Category: Uncategorized

  • The devil is in the tea-towels

    My friend Justin had a flatmate whose accent made the old saying come out like the line above when she was inebriated.

    I just remembered something Natalie Goldberg says in her books on writing: “For every cosmic statement you make, you have to provide ten specific details.” So as I witness Prague, I must remember to steer clear of the vagueries and shortcuts and paint the picture.

    So, as I wrote the last post I was drinking a bitter black cafe Americano and eating a slice of lemon cake with gooey, tart icing on top.

    The ceiling of this airport is a cross between a football stadium roof and a repeating bank logo in the sky that lets just enough sun through. This looks like the sort of hangar you’d hang out in while waiting to be deployed to Landmineistan.

    The woman at the cheapie airline gate told me my flight wasn’t open, so I should come back at noon. I just did that, and another young woman with a dusty pink-orange face and half-awake London drawl told me my flight wasn’t open yet, so I should come back at one. I mumbled something about what the last woman said, but I felt like the character in Office Space muttering about someone taking his red Swingline stapler with no one listening. I also felt the lava of angry customer indignation rising, but in the same moment saw that I didn’t have to fall into the default reaction, since a) I’m on holiday and not actually in a rush (it makes no difference if I wait on this side of the bag, belt, shoes, coat, frisky massage line or the other) and b) it wouldn’t do a damned bit of good anyway. So I decided not to be bothered.

  • Note from Stansted

    I’ve got a stop-over for a few hours in London before I continue on to Prague. My friend Robert Goderre is meeting me somewhere here; we didn’t really plan this part, but I’ve sent him the booking e-mails to print out and we’ve got to end up on the same flight, so I figure we’re okay.

    Why does flying give me such terrible, painful gas? Perhaps it’s related to the way a water bottle will crumple as the plane goes up and down, like my innards are trying to balance the pressure. Whatever they’re doing, I wish they wouldn’t. Um, anyway…

    I’m really looking forward to this trip. I’ve been doing some head-clearing lately and it’s been very effective; I’m leaving all my friendships and my work in a great space, the romance that started about a month ago is coming along slowly but in a really caring and fun way, and I’m off to meet up with two old friends who are genuinely decent men both completely enamoured of life and committed to living it fully. And I’m going to frickin’ Prague!

    Standing in line a few minutes ago, I couldn’t help thinking about the letter I got on Facebook from a high school friend, and looking at where I am now. I would never have imagined then that I would be living in Scotland and travelling to all these European cities. (This is my first trip on my UK passport.) What a gift life is! And how amazing that these incredible experiences are available to common people like me. A quick read through the guidebook I bought makes me feel like this is really going to be my kind of city, and the sights it contains — wow!

    Sure, there are low points, but I’ve been doing some reading — I’m always reading some bit of philosophy, little of it particularly new, just restated or reframed, but this part of me seems to need constant transfusions in order to work properly…

    So I’ve been reading the work of this woman named Byron Katie, and she does a really lovely job of asking simple questions that undermine those terrible thoughts that rip me out of the present moment and trap me in comparisons with the imaginary parallel universe of how things ‘should’ be. Going through this line of thinking lately, I find myself constantly coming back to where I am, and finding that, you know, everything is grand. Even if there might be concerns in the future, they aren’t here yet, and chances are I don’t know the things I’m imagining I do about how the future will turn out.

    Loving What Is is another of Byron Katie’s books, and it’s what I’ve brought along on this trip. Typical airport bookshop book, though I bought it beforehand. Goderre is a total self-help junkie, so I’m sure he’ll have read it, or will as soon as we talk about it. Gord, whom we’re visiting, has also done the Landmark work, and is now a member of The Strategic Coach Program. The nice thing about this is that they’re both such clear-headed, honest, and self-aware people. So not only am I off to this incredible place, I get to spend time with two people I just know will be quality company. (I’m lucky to have a lot of that in my life.)

  • The fear of closed gates

    Okay, I’ve set two separate alarms, so I’m ready to go to bed and get up in time for my flight tomorrow. I get so paranoid about oversleeping when I’ve got a flight to catch.

    Packing’s a snap, though, ’cause I’ve done so much long-term travel the past few years. I’ve got a quickie mental checklist, and I’ve developed a habit of buying two of anything for the bathroom, so I have duplicate wash kit ready to go at any time.

    Yes, I’m off to Prague for a week. I’ve been busy and done no homework; I’m a total ignoramus. Or, put more nicely, I am going as tabula rasa, wu wei, beginner’s mind.

