Leap In The Dark

As is the case with most gifts, the technology that is bringing the world's peoples closer together is a double-edged sword. The more it breaks down the barriers between us for greater mutual understanding, the more it also weakens our cultural distinctiveness.

Just like an eco-system, a culture is a delicate balance of elements that individually may not appear significant, but taken as a whole form something unique and precious. Change or remove one element in that system and you've got something completely different. In the natural world it's usually the introduction of a foreign species of plant or animal life, or the removal of the same that changes it irrevocably for the worse.

In cultural matters it sometimes is only a matter of contact between two peoples for it to happen. Usually it will be that one is technically more sophisticated than the other, and simply over whelms and absorbs the other. Many countries have tried to take steps to preserve their culture by encouraging its growth while erecting barriers to foreign content.

But there is also another scenario, one that was first put into affect by the British Empire at home and abroad, and has been emulated by other countries through out the world. The deliberate attempt to eliminate a people's culture as a means of subduing them and forcibly assimilating them to be like their conquerors. In Ireland and India the Empire enacted official policies forbidding the native languages in the hopes of cutting people off from their heritage.

But the most insidious practice was carried out in North America by postcolonial governments, with the assistance of the Catholic and Anglican Churches, in Canada. Residential Schools were established to forcibly turn Indian children against their parents and their heritage.

Each child who entered the system was forbidden to speak the language of their nation and was told that all they had been taught up until that point was evil and a lie. They were given haircuts and forced to take new names. Anybody caught speaking their language or using their old name was severely punished.

This wasn't even an attempt to teach the children how to get ahead in society. Half their days were spent learning unskilled trades preparing them for a life of service to their "betters". The boys were taught janitorial skills and yard work, while they young girls were taught how to be either scullery maids or other forms of household drudges.

But while it was bad enough that they ripped away from their families and emotionally, mentally, and physically abused by the staff of these institutions during the day, what went on at night in the dormitories is the stuff of nightmares. Many of the students, male and female, were sexually abused on a continual basis for their entire stay in theses prisons.

The end result of these schools was the creation of a generation of people who were almost completely cut off from their own culture and not capable of existing in the one they were supposedly "trained" to take part in. A lost generation of scared, hurt, and, lonely people, damaged far beyond anything most of us can understand.

By the year 2005 the federal government of Canada under the Liberal party had agreed to certain measures to redress the issue. Various financial packages were offered, and it was promised as part of the deal that the government would offer an official apology for the policy.

But now the current administration, the Conservative Party of Canada has reneged on that promise of an apology. In fact from comments made by the Indian Affairs Minister, Jim Prentice, lead one to belief that the government is trying to white wash what exactly the schools did.

The most he will say is that the residential schools were a difficult time in our history, but- and this is the real killer, "the underlying objective had been to provide aboriginal children with an education". Which means that Jim Prentice is either a professional liar or an ignorant fool who doesn't even read history books.

But then again the Conservative party already knows that Native Canadians aren't going to vote for them, and neither are people who are sympathetic to their plight. They're playing to their constituents, the people who believe that Native people are welfare drunks who lost the war and are lucky we give them anything.

To say that Native leaders are appalled is to put it mildly. To go from a government who recognised the damage caused by the Residential School System, to one that wants to gloss over the nasty bits of our history and make out that the policy had its heart in the right place is worse than insulting, it's obscene. I would like to ask Jim Prentice a question, seeing how he thinks this policy was so benign.

How would he like his children taken away from him and made to change the names he had given them, learn a language that prevented him from talking to them, and be told that all he believed was a lie and evil? Wouldn't he want someone to apologise to him for treating his children like that?

The effects of the Residential Schools are still being felt on reserves today as the children of the people who attended them are now a second generation of lost people. They live out in the middle of nowhere with no running water or electricity a lot of the times, and with little or no connection to their nation's past, or any connection to the land.

While many countries face a difficult battle these days in trying to preserve their cultural identities in the face of an onslaught of homogenisation, the First Nation people of Canada are dealing with trying to teach two generations of people what was stolen from them by government policy. It's just too bad that our current government doesn't view cultural genocide as something you have to apologise for.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:05 AM | Permalink

They're almost everywhere these days; some you catch sight of just on the edge of your vision lurking under some shrubbery while others can be seen frozen in the act of crossing the lawn. On occasion you'll even see them standing stock still with a lantern raised in one hand, frozen peering into the night at whatever spell it was that snatched him our of time.

Their garments show a uniformity, if not an inclination to conformity, as they are of the same cut and all made from the brightest of the primary colours. But no matter how similar their garments might get, clothes are still the only way to distinguish one from the other. Identical beards, hair, hat, and features would make them look to be the largest egg split on record or the smallest gene pool in the world.

I'm talking about Garden Gnomes of course, those ridiculous statues that are the butt of so many practical jokes in movies and in life. But what if there were actually Garden Gnomes who existing, whose life work is to tend to gardens that us Big People don't seem to be able to cope with?

Parker Owens has written a book based on that what if, called Gnomes Harvest. Will is your average Gnome with a bald spot on his head, invisible to humans, and obsessed with the garden assigned to him ever since his parents disappeared.

He lives his life according to the dictates of the mysterious assembly known as the Gnome Council. It would probably be more accurate to say that he lives his life in fear that the Gnome Council will find out about the rules he's broken, or that he won't live up to their standards.

And well he should; he flagrantly disregards the Councils edict about association with Rabbits, as he has a type of friendship with a neighbouring Rabbit named Roddy. Roddy has bigger things to worry about than what the Gnome Council might have to say about his association with Will. Staying alive for one thing, recovering from the loss of his mate and kittens for another, just the year before they were killed by the farm dog.

Meanwhile Will is consumed by doubts as to his abilities to tend the garden properly. Each year since he's taken over the yield seems to have gotten lower and lower. It's gotten to the point where the farmer is thinking of getting rid of it and growing tobacco instead. Will tries everything he can think of – he gives the vegetables inspirational speeches, he performs what he hopes are magic dances, and above all he does his best to protect the sacred worms.

Not only do the worms work hard to make the dirt better for the plants to grow in, they also perform mysterious magic beneath the soil where they inscribe the secrets of the universe upon sacred tablets in underground caverns. The worms aren't the only creatures with magic, or supernatural powers, there is also the mysterious Queen Coon, the blind matriarch of the racoon horde.

Not only does she make prophecies concerning the future of Will and Roddy, but she is also the owner of magic kernels. One night she "accidentally" drops them for Will and he uses them in the garden. Are they responsible for the confusion of the summer? Why does Queen Coon want them back all of a sudden? Mysteries like this are enough to drive even the most balanced of Gnomes to distraction, and poor Will has enough on his plate as it is.

Mr. Owens has done something very interesting with scale in this book so that as we read the book we end up feeling, like Will and Roddy, that the garden and the adjoining meadow are large expanses of land. We wander through the book as a creature so small it isn't seen by humans even when he tries to get their attention, and gradually our perceptions our changed without us even noticing.

We get caught up in the cares and worries of the two characters, marvel at the idiocy and crudeness of the humans, (They treat the plants so mean, stomp on smaller ones and I can't even begin to tell you about the horrors they put tomatoes through after they have picked them) and be amazed by the sounds of plants growing and a garden living.

I believe the reason that we can become part of their world so easily is because of the wonderful job he has done creating their characters. Somehow or other he has managed to give them human attributes without overly anthropomorphising them. There is no confusing Roddy with a human; he is most definitely a Rabbit.

I've personally never met a Gnome so I'll have to take Mr. Owens' word for it that Will's character is that of a one. He's not a human that is for sure as his reactions differ far too widely from ours to circumstances. Or I should say, from the humans in the book, as I hope to hell I'm more like Will than those folk who own the farm.

Mr. Owen has also done a nice job of creating the internal struggle that both Roddy and Will deal with. He's aimed this book towards a younger then adult age range, but deals with the issues like survivor's guilt, insecurity, and inadequacy in a very intelligent manner. Instead of either spelling it out, or making the book heavy handed in tone, he manages to let the character's actions speak for themselves.

By showing examples of how characters behave and providing the rationale for it, just the telling of the story is enough to get the lesson across. It's an ability that many writers of books for "adults" would do well to learn how to emulate.

Gnome Harvest by Parker Owen had the potential of being a cute book about fuzzy creatures and little people. Instead he has created a work with believable characters whose own life lessons serve as examples for his readers. As perfect an example of story telling in the sense of stories being a way to teach people how to avoid the pitfalls of being human without them even noticing they are learning a lesson.

You can pick up a copy of Gnome Harvest through Double Dragon Press or at Parker Owens' storefront at Lulu.com.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:48 AM | Permalink

A couple of days ago I reviewed a disc by a young Blues artist that was genuinely fresh and original. A great mix of styles and attitudes it was the type of recording that made you feel good about the state of the music industry for a change. Unfortunately the same can't be said about a new release from another young performer.

Steve Mariner hails from the West Coast of Canada and has just released his first album, which, perhaps unwisely, he also produced. For while Going Up shows that he is not without talent and skill at what he does, the majority of his material is derivative and tedious.

With only a couple of exceptions the majority of the music on the album follow the standard rock/blues boy wanting girl theme. Like so many songs of this type Steve's aren't far out of the locker room when it comes to their emotional maturity and have about as much sincerity as a beer commercial. I can actually see them being used in a beer commercial – one of those ones for Coor's Light with girls in tank tops and Stetsons.

Picking a song like "Shake It Upside Down" as your opening track where the lyrics invite girls to "Shake it shake it baby/Shake it upside down" pins you into a corner right off the start and doesn't do much to form a favourable impression among most sentient beings. While the third song "Remember Me" salvages a little dignity with a simplistic plea for the homeless, and the fourth song by J.D. Miller "I'm A Lover Not A Fighter" at least has a nice rockabilly feel to distinguish it, far too many of the tracks are variations on the "Oh Baby, Baby" theme.

The pity is that there are glimmers of real talent on this album. "El Encuentro" is a wonderful instrumental that he co wrote with Canadian guitarist Sue Foley and shows that both of them are far more skilled then the music they normally play would have you believe. Most Blues/Rock guitarists can run the scale and wail on their Telecasters with little or no problem, but there aren't that many who can pick out the complexities of a Flamenco beat.

Maybe "El Encuentro isn't exactly Flamenco, but it has a beautiful lush sound, with a more genuine display of emotion then any of his boy lust for girl songs that have preceded it. The song is a splendid example of guitar virtuosity on the part of both players.

Steve Marriner is talented; there is doubt about that. The only trouble is that it's hard to tell with the material he has selected for this disc. With the majority of his vocals delivered in the barker style preferred by young blues players, and his harmonica not challenged enough to be really memorable, there is no true way of knowing his true abilities.

The one thing that is clear from listening to Going Up is that if Steve wants his career to go up he will need to find himself a good producer. At least one who will put his talents to better use than he seems willing to commit to on his own.

Hiding under the noise of Going Up is a talented musician who only peeks out on occasion. It's not enough to make this an album worth buying, but it's enough to have some hope for Steve Marriner in the future.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:26 AM | Permalink

Of all the influences on Western style popular music the sounds of Africa are still the most pervasive. Any time you hear Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Rap, Soul, or any combination of the above you don't have to dig too deep to find African roots. Even Bluegrass and Country have African influences, even if it's only their use of the Banjo introduced to North America by African slaves.

It makes you wonder then why it has taken so long for the music of Africa to gain a toehold in North America. Unlike the music of the Middle East or India with their different melodic and rhythmical structures, African music at least has familiarity going for it.

Even though people like Peter Gabriel in the early eighties began his series of World Of Music And Dance (WOMAD) festivals as attempts to bridge the gap between our two worlds acceptance has been slow. While European audiences have shown more of a wiliness to accept performers like King Sunny Ade from Nigeria and more recently Baaba Maal from Senegal, North Americans still treat them like novelty acts.

If it's hard for African musicians to gain acceptance you can only imagine the difficulties faced by people from countries just to their north in the Middle East. Not only are there the political and social barriers to overcome, a good deal of their music has nothing for a Western audience to compare it to.

We can't say of it, oh that sounds like the Blues or like a song I heard on the radio yesterday. Although people like Ry Cooder have produced albums with performers from there, the only way it seems that musicians from Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria and the rest can make an impression is by their music getting sampled for the dance floor.

Music is supposed to be this great means of communication between people, and yet if a good portion of the world doesn't even listen to the rest of the world's music what's that say about our abilities to communicate? Thankfully there are still labels and people who try their damnedest to ensure that musical information flows two ways, and not just West to East.

The World Music Network and Rough Guides, publishers of The Rough Guide travel books and The Rough Guide To World Music have been collaborating on a series of CDs that promote the incredibly diverse selection of music that our world has to offer. One of their most recent releases, The Rough Guide to Africa & Middle East is a compilation of some of the more dynamic musicians to have come out of that region in the last twenty years.

What I found good about this compilation was although they did include a song each from well known performers King Sunny Ade and Baaba Maal, the rest of the material representing African musicians was from countries that don't normally get representation on these types of discs. I especially liked the pieces by Kekele of the Congo and Mory Kante from Guinea. Although I have heard of Mory Kante this was my first opportunity to hear his playing, and I have never heard music from the Congo before so both these tracks were a pleasant surprise.

What wasn't so pleasant was the overt Western influences in the music that's been selected to represent the Middle East. I know that it is supposed to be indicative of what is happening right now, but wouldn't it give people a clearer understanding of the music if more traditional artists had been chosen. It was like they were more concerned with making it palatable for ears used to Western pop culture then to show it in its original context.

I look to guides like this to give me access to material that's not readily available or unfamiliar. Instead of finding out about the distinct music of a region through this disc, we're just given further examples of the pervasive influence of Western culture throughout the world. I personally don't want to listen to music from the Sub-Sahara desert that sounds like it could have been recorded in Chicago in the mid – seventies.

While of course it is unreasonable to expect that popular music won't influence each other around the world, The Rough Guide to World Music: Africa & The Middle East sells itself on the basis of providing an introduction to the music of the regions, not music from those areas influenced by Euro pop and North American top forty. I find it a very worrying trend that more and more of the acts from abroad being promoted in North America by World Music labels are those who have in some way homogenised their sound to be in step with what everyone else is doing.

Instead of celebrating the diversity of the world there is a move towards homogenisation. Even in the accompanying pamphlet and information supplied via the enhanced CD Rom file on the disc seems to think that's it more important to tell the listener how people's music is popular with the dance hall crowd or is similar to Western pop than how it is reflective of their own country.

While they do give good background on the performers and their cultural influences, to many of them end with descriptions of how they sound like an aspect of our culture. I already know what house music and top forty sounds like on our side of the world. What I want to find out is what does the music of the Sahara sound like not what it sounds like after it has turned into the latest dance hall craze.

The Rough Guide to World Music: Africa & The Middle East while providing some insight into the music of Africa and the Middle East continues a disturbing trend of promoting those acts which have become part of a melting pot diluting their original flavour down into something with a generic back beat that can be danced to.

While the people at Rough Guide deserve credit for their efforts to increase awareness of the world's cultural diversity they at times tend to slip into the same is good attitude because it breaks down barriers, instead of promoting learning about other people to accomplish the same task. The Rough Guide To World Music: Africa & The Middle East unfortunately falls more into the former camp then the latter and proved somewhat disappointing to me as a result.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:36 AM | Permalink

I remember the first time that I saw a Bollywood movie. When I used to live in Toronto every Saturday morning on the Multicultural Television Station they would have a double feature of classic Bollywood pictures. At first I thought it was some kind of joke, Monty Python on really strong hallucinogenics or something.

But when the movie seemed to be going on longer then any joke I had seen before, I realized I just didn't understand or appreciate what it was I was watching. I've never been all that thrilled with musicals, and not only did the actors in these productions burst into song at the drop of the hat, it seemed that the sound quality was awful.

