Wow!! When do we get to watch this doc!!

Amazing!! Dr. Cornett is an amazing academic and activist!

A real treat to know that a true “homme engage” is being honored by his fellow montrealers

Ever since i first worked in montreal , composing Muisc fr the film “Nous sommes Jeunes” for cnadian Pcific railroad, and later on duirng my eight joyous years condcuting the Monteal symphony matinnee concerts for young people, i was always overwhelmed by the adventuorous spirit and high artistic standards combined with DARING TO GO BEYOND BOUDERIES.

when i met DR cornett and first worked with him, i felt he was the embodiment of this special quality. Like most other musicians, who cam as i did, as performers in the Montreal Jazz Festival, I was thrilled to be in his class and wished tat i could enroll as a senior-student at McGill in rder to TAKE classes with this extraordinary man.

Like Mrshall McLuhan, he took the role of the university professor to a new level. All his guest artists as well as his students came away inspired.

Alanis Obsawin is one of the finest documentary film makers in the world and the combination guarentees a document that will show the special gifts that Canadians have for uisng film and media to uplift, educate and inspire.

i am telling all my friends in the States and everywhere i go aroud the world to look out for this film and learn more about
the amazing life’ work of notre cher Professor Norman

Bravo, merci et salu!!

David Amram
amramdavid@aol.com

Congrats Dr.Cornett

That’s great news . all the best and much success. Marion

I meet Dr. Cornett at many vernissages and am looking forward to seeing the film that will document his particular talents in communicating art values.

Dr. Cornett is the kind of professor I dreamed of having through my university years. I wish him all the best.

Dr. Cornett is a true social innovator who re-imagined the future of the education system with his model of experiential learning and “dialogic sessions.” His method is one of true learning – a forum of discussion, deep engagement, challenges and opinions. Students found their voices in his class because he created a space for them to do so. Leaders were born under his tutelage, and it is a huge loss for McGill to not champion an innovator of Cornett’s capacity. Sir Ken Robinson calls for a transformation of the education system. See his TED talk here http://is.gd/H3s What Cornett brings is the answer.

Quelle bonne nouvelle d’apprendre que le film sur le Dr. Cornett sera projeté à Montréal. Ce sera l’occasion de souligner sa grande contribution d’éducateur et d’humaniste. Ce n’est pas fréquent que l’on rencontre des gens qui survolent le domaine des arts et des sciences avec cette envergure intellectuelle. J’ai rencontré le Dr. Cornett lors d’un vernissage et j’ai été impressionnée par sa perception lumineuse tout-à-fait originale de mes œuvres. C’est cet esprit original, libre et honnête qui lui a valu son renvoi de McGill. C’est un signe de sclérose lorsqu’une institution ne peut plus tolérer en son sein des “rebelles” épris de liberté de pensée.

How amazing it was for me to sit in the Toronto’s Hot Docs theatre to experience Alanis Obomsawin’s stunningly beautiful documentary about Professor Cornett. She captures his wisdom, his clarity, his profound caring… I saw students made to feel unique.. their reflections not graded but absorbed with utmost respect. I saw a window into a true educator who nurtures individuality and freedom of thought. How radical! An professor who builds rather then tears down.

As an actor/singer I am proud to have been a dialogic partner in Professor Cornett’s class. I remember being surprised and delighted to hear his students/my audience’s honest reflections on my work. They pushed me, inspired me and made me want to share every nuance of what it is to do what I do with them.
Professor Cornett’s unique methods should be part of every academic institution. Instead Mcgill has tossed aside what is spectacular. How can educators be so stupid?

Professor Cornett can not be silenced. He will publish and continue to dialogue because he must… and we will follow. Those who have tasted his brilliance will follow him anywhere..

NORMAN CORNETT is a rock star!

Il y a quelques années, j’ai eu le plaisir d’être invitée dans une de ses classes d’étudiants sur une rencontre portant sur ma musique. Ce fut un beau moment!

I first met Dr Cornett while I was in Montreal and exhibiting at Gallery Gora. He had taken quite some time to really study the context of my images.
I was invited to his class to speak about my work and it was truly an interesting experience.
Congratulations Dr Cornett on the film and your dedication to the arts and thank you for
your interest in my art.

As an artist, it is not everyday one has the honour of coming across such an individual as Dr. Cornett. It happenend to me about five years ago during my vernissage at Galerie dÁvignon. There he was, a quiet man sitting unobtrusively in the corner, writing notes and little did I know at the time, the scope and breadth of his imagination and mind. That became apparent in the following weeks after the show and culminated in the dialogic session for which I was the guest speaker! What an experience and rare treat indeed to be part of! It was the sort of experience you come away from, feeling totally connected to the universe- challenging, invigorating and utterly dynamic. Thank you Dr. Cornett!

I had the pleasure of being a dialogic partner in March 2008, after Dr. Cornett saw the exhibition of my video “Exercises in Napery” at the Fofa Gallery. The uncensored feedback and questions from the students and the discussion generated during the dialogic session challenged me to think about every aspect of my artistic process. The discussion delved deeper and further than any of the classes I’ve taken. I believe this kind of exchange—where personal perspectives are pushed, reexamined and shifted to see in a new light—is a true gift. I am grateful to have had this experience and to have witnessed first-hand Dr. Cornett’s “theatre of learning”. As the youngest, solo dialogic partner thus far, I’ll carry with me the genuinely encouraging and enthusiastic energy of that session.

It was a pleasure to welcome Dr. Cornett to my art exhibit MY JOURNEY INWARD on Sunday, June 7, 2009, a display of 125 works. He asked pertinent and profound questions and challenged visitors with his insight. I look forward to watching the upcoming NFB documentary.

I’ve never seen one man make things happen like Dr. Cornett. ‘You can do it,’ is one of his catch phrases (he likes to put an emphasis on the can), and he certainly has done so. It has been two years now since I was a student in Dr. Cornett’s last class at McGill University. Since that time it astounds me how much he has accomplished. I nervously anticipate Obamsawin’s documentry. It is somewhat different to speak your mind outside a more or less safe classroom environment. I am very excited to witness Cornett’s ideas in such a different context, to see him as uncensored as he made us when he was a professor. And I hope that educators throughout Canada are taking notes on what he has to say.

I was a student for only 3 days in a course with Dr. Cornett. That was enough to change how I think about art and literature. Amazing! Thank you Dr. Cornett
Wilfred

At one of my exhibitions there was a man who I met once and never forgot.
Not knowing who he was, I found his questions and the things he said triggering my interest, making me realise that this was different from the many approaches that I, as the exhibiting painter, forget (or prefer to forget) later. He invited me to be the guest speaker to his Dialogic Session at McGill University, which I didn’t attend, simply because I was too shy to accept it then. That was in 2005. The person I met was Dr. Norman Cornett.

Recently, I’ve been knee deep in a project that involves art in the form of poetry and painting, and need a bit of advice in regards to how to realise it, and interesting enough it is Dr. Cornett that came to my mind, as the one person I met years ago, who has struck me as a singular personality in the world of art in Montreal. What is even more interesting is the timing. I get to meet him at a time when I can give back a drop of attention to his work, which is something I so look forward to know more about.
I do thank Alanis Obomsawin, the director of the documentary “Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer?” and the NFB, to give us this chance.

One of my most memorable art appreciation sessions was with an exhibition by Sue Adams. Dr. Cornett arrived at the gallery with his class asking each student to wear ear plugs and select a sculpture to write about, no artist statements titles of works etc were allowed. Once they were finished he collected all the papers and allowed them to read about the artist and the sculptures then they were asked to write a second paper. Brilliant! Sue was then invited to speak to the class. Unorthodox teaching methods indeed, we are in dire need of more academia that think outside the box!

Marian Read, Director Galerie d’Avignon

I had a pleasure to be invited by Dr. Norman Cornett twice as an artist-guest in his widely recognized dialogic series, first at McGill University and second at Concordia University. Both times were unlike anything else I ever experienced in terms of giving lectures, artist’s talks or being part of panels.

I arrived to a group of young people who, for many months prior to my arrival, studied my videos, sound works and drawings. Under the guidance of Dr. Cornett, though without any influence on his part, the students have conceived complex and often poetic texts, all in response to visual, photographic or sonic material they viewed together. Dr. Cornett was an amazing speaker himself, fully engaged in the process of discovery of some unknown yet knowledge.

Dr. Cornett has an incredibly sophisticated mind and is a ground breaking educator. The interdisciplinary quality of his teaching, his insistence on highest possible quality of research and his comparative approach within fields such as contemporary art, culture in general, or religion (to name a few that I witnessed first hand), prepared him to be a perfect intellectual leader for younger minds. Dr. Cornett is a person able to excite, entice and challenge his students, all at the same time. The film about of Dr. Cornett offers a wonderful opportunity to celebrate his teaching as impeccable intellectually and full of scholarly vigor

Dr. Cornett, thank you for the unforgettable experience. For me as artist, you created a safe zone of inspiration and free exchange of ideas. For the students engaged in the process, you offered an open forum, where no question was impossible and no answer was forbidden. Thank you again.

Monika Weiss, artist
New York City, June 10, 20

I feel fortunate and grateful for the time I spent in Professor Cornett’s class.

Class with Cornett was always engaging, imaginative, informative and best of all…FUN!

Eddie Mueller, thank you for your time, energy, and unending educational efforts.

Michael Charendoff
aka Ouroboros

Dr Cornett is truly passionate about art and knowledge and he is able to transcend the usual hierarchy present in our world, (he is interested in all forms of art without any preconceived ideas (you will see him at vernissages at the Musée d’art Contemporain as well as at the opening of most artists/gallery (obscure or not) that cares to invite him. One thought he once shared with me a couple of years ago, ‘A society cannot think of advancement without the arts’ (Art is a place where ideas can be tested and that we can then appropriate, (integrate in our lives). Congratulations to the filmmaker and to Dr Cornett! André Laroche

it has been a great privilege to have had the opportunity to discuss and share in our passion for art and life,felicitation dr.C,….geza hermann

I first met Dr. Cornett when he attended my art opening last February. His insightful questions and observations and his willingness to talk openly and honestly encouraged others to engage in dialogue – you could feel the very atmosphere in the gallery change. Every time I see him at various art shows his keen eye, interpretations and deep intellect leave me inspired, as did Ms. Obomsawin’s documentary about him. Oh how I wish I could have been so lucky as to have had him as a professor while I was in University.

I don’t know wether this the right way to proceed but as my letter to The Gazette of Montreal dated June 18th about Ms obomsawin’s documentary on Dr. Cornett was not published in that paper, I here agree to have it posted on this site.

Jean Antonin Billard

Professor Cornett currently teaches at CreativeBoost.ca.
His next ‘dialogue’ partners include:

Frédéric Back : Saturday, July 11th,1 p.m.-3 p.m.
Sue Adams : Sunday, July 12th,1.p.m.-3 p.m.
Susie Arioli : Monday, July 13th,6 p.m.-8 p.m.

