Deep-sea Adventure Poverty: BBC Fail

Re: BBC Human Planet, episode 1: Oceans – Into the Blue

If you’re looking for an extreme tourist adventure, consider Compressor Diving in the Philippines.  A little like the reverse of skydiving.  Bite on the end of a leaky, tangled garden hose supplying blasty, rusty compressed air and dive to the bottom of the ocean.  Experience the thrill of getting the bends and risking paralysis for life.  But don’t worry, the stakes aren’t as high as they are for the groups of fishermen who do this several times everyday for weeks in order to feed their families…

Among the closing remarks is the phrase, “the fishermen go home happy with a boatload of fish.”  It’s ok that they’re all poor as dirt and that we watch it on TV for fun… they go home happy.  Almost zero politics and the word DANGER used too many times.  What about the ethics of drifting around in your fancy scuba gear with an epic underwater camera, while the humans you’re filming wear shorts and sustain their existence with an apparatus we normally use to power jackhammers?  You’d better hand over that tank when you’re done (as if there are no ethical problems with that either…).

I’m extra disappointed because I loved BBC Life, the nature documentary series.  Like Human Planet, Life was visually mind-blowing, and obviously focused on specialized life strategies and extreme behaviours.  Life took a unique approach compared to many nature docs.  Sometimes the prey got away.  Sometimes the gender roles imposed by human society were not over-emphasized.  Sometimes the predator wasn’t made out to be a monster.  Every being was portrayed as animate.  It was absolutely not all sex and killing.

It seemed like in Life they were just saying, “wow”, instead of the sensationalization and romanticization that I saw in Human Planet’s first episode.  Too bad their seemingly progressive approach doesn’t extend to humans.  It’s turning out to be an Algo-Western/Northern-white-people-watch-the-exoticized-Other-do-crazy-stuff-on-our-HD-TV’s fest.

Not that I never romanticize our own ‘poverty’: “And then the Sound Recording student will stay up the entire night in a windowless room with minimal provisions, resorting to affordable drugs for a semblance of stamina.  But his wage for the entire night will not even cover the cost of the coffee he relies on.  He is pushing the limits of the human body.  And when the job finally seems finished, the student faces an even greater danger – walking home.  It’s nearly -10 C and his equipment is insufficient.  Soon a chill will reach his body and he might shiver a little…”

Aaaaaand…  I’m still going to keep watching it.  But I’m going to keep asking questions.

A New Earth, by Ekhart Tolle

This book sucks.  Hehehe, I don’t actually believe that, but I just had to say it to balance out its immense popularity.

A New Earth is a mammoth of non-denominational, New Age, spiritual literature, at least partly thanks to Oprah.  Ekhart Tolle’s main points are beautiful, believable, and universal: being in the moment, transcending ego-based consciousness, and taking responsibility for your own suffering. 

I was surprised by how little this book suits me though.  I found Tolle’s ideas were kind of old news – but he makes them pretty accessible, which sets it up well for ‘beginners’ (I’m surprised to hear myself say this, because I don’t feel much like a spiritual non-beginner…).  What I am, though, is an academic, and this is where Tolle is screwed.

A New Earth is basically completely void of argument, which makes it unconvincing.  The way Tolle refers to Jesus and other religious icons semi-randomly renders these references completely meaningless to me.  I was told that he doesn’t believe in academic knowledge gathering though, so I guess he’s off the hook.  Now I know to look to A New Earth for a meditation on ego-free thought , and not for intellectual inspiration.

I’ve heard that The Power of Now was more fundamental, and that maybe A New Earth shows how he’s capitalizing on his success – but I don’t blame him for that.  It just might explain the aura of redundancy around this, his third book.  And again, his repetitiveness is probably very effective for someone who hasn’t thought of any of this before.  I’ve also heard that (despite how photos of his face make me shudder), his presence and speech have a very special, captivating, and inspiring power.  Feel free to continue changing lives, Mr. Tolle. 

If his enlightenment truly came from years of quarter-life, unemployed wandering, I know a few people who are on the right path…  *wink*  What I learned is that I require an intellectual spirituality, and I don’t think that’s a self-contradictory idea…

On Doing Things

Relaxing well is an accomplishment.  It’s doing something.  It’s an actual activity.  It requires an extended period of time: bath, read, stretch, movie.  These are all things that have a certain duration and that start and finish at some point. 

The intermittent nature of using social technology is freaking me out.  It has no beginning or end.  You do it in between your other, actual activities.  It’s just this huge, self-cycling series of instantly gratifying, tiny events.  It’s not an activity.  And it often runs over other activities.

Like taking a bath.  It’s not that taking a bath is any more productive than doing this and that on the internet.  But you come out of a bath with an awareness of having done a thing.  Instead of with a weird mishmash of “work? social planning? education? entertainment?…. what DID I do for the past two hours??” 

It’s like your time/soul has just been ground through a vortex of nothingness.  And you probably thought you were enjoying yourself. 

“17:30 Chorale de rue improvisée”

Dear future PhD thesis, I’m sorry I’m so slow at catching on.  Sound occupies space like nothing else.  And Occupy is sounding… and singing.

