We interrupt this program

 

Cirque de Salvation

It took a long time for me to dredge this back up from the vast canyon of YouTube oblivion. I saw it several years ago - when? 2013 or something, which now seems like forever, and posted it somewhere on the blog, but couldn't remember any identifying details. It was just some sort of bizarre religious procession in Brazil that looked more like a circus. When I finally found where I posted it, the original video had been taken down. I just kept clicking, and finally discovered it (or a version of it, quite different actually) re-posted with nothing but a Spanish description.  

I'm not sure I understand the significance of the kids in white clothing and chains in the middle part, nor the huge glowing multi-colored heads that bring to mind the Mexican Day of the Dead. The music is excruciating, awful synthesizer stuff, until about 6:30 when it briefly becomes quite haunting. And at 7:13, there is a sight of astonishing beauty.

This actually isn't a lot different from most Catholic events in Latin America, and I'm not faulting them for this: when I think of the drab, wheezy, stultifying quasi-ceremonies of the middle-of-the-road Christian church I grew up in, I almost want to say HOLA! and go Catholic. Almost. But it's not likely I'll ever hook up with a church again. It amazes me I lasted as long as I did. The only thing I miss is the sense that someone, somewhere, unshakeably and eternally loved me. I don't think I will ever experience that again.

Captain Kirk and tribbles

CanLit on fire: who can win this game?

I had an immediate reaction to this meme (or whatever it is): truer words were never spoken! Of course, if you truly embrace this perspective you're seen as crass. But what is a writer to do? I've said many times that we don't expect a trained concert pianist to play in an empty hall. But that's the equivalent of what professional writers are expected to do.  That is, those who aren't at the top of what is starting to look like a literary slag heap.

I'm a little sick of being disappointed, and I do try to comfort myself with the three novels I did get published (NOT self-published, by the way - I had to wangle contracts from three different publishers). I also have three or four manuscripts stashed in my computer, and ran one in parts (Bus People - if you wanna see it, the link is here) on this blog. I think ten people looked at it. I just think if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and in this case it wasn't. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/10/bus-people-quick-links-to-parts-1-12.html

But was there some sort of weird karma going on? If not karma, then guardian- angel-ship, which I absolutely did not believe in. But maybe something was protecting me from "success", after all: the kind of success that lifts the privileged class out of the slag heap of anonymity and onto the shoulders of the gods (while selling lots and lots of copies).

It seems the game changed before I could catch up. I was only interested in writing well, which I believed would result in having a healthy readership. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. But it didn't happen, and now I know it won't.

But my melancholic acceptance of failure was disturbed by the current CanLit "dumpster fire" which is threatening to consume the whole industry (and yes, believe me when I say it IS an industry, though that's not such a bad thing - we all need to pay the rent). Though someone came down hard on me for posting the wrong piece on this (though there is no such thing as a RIGHT piece on this!), I will share a link (below) which gives you some idea of what's been going on in the schoolyard. If nothing else, it will give you an idea of the sheer complexity of the situation, how twisted and tangled it has become. Worst of all, it has made some writers afraid to say anything, knowing they risk having their most innocent comments mangled and distorted by the monstrous sharks of social media.

What vexes me is that NO ONE has yet said anything at all about how Twitter has poisoned the well: without even having to face your adversary, and having spent an entire nanosecond composing your thoughts, you can fire off the most hateful volleys, only to be met by a Greek chorus of approval from somewhere before your enemy fires back. Without context, and I mean ANY context at all, even relatively innocent statements can appear to be soaked in poison like a lethal dart.

I will be accused of being a crusted barnacle for saying this, but in the past, if a writer read something in a magazine that made her furious, and she wanted to write a letter to the editor in protest, she would have to take the following steps: find a piece of paper and a pen, compose it, fold it up, address it, find a stamp, walk to the nearest post box and drop it in. At any point, she might think better of it, or at least rewrite it. Then, after a long wait, perhaps weeks or months, it might be published (likely severely edited). But once a tweet is tweeted, there is no taking it back. 

Poison darts are poised everywhere, and can't even be deleted because someone will take a screenshot and use it as a weapon. Those who wish to have a future as a published author are on thin ice, and it doesn't help that the stodgy, arthritic, unmoveable CanLit establishment is sawing a hole in it.

Speaking out is risky. NOT speaking out is crippling, and plays into the hands of elitist powermongers interested only in disenfranchising marginalized groups who MIGHT bring fresh perspectives to the table, if only they were allowed to. But the reins of power, not to mention the purse strings, are in the hands of the Big Few - bestselling writers, hotshot agents, major publishers. So perhaps some unknown angel prevented me from getting what I thought I wanted.

Or not? Are the grapes sour? Who gives a shit, at this point!