For reservations please leave a message on 514.844.7752 or send an email to registration@creativeboost.ca

The NFB Documentary on Montreal’s Norman Cornett
Most people associate documentary features with historical figures: kings, princes, prime ministers, presidents that have lived hundreds of years ago and their lives, as important as these might seem, have no direct relevance for our times. Rarely, if ever, do we see a documentary on someone who is very much alive and whose life and work can inspire us or make us appreciate essential human qualities that lack at so many levels in our society. In this respect the documentary by Alanis Obomsawin, released by the National Film Board of Canada, is a happy exception because it features McGill University’s firing of Dr. Norman Cornett and the circumstances that surround this unhappy event. We learn about his “unorthodox” but very effective teaching methods that despite the negative label inspire and motivate the student. We see his work in the classroom; his interaction with the students, some of whom, totally puzzled at first, discover their inner voice at the end of the course. The interviews with students, colleagues and collaborators reveal all the qualities of a knowledgeable and dedicated teacher, a fearless spirit and a compassionate human being. To use the description provided by John Griffin in his article “Fired by McGill, Beloved Prof. Inspires a Filmmaker,” published in the Montreal Gazette of June 13, 2009: “Parroting opinions expressed by profs in structured lectures are not for him. Cornett is by the conservative standards of McGill University … a subversive teacher. A great teacher, but subversive.”
With a tasteful balance between pointed criticism that presents the unadorned truth, and a strong sense of obligation for revealing the facts, the documentary discloses what many of us are ashamed of admitting. The “subversive” teacher was fired, dismissed without a word of explanation. What’s even worse, despite Obomsawin’s two letters, the university didn’t deem necessary to participate in the film, and the Internet petition, including 742 signatures from all over the world did not accomplish his reinstatement. The beloved Prof. was let go after 15 long years of teaching. The hard fact hits home: Dr. Cornett is fired because he couldn’t “divorce the right answer from an honest answer.” The subtitle tells us something not only about the reasons of his dismissal but also makes us realize that truth and open discussion are not valued in academic circles. Yet, institutions of higher learning should be at the forefront of all new experiments, investigations, discoveries and ideas, whether nurtured in the classrooms of orthodox, unorthodox or “subversive” teachers.
Perhaps it’s time to stop and think about the mandate of our educational institutions. Besides knowledge, what other values do we want to introduce to our university students? What example do we want to set for our future academics, doctors, lawyers, teachers, politicians? What sort of social organization do we want to promote by allowing such harsh treatment of our intellectuals? Are there different standards of evaluation for academia and the rest of humanity? It’s time to admit the insensitivity of methods used by those who hold power. It’s time to make them understand that Dr. Cornett’s inspired teaching is relevant. If his open-minded dialogue cost him his job, then we should stop and think of our cherished democratic values that are now being altered, corrupted, rigged and manipulated. Have we become numb towards the loss of these time-honoured ideals or has someone hijacked it from us?
Anait Brutian
These comments were originally written after viewing the NFB documentary on June 16, 2009 and sent to the Montreal Gazette as a letter to the editor on June 18, 2009.

Norman Cornett is a rare human being with an unfaltering dedication to life and the enrichment of his students’ lives. I can atest to the fact that he is a gifted teacher and leader. I am a better person for having been encouraged by him to live a fuller life. As I have said before and will say again I am a huge supproter!

Where does one begin in describing the Creative Boost ‘Body and Soul’ experience? With the incredibly fascinating guests? The well-informed and innovative teacher? The range of engaging students? Or the dynamic class context that bring all of the elements together under an umbrella of creativity and inquiry? All of these ingredients mesh together towards quite an adventure.

This summers’ workshop opened up many new doors for me. I loved meeting all of the participants and speakers, as well as tapping into music and the arts from a fresh new angle. When the class ended a ‘Body and Soul’ party followed with guest musicians improvising together, others jamming on canvases with paint, and some collaborating on the typewriter with words…the creative engagement continued to linger on. For me this was an exciting endeavor that came about as a result of this workshop and the strong bond between all involved.

I’m very much looking forward to continuing my encounter with the arts this fall in the class, ‘Stream of Consciousness’.

‘Dialogue’ with international award-winning composer,Hans Tutschku,professor of composition at Harvard University.

Saturday,26September2009,18h00-20h00.

Galerie Samuel Lallouz 1434 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal Québec,
Tel: 514-849-5844
email: reception@galeriesamuellallouz
Fax: 514-849-5643

Andria Minicucci
Galerie Samuel Lallouz
Tél. : (514) 849-5844

reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com

$25 all taxes included;$20 seniors,students,and groups of 5 or more.

thank you Mr Carole K
meeting with writer RAWI HAGE,and composer HANS TUTSCHKU? has been such an uplifting creative experience for me. Your dialogic session are very precious moments in my life, I am looking forward to the next encounter.Much Love. Streamnick Vie naya

The case of Norman Cornett is troubling indeed. Years pass but the truths of his story remain largely unheard. Silence is not his friend but his foe. Where would he be now if he had accepted a private deal and closed the door on the issue of the “freedom of learning” he dedicated his career to? His case certainly would not have been heard by the Quebec Labour Board, and the board certainly could not have ruled in his favor, as they have recently done.

If he had been wrong, and McGill had acted justly in terminating his position, he would have had no leg to stand on before the courts. As this is evidently not the case, it appears he did well to hold firm against intimidation. It is apparent that justice is not always served but often must be sought.

I believe in due process and furthermore, in this case, I believe justice will be granted. I simply hope all those who face similar trials are not cowed into silent submission, where their stories will fade. To remain unspoken is to deny the chance for these lessons to become learning blocks for all.

I am presently engaging with Dr. Cornett (we call him Carole K) in the Stream of Consciousness sessions which he is doing. I have to say that these are amazingly exhillerating, from conception to content to experience. We are introduced to artist works without a context beyond the works themselves (Carole K obviously likes the element of suprise) & engage in writing our impressions of said works as they come to us, slightly directed by suggestion, but ultimately left to our own raw impressions. Carole K’s way of presenting art is “diagogic”, meaning (if I understand properly) putting us in a position to dialogue or interact off the cuff with the works of art in question – & then eventually, in conjunction with our writings, with the artists themselves. The teaching method is intriguing & inspiring – non-academic but “intelligent”, & especially experiential. We listen to music blindfolded, write rushing responses to bits of poetic text as well as music, read whole texts & respond as we will to them on our own. When we meet the artists, Carole K reads, in his quirky dramatic style, parts of our various texts annonimously, & said bits lead to provocative (& loosening)discussions. The artists we’ve dialogued with up to now have seemed to enjoy the process as much as the audience.Carole K is very kind, & yet nevertheless in the best sense likes to put his audience out of their comfort zone via the strong art works he selects for us to dialogue with. This is magic – a class where the idea is that the only wrong question is the unasked question (one of Carole K’s repeated sayings), but where you are challenged to immerse yourself in deep waters. As you can tell from my expressed enthusiasm, I’m taken. Thanks – djuana

I was fortunate to have taken two classes taught by Professor Norman Cornett while I was completing my undergraduate degree at McGill. He is an unparalleled pedagogue always willing to help students find their voice by engaging them with his unique dialogical method.

By bringing guests from all fields into the classroom for open conversation, Prof. Cornett created a nonjudgmental, nurturing space within which students were validated as individuals and given free reign to voice, explore, and make tangible the world of ideas.

While my time at McGill taught me many things, without Prof. Cornett, I would certainly not have had the well-rounded education that his classes ensured. It is lamentable that McGill did not recognize the value of his approach, something none of his students would hesitate to affirm. His departure from the university is certainly a loss for the student body, if not the administration.

I encourage everyone interested in what the spirit of education looks like when it finds a classroom to attend a free screening of Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary Professor Norman Cornett: “Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer?” this Wednesday, October 7th at the CineRobotheque, 1564 St. Denis Street. The film will be followed by a discussion on alternative teaching methods with Norman Cornett and Alanis Obomsawin.

Educator George Leonard describes lecturing as “the best way to get information from teacher’s notebook to student’s notebook without touching the student’s mind.” The information that Dr. Norman Cornett presents takes an alternate route, arriving soundly at its proper destination – the minds of his students. And staying there.

Throughout my undergraduate degree at McGill, I took two classes with Dr. Cornett, neither of which had anything to do with their course titles, and both of which stirred me on an intellectual level that no other course has before or since. The tone was set as we walked into class with theme songs like Trooper’s “Raise a Little Hell” blasting, and the sentence starter “I believe…” scrawled on the blackboard. Cornett’s students were engaged in a complex dance with our own identities – simultaneously cloaking ourselves in pseudonyms and anonymous readings, while revealing truths about – and to – ourselves through no-holds-barred reflections and candid dialogic sessions. He hurled an issue at us, be it same-sex marriage, Aboriginal land rights, or the Holocaust, and shattered our apathy. Employing media as varied as contemporary dance, short story, musical performance, documentary film, and political cartoons, Cornett showed his students not only that we were capable of formulating educated opinions about contemporary issues but more importantly, that our opinions mattered.

By my fourth year at McGill, I was achieving excellent grades but was jaded and frustrated. I despised the formulaic, institutional learning that I felt was being imposed upon my once agile mind. Another day, another A. Depressed and on the verge of dropping out, I consulted Dr. Cornett. Not only did he convince me to stick it out for one more semester, but he set me on a lifelong pedagogic quest. For my final project in his course, I painted a self-portrait, literally seeing myself in a new light thanks to Dr. Cornett’s guidance.

A few months ago I attended the premier of Alanis Obomsawin’s excellent film profiling Dr. Cornett and his ongoing struggle with McGill administration (if one can call such a one-sided battle a struggle) at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival. Sitting in a row with several of my former classmates, the lights dimmed and I was transported back to the Birks building, circa 2002. I felt the anxiety of anticipation – will he read (anonymously) one of my reflections to the class? After the screening, Cornett’s Q & A transformed into one of his famed dialogic sessions. He thoughtfully addressed a range of topical questions and comments, facilitated audience dialogue with Obomsawin and with his wife Laura. One moment was particularly illustrative of Cornett’s care for each and every one of his students. In the midst of a rambling but insightful answer to a question about applying his pedagogic theories to the teaching of maths and sciences, Cornett paused, looked into the theatre’s upper rows, and with eyes alight exclaimed, “Dora the Explorer!” He had spotted one of his former students, and without missing a beat, called her by the name that she had assigned herself for his class years before.

Having completed an MA in Education and currently enrolled in teacher’s college, I am perpetually shaping and refining my ideas about effective teaching. Thanks to Dr. Cornett, one thing is for certain – my pedagogic philosophy involves raising a little hell.

Emily Rose Antflick, McGill BA Hon 2004

The city of Montreal boasts a significant distinction besides passionate hockey fans, poutine and great smoked meat. With four major universities and over 165,000 university students, Montreal tops North America’s student ratio at 4.72 students out of every hundred people. Students hail from well over 150 countries. With diverse faculties, it would seem that epistemology would be a subject of avid exploration, and that acceptance of a spectrum of pedagogical methods would be rather generous.

However, the abrupt and unexplained dismissal of Dr. Norman Cornett, the popular albeit unconventional, longtime professor at McGill University, raises questions about control over teaching methods. If instilling a love for learning is considered an important criterion for teaching, it seems that Dr. Cornett’s unique style should be seriously examined.

Montrealers have the opportunity evaluate the subject of alternative learning methods this week, as Alanis Obomsawin’s film bearing the professor’s name, will be screened by the National Film Board from October 7-14.

Tom Paul
NDG

Living in the movies…

“Sense”

many words take hold of our lives
despite us
Nicole Brossard

I won’t say I know when I can’t,
a place in the sun turning midnight
as if there’s such a thing
as telling sun at midnight –

won’t forget the way words with teeth
hang out in places next to silence –
can’t begin to fathom
which is biting which.

I won’t give in to the articulate
when it’s pulling possibility
falsely up short – can’t
say – won’t say – there’s nothing plausible
in raising a hand to salute a past friend.

I am in the web of my intentions fast-tracked,
I don’t know what you know, only know
I’ve realized, stung, I can’t get out easily
on the strength of being forgotten
or shocked.

There’s the fiery mandate
of gentle souls standing up for themselves –
I won’t pretend the words aren’t seductive,
the exchange alive, something volatile
overriding sad common sense

I’m currently taking a course with Dr Cornett, nominated Carol K. in the society of friends.
Perhaps a course is not even the right word, there are no books to study, no evaluation, nobody has to struggle to be the first in the class.
It is a gathering, a reunion of people, a community, and the main purpose is to share.

