Perpetual Motion

            On Saturday morning there was a much larger group at the food bank than there had been the two weeks before. There were also a lot more people smoking than my previous experience. I found out who was in front of me in line, but since she and the person in front of her were smoking, I went across Cowan to stand in the sun and read a poem by Dionne Brand, called Ossuary I, in which she uses the absence of verbs to symbolize something I hadn’t figured out yet.

            The woman in front of me is a food bank regular but I’ve tended to see her during the week rather than on Saturdays. She is someone who can neither sit still nor be quiet. She moves all through the different groups gathered in the driveway and interacts with them loudly. When she does stand still she rocks from side to side as if she’s boxing without fists or arms.

            After half an hour, the line started to form, but I stayed away because so many were smoking. The line curved north, crossed the width of the driveway and ventured a little bit further north.

The woman that was in front of me left her cart in her place and went to talk to a guy near the back of the line about a dog they both knew of as a puppy but that she’d seen regularly since then. She told him, “His balls aint dropped yet! He looks like he’s been neutered!” She went on to say that the dog acts maternally towards the other dogs but since it was purchased for breeding it’s useless without testicles.

Once the line started moving. I took my position behind the talkative woman, who was holding onto her cart, but suddenly wondered why, since she was only going inside to get a number. She moved her cart to the side and then shouted at a woman she knew at the front of the line that was going inside with her cart, asking her why she was doing that. “Force of habit!” the woman called back.

There was a guy standing directly to my left in line and continued to do so each time the line edged forward. Finally he complained that he should be further ahead. The loud woman told him that he could step ahead of her if he wanted, but he didn’t. He eventually stepped in front of me though, after I told him he could.

The loud woman was discussing with the man with yellowish brown teeth in front of her how neither of them drink much during the winter but let go at Christmas and New Years. She declared, “Spiced rum and eggnog! Ya gotta kiss that!” The bearded, brown-toothed man agreed. He told her that he was from Newfoundland and though his parents drank eggnog at Christmastime, he never got into it until he came up to Ontario and had it with rum. He thought it was amazing.

The loud woman told a story of how when she was seven she went to Mexico with her mother. She saw a t-shirt with the caption, “Certified Muff Diver”, which she asked her mother to buy for her. Her mother had to take her aside and explain to her what a muff diver was.

Once I was inside, the one receptionist who’s memorized both my name and birth date gave me number 38. That’s one of the latest numbers I’ve gotten at the food bank. It was already almost 11:00 as I was unlocking my bike.

I rode to the No Frills at King and Jameson, where I bought margarine and real peanut butter. Then I went up Jameson to Queen and went into the Vina Pharmacy to fill a prescription. They were playing a Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” and if I’d let myself I probably would have teared up like I did the day before. I’d thought that Social Services had changed things so I didn’t need a monthly drug card anymore, but my health card didn’t register with their system, so I had to walk home to see if there was a drug card in my latest cheque stub.

In front of me on Queen, man who looked African and wearing a leather cap came out of a store and untied three large dogs. They all barked loudly and excitedly. They all looked fairly old and two of them were overweight. The German shepherd was of normal body mass, but the two ones that looked like they might have been St Bernards were fat. The largest though was grossly obese. As soon as they were untied it jumped on the shepherd and playfully bit its neck. They were all happily wagging their tails as they walked along Queen with their caregiver. The combination of wagging and walking caused the fat on the big one’s body to shake and ripple as it went along.

Since I get my cheque by direct deposit I tend not to open the envelopes they send me. Sure enough, there was a drug card there and in another envelope I found a notice that I would stop receiving a drug card in December. I’d jumped the gun by one month. I walked back to the drug store and gave them the card, they filled my prescription and then I headed back to the food bank. It was already 11:30, but there was plenty of time for me, since I had such a high number.

There was a pile of women’s and children’s clothes on a table in front of the door. An old man with a walker picked up a bra from the top of the pile and asked the woman rummaging on the other side, “Do they have this in a different colour?” Then he added, “They do have brassieres for men at some stores!” The woman, who hadn’t really been listening, asked, “What’s that dear?” He said, “Never mind!”

The loud woman helped a woman in a hijab and her two young children select some items from the pile, but she urged them to wash everything before wearing it.

A man walked to the back of the driveway and a around the corner. When he was walking back, the loud woman called out to him, “Did you just water that tree?” He answered, “I watered three actually!” She said, “Gotta get back to nature!”

Even though she had been just ahead of me, she picked up her cart and went in far ahead of me. I was wondering if I’d been given the number 38 by mistake. Had it gotten mixed up in a pile with some lower numbers? Did the receptionist misread the number? It seemed so much higher than 27, which I’d had the week before, but maybe it was just a trick of the mind. Then when Desmond called numbers 21 through 26, no one responded. Either there was a coincidence of five people in a row being late or else those numbers hadn’t been given out.

The woman that called my number was new to me. She listed several items that were available on the top of the first set of shelves except for the hummus with roasted red pepper. When I grabbed it she said, “Oh!”

