 students have graduated from high school in that time. Nothing has been implemented. Education remains vested in the hands of the Newfoundland government and out of the reach of the people of Natuashish. Teachers have problems communicating with the students, there are interpreters, but none are used. Two-thirds of the students hear only the Innu language at home.
It's been advised that the curriculum change, that Innu teachers be trained, but another generation of students is lost in the meantime waiting for these changes to be implemented. I guess that's just chalked up to an acceptable loss.
You can't build a new community on this rotting fucked up foundation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fuck Albion
Faux Britannica: Lingo No Longer Belong Mrs Queen
"This country makes me say/too many things I can't say"
When I was 18-19, I was in a (thankfully) short lived band called Crazy Knees Carbone with ex and former members of Great Plains.
Gerry reminded me of this painful period when he somehow found one of our mp3's on soulseek and played it for me.
Listen to the mp3 here
I was trying really hard to do something, I'm just not sure what it was.
Gerry reminded me of this painful period when he somehow found one of our mp3's on soulseek and played it for me.
Listen to the mp3 here
I was trying really hard to do something, I'm just not sure what it was.
I slept through a show I was supposed to go to on Friday night. I emailed my friend who was in one of the bands playing to apologize and woke up to this email Saturday morning :
no worries duder. Im hammered out of my mind and I have to record tommorrow. It is going to be a messy scene. Those guys might be mad but they can totally suck a dick because I don't give a shit about notihkinfg. Holy fuck I can need to go to sleepm. I hope lifer in your ville is merry. Eat shit mutha.!
Lachie out.
no worries duder. Im hammered out of my mind and I have to record tommorrow. It is going to be a messy scene. Those guys might be mad but they can totally suck a dick because I don't give a shit about notihkinfg. Holy fuck I can need to go to sleepm. I hope lifer in your ville is merry. Eat shit mutha.!
The Last Time I Gave a Shit, I Got Fucked
I finished 'High Rise' this week. What a mind bomb that book was. It made me want to get in fist fights. Me getting into fist fights is not a good idea. Mostly because my hands are registered weapons.
I went to the mall yesterday with Stephan and Greg. Some kid in a NOFX hat and a Propagandhi hoodie gave us cut-eye. Gerry said it's because we were three emos. Before we went to the mall everyone was telling us that there was no arcade in the mall. We proved those fuckers wrong and hung out in the bowling alley like bangers.
We spent close to 20 dollars trying to win enough tickets to win a fireman's hat. It was 200 tickets and we ended up with 185. How's that for bullshit? We had to settle for a race car set where these cars defy gravity and do a loop-de-loop and 3 harmonicas. If there had been skee-ball games there we would have cleaned the fuck up.
I went into Coles and I picked up the Jose Canseco autobiography. When I was like 10 Jose Canseco was like the next Mickey Mantle. I bought and traded for any Jose Canseco baseball cards I could get my hands on. I even bought his twin brother's card. I thought Ozzie Canseco was going to be something other than a loser who gets arrested in bar fights. I guess I was naive enough to believe that talent had something to do with genetics and not steroids. A one point in my life I debated calling the Jose Canseco hotline. Talk about your lowpoints. I assume this is around the same time that my spring and summer wardrobes were being purchased at the Biway.
After holding the book in my hands, leafing through the index, I decided this jackass was not getting any more of my money. So I bought Art Spiegelman's new book. According to Ted Rall though, Spiegelman is the Canseco of the Cartoon World.
I finished 'High Rise' this week. What a mind bomb that book was. It made me want to get in fist fights. Me getting into fist fights is not a good idea. Mostly because my hands are registered weapons.
I went to the mall yesterday with Stephan and Greg. Some kid in a NOFX hat and a Propagandhi hoodie gave us cut-eye. Gerry said it's because we were three emos. Before we went to the mall everyone was telling us that there was no arcade in the mall. We proved those fuckers wrong and hung out in the bowling alley like bangers.
We spent close to 20 dollars trying to win enough tickets to win a fireman's hat. It was 200 tickets and we ended up with 185. How's that for bullshit? We had to settle for a race car set where these cars defy gravity and do a loop-de-loop and 3 harmonicas. If there had been skee-ball games there we would have cleaned the fuck up.
I went into Coles and I picked up the Jose Canseco autobiography. When I was like 10 Jose Canseco was like the next Mickey Mantle. I bought and traded for any Jose Canseco baseball cards I could get my hands on. I even bought his twin brother's card. I thought Ozzie Canseco was going to be something other than a loser who gets arrested in bar fights. I guess I was naive enough to believe that talent had something to do with genetics and not steroids. A one point in my life I debated calling the Jose Canseco hotline. Talk about your lowpoints. I assume this is around the same time that my spring and summer wardrobes were being purchased at the Biway.
After holding the book in my hands, leafing through the index, I decided this jackass was not getting any more of my money. So I bought Art Spiegelman's new book. According to Ted Rall though, Spiegelman is the Canseco of the Cartoon World.