It wasn't until a couple of years ago when Indian directors started making movies in Britain and North America geared towards a more Western audiences, that I began to see the fun in the dancing and the music. Perhaps because concessions had been made in the rest of the movie, with the plot line being more accessible and the women were treated less like objects and more like people, the occasional song and dance number didn't seem so out of place.

But I still didn't understand the attraction to those older movies with their over bright colours and nearly distorted music. What is it about these movies and in particular the music that made them so popular? Obviously I was missing out on something important,

I guess it was with people like me in mind that the folks behind the Rough Guide travel books in partnership with the World Music Network came out with a new CD called The Rough Guide To Bollywood Gold. Chock full of information about the genre in an informative booklet, and featuring almost seventy-five minutes of some of the best music from the era, it takes you on a guided tour of the people, the songs, and the atmosphere that ensured its popularity.

It's hard to imagine for most of us a world where Indian culture is not a feature. The Beatles and Ravi Shankar made the sitar a commonplace word in our vocabulary, and probably everyone has heard it played at least once – whether they know it or not. But in the early 1960's when the first wave of Indian immigrants landed in Great Britain and to a lesser degree North America, there was nothing of home there for them.

At the same time the Bollywood film industry was introducing two new elements to its product that would increase its popularity: Technicolor film and Playback Singers. Having another voice overdub singing for an actor is not unique to Bollywood, but they are the only industry that made an art form out of it.

When the actor is flailing about on the screen- gesturing and emoting all over the place, the men and women Playback Singers are supplying the vocals. There were very specific conventions that had to be followed by the singers; women had to sing in high-pitched, girlish voices (the sound was deliberately recorded to distort to indicate heightened passion) while the man was deep and strong.

Playback singers became so identified with the actors who they sang for that even the screen stars recognized the contribution they were making to their careers. When a famous Indian actor was told the man who sang the majority of his songs had died he said very concisely: "My voice has died".

With Bollywood's rise in popularity coinciding with the establishment of the early immigrant communities in England and North America, the music from these movies became beloved reminders of the home they had left behind. It was bright and cheerful and full of hope in a cold, bleak, and strange new country that didn't really welcome them.

Listen to the music on the disc and you can hear all the different styles of music that have been incorporated into their production. Everything from sixties electric guitars, yodels from Country and Western, and James Dean/ Elvis like rebellion are all part of the mix. Underpinning it all is the steady rhythm of the tabla (a set of two drums) and sitar acting as the heartbeat of India below the surface of Western slickness.

I still can't get understand the lyrics at all but I have more of an understanding of why it is the way it is. Although one of the oldest cultures in the world, this period was the beginning of the reawakening of a sleeping giant. India had been in British chains as part of the empire for years and independence had come close to tearing it asunder. By the1960s she was just starting to spread her wings and have reasons to celebrate.

The joy and the exuberance expressed through the music might as well be the new energy that was starting to flow through the veins of India. The children of the West might have been trying to overthrow their society at this time, but in Indian communities around the world they were rebuilding or starting fresh. It was a bright new colourful world to be experienced as avidly as possible and as much enthusiasm as could be mustered.

One of the features of the The Rough Guide To Bollywood Gold is the inclusion of a CD Rom data track. If you load the disc into your computer you get bonus features like an interview with the compiler of the disc, extracts from the travel guide book Rough Guide To India, and much more.

What's best about this collection of music is that it gives you a context to place the music in for a better appreciation of what it is and it's significance. After reading the booklet and absorbing the information supplied in the data track I listened to the music a second time. While it still sounded slightly strange to my ears, I definitely didn't find it quite so alien as before and I had an understanding of what motivated it.

The Rough Guide To Bollywood Gold is a great place to start for anybody wishing to learn more about the music of Bollywood. Just be careful where you listen to it, it can be pretty infectious and you may find yourself dancing down the street instead of walking. Sometimes life does imitate art.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:25 AM | Permalink

About a month ago I interviewed Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra. At one point he got quite indignant about the West's lack of knowledge about Arabic writers and said that far too many in our countries still think of Arabs as being only terrorists or caravan riders. While he may have exaggerated somewhat, in essence he was correct because our attitude towards the Arab world has always been condescending.

Of course we have no reason to feel superior, as the Egyptian culture has existed for thousands of years longer then the majority of Western ones. The banks of the Nile River have long been considered one of the cradles of Civilization along with the Fertile Crescent area of the Euphrates River. Ironically most North Americans probably don't even know who are and aren't Arabians.

For instance the people or Iran are not Arabs, yet they are routinely shunted in with the rest of the "Arab world"; a Muslim is not necessarily an Arab and vice versa. The people of Iran are Persians not Arab, while the Muslims of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and the rest of South East Asia are certainly not Arab. But it is of course far too convenient to think of "the enemy" as a single group with no distinguishing features that will humanize him.

How can you call down Fire and Brimstone and the wrath of God upon people whose civilization predates Christ by who knows how many thousands of years? Well you can't really so you diminish them down into a faceless enemy whose beliefs and civilization have no merit or significance. They become A-rabs, or rag heads, to the masses; easy to hate and to mobilize against.

It was with all this in mind that I set out to find works translated into English by an Arab writer. Just by coincidence I happened to come across a reissuing of three novels by Naquib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1988 who just recently died. Three Novels Of Ancient Egypt is a new release through the Everyman Library of Random House Canada containing three short pieces the author had written in the 1930's.

I don't know whether or not Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis Of Nubia, or Thebes At War have ever been translated into English before, but this is the first time the three novels have been published together in an omnibus form. They are logical choices to be produced together of course because all three are set in different periods of the glorious days of Egypt's Pharaohs.

In each novel the author show us the talent emerging that will one day produce a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize. Of course in each instance we are seeing his work through the eyes and ears of his translators, so a certain amount of trust is involved that they have done an accurate job in representing him. But since that is case with any foreign language author there's not much you can do about it.

The style of writing may sound strange to our ears, as it is of an ornate quality that is not normally heard in the English novel anymore, but was quite common in Classical literature around the time when these were written. Differences that may disconcert the reader a little are the use of descriptive phrases in a manner that is unfamiliar, and until your ear adjusts may sound overly melodramatic or flamboyant. "The listeners were delighted, their blood gladdened in a swoon of gaiety and glory, and contentment glowed on Pharaoh's strong, manly features."

To our ears that might sound a little over the top as a means of saying that everybody liked the news, but what it does do is it elevates the subject matter above the commonplace. One of the conventions of Classical literature is that it was believed the language used had to be elevated appropriate to the subject matter of the nobility it depicted. Lesser men and women were considered to speak a more rudimentary form of the language and would be depicted accordingly.

As also befitting classical literature the subject matter dealt with in these tales concerns the fates of the powerful and how through either strength or weakness of character they gain success or failure. When the Greek philosopher Aristotle observed the conventions of the playwrights during his time he noted that in all tragedies the hero was brought down by a fatal flaw in his character and would lose his or her elevated place in society by her own actions and the flouting of the way things should be.

In each of the three novels presented in this omnibus Mahfouz has utilized this convention to act as the fulcrum on which the story balances. Will the Pharaoh succumb to impatience and attempt to scour the land in search of the child who it is said will inherit his throne instead of his son in Khufu's Wisdom At first he does and the result is the death of an innocent. His eldest son, the one with the most to lose in the case of the Pharaoh's children not inheriting kills the wrong child, as of course the right one has escaped.

Through twist after twist of fate the child foretold is elevated higher and higher in the Pharaoh's army, wins the heart of his favourite daughter, and eventually rescues him from an assassination attempt carried out by the Crown Prince. He had grown impatient waiting for his father to die and wanted him killed, but is himself killed by the one the God's had chosen to succeed Pharaoh. By surrendering to impatience the Crown Prince brought about his own downfall and ensured that what had been pre ordained would occur.

What makes all three of these tales wonderful is Mr. Mahfouz's abilities to spin a story. First off are his descriptions of the settings; from the battlefield to the interior of a palace to a boat on the Nile, he sounds like he was right there making notes as the events took place. How else could he describe the way a chariot charge looks when two hundred of them wheel to the attack? Or what is inside a holy temple, and what exact corner the God lives and how he is shrouded? I never sailed upon a boat up the Nile River in 2000 B.C. but I now have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.

But he also knows everyone's most intimate thoughts and desires so well that they had to have confided in him at some point in time for it to be possible for him to write about them with such detailed accuracy. Okay sometimes all the beating hearts and aching desires sound a little too much like a Romance novel, but those moments are balanced out by the retribution meted out in the end.

I've always thought that Classical literature was the foundation for today's Soap Operas, with their intrigues and intricate plotting, and Three Novels Of Ancient Egypt bears that out. But if today's Soap Operas had writers the quality of Naguib Mahfouz creating their scripts they would be of a quality we wouldn't even recognise they'd be so good.

Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis Of Nubia, and Thebes At War are three examples of a masterful writer at work. While they are written in a style we may not be accustomed too, with their adherence to Classical conventions and language that is somewhat more flowery then we are used to, it does nothing to diminish their quality.

Canadian readers can pick up a copy on –line through Random House Canada or through any other Canadian retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:05 AM | Permalink

I'm probably going to show my age by asking this, but how many people remember being in public school and being shown filmstrips? The teacher would bring out a type of projector, basically a high wattage light bulb with a couple of mirrors and maybe a magnifying glass, over and through which a partially developed negative would be pulled, sending a still image onto a screen.

It was primitive but effective, getting information across to thirty restless students who were so grateful for the reprieve from the normal tedium of class that they would pay attention for a while. Looking at the strips outside of the machine gave you no clue as to whether or not it contained a history of Canada or the common cold – both of which were options in grade school.

Like all negatives their secrets were only revealed under certain conditions. These ones were developed all ready so they gave up their images with exposure to light like a slide in a slide projector. Other negatives require more work to be turned into an image that can be used. It's in the preparation of the negative, the transferring of its negative image onto whatever will be used to take the positive that a photographer has his or her last chance to effect the photo.

Using the equipment in a dark room will allow a photographer to determine exactly how much of the picture comes to light, how deep the colours, and make final adjustments to composition. The art of the photographer doesn't end with the clicking of the shutter, it continues right on through until the image is laid out for display or reproduced in book form.

45301 is the title given to a 2003 publication of Viggo Mortensen photographs. The name is derived from the number found on a strip of negatives, and considering the contents of the book, I assume it is in reference to the importance that Mr. Mortensen placed on the development process for the works in this book.

Unlike the images presented in earlier works like Recent Forgeries or Signlanguage or even those from his more recent publications Linger and I Forget You For Ever the majority of the work in 45301 are deliberately abstracted. In some cases it is to the point where the subject matter is unrecognisable, others where it appears like you are viewing the image in front of you through thick, flawed glass, causing the figures or objects in the frame to distort.

In some he has gone beyond even bothering with subject matter and they are pure experiments in colour – the object distilled down to its barest essence, light. Colour can be subjective to the human eye as it involves how light affects surfaces and in turn how our eye reads that reaction. How often is it that two humans will ever see anything in exactly the same way?

At the risk of sounding like some new age flake: light is the essence of everything. Without light what would there be? No shape, no colour; nothing. A photographer works with light and manipulates it to create images. What he does with the light impacts on his finished product. In 45301 Mr. Mortensen experiments with light, image, and how they are both perceived by the human eye.

Using all aspects of the photographer's art he creates various situations for light, dark, and colour either to form an image or just to exist. There are those times when he leaves the lens aperture open in order to capture a moment of motion so that an object is blurred up to the point where it begins to break down into its components of light and energy, and past, to where it is beyond recognition.

The second image in the book itself, entitled "Ride 76" is a shot down into the ground at the front hooves of a horse. We can make out the tops of thr hooves and leg just above them; the hooves themselves are blurred to the point where they are almost indistinguishable from the ground they trod upon as it moves under them. The most substantial thing in the picture is the shadow cast behind the legs.

Created by the one constant in the world, light, a shadow isn't affected by the speed an object travels at except in how it changes the play of the light. Like looking out the window of a speeding train and seeing the ground whizzing by but seeing the solid lump of the train's shadow as it races you to your final destination. It never wavers in its objective no matter what obstacle might stand in its path or how distorted the ground it runs over becomes.

How we perceive speed and movement is dictated by how we see light; we might be able to tell a train is moving by the feel of it during the night, but we have no means of proving it by our eye. No light exists for our shadow to pass through to give definition to the moment.

At one point during 45301, towards the middle, you come across a series of pages on which strips of film have been laid out running into subsequent pages until the roll ends, and new ones begin. At first glance the films seem to be devoid of much, just endless rolls of extremely overexposed negative.

But there is a pattern within them that to my mind has turned them into another form of motion – the slow passage of time as the day changes. Some strips appear to start in the darkness before daylight and continue through the searing bright light of midday, the blues of twilight, and back again to the absence of light. Time moves without showing anything more tangible then colours shifting and light changing. If we could find a still point where we could observe a day like those film strips we would see it just as they represent.

Almost all the images in this book seem to involve motion of some kind or another; even the act of waiting to begin involves an activity of sorts as the body gathers adrenalin and prepares itself for whatever it must do. One of the final images in the book depicts a person sitting in the dark beside a gleaming light.

In spite of the fact he, or she, is in silhouette by looking closely some detail is discernable. While it may look at rest, it could also be said to be gathering itself for action. What lies just through the light? Is the person hiding from something and preparing to be found? What action will it have to take in the next minute, hour, or day?

Motion is anticipated by the contrast in light and dark. We don't need to know anything more then what the image provides before beginning to develop scenarios on our own of the possible and the potential. Unlike other pieces where Mr. Mortensen has captured motion in an attempt to hold onto time, here he has captured stillness and made it clear that it is only a momentary respite from activity.

Viggo Mortensen works to capture moments in time in many ways, one of which is his writing. In a more recent book - Linger - he talks about this while recording the details of cremating his beloved companion Brigit. He has made the conscious decision not to record the event with his camera, he writes to her in his journal, and in fact he had to go back out to his vehicle to dig out this journal to actually write down the events of the day. He can't help himself he seems to be saying, I have to have some record of events.

While there are no writings in 45301 the pages of the book are almost entirely scanned copies of his journal writings blown up and enlarged so that only occasional words can be seen peeking our from around the photos. Or the pages used have been so overwritten and scrawled upon that it would be impossible to discern what each page is about.

As far as I can tell the journal pages selected have no direct relationship to the photographs on each page. So why do it than? One potential is that he is showing us how much he is concerned with grabbing moments of time and making a record of them. This, he is saying is about his photographs, is what the world can look like, always moving, and the eye can do no more than record that motion no matter what implement it uses.

Maybe we can slow it down somewhat and stop it in the frame of a picture. But it will keep going beyond the boundaries of that frame even before the camera is put down or pulled from the eye. But in the journal there is no such notion of eternal motion as words can effectively capture a moment and give the illusion that nothing more will happen after that.

45301 appears to me to be a collection of works in which Viggo Mortensen is exploring the interrelationship between motion, colour, light, and dark. Whether through the lens of his camera or in the darkroom afterwards, or even in the production of the book, he has created examples and captured moments that exemplify that theme.

Of course as with all abstract art, reactions to pieces are entirely subjective, and you might look at the images in this book and think I'm full of shit. The sign of a good artist is that he or she is able to create work that causes people to think and form opinions that they can argue in favour of coherently. You heard my opinion, what's yours?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:24 AM | Permalink

In the interview that prefaces the book Recent Forgeries Viggo Mortensen's home is described as being filled to the bursting with art work under construction, completed pieces, materials that he has accumulated with an eye for what they might become some day, and piles of framed and unframed photographs everywhere. In order to carry out simple tasks like getting a drink for Kristine McKenna, who conducted the interview, out of the fridge requires moving a coupe of canvasses so the door can be opened.

