Month: November 2006

I


before the darkest hour
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

So except for the number bits, which Stephen Elliot is doing, and a spit polish, and some formatting, the business plan is done.

However, what with the sudden vanishment of my deposit into someone’s American medical bills, we need to raise 35,000$CAN by December 8th. (Between Scott and I, we have 14,000). That’s when my option on the building runs out. It’s a good chance we’ve got this if we can put down the deposit, but seven days isn’t enough time to finish the deal.

I’m going to look into selling shares this week. Likely at $200 each. That means if 175 people buy a share, we’ve got the deposit, and so, it looks likely, the theatre.

So, who wants to come with to a show?

to the man with the hands, this isn’t directed at you at all

Things That Make Me Feel Better About My Business Plan #23.

There is a thing that men do that I like. They place their hands directly on my hips, thumbs across my belly, as if to make a frame for my body as something they appreciate as beautiful. None of the women I’ve been with have ever done this. It seems an action restricted to gender or gender roles. The girls I’ve been with were very much girls. They had me lead when we danced, they would put their hand into mine. It didn’t matter that I was younger and my tongue stumbled. I had to be taller, I had to be stronger. Puzzling over this difference this morning, this small, tiny thing, I remembered today how, when I was a gymnast gunning for the circus, my class would practise handstands on each other’s hips. A completely different thing, but with almost the same placement of fingers and palms. Such a small thing, such a tiny thing.

Postmarks now has a permanent home on the web at http://takemewithyou.org.

It’s my surprise that it remains a nice gesture that catches in my mind and keeps my thoughts pinned like a butterfly to a cork. I’ve been violated by indiscriminate affection to the point where I’m terrified of kindness, because it lies more effectively. At first I only felt like I had swallowed stones that ached. Every day they ground me into sand, separating every cell into something that was less than it was, until finally the pressure of repeated unfaithfulness began to compress my unhappiness into a new substance, something hard that coats the inside of my skin and helps me grow bitter. It ages me, steals my fire, my wonder, and simmers with black depressive anger, but it protects me from treachery. I’m caught needing what I’ve locked out in self-defence. I hate my lessons, engrained through wretched repetition, that want cheapens, that desire is as shallow and common as injustice and just as fun.

It’s a beautiful day for global warming.

Watching my reactions, where words don’t trespass, I see where they flare up like temper at every taste of hope, striking me like a physical blow, dragging a corrosive stain to taint every thought. I try to close my ears, I try not to apply my disillusion, but I don’t know that I’m wrong anymore. I’ve been gambling years for someone to be an exception.

Lucky this gives me more focus on my project, hey? Yeesh. Which, by the way, is still progressing. I’ve been quiet here because I’ve been too busy to take time out to write anything that isn’t related to Heart of the World. (Which is still getting about 100 new hits a day). I took some time out to post tonight mostly because I don’t have to go to my day-job tomorrow and I felt I could spare twenty minutes. Tomorrow, not so much. Tomorrow I get this sucker clean. We have until December 8th to raise 35,000$CAN.

I will be delivering tonight’s film but not attending


andrew in a nut-shell
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Media Night at Andrew’s House!

Show up any time after 6:00pm, movie starts at 8:00pm.

Tonight’s media night will be the last one at his current apartment.
(on the corner of Victoria and 10th – bzzr is the obvious one)

Call for directions if needed.

Current Theme: Movies directed by Terry Gilliam

We’ve Watched:

  • Time Bandits – November 13th
  • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – November 20th

    We Will Be Watching:

  • Brazil – November 27th
  • Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – December 4th

    • I need to download an MBA into my brain

    Weather Canada has issued a snowfall warning for Greater Vancouver.

    10-20 cm of snow is expected to fall overnight.

    Gregory Colbert clips are beginning to appear on YouTube.

    I have a habit of not spending nights home. I fall asleep on couches, at tables, pen still in hand, my head cradled in papers, in someone else’s pillows. My bag, invariably it carries books, my camera, and a small overnight kit. Always carry a toothbrush, always carry something to read, never say no to a free plane ticket. Lately, though, it’s like I’m trying to make up for lost time with my room. I stay up late in my own house, writing at the keyboard, trying to grind a miracle out of my business plan. I delete and re-edit until the original version of my paragraph returns to glare at me from the screen with a malevolent beauty. I chase sentences until I simply have to sleep, frustrated that I don’t have a choice. My regular nights out, Sunday’s etcetera, I think I’m feeling too delicate to be around such a false sense of security.

