danse macabre.

still from biutiful.

 recently a good friend and i went to see biutiful, a film billed as a love story between a dying man and his children. the plot focuses on uxbal, a man who is desperately trying to provide his two children with some sort of financial and emotional life preserver to carry them through after his fast approaching death. albeit grim, the film was beautiful and left us both with an unsettled feeling that betrayed simple shock and sadness at the horrors of one family falling apart. the film genuinely asked questions about what was to be done when everything foundational in one's life simply vanishes. i feel as though many films over the last few years, another example would be cormack mccarthy's novel-turned-film the road, have kept up a tone of unapologetic grittiness that seems to hold as its foundation a refusal to look away from true and ugly things.

danse macabre, micheal wolgemut, 1493.

 it may seem an obvious comment but i am always astounded at how reflective the arts, film especially, can be of a specific socio-political climate. in north america the two-thousands have brought us a post-911 era of cynicism of our personal safety, burgeoning concern over population issues, a post-bush era distrust in government, the ever present tumult of middle eastern countries, and the cautionary tale of the financial meltdown of two thousand and eight. it is furthermore no surprise to see that these same reactions, boom and bust of faith in ourselves as a species if i may, have cycled throughout history, manifesting themselves in some of the only relics left behind, the arts. as anyone who has had any rudimentary education in european history would know, the continent was ravaged again and again by plagues cycling from the sixth century on. the infamous bout of black death, as it is often called, peaked in roughly the mid fourteenth century and wiped out nearly half of the european population by the beginning of the fifteenth century. when exploring the woodcuts, paintings and drawings of this era there is a distinct grimness present. one example is the danse macabre, (dance of death, in english) a genre of work that depicted skeletons (often of different classes and backgrounds) dancing together. it was meant as a memento mori (latin for remember death), a reminder that no matter who you are, regardless of riches and sins, death was universal.

letter a in the hans holbein "alphabet of death", 1538.

 i suppose the question that this leads us to is what is our danse macabre? is it films like biutiful and the road, or does it manifest itself in the pop nihilism of authors such as palahniuk and copland? we seem, as a whole, fairly overwhelmed right now with the horrific possibilities of our future. but before letting fear mongering rob us of our rationale we must realize, that with every other era that came before us, there is always going to be an ebb and flow of conviction in ourselves. a distinctly human dilemma that is no more beautifully illustrated than in films such as biutiful. watch it.

tekakwitha.

view of montreal looking south, taken 1930

having just spent an astoundingly great weekend visiting one of my best  friends, i have montreal, specifically french catholics, on the brain. walking home after a particularly long night we made our way up to my friend's studio on one of the top floors of a building and lorded over the montreal skyline. what strikes one the most is how from the ground level you can't really conceive of the way in which churches in a city are built to loom over those oblivious below. they rose up with such grandiosity and authority, it felt my self taken aback by all i had been missing. as a person who doesn't practice any sort of religion, i felt oddly sad for them, sitting in plain sight yet seemingly unnoticed and almost neglected, some sort of beacon of a time lost.

montreal, 1875

the simple feat of building the dome on the basilica style roman catholic churches seems catastrophically impossible to me. specifically when considering how the largest churches in montreal were built as early as the mid-nineteenth century. with a series of pulleys and scaffolding they were painstakingly built over years, sometimes decades. having studied renaissance and baroque architecture, the sheer dedication of the patrons, architects and labourers leaves me awestruck.

bishop ignace bourget of montreal, taken 1862

i was particularly aware of the religious qualities of french canada this past weekend due to my concurrent reading of leonard cohen's beautiful losers. written in the late sixties, cohen's distinctly post-modern work encapsulates the dichotomies of religions in contemporary culture. aggressively sexual, almost obscene, the stream of consciousness narrative surrounds a love triangle between a man, his dead wife, and a fictitious character named f. with the ever looming figure of the indigenous saint catherine tekakwitha, whom the narrator, an academic, studies almost obsessively. recently having been exposed to the rich literary history of french canada i am consistently shocked at how little we pay credence to our own historical legitimacy as a nation. persistently relying on america as an easy scapegoat for a national persona, we neglect our own unique qualities as a people mediating between the two worlds of french and english, not to mention the plethora of other languages indigenous and imported to us. in some strange way i feel as though as long as we don't speak too loud or too boastfully about who we are as a country, the longer we will remain unnoticed and unfrenzied. canada has always held an innately pure quality in my mind, but it may just be wishful thinking.

