2012 with a Bang!

2012 is starting out with a bang!  As I have moved from the active promotion of The Drifts book, I am in rehearsal and pre-production for a staged version of excerpts from the book. I will be doing 5 shows at The Complex in Hollywood, CA June 8-9 (previews) and June 14-16 (peformances) as part of The Hollywood Fringe. Shortly, I will put up a link to our Kickstarter campaign where you can support this exciting project and earn rewards.

You can learn about screenwriting courses that I currently teach at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies here.

2012 also sees me finishing up another literary novel and seeking representation for a murder mystery/suspense novel, Buried Hearts, in which Jocelyn Sloan, a Chicago homicide detective is forced to dig into the suspicious death of her parents while confronting the killer who she has, unwittingly, inspired.

Also this year will see the publication of two scholarly chapters. The Angel at Our Table: Brooding, Benjamin and the Art of Melancholy to be published shortly in Food and Art (Cambridge Scholars’ Press,UK, 2012); and Selling It: Creative Writing, Neo-liberalism and the Public Good in The Creativity Market: Trendsin Creative Writing in the 21^st Century (Multilingual Matters: New Writing Series, 2012).The first articulates the critical origins of The Drifts while the second tracks the role that creative writing has in the public good. I will be presenting on creative writing and the public good at the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) conference in May here in Toronto. Just before that, in April, I have been invited to read, panel and lead workshops at the Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock. Sometime in May I will go to Thailand to act in a German film playing “The Australian” for the Berlin director, Susanna Salonen. Lastly, I will (fingers crossed) receive my TESOL certification in May or June so that I can teach English anywhere in the world.

You can read my Huffington Post articles and/or connect with me at Facebook/thedrifts page or follow me at twitter.com/thomvernon.

I Love Living in Canada Because….

…I can head over to the Saturday Farmer’s Market at St. Lawrence and get clean (chemical- and antibiotic-free) wild boar, elk and bison. Not to mention all the regular stuff: squash, crunchy bell peppers, big heads of broccoli, buckets of beets, sweet potatoes, jams, apples, wild honey—you get the picture. All at ridiculously reasonable prices and good folks.

 

DIE-IN

We did a Die-in Nathan Phillips Square this afternoon in response to Rob Ford’s proposed cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention & public health programs.

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More video here…

Guys on a Wire (or how four queers zipped, swung and tight-roped their way to a fun-filled fantasy weekend!)

There is a little piece of heaven, two hours north of Toronto at Bracebridge. Santa’s Village. I kid you not. It is (practically) year-round Christmas up there, baby. A steamboat cum Stock Car run by a pirate fugitive from Santa’s Workshop, batting cages, calliopes, a zoo, go karts and a Roller Coaster. There is, also, heaven-adjacent the Eaglecrest Aerial Park. If you weren’t in heaven before you will be way high up in the trees. We camped, we ate foil dinners, made mean French toast on raisin challah and at S’Mores. One of the many existential questions that arose over the weekend was is it correct to call the first s’more, a “s’more”? You might want to ponder that as pics of four guys in the trees parade past.

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U.S. Debt Ceiling: No Accountability, No Consequences, No Fix

Is it the lack of accountability?

The U.S. goes from surplus to multi-trillion dollar deficits. This is the result of Republican-led, Democrat-backed initiation of two wars under false pretenses. The wars were more than not funded, they were de-funded through the Republican/Bush-led tax cuts to the wealthiest taxpayers. De-regulation of the stock market created, in true Bush form, a Wild West, every man for himself circus in which we were the ball shot out of the cannon. Gas, oil and coal corporations also received tax-breaks and exemptions in almost direct inverse proportion to their huge profits. These profits were generated in part from the artificial futures market of petrol/gas based on the political instability brought about by the wars. Consequently, we have had to mortgage huge swaths of our economy to just keep our economies dog-paddling.

After all of this, now, the Republicans want to refuse to allow us to borrow more? 

There has been zero accountability for not only the false reasons for going to war (two of them!), deregulation or corporate tax-evasion/welfare. Because we refuse to hold ourselves accountable for the mistakes we have made, we will continue to dig the hole deeper. We can blithely allow ourselves and our representatives to say , do and vote for anything that expediently serves their electoral and donor interests because there is no sting in making a bad decision. Even if they don’t get elected, just the fact that one made it into an election cycle, if not even all the way through (Newt Gingrich, anyone?), they can land a well-heeled position on the corporate boards of hedge-funds and various lobbyists (the list is too, too long). It’s a win-win. For them. For the rest of us, we will not get off so easy.