    In case anything dire should happen, thanks, it’s been fun.

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  • Beltane & Prague

    Last night was Beltane, the annual pagan-y, nude-y, fire-y rite of spring that happens atop Edinburgh’s Calton Hill. I was tired — I feel quite drawn this weekend, and not in cartoon form — but I couldn’t miss it, ’cause it’s become an important event in my year, both as a bit of local culture and as a special time with friends.

    (Forgive my crap cameraphone photography. I could buy a swish expensive camera for taking these shots, but I’d still produce the same result. Photography is one art that eludes me completely.)

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    Flaming icons on Edinburgh’s folly — the start of the Beltane ceremony.

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    A red, half-naked female demon spins hula-hoops of doom around her body. It was raining at this point, but nothing could touch her.

    [EDIT: As usual, Liz did a much better job of documenting the occasion.]

    I’m at a coffeeshop, working (yay!). I’m drinking my decaf coffee black, ’cause I’ve been ingesting way too much heavy and junky food lately. I’d declare some sort of new eating habit to compensate, except I’m going to Prague at the weekend, joining one old friend from Toronto to visit a mutual friend who’s doing real estate development there. The former is a restaurateur and the latter is a flashy entrepreneur with a taste for the high life, so… this is clearly not the time for declarations.

    When am I going to finish my novel?

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  • Payoff season

    Mister Savings Accounts is skint. Does this give you schadenfreude-flavoured pleasure after my last post?

    Actually, it’s just my pocket money account that’s drained, but it was worth it. This weekend was a heavy social time, starting with a Friday Gang dinner, then a night out on Saturday with Liz and Patrick to one of the city’s subterranean vault venues, where people danced happily, casting shadows through underwater lighting.

    Sunday was the first gig for the Edinburgh Gay Men’s Chorus, a singing group I joined a few months back. It was the last thing I imagined myself doing, but…

    When people ask me if I miss acting, the only thing that comes to mind that I miss is singing. So this is giving me an outlet for that without all the crazy lifestyle that goes with the career — which I honestly don’t miss at all. I finished with that and retired, fait accompli. (My theatre department is having a reunion in June and I’m going, and while I look forward to seeing everyone again, I’m really happy to be where I am now instead.) But singing in harmony with people is fun, and even though I’ve just been doing it as a lark and really have nothing at stake here, it was rewarding to have the payoff of a public gig. And since the venue was a pub, we naturally stayed on and bevvied it up.

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    Then in the afternoon I got a call from my friend Tim. Bizarrely, I’d been thinking of him just the day before as I listened to a song by his band, Van Tramp. I was mentally kicking myself: “I think of him as one of my best friends,” I thought, “but the last time we were in touch was sometime last year.” Well, Sunday his band was in town to open for the Sugababes. Not only was that a score for the band, it meant he and I got to hang out after.

    I went to the stage door, where the giant rock’n’roll trailers were waiting, along with some of the fans. A stereotypically unhappy doorman didn’t know anything about where the band was, but a text message from Tim let me know to go around to the lobby, where the remaining fans were trailing out (most of them chubby women or little girls wearing sparkly pink hats, strangely). So I got to see my bud again, as well as introduce him to a couple of my chorus mates and meet one of his band members and his label manager. The manager was a bit shaken that they’d sold out of all the albums they had — which were supposed to last for the whole tour. I figure that’s good bad news!

    Then last night I went to see my friend Callum sing at a showcase for the music program he’s in. He was really, really good.

    Once again, even though it’s not a pre-condition of my friendships, somehow very talented people keep ending up my life. I would like them even if they weren’t gifted, but it’s just too easy to like them when I can be a fan of their work as well.

    So a lot of stuff is coming together lately, for me, for groups I’m in, and for people I care about. Yay!

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  • Bistrophoria

    Yay! I’m sitting in a cafe, working. This is life the way I like it. The neighbours’ workmen are hammering on my wall, and I’m not there.

    I’ve finally switched to using a UK keyboard layout, since most of my things are stencilled with that. I keep typing @ when I mean “, but I’ll adjust. Reminds me of the time my mum and I were in an Internet cafe in Brussels or Bruges or someplace, and I was wondering if we should tell the attendant that someone had switched all the keys around on our keyboard. Oops, I didn’t know.

    I promise to write about something life-like soon, not just this techie-stuff.

