Art All Over.

I've been enjoying art in disparate forms of late. Of course this is not a new thing, but the level of pleasure I've been experiencing from art seems to be reaching new highs. This is interesting to me.

(Oh politicians, please recognize how engaging in art--

as a creator or appreciator--

makes us each and every one a living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being,

and support us in our creative endeavours.) 

I've been partaking in all-things-art on the stage, in books, via videopoems and readings, and I've writren a new song (with one of my almost-trademark melancholic titles: "Requiem for the Burned Down House" for guitar. (I plan to create a video piece for the song.)


Playing Guitar on the Deck on a Chilly Day in April


Let me begin by confessing that I am late to come to and appreciate the singular talents of American writer Richard Ford (b.1944). What the hell took me so long? I've just devoured the final pages of Rock Springs (short stories, Vintage, 1988). Ooh. La. La.

Wikipedia says:

"Ford's works of fiction "dramatize the breakdown of such cultural institutions as marriage, family, and community", and his "marginalized protagonists often typify the rootlessness and nameless longing ... pervasive in a highly mobile, present-oriented society in which individuals, having lost a sense of the past, relentlessly pursue their own elusive identities in the here and now."

Ford "looks to art, rather than religion, to provide consolation and redemption in a chaotic time".


I say here is a writer who is not afraid to put unexpected words into the mouths of his often down-on-their luck characters. (In "Empire," a female Army Sargeant on a train between Minot and Spokane says to a man she's just met--who has lied to her and told her he fought in Vietnam: "Vietnam? Was that a war or what?" ... And you were probably on a boat that patrolled the rivers shooting blindly in the jungle day and night, and you don't want to discuss it now because of your nightmares, right?")

I say here is a writer who knows that even those of the lowest economic means can be philosophers.

Here's a writer who writes about the parent-adult child and parent-adolescent child bond in a way I can believe. (In the story "Great Falls," in a motel beside the city golf course, a mother says to her son: "I'd like a nice compliment from you ... do you have one of those to spend?" The boy says: "Yes ... I am glad to see you." She tells him adult things, like: "Your life's your own business, Jackie. Soemtimes it scares you to death it's so much your own business. You just want to run." And: "I used to be afraid of more things than I am now.")
)
And here is a writer who knows the back roads of Montana and Idaho, and knows about fishing and hunting snow geese, and understands many a thing about the vagaries of the human heart.

Ford's first-person protagonist in "Great Falls," says: Things seldom end in one event."

His protagonist in "Winterkill": "Trouble comes cheap and leaves expensive ..."
Also in that story, "Mr. Wheels," a guy in a wheelchair ("due to a smoke jumper's injury") who drives a specially outfitted Checker cab goes fishing in the middle of the night while his buddy and a strange woman entertain themselves in the car, and "Mr. Wheels" gets snagged on something. His friend comes to help, and has to enter the river to release the line.

(excerpt)

     "It's an odd thing to catch," I said, standing above him in the grimy fog.
     "I can't change a fucking tire," he said and sobbed. "But I'll catch a fucking deer with my fucking fishing rod."
     "Not everyone can say that," I said.

Richard Ford, you are exquisite.

And so are you, Edmonton playwright Nicole Moeller, who wrote "An Almost Perfect Thing," which I saw last Friday night. I can't stop thinking about this play:

http://thegatewayonline.ca/articles/arts-entertainment/2011/03/24/young-playwright-explores-complexity-abduction

More brilliance: Edmonton poet Kath MacLean's launch of her new book (with University of Alberta Press), Kat Among The Tigers. The text demands a quiet time and space and I've not been able to carve that out this weekend, but I was absolutely blown away by the video poem "Doo-Da" Kath screened at her launch. I aspire to be that good one day.

I want to say more, but it's film night tonight. What's up: "The Secret Life of Words."

Ciao for now.