the olympics: issue 2
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Stories, Art, and Design. QuarterlyTRANSCRIPT
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www.sadmag.ca
SADMAG
SADMAG
CITY AIN’T SAdW E LAUNCHEd THE FIRST ISSUE OF
Sad Mag in the same week that the B.C. provincial government announced that it would cut over 90 percent of its arts and
culture funding. Talk about timing! We had journalists call-ing us in that first week to sniff out a disaster story, asking us what we would do about paying for a magazine now that funding was disappearing.
Oh, we laughed. “We were broke before the arts cuts, and we’re still broke now!” Sad Mag was created to showcase young artists and writers who don’t have a piece of that (formerly) fat arts pie; for people who wanted to experiment creatively and infuse artfulness into everyday life without necessarily becoming professional artists.
And look! In the second issue of Sad, we have an antique collector, two burlesque dancers, an artist couple, a poet, and a writer with an Olympic survival plan—who all prove you don’t need to be flush with cash to make something cool.
Vancouver ain’t sad, people. It’s Sad Mag.
Sad Mag team working on issue two. Photo: Rob Seebacher.
6 Robert McNutt
Furniture’s Saving Grace
10 Sister Act
Burlesque Dancers Villainy Loveless and Lola Frost Keep it in the Family
14 A Confetti World
Caleb Beyers and Hanahlie Beise Piece Together “Something Cool”
17 One Voice
A Grassroots Initiative Revitalizes Ghana’s Poetic Tradition
20 Uprooted
In Search of the Spirit of Cambie Village
25 An Equation
Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Olympics
28 Person, Place, & Thing
PrOphecy Sun, The Waneta Valley, and Swine Flu
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Publisher Sad Magazine Publishing Society
Editor in Chief deanne Beattie
Creative Director Brandon Gaukel
Managing Editor Justin Mah
Production Manager Megan Lau
Lead Designer Lon Garrick
Contributing Writers Deanne Beattie, Jeff Fry, Michael Hingston, Shaun Inouye, Justin Mah, Michelle Reid,
Melissa Sawatsky, Rebecca Slaven, Graham Templeton, Lindsay Wiens
Contributing Photographers and Illustrators
Hanahlie Beise, Caleb Beyers, Brandon Gaukel, Shari-Anne Gibson, Tanya Goehring, Tina Krueger Kulic,
Julie Jones, Justin Longoz, Andrew Schick, Rob Seebacher, Marta Taylor,
Eric Thompson
Cover Art Studi.O.K and Eric Thompson
Sad Magazine Publishing Society Board of Directors
Deanne Beattie, Hubert Chan, Iris Dias, Brandon Gaukel, Robert Lutener,
Matthew McGale
Sad Mag would like to thank:Paul Beja, Jocelyne Chaput,
Chandra Chinatambi, Dave Deveau, East Van Graphics, Ryan Longoz, Lucy,
Phillips Brewing Company, Richard Sexton, Fraser Stuart, Catherine Winters,
daniel Zomparelli
Sad Mag is published four times a year by the Sad Magazine Publishing Society, 732 E. 11th Avenue, Vancouver B.C., V5T 2E5.
Email: [email protected].
Contents Copyright © 2009, Sad Magazine. All rights reserved.
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FEATUREd CONTRIBUTORSMelissa Sawatsky | Writer UprootedMelissa Sawatsky is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. She participated in the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Brit-ish Columbia. Her work has appeared in Rhubarb Magazine, emerge 2006, and a chap-book entitled Berlin. She also has a passion for dance, film, and theatre.
“Writing this piece was akin to conducting an archaeo-logical dig of my own neighbourhood. By simply taking the time to listen, a wealth of human-interest stories were unearthed. It was a lesson in how communities are created, and also how they unravel.”
Eric Thompson | Photographer UprootedEric Thompson graduated from Langara College’s Professional Photo Program in 2007. Since then Eric has travelled around the globe to find subject matter that inspires him. He owes his interest in photography to being stranded in a desert, and nearly being shot and arrested several times. After spending a good year in Los Angeles, he is back in his hometown shooting Vancouver’s taxidermic birds. He serves as a photo assistant and is one of Vancouver’s up-and-coming photographers.
“I think Vancouver needed better roofs, more glass, and newer cement. The Olympics have quenched that thirst. I have had a chance to see several Olympic buildings inside and out, and I can see a lot of faded wood in their future.”
Justin Longoz | Artist Swine Flu Justin Longoz is a Vancouver-born animator and freelance illustrator. Currently he works for Global Mechanic where he makes animated commercials and short films. Justin is an epicurean, enjoys tak-ing naps, talking to his cat, and making up bios for magazines that clock in at just under five sentences.
“I treat my work like therapy; it allows me to vent my emotions. It also allows me to play with my fears; I can ma-nipulate them and reshape them into something that’s easier for me to understand.”
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As told to Justin MahPhotography by Brandon Gaukel _____________________
Furniture’s Saving Grace
ROBERT MCNUTTWHEN I WAS A CHILd I COLLECTEd
stuff that was expensive, and you had to do anything you could do to get the money to buy the item: shovelling driveways of snow,
cutting grass, raking leaves, selling pop bottles. I started collecting around the time that I was eight years old: lighting fixtures, door hardware, and plumbing fixtures—top-of-the-line stuff from 1850 to about 1920. My parents thought I was crazy. I even remember breaking into houses and stealing doorknobs and lights, but that was at a time when the houses that were derelict were just derelict and no one cared. Today, there’s stuff in my apartment that you’d be hard pressed to find in the best of museums. My home is my sanctuary, my cave.
different people collect for different reasons. Some people like the hunt of it; I find I’m more looking for the
trophy, the treasure in the pirate’s chest. I have toilet bowls with designs; they’re very rare things to have. I also have been building a collection over the last five or six years of door hardware with engraved initials. The doorknob on my apartment door, in the centre of it is the Birks’ logo—the
backwards-frontwards B. I’ve also got Toronto City Hall, King Edward Hotel—I have maybe a hundred different varieties of this stuff. It’s an interesting way of collecting buildings, if you will, collecting the hardware out of them. Some of the
really famous buildings in the U.S., their hardware is in the Met and Smithsonian.
