nothing more than a spectre, floating.

It’s times like these I understand the melancholy anguish of Sherlock Holmes and why he resolves to whittle away the dead space between cases with drug. Cocaine. Transcendence. He brings his mind to another plane because anything, anything is better than the monotony of daily life arguing (paraphrasing): If your mind is not preoccupied with something of meaning should you waste and potentially damage it by being preoccupied with something mundane?

Or is it that, after a worthy cause, even the mind of the great Sherlock Holmes has spent all of its creative juices? I wonder how he would fare if his cases were one after another, back-to-back, instead of spread out, allowing him to recover in between and act at the peak of his power when a new one arises?

It’s been a week since I finished In All Kinds of Weather. Four days since I finished editing. With the close of this play, my reason for getting up in the morning (in a timely/productive fashion) has finished as well. My drive is deflated. For now, at least. I’ve created a cocoon around me, fallen into hibernation to prepare my mind for the change it’s undergone. I’ve picked up an old project and am slowly getting it to a place I’m comfortable with, but my drive isn’t there. It’s not immediate. In other words, I’m spent. I find myself catching up on movies and readings I’ve been meaning for too long. I’m consuming so much of this escapist entertainment and all the while leaving my own creative juices to recuperate you can almost see the track marks on my arms.

I’ve realised this happens every time I complete something. In the past I would become restless, impatient with myself during this period -

JUST GET UP! STOP WASTING TIME!

But now I understand it needs to happen, that my passion will come back. That my ideas will begin to generate again at a new pace, with a new vision. So I’m trying to let it go. I keep reminding myself this happens, over and over, and will continue to as I grow older. And I guess it makes me feel a bit better.

I’m still anxious as hell, however -

WHEN’S IT GONNA END?

they've stopped talking.

I've been away. Busy busy busy, what with rehearsing for the New Ideas Festival, generally being unemployed and worrying about finances, and writing the ending of In All Kinds of Weather. Yes. That's right. It's done.

And that's a weird feeling. I mean, I've finished plays before and usually feel somewhat regretful that it's over; I don't want to say good bye! There's so much more I could write about them!


But not this time.

I said good bye.

Rather: they said good bye. They grabbed the till and the most marvelous thing happened: they accepted their fate. They knew it was time to go. I saw them, each of them, that look in their eyes. As I was writing, I don't know where exactly but they would each turn to me, in their own time, and look straight into my eyes. Unquestioning. Almost nodding. This is it. We've had our time.

I have never been so satisfied with ending a play before (which makes me wonder if those other plays I finished actually did end...).  Maybe it was because I knew the ending before I began. I knew their images: how I wanted them to be remembered and what I wanted these characters to stand for. Their images were already inside from the top, fermenting (an image which explains, pretty accurately, the story of writing this play, with all the unpredictable alleys it brought me down. It felt, at certain times, that something else was guiding me). The ending aged as I wrote. It was ready last Friday. I have never been so content.

I still have a lot of reflection concerning the creation of this play, but I think the most immediate, stark lesson I've taken from it is the importance of that final image (or those final images). You can't just pick an ending out of the air. You need to find a picture (not literally), study it, then figure out how to re-create it. All the ingredients are there, you just have to look for them. A picture has many layers and it's your job to explore each one. In time, you'll have all the ingredients to make really good beer.

Maybe now I'll stop writing about them like they're real...

a question for adults.

As a kid I had tremendous focus.

I remember spending hours outside, watching worker ants gather food for their families; trying to capture that elusive mantis; marveling at the metallic sheen of the various dragonflies my brother and I captured (though, in hindsight, the means of capture were rather unorthodox) and nursed back to health (case in point).

I remember the toys I had, LEGO and any sort of miniature figurine, preferably of the robot variety (Zbots, various dollar store finds, Reboot), and spending days, weeks, constructing worlds, storylines and games for each that usually culminated in some sort of epic, world-shattering battle that took over the entire basement rec-room.

My imagination, like most kids’, was untamed.

This even bled in to the literature I read, although only recently has it actually become considered literature. I was a very visual child and to a large extent still am as an adult. All throughout elementary school, and for the first year of high-school, I did not enjoy reading. Books. Novels. Words. Too bland. Boring. My mind worked so hard during the day playing with toys and learning in school that if I wanted to unwind with a book it better have had pictures in it. Comics. Or, better yet, movies (don't have to read those).

It wasn’t until Grade Ten that I could successfully pick up a picture-less novel and actually enjoy it. I have a sneaking suspicion the main reason for this is because I didn’t care about reading description. Why can’t I just see it? Hear it? All I wanted was the dialogue. The voices. That’s it. Even the old comics with that yellow box of description at the top drove me nutty. I couldn’t do it. Just voices please. I can see everything else, thank you very much. And that’s the key right there.

I wanted a picture. I wanted to live in that picture. To study it. To give it the time it begs for but rarely gets. And I had the time. I had all the time in the world. No job. No worries about providing for myself. No worries about feeding myself. Nothing except playing and exploring my imagination.

As a kid I had tremendous focus. Because I had tremendous amounts of time.

