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Gabor Maté: Toxic Culture

Gabor Maté knows how to attract a crowd. Today the "world-renowned physician and writer" gave a Keynote Presentation at the University of Alberta that the police had to shut down. Not for anything he said or did, but because too many people swarmed into the Telus Centre to hear him. Someone complained and forty-five minutes into his presentation the organizers had to arrange another room for the overflow. Maté looked stunned at first but quickly adapted. He's used to adjusting to sudden shifts in his environment. Much of his research depends on identifying the influence of surroundings on our physical and mental health.

The crux of his argument was a refutation of conventional scientific wisdom. For too long the medical community in the west has treated mental health issues as separate from physical ones, which are then further isolated from wider environmental or social concerns. All the evidence points to the combined influence of these factors on the well-being of an individual's total health. To isolate one area from another is essentially an ideological position that ends up exacerbating illnesses of all kinds, leading to what Maté calls our "toxic culture."

According to Maté, humans need attachment and authenticity. We're wired to be attached to others and to express ourselves authentically without fear. That gut feeling you ignored? That's what Maté calls "a denial of authenticity." He goes on to identify sociologist Erich Fromm's "myth of normalcy" as a source of society's problems. Rather than attachment and authenticity, society values appearance, behaviour, and life circumstance as measures of success.    

One of the ways to remedy this malpractice is to accept the science and not the ideology, which wrongly attributes only biological or genetic sources for illnesses. The main cause, according to Maté, is our environment. When we cease dividing mind from body, or the individual from society, the toxins in our collective system will wither and die. Only then will Karl Marx's so-called "four alienations" - from nature, others, work, and from ourselves - be finally resolved.

Idle No More: Emancipatory Politics

"What is required is a theatre without spectators..." ~ Jacques Rancière

Idle No More has inspired a movement that's not only responsible for some cool art by Dwayne Bird, it has also been challenging traditional hierarchies everywhere, within and without native communities. As Jacques Rancière would say, it's a form of dissensus, or a dissent from inequality, and an insensibility. By not adhering to conventional methods of protest, Idle No More has been reconfiguring the sensory apparatus that permits participation in legitimate political struggle. The movement is located beyond the pale of acceptability and thus appears as irrational and insensible in the best way possible.

Employing an aesthetic that recalls Viktor Shklovsky's notion of "defamiliarization", Idle No More has forced a new way of seeing by embodying the unfamiliar as a way of enhancing perception of the familiar. At its core, this is essentially revolutionary and absolutely emancipatory. It traverses what Rancière calls the partage, or partition, that separates the legitimate from the illegitimate, and generates genuine hope for substantial and lasting change.

Phil Ochs: The Chords Of Fame

“If there’s any hope for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there’s any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara” ~ Phil Ochs

One of the great unheeded lessons Phil Ochs left behind was to avoid mistaking celebrity fame for political substance. This drove him crazy as he yearned to be as famous as Elvis or Dylan.

"Phil Ochs was the political songwriter Bob Dylan should've been" ~ Billy Bragg

Ochs seemed oblivious to the fact that celebrities are ultimately commodities celebrated by fans who place consumerism above other attachments, especially revolution. Most fans have already bought into the system and have relinquished any commitment to fundamentally changing the status quo.

"God help the troubadour who tries to be a star"

By the time a "Presley-Guevara" hybrid emerges, the fan's priority becomes obtaining a piece of the product, not engaging in any form of social change. In the end, maybe this is what killed Phil Ochs - a fan of both Elvis and John Wayne - the realization that he had been playing the chords of fame, mistaking celebrities for revolutionaries.