    Yesterday, however, I took a day off. I met Minesh at City Hall, and instead of spending energy in a double-run at the office desks which had already individually thwarted us, we sort of did the whole run, really. Lunch at Tomato, then to the Lennox, (consistently a place to run into people – Ryan first, then Kit said Hello, and my brother Cale and his girlfriend Chloe joined us for drinks), then a movie, then dinner, then staying up until 4 in the morning sharing pretty his and hers things on-line until we fell asleep in front of downloaded episodes of Heroes. We even had the most drawn out argument about who would get to sleep on the couch that I’ve had in years. (We’d previously stood outside for ten minutes, trying to get the other person to go through the door first. Who says chivalry is dead? People who aren’t around stubborn goofs like us, obviously).

    Robert Altman died this week.

    I remember at some point realizing that it was dark, that all I had to show for the day were some blueprints, and that I didn’t mind as much as I thought I might. It was nice, not having to pour myself into one thing, to rein in my recent obsessive focus and merely be social. Tonight, however, after work… I want this done by Monday. Sleep is for the week.

    feel free to invite other friends who may be interested in seeing the Pantages.

    Darren Aronofsky as interviewed by rollick over at The Onion.

    My friend Bobbi Styles is getting married this Saturday, and as soon as I received the news, I watched as a tiny part of my brain took over the task of what to wear to what has the potential to be an extraordinary event. (It wandered off into the distance and I haven’t heard from it since. I’m not worried, that bit can’t be integral to function). Bobbi was a music producer in Britain when the size of your immovable hair measured against the leather of your trenchcoat and summed with the depth of your eye-shadow gave you a measure of success. I seem to recall he worked with Duran Duran, to give you a better picture. There’s a video. (If you really must know, you can find it yourself). I’d link to his MySpace, but it sort of hurts. (It has The Hair in it.) However, he’s a very different man these days. His son, Tempest, is going past ten any day now, and he’s lived in Canada for almost as long as he lived in the UK. I’m not sure what to expect. I haven’t seen him in too long to guess.

    After that lovely event, work is finally sending me to the Rolling Stones Concert at time-and-a-half. Details have had a chance to devolve in the intervening weeks, regrettably. It doesn’t look like this will this garner me a free pass in anymore. The Stones people have changed their minds. Probably for ones with less drugs in them. Instead we’re standing outside and attempting to politely harangue passers-by into answering a survey. Missing Van Morrison feels a little like salt in a wound. I only ask that it doesn’t rain.

    And all of this means I’m going to miss the Pantages Tour.

    If you’re interested in theatre, Vancouver history, heritage restoration, community-building, the future of the Downtown Eastside, or all of the above, then it’s a bit of an important to-do. Fitting into practically all of these categories, I’m disappointed that I’ll have to miss one of their tours. (I missed the last one). The interior is being restored to its original glory, a project surrounded with happy political glitter. The tours are a chance to see what the excitement is about surrounding its planned restoration and re-opening – which will hopefully occur by late 2009 or early 2010. The Pantages tour will take place on Saturday, November 25th at 2 p.m. (Dress warmly, the theatre has no heat).

    Adam, the impressionante webmaster of Heart of the World’s website, has apparently been recruited to act as stage manager for a small musical performance that will take place at the end of the tour. He says “It will be a pretty interesting little event.” It was his friend, Charles, who put me touch with Todd, the Save the York Theatre Society fellow. And so it goes. Until we get it. Or, maybe, I sleep.

    Biologically it’s weird of us humans not to have a third eye-lid.

    hurrah torpedo have a way with appliances I can only be jealous of

    ILM “work in progress”.

    Writing the business plan goes alright, though slowly. I feel it should have been finished by last Tuesday. As I told Minesh, (a young men on sabbatical here who’s been helping start Heart of the World beating), at one point, somewhere close to but not quite three in the morning, a chunk of e.e. cummings spun off a word and landed determinedly in the middle of a paragraph, so that it read like this:

    For commercial, profit-making theatrical performances, as in the case of hold-over’s, touring shows, etcetera, my my sweet old etcetera, aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister Isabel created hundreds (and hundreds)of socks not to mention fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

    I didn’t actually realize until I was reading it over the next morning, after some sleep, when it occurred to me that such things offer more insight into the muzzy velvet tangle my brain occupies when it’s exhausted than feels fair.