I asked for a bag of chocolate chips from the next shelf down but she told me I was only allowed one item from the top two shelves.

On the bottom were small bags of little gluten-free cookies and small bags of Air Canada pretzels. I took a handful of the pretzels.

She seemed surprised I didn’t want pasta, rice or sauce.

I took a large can of chickpeas and a can of tuna. She gave me several small containers of pancake syrup and some of those little chocolates in the shape of hockey pucks. It’s not quality chocolate but it can be used for a quick wakeup, though it’s amazing how ineffectual sugar really is at keeping me awake.

The only cereal they had was a few individual servings of Fibre-1 cereal, of which she gave me three.

In the cold section Angie offered a choice between a large bottle of a red fruit punchy looking concoction, a carton of rice milk or a half liter of cow milk. I took the real stuff. There were six small fruit bottom yogourts and two yogourts of the same size with Snickers topping. Angie was wearing a red Santa’s helper hat that had white pigtails coming down from inside. I asked her if her white hair was the result of her having experienced a trauma. She laughed and declared, “This place’d do it to ya!” I remember overhearing her tell someone that she only smokes when she’s working at the food bank.

Next to Angie, a volunteer with a British accent was handing out what he said was ground beef. The packaging looked exactly the same as the ground chicken they usually have but he assured me that he’d just thrown away a box that said “ground beef” on it, so I took it. I guess I would have taken it anyway if it was ground chicken. He also gave me a couple of bags of frozen egg patties.

In the bread section things were sparse, so I as only allowed a choice between an upper loaf or a lower bag of buns. I took a whole grain loaf.

The pleasant Saturday vegetable lady gave me four potatoes, two carrots, an onion and a red pepper. She also gave me several spears of asparagus that looked like they needed to be cooked as soon as possible. I stuck the stalks in water as soon as I got home. In the front, on the floor was a box of avocadoes. She said I could take three. None of them were in great shape, but I managed to select three that were relatively firm. When I got them home though, one of them was brown inside, another was grey and only one of them was mostly okay.

What Joni Said

            On the Friday morning of November 11th, during yoga I remembered that Leonard Cohen had died and I wept a little bit a couple of times. In my view he was the greatest songwriter of this century and the last. I remember hearing an interview with Joni Mitchell about sixteen years ago in which she declared that the three greatest songwriters of the 20^th Century were Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. I have a similar, though different list. I would say that the top three are Leonard Cohen, Serge Gainsbourg and Christian Christian.

            When I got to the hallway outside of the lecture theatre one of my fellow students in Aesthetics class said hi to me and got to the door of the room first. He opened it slightly, then closed it and walked back out to the center of the hall. I asked if there was a class inside, even as I went to check for myself, then I also closed the door. He said it looked like they were taking a test. We started chatting. He’s a tall, slim guy of East Asian descent, who told me that he’s a math major and that this year is his first year of taking Philosophy classes. He’s also taking Knowledge and Reality, though not with Imogene Dickie, the cold and barely human instructor that I’d had. He told me he’s enjoying Aesthetics, and I agreed that the subject matter is interesting but complained that a lot of the theories tend to dry the interest down. He was in accord with that and offered that maybe there’s no need for any theories of art. I told him that philosophy is like that and told him George Gurdjieff’s story that philosophy was invented by Greek fishermen who, when they were forced onto islands during storms would pass the time by playing a game called “filling up he void with nothing”. In the game, someone would make up a question and then someone else would make up an answer, and thus philosophy was born.

            He told me about a site where I could download the third edition of the Routledge Companion. I expressed worry about it being a Russian site but he said it was safe. It’s called Library Genesis and he said he’s been able to get most textbooks that way as long as they are available as ebooks at all.

            The room cleared out and we went inside, but I first introduced myself and he told me his name was Matt. We shook hands and he went to his seat at the back. We continued to chat a bit though as I took off my leather jacket and carefully positioned it on the back of my seat so it wouldn’t be lumpy. I recommended to Matt The Philosophy of Sex course.

            Our lecture was on the topic of literature.

            Professor Russell began by renaming Poetic Truth, for our purposes, as Literary Truth.

            The subject of movies came up and I said that because movies are initially written they should be considered literature. I made the same claim about comic books even when there is no text. Devlin didn’t agree.

            He said that the question, “What is literature?” is not a very interesting one. Truth is getting something right and literary truth is a distinctive way of getting something right. If what you believe is true, you are right. Empirical truth is observable. In math, numbers are truth. The relevant questions for literary truth, as Aristotle said, are character traits such as courage or madness. The truth of what is courage is conveyed in literature.

            According to Shelley, literary truths are not distinctive in content but in kind. In literature we come to the truth through imagination. But literary truth is not truth at all, just expanding imagination, so is Shelley missing it?