I almost don’t buy anything new today. Everyone has the same thing, there’s no uniqueness. Most people ac-cept the mass-merchandising machine—that’s what fuels the economy—and the people who accept the edict: dress
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the same, look the same, smell the same, have the same glasses. When you go down the road that everyone else does, it’s expensive. We live in a plastic throwaway society where a lot of the modern goods are poorly made; with a lot of modern furniture, you’re just going to have it for a little while, it’s cheap like fast food, whereas if you did spend the extra money, and you did buy quality furniture, or you went and bought old stuff, you buy it once. With the antique stuff, if you look after it well—like a chair or table—it can be handed from person to person to person, basically indefinitely. So you feel like it’s a privilege to own it—you feel special.
That’s the nice thing with collecting antiques: they’re durable goods—you have to maintain them properly of course—but they’re the first and last of whatever you’re going to purchase. There’s this high satisfaction factor; it’s like you found some awful thing at the side of the road and you brought it home and you loved it, you fixed it, and gave it a good home. When you restore stuff, you have a feeling of connection with it; you use it, but you use it with respect. There’s a personal relationship with the furniture because it’s like you’ve found it in a bad place, you poured a lot of money into fixing it—it was probably a money-losing proposition from the time you first looked at it—but you saved it, you saved it from a fairly tragic fate.
I’M LOOKING FOR THE TROPHY, THE TREASURE IN THE
PIRATE’S CHEST.
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CHANTÉ SITS IN HER UNdERWEAR on my couch. Her pants are drying over the back of a chair while she and danielle cradle mugs of tea to recover from their
rain-drenched walk. Chanté and Danielle are known, respectively, onstage as Villainy Loveless and Lola Frost. These stunning bur-lesque dancers are glamorous even when lounging without makeup or pants and snacking on Smartfood popcorn. Chanté and danielle Swanson are women you immediately want to know.
The first time I saw Danielle I was struck by the drama of her elegant bob, feminine tattoos, and stately height. Her appearance was such a contrast to Chanté’s fire-cracker features: platinum waves, pierced red lips, and com-pact curves. A subtle movement and the sound of danielle’s voice instantly revealed the two as sisters. “We’re so close we call each other ‘incestors,’” Chanté says. They discuss how people often mistake their intimacy for a romantic relation-ship. “When we’re out the bartender will say, ‘Your girlfriend already ordered you a shot,’ and I say, ‘No, that’s my sister,’” Danielle laughs. “And they don’t mean ‘girlfriend’ as in, my girl friend. They mean lesbian lover,” adds Chanté.
With no other siblings, the two were always close but experienced a rough and tumble relationship in the early years under the care of their single mother. Hardships have created strength in their family. “It was tough growing up.
We refer to ourselves as gypsies since we lived everywhere,” Chanté says. “We fought hard and we played hard,” continues Danielle. “We fought more. There were times, more than once, that her hand print was on my face,” Chanté says. “Only once!” protests
Danielle. “But then I got big enough to take Danielle down and it never happened again.”
They have always been fiercely supported by their mother, father, and extended relations and radiant smiles emerge at the topic. “Our mom loves it. She named her motorbike Lady Lola,” Danielle gushes. When they first told their grandparents, their grandmother was seemingly oblivious to burlesque. Chanté does a robust impersonation of the old Scottish man telling his wife, “Oh, for Chrissake, Sharon! It’s the cancan girls!”
Their grandfather was not far off; both the striptease and the cancan dance were pioneered by the Moulin Rouge in the late nineteenth century. Pictures from their burlesque performances now line their grandparents’ shelf alongside
SISTER ACTBurlesque Dancers Villainy Loveless and Lola Frost Keep it in the Family
By Rebecca SlavenPhotography by Tina
Krueger Kulic
Opposite: Chanté (left) and Danielle Swanson (right).11
family wedding photographs. Their appreciation for family is grounded by their fellow performers’ situations. Many girls hide burlesque from their families, a situation that neither Chanté nor Danielle can imagine. “At a very early age, I told my mom I wanted to be a stripper,” Danielle says. “I didn’t understand at the time, obviously, but it was the provocative, expressive nature of it that appealed to me.”
In North America, burlesque began in nineteenth-century lowbrow vaudeville acts that parodied classical theatre. During the early twentieth century, it developed into a satirically flavoured striptease involving gimmicks, alter egos, and elaborate costumes, decidedly placing more emphasis on the “tease” than the “strip.” By the 1930s, burlesque had temporarily faded under social restric-tions but thrived in Vancouver and along the West Coast from the 1950s–70s, as Becki Ross outlines in her book, Burlesque West. Having reemerged in the mid-’90s as neo-burlesque, it harks back to its history, which emphasizes humour, drama, fantasy, and being sexy rather than sexual. Men are even getting involved in boylesque routines. Danielle accounts the burlesque revival to its empowering pro-body and pro-women qualities as well as to the abundance of producers in Vancouver.
Chanté and danielle began their performing careers in their childhoods when they choreographed dances with friends, which continued until Chanté accidentally smacked Danielle’s chin during a routine, splitting her tongue. Both grew up figure skating, doing gymnastics, and never hesitated to explore any platform that would allow them to express themselves. As a teenager, Danielle slipped into the rave scene, although she insists she “never did energy
ball.” Living apart for six years, Danielle took a variety of dance seminars, honing her technique and classical form while Chanté trained in Latin dance as she travelled through Venezuela and took part in the fetish scene after returning to B.C.
They credit their different styles to this separation. “While she was raving, I became a dirty punk rocker for a long time, so I think that plays out in our aesthetics,” Chanté says. A self-described spitfire, Villainy Loveless bursts onstage mashing energetic bad-girl attitude with classical flair. “She’s always been the feisty one,” Danielle verifies. Once known as Lady Villainy, Chanté underwent a name change to some-thing that she felt more fittingly encompassed her persona. “I realized I was never going to be a lady. The charade is up!” she snickers, unafraid to indulge in a self-deprecating laugh. Villainy Loveless is a gritty character who embraces burlesque’s vaudeville roots in the flesh.