I went to watch a documentary on Dr Cornett made not too long ago by a Canadian director.It is about the loss from an Institution such the Mcgill, of a character, a man which twisted the usual academic way of teaching and truly succeeded at it.
I’m not Canadian therefore i know almost nothing about the educational system here, but after all i’m not that surprised of what i heard.
I left the cinema, frustrated, angry, sad, but also full of hope and illuminated by the dedication and the passion of Dr Cornett, and pleased by the reactions and the stories of his students.

Between many, what struck me the most is his concept of open learning.Not only books teach us something. People around us do so, we teach to ourselves, but that is considered unconventional. Somehow we have barriers, we are limited, we cannot go beyond the standard “safe” methods, the unknown. Whatever is alien, somehow different form the usual, will hardly find space into society.
What about engaging ourselves to different experiences? To break into a new real perception of everything that surround us, from music, to arts, daily life.
To speak out our own thoughts, impressions, to have the FREEDOM of letting our opinions be heard.

His methods of teaching touches universal fields and it reminds me, how limited we are, as individual, to speak out for our self, to tell the truth without having fear that someone will shut us up. And funny enough i’m in North America, country where democracy and freedom are advertised all over the places.
Tell the truth is one of the most scary things. I remember a quote from George Orwell, saying” In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”.

Watching at the classes he was giving i felt like he was the leader of a new revolution. A believer. Not only in himself, but mainly in those out there sitting in a classroom waiting to open their books and listen or read words that are dead. Instead they found someone who made them listening to music blindfolded, asking them just one thing: “put in words whatever comes to your mind”. Read a poem and engage yourself with the person who is writing. Each lessons is a surprise.

That is what we do in our meetings too. The first time Dr Cornett ask us to put the blindfold on, i was a little confused, but also intrigued. Since the first lesson, i got the benefit of understanding a different approach to music, poetry, visual arts. I was not following any specific rules. I was just awakening my senses, opening the gate of my consciousness and i tried to give space to everything that passed in my mind. Improvisation! just like a jazz session.
Content and not form.
This is something i always fought for. Is not how nice it looks like, is about the taste, the smell, the sounds, is our soul.

There is no right or wrong , no good or bad, there is only our own personal thought, uncensored, unplugged and anonymous. What makes us learn is also the possibility of listening to other people’s opinions and engaging ourselves in conversations. The cherry on the cake is the chance of meeting the artists whose works makes the streams of our consciousness flow.

So i now dive myself into a new society, based on truth, understanding, sharing and caring. Truth that comes from our voice, understanding that we all are capable humans, caring because we have a name and we are not just numbers, sharing, because that is what we do and almost everything in life should be based on this value.
Each meeting with Dr Cornett, and the other students, is a real lesson, cause after all, we are all there to learn something, and when the time to meet an artist came, he\she isn’t there just to teach us something, but to have a unique new experience, just like us.

I’m truly touched by his devotion and how he still stands, where others would probably fall, or settle with “enemy”. Is great example and few people are able to stay firm in what they believe in, and both history and our present days teach us that.
I hope his intentions to teach and give chance to everybody to experience new fields, will endure in time, and at the moment, i’m glad to have this chance.

Even when the changes we are hoping for, seems will never come, through support and a continuous effort ,we can see a small gleam of light into so much darkness. Holding on to it is so much more than words, is action.
It should be a duty of all of us to be able to continuously believe in ourselves in whatever way we feel is right.

Thank you
Maya

The Film Community Against Fascism, Supports Cornett

Canada, according to the U.N. has one of the five highest standards of living in the world. Among the rights that countries have, is the right to education, and the concept of education in a developed country such as Canada, is quite different from mere instruction, and what makes the difference, lies in teaching the students “ to think”. This thinking skill makes the difference between a University, and a Technical College or school.

In Mexico, an underdeveloped country, the terrible problems of violence notwithstanding, we have not only one of the oldest Universities in the Americas, but one of the most prestigious in the world; The National Autonomous University, UNAM, which was recently presented with Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize. The award shows that even in the developing world – one finds this odd to put in writing , but is indeed true- it is impossible to think about any sort of restraint on the right to teach any subject as important as religion studies certainly are for human development, in any university department . Courses on this subject are quite common in the curriculum of most of our institutions of higher learning.

On the other hand, Canada’s equivalent to Harvard, Mc Gill University in Quebec, has made an unthinkable mistake, restraining the right to teach its students to think, by removing Dr. Cornett from his teaching activities – even in the face of the disagreement publicly expressed by, literally, thousands of students.

What is the difference then, between the lack of respect for the human rights of citizens by a totalitarian regime, and the attitude shown by Mc Gill in restricting the right of its students to think?

This question that Mc Gill, refuses to answer – quite a paradox- is answered by another question, expressed in the works of contemporary conscious film directors, such as Laurent Cantet in his film “Entre murs” –recipient of the Golden Palm award at Cannes in 2008- about the meaning of present day education in France, or in Almodovar´s “Bad education”, about complicity between fascism and religion in Spain. Certainly, Alani Obomsawin’s documentary “Professor Cornett” , is a real document that will prevent Canadian society to ever forget this shameful event for both Quebec and Canadian education. This documentary is meant to generate awareness.

Mc Gill’s intolerant attitude is not far from Spain’s fascist regime under Franco. When on 12th October 1936,in Salamanca´s University Miguel de Unamuno, said to the fascist Millan Astray: “…What is imposed by force cannot convince… Universities are sacred temples, and teachers are their supreme priests”; Millan Astray, without batting an eyelid, simply riposted: “Death to intelligence, long life, to death”.

This fascist attitude by Mc Gill, reminiscent of Nazi book burning, repression and eventual annihilation of the Jews, and overall inhibition of freedom of thought, should be taken as a warning sign of thinly veiled hypocritical fascism, which neither Canada’s stature in the concert of civilized nations, nor the libertarian spirit that has always characterized the province of Quebec, can allow.

Cornett is not alone, counting not only with right and reason his side, but also supported by increasing numbers of people who are conscious of the importance of the right to education.

Leopoldo Soto

México City, 5th October 2009.

Yves,
Je suis d’accord avec votre position. On n’impose pas une réforme à une population. Comme on n’impose pas une école alternative à un milieu. Il faut que ça vienne de la volonté des citoyens et des pédagogues.
La créativité des différents milieux est telle actuellement que le MELS pourrait aller se rhabiller avec ses “nouvelles” idées. Mais il ne fait pas confiance, ni aux milieux, ni encore moins aux enfants malgré son discours généreux. Il croit qu’en les imposant il fera avancer le Québec: c’est une idée d’un autre siècle.
Entre nous, mon cher Yves, la mission de l’école ne devrait-elle pas être la suivante: nuire le moins possible à l’apprentissage?

Professor Norman Cornett leads an exploration of Kamila Wozniakowska’s art at galerie Eric Devlin.

Saturday,31Oct2009,13h00-15h00.

Cost:$25[all taxes included] $20[students,seniors with valid id].

For registration:tel.[514]256-2483.

Hi hi George Elliott Clarke!

At Doctor Cornett’s Stream of Consciousness session on Saturday, we were graced by the presence of the poet & novelist George Elliot Clarke, writer of, among many books, a novel in verse entitled “I and I” (2009). The discussion of this book was spirited as well as confrontational – to wit, confrontational in a way that I myself was part of, regardless of my being impressed by Clarke’s masterful craftsmanship & storytelling abilities.

The confrontation arose in connection with a long section of the book taken up by a brutal rape scene, this in a book darkly splayed where the ground is basically the poetic & the tragic rendered large & raucous, &, as Clarke said, also rooted in: an adolescent mentality (his own) from the 70s; a desire to interest people in their teens & twenties in the 2000’s (though not only them); a homage of sorts to Graphic novels, comic books, & horror movies; stylistically, in auditory feel, diction, & content, a fresh continuation of the literary traditions of twentieth century North Americans, pivotally Black North Americans, many of whom have a style that is possibly more “accessible” & still “revolutionary” in ways that the less accessible can’t be, given the latter often presuppose a type of education which many people don’t have.

The book is about much more than rape. There are historical elements, particularly delineating Halifax & the 70s world of the black, disenfranchised in Halifax – also a fair amount about Corpus Christi Texas at the time of the 70s in all its cruelty, pulp, prejudice, & circumstance. The personal story of black, disenfranchised Betty & Malcolm gets told, a young love story full of guts & tragedy, humiliation & back-stabbing, sweetness & damage, hope & horror.

My problem with the rape scene – the rape of young Betty – has nothing to do with the inclusion of rape in the story – not at all, & particularly not in this book, where the rape has so many political as well as dramatic implications. Rather (& I can’t shake this feeling), I felt the amount of energy afforded the rape scene, resulting in a huge number of pages so taken up by rape in a relatively short book about so much else – felt the plethora of detail & the on & on & on of salacious detail was frankly over the top in a way that was gratuitous, in the sense that it became almost the most lasting part of the book upon finishing – most lasting for this reader I guess, & this in a disturbing way, because it set up in the back (& front) of my mind an attitude of “rape as interesting in its essentials – as ‘entertainment’ even” – that’s the worst part – “rape as entertainment”.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think the author intended the rape to be foremost “entertainment” – I tend to think that what’s there in the book re the rape was an earnest attempt to represent horror. Nevertheless, I question why the rape scene & all its build-up was given so much room when the murder of the rapist, equally disturbing & necessary – the murder of the rapist was quick & gut wrenching without going on & on & on – just enough to hit the reader up the side of the head – just enough to serve the bloodiness of the plot in a way that rendered reader (rightfully) uncomfortable. Why was the rape (or for this reader) so seemingly studded with GLEE (oh dear) – how am I to process this without my feeble judgement knocking on the author’s door with my questions re salaciousness? The confrontation that came up was difficult – we’re in a group where we’re supposed to say what comes – I say what came…

On thinking afterwards I was lead into thoughts re types of reaction – I thought about how some people are perhaps naturally more inclined in terms of content to distinguish between reality & representation, & how others (like me) find representation nearing in power of reaction to reaction to reality – that is, you give me something ostensibly relishing the ugly, I will react as I reacted here. Nevertheless, I am not a reader incapable of distancing myself so as to not be able to take in what is being offered, distressing or no, as I apparently was in relation to “I and I”…hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I’m wondering if anyone is thinking, reading this, that I’m a bitching feminist (again oh dear). To that I would say firstly that feminist is not a dirty word to me – but but but – more importantly that this is not so much about ideology as about a different sensibility. I have never been a fan of horror – is that my problem? & yet & yet – I read lots of stuff with horrific aspects. George, of course an adolescent mentality is what it is – & adolescent boys – smile – do I sound like a dumb girl? Oh! I have a question: we were in a group where only some of the people had read “I and I”. You did some amazing reading of amazing parts of your book, but never read anything at all from the rape section: what was up with that? Was very pleased to meet you – forgive me if I ask questions you may find miss the point…Djuanaxo

Jazz composer/musician/researcher [ with the Smithsonian] Charles Ellison in ‘dialogue’ with Professor Norman Cornett.

Nov 14, 1-3pm.

$25 tax.inc./$20 students/seniors w/ID

Galerie Samuel Lallouz 1434 Sherbrooke W.,#200. 849-5844

Good day….