            David Novitz tries to get at it better. Trying to preserve the distinctive in kind idea, he says that literary truth is knowing what it is like. Stepping into someone else’s shoes and being transported to another’s consciousness: this is distinctive. How do we understand this getting it right? What is the substance of the distinction? For Novitz it is less important what the subjects of the questions are except as a way of getting truth. Not belief but make belief and what truth would be for that. Truth can’t be a literal correspondence between belief and the world. If you make believe it’s raining, you’re not wrong if it isn’t. Make beliefs are true when your answer matches their answer. Our make beliefs are true when we get it right. There is a correspondence between your perspective and that of another.

            I was confused about the idea of getting into a character’s or an author’s head and how that relates to actual truth. He said that one is not occupying the perspective of a character but rather the narrator. It’s a type of truth that goes along with literature. You can enter into another’s perspective.

                        There was a lot of discussion at the end of our lecture.

            After class, I went up to OISE to check in my French exercise books and then to take them out again. When I opened my backpack to get the books though, a wasp came flying out and up to the high ceiling of the library to explore it’s new home and I’m sure, final resting place.

            The librarian told me that I would have the books till the 25^th and said, “So merry Christmas!” Since I always get the books for two-week stretches, I questioned whether it was instead, November 25^th that the computer was showing. He double-checked and confirmed that the renew date was indeed in November.

My Hero Died but I Got An "A" on my Philosophy Paper

            On Thursday November 10^th I checked my essay mark online and was pleasantly shocked to find that I’d gotten an A. I have never gotten a full A in Philosophy. I got an A minus a few years ago for the Philosophy of Sex, but most of my marks in that minor have been Bs of some sort. I wish I knew what I did right.

            That evening during dinner I watched an episode of the “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” which brought the cast of that show together with the one from Danny Thomas’s “Make Room for Daddy”. The situation was that Ricky was scheduled to spend two months in Hollywood to make a movie and so they rented their house in Connecticut to the Williams family from New York. The problem was though that after the lease had been signed, Danny’s family had moved in for their holiday in the country and the Ricardos were on their way out the door, Ricky got a call from his agent telling him that the movie was cancelled. So Lucy, Ricky and Little Ricky moved into the guesthouse with Fred and Ethel. But it drove Lucy nuts to be living next door to someone that was occupying her own house. She kept checking in on them under the pretense of picking up items that she’d forgotten but then whenever she was there she would move furniture they’d moved for their convenience back to the way she wanted it. Finally, Danny blew up at her and reminded her that he had a lease. He told her to get out and that he’d have her arrested if she came back during the next two months.

            After that, only Danny’s wife, Kathy had any contact with Lucy. Kathy came by one morning a month later to tell her to tell her that she’d made out the rent check and left it beside Danny’s bed. She had to go out but Danny would sign the cheque when he woke up. That’s when Lucy kicked u a mean spirited plan that would never have occurred on the earlier I Love Lucy series.

            Lucy decided to sneak into the bedroom and take the unsigned cheque. The plan was Danny and Kathy would both think the rent had been paid but since it hadn’t, Lucy would be able to evict them. When Ethel had reminded her that this would be stealing, Lucy said that since the cheque was made out to her it was legally hers, so she wasn’t stealing.

            Lucy made it into the bedroom and was about to leave with the cheque when she decided to water some of her plants while she was there. She bumped into something and Danny half woke up. He asked, “Is that you Kathy?” Lucy had to verbally pretend that she was Danny’s wife, hoping that he wouldn’t be fully awake before he saw her. She put on Kathy’s housecoat and one of her kerchief’s and tried to sneak past Danny’s bed but he, thinking she was Kathy, slapped her on the ass and told her to rub his back.

            What followed was a comical scene of Lucy trying to give Danny a massage without looking at him and without him looking at her, until Kathy walked in.

            That night before bed I checked the news online and was surprised to see that Leonard Cohen, the only hero I’ve had in my adult life, had died.

The Night Before Leonard Cohen Died

I rushed up to Innis College on the evening of Wednesday November 9^th but thought that I was nonetheless going to be a little late for George’s lecture, but when I got there, a tall young guy in a tie and who was standing at a podium in the hallway told me that the George Elliot Clarke lecture was just about to let people in over at the other atrium. A woman at a desk told me that I was in the right place and she pointed to the line-up. I went to stand at the end of the line, but a couple of women in front of me were looking at me funny and I also suddenly realized that if they were facing me that I might be at the wrong end of the line. I asked whether this was the front or the back. They said emphatically that it was the front, and so I walked to the other end, which logic suggested was probably the back of the line.

            I noticed that most of the people in line had white hair and more than half of them were ladies, though it looked like there were a lot of older couples there as well. The youngest people in the crowd were a few women of East Asian descent, which struck me as curious. Were they Cohen fans already or some of George’s students from another course?