"The garage is full of paintings even bigger than these" he says, and is described as sounding as if he was confessing to some transgression. It's no wonder than that only two yeas after the show that was catalogued in Recent Forgeries Mr. Mortensen has been able to pull together enough material for a new show at the Track 16 gallery in Santa Monica California.

As with the previous show Mr. Mortensen has released a catalogue of the work that was on display. Unlike the earlier show Signlanguagecontains only works of visual art, photographs and paintings. Well, that's not exactly true, for as is usual for Mr. Mortensen's painting he has incorporated writings from his journals into the works, it's just that none of the writings appear on their own as individual works.

At first glance the paintings appear to be simply colour- bold and vivid eye-catching colours that reach out and grab your attention with all the subtlety of an act of violence. But with careful regard images or ideas can be seen shyly showing themselves through the brilliance.

At first there might only seem to be a meaningless scrawl of words barely discernable through the layers of paint and texture. But, deliberately or not is left for you to decide, certain words or specific images will push themselves forward. They might be slightly darker in their outline, or be a little more exposed, that their presence becomes obvious. However it's happened they are what the eye will be drawn to after settling down from the initial assault of colour.

In one painting the rough line drawing of a tree climbs the right hand border with a dark moon or sun framed between two major branches. The contrast of the images with the predominate rose colour makes one wonder about the scrawl of words that is underlying the whole. Not legible to the reader of the book, part of me wants to know if the poem, or journal entry if that's what it is, are what the title "Volsung 2001" refers to – or is it some reference to the tree and what appears to be an eclipsed moon or sun.

Other paintings are a little less enigmatic; for example "Isolation And Its Effects On Colour Perception With The Passing Of Time 1999" shows a figure – perhaps the artist you wonder because that would make sense in some ways – down on all fours with head hanging between arms. Above the flat back of the figure, near the centre of the canvass has been scrawled Isolation.

The figure itself is the dark mauve/blue that brings depression and despondency quickly to mind, while as the canvass retreats upwards away from the figure the colours gradually lighten. Near the top of the canvass, halfway between Isolation and the top, there is a break in the solid surface, which looks like where the plaster has fallen away in an old house to reveal the lathe work in behind.

Could it represent a possible exit – an end to isolation – or is it a symbol of the isolation in its decay. When we think of people who cut themselves off from the world, it is usual to think of them living in surroundings dingy, depressing, and falling into decrepitude, embolic of their no longer caring about anything.

While Mr. Mortensen's paintings seem to be intense expressions of personal emotion, his photographs in this period are still more concerned with recording events and moments in time for our contemplation. In the interview I mentioned earlier on in this review he talked about how he started photography back when he was still in highschool.

It seemed there was always something going on that I could be taking a picture of, and I suppose I eventually started feeling a little removed from life. I'm actually shooting more these days, but I'm thinking primarily about colour now and assuming the framing will take care of itself since I've been doing it so long. It's a much looser and more relaxed way of working. Mortensen, Viggo: Recent Forgeries Smart Art Press 2006, pg. 8

While I didn't notice that relaxation as much in Recent Forgeries, although there were some examples of it, in Signlanguage it seems like Mr. Mortensen has removed restrictions from himself that had existed up to this time. Images spill over the edges of boundaries; a forest refusing to be constrained by any human element giving proof to the saying of not being able to see the trees for the forest, as they become a dark, dense mass of matter.

Film is pushed past its maximum to until slightly grainy and the resulting image takes on an almost fantastical element suiting the subject matter. Scenes from the set of The Lord of The Rings shot inside Chetwood Forest are full of foreboding. It becomes a place where the an Orc could lurk or other denizens of Middle Earth would feel right at home.

People appear on the side of the frame in the foreground so our eye is drawn to them off to one side, but the pull of the rest of the world is still exerted upon us. No one exists in a complete vacuum, they are part of the environment, or part of that moment in time that Mr. Mortensen has captured and held onto for us to witness.

On occasion where the person is dead centre the question becomes who are they; characters from the movie, Eomer or Gimli son of Gloin, or the actors who portray them? Karl Urban in full makeup and costume is no longer there, whose eyes are looking out at us from the frame?

Or then there are the simple statements of fact that can't be disputed. A woman laying on her back on a large rock in the middle of what looks like a field of grass in the late afternoon sun – the photo is called simply "Paradise". Immediately evoking the joy of basking on a sun baked rock in the middle of a quiet field, perhaps only hearing crickets or grasshoppers.

Somehow Mr. Mortensen manages to capture just the right moments in time with his photographs that he is able to trigger an instantaneous reaction like that. The series of images that make up "Lost", three photos of ghostly tree braches in the winter, and one final shot of the back of a cabin with a ladder leading up to the roof and the trees which contain the branches, combine to give a feeling of being lost.

Not lost in the sense of not knowing where you are while traveling perhaps, but being lost in the ghostliness of a winter day when it feels like the world has gone into a trance. I think it's almost something you have to experience, because it escapes my ability with words to express it. But Mr. Mortensen has captured it perfectly and if you know the feeling you will recognise it, even without being able to describe it.

Signlanguage is an interesting step back in time in the career of Viggo Mortensen the photographer and painter, as it shows him starting to trust his emotional instincts with camera more and more. Gradually he is starting to use black and white film as often as colour and showing a willingness to let things happen as they will instead of trying to wait for or frame the perfect moment.

Comparing the work in this book to the work in Recent Forgeries I found it to be more assured and confident. The colours in his colour photography seem bolder and more assertive then before, and the black and white images show more freedom then earlier work. While his paintings may not appear to show the same significant amount of change, there are some subtle distinctions and nuances of image that began to appear at this point in his career.

It's always interesting to go back and look at an artist's earlier work and see where he has come from and how he has progressed. Signlanguage is one such stop along the way in the path of Viggo Mortensen; like his photographs it is a moment taken out of time and preserved for us to look and think about.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:30 AM | Permalink

From November 1998 – January 1999 Viggo Mortensen exhibited a selection of his more recent work at the gallery Track 16. The title he gave the show was Recent Forgeries, and naturally enough the catalogue for the show bore the same name. First published in 1999 when the show ran, through Smart Art Press, Recent Forgeries has now entered its seventh printing and is released through Perceval Press

So we need to backtrack in time nine years, if not more, to when these works were created. Something to be keep in mind is that these works were in a gallery before Viggo Mortensen became the name he is today. Prior to Lord Of The Rings, Hidalgo, and History of Violence the movies that have thrust him into the limelight, he was already an established artist in his own right, not because he was a movie star or a celebrity.

Although anybody who has spent any time reading his poetry or observing his visual art would quickly recognize his talent, I'm sure there have been many a disparaging comment made about a celebrity getting recognition without deserving it. In fact my voice was one of those making cynical comments like that before actually seeing or reading anything Mr. Mortensen had created.

Even a casual flipping through of the pages of Recent Forgeries will quickly dispel any impression of this being the work of a dilettante or someone out for easy ego strokes. These are all difficult challenging works of art from both the artist's and viewer's perspective.

In some instances the mundane quality of the subject matter; shots from a child's birthday party, a swimming pool, a mother and child on a front porch might individually provoke a reaction of so what? I can do that. But taken in context of the other pictures a theme, or perhaps the modus operandi of the guy behind the camera would be more appropriate a way to describe it, comes into focus.

If we can get beyond our initial reactions to the subject matter; the painter on the ladder, the surf board in the pick-up truck, a man holding a hose which sprays a glorious arch of water across the frame, or any number of other simple moments in time compositions, something changes. Questions about the individuals in the works might all of sudden come to mind – how did that man with those tattoos on that shoulder come to be outside in the blazing sun painting a seemingly endless wall?

Who would leave a surfboard in wide-open bed of a pick-up truck? What kind of person owns a beat up red pick up truck and surfboard that looks as weather beaten as the vehicle? What is the child in the blue face paint at the birthday party looking at off to one side, what is making him smile like that? What is the woman writing in the journal with many crossed out lines in it – or is she just reading it? What are they all thinking?

Questions abound about everything in our world when you let them. Viggo Mortensen's photographs remind us that behind every simple act there is the potential for complexity. Surfaces are just that, the face over top of what lies beneath. Even if his photographs aren't x-rays they do bring us to the point of pausing for a moment to think about what we are looking at and what's below the surface.

I'm not arrogant enough to say I haven't been influenced by anyone, but the way I work has mostly been shaped just by being in the world and looking…So much has already been done and there's not much that's new…Making things is a way of finding out. Mortensen, Viggo: Recent Forgeries Smart Art Press, 2006 pg.9

The worst things about looking at catalogues of shows of paintings, is the fact that it is so hard to get an idea of scale when seeing a work on a page. How much of the impact is lost by not seeing the work in person? Especially in the case of abstract art, and Mr. Mortensen's work is no exception to this, where texture and colour combine to stimulate a reaction within the viewer.

Look at how he describes his process as "making" in the above quote, then go through the book and look at the pictures again. It's exactly what he's done of course, using paint, wood, scraps of images from other sources, and pages of writing from what we can only assume are his own journals as his building materials in making these constructions.

If making things is as he says "a way of finding things out" what is he attempting to find out? What has he seen "being in the world and looking" that has generated the questions he hopes to answer in his "makings"? What is your emotional response to the work on the page in front of you? What do you think he's asking?

In his opening preface to this book Dennis Hopper says something along the lines that the process in which Mr. Mortensen's art travels is from his subconscious to his conscious and in turn is absorbed by the viewers subconscious where it forms into a conscious reaction. While it maybe true there is some visceral reaction to the paintings on an instinctual level – bright colours and forms do provoke reactions – I think that to stop there would sell his work short.

Mr. Mortensen may not follow a conscious process of observation, questioning and answering when he creates his works, but that is always at the heart of the matter. Thought has been given to composition and how materials relate to each other, and whether or not they are helping him find things out in the way they come together in that piece.

Although abstractions his work is not simply a half hazard throwing together of material in the hope that it will make you "feel" something. Look at them a second and a third time and see the work that is involved; spot the clues that he may have left for you as to what he was thinking of at the time. It will be worth your while.

Viggo Mortensen is not a person to do anything lightly; you only have to read the poems that have been included in this work to realize that. More than anything else they are what reveal the complexities that lie behind all of his work. Sometimes describing, like his photos, the seemingly common place or the everyday and elevating it to art, his poems read like post it notes from emotional mine fields. On the surface nothing much seems to be happening but if you were to put a foot down in the wrong place…things could get messy.

Other work brings chaos theory to life where unrelated people become tied in by an event – the man hit by the Harley Davidson owner on her way to the health club, and knocked into the salad bar of the Denny's allows the unemployed actress in the bathroom to walk out without paying her bill. We had learned that the man liked to live dangerously in traffic, ignoring lights etc, and ironically is killed by someone else ignoring a light driving a vanity vehicle to the health club.

We can form pictures or each of them in our mind, or at the find a frame of reference for them. But all we learn about the out of work actress is that "tragedy has often been her ally". Frustrating in its incompleteness maybe, but real in the fact of how much do we ever know about the people at the outer ripples of events?

After plunging into Recent Forgeries and reading, looking and listening (a CD of Mr. Mortensen reading some of the poetry in the catalogue is included) one gets the impression of a mind that is constantly in motion and an eye always on the look out. He might see and hear things in ways we don't and draw conclusions that perhaps we wouldn't have from those observations, but he is not afraid to try and explain his vision to us.

You could do him the disservice and say these works shouldn't be analysed intellectually, but left alone to be "felt" by each individual who sees them. That only serves to cheapen what he does and reduce his effort to the hackneyed. Too often people who have less skill then ego will be heard to say that technique doesn't matter, it's what you make people feel that counts. If you can't organize your thoughts on the page, focus a camera, or hold a paintbrush, you're not going to communicate anything.

Not only does Recent Forgeries find Viggo Mortensen quite capable of doing all those activities, it all shows he has mastered them to the extent of being able to communicate to those willing to listen. If you're not willing to meet any artist halfway, there is nothing they can do about that.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:44 AM | Permalink

When I read poetry I'll occasionally try to listen for the voice of the poet in my head. Trying to visualize, or what ever the equivalent for hearing something that you can't hear is, someone's voice is a fun proposition but in the end your no closer to knowing what the person sounds like then you were when you opened the book.

Hearing the inflections and the nuances that an author gives a piece sometimes makes the world of difference in how you interpret a person's work, or maybe it will help you understand a little of how he or she sees the world. The closest analogy I can come to is it's like watching a play versus reading a script off the page. You might think you've got the meaning of the words, but then you hear the actors speaking the lines and not only do you gain a whole new understanding but you get depths of perception that heretofore you had missed.

Now there are some poems and poets where the meaning isn't that far below the surface. It doesn't take a post doctorate in English literature to figure out the meaning of a Hallmark card or the equivalent that passes for emotional truths in most of today's world. But there are still writers and work out there where hearing a reading does add another layer of meaning.

It's recently been my good fortune to receive a number of books from Perceval Press of the work of poet/painter/photographer/actor Viggo Mortensen. Leaving aside his work as an actor, although a case could be made for that as well, Mr. Mortensen's work is that of an observer of those things that most of us would walk by and not give a second thought to.

Specifically in his photographs and poetry the impression that comes across is that the scene under observation, or the object on view through his lens, was simply waiting for him to wander by with pen and paper or camera. What it is that attracts his eye or his ear is what he is attempting to communicate to us through his work.

Dennis Hopper says in his introduction to Viggo's book Recent Forgeries that art in the twentieth century has hopefully reached the point where we are beyond fascination with technique and are content with allowing it to inspire reflection. In other words we should be able to sit, listen, look, hear, and be able to feel without having to particularly understand what the artist has done to achieve an affect.

Now that's all very well and good of course for the visual arts but for poetry and writing of any kind concessions have to made for intelligibility. If no one can understand a word of what you've written you might as well have not wasted paper and ink. So the object for the poet is to be able to express the emotions he or she wants to convey through the putting together of words that may or may not have anything to do with the end result individually but together generate a feeling, much like an artist's materials may not "say" anything in particular but when utilized they express an emotion.

Of course what I've written could also be a load of crap posing as an intellectual dissertation on the nature of art, or it could actually stem from an effort to communicate an idea to you. I don't know – how did it make you feel – did it piss you off – did it make you feel like I was a jerk off? Or did it strike a chord of recognition?

You don't know if I'm sitting here typing this with a self satisfied smirk on my face thinking doesn't that sound great, aren't I brilliant and nobody is going to understand a word of this so I'll sound even smarter. Or maybe I'm sincerely trying to communicate an idea that I find really important. Wouldn't it be nice if you could hear me saying the words so you had an idea of whether or not I'm sincere?

Which is the point I'm trying to make about Viggo Mortensen and his work and listening to him read his poetry as opposed to just reading them off the page in a book. If we go by the thesis I've proposed above of the reader or the viewer just reacting then you can argue both for and against hearing him read as opposed to reading it yourself.

There are people who would make the argument that after an artist finishes with a creation they surrender it to the interpretation of others and they should have no say in the matter let alone offer renditions to cloud the observer's own ability to make an impression. I personally think the argument that listening to the writer read his work is erecting a barrier of interpretation between the audience and the work, is a load of crap.

This That And The Other is a compilation of tracks assembled from four amazing discs that Viggo and Buckethead (the musical genius with the KFC head gear and mask preserving his secret identity and the mind behind Bucketheadland) have produced over the years combining Viggo reading his poetry and music compositions that their two minds, plus some friends, have come up with. Listening to Mr. Mortensen read his work as far as I'm concerned brings words that were dormant to life.

So what if it his opinion on how they should sound that affects my emotional reaction to the words – he was the one who wrote them in the first place and dictated what I would feel when I read them. What I get from hearing him speak the words is a deepening of appreciation for what he has to offer as an artist.

