Cartesian Dreaming

Cartesian Dreaming
by Peter Fruchter

i think therefore i am
-- uncertain thinking originates with me

but take no issue,
only let 'me' be

-- by thoughtful definition --
that thought originating source,
which source i'll name and say is 'me'.

then, if thought originates with(in) 'me'
it follows close i must so be
to necessarily exist in being
so as to originate the thinking.

so i think,
and so i seem,
the very origin of my own dream.
but what if not?
what if anything appear unthought?

thinking thus of things unthought,
conceiving possibilings unconceived,
i must haste again to thinking,
to conceiving, to defining
what might appear wholly unthought,
what not with(in) 'me' originating
as 'experience' -- meaning, beyond doubt,
any and all that originates without.

might all be 'me'?
might all be thought?
might i be all and
might 'experience' all be naught?

is all with-in --
and naught without?

alas, too late
to think like that.
having thought what is
yet is unthought,
i must now think how may-be not --
i must think beyond my thought.

'experience', then,
it may-be naught --
yet even so,
if just in thought,
makes me wonder what might there be
that be entirely unthought by 'me'.

so must i wonder
so must wander i
for all there is or yet may-be
that is yet unthought by 'me' --
for all i must get up, set out and see.

Defusing God’s Warriors: The Nature of Truth

Does anyone watch CNN any more? Some days it looks like they got young Anderson Cooper running the show. Hosting interminable stretches of it, anyhow. Might possibly work out fine. Such a great head of air. And American audiences might relate. Not intimately like they relate to Homer Simpson -– nobody redeems American ignorance like huggable, indestructible Homer. But, provided sufficient boyish charm and childish innocence -– maybe like with Bart.

And how about that “God’s Warriors” miniseries? Wasn’t that worth watching? Wasn’t it hilarious?

Toronto Sun’s Michael Coren watched it. Didn’t much like it, though. Didn’t like it so much -– he got fuming incendiary at CNN.

Comparing Christiane Amanpour’s CNN miniseries to a suicide attempt, Coren wrote that,

.. CNN ran three shows on religious fundamentalism, making the appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument that the Christian, Jewish and Islamic varieties were not only similar but equally hazardous.

Well.. yeah. Sure. CNN programming can get fatuous, alright. But why get upset? Why expect meaningful significance when viewing footage of Anderson Cooper exclaiming how strong the wind blows? Or when Lou Dobbs declares undocumented workers are waging war on Americans -– regardless how such workers stand, fall and risk their lives for the American dream? Or when Wolf Blitzer comes at us live as smoke grenades from the over-stimulation room -– quivering to make news even when there’s nothing to report? Because, like Wolf told Bill Clinton, he’s a newsman and that’s his job -– making news?

So why get upset at Christiane Amanpour? She’s just doing her job. Accidental tour-guiding us to fundamentalist footage. And look -– see? There’s some Christian fundamentalism here. Alright –- keep very still. There! That was Islamic fundamentalism. And if we all just look behind this rock -– quietly! There! Yes! Jewish fundamentalism.

Of course Christiane neglected telling how the time to worry about Christian fundamentalism was hundreds years back. When Christian soldiers really got crusading the heathens. Or how the time to worry about Jewish fundamentalism was thousands years back. When their tribes spilled from the dessert and got genociding anything that moved if it worshipped false idols. Whereas the time to worry about Islamic fundamentalism is now more than ever. Particularly when in potential conjunction with weapons of mass destruction -– as reported repeatedly.

Right? We don’t lose much sleep over Christian or Jewish fundamentalism any more. We did for a while. Kept waking in the wee hours. Wondering if the militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist terrorists were coming to make pastries of our blood. But when militant fundamentalist terrorists did arrive, when we woke to explosive pounding, there weren’t any Christian or Jewish fundamentalists to be found. None. Nowhere. Oh, we looked. We searched. After the dust settled, we searched high, searched low, searched sideways. Behind stones. Behind trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds.

“Hey there, stone,“ we’d ask, “are there militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalists hiding behind you?”

And the stones –- trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds –- invariably replied, “Nah. Haven’t seen any those lately. Not the past hundreds years. Thousands, even.”

Not one militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist to be found when terrorist dust settled. What we found, invariably, was militant Islamic fundamentalists. Islamists. Invariably. Got real used to finding those whenever dust settled. We’re getting so familiar how they tick -– pretty often now we find them even before they blow up.

Sure there’s Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. Absolutely. Might be there’s a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses in the flowerbed this very instant. But Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Those are not the variety found when terrorist dust settles. And in event of singular exception, when Christian or Jewish fundamentalists do grow sufficiently militant to assassinate or spontaneously blow up –- we don’t run the streets celebrating. We don’t celebrate, admire or venerate anyone remaining in Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ignorance. We manage tolerating their ignorant, fundamentalist religious freedoms -– just so long as not militant. Not a shade longer. For militant means not just ignorant –- but criminal. Nevermind combining militant criminality with incurably intolerant fundamentalist ignorance -– that’s both criminally insane and insanely criminal. So. We manage tolerating fundamentalist ignorance -– barely. But anything getting militant hereabouts goes direct to jail, does not pass go -– and totally does not collect $200. And we do much better without fundamentalism in the first place, thanks so much. That’s why we not only separate church from state –- we even have second thoughts public funding prayer in schools.

Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Because we’re getting militant Islamic fundamentalism -– the meaning of it -– in the (relatively) tolerant West. Not (only) since 9/11. That’s a myth. That we’ve become Islam-phobic since 9/11. In the tolerant West we don’t mistake all Muslims for militant fundamentalists. We know far better. But since 9/12 through 9/whenever –- that’s different. We’ve seen the collective 9/12 dancing in the Middle-Eastern Muslim street. Seen it on T.V. Seen it on Al-Jazeera and CNN. The 9/12 collective rejoicing. We tried laughing it off –- i.e., with (non)Muhammad cartoons. Tried laughing it off as we would Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. Tried laughing it off as we would any ignorance. But that Islamic fundamentalism is too militant. Too criminal insane. It rules the ignorance of Islamic fundamentalism as it has not ruled Christianity for hundreds of years -– or Judaism for thousands.

No way can Christiane Amanpour confuse us. Not when we kept falling asleep during her breathless narrating Christian and Jewish fundamentalism. But militant Islamic fundamentalism? Hell. We can’t get nowhere near sleeping without it falling down the stairs. Blowing up the house right along with the stairs. Militant Islamic fundamentalism blows up and keeps right on ticking. Like some crazed vaporizer bunny. Blows up nightly, blows up daily. Keeps on ticking. No way will it go gently into no sweetly slumbering good night. Not on our lives, it won’t.

There’s no laughing militant Islamic fundamentalism off. Not while it keeps us up nights – and blows us up most days. No laughing it off in Chechnya, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iraq or Lebanon. Not in Asia, Africa, Europe or America. No laughing off how it worships death, how it suicide-murders innocents as eagerly in the West as the mid-East or the North or the South.

But what’s the point Michael Coren getting all upset at Christiane Amanpour -– or anyone at CNN? They’re just doing their jobs making news. Just show business as usual. Reporting things that move. Like wind. Undocumented workers. Fundamentalists. Whatever. Reporting the meaning and significance of movements –- like, why things move –- is so not part of Christiane’s job description. Not at CNN.

Christiane did a great job. Just indiscriminately pointing out fundamentalism. It is indeed a huge problem. She did a superlative job –- simply as a mainstream conversation starter. So that now, six years after 9/11, we can finally begin really talking about it. Right out in the open mainstream. So that more thoughtful individuals can start reasoning why Islamic fundamentalism is such a huge problem –- whereas both Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are not.

That’s the issue. Why on the Islamic shore, as Columbia University’s Mark Lilla puts it, “.. political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority..” -- while on non-Islamic shores they aren’t. That’s the issue, the difference our understanding of which Lilla declares “.. the most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And the way Lilla declares this -– right out in the open mainstream rather than all covert in some merely academic journal –- owes plenty to Christiane Amanpour. To her tearing into and through the mainstream indiscriminately as an icebreaker.

So here we are. Right out in the open mainstream. Owing plenty to them that broke the ice. Like Rosie O’Donnell, proclaiming Christian fundamentalism equally dangerous to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet far more so to Christiane Amanpour’s “appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument” that Islamic, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are all equally dangerous. Michael Coren ought to be grateful rather than furious. But now that we’re here, right out in the open mainstream, it’s time to figure out what makes Christiane so spectacularly wrong. We’d better make some headway following Mark Lilla in figuring out this “most urgent intellectual and political task”.

So what happened? How come Islam musters endless Islamist armies, each militant fundamentalist soldier of which is so bolstered by divine authority that they are eager to die if only it means bringing God’s truth to those of us infidels they kill? How come we in the (relatively) tolerant West scarcely manage raising even sporadic few divinely authorized militant fundamentalists –- and that whenever we do, we hunt those down as if criminally insane and insanely criminal both?

Mark Lilla says what happened -– accounting for Western democracy and, arguably, also for Canadian tolerance and multiculture such as in Toronto -– was the “Great Separation”. And that we can blame it all on Hobbes:

This liberal-democratic order is the only one we in the West recognize as legitimate today, and we owe it primarily to Hobbes. In order to escape the destructive passions of messianic faith, political theology centered on God was replaced by political philosophy centered on man. This was the Great Separation.

This might very well be right. Lilla’s “Great Separation” may account for the cultural shift in the moral and political character of the West. But even so -– how could the mantle of divine authority have become such a rag, to be discarded so out of hand, if we continued even to suspect God was watching us? From no matter how great a distance? No. Something far more fundamental, more culturally tectonic must have occurred to account how we’ve discarded divine authority. How we’ve thrown off that divine mantle once indispensable to ruling as if it became a rag of ignorance and impotence.

Something far more culturally tectonic did happen. God turned up dead one day. The eighth biblical day, perhaps -– when we killed God. That’s what turned the mantle of divine authority to rags.

How did we wind up killing God? Unintentionally. All the while our materialist Enlightenment prophets -– Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin –- were demonstrating everywhere God was not found, the nature of truth was shifting beneath us. Took about one thousand years for truth to turn entirely and categorically from ontological idealism to epistemological materialism.