"So play the chords of love, my friend
Play the chords of pain
But if you want to keep your song
Don't, don't, don't 
Don't play the chords of fame"

Canada's Mosaic: Shifting Patterns

Over the past few years a movement has emerged to reconfigure Canada's relationship to multiculturalism. It's been a subtle but determined effort to alter minority access to justice. This past June, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was repealed by Harper's Conservative government in response to what proponents called strengthening freedom of expression. As Maclean's wrote:

"The effect of killing Section 13 will be debated for years among anti-racist groups and civil libertarians. But it is undoubtedly a turning point. Since 1999, Canadians who felt aggrieved by material transmitted online have been encouraged to seek redress under federal human rights law, which targeted material 'likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt' based on grounds of discrimination like race, religion or sexual orientation. Storseth’s bill repeals the provision outright, leaving the Criminal Code as the primary bulwark against the dissemination of hate propaganda by electronic means."

Section 13 read:

13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Interpretation

(2) For greater certainty, subsection (1) applies in respect of a matter that is communicated by means of a computer or a group of interconnected or related computers, including the Internet, or any similar means of communication, but does not apply in respect of a matter that is communicated in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a broadcasting undertaking.

The Criminal Code doesn't allow minority voices equal access to the instruments of justice that the Canadian Human Rights Act was designed to ensure. It's no surprise that the Canadian Bar Association, representing 37,000 jurists, lawyers, notaries, law teachers and students across Canada, was opposed to repealing Section 13. As CBA spokesperson Shelina Ali wrote:

"The CBA notes that the evidentiary standard under the Criminal Code is high; the offence must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. By contrast, the Human Rights Act provides a lower standard of proof, the civil standard based on a balance of probabilities. The lower standard offers protection to individuals and groups who are the target of hate speech that may be very damaging, but does not meet the criminal law standard. According to the CBA, Section 13(1) 'protects minorities from psychological harm caused by the dissemination of racial views which inevitably result in prejudice, discrimination and the potential of physical violence.'

The CBA reiterates the Supreme Court's position that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute and limits to this right can be warranted."

This last point is crucial: in Canada, unlike in the U.S. where the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on freedom of speech, Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms actually places "reasonable limits" on freedom of expression. Canada has learned through its own history the value of protecting human rights to ensure that diversity flourishes, but Harper's regime is devoted to clawing back these hard-won victories. Section 13 may have needed to be reformed, but it was a national crime to kill it.   

Peter Tosh: The Toughest

One of Peter Tosh's earliest singles was "I'm The Toughest" and he did his best to live up to that reputation for the duration of his 42 years...even on a unicycle...

For much of his career he played guitar and sang alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston in the legendary Wailers until they split up after releasing the 1973 classic, Burnin'. Before they parted ways, Marley and Tosh collaborated on the seminal, "Get Up, Stand Up."



The two shared a Lennon/McCartney-type relationship, with Tosh playing the angry John to Marley's sweeter Paul. When Marley sang of "One Love" Tosh eventually countered with "No Peace" from his amazing solo album, Equal Rights.



So it blew my mind recently when I found myself at the gates of the Tosh Memorial Garden in Belmont, Westmoreland on Jamaica's south coast.  

A giant Rasta named Pablo greeted me with a fat spliff and led me to Tosh's tomb.

Tosh was murdered at his Kingston home on September 11, 1987, shot in the head by a "maga dog," or an ungrateful thug from Trench Town who he had once offered a helping hand.

Pablo then pointed to the house further up the hill and said I could go meet "the mother," 96-year-old Alvira Coke.

All this happened unexpectedly, a serendipitous event on the road between Montego Bay and Treasure Beach.

"Live for yourself, you will live in vain
Live for others, you will live again...
Pass it on"

Django Unchained: Tables Turned

“Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?”

I've just returned from a trip to Jamaica, a country that celebrates slave revolts through such "national heroes" as Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle. When I saw Quentin Tarantino's new flick Django Unchained in Ocho Rios, just down the road from where Christopher Columbus landed and Marcus Garvey was born, the predominantly black audience was vocal in its support of Jamie Foxx's bloody vengeance during the film's final climax. Jamaica is a country that harbours no illusions when it comes to the blunt violence necessitated by the "shitstem" of slavery. It's also a reality that Tarantino has confronted throughout his career.