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  • Really stupid marketing

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    I laughed out loud last night when I was clicking through the music store in Windows Media Player and a Flash advert came up with a silhouetted woman waggling her arms back and forth, dancing for all she was worth. What was the banner ad for? Mortgages! Sweet f*all to do with dancing or coolness or music or… anything.

    I tried with the best of my geeky powers to capture the moving Flash version of the ad so I could post it here, but I wasn’t able. It’s just so shamelessly wrong and stupid and irrelevant that I found it funny. Not “I appreciate that company’s self-aware sense of irony” funny — because it just occurred to me that maybe that’s what they were going for, the “so bad it’s good” factor. No no. It’s just pure, misguided, bad boardroomthink.

    Actually, it reminded me of a snort-through-your-nose-funny article on Cracked.com called “If Banner Ads Were Forced to Be Truthful“. While looking up the URL just now, I found that they’d parodied this exact ad.

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  • Hairy pipe

    Today was “Family Day” in Ontario — whatever that means — so I had the day off. I spent the day out in the city, trying to be productive, though it’s still so easy to fall into tourist mode and just look at this place.

    I spent a while planning my projects for the week in Chocolate Soup, a cafe in the Old Town, and just before I left to walk back home, I used their loo. I was taken aback to see that the pipes still had their original insulation: hair. That’s one exposed building material that would be a pretty hard sell nowadays.

    Hairy pipe

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  • See me live in March

    Who’s Your Dandy?2

    Another Queer Night of Poetry & Music

    Tuesday March 11 — 7:30pm
    Word Power Books
    43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh
    Free
    (we will pass the hat for the artists)

    Featuring

    Graeme Hawley, Hamish MacDonald, Nine, and Zorras

    After a highly successful inaugural event in November, Who’s Your Dandy? returns to Word Power Books on March 11th with another fun and unusual lineup of writing and music. You’ll be treated to a mixture of performance poetry, fiction, zinester tales, and poetry-music fusion like you’ve never seen it before.

    Who’s Your Dandy? is the kind of event that reminds you what’s great about living in a city. Going on a rainy night to a free performance of queer poetic experiments and deeply funky music — this is the anti-Into the Wild. The performers’ voices are confident, incisive, and, best of all, playful. Hold onto your overpriced flat, indie culture’s happening here! SSSS.
    “” The Skinny

    www.blissfultimes.ca/whosyourdandy.htm

    www.word-power.co.uk

    Bios

    Graeme Hawley was a milkman in Oldham before becoming a postman in Edinburgh. He published his own first collection of poetry, Reclamation Marks, in 2004, and is currently saving up to publish his second collection, Everyday Things. He won the Big Word Slam in 2006 and was on the winning team in the Three Nations Slam in Bristol. He wrote this himself in the third person.

    Hamish MacDonald is an author and copywriter who, seven years ago, finally gave in and followed his name back to Scotland. He’s the author of three novels, including Idea in Stone, a magical realist tale about Edinburgh (which you can buy at Word Power). He publishes his novels through his own micropress, printing and hand-binding each book. www.hame.land

    Nine grew up in Northern Ireland and moved to Edinburgh in 1996. She writes the zine If Destroyed Still True, and edits the LGBT section of The Skinny magazine. In the past, she bluffed her way through music journalism, and wrote porn for a couple of anthologies. She gets nostalgic for teen angst, travels to places where she knows nobody, drinks too much wine, rants about politics, and writes about all of the above.

    Zorras is Sandra Alland and Yudnara J. They blend poetry with music to form a performance that is neither and both. They are dedicated to making you laugh and think. With tape recordings, guitar, drums, singing, a megaphone, poetry and plain old storytelling, Zorras become multimedia superheroes before your eyes.

    Sandra Alland is a Scottish-Canadian writer, multimedia artist, performer and activist. Her poems, plays, stories and articles have been published and presented across Canada, the US, Mexico, Bermuda, England, Scotland and Spain. Sandra has published two books of poetry: Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, 2004) and Blissful Times (BookThug, 2007). www.blissfultimes.ca

    Yudnara J. is a singer, percussionist and composer. She has performed and recorded throughout Venezuela, Aruba, Spain and the UK, with such musicians as Rigel Michelena, Gustavo Dal Farra, (El Rabo del Ojo), Antonio Bello (4 of Us), Charanga del Norte, Kabanayen and des loups. Yudnara has also performed and composed with Saira and Contrabajo. www.myspace.com/contrabajoband

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  • To make Mom jealous…

    flowers
    ‘Cause apparently it’s still snowy as hell in Prince Edward Island (and cold in Toronto).

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