{"id":421,"date":"2010-11-03T14:12:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T22:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/onelife\/?p=421"},"modified":"2010-11-03T14:12:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T22:12:35","slug":"politics-art-death-and-marriage-not-necessarily-in-that-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"Politics, art, death and marriage; not necessarily in that order"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Politics. Ugh. Obama got his sorry ass kicked yesterday and Gordon Campbell just resigned this morning after trying to buy people off with a tax cut. It appears the Americans are going crazy–talk about polarization–and Gordon Campbell is an arrogant prick to think the citizenry can’t see through such transparent ploys. Good riddance but it\u2019s not as if this means change. Some other party line asshole will replace him so already fat cat Gordo can go work at a corporation as a consultant<\/em> and receive a hefty salary. Do I sound bitter? The old saw, If voting could change anything it would be against the law <\/em>always jumps to mind at a time like this.<\/p>\n

I can clean up my own back yard however though feeling trapped in the Visible Verse vault, battling dust and giant spiders to save videopoetry from obscurity while ensuring a stellar retrospective. As I\u2019ve told several friends, the anniversary celebration and festival has pretty much taken over my life. Oh well, once every 10 years I suppose I can handle it, suck it up. The buzz is building; I’m doing an interview for Books on the Radio<\/a> and Sean Cranbury soon. It’s going to be fabulous affair with artists flying in from Montreal, Edmonton, Chicago and Los Angeles. Paul Portugues, coming up from Santa Barbara, wants an interview for his book on poetry film.<\/p>\n

Sadly, and shockingly, an esteemed member of Vancouver’s arts community, Lenore Herb<\/a> died recently. We were punk rock cohorts and didn’t always get along but I admired her fierceness and as Jamie Reid said, \u201cLenore was a real Vancouver pioneer in visible verse. She and her former husband, Dermot Foley worked with Warren Tallman to produce many videos of great American poets reading in Vancouver, including the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley. Apart from that she has been the major archivist in Vancouver and probably nationally of the visual work of the seminal, legendary poet bill bissett, and has made several videos of his work with sound.\u201d Friends and family have asked me to organize a memorial screening of her collaboration with bill, th quiet releef uv bones<\/em> as part of the festival. In the 11th hour we\u2019re talking about including it before the Seeing The Voice panel at 4 pm.<\/p>\n

On a cheerier note, my 16-year old son has been contracted to do video game reviews on the gxptube channel on Youtube. It’s a little ironic because he likes to make fun of me for being a writer, worse yet, a poet. Ewww<\/em>. So, I was teasing him and he said but I’m a reviewer<\/em> not a writer. Yeah, well, you have to write<\/em> the reviews silly. Check it out. He knows his stuff and I\u2019ve been able to negotiate credit for his efforts at his distance education school. Here, posted 2 days ago, is a review of Vanquish<\/em><\/a> and posted 2 weeks ago, a review of the Medal of Honor<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m more than a little biased but proud of my boy who is so much more sophisticated than I was at that age. So now, one of my greatest challenges is getting him off the couch and on the recently installed boxing gear he requested and now ignores for the most part. He is also working on a game design and a documentary. He taught himself to edit, produces machinimas and edits video for me, when I can get him off the controller and, or computer. I’ m surrounded by geeks Josef made a good point about his level of sophistication for a 16 year old.<\/p>\n

Met with Patrick Jandak<\/a> recently, a photographer, referred by Warren (Dean Fulton) of pooka press. Originally from Slovakia, Patrik resides in Toronto and was out to Vancouver for the first time. He\u2019s working on a book on writers I was one of 15 he corralled as subjects. So tall, fair, amiable Patrik came over on the water taxi. He didn\u2019t like the rain. \u201cWelcome to the wet coast,\u201d I said after meeting him in Snug Cove. We took pictures down on the pier where all the boat dwellers reside. One emerged during the shoot to ask if we were going to make his boat famous. As we were leaving a woman with a backpack asked Patrik to help her move a kayak. That was funny. Put him to work. Very resourceful I thought. Smart. Of course he was chivalrous, gladly helped her out. \u201cThat was a first,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll have to come back, my friend Martin owns the kayaking rental place. You could take a lesson.\u201d We talked about the struggle involved in being an artist, how his father nearly disowned him when he quit engineering school. Papa is now proud of Patrik. Familiar story.<\/p>\n

Full of links today! I\u2019m not quite a misogamist but definitely leaning in that direction. Here’s an amusing take on marriage, I Guess You’ll Do<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politics. Ugh. Obama got his sorry ass kicked yesterday and Gordon Campbell just resigned this morning after trying to buy people off with a tax cut. It appears the Americans are going crazy–talk about polarization–and Gordon Campbell is an arrogant prick to think the citizenry can’t see through such transparent ploys. Good riddance but it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}