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for providing us with an opportunity to be in dialogue with our wonderful guest, Charles Ellison. I don’t usually write in these types of forums, but yesterday afternoon’s session “In Dialogue with Jazz composer/musician and researcher, Professor Charles Ellison”, was truly good for the soul. How I wish I had had the opportunity of being taught be these two gentlemen — Dr. Norman Cornett who initiated these classes and Professor Ellison! But, wait a minute, I did! It’s never too late, if one chooses to use life as a constant laboratory of learning. I’m realizing that yesterday’s session (although it was way too short), gave me more nourishment than an entire semester of ‘ordinary’ teachings could have given me. I was truly touched & moved by Prof. Ellison’s genuine love & passion for his craft AND his true commitment to sharing it with the world. He didn’t have to, but he chose to do so. I can’t say I know much about the “technical” aspect of music, but after hearing Prof. Ellison in dialogue with us, I now feel a certain kind of freedom in that it doesn’t matter what I know or don’t know…what matters is that I love rhythm and I love music and it’s wonderful to be in the presence of someone who is so totally inspiring and makes me want to take on life even more fully than I have so far. I realized that there are so many things to be appreciated in this world; so much beauty; so much to discover & explore, yet humans seem to focus on what’s wrong, what doesn’t work, or worse the “correct way” of teaching… Dr. Cornett & Prof. Ellison’s approach to learning are to be treasured and I for one, am extremely grateful for this precious gift! My life is richer today because of it. Thank You. I can’t wait for the next time. Bonsaï

When did feminism become a dirty word? – Reflections on the dialogue with George Elliot Clarke

Last night my friend Brandee asked me ‘Why the foul mood?’
‘Because Dr. Cornett (Carole K, I know!) asked me to comment on the dialogue with George Elliot Clarke and now I’m trying to figure out a way to say why it is not okay to write so carelessly and callously about rape without sounding overly emotional or defensive and it makes me so angry that any of this is even still an issue.’
‘I don’t think I could.’
‘I don’t think I can either but now it’s too late to pull out, I’m all worked up about it’.

A few hours after this exchange, I finally remembered that I didn’t sign up for this class to make well-informed, -quoted and -balanced academic arguments – I will talk another time about why I signed up and how much more I learned. – In fact keeping my emotions out of this comment would be hypocritical, there’s no reason for me to justify or defend how I felt about reading this book and listening to the author talk about it.

I was not happy with the choice of I&I and I was very unhappy sitting through a 2 hour celebration of it mostly by people who hadn’t read it. I was not happy that after reading one critical feedback and a 5 minutes ensuing dialogue between Mr. Clarke, Djuana and myself, Carole K. chose to focus exclusively on positive reflections. I felt betrayed by the people who had privately expressed as much if not more irritation over the book but now decided to remain silent. Lastly I am also unhappy with myself for not speaking up again when Mr. Clarke repeatedly stressed how much “fun” he had writing a book that I find if not misogynistic at the very least counterproductive and reactionary on the subject of violence against women. I am on the other hand very grateful that Djuana had the courage to speak up and now expressed her and many of my thoughts in her comment from Nov. 9.

I don’t have to explain why I find it disturbing that a middle aged literature professor had “so much fun” wallowing for what seems an eternity in a young student’s brutal rape committed by a fictional middle aged literature professor. I don’t have to illustrate how Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility” applies to this book and I don’t have to exemplify how Tarantino empowers his female characters where Clarke strips his protagonist of everything she ever had or will have including her revenge and her life.

Everyone knows that men use, have always used rape to threaten, dominate and domesticate women because they are terrified of their power. In I&I Mr. Clarke chose to retell an ancient story: A pretty girl becomes a woman, she starts to discover and explore her sexuality, her intellect and her power and immediately the men around her come and strip her of all that and more, they rape her, belittle and ridicule her, avenge her, go to prison for her, thus indebting her forever to them and finally they kill her. Does this story really need to be told again and again and again? There’s nothing new in it, it’s utterly unoriginal, all Mr. Clarke does is give it some shiny new clothes so that the anticipated “younger audiences” can have as much “fun” with the story as men had throughout the ages. I doubt it’s lack of imagination, no, it’s easy, lazy, a crowd pleaser and ties into the fantasies of many readers and writers.

Chris Brown publicly complains about unfair treatment in the media, Mike Tyson sits on Oprah’s couch and jokes about beating up his wife, George Elliot Clarke thinks rape has great entertainment value as long as you clad it in skilful verses.

All I really want to say is that I’m tired of beating around the bush. It is not okay to write this callously and carelessly about rape. To paraphrase Charles Ellison, art has the power to be uplifting and uniting, reminding us of the best in us. Art can move us forward and – to me – this book does nothing of this.

I was not sure who our 5th stream was going to be but I did imagined our guest of the day was Prof George Elliot Clarke, and I was so curious to hear other comments and opinions from the Streamniks, but mostly why he wrote a book with such a content.

My opinion was heard by everyone in the room while Carol K was reading it, some were surprised, perhaps I was too harsh, others looked emotionless, but I want to believe these were people who did not read the book.
I heard my voice and I still agree with what I wrote even after all the comment and explanations provided by the writer.

To be honest, I didn’t feel I should have stood up and confirm again my opinion on the book during the dialog. After the professor replied to Mario’s comment and questions, telling her that most of the people reacted positively to the story and that these are mostly teenager’s memories, I felt that there was going to be limitations on the dialog. (on the content of the book and not the form)
What else can I say on a book which, following the author opinion, should be address to teenagers; what else can I say about someone who is amused on writing about rape, people getting chopped, blood, death..
I have nothing else to say after the session, because I cannot understand and accept, as a woman and as a person, to be amused by such tragedies, that are already part of our reality. But that is just my reality, which will be heard and probably accepted, but possibly not understood by everybody.
I always stood up for my opinion, good or bad, and most of the time I was surprised seeing that others are just not sensitive as I am; I was and I still am disappointed that violence, rape, sexual abuse and all the horrible things happening in real life, should be celebrated by media, told in books and perhaps in music too.

Is this book addressed to teenagers? My answer is no
Is this book a comic, fun, unrealistic story? I’m really not sure.
Do I want to read and analyze the memories and obsessions of a teenager, now grown up, and yet, in his actual age, still think this is fun? No!
Too bad for me, because I did like the form and I thought that some passages were very well written. I did enjoy some of his poetry.

I was told to write an honest answer on what i was experiencing, and so far I think I did stick to my duty, and not just during this meeting with Professor Clarke but in others too.
And if you ask me, I would do it again.

However, i decided to keep my silence, not for the fear of being judged for my fair opinion, but simply because I felt there was not going to be a meeting point in the dialog.
I would have been more frustrated and the comment I heard were enough for me.
I couldn’t read a book that others found entertaining. What else is there to say?
My final decision is to leave this book at the same page I left if before that Saturday.

On the other hand I was very much pleased on meeting and listening again to Professor Charles Ellison.
The dialog was a real lesson, accessible even to those with a basic knowledge of music, and the session became also a live performance.
His music reminds me of good and beautiful things in life and also how sound can become healing for our body and mind.
I’m often looking for this kind of feedback in arts; to me is to take a journey into beauty in whatever way I define it and perceive it, wishing to find growth and inspiration.

Is a good treat for the soul and that day, I left the gallery with a big smile on my face, pleased that I have two ears to listen and just one tongue to speak!
Very often too many words are not needed. Let’s keep more silence and ponder on our thoughts. We will still find answers.

A big thank you to Dr Cornett who makes all this possible.

Maya

small poem for Pierre Nepveu striking up his sense of place…

and darkness settled on his shoulders
like a job.
Carol Ann Duffy

I am not the place I’ve meant to be
not the song with humming chorus
that never needed a stamp of approval –

not those notes you had no problem
believing in. Here comes the redwing blackbird
tapping out a tone including monotone –
not the music lifting or bravely snuffed out.

In the park today the ducks with heads tucked.
Gulls & their bits of crying baby sounds
heading away from us, our ears straining
to figure out the language that is
something else’s language.

I am not in queue announcing where the true refrain should join…

If it was loud, then loud it was.
The clouds didn’t even murmur.
We walked the river’s edge holding hands.
There was an appetite for silence,
real noise won out

Last Tuesday evening, we had the great pleasure & privilege of welcoming author Pierre Nepveu to our “Streams of Consciousness” class. I was really looking forward to this session as so far, I have truly enjoyed and appreciated all six of the sessions with the guests Dr. Cornett invites in to come & dialogue with us about one of their works, whether it is music, literature, poetry, art… Tuesday evening was for me another wonderful gift and I believe that our class has also give Mr. Nepveu a gift. A gift of acknowledgment for his work, his great sensitivity, his willingness to share part of himself with us and most importantly, for being part of a conversation inside which we all got to be expressed, whether in writing, in reading or simply in listening. That being said, in the spirit of “dialogue” Dr. Cornett has invited me to share something I wrote as a result of reading “Mirabel” by Pierre Nepveu, since there is not enough time to read everything in class. I gracefully accept to share my thoughts from the poem on Page 33 and I INVITE ALL OTHER STREAMNIKS to do the same. Here it is:

After reading page 33, I experience the passing of an era, a way of living that was no longer to be lived. A seemingly banal occurrence of days past, juxtaposed against modern day displacement of many peoples around the world. Was it a foreshadow of things to come? Perhaps we could have paid more attention… or perhaps it is simply evolution taking its own natural course…Many more people have been and still are displaced around the world. Many centuries ago, the Natives were displaced because some people decided to take over the land they had not only been living on; a land they were protecting, nurturing, tending…I wonder if any of this could have been prevented or even whether it even “could” have. What is it that defines a place? Is it shaped by the people, the land, the animals, or is it what WE actually say & do that shape a place? Perhaps place actually shapes us and who we get to be inside that space. So when we are displaced from what we’ve come to know, some people feel lost, and some people move on to another space. Some people it seems are lost forever, while others adapt.

Thirty or so years later, do the fields, now so empty and quiet, know the difference? Do they care? Have they experienced the upheaval or better expressed in French the “bouleversement” associated with displacement or maybe for Mother Nature, it was to be expected. I try to imagine what impact this huge man-made infrastructure, the grand design of “some bureaucrats”, has had on the tectonic shift of our collective consciousness, our planet…

P. 37 – I would love to have Mr. Nepveu’s thoughts on the following, as I didn’t get to ask in class….

“Progress is more than just a question of the future; it should give the past back its integrity as well….” I find this sentence fascinating, very profound and yet I cannot explain it to myself. Perhaps we’re all made to think that progress is a GOOD thing; it’s about moving forward, growth, expansion, better & more. But there is always a cost & benefit equation to everything we do. How does progress give back integrity to the past??? I would love to hear Monsieur Nepveu speak to this line….

Bonsaï

“Mirabel – Soft and sad, dark and swampy with little flecks of sunshine, a bird with a broken twig for a wing.

There’s a deep sadness throughout the book, and like a breeze, it very gently blows through you and it touches your heart on the way and your heart resonates. The sadness is almost impersonal, I want to say neutral or accepting, collective, ancient but I’m missing the right word here. I’ll try again, with an unlikely comparison: The narrator has taken this sadness upon himself the way Jesus took the cross – not that I know anything of Jesus or his cross. Another image that arises is that of the first people whose land was taken; an ancient soul coming back to witness tragedy unfold again. Nothing can be done but someone has to be there and bear it and bear witness. It’s not easy this witnessing but so important that someone is there who sees things for what they are, without drama or delusion and stays, doesn’t run, does not get busy, but witnesses and carries the cross – again, I don’t completely understand what I’m writing here and why so solemn.

Most people have a choice to feel the sadness or to ignore it. They might feel it sometimes at the movies or listening to Leonard Cohen, maybe while making love, but mostly they will protect themselves from it. And other people, like my mother, don’t have a choice, they have no protection, no boundaries, no choice. It’s painful and it compromises your ability to live in society but if you trust the sadness and stop chasing some other people’s dream, you’ll be alright. And you can’t keep it either, keeping it will kill you with depression or drive you mad, you have to let your heart be soft and the sadness blow through, surrender to it completely and it’ll take you with it and leave you cleaner and older and with less to hide. Maybe that’s what the shamans do, they carry some of the collective sadness and madness and so the others can be more at peace.

That’s why I think Mirabel is an important book, important for everyone, no matter if they read it or not, but some of those who read it will be a little cleaner and older and with less to hide.”

… I’d written this text earlier and thought it fit well into the discussion and the fantastic meeting we had with the author Pierre Nepveu. Thank you M. Nepveu, it was a pleasure and a privilege!