Lola Frost’s routines leave the audience hanging on to
AT A VERY EARLY AGE, I TOLD MY
MOM I WANTEd TO BE A STRIPPER.
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every calculated movement. Her name complements “Roxy Heart” and “Velma Kelly” to suit her ’20s appearance, and Lola assures she will “only melt your heart.” Though their styles are different, they are able to collaborate because of their close relationship. The choreography for their duets verges on unspoken as it develops and they connect in a way that other dancers cannot.
danielle and Chanté have been supporting each other in burlesque from the start. Four years ago, Danielle was intrigued by her coworker’s involvement in the scene and by fliers she began seeing around the West End, where she was living at the time. Chanté’s curiosity, however, was sparked while in Victoria: “I saw a performance by the Suicide Girls and thought ‘I could do that. I could do that better!’ Just after Danielle picked up on the scene, I started coming to Vancouver for shows. There were no collectives in Victoria at the time and it was easy to take the ferry across,” Chanté recalls. They began performing with three other burlesque dancers and propagated neo-burlesque in Vancouver. Eventually, Chanté moved to Vancouver and the five ladies formed their own collective, the Starlet Harlots, and began booking shows.
Despite burlesque’s resurgence, it is not exactly profitable. No burlesque dancer commits to the craft as a profession. A burlesque performer is motivated by many factors, whether it is to gain confidence or to bask in the astonished expressions of the audience. “There’s no money in burlesque, baby. We don’t do it for the money, but we like money,” Danielle says. “Burlesque is the one thing that defines every aspect of me, and to have people accept it and like it and embrace who I am and where I’m from—it’s so satisfying. It’s amazing to
have a platform to be as sexy as you want and have it be okay and not weird, not awkward, not dirty. It’s immensely sexy and it’s accepted and safe and really lovely, light, and fun.”
Having experienced body image issues, Chanté is em-powered by flaunting her physique and embracing her form, no matter what its shape. “I’ve had girls come up to me after shows. They say ‘I have big arms too and you don’t care and I’m not gonna!’ And you say, ‘Yes! You go! Take on the world!’ It’s not something that happens after every show.”
“Oh really? Speak for yourself,” Danielle cheek-ily interjects. Chanté laughs and continues, “knowing someone sat silent and felt better because of what you’re doing while you’re having fun is so rewarding. I think that most hobbies don’t offer the opportunity to touch a lot of people.” At this inadvertent double entendre, Danielle erupts in laughter, spitting out her tea.
Like all professions related to physical shape and aesthet-ics, the performance span of a burlesque dancer is short. “For me, I think performing will transition into teaching—not teaching burlesque per se—but drawing that sort of inter-action experienced in performing out of students as opposed to an audience,” Danielle says. “And I would like to provide a platform—a stage for them to dance upon. Ideally, I would love to own a theatre,” Chanté says. Danielle discusses her desire to tour on the East Coast. Chanté affirms that Van-couver is the first place she has thought of as home. When asked if they will continue to work together, Danielle looks at Chanté and smiles. “She’s in my forty-year plan.”
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A confettiWorlddURING THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST, A
million flecks of black paper haunted our apart-ment. They multiplied, spreading across the hardwood, falling behind couch cushions, and
lodging themselves into socks. despite numerous cleanings of our apartment since that week, there is no doubt that a small number still thrive under the bathroom cabinet and deep within the recesses of kitchen appliances. Cut into various shapes and sizes, these cunning fragments are actually the negative space of forty hand-cut and painstakingly assembled paper legs.
Paper sculpture isn’t our usual pursuit. As Shaun+Lindsay, we spend most of our time painting, drawing, and joining forces to develop anything from children’s stories to faux-book covers. This time we had been called in to help with a small portion of what would become twenty meticulously handmade paper statuettes to be exhibited at clothing store and art venue El Kartel. The Spectres—militaristic, black-hooded creatures with graphics
cut out of their torsos—are the sinister creations of Caleb Beyers. Magnificent and ominous, these fierce little souls have been brought to life as much by Caleb’s enthusiasm and hard work as that of his creative partner and wife, Hanahlie Beise.
Taking a jab at “collectible toy” culture, the pair created the Spectres because, as Caleb explains, “I’m quite repulsed by the idea of collecting—[this phenomenon] seems to be more about material indulgence for personal satisfaction, rather than something that genuinely connects people.” We were more than happy to volunteer our services as paper-leg
constructors for this cause; as well, it was a chance to spend time with our busy friends and, of course, have fun.
A combination of factors make Caleb and Hanahlie’s partnership so distinct. The forging of this creative pairing took place during a trip to Campbell River.
It was at this time that the two also settled on their moniker, Caste. “We decided early on that we wanted to
Caleb Beyers and Hanahlie Beise Piece Together “Something Cool”
By Shaun Inouye and Lindsay Wiens
Self-Portrait by Caleb Beyers and Hanahlie Beise
15
break down societal roles. We got to thinking about the caste system, and then we realized it exists everywhere, but it doesn’t exist within the realm of creativity,” Caleb explains. “The best thing about art is that it can be whatever you want,” adds Hanahlie. Within the world of art, it seems, expectations don’t apply.
As Caste, Caleb and Hanahlie have undertaken numer-ous projects. Their work integrates visual art and design into a dizzying array of projects utilizing photography, video, drawing, branding, web design, and writing. As Hanahlie explains, “We are both very adaptable and resourceful. Be-ing able to weave in and out of different disciplines keeps it interesting and fun, and we are always learning and getting better at what we do.” Their wide range of interests and talents has led them to projects such as the complete brand-ing of local fashion innovator and designer Drew William, a four-foot city made of paper featured (and burned!) in a Mother Mother music video; album artwork for such artists as A.C. Newman and Jets Overhead; and, most recently, Art & Sole, an ambitious exhibition with sneaker brand PF Fly-ers, El Kartel, and forty local and international artists.