    My film of the week: 9 by Shane Acker.

    there is a road that leads to my house, but I don’t live there yet

    I fall in love with these people. It rains outside and I fall in love with them. The sun fights off the morning clouds like it’s kicked itself free of thick dreary blankets and I fall in love with them. This is the future. Every day this week I have shared thoughts with another country, written across an ocean, explained very carefully to a tiny video camera how I think I can make this work. I’m not chasing a shadow, I’m chasing a dream. It’s like I’m that metaphorical one girl army, one that’s fought its way off the page to actually stand. The screen in front of me is a window, as is the screen in front of you. It’s alive in the same way that mythology used to be, in the same way that thousands of people carry a cross around their neck. Slowly, we are building the next town with wires. Last time I heard, fifty percent of the human population had never made a phone call. Last time I heard, tribesmen in Africa were climbing trees to get better cell-phone reception in the middle of the bush. We can’t lock them out.

    It’s because of these things, I don’t want to fail. It’s because of the choices we hold in our hands. I want to change something, not raise a glossy flag then look away. I’m tired of people being scared of the dark, deciding that because it’s not their concrete back yard that they don’t have to care.

    Vancouver has a water warning on right now. Tumultuous weather has thrown an avalanche into the water supply, bringing with it possible gasto-intestinal parasites. The number of people who don’t seem to understand that we’re still obscenely rich in natural luxury in spite of this is staggering. They have to boil it first, but it won’t kill them, and they still have access to it. Compare that to the number of people in the world who have, on average, a bucket of water a day to live with. Maybe it’s too late for us to see outside ourselves, but I’d like to think that the recent inconvenience here might force some sacred hearts into flame.

    me with no breakfast VS them with plates of treats. hmmm.

    There is a belly-dance workshop in the Faris theatre today. I poked in about an hour ago to see what it was like, as the sound, strange and incessant, has attacked the foyer since 8 am. What I found was utterly surreal – 200+ women in various hip-scarf heavy interpretations of yoga-wear, (one t-shirt: GOT TECHNIQUE?), bellies dutifully bared, lined up in threes so as to make a large circle, and walking very carefully backwards, arms help stiffly in the air like some strange parody of choreographed children cheating at a game of freeze-tag, while the instructor shouted “Left foot! Right foot! Hands! Hips! Left foot! Right foot!” over blaring electro-clash ethnic music.

    A road I want to travel.

    I escape in about fifteen minutes. (I do not use the word “escape” lightly, here. That music’s been beyond terrible). After work, I’m going to the Tesla Exhibition. There’s a Tesla Gala planned as well, but as the highlights of the evening are apparently The Lord’s Prayer and folk dancing, it’s likelier that I will be finding somewhere with cheesecake and holing up with whatever kind company is available until it’s time for the Purple Party. Any takers? Chocolate probably loves you more than your last lover did, I promise.

    edit: Haven’t escaped yet. I’ve no idea where the evening girl is, as she’s forty minutes late and counting. The belly-dancers have ended thier lunch-break and the 1960’s Warner Bros. Bugs-Bunny-has-dressed-up-as-as-exotic-woman music is back on full force and the instructor is now barking pilates instructions. Save us all.

    I’ve been here so long it sounds wrong that people are still wishing me “good morning”

    The lost NASA footage has been found. In a basement – in Australia – under some “stuff”.


    protection
    Originally uploaded by Tristan C.

    So there’s two things that would be incredibly useful, but need to be done during regular work hours, (and though my work is surprisingly friendly about the recent twisting of my hours around working on this, its becoming a wee leery about my hours in general). They both require someone who has a 2 – 3 hour commitment.

    One: A visit to the city archives to get information on the theatre spanning from 1977 to 2006. This is the place, this is the address we need researched, 639 Commercial Drive. AJ gave them a call, (she can’t go down with the baby), and says that if you haven’t been to the city archives before, that it’s best to go after 10 am to do the little orientation before you start hunting. (Everything is indexed and there’s helpful staff there).

    Two: A visit to City Hall to find out anything possible regarding viable 24 hour operation, environmental studies that have been done on the property, legal capacity, licenses, etceteras. I’m not looking into getting that baroque thing that is a Vancouver Liqueur license, not yet, so that can be left alone, but it would be good to have the details of live performance permits. ($175/each, that I know).

    Southwest Research Institute, UCSC researchers identify the Moon-forming impact, make nifty animated video.