The forgiving woodland poem

“If existence offered a way out somewhere
other than the sleep of eternity
then it might be a woodland”
Pierre Nepveu

I thought of you after you lost your home
as simply as a symptom of gregarious flu
your heart beating against the nicks, flying into
the window sealed against opening, sharing
the bitter talk with your singular mate –
I thought of you with no way to go
forward or back.

It’s weather – the way weather can claim
to be nobody’s fault – the way giving in
has you talking in circles the night before you give up
a good fight you’ve realized
is a useless fight –

it’s the cloud like a strong thumb crushing the roof
there above the life you’ve known,
the passion for hope
sickly like when inevitability
is all wrong.

Woodland – place to pay the debt without
giving up your block of goat cheese & warm wine –
these in your knapsack, the ferns so thick
you’re reminded of sprouting corn,
the blank hill overseeing.

Woodland – forget the gruff, the unfriendly
asking you what you’re here for.

There’s the power that could send you away
without notice – nevertheless, trees
& trees & trees, a miniscule pond,
the heron, uncaring, that has you caring –
woodland, heaven, whistling insinuation,
the arrogant fences
pulled down…

Photos of the dialogue with Dr Cornett, Kamila Wozniakowska Nov 27 (with flashing-light paintings by Jean-Marie Martin; see her paintings at
http://images.google.ca/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hl=fr&source=hp&q=Kamila+Wozniakowska&btnG=Recherche+d%27images&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=)
.
and of our previous Oct 31 visit to the galerie Eric Devlin to see Wozniakowska’s After Revolution art, can be viewed at
http://www.flickr.com/fdmillar/sets.

Dear Streamnicks”,
I am afraid that any words that I might use might be inadequate te describe the experience that I have lived with Dr Cornett and your group last Tuesday. Afterwards, I keep the impression that I could only get a few glimpses, although extremely revealing, of the marvelous group of individuals who were in front of me.
I sensed the depth and the variety of so many experiences, of so many sensibilities,
and my joy to feel it could not help but beind tempered by the knowledge that I would miss so much of what you had to say and to create.
This is why I am so happy to be able to read a few more comments and poems on this site: each of them gives some extension, some new dimensions to what I have tried myself to create. But beyond the book itself and your creative reading, there was an encounter, a true dialogue, a real event from my point of view. Thank you all and to Dr Cornett.

Ceci est une réponse en français à “Bonsaï” concernant la question qu’elle n’a pas pu poser durant notre rencontre, à propos de la phrase: “Le progrès, dit-il, n’est pas seulement affaire d’avenir, il doit aussi rendre le passé à son intégrité”. Ce propos est tenu par un planificateur et il s’agit d’une référence ironique à une anecdote qui s’est réellement passée. La “maison Nepveu”, dans la côte Saint-Louis de Mirabel, habitée par des cousins de mon père, a été déplacée pierre par pierre et les spécialistes en histoire de l’architecture ont alors constaté que le toit original avait été modifié depuis la construction au 18e siècle. Ce nouveau toit était très beau et se prolongeait au-dessus d’une grande galerie, comme pour beaucoup de maisons traditionnelles au Québec. En reconstruisant plus loin la maison, on a supprimé ce toit en surplomb ainsi que la grande galerie, pour rétablir le plan original.
Mon idée, ici, est que parfois les spécialistes utilisent leur science avec arrogance. Pour eux, rétablir ce modèle ancien est un “progrès” par rapport aux modifications apportés par les habitants des lieux au fil des décennies. J’y vois un manque de respect du temps humain,de la vie concrète des êtres, une vision technocratique, épurée et figée de l’architecture et de la culture en général.
D’où mon ironie,à travers les propos que je prête à ce technocrate qui prétend tout savoir et qui méprise le bon peuple et le sens commun…
Est-ce que ma réponse vous satisfait, chère Bonsaï?

Cher Monsieur Nepveu,

Merci de prendre le temps de répondre à ma question au sujet de votre phrase “Le progrès, dit-il, n’est pas seulement affaire d’avenir, il doit aussi rendre le passé à son intégrité.” Je saisi exactement le sens maintenant et j’avoue que vous soulevez un point qui vaut la peine d’être examiné. Il semble que dans notre effort de moderniser tout, selon les dernières technologies ou méthodologies ou réformes, on semble laisser aller quelque chose. Certains disent que le progrès, “c’est la vie”, on y peut rien. De là mon commentaire précédent au sujet du changement. Est-ce qu’il s’agit de suivre le cours de l’évolution et se mettre à la fine pointe des temps modernes et tout oublier ce qui est venu avant nous ? Ceux qui choisissent de résister au changement sont-ils “figés dans ce qui n’est plus”? Devons-nous “keep up or die off..?” Un exemple à l’appui: les journaux, les revues et les livres se font de plus en plus remplacer par les textes electroniques. Oui, il est important de sauver les arbres et l’énergie, mais est-ce qu’il faut anéantir le plaisir de tourner les pages d’un bouquin en anticipant ce qui apparaîtra sur la prochaine. Pour ma part, je trouve que c’est dommage….

Quel plaisir d’entendre ce grand artiste nous parler avec simplicité et passion de son art et de son cheminement. Ses prestations au piano m’ont éblouie par leur sensibilité et sa virtuosité. Quelle solidité aussi.

Merci au Dr.Cornett d’avoir invité cet artiste exceptionnel dans le cadre des “rencontres dialogiques”

Photos of 13 Dec 2009 “Cornett & Pierre Forget” can be viewed at
http://flickr.com/fdmillar/sets

My multimedia reflections on Pierre Nepveu, Lignes aeriennes/Mirabel is at http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZyl0UPbjZBlZGd4Nm16empfMjQ2Yzl3ZmtwZzQ&hl=en
The present site does not permit the insertion of links, let alone photos, art, music etc.

We regret to inform readers that on Christmas, and again on New Year’s weekend, someone vandalized galerie Samuel Lallouz.

Four female figures stand shimmering and shivering outside the Galerie Samuel Lallouz, their backs turned to Sherbrooke Street. They have no protection against the elements or the passers-by. They sway slightly in the wind, fragile and foreign under the Canadian snow. Two of them have been knocked down for their brazenness.

The women are Sirens, aluminum-cast figures of allure and provocation by award-winning Nova Scotian sculptor, John Greer. Some loutish Ulysses, forgetting himself, has knocked two of them down, taking his anger out on women, on art, for all the drunken misadventures of men.

It’s the same old story. Why are we surprised?

Pass on by, Ulysses, as you are supposed to. Block your ears, hide your eyes, bind your body. Go on home to Penelope. Ask her to knit coats for them instead. It’s cold on Sherbrooke Street in winter.

BEAUTIFUL MINDS an interdisciplinary series in the arts:

Dr. Ivar Mendez,NICOLE BROSSARD,John Greer,STEPHANIE BOLSTER,NAIM KATTAN,CARMINE STARNINO,and more in ‘dialogue’ with Professor Norman Cornett.

12January-27March2010

Tuesdays,18h00-20h00;Saturdays 13h00-15h00.

galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Contact:[514]849-5844 reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com

Please note that this new series permits people to
‘go with the flow,’ so that you may attend as time permits.

We have no expectation that all those enrolled will make every meeting of BEAUTIFUL MINDS.

Kindly note that ‘dialogue’ partners may change without prior notice.

Registration in progress.

In response to Erin Moore’s galician-portuguese poetry book “O Cadoiro”

Lisbon is sleeping
I m following the poet’s steps
but…
this is my book too!
wait!
I m getting lost

(lost in space
lost in time)

Fall in the nineteen sixties
five o’ clock in the morning
three teenagers walk along the river
o rio Tejo

(for the purpose the two friends slept at home)

eager for strong emotions

What s happening? here,
Portuguese – Galician poetry?
who s who?
who s speaking?
…lost again

estaçao fluvial
doca pesca
capitania do porto

the river banks look wild

(ervinhas)

the promenade takes the girls from
Belem to the Cais do Sodré
in time for the opening of the fish market

Somos jovems
we r young
it s dawn
and I m happy

when we arrive
the women

the peixeiras

feet in the frozen river waters
still unpack
the fish
just arrived

A poem!
a poem!
you are writing a poem!
how pompous of you!

Up your ass!
who cares
about beeing understood, who cares
about understanding
the Rei Dom Dinis won’t scorn you!

Madame miel

How Norman McLaren drew directly on film, 1944
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Norman_McLaren_drawing_on_film_-_1944.jpg
He made a very simple frame to hold the film, and moved down one frame at a time, by hand. Blinkety Blank (1954-55 — I got the date wrong above) uses this technique as well as visual persistence to create “virtual” movement, as does Pierre Hébert’s whiteboard technique. . See McLaren`s own statement in
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/05/35/norman_mclaren.html

Dr. Cornett’s new session, Beautiful Minds, started last Tuesday January the 12th at Galerie Lallouz. In it we were invited, one after the other, to read the same (inspiring and wonderfull) text. Six different people, six different voices.
I keep wonderind:
Was my voice, MY OWN voice?
It certainely was. But how much? A 100%? 80%? More? Less? What do we owe to others, where is the balance?…
It will certainely be, for me, a good subject of inquiry for this new session with Dr Cornett.

“I am taking dictation from my body.
I am holding an auction, but
who would want these things?”
John Amen

A place
in the wavelength
of catastrophe
where a “they” walks
singing, blood
dried on offended skin –
on scant clothing –
babies under
the rubble no longer
rumbling –

a sky the same
as sky anywhere
on a hot afternoon
not differentiating
loss from excess,
time to grieve & wail
from timely peaceable –
not signalling
what everything else is signalling
dark-spirited, homely-amazed,
properly disputing
the faceless churn of wreckage –
physical, spiritual –
the hard glimmer
of nowhere to be
thankful, loss it’s own irony
as survival pays
no dividends easily…

Miles away
a Miles Davis song
a Haitian poet listening
till she’s bent like
a territorial ricochet of emotion,
her words a staggering proposition
dancing on bloodied point

I too have chosen to be part of Dr. Cornett’s new sessions called “Beautiful Minds”. Now that I’ve experienced three months of this particular type of learning during the summer with “Streams of Consciousness”, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity once again. I am pleased to see that we are going to be exploring more interesting topics that lead us to think, ask questions, wonder, examine and learn, for the simple joy of expanding the mind. Our group has now grown with two more people joining us…each voice bringing something to the conversation. This evening was about examining our perceptions, our senses, and how we describe Reality… Is the glass FULL or is it EMPTY? Who gets to say? Who really knows the absolute truth? Interesting….I can’t wait for next time.

We’re reading Nicole Brossard in Doctor Cornett’s class. We only learned this last session. I was surprised, never thought I wouldn’t recognise a text by Nicole. We were given little swatches from a recent book. I read them & reacted, responded open endedly & also focused on a passage at a time, without bigger context. Now, 2 days later, I’ve read 50 pages of a 114 page book, a translation. I am messmerized – the book is dreaming it’s characters, I am allowing a dreaming book to enter…

____________________________________________

The freighted pedestrian

“I have no doubt: we are often in the front rows of pain
trying to comprehend how it is that one day we take
flight and on the next repeatedly bruise ourselves against
the world or wander thousands of kilometres away from
desire in our labyrinth of images. Discover where the little
folds of tenderness come from that, now and again, close
up over us like scars, and fire.”
Nicole Brossard

The freighted pedestrian has a dark face with a bright ignorance that climbs
reconstructive breathing exercises at moments you least expect – goes
out into the bitter wood guided by existential sweet tooth – falls
out of step blandly going histrionic quiet. The freighted pedestrian
tells tales on bruises happening, expects someone to listen, falls
down a well of silence in search of an authentic future
that will only bite down when there’s no honest choice –
the freighted pedestrian scrambles the mindless taut.

