So long, and thanks for all the … ~ Fish writer in residence #18 (?)

Ah, the memories of a successful writer-in-residence completion! Remember that in-depth breakdown of Latitude 53’s administrative structure? The long-form interview of musician/painter Gord Downie, talking about his poetic influences? The video map of director Todd Janes’ impossibly taut muscles? The interviews with Aaron Sorkin, Werner Herzog and David Lynch?

No?

Well, yeah, I suppose you can’t really remember best laid plans that never quite made it, like so many barn kittens in the winter, to see the green and verdant bloom of spring. Wait, cats don’t have kittens in the winter. You get the point hopefully. If I had to gauge my barely-over-half-fulfiled expectations of commenting on art and ideas in our community using Hustler magazine’s famous rating system, let’s just say there would not be a glut of engorged genitals on the page. Despite what I thought were some pleasant, curse-laden rants on millionaire-funding schemes, stupid censorship of established cultural material and a few name-dropping travelogues, I kind of blew it.

The travelogues, of course, reflect the problem. Compared to being permanently crippled – which I foolishly believed would afford me more spare time to ruminate and shed light on local artists – travel with the short film killed a number of my dreams, including putting any more work into National Portrait Gallery and co-writing a 99-page book about the skewed arena politics. Not that I’m complaining about success, just making pathetic excuses.

Whipping around North America first on two, then one crutch, then a sickening zombie limp, was frankly the time of my life (and boy is Visa happy about it, too). What happened while I was NOT writing/filming three pieces a month for Latitude’s bubbly blog was, thanks to the encouragement of numerous American strangers, I decided to have a go as a filmmaker now, hence the video of Smokey made for and posted here last week. A couple of festivals – including Sundance – have already told me they’ll waive the usual entry fees, so I’d be an idiot to not pay attention to this gift of circumstance which came about by tossing off the High Level a camera so cheap its own reps at Sony now openly make fun of it.

But my goal with the w-i-r gig was to talk about other people, not exhale some road-trip diary, and unfortunately time and circumstances made all sorts of filthy mess on the carpet when they wriggled around with simple exhaustion. It got so insular I wrote a thousand-word piece about being delayed at the International by a day. Here’s an except of that:

“Our flight is cancelled just as its gaggle of passengers bound for Houston arrives. It’s about 4:45 in the Edmonton morning, and the delineation between morning people and those obviously not that at all becomes clear in a hurry. The airline workers clutch old-school telephones. Desperately, one by one, they’re trying to rebook over a hundred of us our complicated connections through affiliated airlines …

“There is a lot of study on how packed crowds move around each other and how pushing back and forth results sometimes in innocents being crushed to death. The more we understand about crowd dynamics, the more common wisdom, like blaming teenagers at rock concerts for being “animals,” has been proven wrong. Crowds, like economies, are simply sometimes beyond anyone’s control. Especially if they get agitated.”

Another article I had planned involved working quotes I got from Sorkin, Herzog and Lynch on 3D cinematography into a defense of the medium as the new sound, the new colour … Sorkin and even Herzog slamming stereoscopy, despite the latter’s having made a brilliantly gorgeous film called Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Maybe somewhere down the road …

What I would recommend to my replacement, not that I’m in much of a position, is to not have one of your art projects explode beyond any inkling of your predicted hopes or expectations. This kind of thing will seriously ruin your ability to deliver other commitments which, in my case, disturbed my sleep so much that I’ve had nightmares about it. You can ask any of my close friends; I thought and talked about posting here every day and was upset at myself every time Mr. Janes would send me a friendly reminder of what had already been eating away at my nerves from months. Because I care about this gallery, deeply, and didn’t want to let it down.

Being named Latitude 53’s writer-in-residence is one of the best things that’s ever come my way, despite the pain. I can’t wait to see what happens next, and to spread the word from the outside again.

Thanks for reading.