From Journal

13 October 2004
I got off at 5, walked to U of T for this lecture I was looking forward to, and quickly found it boring. It put me to sleep. It was all about the fact that radiocarbon dating is rewriting the chronologies complied by Aeagan scholars a hundred years ago, and that one branch of scholarship debates the validity of the other. This is stretched out into a Power Point presentation with the worst graphics and a monotonous delivery punctuated with a English schoolboy’s rhythms. I wanted to say, it wasn’t so bad, I fell asleep because I was tired, but my goodness. I left during question period; I decided that trying to hook up with someone for drinks and conversation wasn’t worth my time.

07 October 2005
Rain today. I awoke near quarter after 11, and have had a quiet day of words. First some writing, then, for the past hour and half, reading. Read a couple of great essays in Northrop Frye’s Divisions on a Ground and the Charles Comfort essay in the book I got from Grandmère’s in August. Almost have the feeling that I’ve got it all figured out and so I’m bored.

Last year I was motivated by what? Trudeau’s example of being a cool Canadian, his enthusiasm for the country, was infectious – this is one the highlights of his legacy for many. I guess it was thinking about Mark Kingwell, then Trudeau, then John Ralston Saul (re-reading Unconscious Civilization) and Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell – questioning why it was these amazing writers and communicators all happen to be Canadian, and how great it was to be part of that culture, one that reminded me of the Scottish Enlightenment. All of this of course, contrasted with the reality of the United States, and all that abysmal writing from France that has infected the intelligentsia of my generation.

Lament for my generation – a year ago I said once to D, thinking of the example of Scotland, ‘we’re all famous in the future, yet none of us know that so we all too busy fighting one another’. I had immense enthusiasm for my generation and our ideas (I guess today I would just say I had immense enthusiasm for my ideas) and D was pessimistic about my optimism. Because of blogs, because of the idea I had for a lecture series …. and then BlogTo came along, K’s reading group – forums to see my optimism play out. The Reading Group is great, no reason to knock it, but the blog thing I’ve become disenchanted with. Because it’s not quite living up to it’s potential. What the guy at Canada25 said to me, about how it’s no different from listening to some guy at a bar … and I couldn’t really disagree with that. That last BlogTo meeting really took the wind of my sails for it – see it as superficial. This is what my generation has to offer? Perhaps a portion of my depression is part realization that I’m always going to have a hard go at it, since I was born at an awkward time – forever experiencing ‘transitional periods’ and surrounded by a generation with small and conventional ambitions. A generation I’ve come to see as very conservative, seeking to emulate their parents, not overcome them. And so, a generation of intelligent people who become disciples to dead thinkers and dead writers, born in another country and in another time, and ignoring the science that truly answers the questions asked by generations. We now know who we are, where we came from, and have a good idea of where we might be going. A generation of Foucault and Baudriallard experts are wearing the wrong clothes for this bus ride.

That being said, I’m enthralled by the writings of a dead Canadian from my grandparent’s generation. Perhaps this is a reflection of my Generation Y sympathies – a generation I’m told (a manifestation of their more apparent conservatism) that gets along more with the grandparents at than with the parents, who are seen to be selfish (the boomers, who I see that way).

I read Saul over the winter, and felt Canadian – saw how my culture and my experience was different from that of the U.S. My enthusiasm became preaching, and I introduced his thinking to the Reading Group. His thinking on our provincial predicament had me reject the art scene and its Artforum desires … most recently exemplified by that quote about October magazine in last week’s Globe and Mail. Talking with E over coffee in the spring, and her asking ‘what’s so compelling about Canadian history?’ and me countering with, ‘what’s so compelling about the American one?’

And now, thoughts of the importance of imagination … which came via Kristeva, but which was articulated by Frye, and picked up again by Saul in his last (prior to Globalism) book. The American one is compelling perhaps because it is the only one we have access too; H goes to L.A. to work with Thomas Crow, whose book explained a lot to me last year. An American story, part of the American imagination. But his book cannot alone explain the problems of contemporary art in Canadian society. And so now, thoughts on the need for a Canadian anthology of art history.

But for me the big break through this year was understanding the imagination. Of seeing how art is all about feeding the imagination, so that our days do not seem meaningless and empty, but part of a larger context. And while it’s easy for me to talk about television as a prosthetic imagination, it is also one that ties society together with a common understanding. Canada’s imagination of itself is not [only] found in a novel – it is found in Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys and Robson Arms … as was said this week on one of the entertainment news shows, pointing out how each show imagines a different region of the country, to introduce the development of a new show set in Toronto.

12 October 2005
Candian hope followed by Canadian dispair. The country had potential and talent, and yet the talent dispairs. Mike Bullard in today’s Globe and Mail, referring to the demise of his tv show last year – here a show doesn’t work and you’re considered a failure, in L.A. it’s no big deal. But Americans are big and forgetful, and this makes them optimistic. Perhaps it also helps to account for how toxic their cultural environment is.

Waves crash on the shoreline of Lake Ontario driven by winds.