a little while …

are really good.

sometimes i think about adding information to the pictures i include in this blog … but so few people read it that i figure i’ll use it as an opportunity to have conversations with people on an “ask me and i’ll tell you” basis. plus, i also like to hear what guesses people have as to where those pictures are from; as they’re usually wrong.

i’ve grown up with a loosely knit collection of influences from the west and the east, and although i don’t identify with my roots the way most males my age do, my ancestry and history demands that i do identify with it somehow. i have zero national pride, for any country i am ‘of’. as much as i used to love lambasting my own culture and its peoples for many of their ills – that i very wrongly interpret as being their own fault – i’d never dream of trading it away for anything else.

the fact is, there is a stigma – a very pretentiously universalist western stigma, and i know because i sometimes share it – that casts a huge shadow over ‘where i come from’ so that it hinders any kind of understanding of the people and their respective lands. sometimes it’s patronizing: “ooooh, you’re from there eh? i hear it’s quite a trouble spot!” ya, that’s much appreciated, monotonous vagueries about places you know fuck all about. but most of the time it’s subtle, and i don’t feel like going into it now. it’s obvious in the attitudes too; i have never ever ever heard anyone mention any desire to want to visit any one of those countries. most of it has to do with a huge misconception that these countries (or ‘trouble spots’) are hostile to outsiders (and please don’t point to iraq as an example) or lack any cultural significance (as so much of our determination of ‘high culture’ is based only on the western canon).

only recently has a city like dubai, with extreme superfluity, managed to excise itself from its surroundings and is slowly becoming one of those strewn about names of cities people want to go to … you know, “oooh, i really want to visit paris/london/new york/hong kong/tokyo.” dubai can kiss my ass, all it’s doing is erecting a western outpost in the east with all the same ideals and a billion times the resources and 25% of the world’s cranes … cause what we really need is another mall with ski slopes.

hmm, i started this post wanting to discuss how beautiful a place like lebanon is. one of those places that packs everything you could imagine, bustling metropolis, ancient ruins, beaches and resorts, etc.. into such a tiny area. but i’ve gone way off track, so here’s a link to one of my favourite songs on sade’s love deluxe album:

Sade – Feel No Pain

you know, sometimes i come off as hopeless based on some of the things i say on this blog and a lot of things do make me feel hopeless. but i’m not hopeless.

i attended this year’s OCAD graduation for which our former governor general, adrienne clarkson was a guest of honour and gave a customary speech (karim rashid also gave a speech. he designs cool stuff but his speech sucked). her speech started off with reference to the explosive nature with which the davinci code (and the subsequent movie) hit the world, and that if there’s anything positive we can take from it, it’s that the massive attention blitz made it possible for the pre-Eusebius (not to be mistaken with portuguese football great Eusebio) gospels to emerge and for us to be aware of the messages therein. yay for optimism!

and now i turn to something of similar, but scaled-down hype, the borat movie, and its utilization of dramatic irony to bluntly showcase ignorance and narrow-mindedness in the american public. but maybe it’s not that simple. i think there’s a dischord that exists between the rhetoric that underlies so much hate/prejudice/blah we’re allowed to easily pass judgement on and the general kindness and hospitality with which the borat character was received into people’s homes and private lives. because, how can both exist? how can you in one instance sermonize on the evils of an ethnic group and at the same time welcome a member of that group into your home? and it does exist …

now this is what gives me hope, that there is an openness in the human heart to grant a stranger a seat at your family table.

(ps: i cannot stop listening to sade)

hanging out in my car as a subarbanite is wont to do on a friday night in an uninspired scattering of boxes constructed out of monochrome lego building blocks (which i love) by someone with zero imagination (which i wish i could love) finding affirmation in a triad of elements consisting of the person in the passenger seat the barren barn that appeared misplaced only by virtue of remaining what it is while what it is in changed and the periodic appearance of a plane in the sky when a song came on the radio whose speakers would randomly deactivate and the only way to re-activate them was to induce some electrical current in the car’s circuitry by yanking on the auto-locks or mirrors that was a cover of a song you can’t help but love by an artist i am in love with. and now i can’t stop listening to her sing her songs.

this is such a sloppy job i’m embarrassed.