Caleb and Hanahlie cite their distinctly different working habits as a major aspect of their success together. As Caleb explains, “I get very excited about new ideas, and I often find myself with my head in the clouds, bouncing from one cloud to the next.” Hanahlie, on the other hand, provides a more weighted approach: “I am a little more pragmatic when it comes to the scope of a project. I am definitely very passionate about what I’m doing, but I think it’s more in my nature to keep things organised and focused.”
WHEN WE ARRIVEd AT THE dUO’S Mount Pleasant apartment on the eve of the Spectres’ unveiling, we fully realized the scope of
their project. While our home resembled the fallout of a miniature confetti disaster, theirs was in the midst of a full-blown paper war. Hanahlie’s index and middle fingers were bandaged at the joints to prevent further bruising from the constant pressure applied to an X-ACTO blade for weeks. Caleb appeared to be crying, but his inflamed eyes and tears were caused only by sustained eye strain drowned in rivers of Visine. This was a poignant reminder that the rigour of working full-time creatively is not just a regular job: “It is our life,” explains Caleb.
Putting in the work required is part of the balance that Caleb and Hanahlie have had to strike. dealing in the business of “selling creativity” (an awkward notion for any artist), these two work together in almost every way im-aginable to make their vocation successful. Helping each other out with technical processes, artistic input, and ideas pays off emotionally and artistically: “I have never, ever, had the capacity to complete work and meet deadlines as I have had since we started working as Caste,” says Caleb. In a relatively short amount of time, Caleb and Hanahlie
have gone from seeking out pro bono projects to regularly securing gigs.
Since arriving in Vancouver at the beginning of 2009, Caleb and Hanahlie have endeavoured to crush the city’s well known reputation for aloofness. “Vancouver has this standoffishness that can be cliquey—people are aspirational but protective of what they’ve got,” notes Caleb, “I find that attitude is really easily disarmed by just going ‘Hey, what’s up? We could probably do something fun together.’” This earnest sensibility in their approach to business and collab-oration is welcoming and refreshing. It also explains how Caste has been able to integrate so seamlessly into Vancouver’s art scene. “We like to keep ourselves surrounded by inspiring, motivated, and creative people,” agrees Hanahlie.
In the end, the Spectres were spectacular. An avalanche of dull blades and empty bottles of glue were pushed aside to display the twenty sculptures, which were imagined, de-signed, cut out, and assembled in a matter of weeks. Despite the injuries incurred while completing this project, there was no doubt that the heroic effort was worth the result. We left Caleb and Hanahlie’s apartment feeling exhausted but also grateful. It dawned on us, moments after collapsing into the taxi for the short ride home, that this was a rare opportun-ity: to contribute to the realization of someone else’s vision. Collaborators such as ourselves can only hope that Caste’s success is matched by their enthusiasm, expressed in Caleb’s oft-spoken invitation: “Let’s make something cool.”
WHILE OUR HOME RESEMBLEd THE
FALLOUT OF A MINIATURE
CONFETTI DISASTER, THEIRS WAS IN THE MIdST OF A FULL-BLOWN
PAPER WAR.
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ONE VOICEA Grassroots Initiative Revitalizes Ghana’s Poetic Tradition
By Deanne BeattiePhotography by Tanya Goehring
and Marta Talyor
WHEN I TELL PEOPLE ABOUT ROB Taylor, I like to say that he’s the guy who is almost single-handedly revitalising Ghana’s poetic tradition from his East Vancouver
apartment—yes, Ghana, a small West African country that’s home to 23 million people. People look at me in disbelief. Rob, who? Where?
Of course, Taylor wouldn’t say anything so grandiose about his project, the online poetry journal One Ghana, One Voice (oneghanaonevoice.com). “I never intended for One Ghana to be the beginning of some enterprise, or some mega-project,” said Taylor. “I just wanted to do something small, in appreciation of the kindness that was shown to me while I was living in Ghana, [something] that could hope-fully get the ball rolling, and get some momentum going so other things could happen.”
Taylor visited Ghana in 2006 with his wife Marta, then his fiancée, when she accepted a year-long internship after the couple graduated from Simon Fraser University. Taylor had already gained some attention among university poets for his poetry, and for a zine he founded with students at SFU called High Altitude Poetry. When he arrived in Ghana, he inevitably got involved with poetry there.
“I had done some research before I left for Ghana, and I knew that there was an academic literary journal run out of the University of Ghana, The Legacy,” he said. “I also knew that there were regional magazines like Black Orpheus, which was being run out of Nigeria in its time. I was hoping that when I got there, I could go up to the university and get involved with this journal, or at least find other people who were active in this kind of thing.”
Ghanaian poets were especially active during the 1960s and ’70s after the country declared independence in 1957. In the riotous decades that followed, Ghanaian artists strove to re-establish the African artistry that had been lost dur-ing colonial rule. Journals like Black Orpheus and The Legacy published radical African writing, and established writers like the anti-colonialist poet and playwright Ama Ata Aidoo, who later won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her fiction. Despite this, when Taylor visited the University of Ghana to find back issues of The Legacy, he couldn’t find anyone who knew what he was talking about.
“The librarian just looked at me like I was crazy,” said Taylor. “I went through the card catalogues there, and I eventually found where it was. I found two copies from 1973, and after that, it was kaput. I couldn’t find a history of this journal beyond the fact that it once existed. There was nothing about why it failed.
“So, as far as publishing goes, [when I arrived in Ghana] there wasn’t anything going on. There had been an anthol-ogy of Ghanaian poetry and some self-published books. There were a couple of publishers who would publish big names from the last movement of Ghanaian writers in the ’60s and ’70s, like Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho, but that was about it. There was definitely no new Ghanaian
writing coming out. It was a very long and frustrating process—trying to find people and venues, to find anything for writing.”
But then he did find someone shortly before his year in Ghana was over. Julian Adomako-Gyimah was a Ghanaian poet who had lived in the U.K. for many years, and had returned to Ghana shortly before Taylor arrived. Adomako-Gyimah and Taylor both wanted to start a poetry pub-lication, and united to produce One Ghana, One Voice. The web-based poetry magazine is now two years old and has published over sixty new Ghanaian poets to date.