Meanwhile I want to grow a grove in a blank place,
have grape vines grappling, the taste of orange surviving
all the ways a life can forget the safe normative –
all the ways, the missteps, the candour without
hope hoping nevertheless – strong coffee, big clouds,
the next time to get passed hesitant Go haunting
the recurrent, salivating
rainy season…

*

The freighted pedestrian #2

“I must look after my solitude. Be able to count on it to
astonish me, to plot and to go on with this madness for
speaking even as I abandon my own language…”
Nicole Brossard

To get from here to there
rather far a field
she could take feather steps,
advertise a patient way

of delaying gratification –
go gingerly well shod,
stick to a swept path
with odd dips into the grass

for musing. The morning has blessed
the freighted pedestrian
on days more nervous than these
for showing a little restraint –

for knowing
what the turtle knew
slow to understanding
as he must have been.

There is, of course, another way:
burst out because on fire,
all the pounding glamour

in tangling hair & reach –
a ticklish whim caught
sweaty above the upper lip,
scenery a blur of merging shots

quite merciful – the next grand adventure
tranquil or no, aflame or no,
but at least no longer
a trickery all behind her.

Love the Brossard. It’s a real stretch to abandon the male gaze but worth it. I`ve been comparing the French and English versions. Am too overloaded with other tasks to write much now but thought I’d mention that “nice cliche” is a mistranslation — surprising in view of the many collaborations between Lotbiniere-Harwood and Brossard. The slip is in missing a French preposition (d’). The “beau cliché” is not Laure as a baby, but her mother’s womb. See full text of my comments at http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgx6mzzj_268dn8rjgfg

Bolster’s Pavilion; feelings, observations, clues. http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgx6mzzj_272djqnw6hc

Le cas Cornett
Réflexions sur une impasse

Marc Chénard

Présenté en juin dernier dans le cadre d’un festival dédié à la culture autochtone, un documentaire de l’Office national du Film du Canada a été visionné en première québécoise par un public si nombreux que l’auditorium de la Biliothèque nationale du Québec était comble. (À la demande publique, les organisateurs ont même décidé d’ajouter une supplémentaire le lendemain, chose un tant soit peu surprenante car le sujet de cette production n’avait vraiment peu de rapport à l’événement si ce n’était que l’ethnicité de la réalisatrice. De plus, en octobre dernier, le film a été projeté de nouveau, cette fois-ci au cinéma de l’ONF pendant une semaine complète.)
Son titre un tant soit peu ampoulé (Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer?) brosse le portrait d’un académique, le Docteur Norman Cornett, professeur de longue date à la faculté des études religieuses de l’Université McGill, mais démis de ses fonctions en 2006. Réalisé par la cinéaste Alanis Obomsawin. le film traite des circonstances quelque peu nébuleuses entourant ce congédiement. « Nébuleuses », doit-on le dire, car l’institution refuse de justifier sa décision, ne donnant suite à aucune des requêtes d’entrevues de la cinéaste, sans oublier les demandes d’explication répétées du professeur.
Bien que le film suive la filière de l’histoire, il ne peut qu’exposer le point de vue de la partie lésée. On y voit donc le professeur prodiguant un « enseignement » que l’on pourrait qualifier à tout le moins d’inhabituel; en effet, celui-ci se démarque de l’approche classique, dite « magistrale » – fondée, bien sûr, sur la transmission univoque de connaissances d’un maître vers ses disciples – par une démarche plus intuitive, démarche procédant d’une discussion ouverte entre les étudiants à qui on laisse entière liberté d’exprimer leur idées et opinions, sans coupures ou censure que ce soit (un fait que le docteur réitère volontiers avec sa formule chérie unrestricted, uncensored, unplugged.). Entre des séquences tournées en salle de classe, la réalisatrice intercale des propos et témoignages d’autres académiques (dont un collègue professeur, retraité de l’Université), d’anciens étudiants, d’invités de circonstance, les uns les plus encenseurs que les autres à son égard.
Sans vendre la mèche dès le départ, le film campe son sujet pour tout à coup laisser tomber la nouvelle de son congédiement vers le milieu de la projection. Peu à peu, on suit le professeur dans ses démêlés, faisant face à une institution campée dans un mutisme total. Des procédures juridiques s’ensuivent, incluant une comparution devant le tribunal du travail de la province (ce conflit de travail en milieu académique étant, apparemment. un précédent dans les annales de cet organisme public), suivi par une tentative de l’Université de le soudoyer (voire « d’acheter » son silence) en lui proposant une compensation monétaire somme toute nominale, offre refusée par le Docteur, résolu de ne pas lâcher prise. Depuis, l’impasse persiste, le professeur s’attendant toujours à l’explication, l’institution refusant de lui la livrer.
À sa première montréalaise, le film a interpellé les spectateurs; l’auteur de ces lignes, présent à la séance, a constaté l’intérêt du public lors d’une période de questions en salle, puis de discussions plus informelles tenues dans une aire de réception. Depuis la projection, beaucoup de voix se sont fait entendre publiquement, entre autres, les témoignages affichés sur le présent site qui appuient autant le professeur que de faire part d’une incompréhension à l’égard de l’attitude de l’institution.
Pourtant, en lisant les propos livrés sur le cas, ceux-ci se contentent dans la grande majorité des cas à se tenir au simple constat, soulevant essentiellement les seules questions que peu d’intervenants dans le débat osent vraiment aborder, quitte à se mouiller en proposant une explication probable de cet état de fait.
Dans les lignes qui suivent, nous tenterons justement de traiter de cette problématique épineuse, non pas en prenant la partie de l’Université, ni encore de lui fournir un quelconque alibi pour le disculper, mais bien de mettre en relief quelques points qui puissent éclairer un tant soit peu la situation.
D’emblée, il importe de bien identifier cette autre partie en cause. Sa raison sociale, on la connaît, mais la nommer en lui pointant un doigt accusateur ne suffit pas. En tant qu’organisme d’enseignement supérieur, l’Université McGill est une institution sociale. De par nature, une institution joue un rôle dans une culture, rôle doté également d’un pouvoir qui accroît en fonction de son importance. D’aucuns peuvent douter ici du rôle tenu par les établissements d’éducation supérieure dans une collectivité, voire de la crédibilité qu’elles ont en tant que pourvoyeurs du savoir. Mais l’envers de cette médaille, ou la face cachée si l’on veut, est justement cet enjeu de pouvoir lié à cette responsabilité. En tant qu’institution, une université est une collection d’individus (employés, étudiants) somme toutes anonymes, mais doté d’un considérable pouvoir d’ensemble. Dans le cas de McGill, on peut bien invoquer des têtes dirigeantes comme le principal ou le chancelier, mais ce sont que des figurants, des prête-noms d’un pouvoir dépassant largement l’autorité de ces seuls acteurs.
En tant qu’organisme complexe, l’institution a un caractère fondamentalement opaque, ses processus de décision obscurcies par une chaîne de commande virtuellement impossible à suivre, non seulement pour ceux qui se trouvent à l’extérieur de celle-ci mais bien aussi à chacun des maillons qui la constitue. Ainsi est-il de toute bureaucratie, où chaque palier ne connaît que ceux qui lui sont attenants et où les réels preneurs de décisions se dissimulent derrière une hiérarchie de structures administratives opaques.
Toutes ces considérations ont une incidence sur le cas exposé dans le documentaire. L’impasse dans laquelle se trouve le docteur Cornett en est bel et bien une imposée par une institution qui use (sinon abuse) d’un pouvoir qu’il détient, le plaçant de ce fait dans une position de force, son opacité bureaucratique lui permettant d’afficher, à l’égard d’un individu laissé seul devant ce monolithe impénétrable, une attitude à la limite irresponsable.
Pour certains, il y aurait lieu de voir un certain parallélisme entre ce cas et le purgatoire (sinon l’enfer) vécu par le protagoniste Joseph K dans le célèbre roman de Kafka Le procès. On pourrait effectivement abonder en ce sens, mais cela ne nous en aide en rien, car on se contenterait de se ranger du côté des interventions qui braquent constamment les projecteurs dans une seule direction.
Mais comme tout conflit implique au moins deux parties, il est tout aussi essentiel de retourner les projecteurs afin de vraiment éclairer la cause dans son ensemble. Doit-on se contenter de voir la partie lésée comme victime d’une quelconque machination d’un pouvoir occulte qui, par un simple coup de tête, décide de se départir de lui?…
Pour revenir une fois de plus à l’institution, il faut comprendre que celle-ci existe et se maintient en raison d’un cadre de principes, d’une déontologie, d’attentes envers ces membres constituants, voire de rituels et de conventions à respecter. Dans le cas d’une université, tous ces éléments s’appliquent et la dérogation à l’un ou l’autre de ceux-ci est toujours sujette à sanction.
Considérons de nouveau l’approche pédagogique épousée par le Docteur Cornett. D’une part, sa démarche n’est pas sans rappeler celle de la maïeutique préconisée par Socrate, sa méthode consistant à laisser les auditeurs accoucher de leurs pensées et d’arriver à la vérité par le questionnement de ceux-ci. Ainsi se déroulait ses cours, durant lesquels il agissait comme intermédiaire et non comme transmetteur de connaissances. Or, une telle pédagogie ouverte ne peut que contredire le modèle traditionnel universitaire, axé sur le principe magistral, tel que mentionné au début de ce texte. Cette incompatibilité fondamentale ne peut se concevoir, du point de vue de l’institution, comme une dérogation de son cadre de principes, voire d’une convention fondamentale qui régit l’enseignement à tous les niveaux.
À ce titre, reprenons quelques-uns des propos inclus dans l’une des interventions sur ce site, l’un des rares qui s’interroge justement sur la méthodologie pédagogique du professeur. (Voir plus haut, en date du 8 octobre 2009, commentaire signé par Yves). S’adressant sur la tentative d’un responsable du Réseau des écoles publiques et alternatives du Québec de « récupérer le travail extraordinaire du docteur Cornett dans les réformes du Ministère de l’éducation (…) », l’auteur poursuit un peu plus bas dans ces termes : « Étant donné que les réformes du ministère de l’éducation tournent autour de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler “L’approche par compétences”, principalement orientées sur la tâche à accomplir, il y a lieu de se demander quelle compétence le Dr Cornett tente de promouvoir, et comment il entend l’évaluer ? » Il y a donc lieu de se demander à quelle fin sert un tel exercice de laisser libre cours aux étudiants d’exprimer leurs opinions, plus ou moins informées, sur une question ? Comme tous et chacun ont un bagage de connaissances différentes, ne court-on pas ici le danger de mésententes par des lacunes dans les compétences individuelles, voire à des apories en matière d’outils (ou de grilles) d’analyse permettant un débat plus rigoureux entre les participants. À suivre cette approche, on se dirige essentiellement vers une subjectivité absolue, relativisant ainsi toute notion de vérité ou de fausseté. Laissons le dernier mot ici à Yves : « Et si je m’aventurais à enseigner comme le fait le bon docteur, le Ministère de l’éducation serait très insatisfait et mon cégep tenterait de me faire perdre mon emploi. Heureusement je suis syndiqué. Mais s’il était possible de montrer que je n’enseigne pas la compétence exigée je pourrais perdre mon emploi tout de même, même si les étudiants apprécient ce que je fais. » N’est-ce pas ce que l’Université tente de faire à son tour ? Ne trouve-t-on pas là l’explication de la perte de l’emploi du Docteur Cornett ?…

