Author: foxtongue
the man with the antique trombone
Promotional photos for local musician/teacher/arranger/composer Jim Hopson.
required watching: perfect for late night
Some other stunning shorts from the same school: Out of the Forest, (a long held personal favourite), The Lumberjack, (a very NFB tinted short), The Saga of Biorn, (funny even before the nuns), Mighty Antlers, (intense), Last Fall, (elegant steampunk horror), Pig Me, (fairly cute), and Dharma Dreameater, (entirely adorbz).
sometimes we have the same colour iris
He smells of comfort, hair products, and exhaustion, solid and shadow eyed. He is wounded, oddly fragile, a count-down of days until surgery, less than the fingers on one hand. Five, now four. We are a chord, complementary notes, time shifted. My inability to climb stairs, now his. The need for a cane, the inability to concentrate through pain. Later this week doctors will strap him to a table, do something complicated with hot injections of plastic, drills and thick needles, fill the cracks in his knee with medical foam, a supportive core of artificial cartilage to carry his bones. A handful of pills every day after, as if he were dying. Expect: chemical powders, fuzzy headed answers, and sleep, almost a sickness. I am aware, concerned, but trying not to worry. When he looks at me, his pupils still dilate.
looking for atlantis
I attended a Napoleonic Star Wars themed birthday party on Friday until the small of Saturday morning, dressed as a courtier/tie-fighter rebel pilot, lace ruffles fluttering from the cuffs of my orange pilot’s jumpsuit, a flouncy white cravat at my neck, hair snail-coiled into tiny Leia buns, lips painted in a tiny red heart, and then I walked three miles home in the incredible snow, taking the long route to see a man who wasn’t there, and stopping to buy ice-cream on the way. Coated in white, dripping as I walked up the counter, the windows obscured by flurries. Seriously, you should have seen the sales clerk’s face.
Shane called just after midnight the other night, thrilled with his pictures, asking if I could shoot his band soon, too. Of course, I said, I would love to, so we set it up that we’ll see each other next month, when they’re in town rehearsing for When I Was A Kid, his upcoming show at the Cultch. If all goes well, however, I’ll miss it completely, as I’ll be out of the country as he stands on stage, somewhere I have never been before with someone I’ve never met yet utterly adore. (My favourite kind of exciting!)
I have a job interview coming up on Friday, a follow-up to a promising phone call I had last week. I really hope I get this one, far more than usual, as it seems like a perfect combination: a company of good people doing good things, ethical, open-source, media-savvy, and clever, within an easy bike-ride from home. I’ve been keeping busy lately, taking pictures, writing, catching up on MIT’s open course-ware, learning new things, but underneath the triumphant glaze of productivity, there’s been an unwavering desire to jump back into the workforce, take part in more than my own little projects. This job, if I get it, could be the key to an entirely new level of personal satisfaction, so fingers crossed that I am what they need.
contact, as important as light from the sun
Novelty Seekers and Drug Abusers (might) Tap Same Brain Reward System.
The space shuttle Discovery had its final launch today. I watched from home, glued to my laptop screen, as the entire process played out over live streaming video from Florida, while Tony watched it with me over messenger, cheering for the crew from his Microsoft office in Redmond. We were a small slice of the future right then, together though separate, witnessing history through now common technology, eyes on an image televised live from the side of a rocket roaring with fire into outer space. The number of viewers at the foot of the screen declared that we’d shared the experience with over 30,000 other people. Beautiful. With that number there and Tony’s words on the screen, it was the first time in almost a week that I haven’t felt lonely.
why you never go after your space wrench
20 Minutes of Oxygen, a music video by my favourite Mike Jackson for Toren‘s local Lovecraftian indie darlings, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. (Costumes by our own lovely AJ.)
as if your sense of humour was built on a faultline
More promotional photos for my friend, the great Canadian poet, Shane Koyczan.
the sons and daughters of hungry ghosts
He said he was in love with me, but he’s already forgetting all that taught him, falling back on what’s easy and available rather than what’s worth fighting for. It is like we never existed. I see it before he tells me while part of me dies inside, a confession of old bad habits over a dinner that I am too silently upset to eat. I push my fork around, pretending conversation. I have no magic words, no way to explain that would remind him. Inside I wonder if he will one day understand “meaningful” or, worse, if in some future, he’ll say these things and I will no longer care, no longer certain of his worth.
your whole body shakes when you laugh
Promotional photo for my friend, the great Canadian poet, Shane Koyczan.