The poetry in One Ghana explores issues of poverty, cor-ruption, and brokenness in the African political climate. The grassroots initiative has proven to be a positive influence on Ghanaian poetry, inspiring the production of a couple print anthologies and launching the international publishing careers of a number of poets.
The story of Ghana’s poetic revival might give hope to Canadian writers. Like Ghanaians, Canadian poets published most prolifically in the 1960s and ’70s as well. However, the stall in Canadian poetry has not been due to a lack of education or resources, but a descent into liter-ary malaise. Charles Olsen, Allan Ginsberg, and Al Purdy influenced much of B.C.’s poetic development in the early ’60s. This era, along with a small-press explosion in
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Intending to inspire a sense of ownership over Ghanaian poetry in these new writers, the founders of One Ghana con-sider it important to pass the torch gracefully.
“I leave it in the hands of Ghanaians,” said Taylor. “I always have a difficulty with the fact that I’m sitting here in Vancouver, running the first thing that comes up when you search for ‘poem, Ghana’ on the Internet. It seems silly to me. I don’t like the idea of outsiders be-ing too interventionist in the development of the writing community in Ghana. And I understand the inherent contradiction, me being someone in Canada, editing their biggest poetry magazine.
“I did something because no one was doing anything. And I will do that until it’s not necessary. And, if that hap-pens sooner, that’s great. It’ll give me more time on Friday nights. I would love it to fade into history.
“If we disappear, that’ll be a good sign, because I’m not going to just give up. If we disappear, it’s on good terms.”
Canada, established the preference for postmodern poetry that refuses to evolve now forty years later. The poets most immediately inspired by these men—George Bowering, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt, bill bissett, and Maxine Gadd included—still dominate local publishers’ catalogues today.
An emerging poet, Taylor has self-published two chap-books of poetry, and has seen his work appear in journals like the Dalhousie Review and Antigonish Review. The Alfred Gustav Press, a North Vancouver publishing house, will make his new chap-book available for purchase by subscription in fall 2010. Taylor was also published in Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry alongside B.C. regulars like Gadd and Marlatt, making him a rare, wild-card addition in a B.C.-published anthology. Co-editor Mona Fertig told an audi-ence at the 2009 B.C. Book and Magazine week that she experienced critical backlash for including new poets in the book. Critics don’t give much attention to poets like Taylor who offer an alternative to the bricolage- or pastiche-style poetry popular among established poets, and Fertig said critics wanted to see more of the same poets who have been publishing for forty years already.
This is particularly striking because Taylor has ac-complished so much for Ghanaian poetry. He clearly has important things to say, but Canadians aren’t listening. It seems absurd then that diminishing participation in and readership of poetry in Canada has people worried that it’s a dying art form. When asked for his thoughts on the state of B.C. poetry, Taylor says, “It would be great if we were in a time when everyone read poetry regularly, like in those stories of [Chilean writer] Pablo Neruda reading to gymna-siums full of people: he just says the first line of a poem and the audience recites the whole thing from memory. I think it says something our about culture and our time, and it says something about our writing and the kind of writing we’re producing, that we’ve gotten to this point.” Participation in Canadian poetry is limited to poets possessing a postmodern style, a decreasingly popular and increasingly confusing style to read. Most importantly, it distorts the political message that poets attempt to communicate. This denies the political roots of contemporary poetry, starving it at its source.
This isn’t something Taylor has seen with Ghana’s new poets. “I wouldn’t want to cast something over an entire group of writers,” says Taylor, “but as a trend, Ghanaian poets are more political than Canadian poets. Ama Ata Aidoo was asked about this, and she just said, ‘Of course.
AS A TREND, GHANAIAN
POETS ARE MORE POLITICAL THAN CANAdIAN POETS.
What, are you crazy?’ because look around, how could we not be talking about [politics in our poetry]?
“In Ghana, there are many more poets who are just throwing politics at you without apology. Here, if we do that, we apologize a lot, or we cloud it with some artifice. There, they’ll just say right in the middle of a poem, ‘and the President is a really lousy guy.’ We don’t get that.”
One Ghana shows that extending access to new artists can create new growth for an entire art form.
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UPROOTEd
By Melissa SawatskyPhotography by Eric Thompson
In the Search of the S pirit of Cambie Village
in the neighbourhood. The Canada Line construction still brought its share of strain to the store: “It was hard. I work long hours, so it’s not only the money, but the long, lonely hours with no one coming into the store,” Gary explains. He opens his financial records for me and discloses that although he suffered a 30 percent drop in sales during the construction, he considers himself lucky compared to the local restaurants, which were hit hardest. Gary offers me a sense of how the businesses in the area work together and, similarly, how they were affected together. “People would come in before going to see a movie at the theatre, but that stopped happening.” His store survived, but there are now only a handful of these long-standing busi-nesses left in Cambie Village. Individuals such as Gary are an integral part of the spirit and character of this community; his inexhaustible cheer and friendly nature makes me feel as though my home extends beyond the walls of my rental suite to include the people on the street.
Around the corner from Gary’s store, there is a large mural painted on the concrete wall of the building. After some investi-gation, I root out the artist and arrange to meet with her at the local Starbucks. It turns out that Teresa Waclawik not only cre-ated the mural, titled The Face of Vancouver, but is also a Cambie Village resident. She arrives at the coffee shop ready to share her story with a bag full of articles, examples of her work, and documentation of grassroots projects that she has undertaken for a variety of noble causes. Teresa has a unique perspective on the extent to which Cambie Village has been affected and altered over the past few years due to the fact that she created the mural while Cambie Street was being dug up. The Face of Vancouver was entirely Teresa’s initiative; she embarked on the fundraising project for Covenant House Vancouver with the support of the City of Vancouver’s anti-graffiti program. The mural consists of 261 caricatures that are strategically placed on a colourful background in the shape of a woman’s face. She explains that the caricatures were drawn from portraits of Vancouver residents who represent “different ages and differ-ent walks of life.”
