right on q

“we get the rap we deserve-if people don’t like the rap of today, chances are-they just don’t like today”

“growing up, i wanted to be a wrestler”

“i’m a musical humanist”

“nothing says ‘i miss you’ like profiting off of your death….. just kidding.”

“you’re gonna have to get in here”

there’s something about losing track of how many times you’re moved by live music before 10am-it’s a magical thing. i’ve worked a few more in a row than i usually do, but when i got the text at 9:30 on sunday night offering me tickets to the first taping of the new q, i just couldn’t say no. when i made it in on a picture of the barcode on my phone and ran right into the homie that i never have to call, because invariably we’ll turn up at the same stuff, i knew it was the right decision. the show that unveiled further proved everything that i love about canadian arts and culture, and having ready access to the cbc.

tanya tagaq, chilly gonzales with a freaking string quartet, bahamas and shane koyzan-what a spectrum of canadian talent, across genre, at least. i guess there are certain things that we’ll (still) have to settle for, or accept and make the best of. i bristled at the end when shad so charitably obliged the middle-aged white lady’s request to “rap”, and couldn’t help but think about mos def‘s comment on that at the 92nd street y talk he did a few years ago when people run into him on the street and are all, “rap-you good!” i mean, are we really not past the point where folks can see that demanding that people perform and entertain at the drop of a dime is disrespect-full and demeaning? even with the best intentions? (sigh). it’s not like anyone would ever ask taylor swift to ‘sing a little ditty’ if they run into her at target. just sayin’.

dear people-i can only hope that you’ll stop being wack. i got babies on the come-up and i want them to have a different life.

but hey, now i can say that i was interviewed for the national with jael richardson, whom i just met a few moments before and i got to reconnect for the first time with another cbc enthusiast and bask in its glory (i covet your sweater, sarah).

big thanks to cj and sarah for the tix.

reg is playing: robert glasper and brandy

rubby is playing: the eq at segafredo, jonathan emile, biggie, badu, jarvis church, teodros, prince

duolingo status: 2914 lingots, 100 day streak, french translation level 14, portuguese level 15, translating articles about shonda rhimes, the knicks, and ho chi minh

awkward double-book of the evening: hooked at tpm and game 2 in jurassic park (oops)

feeding myself:honeyed ginger jasmine tea and smoked trout breakfast sandwich

the girl who was saturday night-heather o’neill

“But they knew from history that it doesn’t work to kill a writer. Every time you shoot a poet, a dozen new ones are born. It’s like plucking a grey hair.” (395)

“You should beware of motherless children. They will eat you alive. You will never be loved by anyone the way that you will be loved by a motherless child.” (144)

“After the 1980 referendum, everyone with prospects left the city. Everyone here now was a direct descendant of a daydreamer. A disappropriate amount of people in the city were planning careers in the circus.” (164)

“A man without children doesn’t belong to any class. He is a free man.” (106)

“Without the screaming of babies, we would all stop dead in our tracks; we would all lie in our beds daydreaming for the rest of eternity.” (402)

“The thing is that Nicolas and I were afraid to be without each other. And whenever you are dependent on someone, then you naturally start to resent them. Everybody is born with an inkling, a desire to be free.” (123)

freedom, daydreaming, family ties, artists-oh how montreal of a book. i remember how blown away i was by lullabies for little criminals, and this is no different. although i read it during the dark year, on a recommendation from a custo who saw a poster of her event on a pole in the ‘trill, just reading back the quotes now gives me a shiver. there is the kind of beauty that comes from never leaving your block (the kind that i haven’t yet been privy to, but hey-opposites attract, right?) and this book is the epitome of that. hashtag, modern feminist leonard cohen.