            The line built up behind me and ran back around past me all the way to the entrance. It took at least twenty minutes for the line to start moving, and when I finally got to the table I suddenly saw that there was actually a guest list. Someone approached me to run a line through my name, so I just said I wasn’t there. He said he’d just write my name in at the bottom, which made me think that meant I had to go to the back of the line, but he wrote my name and told me I could go in.  I think there was a reception afterwards, with refreshments, so maybe that’s what the list was for. But then again, there would have been no reason in that case to write my name down, so I really don’t know what purpose the list served or how anyone got their names onto it.

            I sat in the front next to a seat that had a sign saying, “Reserved for photographer”. They were playing a selection of Leonard Cohen songs. At first some of them sounded fuzzy over the system. I don’t know if it was the recordings or a glitch in their equipment but it seemed to clear up later. The song I heard as I walked in was “The Smokey Life” – “ … Set your restless heart at ease, take lesson from these autumn leave, they waste no time waiting for the snow … It’s light enough to let it go …”

            Above the back of the stage was a large sign that read, “Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, 50 Years On” with the subtitle: “Blasphemy as Treason – Passion as Revolution”

            I saw George sitting with Giovanna Riccio. He didn’t seem to see me when he was looking in my direction and I said “Hi!”

            Honey Novick was there and came up to say “Hi” before going back to her seat.

            An extremely cute and attractive young woman of East Asian descent came and sat down to my left, saying, “Hiya!”  as if she knew me as she did so. I don’t think she knew me. I said, “hi” back. She turned out to be the photographer. She took lots of pictures, but never left her seat. It seemed to me there would have been better angles. Maybe they didn’t want her wandering around and distracting George or the audience.

            Charlie Keil, the principal of Innis College stepped up to the podium. He told us that this lecture series has been in abeyance, but the Harold Innis Foundation has helped to bring it back. He joked that U of T protocol dictates that there mush always be three speakers at the podium before any event. I did not catch the name of the second speaker, other than to hear that he was the principal’s rep. He said that they need to build on Harold Innis’s legacy and announced that they have already signed up journalist and broadcaster, Andrew Coyne, for next year’s lecture. He introduced Graham Coulter, who I think is an Innis College student.

            Graham said that George Elliot Clarke was the fourth poet laureate of Toronto and is the seventh of Canada. He said that George is one of the greatest poets writing in Canada and that he teaches African Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. Graham left out that George also teaches Canadian Poetry, which I am currently studying with him.

            George Elliot Clarke’s poem, “The Wisdom of Shelley” was read – “You come down after five winters, X, bristling with roses … brazen as brass … Roses got thorns and words do lie …”

            George finally went to the podium.

            He started off on a riff about Harold Innis and his contributions to the Staples Theory, which showed that Canada developed differently from other countries because different staples were exploited, such as fish in the east, wheat in the prairies and forestry out west. Innis is a great example, along with Pierre Elliot Trudeau of the tradition of critical thinking in Canada. He added that because Canada has this tradition of critical thinking it would have been much “harder for us to make the same decision that the United States made yesterday”. We all laughed.

            George began his talk about Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers by referring to the Indian love-cure for an old man’s illness that Cohen presents in one part of the book, and which features the chant, “I change, I am the same, I change, I am the same, I change, I am the same  …” It’s like the saying, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

            George told us that Leonard Cohen has always been a presence in his mind. Both of his parents were big fans and Cohen’s records were played often in their home while he was growing up. He confessed that the picture on the back of Songs from a Room of Marianne Ihlen sitting at the typewriter wearing a towel and no underwear “was quite devastating to my personage”.

            George said that Beautiful Losers is dissatisfying in expectations of closure but fresh as the incorruptible corpse of a beatified saint. Afterward, the book is bewildering, but as the character “F” advises, “Connect nothing”. Mystery is life and play is the creative process. The narrative is diabolically slippery. “Moral crusades … I’m still thinking of the Republicans.”

            If even Cohen’s inclusion of Adolph Hitler as a participant of a ménage a trios can be accommodated, his references to the Holocaust certainly can.

            The novel’s three main critiques are: the dissolution of Native Quebec; the exploration of sexuality and the Bohemian denunciation of the rat race.

            Cohen is postmodern in rejecting overarching theological notions. Beautiful Losers was informed by the Decadence Movement, with Charles Baudlaire at the forefront. Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe extolled aesthetics but preferred walks on the wild side.

            George spoke to a technician above and behind us that was minding a projector and asked him to show us the first visual aids, which were a couple paintings that depicted Saint Catherine Tekakwitha.

            The narrator of Beautiful Losers has a comedic, political and sexual obsession with Catherine.

            The next projected image was of the black-cloaked figure of Leonard Cohen.

            Of the proliferation of the adjective, “dirty”, Cohen says in the Donald Britain documentary, “Ladies and Gentlemen: Mr. Leonard Cohen”, “There are no dirty words.” Two more images are presented. One from the aforementioned film shows Cohen being cozy with a Black woman and another shows him typically dressed all in black.

            Cohen has an allegiance to Decadence. George quoted from Baudelaire’s “Le Lethe” – “ … Lavish without shame, caresses on your body …” The poem is from “Flowers of Evil”. Cohen was later to write “Flowers for Hitler”. There is a repugnant moment in the novel, with Hitler in the bath. This is a way of saying that evil is normal.