Abandoning (for now) a couple previous blog drafts to begin obsessing over a new topic: Occupy Chanté.

Situated 6th in an Activities Agenda for November 19th, at Occupy Montreal, reads “17:30 Chorale de rue improvisée/Improvised street choir”.  “Ah oui?”  My interest is piqued.  I’ve been down to La place des peuples one time, to check it out and feel the spirit, and sure enough, didn’t go back until I saw the agenda item about people singing on the site.  I think I’ve been dying for something to push me back there, and this was it.

‘Maybe I’ll just bike past there, and take a peak.’  Shy.  But it’s so easy to just roll up and sit at the base of the statue.  It’s just like doing other normal things you do, like going to a rock show or getting a coffee; no one’s going to come up to you and say, “what are you doing here?”  And with experience in both drum circle communities and social justice choirs, I felt right at home.

There were maybe ten ‘voicers’.  In a circle.  One drum.  Simple chants.  Improv melody snippets.  Fill-in-the-blank type participatory phrases.  “We are the change we want to see.”  We are the joy.  Touching each other, and touching the whole space with their voices.

There is so much to talk about.

Start with one who knows how to get some singing done: Peter Yarrow at Occupy Wall Street!!

 

Artists in Residence: The DoneFors

Failed to see the sho’, but they still slept on my flo’.

Their first album was called ‘How to Have Sex With Canadians’.  That is all.

More?  I saw The DoneFors back in the days of their residency at The Cameron House in Toronto.  It’s the kind of music that boasts smart musicians, so the notes know their place.  Sick, Afrobeaty bass and guitar, smooth groove drummer, country sweetheart songstress, all multi-talented and genre-flexible.  With their hints of clean jazz, country/folk, funk, and pop, there’s the danger of falling into the trap of the undefinable hip.  But The DoneFors aren’t hipster (except for this poster, hehehe).  They’re nicely placed, musical puzzle pieces that click together without pretense.

The most grown-up band to camp-out chez moi, but they still look cute when they’re asleep.    I had to be a responsible grown-up too, and go to bed early the weeknight that they played in Montreal.  But they’re playing in Toronto Toronto Toronto throughout the month of November.

Also their website is full of little gems of hilarity, like their ‘Name Our Van Contest’ and the promise of cake and unicorns if you click on their album covers.

Artist in Residence: Maneli Jamal

A guy happy to bike up Montreal’s hills might still resort to a taxi at 7am after an all-night recording session.

Maneli Jamal got gobbled up by collaborative projects during his stay in Montreal – exploring urban soundscapes with electroacoustic artist and Concordia student Michael Palumbo, and taking the opportunity to record with Pouya Hamidi at McGill’s recording studios.  In between, he slept in our living room.  He’s also the first to take us up on the offer of a Bixi bike tour of Montreal, fueled by Le Vieux St-Laurent, Schwartz’s Smoked Meat, and poutine from La Banquise.

Maneli’s instrument and style demanded 9 mikes to record, the nerdy details of which I’m afraid I can’t provide.  What I do know is that he milks every dimension of sound a guitar can muster, but sticks to creamy goodness that is undeniably nice to listen to.  We’re not talking incomprehensible, experimental, contemporary, intellectual music.  It’s just really yummy, percussive, fingerstyle, solo guitar, with a gentle Persian twist.

Something that stands out about Maneli is that this guy is full of stories.  Oozing with a tragi-romantic past that he can tell you about sometime when he stays in your livingroom, haha.  Politics, heroism, art, relocation, and of course love stories.  Also – I can’t not say it – he’s a dreamboat.  Popularity mounting.

Pop-Pop-Paintball

Since my last post was clearly in a rage (despite my having toned it down a lot before publishing…), I’m going to skip my rant about classical music haters and instead write about something out of the ordinary that I just tried for the first time…  PAINTBALL!

Hahaha.  A little deceptive, because we weren’t a huge mob of hardcore war-play fans, but I wanted something with rock music to put after those capital letters.

I said, “YES, we have to do that!”, when we got invited.  It’s one of those things to try, if it comes up.  Apparently a lot of others bailed out at the last minute, which may have had something to do with the fact that we had to be there at 9am on a Sunday.  We got an extremely animated, hilarious, and super Quebecois intro to the game/rules after suiting up.  I got a homie-sized, full-body camo suit with a head cover, and a face mask like a fancy set of goggles with a mouth-guard – which our animateur said not to take off, even if you got a squirrel stuck in it (or did I misunderstand the French?).  It was a newlywed party, so two of our group were decked out in fashionable fluorescent orange, for easy spotting. 

Round 1: one newlywed on each team.  Get ‘em.
Round 2: ambush newlyweds in a schoolbus in a forest.
Round #forget: rescue newlyweds from a plane crash.
Round #whatever: charge in teams into either end of a little building.
Round #whocares: occupy the church.
Round #lost-track: newlyweds run the gauntlet.