Apportons ici quelques nuances. Cette approche d’acquisition de compétences est particulièrement importante dans un premier cycle (de baccalauréat) où l’on procède d’une idée de base : celle de dispenser des connaissances à un sujet encore non éclairé. (Dit autrement : l’étudiant est un genre de vase vide – ou peu rempli – qu’il faut remplir à tout prix, au risque même de le faire déborder.) Si l’étudiant passe l’épreuve (et un premier cycle en est une, cet auteur pouvant parler d’expérience) et qu’il veuille poursuivre aux niveaux supérieurs (Maîtrise, Doctorat), la dispensation des connaissances continue de plus belle, mais l’étudiant, lui, bénéficie d’un peu plus de latitude sur la manière de les appréhender, de les trier et de les articuler en une vision plus personnelle, l’aboutissement de ce processus étant la rédaction d’une thèse de recherche.
Ce que le docteur Cornett propose donc c’est d’initier en quelque sorte ce processus de connaissance préconisé davantage dans les études aux cycles supérieurs dès l’entrée au premier cycle : les étudiants disposent-ils de tous les outils nécessaires pour articuler une pensée critique aussi efficace que perspicace ?
Sans être dénuée d’attrait, ni d’un certain sens, l’approche préconisée par le Docteur Cornett peut s’appliquer avec succès dans un domaine restreint d’études, en l’occurrence les sciences humaines. Quant aux sciences exactes, l’enjeu premier est d’assurer la transmission de connaissances précises (lois physiques et chimiques, principes mathématiques, techniques statistiques), d’où l’inefficacité de procéder à l’accumulation d’opinions subjectives. Après tout, est-il besoin de débattre la loi de la gravité ?…
À ce même titre, notons ici une autre remarque faite dans les commentaires postés sur ce site.
(Émilie-Rose Affleck, 5 octobre 2009). Diplômée de McGill, et ancienne étudiante du docteur, celle-ci relate une anecdote particulièrement éclairante :
In the midst of a rambling but insightful answer to a question about applying his pedagogic theories to the teaching of maths and sciences, Cornett paused, looked into the theatre’s upper rows, and with eyes alight exclaimed, “Dora the Explorer! (un sobriquet donné à une étudiante, une des pratiques du professeur, n.d.a.).”
Ce qui retient l’attention ici, c’est l’observation que le docteur donna une réponse somme toute assez floue sur la pertinence de sa méthode dans le domaine des sciences exactes, chose que celles-ci tolèrent mal. Il faudrait bien sûr entendre vraiment les propos du docteur à ce sujet pour tirer une conclusion, mais d’après le témoin, tout semble confirmer notre hypothèse.
Et notons-le, cette intervenante chante les louanges du docteur dans son commentaire, bien qu’elle révèle à son insu une autre faux-pas du docteur.
Throughout my undergraduate degree at McGill, I took two classes with Dr. Cornett, neither of which had anything to do with their course titles, and both of which stirred me on an intellectual level that no other course has before or since.
On se réjouit bien sûr que l’étudiante en question ait été stimulée à un plus haut niveau intellectuel, mais le seul fait d’avoir suivi deux cours dont le contenu n’avait rien à voir avec leur titre représente, pour l’institution bien certainement, une sérieuse entorse dans le cursus d’étude.

Dans le présent exposé, il m’ était essentiel, ne serait-ce que par probité intellectuelle, de traiter de la problématique sur ses deux versants afin de soulever quelques-unes des dimensions qui, jusqu’à maintenant, ont échappé à la majorité de observateurs et personnes impliquées de près ou de loin dans ce litige.
De cette analyse, il en ressort la conclusion suivante : d’une part, on retrouve une institution intransigeante dotée d’un pouvoir qui lui permet de disposer à sa guise de tout élément jugé incompatible ou nuisible à ses principes et traditions; d’autre part, on a un individu qui, par acte de conscience, résiste à ce pouvoir qui lui empêche de prodiguer sa philosophie pédagogique. En se servant donc de l’interprétation proposée ici, on peut comprendre (sans nécessairement approuver) le silence de l’Université McGill, parce que personne accepterait leur explication de la démission du docteur Cornett par le seul fait qu’il porte atteinte aux conventions et traditions de cette institution. L’impasse persiste. Mais comme les institutions meurent beaucoup plus difficilement que les personnes, un destin semble à tout le moins scellé d’avance.

Marc Chénard

Nicole Brossard stands as a leading feminist voice in literature.

She has twice won the Governor General’s Award for her writings.

She has published 19 poetry collections,eight novels,a play,many essays,and several pieces for the radio,and founded a feminist newspaper.

Ms. Brossard received the Prix Athanase-David,the highest award in literature conferred by the Government of Quebec.

She will ‘dialogue’ with us on:

Saturday,06February2010,13h00-15h00,at galerie Samuel Lallouz.

Cost:$25[all taxes included]; $20[all taxes included]students with valid ID.

Contact:[514]849-5844 reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com

Bonjour professeur Cornett,
Merci pour cette invitation à participer à la rencontre dialogique entre les ‘’Beautiful Mind’’ et la poète Nicole Brossard
Quelle intéressante façon de provoquer le dialogue que ces intrusions incognito dans l’œuvre (Fences in Breathing, roman Lemeac 2007) de N. Brossard. Au départ, en faisant lire à vos étudiants des paragraphes choisis sans connaitre l’auteur du livre, pour ensuite les amener à interpréter spontanément entre les lignes leur version des faits et finalement partager avec l’auteur des extraits récoltés afin de provoquer un échange sur l’art.
Ce fût pur moi une expérience très enrichissante et je vous résume des bouts de phrases ou des mots de Nicole Brossard qui résonnent, cheminent en moi. Car peu importe le médium de création choisi certains propos sont universels et se rejoignent sur le pourquoi d’Être d’un artiste.
I write to make trouble and provoke discussion, tension,,,question
Veut la lumière mais ressens le sombre
Je….Sois …… Je…. collectif
L’homme n’est ni ange ni bête…………..Blaise Pascal
Conditions humaines
Corps du texte…constructions….. Espace
Que le lecteur soit hanté, intrigué qu’il y est mystère et exploration
Mélancolie et le présent….. Écrivaine du présent
Create a narrative
Vieille civilisation avant…. maintenant rien ne seras plus jamais pareil …manipulation des gênes … nouvelle civilisation
Virtuality…. all possibility
Individu ….démocratie!….. Individu… individu….. Démocratie?

What I tried to admit was right to myself (for Nicole)

“It is time to do something that might cause
embarrassment. Let emptiness mother your child.”
John Amen

Totally crushing song – do you get the hope – is it enough
to leave you toasting past life, turning off the football game?
Is it the way a song is supposed to be, or something
half-sure, craftier?

I am my own name lacking the sensation of trusting recognition.
In the midst of a morning memory, I light up, go dark again.
(There’s that poet who knew to be a citizen with conviction could be
the warmest thing.)

And what of the sentence – the way it deploys
gladiator myth you can’t take back – strong
arm wrestle pronouncements like
what’s in back of a broken fiction?

You sent me pictures of your grandkid today
just four weeks old with the air of an old soul.
See baby looking blank – see baby with thumb in mouth
the epitome of the soothing, dumb song.

I’m not going to black out all the signals coming in
just to finish up quickly – not going to put psyche money
on red for any reason other than to arrive.
Involved in the cultural icons, I will
stop long enough to tell those who care
the economics of hope
have a hard time
reacting…

responses to reading Pavilion by Stephanie Bolster. Pages 1-40:
I’ve read this twice. The first time, I felt nothing at all, no response, I enjoyed the delicate wistful mood in certain of the lines.
On second reading, again, no strong feelings, but I begin to enjoy a bit this same wistfulness I find in other sections besides the Japanese Pavilion. The lines I enjoy most remind me of painting a moment in time. A circular stillness.
“Window” touched me somewhat. It evoked a feeling of loss and nostalgia, but ever so subtly. Bolster’s writing reminds me of touching things with a feather. Sometimes I have no sense of feeling in the writing, sometimes I sense feelings of loss whose intensity seems at first reading to be hidden behind that light graceful feathery touch, for instance the loss of D. and her daughter.
The description of the animated film about the crane girl touched me. I forgot it was a description of an animated film and it became real for me, and I felt sad.
Most of the poems after “Late” I do not like, with few exceptions. When they become more prose-like, and lose what feels to me like their rhythmic quality, I become irritated, and just want to race through them, and can’t be bothered to try to grasp or feel them. I realize that the rhythm of poems that I don’t grasp, or that don’t touch me in their content, is what remains to give me some pleasure. On the whole, I do not feel very touched by these poems.

I wondered about my lack of response to much poetry and wondered how much might be due to my lacking an affinity, at least until now, for the English lanugage. If the mood isn’t strong, nor are there compelling images or ideas that resonate, I find myself fairly unresponsive. After the dialogic session with Stephanie Bolster, I did finding myself feeling somewhat more fondness for a few of the poems she read. I enjoyed her reading her own poems, finding a crystal clarity in the quality of her voice.

This session this evening made me very interested in discovering how people respond to poems the way they do. Some stay with the image and bring it even more alive, expanding on it, or deepending it, some go quite far afield in their imaginations in their association to an image that has a lot of valence for them. What makes us respond the way we do? I would love to explore this. The dialogic session with Professor Bolster stimulated my interest in this process.

Goat boy

“…When he was four,
my brother bit me because I was not him.
No one was.”
Stephanie Bolster

When I was four
I told my brother Ross
he was a red red rose –
this before, long before
he could understand
the slight, only a year old
at the time – also before
I really got the humour & yet
I laughed, watching him through
the bars of his crib, fatally
attractive.

When Ross was four
so much he simmered
from his crucial place in our landscapes –
serious lad he could do what was expected & yet
what was expected always trumped
his seriousness, his passion
a little goat boy larger
than our discoveries
of where he wasn’t
fitting in.

When we are both nearing fifty
nothing is as large as
what we’ve left behind
not meaning to. There’s the grown
aspect of our childishness
that haplessly keeps
us near – the place
with the red red rose
he can never forgive me
insisting on – never
lost or found simply
a place for small children
to give out not able
to give way

The classes I took with Professor Cornett have brought a transformation that is simply soul-changing. This is the most important thing to have happened to me in many many years, and at the end of my life, I feel sure I will look at it as a vital turning-point in my life. It has profound implications in very personal ways, a very healing process. It was a struggle, to be open in ways that I’ve lived closed off from the nourishment that the arts bring – a struggle to keep opening the doors, embarrassed about my rough, stark, aesthetically unrefined responses, but I hated to miss one single class. I felt more profoundly nourished by your classes than anything in ages.

Saturday Feb 13’s poem, I now find out, is “Next Door Cafe” by Carmine Starnino from his new collection This Way Out. And Tuesday Feb 16’s is “Our Butcher”.

Taking the last first: the title changes everything; I had been reading this in the first person. Now I pay attention to the 3rd person: I, says the poet, could be “he” and then launches into a five stanza riff on animal anatomy, a bloody baroque riff indeed, neatly wrapped up in the last two lines. It still makes me uncomfortable, but the blood and guts are easier to stomach within the frame: I-he-I-meat-paper.

I am gradually though not willingly learning to live with cognitive dissonance, hold onto quite separate and contradictory experiencings of poems/paintings/sculpture in tension, without trying to resolve them. I’ll see how long I can keep up the balancing act of multiple responses. Am I a different self each time?

Now for “Next Door”. Certainly saturnine. Not a mood I care to inhabit. On first reading I was might put off by this dispeptic sketch of dissipated drunks: Alexander Gray with a chaser of Francis Bacon. Then I read this ad from London Review of Books (reprinted in a G&M column) which I think sums up the persona of the poem (not Carmine I hope, but a mask):

“Yesterday I was a disgusting spectacle in end-stage alcoholism with a gambling problem and not a hope in the world. Today I am the author of this magnificent life-altering statement of yearning and desire. You are a woman to 55 with plenty of cash and little self-respect. When you reply to this advert your life will never be the same again.” That persona.

Figuring out John Greer’s sculptures (which we tried to do on Feb 13 and 16) is so tricky — including following clues through ancient sculptures and the trail of Greer’s own work, that I had to put my thoughts in a 5-page hypertext document. It is an attachment at http://sowhatz.ning.com/forum/topics/john-greer-sculptures. Just click on “John Greer, sculptures.doc” to open it, and you will be able to read it, view photos of different sculptures, and follow the web links.

