Saturday, September 29, 2007

Cat Chronicles (aug 8.07)




Hey there Vermouth

Hey there beer
Good old friend of mine
I've come to love your bitterness
and to taste your fizzy brine

Oh hey there Vermouth
dark duty
You don't taste so bad do you?
dark duty

You don't go well with cigarettes
and you might make me gag

You're a dark duty
and you're not meant to be had
all alone..

Friday, September 28, 2007

Senor

Charles

A quiet might

Love Will Keep Us Together

Love Will Keep Us Together / Captain & Tennille
Inspired by James Culleton's
"Smoke Tygre @ The Label Gallery"



Jakebrakes


Thursday, September 27, 2007

from BBC.co.uk


At first glance, the photographs seem innocuous enough. Men and women in uniform lie back in deckchairs, listen to accordion music, decorate a Christmas tree.

Karl Hoecker and his dog, Favorit (courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

It seems like a carefree life - but the pictures were taken at the Auschwitz death camp at the height of the Holocaust.

The happy men and women are Nazi officials enjoying time off from the business of genocide, their images collected by Karl Hoecker, an adjutant to the camp commander.

His unique album of 116 photographs was found in Frankfurt in 1946 by a US intelligence officer, who kept it to himself for six decades before showing it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum last year.

Museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding, who has helped to put album online, believes the very ordinariness of the scenes captured is what makes them so chilling.

It's shocking because it's a reminder that they were human beings, that they weren't red-eyed monsters
Rebecca Erbelding
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
"It shouldn't have surprised us that this was how they lived in Auschwitz, that this was how they unwound after a 'hard day's work'," she told the BBC News website.

"But I think it's shocking because it's a reminder that they were human beings, that they weren't red-eyed monsters, that they had pets and children and lives, and yet could do this to other people."

sept 25/07, morning (revised from Feb/99)

the beat of the sun
is nothing
at all like
that of my blood and
your eyes are
nothing like the full moon
(though, in fairness, they
do make me howl and
go crazy),

so i don't know what,
if anything,
to associate with nature
(since this pen is
nature and this computer screen is
nature),

but you have a talent, you told me,
for spreading your toes out wide and for
spreading yourself out thinly,
and as we lie
there together, your left hand trailing
off towards the floor your
fingers pointing outward, pointing me
in some strange direction,
you said:

be careful what you wish for--
you just might get it.

now you're gone.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

September Evening (REMIX)

you hang on the back gate
and demand
I release the dog
wedging the toe of your small shoe
deeper between the boards

she whines
and you shoulder this weight
on the path
where I put my hand in yours

inside the yard
you and I
crouch down
and between wet nose and nuzzles
watch the slugs wriggle
in the mud
piled up beside the garage

you ask me if unicorns live in the city
I wonder if their territory includes us
and the wolves, the coyotes and the pebbles of life
that dot your landscape

looking over at me
with somber brown eyes
you turn this moment to stone

The Scott Nolan Band

Aria

History is a violence
perpetrated on the living

It is all here
in joyful decline
and concatenating vigour

Moving forward
is nothing but moving
and moving backward is nothing
but moving
outward and inward is nothing
but all at once
you and the exuberant
aria

RBC Painting Comp.

Vancouver artist, Arabella Campbell named national winner of the ninth annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition
Calgary artist Chris Millar and Toronto artist Melanie Authier named honourable mentions with a total of $55,000 awarded among the winners.

c'est dommage pour Mel and Shaun, :(

Smoke Tygre @ The Label Gallery


Yahoo, Free Clip Art, and Britney Spears on the Generous Ebay

Yahoo can hear lyrics
of songs
trying to map
a distance
that is not there

Dictionaries
of hot mail
and music lyrics
fill your mind
to clear a gap
that is not found with a search engine

The internet pushes
a mass of jokes
that get you closer
to games that are not there

Napster is not what you need
to find the partitioned mp3’s
that are not there

Breath in the snes roms
and time your movement to yahoo.com
to balance the givens
that will you weather
and make you there

This is my google
the music of the new
and the everlasting wallpaper

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Concentricity, time, and the generous divide

You can hear a single point
of madness
trying to breach
a distance
that is not there

Fleets ripple
of turpitude
and colour
your mind
to clear a gap
that is not there

Islands push
a mass
of hymnals
that get you closer
to a pulpit that is not there

The rope of reason
is not what you need
to tie the circular partitioned
that is not there

Breath in
and time
your movement
to balance the givens
that will you life
and make you there

This is my body
the body of the new
and everlasting covenant

voila!


The New Sign & The New Era (Part 1)

(sign design my Jenni Reeder, Don Ritson, and Daniel Saidman)

(installers were Daniel Saidman, Josey Krahn, Andrew Courtnage, and Mr. Bruce)

(movie and ladder holding by James Culleton)

RIP Ken Danby


Ken Danby, recognized as one of the world's foremost realist artists and best-known in Canada for his iconic hockey painting, "At The Crease," has died at the age of 67 while canoeing in Algonquin Park.

