“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Sclemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated…”

Great piece. Interesting that quite a number of ex-soldiers have ended up at OWS. I suspect many more will join over time, should the movement continue to gather strength. One the big differences about this war, is the number of soldiers surviving what would have been fatal blasts because of better armor, but sustaining traumatic brain injuries, or mild traumatic brain injury. There is much greater knowledge of the effects of concussion than before the war – and probably more in the US than in other countries – but I imagine there are a great many soldiers being released into general population with undiagnosed mtbi’s, and cognitive, emotional problems that neither they nor the people close to them understand.
Curiously, I heard this broadcast this morning, about a video game built for people with PTSD and MTBI:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2011/dec/02/family-heroes-video-games-veterans/

This has been the oddest war, totally divorced from the nation as a whole, the troops both lauded and ignored at the same time.

t.

tim

Well that weekend just whizzed by . . . Anyway.

I wrote Bart some of this but I’ll repeat it here. Canada, urban Canada in particular, is a very conformist place. I spent a couple of years in Toronto, and I really found the combination of snobbery and conformity stultifying. They wouldn’t let you in, and they didn’t respect difference – in fact would often go out of their way to destroy it. I think Toronto might be worse than other cities in this regard – funny, for a place that attracts so many immigrants – but these qualities exist across the country.
I was lucky enough to be raised in parts of Canada where conformity wasn’t the rule. You’ll still find this mentality in the outlying areas – the North, parts of the East and West coasts. These places were great, very individualistic and non-judgemental, very frontier-minded I guess, and this is the Canada I look for when I go back. Some great stuff comes of these margins as well – I was very impressed a few years ago by a show of West Coast tribal masks, really amazing stuff. Ditto with a lot of contemporary Inuit art. But these places are out of the way, with not much infrastructure. They’re not places, by and large, that can support an artistic infrastructure, and for someone like me, who’s spent my adult life in the city, it would be hard to go back.
Few Canadians talk about this – it’s hardly even acknowledged – but Canada is still essentially a colonial nation. We traded one (or two, if you count the French) great Imperial power for another, and in the latter case that Imperial power was right next door, and blared its cultural power through a Marshall stack. Canadians are so bombarded by American culture they think it’s their own, which is a truly bizarre place to try and create in. I think, after a point, I felt it was easier to just be down here.
Also, I wonder how economic developments over the past 20 – 30 years have affected Canada’s artistic life. Canada really has gone back to being a resource based nation, particularly with the rise of the Tar Sands Project which seems to have completely taken over the economy. At one time, in the Trudeau era, we at least aspired to be something else. We aspired to be bilingual, to be something else. Trudeau challenged Canadians to be something else. A lot of it didn’t work, but at least the aspiration was there. I found it very interesting that Harper has put the Queen back in foreign embassies, and returned other colonial symbols to their pre-Trudeau place.
I knew a number of Aussies when I was living in London. There are many parallels – I think Australia, not the US, is the country Canada most resembles. They too have returned to a resource economy after trying to move forward in the 70′s and 80′s. The people I knew, artistic for the most part, talked about the same stultifying effect on national life, and the tall poppy syndrome in which Canada, all colonial societies, excel.
From a distance there’s a lot I appreciate about Canada. Like I wrote Mark, it is, or was, a working class paradise to some degree. It’s a great place to be an electrician. Looking back at it from the US, I appreciate our ability to laugh at ourselves, how we don’t take things so seriously. Americans can get so hysterical, usually about nothing. I think Canadians are generally happier. When I was living in London, I appreciated Canadians’ easiness with each other. It’s a nice quality. And all that wonderful space, that magnificent country. In a crowded world, that’s not a minor thing. I do sense a great deal of energy, desire, intelligence below the surface. But that colonial structure keeps it down, keeps it in place, keeps it non-threatening.

It took the US a revolution, a brutal civil war, and a century or more to begin to find its artistic voice. So maybe it just takes time.

Tim

Tim

Of course, the same phenom exists everywhere, in which “writing has become ancillary to creative-lit programs, which are a huge business all on their own.” Robert Siegle in his seminal book, Suburban Ambush (which I recommend as a virtual bible for any urban post realist writer) describes the anti-academicism of the post-punk writers he’s writing about being in direct “opposition to the great culture machine — which includes academia, the literary establishment, and the media.”

I would go further to suggest this Borgias-like marriage between academia, the literary establishment, and the media began in the early seventies and accelerated in the eighties, particularly in Canada, to the point where no writer, or publisher, who has not first given a kiss to the ring of the great culture machine will not be deemed suitable.

For instance, after spending the 1980s actively publishing and promoting writers in my home province, an anthology outlining my province’s literary history was published by the local university press. Not a single individual I promoted, and published, was included.

At that instant my anti-academicism was cemented, as was my opposition to the great culture machine.

The same phenom exists down here of course – everywhere in fact. So much writing has become ancillary to creative-lit programs, which are a huge business all on their own. But I wonder in Canada if it isn’t part of a general regression in the last 30 years or so to the hewers and drawers of water we’ve always been. There was a flowering in the 60′s and 70′s, perhaps continuing on into the 80′s, when we strove to become something else. But it is also part of a larger trend.

T.

Another nice piece. I think this disdain for the homeless is part of the mean-ness of our age – no one wants to admit we’ve been duped for the last decade or two, and it’s much easier to blame poor people for their plight. Also, twenty odd years of neo-liberal rule have eroded a sense of community, so people stop seeing the destitute as one of them.
Still, I don’t miss the aggressive beggars of the 90′s here in NY. I notice the beggars out now tend to be much more polite. And people give them money. So all compassion is not lost.

Tim