Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. ~ George Orwell Ephemera, by definition, are supposed to come, do their thing, and then disappear again. It is not supposed to last. I collect it. I have a partial ceiling tile from Pub 340 with a set list written on it. I have the handbills from The Smugglers very first show (so FIRST, in fact, they werent even The Smugglers yet. They were The One Eyed Jacks.). I have a guitar pick, a guitar pick that would cost me ten cents at any music store in the city, which I snatched from a urinal at The Cobalt when it landed there after being flicked into the eye of a Vancouver Punk legend by another Vancouver Punk legend. As they came to blows and tumbled out into the barroom, I reached in with a paper towel and snatched it out. I have boxes of this shit. Posters, handbills, set lists, pieces of broken instruments, shards of broken records, ad infinitum... AD ABSURDUM - I am a collector. An ex-girlfriend once told me that I dont make friends; I collect interesting characters. She was right. I have ADD of the Soul. Boredom is death. I am a hedonist and junk-starved for sensation. Therefore, to feed my addiction, I collect. I need the buzzing of creation to flow around me, to drown out other negative and nagging and pedantic harbingers. One day I will be dead. Today is not that day. But the day will come. If you cannot possibly win against an enemy, mount no successful defence – embrace him. Acknowledge his mastery but parlay for terms to surrender when prepared. “When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.” ~ Chief Tecumseh I am often told to “act my age” but I don’t know what that means, other than to acknowledge it is MY age. At 42, my father was three years away from quintuple bypass surgery and 11 years from death. At 42 my mother was raising four children and beginning her career in minor hockey where she would no longer be “Ted’s Wife”. He became “Bonnie’s Husband”. At 42 my older sister was Dr. Heather Cameron, PhD., Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität, Berlin, and recently honoured as Germany’s Professor of the Year (the first time a non-German professor without tenure has ever been awarded the distinction). At 42, Mozart had been dead for 5 years. At 42, Adolf Hitler began seizing power in Germany. At 42, Colonel Geoff Parker (CAF) was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. Lots of people, do lots of things at 42. I have chosen to do this. I continue to collect, collate, and disseminate: A middle-man between worlds, hovering, watching, sometimes participating. I do not need your permission or your blessing, though I attempt to explain the point and joy of my position. Tonight I was at a gallery opening. I was surrounded by young, inspired, people - people with passionate opinions, some of which were idealistic prattle. By artistic, creative people – some of whom may have held themselves in slightly too high a regard. But they are allowed. They are the vanguard. This is their time. They are the guardians of productive fun. Energy and form - Blake’s “Marriage”. They are testing the waters. Not in any forensic politico sense. Their politics is art. Science is how we live. Art is why we live. Every song on the radio, every frame of film, every dress in the room, every novel, poem, painting, one day, will come from them and their kindred travellers. They have had many names over the centuries. At one time, Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting them as they knelt at his feet in the Agora... At another they celebrated the return of the King with ink and wine in Drury Lane... They exchanged quips and verse dans Les Deux Magots... Screamed, “GO! GO! GO!” at The Six Gallery, swigging jugs of red wine... The passed Hilly Kristal’s auditions at 315 Bleeker... They sat in a Harvard dormitory, ignoring the ghost of Marshall McLuhan, and shaped the tools that afterward shaped us. They lived. Fought to live. Lived to create. Everywhere they go, the entourage follows... And I follow them... Legend claims that Countess Báthory Erzsébet de Ecsed bathed in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth. She died at 54 sealed in a bricked off cell. Likewise, equally fruitless, Juan Ponce de León sought out the Fountain of Youth. He found Florida instead, now the highest concentration of senior citizens in the United States. You cannot reclaim, recoup, or recapture your youth. Nor can you steal, co-opt, or siphon the youth of others. All you can do is live your life. That is what I am trying to do. I cannot sit around only sharing stories of what we have done, what it was like “then”, or lament on a future we have less and less time to bring to heel. I want to share stories of what I am doing. Don’t rehash old memories: Create and share new ones. The ephemera I collect wasn’t made to last. But I took it. I gave it a home, both physically, in a box in my closet and figuratively, a spot in our collective memory. The past is our ward, the future their set task, and the present is mine to capture and spirit away, a collection of purloined moments, to give it life beyond its congenital extent.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 06:53:44 +0000
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