"Slave driver the table is turned
Catch a fire, you're gonna get burned" ~ The Wailers

Tarantino makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. He's a persistent nag that won't let anyone off the hook for past injustices, a constant reminder of the debt that continues to plague the culture. That he pulls it off with panache and biting humour is all the more reason to celebrate his work. Enter Django Unchained.

Along with including Jim Croce beside Rick Ross on the soundtrack, the singular achievement of Django Unchained is its recasting of slavery to allow its horror to be realized in a contemporary vernacular that speaks to the present. It's no surprise that most Americans find Spielberg's tidy reminiscences in Lincoln more palatable, but it's Tarantino's rude intrusions that they really need.

The film succeeds in mixing pop humour and Shakespearean drama with schmaltzy clichés like the spaghetti western to create a deliciously novel, riveting tale. Leo DiCaprio embodies a grotesque combination of Macbeth and Daffy Duck as he relishes the ghoulish task of smashing a skull with a hammer, while Samuel Jackson's fevered portrait of the "house boy" is enough to cheer for his untimely demise.

The film resonates with righteous justice and vengeance. Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Django has a tense earnestness that provides the still center for the rest of the action to spiral around. DiCaprio, as plantation owner Calvin Candie, is the warped loon swinging from the chandelier, while bounty hunter Christoph Waltz, the foreign eye offering the Old vs. New World contrast, is removed, literally un-American and ironically civil. In the end, the barbarity of the "New World" bleeds through and stains all, participants and witnesses alike.

Pure Irie: Pelican Bar

I've been searching far and wide for a bamboo bar perched above tropical waters and I finally found it with the help of a trusty guide, Kanute. It lies just off the southern coast of Jamaica between Black River and Treasure Beach. Floyde, a local fisherman, dreamed up the idea about twelve years ago and then had to rebuild in 2004 after Hurricane Ivan wiped out the original. Thank Jah he did.

Pelican Bar stands on a shallow sandbank about half a kilometer from shore and gets its name from the great flocks of pelicans that hang out there. Kanute, an Abbott and Costello fan, ferried us in his skiff, "Why You Ask," from Billy's Bay in Treasure Beach about forty-five minutes away.

Along the way we passed a pod of dolphins lazily breaking the surface like floppy tires under the blazing sun. Once at the bar we tucked in for a plate of delicious curried lobster and a couple of Red Stripe stubbies. Pure irie was achieved by all.

Merry Christmas!

A Design To Kill: Guns

Guns kill. Pencils write. No imbecile could use a gun to write a letter and if he tried to kill someone with a pencil, he might inflict a slow demise by lead poisoning. As any designer knows, the way something is made will determine its use. I can't eat breakfast with a pencil and a gun won't mow my lawn. The gun is a tool specifically designed to kill. That this seems obvious is all the more painful in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, yet the old ruse, "people kill, not guns," continues to obfuscate. As George Orwell wrote, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
 

("The Knotted Gun" - Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, United Nations, NYC)

Is the U.S. capable of opening its eyes wide enough to tackle gun violence? Or will the N.R.A. continue to hold it hostage with dreamtime fantasies?   

Celebration Rock: 12 From 2012

This has been a great year for music. Yuko and I drove to Coachella in April to experience Radiohead and Tupac's hologram; we saw Lucinda Williams at the Bowery Ballroom in New York and the Knights at the historic Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, then Public Enemy in Brooklyn's Wingate Park...back to Edmonton for The Tallest Man on Earth with the phenomenal Strand of Oaks supporting; then Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney....and we're ending the year on a high note in Jamaica following some crazy riddims. Here are 12 of my fave tunes from the year:

1. Japandroids: "The House That Heaven Built"



2. First Aid Kit: "Emmylou"



3. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Only In My Dreams"