“How could you not love someone who came up with songs like that? That was the trouble with people with talent. That was the reason they got away with murder.” (138)

“Etienne liked young girls. They believed in his persona completely. What did he need with women who could see right through him?” (105)

“If you want to see yourself the way the devil sees you, then read your sweetheart’s diary.” (25)

“On principle, I ignored guys when they chose to talk like forties pimps from Chicago.” (294)

“I suddenly couldn’t stand to listen to it. It was like listening to a lover lie when you know the truth.” (345)

“Whenever a smile is glued on someone’s face, it seems kind of sleazy. But I was in love with him and you can’t find someone you that you love sleazy.” (311)

“Rich people weren’t responsible for petty crimes. They were responsible for the great crimes that took hundreds of years to commit and were, therefore, unpunishable.” (69)

“No one sleeps like young sociopaths meditating on the wonders of being themselves.” (51)

“She was an ambitious, clueless lunatic.” (80)

and sometimes, relationships get ill:

“If you smoked menthol cigarettes, people wouldn’t bum them off you. He knew all the tricks of being alone.” (144)

“Nobody wants to be reminded of what they could have been. If there was a time machine invented and we could all travel back in time to see ourselves as children, we would never recover.” (272)

“He never encountered narcissism quite like that embodied by my father.” (55)

“Maybe the saddest thing about Adam leaving was that I wasn’t going to miss him. How did I know for sure this wasn’t love?” (108)

“There is nothing as frustrated as being consumed with rage over someone and knowing that you aren’t even on their mind.” (37)

“Adam and I had always wanted to swap our memories, as if we were kids trading cards at the back of a school bus. He had wanted to have a memory of being famous. And I wanted a memory of feeling secure.” (243)

“Men always come back. When you least want them back, that’s when they come back.” (318)

“We were very, very suspicious of tears, having grown up on Boulevard Saint-Laurent.” (98)

“She thought that I was a gold digger, which I was, except I wasn’t there for the money. I was there because I knew that Misha had an abundance of love that he had saved up. He had store it under his mattress because he’d had no one to spend it on.” (112)

libraries used: annette street, college and shaw

movie tie-in: the future (dir. miranda july)

cds donated to the library: year of the carnivore soundtrack, imposs-mon poing d’vue

double cds kept: (due mostly to 1/2 discs): lauryn hill unplugged, ohmega watts-watts happening

true lies-mariko tamaki

“Just as you don’t have a crush with someone (you have a crush on them), it’s similarly impossible to have sex with a crush.” (98)

oh, the wisdom. the fantasy! i read this one almost a year an a half ago, and i remember it being so funny that i missed my stop on the streetcar on my way to a chfa party. when i reached that party, sarah told me that it was one of her faves, and i like that its compact packaging allowed me to slip it into my fanny pack and eat some duck-based hors d’oeuvres.  she did mention something about seeing mariko perform live, and i cannot find any videos. so-if anyone can, please share-please and thank you.

“There is no such thing as clash or mismatch but there is such a thing as ugly. And nothing goes with ugly.” (59)

“My grandmother told me once that lies are like bubble gum, they stick to your teeth and if you swallow them, they take twelve years to digest. My grandmother says that truth is like honey, sweet on your tongue.

Oh if only it were true.

I think I would be more inclined to compare lies to pearls; they look better strung together in a set.” (13)

My father and I have had a particular and consistent relationship when it comes to communication: I have a lot to say, and he doesn’t want to hear it.” (50

“…Dave was one of those strange boys who was less interested in sexual adventures than he was in an intimate and meaningful relationship. Dave’s mom, I guessed, spent an excess of quality time with him. Either that or she completely ignored him.” (31)

it’s a thin line, between lie and truth, love and hate, and parental neglect and smothering. i love how she just melds this all together. i remember reading about tamaki in ricepaper magazine, before i was a contributor. i’m glad she’s still working, and i’m still jealous of her sweaters. my favourite piece of hers was a hilarious article about fat girls and fashion.

i had another dream about a dog, this time i was trying to smuggle a dog at work but accidentally killing it twice in extreme temperatures, and then it disappeared completely. i read about dog dreams, and they’re possibly about loyalty and ex-partners hanging around. i hung out with milo, david‘s dog bestie a few days ago, and he was crying and moping then cuddling and biting my hands. reading up on that-it’s about possessiveness. perhaps it’s the loose incense that i’m burning that is making my dreams more vivid, but it’s all a bit eerie.

my ex recently told me that he “dated someone else and didn’t like it” so he wants to get back together. guess whose framed baby picture has just been replaced by my newly won marmot portrait?

also-shouts to the reference library, not just for providing the portrait from their photo archives, but also the info that there are actually marmots at the toronto zoo. i may get to observe some actual marmots before the year is up. badu is good.

dating your mom-ian frazier

“who do you like better, me or faulkner?”