Mr. Mortensen's poetry is not your typical verse and rhyming couplet type thing, or even the more acceptable modern version of free verse. He creates something more along the lines of prose pictures, imagery forged in words that seek to define, in the words of Joyce that he quotes so appropriately in one of his books, the conciseness of his race.

That could encompass everything from an observation on relationships, love lost, and our reactions to those incidences. How we react to the day to day of existence says more about who we are as a people then any grand statement by politicians making patriotic proclamations of pride and prejudice. Listening to the words of Viggo Mortensen one might be tempted to dismiss them as mundane or convoluted, but if listened to closely they have more to say to the heart then is comfortable for most people to want to hear.

It is easy, as I've shown in this article, to get caught up in intellectualizing art and what it should and shouldn't do. Listening to Viggo Mortensen and Buckethead's renditions of Viggo's works on This That And The Other is to be brought back to the direct immediacy of art and to be given the opportunity to experience a creation first hand from its creator.

(Image to right is a thumbnail click with mouse to see full size – "Contemplating Viggo": Original photo R. Marcus, Digital treatments and graphic design, E. Marcus)
In my opinion there can be no finer gift that an artist can offer his audience. No matter what your opinions of art and its role or how best to appreciate it if you can't accept that simple truth when listening to This That And The Other then I think you've missed point of art altogether. So, sit back, put the disc in the machine, put on your headphones, crank the volume, and go for a trip with Viggo and Buckethead that you won't regret or want to have missed.

It's just like giving the finger to academics that dissect the crap out of everything.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:49 AM | Permalink

In the 1990s Rye Cooder made a memorable trip to Cuba where he connected with the musicians who had first popularized the afro-Cuban sound decades earlier. The Buena Vista Social Club was a truly remarkable album. Even though some of the musicians involved hadn't played or sang in years, and were now elderly, for a brief glorious period they recaptured the form that had made them famous.

In a subsequent follow up album, and documentary movie made of their concert tour by Wim Wenders, they still showed no signs of aging. Seemingly immortal one could have been forgiven for thinking their second career would last as long as their first. Of course that wasn't to be the case as even before the release of the documentary some of the musicians featured in it had died.

In the years since more of the elders of the original Cuban music scene have passed over, hopefully content in the knowledge that for one brief moment they were able experience the recognition they so richly deserved. The best thing about the discs and the movie that had propelled these musicians back into the limelight was not once did it feel like they didn't deserve the attention. There was never the feeling that sentimentality was being used to milk a cash cow: "Oh look at those cute old people singing and dancing".

Unfortunately the same can't be said for two newer releases of more recent tours. Muscia Cubana Live In Amsterdam and Musica Cubana Live In Tokyo both give off the whiff of an attempt being made to cash in on the name made by the Buena Vista Social Club. Both discs give original Vista vocalist Pio Leiva top billing, when in actual fact by the time of the Tokyo concert he is almost unable to walk let alone sing.

In the Amsterdam concert he is surrounded by an incredibly tight band of musicians, and he manages to croak his way through a number of songs with a reasonable amount of enthusiasm and ability, but not with any sort of skill level that merits a concert disc. He is accompanied by one other solo performer, who while is technically able, just doesn’t seem to have the same sort of energy and passion as any of his elders did.

Also included on the bill were a Cuban version of Brittany et al called Chiki Chaka whose only redeeming qualities, aside from physical assets, were the band that accompanies them and the fact that one of them has a reasonable voice. It seemed more like and opportunity to give Pio Leiva a chance to the George Burns routine, right down to the cigar in his mouth.

In Tokyo it seems that all they've used is Pio Lieva's name as the draw and the concert was advertised as Pio Lieva and the Sons of Cuba everywhere except on the box of the DVD. (Although technically it should have been Sons and Daughters of Cuba as there were two women involved who could actually sing). This concert is actually by far the better of the two as we get to hear the next generation of Cuban musicians.

They are amazing; from the musicians out to the vocalists they are worthy of being the successors to the men and women of the original Buena Vista discs. Which makes it even more embarrassing and sad when they haul Pio Lieva out onto the stage and he can barely walk and his singing voice has been reduced to a low mumble. I have to admit that I couldn't even bring myself to watch the few times they did bring him out.

The other thing that gives the impression of exploitation is the packaging makes no mention of any performer's name except Pio Lieva and the sexy girl act Chiki Chaka. The credits on the disc themselves aren’t much help because if you don't know somebody is the word vocals and a name don't mean anything when there are seven vocalists.

Of the two discs Muscia Cubana Live In Tokyo and Musica Cubana Live In Amsterdam I would say the Tokyo disc is the one with any redeeming qualities because of the opportunity to see the incredibly talented people who are carrying on the tradition of afro-Cuban music. Aside from that I would say don't bother with either of these discs.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:51 AM | Permalink

I remember the one trip I took to Chicago. I was very excited because I was eighteen which was the drinking age in Illinois at the time, which meant I'd be able to go and check out Blues clubs to my heart's content. Imagine my disgust that on the day we pull into Chicago we discover that the drinking age had been increased to nineteen.

No grandfather clause for people born before that day; you weren’t nineteen you weren't getting in a bar. I knew they were going to be checking people closely, and I'm the guy who had to carry his passport with him until he was twenty-eight in order to get served. I knew that I had no hope in hell of getting served or seeing the inside of any of the great clubs lining the streets of that town.

Well I haven't been back to Chicago since, and I probably never will now, but I finally got to at least see inside one of those great Blues clubs. Jimmy Burns Live At B.L.U.E.S. is a live DVD produced by Delmark Records shot one afternoon during a summer afternoon barbecue at one of those old clubs that I couldn't get into.

Maybe it's a type of romanticism, but the opening location shot showing the bar's beat up, store front style frontage gave me a quick thrill of anticipation. Going inside to see the band gathered on a stage so small that only the two guitar players can stand abreast, and the chart on the wall behind them listing that month's acts, like Eddie "Cleanhead" Vincent, in magic marker, only served to heighten the atmosphere of anticipation.

Of course all that meant that I was giving the band and the DVD a load of unfair expectations to live up to. It's not fair to anybody to load your own romantic ideals upon them, but you know what? Jimmy Burns and his band not only didn't disappoint, they brought that old dream of mine of seeing Blues sung in a Chicago club to life.

The combination of who they were, the unpretentious way they presented themselves, the diversity of their music, their obvious pleasure at playing, and their level of skill made them a treat to watch and listen to. When that was combined with the wonderful job of capturing all that and the atmosphere of the space by the DVD's directors, made watching Live At B.L.U.E.S almost as good as being there in person.

Jimmy Burns himself started out playing in the fifties, but when he began raising a family in the early seventies he put full time music on hold for a while. He never stopped playing; he just wasn't pushing himself to go out on the road and gig every night. However in the mid 1990s he started up again full time and signed on with Delmark. Records.

Since then he's been playing regularly and he doesn't seem to have skipped a beat for taking the time off. I was watching and listening to him play guitar and trying to figure out who he reminded me of. It took only a song or two for me realize that it wasn't who he reminded me of that made him sound familiar, it was that he was effortlessly doing all those things that people worship Eric Clapton for attempting.

In fact both Jimmy Burns and his guitar player Tony Palmer are casually better players then almost any other rock or blues guitar player I've seen or heard in a long time. Not only do they not go in for the usual bullshit that you see from rock guitarists, or try to play so fast that you can't hear a note they are playing they play solos on parts of the guitar neck the most guitar players seem to have forgotten existed.

There is more genuine emotion to be heard in a solo played back up towards the pegs than you could believe possible. After listening to the first couple solos by each man I was left wondering why the hell anyone could get excited by some guy bending notes over and over again down by his pickups where it just becomes so much noise after a while.

Jimmy Burns is a Blues man, but one who has created his own style of playing. In most of his material you can hear his Mississippi roots but on top of that he grafts everything from soul to R&B. Almost every song he plays has something slightly different to the one from before it, but he doesn't dilute any of the power of the music like so many other attempts to augment the Blues.

The nice thing about live concerts is that occasionally the band will bring on a special guest. On this occasion the band brings on another "rediscovered" blues singer, Jesse Fortune to sing lead on track thirteen of the disc, "Three O'clock Blues"

Jesse Fortune is a real old time blues singer. His vocals have more in common with old spirituals and field "Hollars" then the more sophisticated styling of Jimmy Burns. He got up on stage and his voice swooped, soared; shook like a leaf at times, and roared like a lion at others. I don't know if I could take a full set of that style of singing, but it was quite amazing to listen to on this occasion.

Live At B.L.U.E.S comes with audio options for all systems, so even if you have nothing but what came with your television to use for speakers, your sound quality should be okay. You also get a commentary feature with Jimmy talking about each song as he performs it, its history and where it was first played.

For those of you out there like me who have always wanted to see a Blues band play in one of the older bars of Chicago, Jimmy Burns Live at B.L.U.E.S is truly a wonderful experience. A great band, a great location, and great material, what more could you ask for

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:15 AM | Permalink

I've never really been attracted to most of what was popular rock music in the 1950s. During the seventies when the whole 50s nostalgia thing was happening I never understood why people were so turned on by the music. Most of it seemed like really lame imitations of black music from the time, and the rest of it, Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons for example, just didn't make any sense at all.

One of the few white acts I liked from that time period was Jerry Lee Lewis, or "Killer" as he was known. There was something about him that gave him that spark of danger that none of the other packaged acts seemed to have. He had a connection to the music that verged on the spiritual and he played like he was almost possessed.

But it was his style that really enthralled me, not just his playing with his elbows or feet either, but the heavy bottom end that pounded out the beat while his right hand rang out the melody. I've heard a lot of other rock keyboard players of various styles since I first heard Jerry Lee and although some of them have been good, not a one has had the same feel for the music that the "Killer" did.

It wasn't until a couple of days ago that I heard someone whose playing was similar enough that it reminded me of the way Lewis would attack a song. The thing is though that Barrelhouse Buck McFarland died in 1962 just eight months after he recorded the tracks that Delmark Records has released under the title Alton Blues

Buck McFarland was born in Alton Illinois in 1903 and was part of a group of Blues musicians from the twenties and thirties who were referred to as the Alton school. This was in reference to the similarities they all had in their piano playing and the fact they all came from Alton. (A later graduate of Alton Illinois was this guy called Miles Davis who was supposed to have been a half decent trumpet player)

In the years between World Wars One and Two Buck and other Alton natives, plus some others, made up the core of a thriving Blues scene in St. Louis. Somehow or other St. Louis never achieved the fame as a Blues centre that Chicago or Harlem obtained but in between the wars and in the immediate aftermath of World War two it was just as potent.

The barrelhouse style that gave Buck his name came about due to the types of places they would be playing in. Barrelhouse bars were usually at the low end of the social scale with the bar consisting of some planks laid down over some barrels. They were crowded rooms with people talking at the top of their lungs and in order for the piano player to be heard he needed to keep it simple and loud; heavy on the left hand and sharp and clean on the right.

According to one player from that time, "you could just mash your hands or elbows on the keys" (sounds a lot like the way Jerry Lee used to play doesn't it?) But in reality it was also more refined than that as you can tell by just listening to Buck's playing on Alton Blues

This was the second of two recordings that Buck made on being "rediscovered", the first one was recorded in early 61 and the sound quality supposedly wasn't that great. But this second effort, recorded in the home of St Louis Jazz Club members Bob and Vivian Oswald with better equipment, sounds amazing. You can hear every note he plays from the most delicate trills with the right hand, to the pounding bass of the left.

What's really wonderful, and caught me by surprise not knowing what to expect, was his voice. It sounds like what beautifully aged wood would sound like if it could sing – rich and deep with no cracks or dryness. As a complement and a counter point to his piano music, whether in full tilt barrelhouse mode like on "Barrelhouse Buck" or the more melodious "Goodbye Blues", it fills in the spaces left by the notes played by the piano.

But the piano playing is really what it's all about when you listen to a guy named Barrelhouse, just as it should be. I've never heard anything like his playing ever. Many is the time I've been told so and so is great piano player and been really disappointed because he or she just sounds like every other rock or blues keyboardist.

They might be technically more proficient and able to play any style under the sun, but they still couldn't hold a candle to this guy pounding out the rhythm with his left hand like he's keeping time with the pulse of the universe and letting his right pick its way through any melody that strikes it's fancy. Okay so maybe that's a bit poetic and over the top but when I listened to Barrelhouse Buck McFarland it felt like I was finally hearing Blues piano played like it was supposed to be played.

Nobody, not even my old buddy Jerry Lee, approaches the way Buck could play barrelhouse Blues piano. There is something effortless in the way he moves through all his material that makes everybody else look like they are just trying too hard to be "Blues" piano players. There is a genuine artistry to simplicity and directness that only comes from years of experience and a willingness to let the music dictate what happens and not try and discipline it into a nice neat space.

People probably wonder why I write about old time music and musicians so much. Well first of all I don't consider them old time, it doesn't matter when music was written or recorded, and it doesn't matter if a musician is twenty, eighty, or dead. What matters is what they put into the music they make. Listening to Barrelhouse Buck McFarland's Alton Blues is listening to someone who put his all into every note he played and every word he sang and that makes it timeless and priceless.

Oh, and one more thing, track twelve on this disc is simply called "Talk", it’s a wonderful conversation between Buck and the folks doing the recording about the people Buck used to play with and some of things they got up to. It's a great little bit of story telling, and even better for probably being true, and the icing on a really wonderful cake.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:35 AM | Permalink

Affirmative action programs seem to be surrounded by controversy the world over. In North America African Americans and women have been the major recipients of these programs in an attempt to redress discrepancies in education, financial, and employment opportunities that continue to this day. Of course the backlash from the majority white Anglo-Saxon male population ebbs and flows depending on how threatened people are feeling.

In times of economic threat the majority circles the wagons against those they see as stealing their livelihood, their rightful place in society as the ones who get everything given to them at the expense of others. But in North America we only have to correct a few hundred year of injustice and the majority do see the point in it.

The change to full equality has an inevitability about it that can't be forestalled in North American society in spite of what a minority power base tries to prevent. The idea that black and white people need to be forcefully segregated seems ridiculous to us now, but only forty-five years ago they could not share lunch counter facilities or sit together on a bus.

Twenty years ago nobody would have believed that a black person would be the president of the Republic of South Africa. Yet today they now have majority black rule after years of near slavery and segregation. There is tangible proof that change can occur and that no ones place in society is fixed in position by their colour or the strata of society they are born in.

But at the same time another reality exists beyond the ken of understanding to North American minds. The caste system in India has existed for over two thousand years and has successfully segregated elements of society according to status and birth for longer then our culture has even existed.

In his new book Hitchhiker Vinod George Joseph has written about the caste system by following the lives of young people from a variety of backgrounds as they try to navigate their way through today's India. To someone like myself raised on the notion that all people are equal and deserve an equal opportunity to prove themselves, it was hard to believe that this book was set in contemporary times.

Occasional references to names (Microsoft) and events (the bombing of the World Trade Centre) seem like they are from another planet when read in relation to the description of a mother and daughter being killed because of their caste. Instead of grade point averages students talk about what kind of reservations each school and each program have.

For those like me who had no idea what that word meant in the context of schooling Mr. Joseph lets it come out in the story line without having to lecture or teach a class. The conversation between students of different faiths and castes as they discuss their chances of admission to what they think are their best options for careers and what will be required of them to achieve their goals, brings it all out naturally.

Most of the time we see the world through the eyes of his protagonist, Ebenezer. As an untouchable he should have all the advantages of the affirmative action offered by the reservation system, but he is a Christian and that mean he is no longer part of the caste system so is not entitled to those benefits except to a reduced degree.

Supposedly because his family are no longer Hindu they are no longer subject to the same sort of prejudices that affect others. That's fine in theory but in practice of course they are still untouchables who nobody would want have their son or daughter marry, or will give a job to, or let study (or even teach) at a school they run unless they are made to.

