Giving up on the post

Sick at home in bed today. Lisa brings both papers home. The national papers. Not sure why they get that name... An easy read of forgettable articles about... well, I can't really remember. A self serving article by Conrad Black which was supposed to be about how he finds redemption in teaching, but is really about his love of long, pretentious sentences about himself. I go back to Ruskin.

Couple of years ago I wrote a show that I took across Canada that featured the National Post and the Globe and Mail as active participants. I spent the two months on tour cutting up the arts sections. I divided articles written about Canada from articles about (mostly) crap pop culture from the States. Movies, books, computer games. By the end of the run I had an immense clear garbage bag with articles that were advertising for American products that needed to be sold to Canadians, and a small clear kitchen bag of stories that were actually about Canadian culture. I carried those on stage and tried to talk about how strange it was to come from living abroad to a country that seemed to have no offical outlet for its own worldview. A culture that for an outsider would seem to have no interest or respect for itself.

They scream about how terrible the decline in readers is, but will they cure that by creating more empty and uncontroversial articles about ... well, mostly about nothing. I think we're desperate for information that actually connects to the life we are living. And I think on some level we're clear when we're being offered smoke and mirrors, bait and switch. Culture sections that are ads for celebrity movies. Lifestyle sections that are twelve pages of product placement.

I've had the good luck to live in countries where papers were filled with articles that took hours to read. Articles that were challenging and maybe even ( shock, horror!) made me work to understand. Info that made me want to talk about the issues over dinner.... that made me, well, at least remember what they had been about.





I go back to Ruskin. The Nature of Gothic. How to tell good architecture from bad. He says, "First, see if it looks like it had been built by strong men; if it has the sort of toughness, and largeness, and nonchalence, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign-manual of the broad vision, and massy power of men who can see past the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If the building has this character it is much in its favour.'

there's some truths to talk about over dinner.


I wish the culture mavens of Can-culture would dare to confront work that has this sort of complexity. The country is full of it. It just seems to scare the shit out of the self proclaimed national reporters and editors of Canadian culture.