I remember reading and re-reading the first, maybe three, issues of Jeff Smith’s Bone, evoking the small-town innocence of the Barrel-Haven and the mystical woods surrounding it. I remember studying each panel until the forested valley was all around me. I escaped into this world. It was so real to me. And still is. I can still remember living so intimately with these characters who weren’t even my own but of another’s creation. When I read through it now (and I do, often) I always find it remarkable that the beginning, those first three issues, go by so quickly – they are just the beginning of the story, after all.

But wait a second. That can’t be right. How did I find such life in something so short? Same goes for The Lion King. It’s only a ninety-minute movie and, upon adult viewing, certain aspects (like Simba’s exile with Timon and Pumbaa) are so quick now when I remember them taking so much time as a kid (in a good way). How can this be?

Time hasn’t changed since I was a child. It still passes with the same frequency and regularity. Perception and experience modifies it as we grow old, however:

Research suggests a person’s perception of how much time has passed between two points and how well memories are recorded onto an individual’s brain are partially dependent on the amount of new experiences that person has during any given day.

The above quote is taken from the About page on Matt Danzico’s 2011 project The Time Hack. He’s attempting to lengthen his perception of time by trying something new and zany every day. The result is rather whimsical and inspiring.

Which brings me to the onus of this post. It is the question:

Are we actually hurting our experience of the world with how much choice is available to us at any given moment?

I’m reminded of one of my good friends, a few years back, stating at a party: I have no time to re-read anything. There’re too many things to read.

And this opposing quote from C.S. Lewis: I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

As we grow up and transform into that wonderful and frighteningly awful word, adult, it seems we lose focus. I can say for certain I don’t allow myself the same amount of time I used to to live in a work of art. I look, consume, and move on to the next. Same with books (yes, I am on to reading actual, picture-less books now although graphic literature will always hold a special place in my heart. So will books that have drawings put at specific intervals throughout. I love this! Why don’t writers hire artists to do a series of woodcuts anymore? Is it too juvenile? All the classics have it. Maybe I’m just a fan of multi-disciplinarity. I love when a product of one medium inspires another). I, like my friend, rarely take the time to revisit my favourite books / plays / paintings / etc., and I’m not sure that I like this lifestyle.

I ask the question above not as a proponent of either side but with another question hidden firmly within the original:

How can we fully appreciate a piece of art without the appropriate time to experience it?

Art demands time. Why, as people at a particular phase of life, don’t we make the effort to spend time with something we like? Are we actually satisfied with reading / watching something briefly and then clicking the “Like” button and stumbling away? Is that enough to actually appreciate something? Or is it that we feel guilty spending too much time with any one particular thing when there are so many others awaiting us? It’s a mystifying conundrum and I’m as guilty as anyone for acting in this manner. I’d say about a sixth of the books on my bookshelf I haven’t read yet. And I keep adding to this because I keep finding books I’d like to read. But how many times have I said to myself that I’d like to read that again (“I’ll probably catch so much more the second time around!”)? Too many.

It's a thought that's been on my mind most of this year. And I think I’m going to work towards improving it.

It’s been too long since I’ve explored the woods around the Barrel-Haven.

how I’ve felt recently (in a creative sense).

Photo by Me!, 2011, St. Lawrence Market

time for a little self-exploration.

I am alive. Just drowning.

Seems I’ve needed to occupy my brain with amusements instead of puzzles recently.

I don’t want to say Act Three is overwhelming or scary. It is. That shouldn’t have to be said. They always are, aren’t they? What I do want to say is that my drive is... muddled. As my mind fills up like an unskimmed, neglectfully chlorinated swimming pool, I find the need to resort to the many other things I have seen as not worth my time, namely time-wasting.

As much as I pride myself on using the internet for productive means (watching TED lectures, keeping abreast with the theatrical blog-o-sphere, and the next art and design developments) I can sure as hell use these to no productive end as well as the next man (if not better because “I’m learning”).

And while exploring my own creative imagination requires intense focus, a focus I’ve come to love and welcome with a lover’s embrace, I find myself opting for the less regimented realm of another’s.

After all, how can I become a good writer if I don’t know what else is being written?

So I occupy my time with stories, with books, with images and music. Anything to overcome that bubbling voice drowning in my pool telling me I’m only hurting myself by postponing the inevitable.

And yet I can’t be too harsh on myself because I have been productive. I have seen theatre. I have seen movies. I am reading literature. And most importantly I am unconsciously picking up the parts I enjoy most and storing them in my pool house, in the toolbox right next to the pool skimmer so in a few hours when I skim and chlorinate the rotting thing I can feel confident the next time I want to go for a swim because I have new tools that will help fill up all those cracks in its damn foundations.

they're on to me.

I had no idea my previous writings were already part of a legitimate field of study. Cyborg Anthropology.



Fascinating idea of the "second self" and the necessary time for reflection. It happens to me all the time. Only when I have time off, when those external factors are at a rest can I upkeep my online persona, can I tailor my second self to the rest of the world.

It's communication at a heightened degree - communication on multiple planes of existence - and the most exciting thing is that we can navigate life between them successfully! (most of us any way... let's not mention that Korean couple who let their baby starve... I mean... shit...)

...you can stand on one side of the world, whisper something, and be heard on the other...

It's odd to think of people interacting with you when you're asleep. Offline. Whatever.