4. Alabama Shakes: "Hold On"



5. Grizzly Bear: "Yet Again"



6. A.C. Newman: "I'm Not Talking"



7. Kishi Bashi: "Manchester"



8. Rufus Wainwright: "Montauk"



9. Grimes: "Genesis"



10. Low Cut Connie: "Boozophilia"



11. Leonard Cohen: "Going Home"


12: Himanshu: "Womyn"

 

Beneath The Surface: A Telling Silence

Minus twenty degrees in creaky-cold Edmonton...another reason to look back to the West Coast. Here's one of mine from a few years ago that was published in The Antigonish Review:

Beneath The Surface

Shadows rub against the surface
of the lake like ghosts at a window.
They move towards me on the
shore - tangles of orange, black, flashes
of red. A rubbery mouth yawns from
the depths groping for a mayfly or the soft
belly of wet bread. A frog pops from the
mud; dragonflies veer left and right.
The wind is silent in its telling.

I close my eyes and feel
a breeze through my veins stretching
into a gale. I remember days blind
as a Vancouver weather
forecast, English Bay, slow
coffee - faces at a window.

(photo by Yewco)

K-Tel: Tinsel And Trash

This is the time of year when I get nostalgic for the tinsel and trash of my childhood holidays. Christmas was when the K-Tel schmaltz factory would infiltrate my cartoon afternoons with commercials hawking the "hits" from the likes of Mac Davis, Mouth & MacNeal and Donny Osmond...
 

But for my seventh Yuletide I caught the buzz from another K-Tel classic compilation: Superstars! The year was 1974. I was in grade two at HT Thrift in South Surrey and I was ready to rock to the sounds of BTO, Paper Lace and...The Three Degrees. I begged my parents for the album, declared that I was going to be a "rockstar," and on that magical morning when I ripped open the tinsel trash *voila!* Superstars awaited.      

It wasn't until years later, after my double album and my collection of 8-tracks had disappeared, that I learned K-Tel was a Canadian company founded by Philip Kives, a native of Saskatchewan. K-Tel got started in the late 60s with blockbusters like Twenty-five Polka Greats, which, according to their website, "sold a million and a half in Canada and [sic] USA."



Those were much simpler times, indeed.



 

Eden Robinson: Nuyem

The Haisla concept of nuyem, or the handing down of protocols, suggests a universal pursuit common to all centers of cultural production. In the case of Eden Robinson, it refers to the customs of the Haisla from the Kitamaat territory of B.C.'s northern coast. Nearby Kitimat also happens to be the area where the Enbridge Pipeline Project wants to set up shop.

Protocols can take on many different forms and lurk beneath the most innocuous of intentions. Enbridge and the Harper government suggest the pipeline will be a boon to the economy and transform Canada for the better. The so-called benefits will create a legacy that will sustain future generations. As for any local protocols, however, only the strong can survive. In The Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols and Modern Storytelling, Robinson provides a response:

“As clear and complete as we want this discussion of our nuyem to be, it is important to recognize that the Old People realized that some things cannot be shared. This was and remains a way of preserving our culture. In times past, it was recognized that whatever the missionaries knew about our culture, they tried to suppress. The less they knew, the safer our traditions remained. Nowadays, we simply realize that there are aspects of our traditional perspective and values that non-Haislas would never be able to understand.”

(Roy Henry Vickers)

This strategy of exclusion, one limited to the Haisla community and those close to it, is seen as essential for their survival. Any "Canadian" protocols, such as those advocated by Harper or Enbridge, are simply neoliberal economic assumptions - other forms of cultural imperialism - masquerading as national virtues. For me, someone sympathetic to the Haisla nuyem but outside their community, I wonder how any strategy that concludes the "other" is beyond understanding is sustainable in the long run. As Robinson realizes after taking her mother on a trip to Graceland:

“You should not go to Graceland without an Elvis fan. It’s like Christmas without kids – you lose that sense of wonder...In each story was everything she valued and loved and wanted me to remember and carry with me. This is nusa."