            I took notes while George was lecturing. The photographer seemed to look at me a lot when she wasn’t taking photos. I may be wrong, but she also seemed to squirm a bit at the subject matter of the talk, which got pretty explicit sometimes.

            The book depicts a sardonic version of the Christian doctrine. From Baudelaire again, “Frantic lover, implore the whip …” Baudelaire’s pleasure in necrophilia and his divine black sorceress. Blackness over whiteness are tropes that Cohen uses as well.

            Our next image was of Cohen celebrating his 45^th birthday on the island of Hydra with a voluptuous dark skinned, naked woman from Romania on his bed. This image was followed by one of Charles Baudelaire and another of Baudelaire’s Caribbean mistress, Jeanne Duval.

            A clip was played of Ray Charles singing “Ol’ Man River” an African American protest song written by the Jewish composer, Jerome Kern. Sartre speaks of the secret blackness of white. Ray Charles is rendered secretly white. George quoted Norman Mailer’s statement that “jazz is the music of the American Negro, criminal proletariat”. Blacks were more improvisatory. Jazz produced an ethos. Jazz music is fuck music, but a particular kind of fucking. The cool element wears dark glasses like Cohen’s character, “F”. Norman mailer wrote of the “White Negro”. Sartre said, “The Black man remains the great male of the Earth, the world’s sperm”.

            In Beautiful Losers, everyone is a loser, including the Jews and the nurse, Mary Voolnd.

            Sartre’s existential Negro and Mailer’s white Negro hipster accept the risk of defeat. The wrong kinds of defeats: the muting of the self and the defiance of rage, totalitarian issues of society. George reminded us that Cohen wrote “The Energy of Slaves”. According to Mailer, to be Jewish or Negro is to act out the psychotic. In Pierre Vallières’s “White Niggers of America” the existentialist protest of French Canadians is given a Black soul. In Beautiful Losers, the face of the character “F” turns black after too much dirty sex. The soul has been presented in essence as being lily white ever since Plato, but the soul is black. “Black is beautiful” redefines the province of decadence in the hidden blackness of “F”. This identification is problematic and is a heavy psychic burden for Blacks to bear.

            In Beautiful Losers, Catherine Tekakwitha experiences an ethnic cleansing, as she is transformed to a Caucasian. He skin becomes white as a transubstantiation of cultural genocide.

            George said that Canadian scientists researched diets on natives and deliberately induced malnutrition in London, Ontario. “Why London, for cryin out loud? Why not Kensington?”

            In Beautiful Losers, Cohen describes the presentation over a radio station of a song by a Soul group called Gavin Gates and the Goddesses. The four female backup singers, George said, are an allusion to the women that were killed in the bombing by the KKK of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.

            “F” may be guilty of statutory rape. The scene in the book that depicts the rape of the narrator’s native wife, Edith, when she was young, reminds George of the abduction, beating and murder of Helen Betty Osborn in The Pas, Manitoba in 1971.

            The crowd scene in Beautiful Losers, in which the narrator is masturbated from behind by an unseen woman is reminiscent of the scene from Anais Nin’s “The Woman on the Dunes”, except that it portrays a woman in a crowd, watching a hanging. She is overwhelmed because she has never seen a man die before. While she is in this state a strange and unseen man presses against her from behind, and as she does not resist, he opens her skirt and penetrates her from behind.

            The scene in the book of the Quebec separatist rally draws upon the Beat oeuvre of Allen Ginsberg. Beat movement – Ginsberg – liberty. Cohen and Ginsberg are Jewish Buddhists who question everything. The rhetoric of Beautiful Losers owes much to Howl.  Ginsberg’s poem, “A Supermarket In California” interrogates certain famous poets about their activities in a supermarket: “Garcia Lorca, what are you doing down by the watermelons?” Cohen’s narrator asks similar questions of Catherine Tekakwitha.

            Beat went hand in hand with the sexual revolution, genitals and manuscripts. Ginsberg: “Who sweetened the snatches of a million girls …” Free your mind, your ass will follow. Kerouac also denounced repression. Ginsberg howls against Moloch. As a symbol of repression. Cohen accuses the church in a similar rant.

            An excerpt was played from Ginsberg’s Howl. Ginsberg’s “America” has a list of first person declarations that are similar to those of Cohen’s narrator in Beautiful Losers. The socialism of mini-skirts. In Ginsberg’s footnote to Howl he declares that everything is holy. The meaning of Beautiful Losers is reflected in the “God is alive” segment. Then George plays Buffy Sainte Marie’s attempt to turn the words into a song from her album Illuminations. Personally, though I’m a big fan of Buffy Sainte Marie, I’ve never liked her version of God Is Alive. I’ve actually written a much better melody to accompany the words.