Ebenezer tries his best but at every turn another barrier is raised against him. Sure the companies have to keep so many spots open as reservations, but if you can't find a "qualified" person for them you can't fill those spots and they just stand empty. Or if a certain amount of money can be made to exchange hands then rules can be changed and reservation spots can vanish.

No matter how many affirmative action programs are implemented, no matter how much the government says they are working to change the system and make life better for the former lower casts, nothing really has changed in the way people see each other. Well-educated Ebenezer still has to tug at his forelock to an illiterate farmer who acts as if Ebenezer needs his dispensation to do anything because he is one caste level up.

After the riot that kills Ebenezer's mother and daughter the men who did the killing and started the brawl (and who raped his aunt when she was a teenager) are not sentenced or even charged. Do you think it makes a difference that the police jobs are all held by a caste superior to Ebenezer's and is the same as those doing the killing?

I don't want to give the wrong impression about the Hitchhiker, that its one long tirade against an unjust system, because although that is a part of the story, its also the story of people and their experiences on all sidesof the system. There are the young men who want desperately to succeed on merit alone and not be thought of as tokens; the young women who want to be more than chattel and judged by how much of a dowry they will bring to a prospective marriage; and those who get caught in the sectarian violence between Muslim and Hindu.

All the characters in the story are entirely believable in the way they act and behave considering who they are and their circumstances. The author never makes the mistake of climbing on any particular soapbox; he is simply reporting the facts as they are.

Vinod George Joseph has written a work of fiction and has even changed the names of castes. In his forward he says that he has done his utmost to paint as fair a picture of the circumstances in his country as possible. Judging by the way in which he lets the story almost tell itself and never presents a judgement on his characters, simply letting their actions speak for them, I'd have to say he has succeeded.

Hitchhiker is a difficult book to read in its blunt honesty and it's unwillingness to compromise anything in its attempts to depict the truth of the circumstances in his country. I don't know if everybody who reads this book from India will agree with what is said in it, from either side of the argument, but what I do know to my ears it has the ring of complete authenticity.

For anyone who believes in the economic miracle of India, and how bright a future it has, reading this book will make you re-evaluate a lot of what you read in the newspapers about that. It seems like the shiny bright picture being painted is hiding some of the old unpleasant truths India might not what the rest of the world to know about.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 02:15 AM | Permalink

The Kalimba, to call it by its proper name, in the hands of Kahil El'Zabar becomes something incomparable, to my ears, to anything I've ever heard or imagined. No longer that funny plink-plink sound with a buzz that I'd grown accustomed to. Instead a beautiful, and melodic trill that is enthralling in its own right and with the strength to act as the underpinning percussion for the solo work of trumpet and saxophone.

Yes there are other musicians in the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, which judging by my review so far you probably couldn't tell. My apologies to those three fine musicians for that, it is not meant as any slight to them or their abilities or to imply they somehow play a lesser role in the band, because they don't.

Ernest "Khabeer" Dawkins on alto and tenor Saxophone and percussion and Fareed Haque on electric and acoustic guitar have both played with the band for a while. Corey Wilkes on trumpet, flugelhorn and percussion is a new addition to the band, and although only in his twenties he already tours with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and fronts his own bands.

As in a lot of Jazz ensembles, especially those with no base player and a percussionist who plays leads; the guitar player becomes the centre point around which everything else orbits. Fareed Haque is that eye in the hurricane of the Heritage Ensemble. Calmly seated on his chair he effortlessly strokes out the notes of the songs melody as a perfect rhythmic lead. He holds on to the theme of each composition, allowing his band mates the freedom to come and go secure in the knowledge it will be there when they return from their improvisational excursions.

And what excursions they are. The pity is that I don't have the vocabulary to describe how wonderful they are. For example what can you say about Mr. Dawkins' incredible saxophone work that runs from gently blown notes that waft like butterflies through the air of the studio to high sharp notes that sting the ears like a wasp bite with their urgency.

I haven't seen or heard anyone play a flugelhorn since the late Freddy Stone back in the early 1980s, so I was interested in seeing what Corey Wilkes would do with it. I've always found Jazz trumpet to be the most difficult of all instruments to listen to. Usually I find them too harsh and blaring, like the player feels that loud, and fast are the main elements of a good solo.

Corey Wilkes does not belong to that school, perhaps it's from playing the flugelhorn with it's less brassy sound, but whatever it is he falls into the category of Jazz trumpeters that I can listen to for hours. He's not loud just for the sake of being loud, or fast to show off how fast he is, the music dictates all of that for him.

You can see him building solos in his mind as he plays, but he also works in pre-arranged bits, like playing the flugelhorn and the trumpet simultaneously and making it work. It doesn't sound like noise, it sounds like two horns being played by different people. But like everyone else in the band, showing off is not his intent, but serving the music is.

Kahil El'Zabar has had versions of the Ethic Heritage Ensemble playing for around the last thirty years in and around Chicago. Whether you watch and listen to the DVD or just listen to the CD, Hot 'N' Heavy: Live At The Ascension Loft, featuring the latest configuration of the band is Jazz at it best. When free flights of improvisation are combined with incredible skill and discipline like they are on these recordings, you know you're listening to the best.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:02 AM | Permalink

Indomitable, indefatigable, and inflexible have all been words to describe the Mid –Yorkshires constabulary's Andy Dalziel. But more surprising is how many people call him friend. No matter how exasperated Ellie and Peter Pascoe, or Sgt. Wield get with "Fat Andy" there is no thought in any of their minds of that presence ever vanishing.

Like a mountain or other large part of the scenery seen every day, life without Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel coercing the next round out of his subordinates is unimaginable. Which makes his being brought down by a bomb at a suspected terrorist site all the more unbelievable. Not just laid up for a few days either, but in a coma from which he may never rise again.

Terror and terrorism confined to London in modern Great Britain and no matter how far north your go, even into the wilds of Yorkshire; its effects are being felt. With Andy down it's up to his far more politically correct subordinate Peter Pascoe to liaison with the Counter terrorist troops that storm the Mid-Yorkshire police headquarters in an attempt to drag as much information out of the site's ruins as possible.

In Death Comes For The Fat Man Reginald Hill has gathered together his familiar cast of characters from the Mid Yorkshire constabulary and thrown them up against every police officers' worst nightmare. A beloved colleague brought down in the line of duty and you're not able or allowed to do anything about seeking out those responsible.

For Peter Pascoe his frustration at being relegated to the sidelines by the counter terrorist squad is only made worse by the feelings of guilt he is suffering for having been literally sheltered from the worst of the blast by the bulk of his superior officer. It only increases his frustration and anger to find out that those responsible are in actual fact vigilante anti-terrorists who are being covertly assisted by the very people who are supposed to be investigating their activities.

In other words Reginald Hill has set-up all the right ingredients for a typical hunt the spy among the spies while you hunt down the killers that has been the hallmark of good British mystery writing since Le Carré. But the wonderful thing about Reginald Hill books is the fact that he goes off in directions unexpected and poses questions that maybe some of us would rather not think about.

There's a great deal of fuss made these days about the intelligent person's murder mystery as opposed to the old fashioned pulp fiction style of Raymond Chandler, or the detective pulling it out of the hat style popularized by Dame Agatha. But even they have become formulaic with the troubled, alcohol plagued, solitary male who can't keep a relationship on the rails, or the woman who has to be as tough as the men but keep in touch with her feminine side. You wonder when they ever have time to do any police work they're so troubled.

That's the great thing about Reginald Hill's books. He never loses track of who his people are and what they do for a living. Instead of making it an oddity for a cop to be human and have emotions, while all those around him or her are either on the take or louts of the first degree, it is commonplace among his characters.

He is also far too adroit a writer to ever make all of his villains evil wankers carrying bags marked swag, or to let liberal niceties prevent him from writing truths. For example in some parts of England today there are elements in the Muslim community who would have supported the decision to bomb the underground and who could very well be planning some other such activity.

But just as Hill won't shy away from that truth, he doesn't shy away from the truth that there is just as sizable a number of English Christians for whom the sun has never set on the empire and who believe the only good wog is a dead one. It's a collection of these types who have formed themselves into a group called the Templers; named after one of the more fanatical groups of knights from the time of the Crusades. (Hill also shows himself capable of having fun at his own expense when Peter is researching the Templers in a book store and the proprietor makes comments about them being all the rage in books right now because of that damned De Vinci Code)

The bomb that caught Andy was their handiwork, although it was the occupants of the video store who were the target and the police were just an unfortunate accident. You see the Templers have decided to carry on the work of their namesakes and kill the Infidels who have in their eyes escaped justice. In other words found not guilty by the courts but not by the Templers.

At first Peter has a policeman's usual abhorrence for vigilantes and their scorn for the systems of government. But what if Andy were to die? What might happen if he caught up to the Templers who did this and Andy had crossed over as he continually threatened to do? What is fuelling his obsession to hunt them down at all costs if not a need for vengeance?

Is he that much different from them? When he realizes how well protected they are, and they might just get away with it he begins to wonder. What would he do if he found out they would escape prosecution, or get off with a slap on the wrist because knowing and proving are two different things?

These are his thoughts as he hunts for Andy's attackers across England. Sneaking around behind the backs of his new friends in Counter Terrorism, who have conveniently seconded him to their service where they hope to keep him under wraps. But Peter hasn't been under the tutelage of Andy Dalziel all these years for nothing. Piece by piece he puts together the jigsaw puzzle with help from the most unlikely of sources.

Constable Hector, who thought he heard the shot that brought everyone to the scene, has always been a standing joke around the dept. The idiot child of the Mid-Yorkshire force turns out though to be close to savant when it comes to drawing faces from memory.

When someone tries to clean up a loose end in Hector and tries a hit and run that fails, Hector is able to draw the driver's face from memory. When the same face turns up on the back of a novel about counter terrorism in the Gulf War, as its author, and in Hector's room trying to visit him after the accident Peter knows they have one of their men.

Reginald Hill delivers another wonderful book with two of the most memorable detectives in the Parthenon of British detective writing. How many other authors have created a character that can dominate it even when they are laid up in a coma for the majority of the book. Oh all right Andy does a little astral projecting, negotiates with death on occasion, but it's nawt much more then he usually does in a day's work, as I'm sure he'd be the first to tell you over the pint that you bought him.

Reginald Hill writes books that are about people who happen to solve crimes because they are cops, but they are also people and as such he has succeeded in bringing one of the most human faces to policing of any of the writers of crime fiction alive today. Death Comes For The Fat Man is touching, scary, funny, and very human all at once.

There is a crime to be solved, and murders to be prevented, but there are also lives to live and hopefully to be celebrated and not mourned. Death Comes For The Fat Man is available in Canada through Random House Canada and various online retailers like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 12:57 AM | Permalink

Most of us take pride in the country of our birth, even if on occasion we don't agree with those who are in charge. We all like it when our country is recognized by the world's press; it makes us feel important by association. Coming from a country like Canada, of lesser importance on the world's stage, catching the eye of International media is even more of treat.

But there are those occasions when you realize you need to be careful what you wish for, because it might just come true. Start thinking, how come the Americans get all the press, and the next thing you know Canada has its very own prisoner scandal, just like the Americans in Iraq did a few years back.

Now obviously that’s not quite what you were hoping for when you wanted to see your county's name above the fold at Le Monde or other prestigious papers. Reading that in April 2006 three captives held by Canadian soldiers were mistreated and that even now a year latter an investigation is ongoing into the whys and wherefores of the situation.

If that weren't enough to make you cringe there is also the report that the Canadian army has been handing over prisoners to the Afghanistan security forces without checking on what their eventual fate would be. According to Canadian law any person in custody may not be turned over to a third party if there is a chance they will either face execution, torture, or any other cruel and unusual punishment not allowed by Canadian Law.

When the issue was first raised in the House of Commons, Minister of Defence Gordon O'Connor denied there was any wrong doing, by insisting that the International Red Cross was overseeing all prisoner transfers. But as of March 4th/2007 the Red Cross said they were doing no such thing.

Officials in the Defence Department claim that they signed a deal where Canadian troops must notify the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the International Red Cross when they had over a prisoner to the Afghan authorities. The Human Rights Commission is supposed to be monitoring the well being of the troops once they are in the hands of the Afghan army.

This agreement is described as an extension of one Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier signed back in December 2005 agreeing that all prisoners Canada captured would be turned over to the Afghan army. That agreement had been widely condemned by Human Rights activists, because there had been no provisions made for monitoring by any Rights body.

While the new agreement rectifies that in principle it's almost impossible to know what actually takes place on the ground in Afghanistan. The Canadian Military Police Complaints Commission is currently investigating eighteen cases of prisoners being handed over in spite of the knowledge that they would be tortured or otherwise mistreated.

Now I don't know about anybody else but I don't like the idea of my country being considered complicit in the torturing of Prisoners of War. To give the Minister of Defence his due, he doesn't appear to either, in a surprise visit he landed in Afghanistan on Sunday determined to find out as much as possible.

He claims to have a two-fold purpose in visiting. The first he says is to meet with the people from the Human Rights group and gain assurances they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. " I want to look the man in the eyes and I want to be confirmed that they are going to do what they say they are going to do"

His other intent is to have people in the Canadian army show him exactly what the process is, what they do from the moment they capture an enemy soldier to the moment they hand him over to the Afghanistan government. I would guess his reason for this is to find out where there are any holes in the process that could cause things to go wrong, or information to not be delivered.

How could Canadian soldiers hand over prisoners when they knew they would be tortured? Who was responsible for that decision and how could it have happened eighteen times? Was this an isolated instance of one man or one platoon that has a personal vendetta against the enemy, or is it wide spread lack of understanding of the policy.

That's the information that the Minister and his staff should be trying to find out so as to prevent any repeats of the activity. I hope for the sake of my country, the men and women of the armed forces and the people who are taken prisoner that he is able to find a solution to this problem.

It's hard to take pride when one is complicit in torture, and if our government, or our soldiers are taking part in that sort of activity than none of our hands are clean.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:47 AM | Permalink

Rio de Janeiro, home of Sugar Loaf Mountain, white sandy beaches, beautiful half naked people, a magnificent statue of Jesus Christ that looms over the city, and some of the most violent slums in the world. In The Favela (Portuguese for squatter or slums) that cling to the sides of hills overlooking the city, thousands of people desperately eke out an existence in conditions that no North American can come close to understanding, while the hotels on the beach pretend they don't exist.

Rule of the Favela are split between the drug lords and the police, and with the other 90% of the population stuck in between and trying not to get squeezed out of existence. Between 1987 and 2005 when 467 minors were killed in both Israel and Palestine, 3957 people under the age of 16 died violently on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The distance from the white sandy beaches to the Favela is measured in more then inches and feet; they might share the same territory but they are worlds apart.

When the police are even more dangerous to the citizens than the drug runners, the police are the ones making the money from the drugs not the kids who kill each other on the streets for the dime bags of coke, where can a people go to save themselves. Who can they turn to when the police exact vengeance on drug lords by coming into the Favela and killing people at random as happened in 1993?

Twenty-one innocent people were killed by a division of police in retaliation for the death of four officers on the previous day. They had been executed by the drug lord of one Favela, and the police exacted their own revenge with machine guns and hand grenades. Among the dead was the brother of Anderson Sá a young member of the drug gangs.

Anderson was born and bred in Vigario Geral Favela, affectionately referred to as the Bosnia of Rio because of the extreme violence and its similarity to an armed camp. Growing up in Vigario a young person has the option of making $650 US a week working for the drug lords and probably dying by the age of twenty-five, or earning the average wage of a Brazilian adult, $13.00 US a week. There were no other alternatives.

When his brother died, Anderson's Godmother feared that he would drift further into the drug culture, she was enough of a realist to know that not much else awaited a young man, especially a young man who would most likely want revenge on the police for the murder of his brother. But what she hadn't counted on, or anybody else for that matter, was that his brother's death would serve to change Anderson's, and hundreds and thousands of others through him, life.

The documentary film Favela Rising, now available on DVD tells how Anderson and a group of friends took it upon themselves to try and change their corner of the world and have had more success than they might even have hoped. AfroReggae started as the name of a newsletter about Afro Brazilian culture and like a cell splitting multiplied into so much more.

A band for performing music that spoke to the people about what they could have, and that demonstrated aspects of their culture by incorporating, dance, singing, martial arts, drumming and acrobatics. Classes to teach young people how to play the drums, and dance, and sing all in the manner of their people, African Brazilians, were a natural extension of the performances, and a means to their end of showing their was another life aside from that of being a drug dealer.

It's a simple theory, but one that takes perseverance and dedication to put into practice. Give people back who they are and it gives them a sense of self and belonging; they are more than just another Favela resident, they are Afro Brazilians with a heritage and a history. They are a people.

Native Americans of various nations through out North America have been doing this in an effort to save their newest generation from death at the hands of pretty much the same things as the residents of Vigario Geral. But Anderson and his people have had no help from the governments; in fact they know they can't count on the government at all, so they do it on their own one person, one block and one neighbourhood at a time.

Naturally Favela Rising focuses on Anderson Sá and his associates and their Afro-Reggae programming but the film makers, Mat Mochary and Jeff Zimbalist, have done a remarkable job of conveying exactly what the streets of Vigario Geral are like. Shooting from overhead and using long shots give you the sense of how stacked on top of each other everybody is, with houses crammed into every available space

The camera peeks into dark and dingy shelters in which the blue light of a TV might shine, as the inhabitant sits in the doorway staring with eyes that have been drained of hope. It's these incidental shots that are the ones that speak most powerfully about life here. The scenes of violence might be more viscerally thrilling but the weight of the look in people's eyes that is resigned to this being all there is, lives with you long after the cameras have left their presence.

The directors lived and filmed in the Favela on and off for two years. When they weren't there they left cameras behind with the Afro Reggae people to distribute among those students who had become proficient in their use. According to the film makers some of the most dynamic footage of the documentary comes from the work of these camera men and women who because of their situations were able to take cameras into places they wouldn't normally.

In order to tell the story properly the directors have interspersed file footage in amongst their own, and in it is where we are given the background on all the history of the Favela. They have also made wise use of talking head interviews with the principles involved in the Afro Reggae program to help tell the story of how they went from a small magazine to a cultural event that draws tens of thousands .

In a bonus feature on the DVD, a brief film about making the documentary, neither one of the filmmakers makes any bones about the fact that they are both friends with Anderson Sá. So if you are looking for something that might pass for objective film making on this subject, this is not for you.

But if you are looking for a passionately told story of one community's attempt to throw off the shackles of poverty and violence. Not only do they succeed in helping themselves beyond their wildest hopes and dreams, they have now been approached to help start similar programs in Haiti and other areas in the Caribbean and South American.

I'm always wary of any movie that labels itself inspiring. If there is a more overused word in today's movie public relation game I've yet to see it in use. But if they want to ever show a movie that deserves to be described in those terms, thenFavela Rising is one movie I wouldn't ever argue about giving that honorific. On one final note, the investors in this film have agreed to donate 100% of net proceeds to favela educational programming.

Just one more really good reason for buying this DVD..

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:27 AM | Permalink

On Friday evening The European Union issued a statement announcing a new agreement aimed at cutting greenhouse gases and emissions. The three steps announced will be in addition to their previous commitment to abide by the terms of the Kyoto Accord.

Under the terms of the agreement the Union agreed to ensure that over the next 13 years that greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 20%; ten per cent of all automobiles driven in the member states would be fuelled by biofuels made from plants; and that a total of 20% of all energy used by the member nations will be generated through renewable sources compared to the current six %.

But there are a few items in the accord that have given environmentalists pause, and caused some voices to be raised in concern. First is the fact that the French and some of the newer Eastern European member states like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have insisted that Nuclear Energy be listed as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Some of these countries are landlocked and are at Northern latitudes, which reduces the viability of solar and wind power acting as a substitute for coal fires driving the engine of industry. While nuclear fuel might burn cleaner the problem remains of what to do with disposal of the spent fuel rods. Would using nuclear fuel just be a matter of exchanging a short-term problem for a long term one?

Then there is the fact that not all countries in the union are going to comply within the time period allowed. Once again it’s the former Soviet Bloc countries that are facing difficulties. Having only joined the Union in 2004 some of them have not yet benefited completely from their membership and would face real economic difficulties in meeting the goals established by the agreement.

In order to accommodate these countries the language of the agreement is vague about the commitment of individual countries, only stipulating that over all the Union meet these targets. So while some countries might fall short, as long as others make up the difference they will be able to claim success.

What the leaders of the European countries are hoping for, aside from preserving the earth a little longer, is that by showing a commitment to lowering greenhouse gases above and beyond that agreed to under the Kyoto Accord they will encourage some of the other major polluters to at least sign off on Kyoto. With neither China, Russia, India, nor the United States doing anything about mandating controls, four of the largest polluters and consumers of fossil fuels in the world are doing nothing to in the fight against global warming.

Since the biggest concern that each of the four countries has about Kyoto or any agreement that forces emission controls, is the impact it would have on their economies, this new plan by the European Union can be effective in a couple of ways in offering them encouragement. First of all is the fact that they have managed to come up with an effective means of ensuring that nobody within a group of twenty- four nations is going to have to do anything that will endanger their economic growth.

Then there is the fact that the Union will be reducing its own overall economic stability for the period of time it takes to adjust to its new reality. The other four countries will be in a position to institute Kyoto type controls and yet still be under fewer restrictions than the Europeans.

If they can get at least Russia on side that will be a big plus, as Russia is a big trading partner with the Union it might not prove that complicated. Especially if it can be made clear to Putin, president of Russia, that doing so will make him look better in the eyes of the world then the Americans. The Cold War maybe over but the "competitive" spirit still remains between the two ex-foes. Nothing seems to motivate intent on the part of Russia's political leadership more then an opportunity to make the American government look bad.

The politics of the environment is a tricky thing, where governments are more concerned with their chances of re-election or the fate of their political party than protecting our future. Somehow the European Union is managing to find a way to achieve results above and beyond the minimal requirements of Kyoto. Now that's an example we can only hope that other countries can follow,

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:27 AM | Permalink

I have a confession to make. Those of you who have a passing acquaintance with my opinions etc, might not be too surprised by what I'm about to tell you, but to others this may come as a bit of shock and I apologise for that. I just felt that given the tenor of the times that I owed it to everybody to make a clean breast of things.

I'm a security risk. Yes that's right mild mannered, beady eye Canadian with my head full of lies I may be, but I'm also a dyed in the wool security risk. This is no new thing either, brought about by any of the many disparaging comments I may have recently made about various political figures on both sides of the border, or any relationship I may or may not have with foreigners of a different colour.

No, I'm ashamed to admit that my days of being a security risk predate either George junior or senior's presidential stints and date from a series of incidents that took place between 1980 and 1983. Not that it matters I guess, as Maher Arar has learned it doesn't matter when an incident took place, or whether you were innocent or not, once labelled a threat, always a threat.

I found out about my status in the summer of 1988. I was "between engagements". (That's what actors call being out of work it sounds a lot better) and it just so happened that my period of forced idleness coincided with Toronto Canada, where I lived at the time, playing host to the annual meeting of the Group of Eight Industrial nations (G 8)

To handle that influx of media that was sure to accompany the leaders they needed to hire a large number of media clerks; people who had experience with files, organizing information, and dealing with requests for copies of documents. Two or three local temporary employment agencies had been hired to tackle the job of recruiting individuals to fill these positions.

Since I had had plenty of experience doing office work from when I had helped manage a theatre company, I decided to apply for one of the positions to earn some needed money to tide me over. My credentials were fine, I was actually overqualified but that didn’t matter, and I was told the job was mine as long as I cleared a security check.

As I wasn't going to be having any contact with any of the dignitaries, it was considered a forgone conclusion that I would pass. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or the woman from the employment agency who had to phone and tell me that my application for security clearance had been rejected. According to her, no one else who had applied had been turned down, only me.

It took me a bit, but I figured out what it was about eventually. It was one of two things, or maybe the two combined and they both involved events that took place between 1981 and 1982.

At the beginning of the 1980's the American government was looking for places they could test one of their newest weapons, The Cruise Missile. Northern Alberta, in Canada was ideal for their needs as the topography was varied and there were miles upon miles of unpopulated land. They could launch the missiles from planes and guide them to their final destinations secure in the knowledge that no humans would be disturbed.

That it happened to the traditional hunting grounds of neighbouring Native Canadians didn't concern them overly much, nor did the fact that it was the migration route for huge herds of caribou. It's not as if the missiles had nuclear warheads on them for gosh sakes. Anyway the Canadian government at the time gave the American's permission to go ahead and test the missiles and even offered to build the guidance system on Canadian soil.

In 1981 I was one of about twenty people in front of the American Consulate in down town Toronto protesting the testing. As we marched on the sidewalk in front of the front doors, two gentlemen, who might as well have been wearing signs saying "SPY" were taking our pictures from a meridian in the road. In the course of the next two years the demonstrations grew larger and larger until in the fall of 1982 about 100,000 people turned out to march through the streets of Toronto against the Cruise missile tests.

It was probably the biggest demonstration of it's kind in Toronto, maybe even Canada. Shortly after that somebody left a van filled with explosives parked up against the factory in Rexdale, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, where the guidance system for the missiles was being constructed. It didn't too that much physical damage, but some poor security guard was killed.

I remember hearing about at work and coming home and asking my roommate if we knew the people who did it. He gave an odd look and said, "we know people who know them. Watch what you say on the phone for a while." I wasn't thrilled that we had even a tenuous connection to anybody that could be responsible for killing somebody else (They called themselves Direct Action and had actually been responsible for a couple of attacks across Canada. They had blown up a couple of adult video stores in British Columbia and some power lines as well. Ironically when I moved to Kingston Ontario in 1990, they were already here having been sentenced to serve their time in the jails here) but I did think he was being a little paranoid about the phones until my father asked me why the hell my phone was tapped.

At one time or another in his career as a lawyer my father had prosecuted drug offences for the Canadian government, so one thing he was familiar with was the sounds indicating the beginning and end of a tapped conversation. After about a couple of months of being careful on the phone, of not even talking in the same room as the phone in case of a location bug, we gradually slipped back into our normal behaviour.

Eventually I just simply forgot about the whole thing, getting fully involved in my career in theatre and frustrated with the infighting among the political types, I became less and less involved with activist politics. If I hadn't had to apply for security clearance for the G8 event in Toronto I may never even have known.

Now nine years later I wonder if they consider me a threat? Probably not, because I've the feeling if they did consider me so I would have been talked to a while ago. Maybe I'm on some sort of watch, but its not one where they consider me a major threat or anything.

But still, I don't try and cross the boarder into the United States because I've the feeling they would be pushing my luck, and they might decide to detain for an indefinite period just to be on the safe side.

Well there you go, confessions of a twenty something security threat. I hope it hasn't shocked any of you too much knowing that for these past however many months your writings have shared web space with someone like me. I figured I owed it to all of you to own up to my less then perfect past and warn you that associating with me could cause you problems.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:59 AM | Permalink

In what has to be the closest vote on record at the United Nations, resolution 929 was finally passed. In another, among the many, unique qualities of this vote was the fact that when the final tally was recorded, there were no abstentions. Long time observers of the U. N. were left scrambling to find out if on any other occasion opinions had run so high that no one abstained.

One grey haired gentleman was so visibly moved by the show of actual opinions on the floor of the august chamber that he wept. Friends could be seen gathering around him to lead him out of the press gallery later, and it was said that all he was capable of saying over and over again was "incredible".

He wasn't the only one affected by the sudden show of decidedness from a membership so known for its refusal to commit that ordering take out has been known to take days. Ambassadors sat around in small groups or singularly talking in subdued voices, almost as if they were taken aback at their own temerity.

Most of them had been selected by their respective countries for their abilities to procrastinate and prevaricate and had never dreamed the day would come when they would actually see themselves saying either yea or nay. There were members whose country's leadership and name changed with greater frequency than a drag queens' wardrobe, who had kept their position by exercising the right to abstain like an art form.

But even they had been caught up in the emotion of the moment and deviated from their entrenched position of fence sitting to cast a vote in favour or against the motion. It was of course these wild card votes that had left the outcome up in the air. Not only did nobody know how these individuals would vote, they had been non-entities for so long nobody even knew what bribes or blackmail they might be susceptible to.

Of all the unique attributes that history may ascribe to this vote in the future, the one that most observers are still stunned by was the inability of anyone to be able to predict the vote's outcome. Not only did the issue cut across cultural and political lines, it threw old alliances out the window. It was every man and woman for themselves out on the floor and you could almost believe in the idea of sovereign states voting for the interests of their people not out of political necessity.

At the press conference where the official announcement of the result was released to the world's population, United Nations Special Envoy Kiska White of The Extra Special Team Examining Elections (or TESTEES as they are now known) alluded to that fact in her opening comments before preceding on with a detailed explanation as to the significance of the resolution's passage. What follows is an expurgated version of that announcement. (For full details check out the TESTEES web site at a location other than the link provided here) It should also be made clear at this time, that like all members of TESTEES Ms White's nationality has not been made public and all efforts were made to make the members as anonymous to each other as possible to prevent any country from having an undue influence on the proceedings.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press and my fellow citizens of planet earth, it is with great pleasure that I'm here with you today to announce officially the results of what I consider the most important vote ever taken in humanity's existence. I don't think I would be far off the mark in saying that from today onward the world will be a vastly different place, and hopefully a better one for it.

Judging by the response of the membership of the General Assembly to Resolution 929, they obviously agreed with me on the import of its impact on the shape of things to come. Whether or not they supported the resolution is another matter, but it managed to get them all to actually vote for a change, so right there we accomplished something that nobody else has done in the history of the U. N

This resolution was a long time in the making and to see it brought to fruition today is culmination of the dreams of many people, some unfortunately are no longer with us as it has passed to us second generation TESTEEs to ensure its passage. You are all aware of the history behind this resolution; of earlier version requiring all male politicians to be sterilized before seeking office in the hopes of curtailing testosterone in positions of power and thus eliminating belligerent behaviour.

What first started as a voluntary program; who can forget the "Get Fixed" buttons that became popular for a while, later became mandatory when it became obvious that some men were too attached to the notion that the ability to breed affected their leadership abilities. Unfortunately the "Spay" your politician campaign did not meet our expectations.

Although all male politicians were eventually in compliance the world over, it did not seem to have the desired effect upon their bellicosity. Unlike their brethren among canines and felines "fixing" humans did not seem to cause a reduction in the production of testosterone and a resulting calming of behaviour.

I must admit to you that at this point quite a number of us were ready to give up. We had been so sure we had found the means through which war would eventually be made obsolete. It was at this nadir in the proceedings that our Turkish representative made an almost casual reference to his country's former habit of creating eunuchs for positions requiring calmness and zero production of hormones.

Thus was the first step taken on the long road whose end we have finally reached today: with the successful passage of United Nations resolution 929: All men from this point onward will be castrated prior to seeking political office, and all men currently holding such office will be castrated forthwith.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:52 AM | Permalink

The last time I was in seeing my pain specialist we discussed the idea that I should consider taking a supplement called Malic Acid. According to the one trial conducted using doses of Malic Acid with Magnesium there is some indication that it might assist people with Fibromyalgia, although it is unclear how the way the body metabolises Malic Acid has anything to do with it. Because I suffer from a type of chronic pain similar to Fibromyalgia he hoped there might be a chance that this could also play a role in treating my condition.