Prior to shifting, truth and authority were divinely revealed and granted. The actuality of God was incontrovertibly definitive for St. Anselm. God was the greatest possible. Therefore, God couldn’t just be an idea. God had to be real. For if God were just an idea then God would not have been the greatest possible. Which, of course, God was –- the greatest possible. But, hundreds of years later, after Copernicus and other materialist prophets kept demonstrating how fully reliable God wasn’t, there was a tide of doubting God’s greatness. Descartes sought to stem the doubting. Tried to demonstrate how there was some God given truth -– given directly to human minds –- we could be certain of. But Descartes failed. Among many others, Hobbes maintained only science reliable in providing -– only evidently provisional -– knowledge. More strongly, La Mettrie pretty much ridiculed Descartes. Claimed that lacking evidence could mean nothing but ignorance. And then, after Darwin made such monkeys of us, doubting God’s greatness flooded the West. Today, in the West, truth has turned entirely -– from certain as God given to -– provisional. Since we now know that anything’s possible, we reject that purportedly greatest. Anything’s possible –- so there can always be greater. Hence God, the greatest possible, can’t be real. There can be no greatest when there can always be some greater. Therefore, as the greatest possible, God can only be an idea. And a rather silly one at that.

That’s what killed God in the West. The way the nature of truth shifted between back then, in St. Anselm’s day, and now. A stark and categorical difference the practical significance of which is easily illustrated by before-and-after thought experiment.

Imagine, for instance, that there’s a bible passage pronouncing all swans white. And imagine any true, devout believer, familiar with that bible passage, living sometime in middle-ages. Imagine, finally, that some fellow arrives carrying a large black bird -– loudly declaring he’s found himself a black swan.

What to do? As a true, devout believer, one surely tries to help. For the fellow’s own good. For sake of his immortal soul. One calls his attention to the bible passage pronouncing swans white. One encourages him to realize his error -– that the black bird he holds can’t be a swan. Right? Swans are white. But, madman that he is, the fellow starts to laugh. What can it mean? Is he possessed? Is he rebelling against God’s word? Is he a heretic? No telling. Must call on the village priest. Still, the fellow will not admit his error. His pride is such that, rather than recant, he vomits his sacrilege high and low. The priest has no option but to call on higher authority –- like the local inquisitor.

Fast forward a few hundred years. It becomes conceivable -– for some –- that swans are not necessarily white. The heretic becomes a naturalist. The devout believer begins having some difficulties remaining true.

Fast forward to the present. The heretic has become a scientist. The devout believer is now regarded as an ignorant fundamentalist. Western society permits and respects religious freedom to such ignorance only so long as it does not (re)turn militant.

That’s what happened. That’s what accounts for the difference. And that’s why still, six years post-9/11, instead of joining forces to deal with climate change, with icecaps melting as we breathe, humanity is clashing cultures like there’s no tomorrow. There can be no tomorrow until we emerge from our bloody past.

Platinum Cheap Shots

one

So you finish your first nice meal in the week, friendly waiter, chopsticks, a warming drink, and need to dash to the film. Just as the flash storm hits. Standing in the doorway only 3 blocks from the theatre, you know you aren't going out there, in the cold rain only to sit in an overly airconditioned seat for three hours. Not after catching the sniffly back-to-school bug from Sam the Scrabbler on the weekend.

How do you know you are friends? When she goes into the rain to retrieve her car, to drive you both two blocks closer to the line. Which she does, leaving you standing there as cabs and delivery cars splash by.

After the movie, hot tea and warm socks dominate. She will be off shortly to Midnight Madness, and you to bed. For a few moments, there hangs a damp silence as the tea spices scent the air.

What movie did we see?

two

Flashbulbs bathe Brad and Angelina, Peirce and Kiera and all the rest. Now look elsewhere.

The man in the third row, peering over shoulders to catch a glimpse. Silvered shoulder-length hair spills onto the dark jacket just as he turns around, my camera staring at him instead.

Videographer wielding dozens of pounds gracefully angled up past the podium. Here they come, the glitterati, and his red light glows on. And finally, there she is. He moves closer still across stage left to reach up and zoom in closest. His meal ticket.

A young man sits beside me, willing to chat. A screenplay writer/ director, unseen as of yet by any except school chums. Studying each move and motion, each smile, a look. With a confidence he'll need later. Still real.

Reviews from the Platinum Cheap Seats

Last night Tracey joined me at ROMULUS, MY FATHER, an Australian tale of immigrant life and a study in mental illness. Touching. Fabulous acting.

Tuesday we saw the second of Two Kiera Knightley flicks, the better one, called SILK. Start in France a hundred plus years ago, and meet the villagers whose wealth depends on the health of the tiny silk worm. Young Herve is sent journeying across the world to acquire eggs, and experiences the beauties and trials of Japan and her conquests. Achingly beautiful ending. Worth getting through the rest.

The previous KK flick, ATONEMENT, was less redeeming though also twisty at the end. 1935 England. She also falls in love with the hero, but doesn't marry him. War happens. We watch the wayward lovers in imagination.

All tragic epics, though each finds a ray of hope in the narration.

Themes for me this festival year:

Everyone smokes all the time (though I'm not allowed to while watching them);

Each film begins with a flashforward in time—no surprises for us;

Everything is epic at 9pm at the Elgin VISA screenings;

Quality is higher with lesser known stars. Translation: movie is more watchable;

Cell phone pics don't do Brad Pitt, atc., justice.