            According to Mailer, the Negro still does not know if he is part of mankind. Ginsberg refers to “the Negro streets”. Destroying public sculptures. A small Nazi party. The scene is prophetic. Flowers to the police. Trying to levitate the Pentagon. George says that Beautiful Losers is a relatively late Beat novel. As it was published, Trudeaumania was waiting in the wings.

            That marked the end of George’s talk.

            There was then a question and answer period. Someone asked George to recite one of his own poems and so he chose, “Look Homeward Exile” – “ … Lavinia, her teeth decayed to black stumps, her lovemaking still in demand, spitting black phlegm – her pension after twenty towns. And Toof, suckled on anger that no Baptist church can contain, who let wrinkled Eely seed her moist womb when she was just thirteen … Blind blues – precise, ornate, rich needlepoint …”

            I went to ask the second question, but the Innis College suit to George’s left cut me off and asked one of his own. I thought that was rude. He asked about process, so George talked about Leonard Cohen’s poem, “Style”, which he thinks was a reaction to the Cuban missile crisis. We looked at that poem in Canadian Poetry class and that was when George seemed to get that idea about the meaning.

            I got to ask my question next. I commented that I’ve always associated the character “F” with Cohen’s “The Master Song” and Cohen’s tendency to split himself into two people, with one of them being the dominant half and the other serving as the observer. But I said that it had just occurred to me that “F” might be a kind of sexual Frankenstein’s monster with some of the pieces coming from the personality of Irving Layton. George answered me by my name, which was nice, but didn’t really answer my question, but he went off in another direction about the same subject, saying that F could stand for French, Frankenstein or even Fuck but he thinks that Cohen means for us to fill in the blanks the way we choose. He added that it’s the same thing with the Aboriginal tribe referred to as the A --- s. Are they Algonquins, Assholes? Again, he said they are open to interpretation.

            George again started talking briefly about the US election and claimed that the republican sweep put Obama’s legacy in danger of being destroyed. Someone in the audience called out, “Wrong!”

            Someone asked George to compare the previous Canadian government with the current one in relation to poetry. He said that as the Parliamentary poet he has to be non-partisan. But he said that it’s far better to exercise passion in seeking change than it is to be passive, though passionate activism doesn’t necessarily change anything in the end. “No pun intended.”

            In Beautiful Losers, on the first day of spring there is an orgy on the street and the teenage Nazis join the passionate mob. The novel is essentially an existentialist statement. Out of suffering you get the Blues and out of joy and activism you get jazz.

            Someone asked the difference between Cohen and Ginsberg. George said, “Context”. It’s the difference between Canadian Quebec and the United States. The milieu for Ginsberg is an immigrant family in cosmopolitan New York. The American Dream in a democratic republic. The sense of a republic is being unrestricted as an individual. Canada, being part of a monarchy is saturated with elitism. We think we are every man and woman but we are not. Their money says “e pluribus Unum” which means “one out of many”. Our money says “Dei Gratia Regina” which means “By the grace of god, the queen”. We’re saying that only one person matters. Ginsberg’s anti-clericism is republican, whereas Cohen both criticizes and kind of likes the church at the same time. A. M. Klein and Cohen witnessed a renaissance in their social setting. Cohen borrows from Ginsberg and regurgitates it.

            Someone asked, “Should we hold Cohen culpable for last night’s election?” George said Cohen recognized darkness and its beauty. The US election may be an unhappy awakening. There is no appreciation for darkness. They have signed onto a misery that they did not intend. They couldn’t see the alternative light. Cohen has always embraced darkness as an aesthetic.

            Beautiful Losers was ahead of the curve. An orgy nullifies Nazis. The novel points to the ideal of liberation and freedom, but we must understand our ability to be regressive.

            Charlie Keil returned to the podium to thank George.

            After the official question and answer period, some of us came up to where George was standing and chatted. It was mostly about the election. The guy from the audience that had told George that he was wrong when he’d said that Trump had just wiped out Obama’s legacy explained why he was wrong. He said that the fact that Obama had reopened relations with Cuba is a legacy that can’t be taken away. He said the same thing is true for Obamacare. George disagreed about Obamacare. He said that Obama made the mistake of trying to please everyone when he was in power. He had promised to bring change but didn’t put the bankers who’d instigated the financial crisis in jail. George said that that was what brought Donald Trump to power. I argued that Trump doesn’t have the hearts of all republicans but George thinks he does because they won the senate and congress and the Supreme Court. I didn’t pursue the point because things just moved on but I think the Republicans just wanted to ride Trump into power. For most things they have the power to deny him their blessings for anything insane.

            George was called away to the reception and I went home.

Poetic Truth

            When I arrived early for Aesthetics class on Wednesday, November 9^th, Tim was already in the room. He asked what I’d thought of the election. I said, “What do you expect from a country that fought a revolution just to eliminate the middle man in the slave trade. I suggested that Drumpf won because the United States actually died in 1861 when the Civil War broke out. What they should have done is split into two countries then and it would have kept something like this from ever happening.