“The hardest thing about being a member of the Bloomsbury Group is learning how to be a person at the same time you’re being a star. You’ve got to rise above your myth.” (8)

“there’s more violence in one episode of game of thrones than there is in my 500+ page novel”

joseph boyden is handsome. so handsome. i wasn’t prepared for the depth of his physical beauty, but perhaps this is the reason that for the first time in my five years of attending author events at the toronto public library, i faced the possibility of not being allowed in because i didn’t register. i had avoided reading the orenda because of the violence, but after hearing him speak on it, i realize that i’ve been a fool to listen to (mostly white) people’s focus on it. as much as it’s a part of our creation myth (canada’s, that is), i have read a lot of wagamese in the last couple of years, and at times, it is a bit much to take.

but mister is as interesting as he is handsome (and as great as a writer, obvi)-having worked as a digger of child graves, with chickens and goats in his north york backyard because his doctor father accepted them as payment from his immigrant clients, mixing it up with the jesuits, and riding his motorcycle to louisiana to learn more, at school and presumably, in life.

i paired it with the sole quote from dating your mom, a book that i ultimately deserted, perhaps it was a good thing that the library let that hold expire. but it was nice to handle a book that still had the envelope for the catalogue card-i should’ve looked at the last date stamp, oops. it’s a pretty fitting pairing, i think.

branches used: ny central, annette street
duolingo status: 248 day streak, italian level 12, 2070 lingots
watching: the office (season 9)
reading: kavalier & clay-just like chicago (they always have good one books)

all of our names-dinaw mengestu

“No one I met believed I was a revolutionary, and I didn’t have the heart to claim I wanted to be a writer.” (4)

“One paper might have been skimmed a dozen times before someone finally paid half-price to take it home, granting everybody, even the poorest among us, just enough information to take a position, however misinformed.” (88)

“I came for the writers and stayed for the war.” (143)

another one that i have to thank the philly free library podcast for, and yet again casts morality and obligation as the middle ground between love and politics. i just had to turn down a friend who wanted to use the personal work that we’ve been doing over the last few months for a school project, and i know it’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but i’ve learned from my days of being flattered to be an interviewee-it’s not as glamorous as you may think-and the considerations that i take not to be an asshole as an interviewer are not the norm. my on-camera work has also come up over the weekend in relation to rock climbing, which may once again be in my near future.

“I remember taking him to the post office once so he could mail a letter to his mother. While we stood in line to buy stamps, I asked him what her name was. He looked up as if he no longer knew the answer to that question, or had lost the right to answer it.” (31)

“He said his prayer without any devotion, as if he had either long ago lost his faith or didn’t believe those men were entitled to share it.” (230)

and, just like that-the author expertly slips in stitches of religion and family and native lands to the narrative of identity and our influence in shaping identity for ourselves and others.

“We didn’t know where all the cracks and fault lines between us lay, and so we said little, in order to avoid them. Once we were in the bedroom, we rushed through our clothes. Kissing was an afterthought.” (53)

“I had assumed that passion and speed were the same: the faster you flung and thrust, the more desire; maybe the difference between fucking and making love isn’t just a question of the heart but of the hands as well. Lovers fumble all the time-especially in winter, through all the layers.” (151)

“I kept thinking I had had enough of him, only to realize, before reaching home, that I felt emptier now than before I saw him.” (54)

“Isaac was so much easier to be with when only the ghost of him was around, and I remember thinking that if he were dead or never came back I’d probably learn to care for him more than if he were to walk through the door right then and never leave.” (71)

“He had so much more than my leaving to mourn that I would like to think I slipped away as quietly as possible.” (255)

and finally, the love story. or, the longing story, as it is more that than the former. but isn’t the longing what makes a love story a story? when it’s present and new and forming and fresh, it’s a narrative-it’s not a story until it’s over, or it’s impossible. there has to be some marker of a shift in time before it becomes a story, and a blink before the other stories it overlaps into is visible from the peripheral vision of time and space. this one is as beautiful as it is haunting, and blurry as it shifts from characters through characters, and proves (again) that geography has nothing on the heart.

library used: parkdale
library material not to miss: picture day
duolingo update: translation tier 8 (french) attained

the dead are more visible-steven heighton

“English resembled a sprawling bureaucracy. Hard to get a definite answer. Harder to find your way around.” (8)

