Scotch Heart

Kyle Armstrong is a difficult man to find. The full-time dad and as-much-time-as-he-can-find filmmaker has been quietly pursuing his craft for several years, working his way up from Super 8 to digital video and his recent shorts have garnered critical acclaim appearing the travelling Alberta film series Prairie Tales, and the FAVA Freshworks series, but his preference to keep his work in its original format has meant he's kept a fairly low profile.

Recently Armstrong composed a video to accompany Edmonton sound artist Mark Templeton's Scotch Heart cassette. The video found it's way to music blog Altered Zones and from there to its parent site, Pitchfork. Armstrong alternates treated footage of people and faces with surreal splashes of warm lava-lamp , abstract washes of colour, and palate-cleansing cuts to black to create a meditative piece that perfectly complements the hypnotic melodic abstraction of Templeton's score. Here's hoping more of his work gets a wider chance to be seen. In the meantime, grab a cup of tea, put on some headphones, pop it out to full screen, and enjoy.

If you'd like to learn a bit more about Armstrong, check out his recent interview with Vue Weekly here. He has one other video in the wilds of cyberspace - a promotional video he shot and edited for Edmonton/Vancouver musician Darren Frank:

Tragedy: Wheel inside a Wheel

In the face of horrific events, I tend to go quiet. I watch along with the rest of the world but I don't feel that I have much to add. Online life does not do well with quiet. We're supposed to always be looking for ten-ways-to-shout-louder-than-others-here or find-success-like-dooce there. I tend to step back. Tweet a few things that informed me. Like how a nuclear reactor works. I had no idea.

I wait for the regular tragedy cycle. Shock and awe. Commentary. Stupidity - that US network that chose to add frantic drumming over video of the tsunami because the footage wasn't dramatic enough for them. The religious chatterers of all stripes who think they have the direct line to shifting rock and the voice of gods. The need to know so we can feel some sort of control over those gods. And men. And atoms. All while living on a planet that shakes itself silly while spinning through space.

It's been a while since I've thought of the voice of God in the midst of a tragedy but I was thinking of all this a few years ago when the combination of human imperfection and natural forces heaved themselves onto the shores of southern States. As I walked through my quiet neighborhood, I could hear Mary Gauthier's voice. She wrote a song, Wheel Inside The Wheel,  about a funeral in New Orleans. I saw her at a folk festival - too early in the morning and in the pouring rain. As the audience took shelter as best we could - hats, rain ponchos made from hastily torn garbage bags, Mary said "You're impressing the hell outta me." We shouted our encouragement, our breath showing in the morning air and then rolling upwards with the collected cigarette smoke and coffee fumes into the falling rain.

She told us she wanted to write a song for a friend, a songwriting friend, that had died. She felt unworthy to write a song for someone who had such incredible skill so she asked God, "Lord, what should I do?" And God said, "Go to New Orleans! Go to New Orleans! Go to New Orleans!"  And Mary said, "Shit God. Don't speak to me directly. You're scarin' me."

Those are the words I heard step after step on my clean and dry sidewalks...New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. And now on currently not-so terra firma, my keyboard and all of us chattering away trying to avoid the tremors beneath our feet. Shit God. Don't speak to me directly. You're scarin' me.

Christmas music: Yuletide Fires (Chor Leoni)

I'm very close to the time I've arrived at the Seasonal moment when only German lullabies and a Huron Carol will soothe my weary, distracted mind & warm my not-so-ho-ho-or-hopeful heart. 

Tonight I'll curl up in the oversized armchair in my darkened living room, lit only by the fireplace and the LED lights twirled around the floor lamp, and imbibe Chor Leoni's Yuletide Fires in one long, uninterrupted dose. I won't be the same afterwards.

On the last couple evenings before December 24th, it's balm and massage that refresh and restore the body, mind and spirit.

When asked about the CD, Artistic Director Diane Loomer said, "Much of the CD is quiet, peaceful, and serene. Its intent is to calm and encourage listeners to relax into Christmas, let them escape from all that Christmas is hyped up to be and rarely is. Our hope is that Yuletide Fires will allow listeners to slip into surroundings of beauty, grace, and balanced quietness."

Yuletide Fires was voted the Outstanding Choral Recording of 2004 by the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, and won a Western Canadian Music Award as the 2004 Outstanding Classical Recording.

To listen to some samples, including the gorgeous Huron Carol and Stille Nacht, and read a list of all the album's songs, scroll down to the bottom of the Yuletide Fires page. You can purchase the CD from the Chor Leoni site or download the entire album or individual songs from iTunes.

Out My Window 1: FS Michaels

Now that it's December, this is what I see out my window here in the southern interior of British Columbia. 

As the months get colder, I watch the snow line creep down the hills, a little further each morning, until it's winter and the cold is here to stay. Then the hills no longer disappear into the night, black on black, the way they do in summer. They glow instead, snowy in the moonlight, spellbound under the winter stars.

Of kiwis & hope

This evening (Wednesday) my dining room is filled with plants from the balcony so they won't freeze outdoors in these record-low temperatures. To remind myself why I persevere about many things, not just gardening, I'm re-reading nutritionist, gardener & author Joan Dye Gussow's lovely essay, Kiwis and Hope wherein she describes the "immaculate conception" of kiwifruit in her garden.  I encourage you to read the entire piece (it's not long & she's a wonderful writer) to learn why Ms. Gussow believes cultivating hope is not a foolish or futile pursuit.

And they [kiwis] seem to me a happy metaphor for the importance of continuing to work toward our necessary future even though the prospects sometimes seem daunting. Even when things seem hopelessly unlikely; if you just keep trying, even nature is apparently willing to break some rules (from the PowellsBooks.Blog essay).

Photo credit: Kiwis by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga); copyright: GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), via Wikimedia Commons

A sense of place

Two views of autumn from two different bridges, 100 kilometers, 24 hours, and a world apart:

"A sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.” —Rebecca Solnit

This quote is pulled from the page of one of my favourite features on the Orion Magazine website: The place where you live. Someday, after I've done more deep thinking, searching and writing (hard but necessary work, a worthwhile 24 hours alone project),  I hope to contribute an essay there. For now, the first draft, which I started composing while walking under the city bridge last night, consists only of a list of essential elements: flora, fauna, water, mountains, sky, sunlight.

A few more words about the last element, sunlight: I prefer the early morning Autumn light, sometimes silvery, sometimes golden, soft, gentle and slow. Two memories come to mind. Nine years ago, in a clearing along the Grouse Mountain trail: sunlight glittering through branches, creating a golden glow that filled the space. I felt like I'd stumbled upon a sacred place. And last Sunday morning, while driving back to the city: silver shafts of sunlight breaking through clouds to meet the mist rising from the farm fields - a luminous, diaphanous joining of earth and sky.

I'm beginning to understand the quote. Yes, place is within you -- it's deep knowing, deep connection, the sixth sense. And that sense is helping me feel, finally, at home and at peace within the city where I live.

24 Hours Alone

I was thinking the other day about how hard it is to spend 24 hours alone. It takes some real planning. It would take planning even for those without children or other live-in humans. If I counted up all the times I intentionally spent 24 hours in my own company, it wouldn't even take five fingers.

It is more difficult for women. We can't just step into the empty woods or take a 2 AM walk without extra considerations. This is a fact of life I find beyond irritating but there it is.

Still, there are all sorts of ways being alone can be done. The challenge of 24 hours alone should be taken at least once a life and more often if possible. Make a plan and include the word "No." Get some groceries. Turn off all the ringing and beeping things. See what happens in your own company.

And if you need to start slow, watch this: