VAGABONDAGE

Graffiti left by Rimbaud near Karnak, Egypt.

… J’avais en effet, en toute sincérité d’esprit, pris l’engagement de le rendre à son état primitif de fils du soleil, – et nous errions, nourris du vin des cavernes et du biscuit de la route, moi pressé de trouver le lieu et la formule.

- Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Vagabonds’

One of those themes not known to inspire summer blockbuster films, the idea of homelessness is central to last year’s Wendy And Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, and Vagabond, a 1985 release by France’s Agnes Varda. I picked up both at Montreal’s Grand Bibliothèque recently, amongst more prosaic fare like Stargate Continuum, and of course it’s the smaller, more thoughtful films that have stayed with me, while the special effects vehicles fade as quickly as the indigestion wrought by a bag of Frito’s ‘Original’ Corn Chips (‘Original’ cuz only the Undead can eat the BBQ-style).

IT’S EIGHT O’CLOCK

garage rock extraordinaire

It is eight o’clock and I’m lying on my bed reading Miranda July. I’m reading No one belongs here more than you and I’m hearing Miranda July’s voice as I read – because I know what her voice sounds like. I’ve seen the movie she did, Me and you and everyone we know, and she not only wrote and directed the film, she starred in it. So it’s Miranda July non-stop, 24/7. Her voice is the voice of Miranda July the movie actor, not Miranda July the psychotic-sounding Kill Rock Stars recording artist. When I heard those CDs – and those CDs were the first I heard of Miranda July – I thought she must’ve been about as punk rock as it gets. Then I saw her videos at GIV, this place in Montreal that has a big library of artist’s videos – and DVDs now, I guess – and the projector kept fucking up on one of her videos and so we – there were other people there watching the videos too – we only got to digest this one video of hers in weird pieces, because it just kept stopping. Miranda July of the videos was definitely out to disturb the audience. Like the one with the baby – that was disturbing. Not disturbing like Ju-On, but disturbing like pushing the audience’s buttons to show the audience that hey, look, you’ve got buttons I can push to disturb you a little. By the time she got around to doing a movie, she’d toned it down. Same with No one belongs here more than you. Or maybe I’m just used to her now.

MOVIETIME

Edvard Munch's 'Vampire'

When I’m at home, which is most nights, I generally like to spend a couple of hours watching movies. This is my personal compromise between needing something to do when I am too tired to read or write, and wanting to avoid the absolutely mind-wrecking shitstorm of what’s available on TV. (Also, since moving to a location below Mount Royal, in the shadow of various skyscrapers, the quality of my television reception has been brutally reduced. Yes, I still watch TV that arrives for free from ‘signals’ in the ‘air’, as opposed to what is piped in via cable for a hefty fee.) Lately I’ve been trying to cut my screen time down by getting stoned and lying around listening to music instead, but there can be no denying the powerful attraction a filmic voyage can have on my imagination.

JOHN GIORNO COMES ALIVE!

Giorno at 2008 FVA. Photo by Isabelle Hayeur.

In 2008, I was commissioned to write a review of John Giorno’s performances at the Festival Voix D’Ameriques. It’s taken a while, but it finally has found a home at Chicago-based spoken word site the e-poets network. Check it out!

If you haven’t experienced Giorno live, there’s a couple of video clips of his 2008 performances at the Festival Voix D’Ameriques here. You can also listen to some of his recordings at the fabulous UbuWeb, and read the article I wrote about him for the Montreal Mirror here.

In other Chicago-related news, Victoria Stanton’s videopoem of ‘Oilers’ (featuring text / voice by yours truly) is being screened at the upcoming 9th Annual Chicago Anarchist Film Festival.

FROM THE BOOK THAT DOESN’T CLOSE by Joe Blades

Joe Blades' latest ouevre.

I was eventually going to get around to writing about Joe Blades’ new poetry collection from the book that doesn’t close, which I read last week, but just this morning I found out he’s been the victim of a fire that has turned his whole life upside-down. Now, there can be nothing more nightmarish for a writer than a house fire. I don’t think that the fire actually consumed Joe’s apartment, wherein is housed his manuscripts, books, papers, etcetera – but water and smoke damage is almost a certainty. It’s with that in mind that I’m writing this today, hoping Joe can recover as much of the material of his life as is possible …

REVIEWS, MOSTLY LIVE, SOME BOOKS

First of all, I’d like to give my Maxell ‘digital’ headphones, which are right now piping Nico’s ‘Innocent and Vain’ into my brainpan, these headphones bought cheap at a pharmacy, I’d like to give these headphones of mine a bad review. The sound quality isn’t bad – I, who have had a lifetime career of listening to scratchy rock through shitty speakers, am not one to judge sound quality – but because they have only little padded speakers that sit on top of my ears and squish them all up. They squish the shit out of my ears. Failing grade. Next time – really really big earpieces that go right over the ears and don’t squish them.

It’s officially spring, and springlike outside, even if cold. Springlike sunlight sprinkling down upon us all like shy flower buds awakening slowly, sensing something …

BEFORE I COMPLETELY FORGET

Like I said, I want to write something that vaguely resembles a review of things I am looking at, but these past few months have been sort of a blur of events, and although I have indeed been plowing through a lot of interesting material, I’ve had no free time – I mean, really free time – to write anything about anything. And by now I’ve probably forgotten more than half of it. Which raises the question, Why bother reading anything (or watching any films, or attending any live performances, or doing anything cultural) at all? There are many publications that devote themselves to chasing the Newest of the New – your average weekly, for instance, which every week breathlessly gushes over the latest films and touring bands, or monthly music magazines, or even the occasional literary publication, although it becomes less and less likely you’ll find any reviews in those things. Or so I’m told. But why bother? It all just goes by, it’s like being stuck in a car or train, or even a plane; eventually, all the beauty and variety of things passing the windows becomes a blur.

WARHOL DEAD!

On Wednesday, January 14, I joined what appeared to be half of the population of Montreal for the last ‘cheap night’ at the Museum of Fine Arts before Warhol Live closed. Given that the temperature was approximating that of the dark side of Pluto, I thought I was doing pretty good just getting out the door rather than opting for a snug night with a bad movie. But I even managed to carry out a complimentary and somewhat more complicated operation – finding a quiet alleyway near the Musée where I could spark up a half-a-joint in order to maximize whatever eyeball-kicks the Warhol show might yield.

RELEASE THE MILLER EPHEMERA!

Recently I confirmed my prediction in my essay “Scraping The Bottom of the Beat Barrel” that the recent aquisitions of various Beat archives by various public institutions would result in a deluge of ‘new’ material by Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. Actually, so much has come out lately, I haven’t been able to keep up. Just googling around a bit, I found out Viking has released And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, the legendary collaboration between Burroughs and Kerouac on the topic of the killing of David Kammerer by their friend Lucien Carr. Penguin has finally released Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha, Kerouac’s attempt to spread the Buddhist gospel, which hadn’t seen print except as a series in the venerable Buddhist journal Tricycle back in the mid-nineties. A batch of Allen Ginsberg’s letters has also been published, and in 2007, the University of Ohio (!) published the crucial 1953 Latin American notebook of Burroughs. Crickey! Who knows what else is out there …