CanLit-dumpster-fire-disaster



If you'd rather not wade through this long piece, here's a short excerpt which demonstrates how rancorous and confusing this has become:

Then, a new twist: B.C. author Angie Abdou wrote on Facebook that she in fact had notified Kay about Wunker's post as "part of a conversation about troubles raging in the [CanLit] community and how those issues are making their way into the classroom." But by the time Abdou went back to look for the post to send it to Kay, Wunker had unfriended her. So Abdou asked Bok to screen-cap it. In her confession, Abdou apologized for unintended consequences against Bok and Wunker; she called Wunker "a committed teacher and writer." She then left Facebook and Twitter. (On Thursday, Abdou provided The Globe with a statement. "I made a mistake, and I'm extremely sorry. I did not intend to betray anyone's confidence or to harm the reputations of anyone involved.")


Are you with me still? . . . No? Well, don't feel bad. Neither am I. The twists and turns of it are giving me vertigo. Come OFF it, people! Try to come up with some sort of armed truce, before the whole thing collapses and entire books are lost due to discouragement and pain. Creativity will be extinguished along with the flames. If people are not allowed to express themselves, if works of real literature (NOT TWEETS!) die on the vine, everyone loses. Everyone. Do you hear?

Hinterland Who's Who - Woodchuck (a. k. a. Groundhog!)

Marshmallow Friday

A friend of mine sent me this sticker, which at first I thought was some sort of dancing macaroni. Doing a TinEye reverse image search, they turned out to be . . . marshmallows! Marshmallows, all squashed and screaming. Why, I don't know.

I don't make these things up, I swear. But since it's Friday, and I want to do something really stupid. . .

I call this Somewhere Under the Rainbow.

Field of Screams.

I Can't Think. . . I Must Be Pink.

Mall-O-K!

Mallow-Slide!

Bubble Hum!

Marsh Mashup

Splop!

Marshma.

ASTONISHING FIND: 3D Movies from the American Civil War!

AMAZING DISCOVERY: Actual motion pictures made during the American Civil War! 

Yes. . . here they are, in all their quaking glory: real movies from 1860, fully 28 years before the so-called "first motion picture",  Roundhay Garden. While Roundhay (filmed in 1888) lasts barely a second, these Civil War movies go on forever! They simply never STOP!

(Roundhay Garden, 1888, which lasts barely a second).

As if this weren't incredible enough, these remarkable historical 
artifacts are filmed in 3D!

Burn the textbooks!

Discard all known film studies!

Fie on Edison, what did HE know!

To fully understand the phenomenon of 3D Movies from the American Civil War, we must take a look at film technology. When still images are rapidly displayed in sequence, the illusion of motion is created. So it was with Roundhay Garden (5 frames). But just LOOK at these amazing Civil War images! An astounding illusion of motion is created using, in most cases, only two or three frames. And it never stops! The movement just continues. This would have driven Edison crazy! 

As is the case with all serious creative endeavours, these superb historic dramas prove the maxim "less is more".  With a mere jerk, twitch, and spasm, this remarkable gentleman transports us to another time, another place. And look closely at the details, the furniture, the clothing, as it wobbles and lurches and twists, to fully appreciate the eerie 3D effect! 

As with all major historical discoveries, disagreements and controversies have arisen, particularly about the state of mind and health of these subjects. Eager to push their own petty agendas, some historians have suggested that they may have had untreated neurological disorders.  Seismologists have a very different interpretation of the same data, as do entomologists who have suggested the possibility of a parasitic invasion. 

Few give credence to the cynical claim that these movies are dismissable because they (in the words of one ignorant critic) "have no plot". But what they admittedly lack in story line, they more than make up for in sheer mesmerizing sameness. Only the subtle shifting from one frame to the next creates that uncanny sense of motion: the vertiginous feeling that the floor under your feet is being violently shaken.

Along with thoughtful historical interpretation has come the usual  lunacy from extremists. Suggestions that this fine lady is sitting on a Hula Chair is not only disrespectful but impossible (unless she is, as one disreputable quasi-historian has hinted, a time traveller). The suggestion that she is astride one of those Victorian  medical vibrators is equally ridiculous, though it would explain why her suitor can't keep his eyes off her.

Film historians are beginning to discuss possible titles for these newly-discovered Civil War epics. A working title for this particular motion picture is, "The Man Holds Up His Hat".

"The Men Lean On The Clock."

"Shake, Rattle n' Roll."

"I Lost My Boots in San Francisco."

"Can't Stop Fiddling with This Pencil".

"I AM Sitting on a Hula Chair".

"Don't Go to My Barber, He Can't Trim a Beard"

"Yep - I Told You It Would Happen".

Blogger's explanation. OK, I hate explaining myself, but a friend of mine asked why he was seeing only flickering old photos and not movies. Well, technically he IS seeing movies, but they're only two or three frames long. These were taken for stereoscopes - your old Granny might have had one. This was a viewer with double-image cards that, when viewed as one image, "sort of" looked like 3D. The effect is kind of like those gifs from ten or fifteen years ago that everyone raved about. The effect is an optical illusion from having two slightly different perspectives shuffled back and forth. So I would assume the photographer snapped two photos from slightly different angles. This is why some of them have alarming changes in body posture, heads bobbing up and down, people disappearing and reappearing, etc. BUT, technically speaking, these ARE movies! I will post a link below written by a historian, claiming the same thing. So I'm not quite as ditzy as I seem. 

motion-pictures-from-the-civil-war