Teresa’s project brought the community together during a difficult time. While she was working on the mural, it was vandalized by graffiti, and after it was completed, targeted tag-ging appeared on some of the caricatures. Teresa recalls that people began to feel quite protective of the mural, which itself serves as a symbol for community and diversity. Nonetheless, she was exhausted by the end of the project, which she worked on for more than ten hours a day. I can see the fatigue in her eyes when she says, “I feel like flat ginger ale.” As a result, she is leaving Vancouver. In a political climate that is willing to slash arts and culture funding at an alarming rate, it is no wonder why she is moving on.
The Face of Vancouver is one of many projects Teresa has taken on, both as an artist and an activist. Her efforts reflect an attempt to keep the spirit of community alive and to stand up for those who were made to suffer in the name of progress. Teresa remarks that, at this point in time, Cambie Village “feels too stylized, too contrived. It’s been planned to death.” Her
ALMOST EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK during summer, the seductive sound of flamenco music escapes the confines of Kino Café and enters through the open windows of my top floor
suite just off Cambie Street. Now and again, its rhythm is interrupted by the scrape of skateboarders making use of the empty parking lot below. Other nights, the music is drowned out by the noise of neighbourhood bottle collectors sprawled on a concrete ledge, swapping stories and punctuating their conversation with haunting songs.
Day-time brings its own set of sounds to Cambie Village: the beep of delivery trucks backing up into loading docks, the clang of commercial garbage bins being emptied into trucks that lumber away with a hiss of hydraulics, and the hum of residents and visitors conversing as they make their way to and from restaurants, the liquor store, or a movie at the Park Theatre. Bob, the local vendor of the bi-weekly Downtown Eastside paper Megaphone, greets passersby with a wide smile and chats with shoppers in front of Choices market. All these sights and sounds have remained through the overwhelming changes that I have witnessed during the two years I have lived in the neighbourhood. The roads and sidewalks have been gutted and repaved due to the cut-and-cover construction of the Canada Line, countless businesses have been forced to close their doors, and new stores have emerged to replace the old.
When I moved into Cambie Village, which is roughly book-ended by Broadway and King Edward Avenue, there was an alarming number of empty storefronts with “For Lease” signs in their windows and orange pylons were a permanent fixture along the roads and sidewalks. One of my favourite used book-stores, Kestrel Books, was mere months away from relocating to Kitsilano, with much of their stock reduced for clearance. I scoured the shelves with a mild sense of guilt: by acquiring these books at a fraction of their cost, I was losing something more important. After the bookstore disappeared, the retail space remained empty for months—a common sight in this section of Cambie Street at the time. On her blog, Cut and Cover: Chronicles of the Cambie Village, Vanessa Kay observes that during the peak of construction in 2007, there were approximately thirty empty storefronts in the area, abandoned by business owners who had either been driven to relocate out of necessity or forced to close their doors for good. The business owners who made it to the other side of the Canada Line construction have been hugely fortunate, yet the neighbourhood is in the act of reviving and reinventing itself.
While some stores are just starting out on Cambie Street, others are doing their best to survive the geographic and demographic changes. Giriraj Gautam (who goes by Gary) owns the Cambie General Store and has been in business for fourteen years. Every time I enter the store, I am greeted with a sing-song “Hello!” and an impromptu song or dance. One day, his greeting takes the form of fingers snapping over his head; on another day he improvises a tune out of the phrase “How are you?” When I ask him about his experiences in Cambie Village, he chuckles and refers to himself as an “antique piece”
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The couple invites me right into their mid-afternoon meal, and somehow I don’t feel the least bit intrusive. Wayne claims to be on his fourth career: retirement. He has become a philanthropist by combining his wood-working skills with a fundraising project to benefit Habitat for Humanity. He constructs wooden puzzles that he gives away for donations, which he then gives back to the charity. He achieved his initial goal of raising $10,000 in only eleven months and is still going strong. Wayne, much like Teresa, is an inspiring example of the active and creative individuals that live and work in Cambie Village. I walk out of Trixi’s overcome by a feeling of community.
At home, I look out my window and watch my neighbour tend his garden across the alley. Norm has lived in the same house for thirty-two years and has witnessed innumerable chan-ges during that time. He gestures toward his yard and says, “I’m happy being left alone in my garden—this is my paradise.” He reflects on today’s time and how everything from dinnerware, to home furnishings, to human intimacy has become increas-ingly cheap and artificial. “Nothing is real anymore,” he says. Norm sees a world transformed from the one in which he grew up—with manners, discipline, and efforts at refinement—and he is disillusioned by what he sees. The grating racket of late-night skateboarders bothers him, and he resents the smell of litter and urine left behind by the group of men who regularly loiter in the parking lot across the street. Although he is some-what cynical about the many changes he has witnessed over his
mural is something authentic in the midst of this, and she hopes it communicates a positive message about what one person can accomplish, given the right motivation. The Face of Vancouver and the open, earnest face of Teresa herself represent the meaning of community spirit.
Less than a block away from Teresa’s mural, Ernst Walti and Beatrix Handlbauer serve crepes, coffee, and other scrumptious treats at Trixi’s Crepe and Coffeehaus. Ernst tells me that he and Beatrix bought the business in 2005 and were aware of the impending construction, but miscalculated the extent to which it would affect their business. While he is honest about how difficult it was to endure a 50 percent drop in sales for over ten months, he also emanates an air of resilience. With a worldly wise aura, he amuses me with witty comments as he cooks up a storm of crepes. He talks about the street parties that take place throughout the year and insists: “I really like it here.” Things turned around for Trixi’s directly after the completion of the road construction, and he estimates that 70 percent of his customers are now regulars that live in or near the area. It is evident that he knows many of his customers personally; he takes the opportunity to support them by displaying their artwork and helping to promote their passion projects. Gestur-ing toward one of his customers, Ernst suggests, “You should talk to Wayne, he’s raised over $10,000 for charity.”
Wayne Helfrich and his wife, Lise, sit at a table in Trixi’s eating crepes. They are eager to talk to me about their endeavours.
