friend proud

I just spent a fabulous time at the Hillside festival in Guelph, Ontario. It was my first time, and I met so many gorgeous people who were more than open to braving the seriously muddy conditions of the weekend. We ate warm hippie-made food all weekend and I got to hang with some bands I have worked with recently - Sunparlour Players - as well as bands who are practically family like Dave from the Warped 45s and the boys of Patrick Watson. One of the huge things that you take away from this festival is the rampant feeling of goodwill - it's created via many things - the fact that you purchase a plastic mug upon arrival and use it for all your drinks over the weekend, that there are no paper plates and a huge crew of "dish ninjas" who make life at hillside a community affair. It's all so specifically awesome, and it's festivals like this who are aware that this kind of get together does impose an impact on an area that DO SOMETHING about their waste who will continue into the future.

Lots of good moments - from the sunday gospel session (Shane Cuizon's spoken word was terrifyingly good and Melissa Mclelland was also a highlight)to the tongue n' cheek of Bahamas to the skillful mastery of Kevin Breit and the awesomeness of the Rural Alberta Advantage. Memory lane thanks to Patrick Watson, and a lightning hit in the tent just before Clues made me grab the arms of friends nearby. Memorable because of the monsoons and the fact that we were all in this together.

I often feel pretty lucky that I'm part of this creative music community and this weekend re-affirmed this thought. My friend Exan is also part of the community and recently directed her very first music video. We celebrated the other day at a launch event in downtown Toronto. So friend proud. (I've f'd up the formatting for this post but I'm too tired to toggle with it... so posting it as is.) Enjoy!

found: writings, offered: stuff.

I've been purging lots of late. Two Sundays ago I posted on freecycle - a great yahoo groups list service for people interested in finding homes for their stuff as it has no longer become useful to them. I had a couple of things in the house - shoes I never wore, sunglasses, a pulp Maeve Binchy paperback, a cute dress, some candle holders circa junior high... and I posted this. I had a quick response from a single mom who wanted to pick up in the next two hours. She was elated! She arrived soon after and I was able to re-gift my stuff, and feel good that someone could put these things to good use. Awesome.

Today I posted the chest-of-drawers I felt never fit into this apartment of mine and a wicker picnic set on craigslist - hoping to find them new homes too to make way for some updated things in my place. Change is always fun to kickstart!

Among the discoveries in my house, I found a writing excerpt of mine... interesting snapshot of life, I thought, so why not use it on the blog as a wee window to my brain (not current, though, I should add, this seems to be last year or the year before.) Oh, and I should mention that this was found in a file called "narcissism, self-loathing, world collapse and love" which, I see some humour in... I certainly can be dramatic at times!

Found: Writing

I started taking the pictures one day just so that I could look back on a year in my life. I guess I was needing a change and I’d always liked those one a day type calendars so I thought I’d take my own. I started in November so that the following year I could actually get the thing (hopefully a masterpiece by then) printed and sent to my friends in exotic far flung places.

It was just one of my life projects. I always seemed to have a few balls in the air with my projects. It was the only thing keeping me sane. The world news seemed to be reporting absolute collapse and failure. If we weren’t careful the icecaps were going to melt down because we were all drilling into the oilsands and burning up our air without any thought to the future. Those baby boomer types were all staying put in their jobs because their RRSPs they’d been instructed to save so carefully had vanished into thin air after the US banks began to go out of business. The future was apparently bleak and I was just a wee lemming about to jump of the cliff like everyone else. And this is how my life launched into its 29th year. By now, according to my life plan, I should be married with children but it was not to be so. Instead, I was just a downtown gal, scarf-tied and sullen, wandering the world aimlessly amidst a sea of contracts and looming EI lines. Life was beautiful and it was only up from here.

If I were to write a book I would imagine the emo-steeped low-drama everyday sort of narrative would pour out of me. I don’t think it would sell. Who wants to hear about the life of so-and-so who finds it hard to get up in the morning and whose daily joy revolves around the coffee grinder in her kitchen?

Today’s picture was a cloudy mess. If the skies could speak it would likely talk about the sun hidden behind a layer of protective clouds. My mind wandered to London skies. This would be typical day there but I was not in the thriving city of London. I was in Toronto, a city recently voted number four for its cultural prowess just behind longtime frontrunners, Paris, London and Tokyo. No kidding. We’re number four. Perhaps it’s because in these dreary frigid days, all the artists warm up their back garages and hunker down for four months of hell. Absolute hell. Who wants to live in a city without mountains that gets really freaking cold and where you can’t even ski?

a taxi story

Hello world. I'm back. Since my last post I've been dithering in the unkempt world of no-wireless and it has made me very hobo-like. It's been a mess of USB keys-as-necklaces, webmail and back-and-forth that I barely have enough energy to describe. And what's worse is that I've had no outlet to regale you with daily tales of discoveries and stories.

And so, as a sort of small apologetic offering to the world, I give you a wee story to whet your appetites.

Of course, it all went down in a taxi cab.

I was rushing, as usual, and the skies were threatening rain, and the added pencil skirts don't work on bicycles situation didn't help, so, in an effort to solve all issues, I decided to jump into a taxi.

The driver, a lovely gentleman of (I'd guess) around 60 years of age, actually turned down the music rather than choose an obnoxious pop station for the ride. I was heading to my home, and was happy to be chauffered. Somewhere along the way, as we were stuck in traffic, the subject of the recent Iranian elections came up and he, as an emigre to Canada, and an Iranian, was quick to say he was disappointed with the results and said very clearly to me that "this is no longer about the election, it is about basic human rights, the people, the world, will not stand for this."

I asked him what we could do to achieve any kind of result or change for the country as I knew that the whole political issue hadn't been clearly explained on television. He explained that the issue was mainly that Ayatollah Khomeini (the 1st Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran) had stood up and publicly supported the election results and would not back down. At the time, he said, the people of Iran were waiting for Friday when, he explained, the Ayatollah was to speak at the Friday mosque service and hopefully make a sort of loophole statement that might concede some wrongdoing in the election.

Unfortunately, as Friday came and went, I saw no Canadian news reporting on the results of this speech, which my taxi driver had explained, he could listen to on his Iranian radio device that was giving him the best reporting he knew of about the daily situation.

I'm watching it carefully now, and so far have only seen fingerpointing from the Iranian government. First they blamed England for interfering and now they're trying to lay blame on Obama and the USA. Obama was an easy target as he actually made a public statement on the matter. Stephen Harper called the situation unacceptable in his recent press statement.

I know the issue that is going on is one thousand times worse than what we are seeing on our news, and what is leaking out quietly via social network sites like Twitter. There are likely more murders, more imprisonments, more physical wrongdoings and signs of dictatorship than anyone in the Western world would know how to manage.

It sparked something in me this taxi conversation. It was mainly a feeling of helplessness. I'm not Iranian but I often think that in times of world conflict, we get off too easily. But despite my strong feelings on the subject, I still don't know what to do. I don't know best where my time and money would be spent. I worry about the journalistic situation since they are revoking passports for foreign journalists and are threatening the lives of Iranian journalists currently inside the country.

Last year I read Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. I was truly moved by this story which was part memoir and part literary criticism. It also gave me a peek into the real world of women in this country and how lucky we are in Canada to be able to even read freely.

I couldn't help but think that the recent election has regressed the world position of Iran to untenable levels.

But I still don't know what best to do. Does anybody know what we can tangibly do to make a difference from Canada? It's on my mind. I think it should be on everybody's mind these days, really. Regardless of your cultural ancestry. This is a major world event and I hope we focus hard on them and make them see it is unacceptable to continue like this.