Two more to go!!

Reviews from Box 61 day 7

Day 7 - Last first, saw DEVIL'S CHAIR tonight, was wonderfully bloody, and gooey. Well done special effects on apparently small budget their next film is Blood River which is starting filming in the next couple of months in Nevada -- Something to look out for. Saw CLEANER today a Character based film directed by Remy Harlin -- I know, no shoot 'em up, blow 'em up or car chases, he wanted to do something "serious" with Samuel L Jackson, Ed Harris and Keke Palmer(Akela and the BEE) he succeeded. Very cool flick. Then MARRIED LIFE (Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams were there) was about late forties/early fifties marriage but was really about betrayal and morality or lack thereof, well made felt slightly dirty coming out of it. ROMULUS MY FATHER -very well made and was based on an autobiographical book of the same name by a australian philosopher these people were not happy immigrants but rather depressed ones. Kid was great in lead role. Eric Bana was there and was Romulus. Got a ticket didn't have to rush for a change. More later

The Principle of Tolerance (Culture & Multiculture, Part 10)

There’s nothing more dangerous than ignoring culture. Nothing fatal as ignorance when it comes to cultural principles. For cultural principles are made equally of ideology and of ideals. And while ideals shape the world -– ideology will surely destroy it.

Mentioning any clash of civilizations produces vehement denial. Fair enough. Wherefore art these civilizations? Whereabouts is even bare civility remaining? Thus and however, though -– nobody can deny how cultures are clashing. No one tries denying cultures clash like there’s no tomorrow.

What tomorrow? The long cold-war years are over. Done, those days of superpowers balancing, cavorting on the cutting edge of mutually assured destruction. Perhaps coming to grips with climate change isn’t hopeless -– should we only work together in good time. But what hope of working together? What hope while the conjunction of militant fundamentalism with weapons of mass destruction approaches? The spectre of our twenty-first century looms too vast. Threatening, as it does, to shroud us not only in greenhouse gasses -– but also in unholy smoke of mushroom clouds.

In “The Politics of God” (New York Times Magazine, August 19, 2007) -- an essay adapted from his forthcoming book -– Columbia University’s Mark Lilla declares understanding political theology “[T]he most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And he’s right. Whatever called, we absolutely can’t afford persisting in ignorance when it comes to political theology -– perhaps better known as militant fundamentalism.

Lilla is quite right, as well, to point out how categorically our ignorance persists:

.. we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form -– as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more. We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

Indeed. But what to do? How even to begin emerging from our ignorance concerning cultural principles entailing militant fundamentalism? Lilla proposes we get in touch with our own fundamentalist roots:

Even the most stable and successful democracies, with the most high-minded and civilized believers, have proved vulnerable to political messianism and its theological justification. If we can understand how that was possible in the advanced West, if we can hear political theology speaking in a more recognizable tongue, represented by people in familiar dress with familiar names, perhaps then we can remind ourselves how the world looks from its perspective. This would be a small step toward measuring the challenge we face and deciding how to respond.

Is that so? Could we do that? Take that one “small step” to reminding ourselves? To get in touch with our own fundamentalist roots? No. Not likely. Not by however many small steps.

Lilla completely underestimates how distant our memory “of what it was like to think as they do” has stretched. How distant? Stretched past all breaking points. Inconceivably distant. We have crossed a great and categorical divide from our fundamentalist roots. There’s no small stepping back across.

Our division from fundamentalist roots is categorical. With but few exceptions compassing those we deem criminally insane -– i.e., David Koresh -– almost none of us remain able in the West to conceive as militant fundamentalists do. We can’t help regarding exploding murder-suicides, for instance, as we would enemy combatants prepared to make the supreme sacrifice. As if willing to die for their cause. And, while simultaneously realizing it isn’t so, we still can’t begin conceiving how fundamentally such murder-suicides are not sacrificing. How not willing -– but eager they are to die for their cause. How eager they are to die if it means bringing God’s truth crashing and crushing us infidels. We can’t begin conceiving it -– how great God is for the truly faithful of militant fundamentalism.

Lilla doesn’t appear to deny our division from fundamentalism. He does question the divide, however. How and when did it come to be so great? How categorical is it, anyhow? As Lilla put it, “The history of political theology in the West is an instructive story, and it did not end with the birth of modern science, or the Enlightenment, or the American and French Revolutions, or any other definitive historical moment.”

Quite right. It didn’t happen overnight. Our division from fundamentalism spanned hundreds of years and involved everything Lilla mentions. More, even. But none of that means we can’t figure out what happened. Our trouble recognizing and identifying what happened is due only how thoroughly and intimately we take it all for granted -– not how long it took.

What happened? We killed God dead -– that’s what. So that now, as we’ve heard long since -– God is dead. How did it happen? When? Once we began following the great materialist prophets of our Enlightenment. Copernicus. Galileo. Newton. And the greatest of our prophets -– Darwin.

Copernicus and Galileo showed us how lights didn’t move in the sky around us by God’s hand. Newton showed us how nothing in the mechanics of the world was getting moved by God’s hand. And when Darwin made such total monkeys out of us -– that was the last spike. Went right through God’s coffin and killed God dead. Because Darwin showed us how nothing in our ancestry and own bodies had been moved by God’s hand.