“A place I could feel I belonged forever by virtue of not belonging. Never belonging. Islands always rebuff belonging.
But I was falling out of love with distance, absence.” (20, Those Who Would Be More)

“It’s a smile that enjoys itself a little too much.” (80, Outtrip)

oh, boy. i really chose this one because i promised myself i would non-movie trailer blog today, and i’m secretly giving all my attention to the re-watching of my so-called life, a show that apparently still makes me cry. i’m surprised at the ru-paul reference that just passed, and of how i’m also understanding the mother’s point of view this time around. this book was recommended by melanie, after she saw the author read sometime last year. i enjoyed the collection most of the way, i think the last few stories were dragging a bit for me. ok, that’s it. back to mscl.

rhymes for young ghouls

the movie is so much better than the trailer. thank you, everyone who made this happen.

(you) set me on fire by mariko tamaki

“Sometimes silence sits on talk like a bully squashing any power words might possibly have.” (174)

“Here’s something. You can talk and talk and talk and not get rid of silence.” (174)

“hang up and then you call right back…”

so, shortly after my baby dropped me off today, i got this text from him: “wayne brady is dating chili” which i guess means that usher is now potentially a bitch that wayne brady may need to choke.

“Everyone knows that people hate/dump people who get dumped all the time. I have this feeling that it’s easier to dump someone you know someone else has dumped. It’s like throwing out something you bought at a garage sale.” (108)

i have to say that i enjoyed tamaki‘s non-fiction stories better than this ya, but i respect that she’s still revered and working. she’s one of the first canadian artists that i learned about during my stint at ricepaper, and she has not rested on her laurels, but has grown like krs-1‘s nose.

“There should be a system of language that lets us know not only what people mean but also the level of hostility implied. Imagine how lovely all of our childhoods would be if we knew that sort of thing, if we knew the difference between a person being vicious and a person attempting to be friendly.” (57)

i just heard the (underwhelming) new common track (while watching him win all those awards for finding forever) and admittedly, it is hard to tell.

annabel by kathleen winter

“you don’t believe in heaven ‘cuz we’re living in hell”

“To Thomasina people were rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming.” (41)

this one was recommended to me by someone i no longer speak to. it was also chosen by the ontario librarian’s association a few years ago as a book that we should read. indeed, its subject matter is tragic and lends itself to possible exploitation, but it’s easy to be sensationalist-harder to find another way. it’s delicate already, but complicated infinitely by association with a child’s psyche, and somehow the coldness of labrador as setting provides comfort through it all.

“Why did people not realize children could withstand the truth? Why did adults insist on filling children with the deceptions their own parents had laid on them, when surely they remembered how it had felt to lie in bed and cry over fears no one had bothered to help you face.” (199)

“A lot of Labrador was like that. Dull and frozen and in the dark one minute; bursting with sour and sweet and red and green when you did something with it. Labrador was a place where the human touch meant everything.” (122)

just hold on, we’re going home.

dream wheels-richard wagamese

“who’s the desperado?”

“There were no mulatto gangs. He was alone here, and he felt the weight of his isolation every time he hit the street, the disdain, the anger his obvious mixed blood caused in people. It was a dangerous place to be without backup.” (30)

richard wagamese is a national treasure. i had never even heard of him before last year, but his books have only ever been recommended to me by librarians, and that’s pretty spectacular. shoutout to nancy of (mostly) parkdale for talking to me about ragged company first and to pam for introducing me to the ola who have once again suggested one of his books to be on this year’s summer reading list. i can’t wait to devour that one in conjunction with the buffet of delicious and nutrituous works in his canon.

“The way he figured it, smell was the one sense that allowed you to hold on to things, to remember, recollect, reassemble a life, and he came here to do just that.” (12)

“The whiskey smell spewed into the room with each snore. It seeped from his skin, hung in the air like the curses from an hour ago, and her throat constricted from its sour, sickly richness.” (16)

“It struck her then that language is built of silences, the real words tucked away inside the wide gulf of the silences people fall into between the words.” (200)

“But hope bruised too, and Claire fingered her swollen nose and felt the crush of loss that hurt more than the beating. Hope sometimes felt worse than dying.” (77)

mister wagamese-i’m great-full for the beauty and the heartbreak that you wordpaint-thank you.