IN WHICH WE REALIZE WE CHOSE THIS

Even though I only live an hour away from my family, I hadn’t seen them in eight months. The pandemic was to blame, of course, but even at the best of times I would only go see them every few months. There is that no public transport goes to Lacolle. More importantly, there is that I have really bad FOMO. I saw about 300 artists in concert last year. But COVID cured me of that. Now I can be in Lacolle without thinking about all the things I’m missing because there is no longer anything to miss. The pandemic has taken with it all of the advantages of living in the city and left only its inconveniences: too many people everywhere and too little of anything else anywhere.

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UTOPIA #8: THE WOMAN WHO GOT FLOWERS IN THE MORNING

            Once, when she was young, she came to the conclusion that flowers were the best gift one could possibly receive. They were beautiful and useless. They were ephemeral. Giving someone flowers, she thought, was like saying “There are no words. There is nothing. Therefore, I must resort to the most useless gesture.” It was then that she decided that, when she would be older, she would get fresh flowers every morning and put them in the lobby of her home, in the living room, in the kitchen, in her bedroom, wherever she pleased.
            She was older now.
 
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Apologie du film minable : fragments

Le cinéma est le «bizarro» du monde de l’art, le médium commercial. Si «le médium est le message,» le message du cinéma est «je suis dispendieux,» de sorte que c’est souvent l’argent qui y est mis de l’avant (qu’on parle de film à petit ou à gros budget, ou encore de succès ou d’échec au box-office), relayant l’art à l’arrière-plan. Le cinéma se nivelle donc constamment vers le bas à la recherche d’un public potentiel. Ici, je ne parle pas d’élitisme. Ce n’est pas le public qui tue l’art mais bien la possibilité d’un public; c’est-à-dire que l’art commence à mourir du moment que l’artiste croit que s’il fait certains choix plutôt que d’autres, il pourrait ainsi trouver un public.

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Utopia #2: The Cabin in the Woods

The fire crackles. He’s sitting at the perfect distance where he can barely feel the heat, so that he is reminded of it every few seconds, every time it momentarily builds up, enveloping him. It’s only when it makes a sound, when a flame breaks a piece of the wood that he looks up and observes the fire for a moment. He always found beauty in anything that refuses to remain still, in anything that refuses to be captured.

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2016 as Dance Memories (Mostly)

1. Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) / Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (M2M), Trajal Harrell (Festival TransAmériques)
American choreographer Trajal Harrell’s work has always been impressive if only for its sheer ambition (his Twenty Looks series currently comprises half a dozen shows), but Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) is his masterpiece. In the most primal way, he proves that art isn’t a caprice but that it is a matter of survival. Harrell and dancers Thibault Lac and Ondrej Vidlar manifest this need by embodying it to the fullest. The most essential show of this or any other year.

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​Best Concerts of 2016

1. Bas + EarthGang @ Le Belmont (Greenland Productions)
For years, I’ve suspected that indie rock audiences were the worst and this year my suspicions got confirmed. The crowd at this hip hop show not only knew the lyrics to all the Bas songs, they also knew the lyrics to all the openers’ songs and to the ones spun by the DJ in between sets. I seriously had no idea Montrealers could be that enthusiastic about anything. I lost my shit that night and am pretty sure no one who knows me would have recognized me.

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Best Albums of 2016

Best Singles of 2016

Favourite Reads of 2016

The Moon and Sixpence (1919), W. Somerset Maugham
“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”
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