That’s how it happened. Us killing God. By wresting his creator hand right out of creation. Our great Enlightenment prophets showed us everywhere God wasn’t. Not in the stars, not in the mechanics of the world -– not even in our own bodies. Such that, when all God’s workings had been unsaid and undone, biblical thumping invoking God given truths came to mean ignorance more so than divine authority.

That’s what happened. Thumping bibles hasn’t lost all authority -– we haven’t come entirely that far. But almost none of us can help regarding thumping bibles as ignorant. Most of us regard them thumping as clowns. Which contradicts and demolishes our inclination or ability to credit their divine authority. Hence, we’ve laughed Christian fundamentalism right off. Laughed it out of state and out of court. It hasn’t even much prayer left in public schools. And while many of us bring in the clowns or go visiting them when feeling nostalgic -– we just can’t conceive how to be ruled by them any longer. Not by such clowns.

Once we killed God, the very nature of truth changed on us in the (relatively) tolerant West. We just haven’t got that old time revelation to fall back on any more. God’s own truth is empty and shut to us. Consequently, we’ve got nothing but solid evidence to rely on. Trouble is, evidence can never be solid like God’s truth used to be. Evidence is all descriptive and provisional. Nothing certain about it. Nothing definitive like God’s truth used to be. Damned evidence keeps arriving on daily basis. Never lets up. And no matter how confident we might feel -– we keep getting proven wrong eventually.

Killing God has made us provisional, uncertain and post-modern about truth. It has traumatized us and made us (relatively) tolerant. It has also made us intolerable to militant fundamentalism -– to the truly faithful. Who, by (their great) God’s own truth, know that they are right. Right to bring God’s truth to us. The more spectacularly the better. For their redemption, their eternal reward and for our own good, even. But even so -– we can’t conceivably respond in kind. How could we ever go out crusading to save heathen souls or die the martyrs’ death again -– knowing we might be completely in the wrong?

What if we could, though? Just hypothetically -– what if we could follow Lilla’s suggestion and get in touch with our fundamentalist roots again? What if we became certain of God’s truth once more? If we managed conceiving how truly great God is, if we found that absolute faith -– individually and especially collectively -– once more? If so then God help us all. For then we shall have re-crossed the categorical divide backwards and rejoined the truly faithful. And all helping ourselves from the spectre of this twenty-first century will have utterly passed us by.

There’s another avenue open to our understanding. Rather than getting in touch with our fundamentalist roots, let’s explore, discover and learn to better appreciate cultural principles distinguishing us as Canadians -– and Torontonians. For anything good and positive we might contribute stems from Canadian moderation, democracy -– and from the best of multiculture as in Toronto.

Let’s better appreciate the source, origin, meaning and significance of the principle informing our moderation, democracy and multiculture. Let’s better appreciate the principle of tolerance. For in so doing we enhance our identity as Canadians and Torontonians -– and more generally emerge from ignorance concerning cultural principles. Concerning all cultural principles -– including those entailing militant fundamentalism. Because what’s made our ignorance so fatal hasn’t been losing touch with our fundamentalism. It’s been how we’ve dismissed both the ideals shaping and ideologies destroying the world. How we’ve dismissed all principles. What’s been so fatal to our understanding and future has been how deeply the relatively tolerant West has fallen into materialism.

That’s our trouble. Materialist monism contradicts appreciating any principle -– regardless whether that principle informs other cultures or the meaning of our own tolerance.

Reviews from Box 61 day 2

Day two started out great with THE BRAVE ONE at 11:45am at the Ryerson -- Was a Neil Jordan (the crying game) film starring Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard -- Great film very well made, went over the multidimensional nature of Fear, grief, and surviving life altering experiences. Wonderful performances.

Film two, 2:45pm again at the Ryerson, LE VOYAGE DU BALLON ROUGE one of two french films today that I wish I had missed. Two hours I will not be getting back, what bothers me is there was no POINT to either of them, the other was film #5 at midnight at the Ry --FRONTIERES --- while ballon was "fly on the wall" of a woman and her child and a nanny/film student, no plot very little to care about. Frontieres was just a bunch of cliched horror film settings and was mostly an excuse for gratuitous gore and blood. I like gore and blood sometime more than the rest of them but for God's sake give me a plot, a story, some logical bond as an excuse to watch someone die or get maimed horribly. Ok enough of that.

Film three -- CAPTAIN MIKE ACROSS AMERICA I love Michael Moore, that is my bias. I think he goes a little overboard and is too sentimental sometimes as a documentarian, but he is honest and aboveboard about his biases, and I admire that. So when Kerry dropped the ball Mike and a lot of artists picked it up on his behalf and tried to get more democratic people out to vote. What they did succeed at what getting more young voters out to vote than ever before in history and the great majority of them voted for Kerry -- just like the Titanic we know how that worked out. A lot of the issues he touched on need to be HARPED (no pun intended but why the hell not) on, for all of north american politics and media -- we should not be complacent as we are not innocent either, and there but for the grace of God go us all. Weak points are he admitted that he didn't include any of the violence that he and his family experienced on a number of occasions during this period, I think in the balance, for the integrity of the piece He should have, and there had to be included some young or old Republican that did not sound like some inbred fanatic, those are the easy ones to discount; the ones that are articulate, logical and sound like they know what they are talking about and that are passionate about their beliefs are the really scary ones and really the ones that Michael et al are battling. But just like SHUT UP AND SING that I saw last year the main ideas that I came away with were: 1-- The powers that be in the U.S. find ideas very threatening and scary(ironically what they accused the USSR of for more than 60 years) 2-- The Powers in the U.S. find it easy to use their constitution as a tool for posturing at the world but when it comes down to actually walking the walk so to speak, they don't. Hypocrasy rules. Good film as it caused me to think about this and actually write it.