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lifetime, he is still one of the most visible and friendly residents in the neighbourhood. When my partner and I moved in across the alley, he was the first person to introduce himself and wel-come us, not only into the neighbourhood, but into his life.
Our other neighbours, Ben and Shale Eberhard, have become an integral part of our lives, too. They are generally happy living here and enjoy the diversity of the people and the family-oriented feel of the neighbourhood. Shale often settles into the couch at the end of the day and will proclaim: “I love our home.” She includes the surrounding area and residents in that definition of “home.” Their two cats, Mo and Barney, are now fixtures in the neighbourhood and people have come to expect to find them waiting for affection on the sidewalk as they walk by. Ben reflects on the construction and asserts that “the redevelopment of Cambie was an opportunity to do something different.” With the arrival of a Shopper’s drug Mart and a new Canada Line station at King Edward Avenue that resembles a bunker, the redevelopment seems to be tragic-ally unravelling in a singular direction. Ben decides, “I don’t think [the redevelopment] killed the neighbourhood, but it killed a bit of the spirit of the neighbourhood.” This sentiment is a common one in Cambie Village, as long-time residents and business owners carry on in a neighbourhood that has not only had a facelift, but multiple transplants.
Cambie Village is anything but homogenous. There is room for the resident homeless and buskers to coexist with patrons of the upscale French restaurant, Pied-à-Terre. In fall 2009, a
fatal shooting at the busy corner of Cambie and Nineteenth Avenue shook us up to the reality of how close to home violent crime can come, but we always wake up the next day to our neighbourhood and carry on.
After the 2010 Olympic Games, the redevelopment will likely continue along Cambie Street and the community that currently inhabits the area may be priced out and forced to make their homes elsewhere. The neighbourhood will survive, but it may be an altogether different neighbourhood ten or twenty years down the road.
For the time being, Ben and Shale, though unsure about the direction in which the neighbourhood is progressing, anticipate starting a family here. Across the alley, Norm tends his garden and continues to introduce himself to those new to the area in an effort to make them feel at home. At Trixi’s, Ernst has the door wide-open and regulars, such as Wayne and Lise, sit down for crepes and continue with their philanthropic work. Gary greets his customers in the Cambie General Store with an unaccountable cheerfulness that never fails to make my day a little better, a little brighter.
The winter has begun to settle in and with it has come the familiar Vancouver chill that foretells long months of rain and unpredictable snowstorms. I keep my windows cracked open as long as I can stand the cold, so as not to miss the nightly flamenco serenade from Kino Café. The Spanish music and the stomp of the dancers’ feet echoes something of the spirit of Cambie Village that, while elusive, still remains.
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AN EqUATIONOr: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Olympics
By Michael HingstonArtwork by Andrew Schick
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SO THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT HAS announced its plans to clear-cut funding to the arts over the next few years. From a projected $42 million in 2009/2010 to just over $3.5 million head-
ing into 2012—that’s a loss of roughly 90 percent, a true decimation.
Yeah, well, big whoop. Arts cuts? More like farts cuts.See, we here at Sad Mag are optimists. Give us lemons, we
make lemonade. Then, while we’re at it, we take the leftover peels and seeds and whip up a few dozen lemon tuxedos. No big deal. We simply make do with what we have.
That’s why when we look at the perfect storm of cultural steamrolling about to descend upon our fair Vancouver—
People
47,600[1] / 2 = 23,800[2] x 1.25[3] = 29,750[4]
Space
29,750 x 0.8[5] = 23,800[6]
Rent
23,800 x $775[7] x 21[8] = $387,345,000[9]
Expenses
$387,345,000 - (a) $20,000[10] = $387,325,000
- (b) (29,750 x $36.41[11]) = $386,261,802.50
Net Profit
$386,261,802.50 to $387,325,000 / 29,750 = $12,983.59 to $13,019.33[12]
[1] Number of people in Metro Vancouver who define themselves as employed under the banner of art, culture, recreation, and sport, according to the 2006
census—for logistics’ sake, we’re going to assume the employees in these four categories are spread out evenly.
[2] Number of art and culture employees in Metro Vancouver.
[3] To factor in those who didn’t earn money in the week before the census, which was its big criterion.
[4] Number of people who care about, and have financial stake in, the arts in Metro Vancouver.
[5] Number of bedrooms/person (adjusted to include couch surfers, and those who’ve shoved a mattress in a linen closet).
[6] Number of bedrooms of prime hospitality real estate.
[7] Average cost of renting a room during the Olympics, per day (based on a sample of craigslist vacation rentals).
[8] Two weeks for the Games proper, plus some wiggle room on either side.
[9] Straight motherfucking revenue.
[10] Cost of renting an 80,000 ft2 warehouse space in Richmond for the month of February (based on real ad, at $0.25 / ft2). This is the frugal option.
[11] Cost, per person, to rent and live out of a 150 ft2 storage locker for one month, based on Public Storage’s famous (if somewhat misleading) “$1 for the first
month” promotion. Figure includes a one-time $18 administration fee and the price of an official Public Storage lock, as well as all taxes. This is the fancy-pants
option—for those whiners who need more than 4 ft2 of damp warehouse space in which to live.
[12] Each person’s share of the net profits. Now go finance a dream project or two! And don’t worry about any of that money finding its way back into the
government’s pockets—this scheme is tax free.
a combination of those crippling arts cuts mentioned above and the 2010 Winter Olympics—we see opportunity. In fact, we see a perfect window in which we can all make up for those lost millions in funding.
It’s true: take a look at the following equation and find out how you, too, can personally take home $13,000 in cold, hard profit for just three weeks of your time. That’s nearly ten times what your share of the pie is under the current budget. All it’ll take is a little co-operation with your fellow artists—and a willingness to live in a cramped warehouse somewhere in Richmond. But we’ll get to that.
Still skeptical? Don’t be. It’s math, people. That shit don’t lie.
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PERSON, PLACE ANd THING
1. PrOphecy Sun 2. The Waneta Valley 3. Swine Flu
1.
2.
3.