In the first round, I had no idea how far or fast the guns could work, so I was surprised when I ended up with a splat of purple on my goggles.  Dead, haha.  Luckily right after the first round we got a target practice due to a newlywed removing their mask on the terrain.  Punishment: 1 ball from each of our twelve guns.  Once I got the hang of it, it was really fun.  I blasted the pants off of the groom and a flustered string of ‘sorries’ came out of my mouth in both French and English.  A hardcore player outside the fence shouted firmly, “Never say you’re sorry!”  I was lucky enough to take most of my hits in the face, except that a little pop on the mask doesn’t leave any bruises to show off later.

Of course it’s a game that gets a little more sombre when you actually think about it.  When I thought about people playing this ‘game’ with real guns.  Then it especially creeped me out how exhilarating it felt to hit your human target.  My partner, who took 3 balls from each player for removing his mask, obviously reflected on the feeling of having a line-up of guns pointing at him.  It makes your heart pound.  He’s from a war-torn country that also endowed him with the looks of an extremely cute terrorist when dressed in camo, haha.  Hopefully the game provokes similar reflections in others, and the experience of paintballing can awaken people to the seriousness of war.  Instead of to the rush of violent play.

And I sure hope Wikipedia isn’t lying when it says paintballs themselves are made of “non-toxic, biodegradable, water soluble mineral-oil.”  What a mess!

The Quiet Ones

I recently heard a small group talking about a certain individual’s personality, and it turned into an overgeneralized, spectacularly judgemental, ego-feeding binge on the souls of ‘quiet people’.

This person was criticized for not being talkative and not being involved in a very verbal or socially responsive way. The observation that she doesn’t often make eye contact turned into the imagination that she must have no self-esteem or friends because she walks slumped forward, and reasoning that only confident people have friends. The observation that she’s a physicist led to comments about how she must have destroyed her social life by studying too much and how she probably never has fun.

Dear ‘loud’ people. Quiet people do have fun. They probably have fun maintaining a considerable distance from YOU.  If being ‘quiet’ means not being socially equipped to connect with people, doesn’t that make YOU ‘quiet’ when you FAIL to engage a ‘quiet’ person?  Maybe you’re not worth their social energy.  But in a way that’s ok too.  No one connects with everyone.

Being extroverted is not some pinnacle of personality success, nor is introversion the epitome of dysfunction.    < <  An especially good comment on a related blog post.

JazzFest Chronology

This is how it went down.  Free shows, world music, party bands.  Oui oui!

Sat, June 25

• Beers at our place with a couple friends.    That’s how it all began.
• Accidentally saw Ben L’Oncle Soul and missed Filewile while slowly getting more beer and pizza.
• Watched the glowing fountains and admired the clean-up crew.

Sun, June 26

• Had a vegan brunch and tried to figure out my life path.
• Should’ve seen Sexteto Tabala de Palenque and Les Doigts de L’Homme.
• Had a friend say the Boogat show was great.

Mon, June 27

• Me-date: biked down for Group Doueh on my own.

Tues, June 28

• Crazy day at work and gelato.

Wed, June 29

• Fitz and the Tantrums with Kaleidoscope Jones.

Thurs, June 30

• Got my wisdom teeth pulled and hung out with a dead monster face taking pills while anxiously waiting for my eye to un-numb.
• Welcomed a friend from Toronto to stay for the weekend.

Fri, July 1

• Ate smooshy soup while watching the boys have fancy sausages.
• Group nap.
• Saw Catl and Debo and stomped and swang a little too much.
• Welcomed three more friends from New York City to stay for the weekend.

Sat, July 2

• Ate squished banana.  Group nap.
• Saw the Roma Carnivale vs. Fanfare Severni showdown. 
• Had dim sum takeout and rice congee in Chinatown.
• Saw Atomic 5 and Novalima.

Sun, July 3

• A guest friend made me mango fennel soup.
  
• Tam Tam drum circle in the park all afternoon.
• Poutine line-up in the rain, for the guests.
• Missed Systema Solar, and the Mexican Institute of Sound were cancelled.

Mon, July 4

• Also missed Khaira Arby and Her Band.
• Lay my sore face down after going to work all day.

La La JazzFest!!

JazzTips

Tips for the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal so far:

• There are free shows all the time and weeknights are almost as pumpin’ as weekends.
• There will be lots of blues and soul, which may be a tip or a warning, depending on your preference.
• They will check your (big) bags on the way in, but beer inside isn’t that expensive anyway, and you can walk around the whole festival with it.
• The density of the crowd is deceptive.  Try one of the ‘secret passages’ that allow ‘traffic’ about midway through.  The crowd closer to the stage might actually be less packed thanks to the barrier.
• L’Astral is a great place to get stared at awkwardly while you try to enjoy funky tunes from an invisible DJ.  A good place to chill if you like… uh… standing?
• Earplugs.  All the hip kids who live for live music are doin’ it.
• Skip my last tip if you’re not a Montreal cyclist. 
• You can’t bike down Clark Street from the Plateau!  Some student with a mouthful of sandwich will not even let you walk your bike down.  I recommend St. Dominique – it also takes you straight to the massive, amazing, monitored, JazzFest bike parking lot!

La la la!!