Ephedra is an asthma medicine that people were taking for weight loss and who knows what else. It is only to be used in very specific conditions; otherwise it can be harmful and potentially fatal. Well too many people found that out about Ephedra by dying of strokes because it was misused and sold under false pretences.

There should be no need for people who are not suffering from some illness or chronic condition to be taking food supplements. But as our foods have become more and more refined and processed the parts that are of value to us in them have been eliminated. For the majority of us supplements can be avoided through the simple expedient of eating a properly balanced diet of proteins, carbohydrates, grains, fruit, and vegetables.

It's not rocket science, it just takes a little pre planning and exerting a little effort in taking care of yourself. Maybe instead of one of your trips to the gym why not do some meal planning? Instead of paying a couple of hundred dollars on a substitute for green leafy vegetables, buy a head of lettuce and make a small salad with your meal. Think of the money you'll save.

I'm going to report back to my doctor what I've found out about Malick Acid. I know that I don't eat enough fruit; my wife is allergic to the majority of fruit – something about the sugars they produce – so we don't normally have it in the house. So I'm going to try eating an apple a day, or its equivalent in apple sauce, and see if that helps any.

Maybe it will help keep my doctor away!

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:49 AM | Permalink

Sometimes there are stories you read in the paper that let you know just how far the world has drifted down the path of insanity. Right now as I write this article over 170 children are being kept in a former maximum-security prison in Texas. The euphemistically titled T. Don Hutto Family Detention Centre serves as a holding tank for people that don't have proper documentation to enter the United States.

Among those 170 children is a nine-year-old Canadian citizen named Kevin, the child of two Iranians who were so desperate to get back to the country their child was born in they had hired human smugglers to sneak them back. Majid and Masomeh (they don't use their last name) had originally come to Canada in 1995 seeking political asylum due to fear of persecution back in Iran. In 1997 Kevin was born in Canada and was automatically a citizen. This did not stop the Canadian government from deporting his parents in 2005 –ten years after they had applied for refugee status- because they did not meet the requirements to qualify as political refugees.

During the ten years they had lived here Kevin had reached grade three in school and Majid had managed to gain full time employment sufficient to support the family, and be productive members of society. Notwithstanding all of this they were sent off to a country which was completely alien to Kevin, and that his parents had done their best to forget.

What kind of government lets a family live in its country for ten years before deciding to deport them? If these people have lived here this long already and proven themselves to be productive members of society what point was the government making by sending them back? That they are unfeeling creeps who don’t give a shit about individuals but only about appearances?

Is it so important to them that they look like they are being tough on Muslims that they ignore individuals? Are they all only "rag heads" to those charming folk at immigration?

You know that in Canada in order to successfully apply as a refugee seeking political asylum because you are in fear of physical violence against your self and your family you have to have proof. How many people are going to think to go to the local police station and ask for the documents that show their arrest order, or the piece of paper signed saying they are to be tortured?

I know that's awfully negligent on their part and they probably should make more of an effort, but what can you do they're not like us are they? That's the problem with refugees, they're just so different from the rest of us and they don't know how to behave. Why I'm sure any decent person would have made sure to have all their relevant paper work in order – you would have, wouldn't you?

When Kevin and his family's plane landed in Tehran Majid was immediately arrested and hauled off to jail where he was tortured and beaten for three months. After being released friends and family began to make arrangements for getting the family out of the country again. They contacted a human smuggler who got them to Turkey for $20,000 and for another $20,000would get them to Canada.

They took a flight to Guyana, where they were booked on a direct flight to Toronto from Georgetown the capital city of the South American city. Because they were travelling on Greek passports they had no need of entry visas for getting into Canada, so they weren't questioned getting on the plane.

Unfortunately a fellow passenger had a heart attack and died and the plane was forced to land in Puerto Rico so emergency crews could remove the body. During the hold over they were forced to got through immigration, where they were detained because travelling under Greek passports they needed visas to enter the United States. They were held in Puerto Rico for five days before being shipped to the confines of Texas.

This was in spite of the fact that not only was their plane never supposed to have landed in the United States, their tickets were for Toronto with no stopovers in between, and they repeatedly insisted they didn't want to go to America. Maybe American immigration officials thought they had deliberately killed the fellow passenger so they could sneak into the States or that they were planning to parachute from the plane before it reached Toronto. You never can tell with these types – they may even have been planning on hijacking the plane and using it as a weapon.

Better safe then sorry when dealing with Iranians, especially ones who have no desire to come to the United States. That only shows there is something wrong with them. They'd rather go to Canada then the U.S. Yes it is true they were travelling under false documents, but they would have never come into contact with American immigration officials if not for a freak accident, and American demands that they go through customs for no reason. This should have been a problem for Canadian authorities to sort out, especially considering the status of the child, and been none of the American's business.

But now they sit and rot in an American jail, and Canadian authorities are doing squat for them. If the Canadian government wants to help one of its young citizens it will have to let his parents in to look after him. Parents who have already proven themselves to be responsible citizens, and people whose refugee claim should have been taken seriously in the first place.

According to Audrey Macklin, a professor of immigration at the University of Toronto, a case exists for a pre-risk removal assessment based on what happened to Majid when he was returned to Iran the last time. The assessment will determine the level of risk he faces if removed again from Canada and sent back to Iran and the level of risk he is to the Canadian public. So far the best the Canadian government has been able to come up with is some halfhearted comments about maybe being able to help Kevin but being able to do nothing for his parents.

How nice, remove a child from his parents after all he's been through to this time. Just the capper he needs for an already blighted childhood. Yanked out of his grade three class to be deported to a country he knows nothing about; his father taken away and tortured for three months; being smuggled out of a country where if they're caught they could very well have been killed; and now being held in a jail in Texas where if his father tries to visit him after nine thirty at night he won't be allowed to see him again.

They don't coddle families in Texas you see; (the only good nit is a dead nit was first said by an American general in reference to Native Americans; obviously not much has changed for some people, just who the nits are) everyone has to get up at 5:30am for showers, they have fifteen minutes to eat meals, everyone must go to bed at 9:30pm with laser-triggered alarms activated if anyone strays, and they are locked down three times a day for an hour for a head count.

And this is what they refer to as a residential, non-secure setting. Damn I'd hate to see what they call a secure facility. Hutto sounds like most maximum-security prisons in Canada not a detention centre for families who are awaiting decisions on their fate as refugee applicants or whether or not they are going to be allowed to continue their journeys before they were so rudely interrupted.

Nine-year-old Kevin has become so desperate that he has written a letter to Prime Minister Steven Harper of Canada, begging him for help. (The image is a thumbnail; drag your mouse over it for a larger "pop-up" view of the letter) He might get lucky, because Canadians are facing an election and depending how the public react to his plight, Kevin might find himself the beneficiary of Prime Ministerial intervention.

If Harper senses he can make political hay out of this at the Liberal party's expense he will charter a plane to take him to Texas so he can bring little Kevin and his family to Toronto personally. But if it looks like most people don't really care one way or another, you can bet he will issue a statement expressing sympathy and his belief that the system will work our right in the end. The Prime Minister can't be seen showing favouritism if it's not going to win him significant points with the voters.

It's reading about these types of situations that remind me of where true evil resides in the world. It lies in the inherent lack of compassion that we imbue all our systems with. We encourage those carrying out the orders not to get emotionally involved, and to treat each case the same with no deviations. Situations and people are never unique so all you have to do is process forms not worry about whether or not you have just sentenced someone to months of torture and possible death because they don't quite qualify as a refugee.

Better luck next time. Hope you live! Next! I'm only sticking to the rules, is not that far from I was only following orders. Kevin and his family should never have been deported in the first place, but there are rules about these things and they have to be obeyed. God knows what would have happened if they'd been allowed to stay: Kevin would be in Grade five and his dad might have had a promotion at work.

The end of civilization as we know it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:27 AM | Permalink

"Psst, hey buddy. Yeah you…do you see me looking at anyone else…hey don't get pissed, it's just my way, don't take it personal or nothin'. Well get over here already…you want me yelling this across the street so just any yahoo can hear what I got to say. If I wanted the world to hear I'd have take out an ad or hired a blimp.

Hey, I warned you, I'm a bit rough around the edges, but you know what they say about whores with hearts of gold, well I may not spread my legs that way, literally as it were, but on occasion I've been known to sell bits and pieces of myself.

Hey don't look like that, you'd think I just threatened you ending up in a cheap motel in a tub full of ice and finding out that you've donated your liver. That's not what I mean by bits and pieces of myself – do I look like that type – heck you wouldn't recognize them anyways. You're thinking I'm the type of scruffy guy you' expect to be taking part in the illegal traffic of body parts.

Which is a joke and a half because those folk walk around in the latest designer togs that cost more then I make lurking in this alley for a month. You need a lot of money to be involved in that racket to begin with, and then you're also going have to dress well enough to look like you've got a real business behind you.

Not me boss, I'm at the lower end of the scale, nothing quite that glamorous for folk like me. Nope the bits and pieces of myself I dispose of are far less exciting, but to me are as precious as any bits and piece of the physical form. I sell bits and pieces of the soul.

Oh grow up, I'm not a Satanist or something silly like that, I'm an Art Dealer. I represent some of the finest creative minds in the country, maybe even the continent. They pour out their heart and soul and turn it into paintings, sculptures, photographs, and video. Then I try and turn that into money for them.

Of course I don't just represent artists, a person has to eat after all and the chances of making any money off living artists is pretty thin. You can't even kill them either to increase the value of their work, because you need them alive so they can continue to produce product that you can sell after they die when it's actually worth something…If there was someway around that problem, believe you me Charlie I would have figured it out ages ago…

Anyway that's neither here nor there, idle dreams and such for days when you laze around thinking of the ideal world…. Where the money for me is at the other end of the equation; working for those types who want Art to hang on the walls (hey that reminds me of an old joke: What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who hangs on walls? Art…kills me every time) of their corporate offices that goes with the décor, but doesn't look like it's been chosen to go with the décor.

Now that's a trick, son, because you've got to make sure it blends nicely with their carpets, the window treatments, and the paint job, but at the same time be distinctive enough to show that they have taste. The higher up the corporate ladder the trickier it gets I tell you.

Your junior executive just wants something to cover the blank spaces on his walls; he or she can't afford to be too ostentatious or adventurous either financially or in terms of style. They don’t' want to stand out as being daring or anything like that, cause they need to blend in and give the appearance at least of being just like everyone else.

With those types you usually do a brisk trade in the standard, safe abstractions from the past century or so. Nothing too outrageous like a Warhol or a Pollack for them – maybe a Chagall or Matisse reproduction. The more daring might go for something a little more modern like a Harold Town print from the fifties, but that's going to be it.

By the time you've reached up to the top of the corporate world and instead of blending in they feel the need to distinguish themselves – show that they have character and individuality, you might be able to sell something new. They love to be able to say things like, "Oh this is a painter I discovered – quite unusual I agree, but I like the challenge of the piece."

Or some equally meaningless self-satisfying words that show off how perceptive and artistic they are. My job is really sort of like a pimp. Instead of finding them a whore to flatter their egos, I find them paintings that do the equivalent to their intellect. I give them the appearance of having a sense of the aesthetic, even if they have the soul made out of stocks and bonds.

You'd think after all that; the effort I put in for the artists in finding people who might actually be interested in their pieces of post-modern modern abstractions – or what ever they feel like calling their feeble attempts these days – and the energy I expand on my corporate clients to make sure that paintings I obtain for them fits into their niche properly that some sort of gratitude would be forthcoming. But no; at best I'm looked on as a necessary evil by the artists, and some sort of minor functionary who doesn't rank much higher than an interior designer by my clients.

So I'm forced to skulk around in alleyways searching out commissions because nobody wants to be seen in my company or pay me what I'm worth. But I'm good at what I do, and enjoy it too. I'm just wanting my ten percent like every one else in the world – heck I don't even ask for the fifteen or twenty that actor's management and agents get. Does that make me a bad person?

You look like a decent soul, with a kind heart. You wouldn't deny a many an honest living would you? I didn't think so. Look sorry to have bothered you like this, I didn't mean to unload on you, but one thing about being a sales person and an agent like I am is that you soon learn how to judge character. I didn't think you'd mind lending an ear for a few moments, not with sensitive eyes like those.

Forgive me for being so bold, we've just met and all, but you wouldn't by any chance be a poet or something of that type. It's just that something about you says sensitive and feeling in a way that I only get from people who have poetry in their soul. If you don't mind me saying you look like the type of person who would appreciate art on a scale far more advanced then the cretins I usually have to deal with.

Can I interest you in a piece of art…?

The author has just come into possession of an original, one of a kind Harold Town lithograph from 1957 that he has just put on the market, marking his first foray into the world of art sales and deals.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:44 AM | Permalink

Probably from the beginning of military history the words Military Intelligence have generated hilarity among common soldiers. Learning not to trust anything except what they see in front of their eyes has become common for soldiers no matter how sophisticated the technology at the disposal of their "intelligence" sources.

Which when you think about it makes you wonder why everybody was so quick to believe the initial intelligence reports of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. With no actual eyewitnesses as of yet confirming the existence of even a bug bomb let alone facilities to make nuclear weaponry the question of their existence has long since passed into the realm of the less said about it the better by the American military establishment and its political masters.

This of course hasn't stopped those who have opposed the war from the onset forgetting what was originally given as the motivation for the invasion of Iraq. So the title of the latest collaboration between Viggo Mortensen and guitar virtuoso Buckethead (the man with the penchant for wearing an empty bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a mask as a disguise while on stage to preserve his secret identity) Intelligence Failure can be read within that context quite easily, especially considering its contents.

The eight tracks contained on this CD are constructed utilizing excerpts from speeches and news conferences given by current and former members of the Republican administration. They are mixed down and overdubbed with new and previously composed music played by Viggo Mortensen, Buckethead, Henry Mortensen, Walter Mortensen, and Travis Dickerson.

So you get to hear some of the greatest "hits" from the past few years, including such favourites as Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations assuring the world that the weapons of mass destruction exist. Or how about George Bush's witty comment about seeing the first of the planes going into the World Trade Centre "I thought, there's a bad pilot".

Of course it's not all one liners, there's also the serious statement from such distinguished gentlemen like Karl Rove exhorting Republicans that's it their job to convince the American people they are the party to that will be able to win the war on terror. Or George Bush, again, explaining to America why other people hate them; not mentioning anything about the exploitation of natural resources, support of repressive regimes, or how living in poverty for generations can create resentment towards examples of conspicuous consumption.

Intelligence Failure makes no bones about its politics or where it stands on the issue of the Iraq war. Obviously this is not going to find favour among those who think that voicing an opinion contrary to the one held by the White House is anti-American or unpatriotic.

Aware of that the creators of the disc also include the voice of American historian Howard Zinn at one point offering some timely reminders about patriotism, politics, and history. "Patriotism" he says "does not mean loving your political leaders it means loving your country" Or he asks what basis has history ever given us for having faith in the leadership abilities of our politicians in the past forty years.

He doesn't list the decisions of leadership over the past forty years that have brought about this state of affairs, but you don't even need to look back that far. It's been the mistakes since Viet Nam that have brought the world to the situation we face now. The unstinting support of The Shah of Iran, supplying arms to the Taliban for their war against the Russians in Afghanistan, and turning a blind eye to Saddam's use of poison gas on Kurds when he was their ally fighting against Iran in the mid 1980s have all contributed.

The first time I heard a "found sound" recording utilizing the taped words of public figures offset with music was My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts put together by David Byrne and Brian Eno back in the early 1980's. Intelligence Failure is the first attempt at this type of project that I have heard since then that has been as innovative and inventive in its use of sound, voice and technology to create atmosphere and mood.