            When Professor Russell arrived he was wearing dark glasses. He set up all the digital stuff he needed for his lecture, but what was conspicuously absent were the tunes he likes to play before we start. I asked, “Where’s the music?” He sighed and shook his head, explaining, “I’m not in a very festive mood.” “Because of the election?” I inquired. He nodded, sadly.

            Tim commented, “I changed my mind! Some jokes are morally wrong!”

            Devlin responded, “This is a different kind of joke.”

            When class began he told us that he’d posted the instructions for our applied essay. The purpose of our papers will be to explain, or defend some theory we’ve considered in this class, and argue that it helps deepen our understanding of a particular artwork or piece of art criticism as to what it is and how it works. In other words, we will present, explain and defend some theory from any of the readings and use that theory to explain some aspect of a particular artwork of our choice. This should not be presented as art criticism. The thesis and main argument should not be directed toward advancing an interpretation or claiming that the work is good or bad. Rather apply the theory to an artwork in a way that helps us more deeply understand what it is and how it works. Find something that speaks to you and that you think counts as art. Write an essay where you argue that a certain theory explains a relevant aspect of the work. Have a clearly stated thesis, a brief description of the artwork, an explanation of the theory and why it is true, a detailed application of the theory to the artwork, object to the theory and then respond to the objection.  Most of the essay should consist of our explanation of the theory and its application. We can’t write about the same theory we covered in our first essay. We can’t use a theory of art from outside the course but of course we can use art from outside the course. No quotations are allowed unless we are quoting literature. Try to understand the difference between interpretation and understanding.

            We started with a review question: Can high art be used for entertainment? 68% of us said yes and we were right. High art can contain some ingredients for entertainment.

            A second question was: Can low art be deeply and authentically emotional? 82% of us said yes and we were right again. Low art can have an ingredient associated with high art and still be low art.

            Our lecture was on the topic of Literature.

            It has to do with writing. We know our categories now. Ruling out things like tech manuals and science writing, we say that literature is fine writing with imagination. But this leaves in pulp novels and pop fiction, so we add a new criteria that literature must be significant and serious. That leaves us with novels like Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, Crime and Punishment as well as poetry and plays.

            Fine writing has high aesthetic value.

            Fiction and literature prescribes imaginings.

            Since literature is serious it is contemplative and so it is high art.

            I said that creativity should be the key for determining whether writing can be seen as literature. I offered that the Philosophical essay that we read by Arthur C. Danto was very creative and so it should fit. The professor seemed skeptical.

            How we use literature is the institutional aspect. We can know the rules. We can read a sentence and not take it literally. Imagine it is raining, but don’t think it is raining. That is the institution.

            Poetic Truth is true in what sense? Literature and art gets at something true in a distinctive way. There are two ways that it might be distinct:

            Content – There is a difference between poetic and scientific truth. For Aristotle, poetic truth is about character. Its cognitive value is to enrich our knowledge of human character.

            Kind of truth – Getting things right. If we believe it is raining, our belief is true, if it is raining. For Shelly, literature is distinctively about prescribing imaginings. Literature gets us to enlarge our imagination and its possibilities. For Shelly, this is truth because cognitive value doesn’t quite get at getting things right.

            Novis says that poetic truth is knowing what it is like. You know what it is like to be you. Imagination involves you knowing what it’s like to be me. If you get it you get a truth.

            At the end of class I approached Professor Russell and told him to cheer up, because Trump will be on trial for fraud on November 28^th because of useless courses that students paid for at Trump University. As we left the lecture theater Devlin told me that cheered him up a bit, but he said that he wasn’t so much depressed because of the election but because his faith in humanity had been shattered because he’d never believed that the people of the United States could have been so stupid as to elect Donald Trump. I told him what I’d said to Tim. That it’s all the fault of the civil war. The United States died in the 19^th Century. The nation should have had a referendum and then the south and the north should have split into separate countries. None of this would have happened, because the north would have become a progressive and liberal country and the south would have become something like South Africa until the slaves finally revolted and took over.

            After class I went to OCADU early because there was no time to go home other than to get there and pretty much turn around and leave again. So I went to the studio where I was scheduled to work that afternoon and luckily found it empty. I ate an egg and cheese sandwich that I’d brought with me and then I laid down for a while. I think I did manage to nod off for a bit so I got some rest before the students started arriving.

When the instructor, Nick Aoki, got there and started to set things up, I asked him if he’d mind skipping the mid-class coffee break and just finishing early this time. He seemed all for it, so that was what we did.

            I did one minute poses, then twos, then fives, then tens and finished with two fifteens before I was done. I tend to work pretty hard as a model, but I seemed to be putting in more effort than usual, perhaps as a way to thank Nick for letting me alter the regular format so I could leave early.

Something in My Eye

            I worked at OCADU at 11:50 on Tuesday, November 8th. When I signed in I noticed that Brian Haddon was working the same shift and that he hadn’t yet signed in, so I decided to wait for him. After about ten minutes, a female model that I recognized, but whose name I’d forgotten, arrived at the front desk to record her signature on the time sheet. I think I’d only met her once in the model lounge last year or last semester and we chatted very briefly. After she’d scribbled her handle in the book, she turned and noticed me, saying, “Don’t tell me …” She thought for a few seconds and then offered, with a furrowed brow, “C – h … ?” I nodded. Then she thought a little longer and said, “Chris …” I encouragingly told her that she was getting closer, Finally she said, “Christian”. I was impressed. I only remembered that her name was Susan after she reminded me. I waited for Brian till 11:45 but then I had to get to class.

            I worked for Chinkok Tan, who teaches painting in the Fine Arts department. He’s been working at OCADU for a long time, but it had been a couple of years since I’d posed for him and he’d forgotten my name.

            The only thing that hasn’t turned grey on Chin are his big black eyebrows that look so starkly different from the other sparse foliage on his head that one might think they’d been glued above his eyes for comic effect. They actually look like a pair of very dark flipped up sunglasses with invisible rims.

            He asked me, “How are you and Maria?” I was confused for a second or two until I realized that he’d mixed me up with Maria Kasstan’s late husband, Jim Calvert, who also used to model at OCADU, but who died 12 years ago of a heart attack on a bench in front of police headquarters on College Street. The police assumed he was homeless because he was wearing old clothing and perhaps they thought he was just stretched out drunk on the bench. He died even though the hospital was two blocks away. Jim and I did not really look much alike, other than both being tall and blonde, but I guess guys like that all look alike to Chinkok Tan, perhaps because of his ability to “see”.

            While he was looking over his students’ homework, he told them that they don’t need to take anatomy classes, but rather just need to learn how to see the shapes. He assured them that if they do that they will draw the figure perfectly. “It’s like magic!” He explained that instead of seeing a human figure or a Coke can, he just sees a series of shapes. He said that there are millions of artists as old as he is that are still struggling because they don’t see the way he does.

            He told them that he would give everyone in the class a 69, unless they are absent a lot. But if they wanted to get more than 70 they would need to learn to see. He gave seeing a monetary analogy. He said that one has no inventory in one’s seeing brain unless one sees the shapes. But we can make deposits in our seeing brain just like money in a bank account. If you don’t make those deposits then you have nothing. I guess that proves that Jim Calvert and I were identical twins.

            On my way out I saw Brian hanging out in the atrium, so we chatted for a while, then made a tentative arrangement to go for a beer when my semester is over. I had to leave to get to a doctor’s appointment for 15:15.

I got to Bathurst and Bloor with just two minutes to spare, but of course I had to wait fifteen minutes anyway. Dr Shechtman looked tired but it didn’t seem to interfere with him doing his job. I told him that I’d had something in my eye for the last two days. Since I ride a bike I get lots of bugs and specks in my eyes but they usually blink out within minutes or hours. This one lingered, so I thought the safe bet would be to have my doctor look at it. I told him that when I was looking on a dusty shelf for bags to put my laundry in, I felt something go in my eyes. He looked, but couldn’t find anything. He put some fluorescent dye in my eye that would show if there were any scratches on my cornea but still found nothing. He had another more thorough look but the source of my sensing a foreign body in there was nowhere to be found. He told me that if something is in my eye it is too small to see or it could be a very small scratch caused by something that came in and went out. He advised me to use Visine for a while and if the problem persists to come back and see him.

I got him to renew a prescription for psoriasis cream, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

I checked the US election results before going to bed at midnight and it looked pretty certain that Drumpf was going to win. Ironic that a country founded on revolution would fight so hard to keep from progressing.

Mouskouri Machine

           

            I woke up on Monday, November 7^th with the phrase, “Strike down the mastery of the mystery machine” in my head. It had something to do with a vague dream about turning some language problems into poetry. As I got up and got ready to do yoga, some other phrases tumbled out: “Strike down the mystery of the mastery machine/ we only get along because our languages do/ Bite back the mastery of the mystery machine/ we don’t get along because our languages don’t/ Squirrel words / bear words / bare words / can’t bear their words/ mastery of the history machine”. There’s something there, but I’ll have to dig it out after knocking it around for a while.

            There was also, “If I shout loud enough about some far away pain, no one will guess that I am talking bout me.”

            I’ve been learning a song by Serge Gainsbourg called, “Les Yeux Pour Pleurer” and I’m learning it from a recording by Nana Mouskouri. Holy crap that woman can sing! I’m just used to picking up the words of songs the way they are sung. I’m not used to being moved every morning by a singer. It’s very distracting, but I am learning the song, though the way she climbs up and down the scale makes it very difficult to nail down the song’s chords.

            I spent the day catching up on my journal and reading a boring essay about “what is literature?”

            For dinner I made a soup out of vegetable broth, carrots, squash, sautéed onions and ground chicken.

            I watched an episode of the Lucy-Desi Hour. It’s really not as good as the half hour long “I Love Lucy” series. It doesn’t have the same charm most of the time.