A farm west of Lethbridge...
I'm driving somewhere south of Calgary, West of Lethbridge, a country road, then the best picture ever, the sun setting, sky turning every shade of over-saturated blue, moon rising, I'm taking pictures...a barn, big, red, tourist, rising up from the edges of the river...a row of trees trace silhouettes against the sky....photography gold...
Down, to the farm, I work here, haven't worked here forever, don't know if they remember me, some sort of tourist farm, with shops for all the visitors, I'm trying to find where I fit in, don't know, it's busy and understaffed...
...And I'm wondering, when did I last work here? And do they have a cheque for me? I'm not sure, not sure if anyone remembers me, soooo many tourists, don't know where to start, which shop to man...
...I find myself wondering, I've driven here from Calgary, to work, so far, 3 hours, and I'm not sure if they remember me, have my cheque, only I remember they told me I'd be back, and I'm thinking that this is bollocks and so I return to my car, leave the tourist barn filled with shops, drive back towards Calgary, I need to get a job closer to home...
(Sick the past couple of days, chest, head cold, sleeping 12, 14 hours per day, these amongst the feverish dreams...)
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Trudeau being Trudeau
Now I wasn't and I'm still not necessarily a fan. Yep, he's good looking, charismatic, and all the rest, still....
Nonetheless, here, he acquits himself rather well and I'm glad he's our PM. There's a lot worse options out there...
(Can't seem to embed this. Follow the link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWI5-vWqcGc
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The Role of the Artist
I will give you this, that if you've found this, that art to you isn't some accurately rendered portrait of a duck, panda-bear or wolf. That you've set the bar a little bit higher and have some appreciation of both the history and role of art...
That said, there's no accounting for taste. Still, I'll try and sum up my own tastes and expectations below...
The role of the artist is to open us up to new experiences, thoughts, feelings, realizations and understandings. These things are not done from the center, they are done from the outskirts, from the margins...you cannot see or describe the shape of the world if you live at the center, from the center you see the world spreads out limitless and without end, rather you must live and travel upon it's edges...
...the artist, they delineate and describe the shape of our world, our expectations, of emotion, of love, of thought, they open up to us the doors to worlds we are too fearful and inadequate to explore ourselves firsthand...
...there is the myth of the self-destructive artist, Orpheus, any one of a number of popular singers, Van-Gogh, ... the myth survives, because what do we expect of them? That they travel further than us, experience more than us, that they feel, love, understand, intuit more than us, and that they somehow bring us back and translate some portion of their understanding, so that we may, vicariously, live through that minute remainder of their experience, the bored suburban housewife who never has been camping, a picture of a wolf upon her wall, the articulate university graduate, never been kissed, Klimt's "The Kiss", the pedant, never outdoors a single night his entire life, "Starry Starry Night", the voyeur, Egon Schiele...from a person's taste in art we may somewhere discern where their life is lacking, what speaks to them...
...For those who would live, they need nothing, they need only to create, for the rest there is the artist, that shared and subdivided, infinitely replicated portion of life that is dulled the moment it is shared and discovered, perhaps only music stands up to the endless replication and division of art, everything else wears thin...but if you were wondering why art doesn't grow in the suburbs, why, it's the same reason that love doesn't, life doesn't, intelligence doesn't, art demands a richer soil, and the comfortably numb will never weep for joy or sadness to fertilize it...
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People are like poker hands...
And trying to explain people, find the metaphor for them, their infinite variety and lifestyles, successes and failures, and it imperfectly comes to me...
People are like poker hands. If life is most like a game of poker, then people must be the hands. The cards, those qualities or attributes we've drawn or cultivated...
A face card? Queen, King, Ace? With this you can bluff your way through almost anything...Everyone likes a pretty face. Even if the rest of your hand is shit, a 2 of Spades for intelligence, 3 of hearts for integrity, hold those close to your chest, bluff, bluff, bluff, and the poorer poker players, they'll only see the face card and guess you're a winner...
Maybe you got a low face card...a 6 or a 7. Shit. Nobody looks at you, thinks your a player, but you plod through life winning, victory after victory, success after success, because that isn't the card they should be looking at, you've got other cards, close to your chest, or maybe laid out where everyone can see them, a full house, straight, a flush even, and with these cards you're a winner...you're solid.
We are all a bit like this, the card we show, we value, whether it be integrity or looks, intelligence, wit, culture, education, whatever, this is how we are judged, and by those who value that card accordingly. Those with a face card, they don't give a damn about your integrity, culture, personality, intelligence card. But in the end, it's not the card you're showing, it's the hand that you're holding, and how that card fits in, and this decides the game.
Still, a lot of people go far by bluffing...
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