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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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People don't like to be reminded that lurking somewhere there are people who can do some shit that you can't do. They can think a way you can't think, they can dance a way you can't dance. They are excellent. You aren't excellent.
On Monday night I rode my bike in the sleetish rain to the Rex to watch Rob Cruickshank project slides to the live sounds of Methusela. I wore the wrong trousers for the bike with no chain guard and had to roll up my pant leg, which was chilly. Also, in case y'all haven't noticed, it's DARK at 5:30 these days. And also my gloves are faulty. So by the time I got there I was feeling distinctly Novemberish and bleak. The bar was kind of empty-ish but not completely, as befits a Monday night. Rob was in the zone, his nighttime slides of storefronts and subway stations enhanced the bitter-slowly-turning-sweet urban mood of the evening. Methusula are easy on the ears and don't demand a change of frame of mind. Rob's super 8/slide connections were hitting the mark: astronauts filed dreamily out of the lurid glowing window of a Queen West fabric store, soldiers leapt from helicopters into a sea labelled "MEAT" and a rocket ship fired up through the torso of a mannikin in a red dress which morphed into an old cave stalactite trajectory. Faded phallic images from the past ticked into the atmosphere of a quiet, slick-street evening in Toronto in the late autumn.
They're going to do it again next week (Halloween) so go see for yourself.
tonight! YYZ Books is hosting a launch for the newest issue of The Ganzfeld. Also there will be Paper Rad stuff there too! And after that is the Toronto Comic Jam at the Cameron.
6 - 9 pm
The Ganzfeld #4 Book Launch at
YYZ Artists Outlet, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 140
9 pm on...
Toronto Comic Jam in the back room at
the Cameron House, 408 Queen St. West (north side, just West of Spadina)
Last weekend I posed the question, "What do you like better...screws or balloons?" Unlike most of my friends, who roll their eyes and ignore me when I pose an either/or, 2-year-old H. gives the question genuine consideration and responds with direct honesty, "Screws." I think its a good answer. Balloons are dumb. I feel incommensurate satisfaction at having recieved any answer at all.
The whole thing started about 20 years ago. Sophie's Choice had posited the cruel impossibility of binary options. My parents were separating. I had to decide whether to finish high school or flee the province. I chose flight which was easier than my brother's choice of which parent to live with. I pestered my poor brother relentlessly, "Who do you like better, Kate or Allie?" He never did answer me. To this day, when I slide the question into an otherwise convivial conversation, he responds with exasperated sighs and the occasional administration of physical pain (all people with brothers will know what I mean). But in that perverse opposite land that is sibling communication, this lopsided torture was, and is, an acknowledgement of respect for the horrid decision that he eventually faced, while I ducked out and never declared myself.
Binary choices are not in vogue, pre-rhizomatic dinosaurs from the old days before our eyes were opened to the falsity of polarity, the uncertainty principle, the tyrranical reign of cultural context over meaning of any kind. But we, of course, make them all the time regardless. There is content in choosing one thing over another, and there may even be consequences. Choice is risk, action, carpe diem!
I have a really hard time choosing between Kate and Allie. Kate was more fun, Allie was a wet blanket. Kate was cuter, but Allie was more entertaining. Also, Allie was Chip's mom, so there's a good chance you'd get him in the bargain and he was a creepy but fascinatingly weird little dude. If H. can choose screws, I can choose Allie. She makes me laugh.