The music and the voices are worked together so that on occasion the music dominates to the extent that the voices become indistinct but remain as a persistent drone; an ever present reminder of their existence and persistence in our lives. The voices of George Bush and the rest of the gang have been the undercurrent that has sent repercussions throughout the world since they first came to power no matter if we hear them or not.

Like an undertow they exist under the placid surface of life creating eddies and whirlpools that continually threaten to suck us all under. At times the music is that placid exterior existing in counterpoint to the terror created by these men and women. At other times the music becomes discordant and jarring; a reflection of their effect upon the world as seen by the creators of the piece.

Intelligence Failure can be seen as a reference to the joke I talked about at the beginning of this review. Or it can be seen as a general commentary on the state of American society which suffered a collective intelligence failure as it got caught up in the emotional turmoil that surrounded the attack on New York City and the aftermath.

A third option is the possibility that it refers to our collapse as a species in terms of striving to create as a counter balance to our ability to destroy. In the first track on the CD "Demolition Of The Willing" Viggo picks out Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" on the piano while Henry reads/sings/chants English lyrics of brotherhood and friendship to the tune. While to some this may be a sign of resistance, to me it feels more like a sign of how far we've fallen that no one has created anything near as beautiful or celebratory as Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

With all our technological advancements, our so-called culture and society that others envy and covet, all we can do is produce is an atmosphere that frowns on original thought and puts down intelligence as some sort of aberration. Artistic creativity is dismissed as being less then manly and otherwise suspect.

Science and technology that if properly funded could eliminate our need for fossil fuels is ignored and under funded, but billions of dollars a year are spent on figuring out ways of killing each other. Money is available for creating passport-screening programs at the world longest friendly border, but doesn't exist to rebuild one of the oldest cities in continental North America after the devastation of Katrina.

Intelligence Failure by Buckethead and Viggo maybe seen by some, even its creators, as simply a commentary on the Iraq war and its circumstances, but that's just one symptom of a much larger intelligence failure. Buckethead and Viggo have created an aural sound collage with the intent of trying to open people's ears to a new way of listening to the same old words and maybe hearing something a little different then they heard the first time round.

Depending on how close people are willing to listen, they may even hear deeper then the creators hoped. This disc isn't going to end the war, or probably even change that many minds about it. Those who are still supporting it at this late stage aren't about to change anymore. But maybe what it will do is help those who did see some justice in it originally understand why they feel so cheated and betrayed now. Maybe it will encourage them to think a little and ask why the next time when someone comes waving a flag to lead them off to war.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:16 AM | Permalink

linger: 1. To stay on as if reluctant to leave. 2. To proceed in a slow manner; dawdle. 3. To pause or dwell with interest, pleasure, etc.usu. with over. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, Signet, 1983 p.460.

When we sit around the table with friends after eating a convivial meal, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes; doing anything we can to prolong the moment so it won't end; we linger. When an image, thought, idea or scrap of song lyric stays with us for longer then normal, it is said to linger. When a moment in time, fleeting and impermanent, has pinned us like a butterfly in a display case for good or bad we linger over the memory.

There are lingering tell tale signs of a trail in all the good Western movies when the loyal Indian scout is helping the soldiers track the renegades. The smell of rain lingers on in the damp musty scent of the earth that rises out from the roots of an ancient tree, or in the dust of a city dampened on a hot summer's day and the steam that rises from the sidewalk.

Linger is also the name of Viggo Mortensen's 2005 collection of poems and photographs released through Perceval Press. Photographs of course are a means which we can all make moments in time linger forever. Simply a matter of pointing and shooting and presto: instant memory.

But through the lens of Viggo Mortensen photographic memories are sometimes as indistinct as the their real counterpoints. Blurred images in the foreground merge with background murkiness, and with enigmatic titles like "Fall 7" we're left trying to piece together the artist's memory fragments and to wonder about the nature of memories.

Then again look at the images that Mr. Mortensen has recorded as if shot through a tube. There in the distance, as if seen through the lens of an inverted telescope is an image that is in sharp focus. Some of the photographs in this series are entitled "hindsight". According to my old friends Funk & Wagnnalls this word has two meanings: the understanding of an event after it has happened, or the rear sight of a gun.

Looking at a picture of something that you remember, something that has lingered long in your head, will sometimes bring new clarity, about the whys and the wherefores of your history. But sometimes, lingering memories are like looking down the barrel of a gun, the gun of your past that has the ability to blow apart your present with feelings of guilt, remorse, anguish, or even anger either because of your own actions or past inequities.

Of course, Mr. Mortensen could also be using the word hindsight to describe his position literally in the process of composition. He is the final sight looking through the barrel of his lens. He is the one who has aimed his eye, and therefore ours, at certain images that he wants us to let our eyes linger on and be affected by.

If a photograph provides a literal view of something that is to be lingered over, poetry and words offer a different path into memories, a different means of drawing someone's attention to an incident. In some ways we might think they would be subtler than photos, as a photo presents a concrete image for us to look at, but that precludes the power of words.

Think how many times people have used words to convince others that black is white and vice versa. Words are a far more dangerous commodity than a photograph could ever be; they have the power to convince without needing to supply anything so mundane as the truth.

In the hands of Viggo Mortensen words are not a dangerous tool, unless you have objections to lingering over truths. Whether they are emotional truths about himself, or truths about the world as he sees it. Linger with him as he recounts the cremation of his dog Brigit; the details leading up to he being put down are sparsely sketched, but the trip from the vet's office to the crematorium, the waiting for Brigit to be "done", the attempt to keep the bones together as he gathers them in the bag provided and places them in the cedar box when she is "ready".

The meaningless questions, "what kind of cedar is it?" which slip out of your mouth at times like these that he dutifully records for us to hear him saying in our heads these however many years later, make the incident all the more powerful. It is a day for lingering for Mortensen the writer, as he lingers in the crematorium office waiting, writing about whether or not he should be writing about this moment. He doesn't want to record it on film because that doesn't seem right, but he knows he will want to linger over these moments later.

Of course it's possible to linger over beauty, and fun just as easily as despondency and upset. The images of nature in this book, of the grey majesty of gathering thunderheads, sun through foliage, and nature's juxtaposition with the man made as she reclaims the ruins of an old fort in Spain.

A sequence of photos follows a boy through the steps he needs to take in order to complete a cartwheel. It appears Mr. Mortensen has left the lens aperture open and shot at a very slow speed, in order to preserve the moments of motion – the transitions from one point of being to another. How often is it we get to linger over the sight of a young boy's exuberance? Mr. Mortensen has captured that energy beautifully.

Linger invites you to join Viggo Mortensen linger over images and words that have affected him in the past few years. Maybe we are the hind most sight, as we are the last ones looking at the lingering images and reading the thoughts that he would have linger in our brains.

An artist strives to create work that will linger, that will exert a pull upon those who read, see, hear, or watch what they have created. One could look for deeper meanings, deconstruct it in true post-modernist literary tradition, in an artist choosing the word linger as a title, but not this one. I'd prefer just to let the work speak for itself; it has a nice strong, clear voice that talks to the heart and the mind.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:45 AM | Permalink

A child who has nothing else can at least dream. He, or she can dream that one day they will be made weightless and fly away from the burdens that tie them to the earth. They can create fantasy worlds with languages they have invented where the word No does not exist when the hungry ask for food.

But when the child loses the power of dream and is faced with reality; that there is always going to be someone who will say no to the hungry and the only way to escape your burdens is to lay them down forever, does that make them an adult or lost? Are the dreams created by a child with nothing else to sustain him or her so unimportant and powerless that the world can so easily shatter them into shards of glass that will shred his or her skin as they are forced to trudge through them?

Hopefully none of us are unfortunate enough to have to live the life that Anosh Irani has created for her child characters in The Song Of Kahunsha. Since the day his father left him at the gates wrapped in a white rag with three drops of blood on it,
ten-year-old Chamdi has spent his life in an orphanage. From the courtyard that surrounds the building the sounds of the city, Mumbai (Bombay), creep like faint music.

Amidst the shelter offered by the red colours of the bougainvilleas that grow near to wild around the courtyard he creates for himself an image of what Mumbai must be in his mind, and even renames her for himself – Kahunsha – City of No Sadness. Of course some part of him knows this can't be true, even in the midst of their sanctuary the children have been told of the troubles in the outside world.

When Mumbai erupted in one of its rounds of religious riots; Muslims and Hindus committing unspeakable atrocities against each other for the sake of God, they are told about it. Warned in no uncertain terms not to leave the courtyard because the city has become dangerous even for good little boys and girls like them.

When the orphanage is pulled out from under them by greed, and they are to be moved to another one in the country away from the city, Chamdi decides he can't leave his beloved Kahunsha. How will he ever be reunited with his father if he is not in Mumbai? How will they ever get to Kahunsha together if he is not here to find him? So before the move he runs away out into the reality of Mumbai.

The reality of men, women, and children living on the streets; the reality of people who say no on a regular basis no matter how good a boy you are and no matter how long you have been without food. It is not only not a City of No Sadness, it is almost worse, a city of dead and corrupted dreams. Where even the children hide their dreams and only whisper them quietly at night in their sleep hoping they won't be overheard.

How can you dream when even life on the street, where at least you should be beholden to no one, is controlled? After two days of hunger on the street Chamdi is taken in by a brother and a sister who live in a lean too with their mother and infant sibling. Sumdi has a ruined leg from Polio and he dreams of being to fly above the city whose streets he can only hobble through. Sumdi is also missing an ear, but that is thanks to the knife work of the man who controls the neighbourhood they have washed up in with the other flotsam of an uncaring world.

He and his sister, Guddi, and every other street person old and young, crippled and hale, are held in forced bondage to Anand Bhai who takes all the small amounts of money they are able to accumulate throughout a day from begging, stealing, working, or worse and doles out percentages to them. This is no colourful Dickens like Fagan; hold out on Anand and he might find other ways to make use of you.

You don't need arms and legs to see, hear, and talk. He has one such creature who he parks near jewellery stores to listen for information about when money and jewels are being moved so that he can rob them. This is no City of No Sadness.

The Song Of Kahunsha is not a book for people who want to hold onto illusions. Anosh Irani has a done a magnificent job of bringing horrors to life that should give us all nightmares for rest of our days. The casual use of children as soldiers, the indifference to suffering, and the horrible poverty are bad enough. But the fact that these same children have nothing else to even hope for, to dream about, or to believe in, except wild and hopeless dreams of escape, has to be the biggest horror of them all.

Until Chamdi shows up with his Guddi and Sumdi haven't had the luxury of being children for so long they've almost forgotten their dreams. Guddi, perhaps because she is a girl and not had to harden herself as much as her brother retains some, but they are tamped down like an almost extinct fire.

For to dream means to have hope and in the city of Mumbai that Anosh Irani draws for us the only hope is to make enough money to keep Anand Bhai from putting you to another use and eating each day. What good are dreams that don't fill your belly and keep the knife away from your face?

That's the road we travel with Chamdi, from the moment he leaves the courtyard of his sanctuary at the orphanage and learns the reality of the street. He knows there are no magical police tigers that will keep all the children safe, that Kahunsha doesn't exist. But does that mean all dreams have to die, because one no longer exists?

That is the question that Anosh Irani poses so eloquently with this book; what is the nature of dreams and hope? Perhaps a child's dreams of magical lands can never come true, but that doesn't necessarily mean an end to them. There is a single note of hope left ringing in our ears at the end of the book; there is no reason to feel it, or believe in it, so maybe it is a dream but maybe not.

The Song Of Kahunsha is a harsh, unforgiving, horrifying, and beautiful book all at once. It's about the power of dreams, and the meanness of the world. Simple and eloquent simultaneously, it will break your heart and not offer any apologies. Yes we get to close the book, walk away and leave the streets of Mumbai to her inhabitants, but after reading this book it will be a lot harder not to dream of them from time to time.

The Song Of Kahunsha is published by Anchor books, a division of Random House Canada and can be purchased directly from Random House Canada or any number of other of Canadian retailers online or otherwise.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:49 AM | Permalink

When they had come to your land you had given them what they needed. Soon they began to take without asking, and then they took what was yours. You fought, but they were too many and they had better weapons.

Some of you they forced to move to somewhere else when they wanted your land. Some of you they killed all the game that you ate and built your homes from, so you could no longer live. They took all your land and pushed you on to small islands of reservations where slowly starved to death and went mad.

It was amongst the people of the plains, from the Paiute, in the late1800s that a man rose up named Wovoka. Wovoka said that if the people at the end of every six weeks dance this dance, "The Ghost Dance", the Europeans would go away, the buffalo would come back, and all those who had been killed would be returned.

The people were desperate, they were hungry, they were dispossessed, and so they danced. All the plains peoples; The Crow, The Cheyenne, The Arapaho, The Shoshone, Lakota, Ogala, Dakota, and others – they all danced.

In 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, beside Wounded Knee Creek, a group of families had gathered at Chief Big Foot's Camp to dance the Ghost Dance. The remnants of the 7th army were sent to oversee, and put down. It became a massacre. Eyewitnesses who came upon the scene two days latter found bodies thrown hundreds of yards from the camp – only cannon fire could have done that.

The American government at the time proclaimed it a heroic victory over renegade Indians. It was recorded so in the history books, and for many years the killing of unarmed men, women, and children was believe by all people to be a great military victory. It wasn't until the 1970's that the truth was finally printed in books like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown and the lie was exposed.

Thirty years on in 2002 film makers gathered to recreate the massacre for the movie Hidalgo. Twice in the shooting of the movie they recreated the "Ghost Dance". Once just before the massacre, and once latter in the film when the character played by Viggo Mortensen is close to death in the desserts.

Miyelo is Viggo Mortensen's recounting of both the past and the present versions of the Ghost Dance. During the filming of both the recreated camp by Wounded Knee Creek and in the California desert where the dance was shot a second time he used his camera to record the events.

Shooting mainly in Black and White his pictures of extras and the recreated camp feel like a record that has stepped out of time. Modern shots and technology have been dropped through a time machine to bring us back images of what it was like so many years ago.

Even those shot with colour, specifically the series entitled "Hindsight" appear to be looking backwards from a great distance. Whether the focus of the camera is set off to a far horizon, or he has developed the photos so that only a tight circle of image remains, these images live up to their series title. We are only able to see the past through our own lens of opinion and thought.

In the California desert where he has shot the dancer involved in the hallucinatory Ghost Dance from the end of the movie, he has used colour film, but maintained the illusive contact with them that his character in the film enjoyed. The dancers do not exist here anymore, they have long gone on to another world where maybe they are hunting buffalo and they have been reunited with the spirits of the their grandparents.

Mr. Mortensen's images capture the intangible quality of their figures, causing them to flit in and out of reality on the static page of a book. Now you think you seen a glimpse of a figure through the mists of time, but you can't be sure. Other time they gather in a watery circle, so it looks like you are seeing them reflected in a puddle; a puddle that somehow shows both ends of a tunnel between times.

While Viggo Mortensen's images are the dominant focus of the book, he has included some very important texts as support reading. There is the first hand account of the discovery of the bodies at Wounded Knee Creek that I referred to earlier, an account of the work of James Mooney, who worked for the Smithsonian Institute during the period of the Ghost Dance, written by Mike Davis, an extract from the work of James Mooney about his travels among the people during this time, and an article written by Clement "Sonny" Richards a contemporary Lakota medicine man.

Don’t be looking for any words of good cheer among these writings, because you won't find them. They serve to drive home the horror of the events that took place during those times, as well to place the Ghost Dance within its context.

Someone once wrote that the truth shall set you free, but I offer this codicil of if you are willing and strong enough to face up to the truth. Miyelo is the truth of the history of North America, may you have the courage to observe it and absorb it.

Miyelo is currently available through Perceval Press in both hard cover and soft cover editions.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:14 AM | Permalink