This "nusa," this way of teaching, is a conversation I want to be a part of, yet I know that history stands in the way. Can it be undone?

High Life: Macca In Edmonton

"Let's go, let's go
Down to Junior's Farm where I wanna lay low
Low life, high life, oh let's go!" ~ Junior's Farm

I knew we were in for a good night the moment Sir Paul hit the stage dressed in an iconic collarless suit with red-piping while clutching his 1963 Höfner bass in his left hand.  No Beatle boots, alas - just a pair of sneakers. Times change.

As the woman in front of us leapt to her feet waiving her neon-yellow sign exclaiming, "I've Waited 50 Years To Meet You!" the band kicked into "Magical Mystery Tour." The temperature may have been an icy -16°C outside, but inside it was just right.

Highlights included jubilant romps through "All My Loving," "Band on the Run," "Back in the USSR," as well as tributes to Jimi Hendrix (a "Foxy Lady" jam), John Lennon ("A Day In The Life/Give Peace a Chance") and George Harrison ("Something" on ukelele).

(Back in the USSR)

The first Beatles album I owned was Let It Be and to this day George's blistering solo on the title track still feels like pure euphoria and guitarist Rusty Anderson nailed it. The pyrotechnics on "Live and Let Die" were so intense we felt the heat in our seats and when the Edmonton Police Pipe Band joined Macca for "Mull of Kintyre" I didn't know if I should weep or wail.



For the first encore Paul invited a fan onstage to grant her her wish - an autograph on her torso for "the only tattoo her father would allow" before the band launched into "Day Tripper" and "Get Back."

The evening finally finshed over three hours later with Paul, Rusty and Brian Ray trading riffs on the classic medley from Abbey Road: "Golden Slumbers/ Carry That Weight / The End":

"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make"

Not too bad for a 70-year-old Beatle in suspenders.
 

It was McCartney's first time in Edmonton and the city rolled out the red carpet with Mayor Stephen Mandel making an official proclamation in honour of his visit. The "On The Run" tour wraps up in Edmonton with its second show Thursday.

Set List

Magical Mystery Tour
Junior's Farm
All My Loving
Jet
Got to Get You Into My Life
Sing The Changes
The Night Before
Let Me Roll It / Foxy Lady
Paperback Writer
The Long & Winding Road
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
My Valentine
Maybe I'm Amazed
I've Just Seen A Face
And I Love Her
Blackbird
Here Today (For John)
Dance Tonight
Mrs. Vandebilt
Eleanor Rigby
Something (For George)
Band on the Run
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Back in the USSR
I've Got A Feeling
A Day In The Life / Give Peace a Chance
Let It Be
Live & Let Die
Hey Jude

Encore

Lady Madonna
Day Tripper (Paul signs a woman's torso for her future tattoo)
Get Back

Encore 2

Yesterday
Mull of Kintyre (w/ Edmonton Police Pipe Band)
Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End

W.B. Yeats: Lapis Lazuli

Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. ~ "The Circus Animals' Desertion"

What can be said for art in a world of market values? Why pursue the muse when she's courting Wall Street? Yeats would have called me hysterical for even contemplating such questions. There's no worth in the while; time or money buy nothing in the rag and bone shop of the heart. When all clamoring and climbing is cast aside, life finds itself in the act of creation. Only those gripped by the mundane panic of routine fail to notice the transfiguring power of art, the supreme vitality of song to heal the wounds of a blast.

(Olivier De Sagazan, Transfiguration 8)

Yeats wrote "Lapis Lazuli" as the Nazis were pursuing the black arithmetic of a "Final Solution" and Europe was courting destruction. In the crucible between depression and war, when everyone weighs the purpose of a poem against the force of a rocket launcher, Yeats answered the critics and uncovered a piece of eternity in a carved stone of lapis lazuli.  

             Lapis Lazuli (1938)

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.


All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,                                 
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.