depiction of catherine tekakwitha

ancestrality.

recently my aunt scanned and sent forth hundreds of photos of our relatives, past and present. it shocked me to see myself in these people i had never really met or connected with. it can be especially bizarre considering i don't really perceive myself as being indigenous in anyway, admittedly mostly due to the genetic lottery of ending up fair skinned. that begs the question of how you can even conceptualize yourself as an ethnicity? since we've cast off biological determinism long ago, it can't theoretically be based on any skin colour? what had to happen to me when i was a child, what experiences did i have to have, to now consider myself metis or native or french or white? what essence can you be missing that makes you one thing or the other? how important is it to even care? i have a feeling it's tremendously important, but i don't really know why.

freakbook.

the todd browning film "freaks" (1932) is one of my favorites. i've watched it in more than one university class, using it as a means to discuss the exploitation of people with disabilities in a period when political correctness had no place. the language used in films of this era is such an affront to our modern sensibilities that it almost comes off as absurd and humorous. the film, set in a travelling circus, revolves around the engagement between cleopatra, a beautiful trapeze artist, and hans, a little person who is the ringleader of the sideshow performers. the twist in the plot is that the trapeze artist is actually conspiring with another man to seduce hans- only to murder him and gain his large inheritance.

the most (in)famous scene in the film is when the "freaks" all sit around the table to dinner with the trapeze artist and start chanting "we accept her, one of us" over and over. as the chanting wears on, utensils banging on the table, the trapeze artist and we, as viewers, come to the realization simultaneously that the only way the "freaks" will let her be "one of them" is to mutilate her, thus normalizing her appearance to cruelly match that of those she sought to betray. the film, intending to portray the "normals" as the true monsters and the "freaks" as morally unblemished and trusting, ended up being perceived as just the opposite, a exploitative cinematic freak show. this was no doubt due to studio intervention at the original ending which grimly portrayed cleopatra's conspiratorial lover being castrated by the "freaks", while the trapeze artist's own extremities are melted into grotesque duck feet. the studio, not surprisingly for the era, replaced it with a more "suitable" ending where hans lives happily ever after as a rich man. despite potential for generating money due to its extreme shock value, "freaks" was a flop, and subsequently banned in the u.k. for almost 30 years for being "too shocking". it essentially ruined browning's career. luckily for us, the 1960's brought a surge of interest in cult films, and by proxy "freaks" was saved from the abyss of failed and forgotten films before digitization. 

i find it curious when the integrity of a work is corrupted by nature of its easily exploited/mocked subject matter. could a film like "freaks", even today, ever truly be appreciated as anything other than a parade of physical deformities? how can one, as a filmmaker, photographer or artist of any kind, find a middle ground where the inherent qualities of content don't usurp artistic vision? i promise i won't go on about art theory, a history lesson on "freaks" simply felt in order. watch it. 

detroit.

part of a photo essay by sean hemmerle for time entitled "the remains of detroit". this photo shows a theater, built in 1929, now used as a parking garage. the plain modernity of the cars lends the grandiosity of the ornately buttressed roof a distinctly absurdist quality that i just can't get enough of. i discovered this set of hemmerle's photos a few years back and show them to whomever will look. it's a sad and beautiful reminder of bubbles waiting to pop.

it will do just fine.

"grammar is a piano i play by ear. all i know about grammar is its power."
                                    -joan didion

grammar is one of those things we so often ignore without realizing our desperate dependence on it. without it words would free fall from our lips, pooling at our feet, lost forever to any significance. it somehow, almost divinely, gives structure to the otherwise chaotic and often abstract nature of our minds as humans. it is something that has evolved over time, allowing us to connect and fuse our ideas together, bringing forth collective products full of all the grace and humanity that defines us at our best as a species. some write for personal reasons, some to put forth their certain version of the world. for our purposes the simple accumulation of all those human cultural products we hear, see or feel and wish we could remember to write down or capture somehow will suffice. all and any things historical, literary or aesthetically pleasing will do just fine.

didion.