Film four -- Ang Lee's LUST, CAUTION -- very good film -- good story of a group of people trying to eak out some meaning in their lives set against the cultural revolution in mainland China and Hong Kong in the thirties during the Japanese incursions into china before the second world war. time line is a little fuzzy for me but I don't think terribly important -- very powerful film full of powerful in an understated fashion about passions, emotional and political and the fuzzy lines that people undercover find themselves crossing and recrossing. What is real? What matters?

Reviews from the Platinum Cheap Seats

Discovered yesterday having a fancy VISA card is useful for something. TIFF has this special lineup for ticket and card holders at all the Elgin galas. Skip the lounge, watch the media feed off star energy on the red carpet. Then take your choice of seats in the theatre. Second row centre rocked last night. Save one for Tracey while she rushes.

Front is especially redeemed with the star line-up with Sean Penn's newest film, INTO THE WILD. Let's see. William Hurt, Carolyn Keener, Emile Hirsch, Edie Veder all showed. Not sure why actually. The director says a few words at the mike, cameras flash wildly (perhaps the thruer meaning of th emovie's title for these people), and he introduces each present star. Then they leave, and the curtain raises.

This film hits the big screen and general release shortly. True-ish story about a young man who needs to go to Alaska on his own. Honestly moving.

Penn can tell a story. Even got the bear to act.

Reviews from the Platinum Cheap Seats

Sunday morning: waking up just in time to return to day two of the Michael Weis Memorial Scrabble Tournament after another late night of TIFFing.

Let me back track a bit. Last night.

I know Tracey was incredibly lucky to have missed what the director personally described as a "long and slow" movie last night. Got to see Ben and Casey Affleck, and Brad Pitt. And a million people pretending(?) to be media taking photos.

The incredibly long and slow THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY ROBERT FORD was... started 40 minutes late, and lasted over 2 hours also.

There was some interesting narration and stylized camera work. But a cowboy movie that was almost all unwitty dialogue. Unusual ending too, one which prompted some audience memberS to start muttering along the lines of, "God Is this finally the ending?" LOL Luckily the boys on screen were pretty. Didn't realize Brad Pitt was still so A-list actually. Isn't he merely an adjunct to AJ?

Friday began my TIFF experience. I joined Tracey for two flicks.

We sat front row, feet up at the Ryerson to listen to Michael Moore. Guy loves an audience, and this latest secret film illustrated this even more than he does in person. CAPTAIN MIKE ACROSS AMERICA documented Moore's 2004 60-city self-described anti-propaganda tour. The man wanted everyone to vote in the last American election. By everyone, it was presumed though, he meant democrats, that odd American animal symbiotically birthed by an invisible republican threat. Let's just say the film featured Moore in front of audiences, again and again. No plans to do anything with it either, none. Which may be a good idea.

We marched down afterwards to the Elgin, where Trace succeeded in rushing LUST, CAUTION, Ang Lee's latest. Another heartthrob screamfest for a man and his cast. Good movie, another character development illustrated in vivid, slow detail, more painting in motion than action movie.

Good thing I have friends to write real reviews. I'm off to scrabble now. Anyone heard of the word "perinea"?

Reviews from Box 61

Hey All, Went to three films today at 6pm was at the Ryerson, saw FADOS -- was a great creative way to start off the festival. Was a musical, dance variations of Fados which are essentially Portuguese Blues. Very intense, very emotional, some fantastic voices. Was like doing a intro class in the art form in all of its forms from traditional and historic to the contemporary and modern.

Second Film was PERSEPOLIS based on a series of graphic novels about a young girl's journey from childhood to young adulthood in Iran. Was heartwrenching, funny, put you through the whole gamut of emotions. I enjoyed it. The line was horrendous and I arrived an hour early. At the Visa screening room you get into a preferred line if you are a gold or platinum Visa cardholder you get into a special lounge and even if it is full their line goes in first. I think the fee is too high for myself, but hey maybe next year.

Third was a wonderfully gory and gross film out of Italy THE MOTHER OF TEARS -- Scary, funny, gross and hell midway through the fire alarm went off for 15minutes. Was a complete gross out!!! Perfect midnight madness fare. Was accosted in line by a beautiful, inebriated young man named Alex. Had to yank him back like a raw recruit. "Hello Doll," I mean really!!! Met Coyette again this year as we like to sit in the front two rows. Was nice to have someone to sit with. 5 films tomorrow, sometimes I wonder about my sanity. More later today.