New Sign - New Era?


Well...

as is the usual with A Label for Artists Gallery, I thought I was just dropping a painting off for an exhibition on Picasso(which opens tonight at 7) but in reality I found myself helping with putting up the new sign(on a rainy, windy and miserable day, sound familiar?).

Unlike the last sign episode, the characters in this installment were wise with sign experience and well prepared for the elements, and all the materials were brand new and everything went very smoothly(right down to having brand new light bulbs put installed previous to the hanging!).

Tuesday, September 25th, the new era begins...

(you'll have to go down to the gallery to see the finished piece, for those of you out of country, more pictures and videos to come....)

West Broadway-- west, 0123h, east 0119h, Sept 25


Monday, September 24, 2007

Being & Time

It goes
twirl-lily-dew

Gone
illusory-boo

You are
undividedly-you

Still and
fleshily-mused

Ken Danby, 67


Sang Ho Park

Sunday, September 23, 2007

West Broadway, west: Sept 22, 1917h


West Broadway, east, Sept 22, 1915h


Rushing

This is a poem I recently wrote. It's about my bike. Feel free to criticize it mercilessly, I won't be offended.

Old creaky bike

rusty mechanical ages
that precipitate in corroded auras

That make me raspy
and angry

Where did that old orange screw go
it rolled away and disintegrated into the earth
Goodbye, goodbye
So long old friend
I think I need to trade you in, faithful steed.
(The screws disintegrate one by one)

Body of steel,
and cycles of iron
Of what will I wish of you when you are gone
Of what will I laugh of if it's not of your shortcomings
Old chain pedal machine.

Old friction of metal against metal
with my volition as your will
There is no difference between the two
We move so nicely together, its as if we were stilll.

Still...

Faithful metallic steed
creaky as you are mighty
we are now as one, russshingg...

What are you missing?

Until I decide to set you free.

Frankenartist

Saturday, September 22, 2007

further to: l'enfant sauvage



...in which our feral child notices himself in a mirror, and makes threatening gestures.

no, this is not a wig.

Compare

Friday, September 21, 2007

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

YWG, post-security check rant

I feel the tear stream down my cheek
When she takes that jar away from me
She does not know just what it means
To contain the world's finest salsa recipe.

Made of fresh chipotle and raspberry
By the hands of the son of José Madrid
To have it back, I beg, I plead
But this reasonable request she does not heed!

She throws it into the trash bin, you see
Just doin' her job as airport security
An all this really does get to me
Cause it's getting so tight I can hardly breathe.
It's getting so tight I can hardly breathe.

What's the harm, this jar is so tiny
Seal isn't broken, edges aren't pointy
They allowed me travel with food last week
But this case offers nothing she'll hear from me.

"These are the rules Ma'am, it's all routine
No pastes, no drinks, no liquidries
Can you Imagine if each Tom, Dick and Harry
Wanted each forbidden item set free?"

The morning sun rises, it's five thirty-three
I'm fragile in state and my eyes are sleepy
I've had just enough of this power-trip scene
Cause it's gotten so tight I can hardly breathe
It's gotten so tight I can hardly breathe

baby beafers are so darn pute!



couldn't help me-self

Pembina Hall, Sept. 16, 1330h

My stomach feels
giddy and tight and
it's not just the
coffee or lack of
sleep it's

something else it's
the wide muddy river of
time outside these windows it's
Grey Gull dreaming overhead it's
the swirl of cinamon in my french toast and
the wind the far
openings of space the
friends in distant cities and near ones too it's
the knowledge of the wolf who
ate his own paw
but paws will
grow back or we'll
learn to walk without them it's

this knowledge of belief it's
this belief of knowledge

that cats curl themselves next to me for
protection or safety or
love (we imagine in our
human conceit) it's
how Y's skin sleeps in
her dim bedroom while her
souls sits somewhere else it's
how these hearts and minds and
bones and bodies mix
themselves up together,
how they ignore our illusions of
seperateness and self-hood how
all things return to their source and
paws grow back and

I imagined 100
impossible things before breakfast and
dreamed that our text messangers all stopped working
and the sky turned green

and if all we had left
was nothing
but this speechless voice of
cycles, birth, death, then
at least we all have it
together.

Sept 16, 8:40 a.m. taxi

sun so giving and
sweet on morning pavement
it could bring tears to your
tired morning eyes if you let it
but this is all
too much
second nature for you now--

this hard concrete,
these backlanes like nerves and
this gasoline blood,
hydro tower becomes the blue sky and

Dark Dog, on his leash
sniffs the cool yellow air, expectant and excited--

he doesn't know any better--
to him this is all still
so new,
to him it's all still so bright and
young,
every second

alive

and pregnant,
with
its own possibilities.