This is a fascinating and disturbing story from a New York Times magazine article from 2006 about a syndrome that sees husbands and sons shutting themselves inside their bedrooms and withdrawing from the world for upto 23 hrs per day for periods of four years +
I had questions about how this effects the body. Would there be muscle wastage? How does the human body adjust to no daylight and what happens to the circadian rhythm? But mainly it’s the small spaces they occupy and their choice to do so, and what is behind it that perturbed me. I also wonder about the stress response/responder. Have our bodies become so accustomed to stress that the response is now over pronounced and extreme. All of this leads me back to light pollution and that wonderful talk I heard at UBC last year by the art critic (from Yale) about, amongst many things, sleep disturbance.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga3E-70u4g0&w=425&h=220]
This wonderful song & performance by Willie Dixon came up on on a search for “aerial hoop 1920’s”. Sometimes you find accidental treasure on there. I found my favourite brain science documentary through the strangest unrelated search term.
Radio-eyed
My eyes are out on sticks after hours and hours of copy-reading (if there’s copy-editing, there must be copy-reading?) my novel Malarky. It’s strangely like being at sea. In between these hours I take the odd short walk or today allowed myself a balmy trans-atlantic conversation with a dear dote of a friend. It was late night her time and mid afternoon ours. I was so discombobulated from my reading I stared at the reflection of my own kitchen in the computer camera image and thought I was looking at her house in Ireland. I admired her shelves aloud and then thought that’s strange why’s my head in her kitchen?! The laughter transcended all time zones.
This reading and rereading and checking is endless and makes the day timeless. Indoors when others are out, when the sun is up. When you’re indoors this way, you could be any place in the world. Because the world you are in is so (anxiously) consuming. The world of get it done, let it be over. On my two walks I thought of other books the entire time.
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Yesterday in a similar work pattern, I took a break and joined some friends at The Fair which was taking place at the Waldorf Hotel. I was intrigued by the wiki snaps projection in the closet of the Filip/Motto Books room as they (with added explanation) revealed to me how narrow ‘open source’ can be in its inbuilt policies and I enjoyed the attempt at subverting such. Outside, a shipping container houses the FIT project. When I looked at the images inside it, in its other incarnations it has taken over abandoned-industrial spaces and it occurred to me that here in Vancouver it would probably be difficult to find such a space to take over given how tied up developers are with any small patch of land.
All the way home I wondered why The Fair would want or seek to replicate A Fair the way it did? It’s so redolent of Vancouver’s ongoing positioning effort as World Class City. I truly wish it would cease and accept it’s a logging town and use that as a departure point instead. The matter of what The Fair set out to replicate actually obstructed the possibility of a broader and more compelling engagement with (occupation of) that space. Another thing that occurred to me is since we are awash with funding disasters and Artist Run Centres face challenges around finding affordable space in the city, I wondered if future reconfigurations might involve transient occupations of transient spaces by multiple galleries for temporary periods of time as the norm. The recent debate around zoning of industrial land could be expanded to include zoning on “creative” plots of land within that land. The way green space is factored into condo developments. I think co-existance between art spaces and industrial zones may be the only workable solution to the current dilemmas. l find those industrial areas fascinating.
On another note some audio from the Rereading the Riot Act event (along with a medley of other recent Unit/Pitt audio recordings) was being broadcast at The Fair via Unit/Pitt Radio. I understand this radio will be also audible at 15 E Pender from Monday for anyone who might be passing that location. I love this audio initiative!
Class-word-war
There’s been a number of articles debating the term chav and chavism in British newspapers (Polly Toynbee here) during latter days. Good to see a discussion about class and social exclusion back on the table and the implications of that term. Surprised it hadn’t come up before now. I am all for satire and comedy, but that term has seeped into the public consciousness beyond any reasonable satirical soakage or take up. It also indicated the growing gap which has become so pronounced. This isn’t going to be in anyway aided by Cameron’s govt cutting grants, cutting libraries and jacking up university fees to 30 grand (that’s 50 or 60 in our dollar) and eroding the NHS.
The hockey matches make it very simple to undertake the practical chores of the day! Yesterday I made a slow left turn onto Kingsway across four lanes of empty traffic with no need for a traffic light. I had the hardware shop to myself, really — the entire lumber section was all mine. At the gym it was a matchless zone, the TV was off and the music it’s usual pumpity dreadful. There was also a live serenade by the trumpeter in our building that indicated the outcome.
Much as I continue to enjoy the public exuberance and animation over this sporting pursuit, I also enjoy the sleepy and curving calm the entire city being indoors glued to a screen for three periods affords.
I have too much work hanging over me at the moment to join them on the entire 7 match schedule.
No bingo
The sun is up.
Today is the day of the adult gymnastics meet I had to pull out of because of some misbehaving nephrology and all round lack of verve. Humph.
I will attempt to replace it with written labour today, and tonight will maybe go and admire those who were able to participate. I’ve been watching some aerial hoop (trapeze) work on youtube for a treat from time to time, just mesmerizing.
Cupan Stanley/ Cupan Annette
For all the good feelings, excitement, fervour and civic pride over our current major sporting endeavour — attainment of the Cupan Stanley — I was startled and perhaps should not have been to see a higher level of aggression out of the street today. In one incident, for no explicable reason whatsoever, a cyclist took extreme umbrage at a car turning right. The car arrived at the light before the cyclist and so there was no way the stationary car tipped the cyclist or cut him off. He launched into an extraordinary and threatening tirade at the driver, coming close to her window, blocking her path and shouting cunt, cunt at her. His issue seemed to be the fact she was turning right. He was going straight ahead. I did not understand it.
Shortly afterwards another altercation with another man, same language, different tongue, different target. He was refused service in the liquor shop, as he’d been abusive earlier to staff. Two security guards were present, not aggressive, just present. Strangely after an outburst that was high voltage, the angry man resorted to asking the security guard to come outside with him because he would show him something PLEASE. This please had a bit of reverb to it. The something likely being a box in the ear.
Perhaps it was co-inincidental these outbursts, but there were a slew of them. People seemed either deliriously happy or tense, tense, tense like they were going to blow if a sparrow flew near them. The audio of the match follows us almost everywhere while it’s on and I’ve noted a resurgence it older tellies being wheeled out in public places, which I find kinda moving. Groups of people gathering in a community centre, to look at a twenty year old TV, has a refreshing Spring like feel to it. Aside from the aforementioned aggression, I am enjoying the public and animated nature of the hockey. Reminds me a bit of the quarter-final, World Cup match with Italy, in, was in 1994?
My in-house males are, to use the local vernacular, stoked on it. Also, I am having fun with work colleagues in Boston over the pairing.
Sports-wise I am currently more interested in aerial hoop and swimming (the incredible Annette Kellerman has captured my gaze) and plan to watch a genre of film I knew nothing about from the 1940’s with women diving and swimming in them, when I have a bit of time.
Only 2 days .. Diving Venus
to listen to this fascinating radio documentary … don’t miss it