Box 61

The TIFF envelope with my film picks ended up in the 70th box out of 75. Specifically, #61 out of 75 but #66 turned into box #1 due to the annual lottery. Crap. So, hindsight says I should have got coffee first instead of just rushing over there, a later arrival perhaps would have given me a better outcome, but I will find out the consequences tomorrow. It just doesn't matter!!! I will be at TIFF for the whole shot for the second year running YEEEEHAAAA!!!! I chose 45 films, I do have 5 extras and who knows how many I will just sell to friends and grateful rush line people. More tomorrow.

Gutter Music

People used to drop sandwiches in my case. One time, this nice old lady asked to buy me dinner.

“Come on, lady,” I said. “Do I look like a charity case? Do I sound like I’m begging?”

I have never panhandled. Never have, never will. Some couldn’t tell any different, though. Between playing my sax on the street and panhandling.

Not quite playing, really. Practicing. For five or six years, just east of Spadina at Queen.

Pathetic? Might have been. But not panhandling. Not begging. Never asked anyone’s spare change for the privilege of hearing me practice. Doesn’t matter how pathetic my sound was. Even the saddest busking is nothing like begging.

Another time, this bunch of teeny-bumpers and trampers were going by. All made out in their Friday night worst Queen West drags. “Go home, poser!” one of them shouted my way. “We know what those roller-blades cost.”

Yeah. Nice blades. That’s how I got myself downtown and back. “Kid, you really got me,” I replied. “You have seen through my disguise. You have penetrated my costume.”

What was I to try and explain? That the blades had been a gift? That I wasn’t even out to get down and desperate? That there was no helping getting grimy sitting on the sidewalk hours on end – drying in the sweat of blading from The Junction with a sax on my back?

No point. No use explaining differences between buskers’ performing and how bums make spectacles of themselves. No stopping people projecting their own motives all over everyone else. So they thought I was one of them – except old. Too senile to scuff my blades properly. As if I’d forgot tearing designer tags off pre-ripped jeans or gangsta’ duds my parental units bought me. So what?

Thing is, buskers and panhandlers don’t get along so well. Like that one night this kid armed with bucket and drumsticks came banging along. Not half bad. And then he says, “Let’s go down to Richmond.”

“What for?”

“What you make here,” he asked. “Maybe fifty to a hundred?”

“Yeah, like that,” I said. Drummer-boy knew his stuff.

“There’s one spot at Richmond, you’ll make two to three hundred. Guaranteed,” he resolved. All excited.

I totally didn’t feel like abandoning my Queen West spot. But I packed up and followed to Richmond anyhow. Curiosity and his excitement got the best of my caution. And sure enough, across from that absurd square in the air theatre, there was this building the step-up to which formed a natural small stage. “Natural”, that is, as in artificially ideal – not like any birds were twittering or any water was falling. It was all clubbers and movie-goers crowding Richmond that hot, pheromonally acrid summer night.

No sooner we got jamming, though, this big, farmer-from-Toronto panhandler runs up. Brass-cup in hand – no kidding. Runs right up. Aggressive as dogs out of junkyards. “You’re mowing my grass, assholes!”

Drummer-boy, he launched right in panhandler’s face. “Yeah, retard? Yeah? Where’s your name engraved? Where?”

Went back and forth like that a few minutes. Who’s mowing whose grass. Who was there first and last. Who was where, when. And their ancestors before them. Whose ancestry was least legitimate. Went back and forth long enough for what seemed every reveller that part of Richmond to come gawk the free entertainment. I was unlacing my blades when panhandler got wailing on drummer-boy. And it looked real bad for drummer-boy until he brought those drumsticks he’d been holding in his fist down. Brought them drumsticks down on panhandler’s forehead.

Everything stopped. Including traffic as corner lights blinked red. Everything halted like a hitch in the Richmond summer night breathing. One moment of stillness and silence –to figure out, perhaps, what such oddly muted splashing of wood on flesh and bone might mean. What it signified. Then, as lights changed and traffic surged, the crowd shifted internally. Some craning viscerally too forward while others, noting drops of blood spattering their clothes, retreated.

Panhandler, shuffling now, advanced on drummer-boy. His eyes had gone from rabid to mostly puzzled, though. He needed more time to figure it out. Drummer-boy, however, understood just fine. Drummer-boy was nimble, he was quick – knew the heft and meaning of his drumsticks. And with panhandler’s fist and brass cup flailing after his face, drummer-boy leapt like a stork. Straight up. And brought his drumsticks down on panhandler’s head again.

Now the crowd began turning away. Turning like stomachs now that the bleeding wasn’t in drops any more. Realizing how anything might happen at night on the streets. How fast. Probably to someone else. But maybe not. Maybe not just at night.

I was almost done unlacing my blades. Hadn’t rushed as much as I should have. Wasn’t completely clear in my mind how to go about separating them. Had one notion buzzing around that, in just this case, never might be better than late. “Better”, that is, as in safer – for me. Not like I wasn’t going to – just why I hadn’t rushed as I should have.

Panhandler resumed his advancing. But not pistoning fast as the first time. Nor flailing wild as the next. Somehow more like swimming. Like his airspace converted partway to liquid. Even his eyes were swimming. And replacing the former stream of death threats from his mouth was an organic sort of sound. A sound impossible to recall as severe personal injury.