The problem is that with no accountability, there is no way to know how, as a nation, to go forward or to fix the problem. We just carry on like hamsters doing the same thing over and over. Hence, the coming second economic crash as the housing and stock markets careen off as a second wave of securitizations mature.

This period will not reverse course, until we course correct and demand accountability.

Rewriting Class! Registration Wrapping Up…

Here are some notes on a fresh, new class, Rewriting: A Toolbox That Works, I’ll be leading at U of T SCS this summer (starts July 6, Wednesdays, 6-9 PM, 8 weeks).

I’ve been in the arts education world for awhile. But it has always struck me as odd that there aren’t learning environments where writers can deepen their work through re-writing. God knows, the initial inspiration is thrilling—but then what?

Rewriting is, for me, is a bit like peeling an onion.Over time and by poking around I learn more and more about what I’ve written. By engaging with the material in a focused way, the material teaches me what it needs to be the most potent, resonant and effective.

The Passages

To enter the Paris Passages is to tunnel back in time. They are constructed of iron and glass and are like veins running off the main arteries (aka boulevards). They are the veins of commercialism, seduction and mystery. If you happen to be looking at some hot tamale walking towards you on the left, you may indeed miss the passage inviting you on your right.

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When one does see the entrance, and chooses to enter (for passages are all about choice), one is immediately enclosed in iron and glass. Straight lines, curlicues, rectangles, squares; the bright day dims and the eyes adjust. The ceilings, constructed of thin iron beams and plate glass, rise begin at the top of the tall walls and mount to an apex. Some of those mounts are curved, some pointed. You are enclosed, hemmed in and one has to literally tunnel your way out. One is literally tunneling into the past because most of Arcades (passages) date from the turn of the 19th c. to the Restoration in mid-century. The names of the Arcades themselves trace from their original owners or intent. For instance, the Passage Vero-Daudet

And then—a chateau!

From a little town in the South of France, near the Spanish border, in the haute Pyrennees, Walter Benjamin and a tiny posse of refugees hid themselves amongst longshoremen and ducked onto a trail that took them up the mountain to the Spanish border. How WB ‘hid’ as a longshoreman while carrying a large suitcase with (it is presumed) a manuscript in it is beyond me. In those times, perhaps as now, when you don’t have papers one has to have a facility to wriggle through the fog: ‘…faut se debrouiller’. WB with his heart condition and heavy suitcase had the patience of a donkey. All of those hours in the Bibliotheque Nationale and putting one foot in front of the other up that ascent demands patience. So, me too, I’ll hike up that mountain tomorrow in WB’s footsteps and try to have the patience to notice.

I was running yesterday in the Bois de Vincennes and at the end after a long, long run—a chateau! Running’s a bit like that mountain, and writing too, one foot in front of the other, the breath I’m breathing now, one word showing the way to the next.

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Eiffel Tower in the Catacombes

I can see the Eiffel Tower in Berlin sidewalk pavement, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Bracque and the catacombes.

They are each composed of little pieces, brush strokes and bone.

Fragmentation is all that we have. But, but. Out of fragmentation comes wonders of montage like the cast iron, wrought iron, the Eiffel Tower, cinema, Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, German Expressionism, Foucault and, of course, Benjamin.

Collecting takes on a whole new meaning/ resonance when one realizes that it is the human impulse to organize, construct, recreate and imagine.

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Iron, Arcades & Canadian Geese in the Bois du Bologne

Feeling melancholic and joyful, go figure. Being over here has helped me to understand  the little hunchback that haunted WB and who haunts me as well. This guy is always there to take charge when things don’t go my way or I get thrown a curve ball. But, over the last numerous months (before, during and probably, after this trip), we’re getting a better handle of what we require from each other. I am making it much clearer exactly who is calling the shots.

That said, it has been a time of learning and reflection—in the best way possible. I’m having these moments of absolute clarity (do you get them, too?) as I’m racing down an icy hill in Vermont with ‘Ray of Light’ booming in my ears in the Jardin du Tuileries or the Bois du Bologne with Gaga blaring. I am present here. There are these moments after making the top of a hill in Montmartre, when the evening is coming; when a long running path stretches out, beautifully, ahead of me; when I see Canadian geese (we’re everywhere!) digging by the lakes here. The smell is different than Berlin (flowers and dog poop, often), Los Angeles (sage and jasmine, often), Vermont (manure and air so pure it singes the lungs) and now Paris (a definitely consistent floral scent). I’m not sure what it is but it is not sage.

Two days ago, I discovered by chance the Passage de Panorama