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1. PROPHECY SUNby Michelle Reid
Photograph by Julie Jones
IT’S OKAY WITH PROPHECY SUN IF YOU’RE a little frightened by her music. Her creations can be uncomfortable, difficult, at times discordant and “not always pretty.” But that’s exactly the point: “If I’m not
going there and challenging myself,” she explains, “I might as well stop because it’s not really authentic.”
When talking about her creative process, the word “au-thentic” comes up frequently, and in person her demeanour faithfully echoes her music. PrOphecy radiates openness and honesty, and is eager to share, listen, reflect and laugh; after all, her creations were made to share with others.
PrOphecy crafts her pieces within an open-ended framework to allow for the songs to change and evolve as inspiration strikes, using sounds recorded anywhere and everywhere. She works with a particular flavour in mind, but without a rigid structure. “It’s almost like I’m conjuring up a story,” she explains. The benefit of producing like this is that it creates room for the unexpected.
PrOphecy’s complex and ethereal compositions defy description, making it difficult to draw comparisons or to diminish their rich, strange, and vibrant character. You have to hear them for yourself, and after playing them over and over, this formula for listening is best: lie back, kick off your shoes, close your eyes, and let your mind gently wander. This is the antithesis of studio pop.
Each song is a record of a personal metamorphosis, an epiphany. To me, the idea of exploring your psyche and deepest emotions in front of an audience sounds paralyzing. “It’s a very vulnerable place to be,” prOphecy concedes. “At the same time, once you share it with others, it’s not yours anymore. Once it’s out there, it’s for others to take and experience.” Her creations challenge the listener and provide catharsis, an emotional rush from connecting with something authentic, surprising, and raw. PrOphecy’s music, when performed live, is a reminder that listening is not passive but active—a transformative experience for the performer and the audience alike. A Greek philosopher once opined that you can’t step into the same river twice, because the flowing water is always changing. Each time prOphecy performs, this fluid condition applies. And you can be sure that the future holds only richer, deeper musical experiences. “My work is progressing,” she says. “There’s definitely a flavour of warmth to it. I just want to bite my teeth into things more.”
2. THE WANETA VALLEYby Jeff Fry
Artwork by Shari-Anne Gibson
AN INFERNAL SHANGRI-LA IN THE heart of B.C.’s interior: near Trail, near Nelson, Cranbrook, but you’re only ever going to find it through some unfortunate mishap. Maybe you
do by hitchhiking with the wrong guy; maybe by hiking down the wrong trail; or maybe you follow a phantom voice all the way there, to the gut of the Waneta Valley, never to be found again. Imagine it like this: a mountainous desert with a black river running through the deep cleavage of the hills. It’s almost every summer that lightning slugs the rock and trees of Waneta Valley’s mountain slopes, and forest fire erupts. Water bombers haul hulking bellies of water from the river and buzz around in the smoky air, looking to temper the flame. Local newscasts depict the firemen dig-ging up the roots scorched by the heat. At night, you know that this is what the end might look like—the dark body of a mountain outlined with an orange glow, and on one edge of the slope you see a strip of fire like a Titan’s blazing fin-ger reaching around. The river won’t stop it. The hot ashes will just drift over it and alight upon the papery dry earth on the other side, landing upon a leaf, a twig, a stump, or a flake of bark littered with brittle pine needles.
Every night seems the same, only the Titan is consist-ently reaching around a different edge or another slab of trees. Then, suddenly, one morning he’s gone. Not really gone but gone for now. He’s just hiding beneath the red and bronze shield of rock, sparkling with heat and rage, waiting for the next bolt of lightning to let him out. His heart burns as hot as an exploded Molotov bomb. There’s no leaving the Waneta Valley. What you won’t experience here is the feeling of sweetness and hope, but the proven sense that the Titan is behind everything, waiting for his day, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
3.
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3. SWINE FLU by Graham Templeton
Illustration by Justin Longoz
IF WE CAN EXTRACT ONE THING FROM THE tangled mess caused by the swine flu pandemic, it’s that pig farmers are the smartest farmers out there. After all, nobody knows about Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease,
but everybody knows about mad cow; while nobody recog-nizes the name H5N1, we’ve all heard of bird flu. The pig farmers knew that if their pigs were going to be the targets of the next animal-themed disease name, they would have to get on top of an aggressive crisis mangement campaign. They pulled off one of the most amazing feats in media his-tory: they actually managed to get people saying “H1N1,” rather than “swine flu.”
That’s the last of H1N1’s interesting features, however, since it’s actually an entirely boring disease. The recom-bination of three pre-existing strains of influenza, H1N1 is, simply, the flu. It’s not even a terribly exciting flu; at least bird flu manages to kill about two-thirds of those very few who are infected. H1N1 has traded power for virulence, so while it spreads quite quickly, it’s also relatively harmless. It has killed fewer than ten thousand people so far, and given how many people have been infected, simple division can tell you that this actually makes it less dangerous than the seasonal flu we endure each and every year.
If you have to get the flu, H1N1 is the strain to get; not only is it less dangerous than the regular sick-day flu, but you also get to have the most fashionable virus around. Swine Flu is the American Apparel of things that give you diarrhea. If you want to get in on the trend, though, you’d better act quickly; it wasn’t so long ago that the hottest thing in town was bird flu, or mad cow, or SARS, or West Nile. Go back far enough, and you could probably make a case for killer bees.
The fact is that modern medicine has created a world in which only the very old, the very young, and the hopelessly destitute have anything to fear from widespread diseases.
To be honest, if anything’s going to kill you, it will prob-ably be heart disease.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Joining the arts community in ourYear of Living Dangerously!East Van Graphics is offering the not-for-profitarts community 25% off all our website listedprinting prices for all event needs thru 2010!Call Randy at 604-351-2271 or [email protected]
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Joining the arts community in ourYear of Living Dangerously!East Van Graphics is offering the not-for-profitarts community 25% off all our website listedprinting prices for all event needs thru 2010!Call Randy at 604-351-2271 or [email protected]
w w w . e a s t v a n g r a p h i c s . c a
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