Not much telling left. Drummer-boy backed from panhandler’s advance, reached back and smashed his drumsticks forward. Teeth sprayed out. Drummer-boy backed up farther, turned, and walked away – with panhandler weaving steadily after. Whatever crowd remaining dispersed. I laced my blades and packed my sax. Like something back from its grave, Panhandler returned. Last I saw, he was groping the gutter for his teeth.

Buskers and panhandlers aren’t much alike. Don’t always get along. Better not to confuse them for each other. Far more important, though, is this. All out on the street – whether panhandlers, buskers, scavengers, criminals, addicts or saints – have their own, particular reasons for being there. Their own unique stories. And far more important than not mistaking them for one another is not assuming to know who they are in the first place. For there’s no helping anyone when we make dogmatic ideological assumptions. That’s when we endanger everyone. When we become too sure we know even to hear their stories.

Hell. On or off the streets – regardless – it’s not like most are able telling their own stories. Who they are. What they’ve stood and fallen for. What has broken them. It takes some hard listening, hearing each other’s stories. It takes work. And even when we listen, it can take years between hearing someone’s story – and understanding it.

That’s how it was with my friend Jack. Started jamming with me one night. Barely qualified as a busker. Did far better than me in terms of audience appreciation, though.

“If you think my song don’t suck, go ahead and throw a buck!” he’d yell. Then, he’d get up, stand in the way of passers-by and, strumming most discordantly, yell, “If you think I’m a total loony, go ahead and throw a toonie!”

Most did throw toonies. Not all due to intimidation, either. I could tell that, like me, they admired his character. His spirit. His pluck if not his plucking.

I’d see Jack once, maybe twice each week. And each time, no fail, he’d ask, “Buddy, you know any love songs?” I didn’t do songs – never mind love songs. Like, what’s love got to do with anything? But Jack, he tried to set me straight. Love, he’d tell me, was what it all came down to. Wasn’t no point living in any world without love.

Pretty embarrassing. “Lovers!” he’d yell when couples passed. Off he’d go after them, composing yet more stupid silly love songs on the fly. And, however absurd his songs, he’d almost invariably get offered bills. Which, entirely invariably, he’d turn down. “It’s not about money,” he’d say. “Only be stout hearts, and your love shall be forever.” Embarrassing? Just about nauseating.

But my opinion of Jack could not plummet far. I had to admire him. Before and yet more so after he showed me his artificial leg running all the way down from his hip. Something about a heroin deal gone bad years back. But he was alright – had long since been in remission from heroin. He was doing fine, had himself a part-time day job – not that he needed it with how well he was doing busking.

Except, next time I saw Jack, he was barely able to hobble. Too much joking around with the cops, he told me. They had him in a cell overnight, he said, and, while there, injured his good leg. Time after that I saw Jack, he wasn’t even able to sit. Kept falling over sideways. No longer in remission from the heroin. No longer busking. My friend had turned panhandler.

Only saw Jack a couple more times after that. Couldn’t last – not at the rate he was deteriorating. Fast and irrevocable. Like any animal on its last legs and failing. He was killing himself. And I did not want to see it. Last time seeing him, I told him so. That I admired him and cared about him. Asked if he might do me the favour of not making me watch while he killed himself.

“Don’t worry, man,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to watch if you don’t want. But I won’t stay in a world without love.”

That was the last I saw Jack. But it was years before I understood how literally he’d meant it. How overtly he elected not to remain in this world without love. And more years still before my realizing how we’re all like that. Maybe not as uncompromising in our principles as Jack had been in his – the one about not living in any world without love. Still. Even if just a little. We’re all principled. We’ve all got our reasons. Our own stories. Who we are. What we’ve stood and fallen for. What idiosyncracy may break us – as opposed to everything we don’t even notice. What we live for. What, sometimes, like Jack, we’d die for. For – or against.

We’ve all got our reasons. Our own unique stories. And, far too often, we’d rather not know. Neither our own stories nor anyone else’s. Like I didn’t want to know what it meant when Jack turned panhandler. How and why he would do himself in.

Let’s face it. We’ve been seeing and hearing it the past couple weeks. Toronto can’t deal with panhandling. Totally shrinks from panhandling. The way Toronto shudders when confronted by panhandling totters institutions and dims streetlights. Panhandling has got Toronto leaping at its own shadows.

When panhandling blocks sidewalks, Toronto looks away. Toronto struggles desperately to not know. Ears stopped, gaze firmly averted, Toronto retreats to ideology. Retreats to pretending there’s nothing personal. No personal reasons. Just impersonal economic causes.

Those blaming society for keeping panhandlers from humane means of production call for subsidizing ever greater Toronto public shelter industries. Those blaming panhandlers for illicit, antisocial means of production call for increasing police intervention. Neither calling ever helps. Rousting from point to point isn’t helping. Herding in public shelters so exacerbates indignity – few would not rather risk going out to sleep in the snow.

When it comes to (not only) panhandling, our poverty is not in means of production. It is in production of meaning. That’s our trouble. How we turn away. How we’d rather not know the stories. The way we retreat to ideology. We don’t want to know what panhandling means. We don’t want to know who panhandlers are, who they have failed to be and why. Absolutely not if it entails getting personal with them.