This week’s guest received a nomination for the Governor General’s Award in literature[2009],and serves as editor of Maisonneuve magazine.

Carmine Starnino discusses THIS WAY OUT.

Saturday

February 27, 13h00-15h00

galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Contact: [514] 849-5844 reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com

Cost:$25[all taxes included]; $20[students with valid ID]

Singsong gauntlet, puckered & half-stitched

“…We are counted
one by one into this dead end,
where the bandwidth’s slow and we speak
not speech but yeses and nos that add up
to a scoop of that, a pound of this. What bliss.”
Carmine Starnino

The graces in our cups, a calling in sync with mythical bells, the walk to the corner knowing where you’re going with all motives hidden – the moon in the day sky, & here we are, alive with the small promises we’ve managed to keep. Romantic query – is it as much about healing as loving? The kids in knee high boots, jungle jackets, lean slacks – décolleté & the nervousness of achieving – how to look them straight in the heart not judging? The winners losing smiles to next competitions, the singsong gauntlet of whatever challenger haply invested in the next result.

Today so much light it’s fantastical. Notes that reach the outer edge of sublime, the song a kite never finishing. Puckered & half-stitched, the total effect, the chasers after a glee like stung-looking lips on a child with heart shaped face peeking up through blankets out of a jogger mom’s reinforced stroller. We are going down to the river to rest. Puckered & double-stitched, we’re awaiting the moment that refuses no exit, resurrects enjoyment, appreciates the views.

Singsong half-stitched, gauntlet puckered. The way the suburb tries but fails to control its own maps, a hungry intention with stringent appetite. Then on streets all houses, 2 blocks above the river, smells & sensations mid-morning all about quiet pinching wishbones – mythical memory infusing subtle place with gaudy apprehension – love on a stick, ready to stir, ready to be held chest-high to orchestrate liveable belief in the broken down, double jointed, parrying memories…

Carmine Starnino “This way out”

Commenting part 1;

Gloomy at times. Gloomy yes, but fun.

These pages are about conformity. The conformity of people living in “shoebox flats” where even doors are “class-conscious” (p.14). It reminds me of Pete Seeger’s (1963 written) song “Little boxes” in which conformity means university for other class-conscious people: “All the same”.

All the same, but inviting. For it is also Starnino’s uplifting quality of writting throughout these pages that prevents the reader from sinking into dispair (especially if you feel particularly down the day you are asked to do the reading). Scraping dog shit from your shoes is not necessarily what comes first to your mind while visiting Rome. It is however all this shit that he dares talking about that differentiates Starnino from the traditional and boring half truths and half lies of today’s discourse.

Shit brings, in these cases, inexpected and beautifull surprises.

Starnino belongs to this tradition of daring artists who help us thrive through today’s world shit.
Shit happens.

Commenting parts 2 and 3:

“One has emotions about the strangest things” quotes Starnino (p. 63). As a gift he offers us his own raw emotions. Happy and beautiful memories (about his father or the butterflies of his chidhood) cohabit with his gloomiest thoughts.

No hiding.
No “rise and shine” obligation.
No going around.
“Bouts of truth-telling” accepted just as they are.

I won’t forget this “Tale of the Wedding Ring”, Carmine. Next time I watch the moon I’ll think about you:

“This little you had
You left behind
To be found”

The Lady of Shalott

A hasty note: big things are coming March 6, 9 and 13 on neurobotics and much else. On Tues Mar 2 we read about the Farhoud, the bloody pogrom in Baghdad in 1941 that shattered the hopes of a generation. A terrifying passage: an eyewitness acount of the storming of a city.* I recognized the quotation as Naim Kattam’s autobiography “Farewell Babylon”. See also his 2006 article “can a Jew be an Arab” in http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2006/11/can-jew-also-be-arab-naim-kattan.html
I look forward to meeting this polyglot writer, very much part of the new intercultural Quebec.
*it could have been the sack of Rome, the fall of Constantinople, any city in Europe in the 14th or 18th c., Kigali, the fall of Saigon, the killing fields of Cambodia, Shatila…

Saturday,13March2010,13h00-15h00

A internationally-renowned neuroscientist,an accomplished sculptor and photographer,Dr. Ivar Mendez will discuss,” The Sciences,the Arts,and the Human Condition,” with Professor Norman Cornett.

Dr. Mendez created the “deep brain stimulation” procedure,and performed the world’s first “teleneurobotics” surgery.

He forms the subject of documentaries by the DISCOVERY CHANNEL and other film producers.

Dr. Ivar Mendez serves a consultant for UNESCO,particularly in the developping world.

Cost:$25[all taxes included] ; $20[with valid student ID].

Limited seating.

Please reserve: reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com [514]849-5844

Location:galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

It was deeply inspiring to have as our guest Dr. Ivar Mendez. I had not seen the videos, and so this was a first encounter for me. What struck me was the way he embraced different domains of experience, domains that are, as he said, so often treated as being exclusive of each other, science, art and spirituality, for example. I was astonished to see the extent to which he is able to engage in his cutting-edge medical scientific work and surgery, and yet maintain his commitment to his art, as well as a deep compassion and empathy for the suffering of his patients. I have so often heard the argument that in order to maintain their objectivity and therefore effectiveness, doctors must become immune to these feelings. As he said, one cannot be a good physician if one has lost one’s ability to feel compassion for the patients. This is what he teaches his medical students. I was also deeply impressed by Dr. Mendez’ strong and active commitment to reducing the inequalities in the world. In his view, medicine is a profession of service. I wish there were more who shared his spirit.

Monday,22March2010,19h00

McGill University, Leacock Building,room 132

Alanis Obomsawin [twice winner of the Governor General's Award] screens and discusses her latest film:

Professor Norman Cornett:’Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer’

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

A most wonderful evening yesterday at the screening of Alanis Obomsawin’s film “Professor Norman Cornett:’Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer’”. I would guess that there were several hundred people present, a range of generations, from students to elderly. I found the film beautifully done, riveting. The film itself wove heart and mind together, in keeping with the subject. There were delightful moments of wit and humour. It is a passionate film, and very sensitively made. The only thing that disappointed me was that Ms. Obomsawin did not speak as well. I had looked forward to her telling us about the making of the film, and answering questions.
Dr. Cornett took questions after the film. Quite a number of people were clearly disturbed by Prof. Cornett’s dismissal, and by the cowardly unethical way it was done. Prof. Cornett suggested that the best way to support him in his struggle for justice would be to write letters to the newspapers, McGill Daily, and other newspapers in response to articles that appear, such as in the Gazette and La Presse in the last few days.
I had read about the way Prof. Cornett would recognize in the audience former students from previous years, and call out to them, remembering the names they had chosen for themselves. Yesterday evening, I was delighted to witness this myself. He recognized students, and their names, from 10 years ago. One of the students in the film said that while to his other professors he was a number, to Prof. Cornett he was a human being. I saw this in evidence myself yesterday evening. The mutual affection and caring between Dr. Cornett and former students was striking. Passion and eros (in the broader sense of the word, a feeling of relatedness) were always present in the classes, it seemed. A passion for ideas, for life. As opposed to the “teflon learning” in Prof. Cornett’s classes there was the refining and tuning of the instruments themselves. How can this not be a goal in education? Students were not confined in an academic bubble, just vessels waiting to be filled with the information the professor deemed important. Life was brought into the classrooms, and the students had to engage with what was going on in the world outside. As one of the students put it so beautifully in the film, it is one thing to learn about an issue in a merely cerebral way, another to actually engage with it and care about it. As Dr. Cornett said last night, cognition and affect must be alled for learning to occur. All those themes touched upon in his classes, the political issues, the music, the dance, the visual arts – they all belong to the realm of religion, in its deepest sense. How can any aspect of life be divorced from it?
Dr. Cornett gave a message of hope to those that felt defeated by the way the conservative, rigid, close-minded forces had won over the open, creative spirit he stands for. However, Dr. Cornett gave a message of hope, and talked about the power of one, to bring about change. There was no sense of defeat in his spirit – quite the contrary. Thank you Ms. Obomsawin and Prof. Cornett for an unforgettable experience.

Our ‘dialogue’ partners include some of the foremost cultural figures in Canada,such as Kent Stetson,winner of the Governor General’s Award and member of the Order of Canada,Griffin Prize nominee,Priscila Uppal,et. al.:

SIX DEGREES OF IMAGINATION a ‘dialogic’ series with: Priscila Uppal,Kent Stetson,Madeleine Thien,Norm Sibum,Mary di Michele,and more.

13April-12June 2010.

Tuesdays,18h00-20h00 and Saturdays, 13h00-15h00

Location: galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Contact: [514] 849-5844 reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com

Cost: $300[plus taxes]; $275[students,seniors with valid ID]

Registration: in progress

Very glad to be back again. The spirit of adventure infuses these wonderful sessions. Interesting to hear the background of experiences that help shape each person’s response to the material we were presented with. Noticing how my quick judgments – like, dislike – tend to narrow perception. How to learn to be more open, ask more questions, and wonder. A world that can be so easily missed otherwise.

If my existence is spent clinging to the edge of an object or a concept or anything – can I let go?

To start at the edge was reassuring; it seemed easy to orient myself. After moving side to side, meeting and not feeling able to pass the other imaginarys, I felt stuck and couldn’t explore further the edge of the piece. Renaissance Europe did a better job of discovering the new world than I did discovering the other end of that piece.

Are our individual languages, our tools to describe the world, able to communicate what we are locally experiencing to form a fuller picture of the object or do we have 4 incompatible experiences? It will be interesting to see how our descriptions ‘fit’.
Having a piece to my own let me explore it to a greater degree. After spending 10 minutes touching the piece and positioning its powerful horns within a mental picture I had a good sense of its size, dimensions and so its familiarity became comforting.

Is that satisfactory for me to make my own picture of the piece without any communication? Or do the limits of my imagination and experience make me ignorant?

Many questions…

A two-part series,SCULPTING VISION:

Professor Norman Cornett leads a study of,” Beasts and Burdens,” by Vanessa Paschakarnis. A discussion with the artist follows.

Saturday,24April,13h00-15h00

Saturday,01May,13h00-15h00

Location: galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Registration: reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com tel.[514]849-5844

Cost:$50[all taxes included], $40[students with valid ID].

Again today,we were invited to look at the art works on exhibition in the gallery, and write in stream of consciousness style – 1st what we saw objectively, with a drawing, and then what objective data we discovered in our tactile exploration of a sculpture – and then do the writing around our subjective responses. Every session is a rich learning experience. I found that without giving myself the time to really engage a work of art, the experience can be rather thin, especially if they are pieces that don’t appeal to me immediately. But if I engage, or rather just stay in a receptive mode & write about what is actually there, objectively, then the work can start growing on me, and more & more of it reveals itself to me. Today, by the time I had finished writing on the objective aspect (just the data – what’s there – the material, colours, shapes, etc.) I felt I was having an encounter with the sculpture. A sense of powerful beauty I hadn’t felt before was evoked in me, a sense of the sculpture poised for movement, in contrast to the sense of heaviness and massiveness of the material and size.
It taught me again that if I just stay with a piece, give patience and time to that engagement, it will become an encounter, an experience. I think that often what blocks my ability to appreciate art, poetry, music is the sense that I’m not getting something I’m “meant to get.” And therefore I feel blank. Now, with this wonderful education that is Dr. Cornett’s series, I’m learning that I’m not blank after all. And if there is anything I’m “supposed to get” – it doesn’t matter, as long I really encounter the piece so that my own experience of it can unfold and delight me. I feel as though I am being taught the foundations: how to “see” and “hear”, and discover through touch. It reminded me of Murray Schaefer’s documentary on the way he taught music by going to the fundamentals, and having children search for all sorts of found objects, and explore what sounds they could make separately and together with each other. That film inspired me. This is the kind of experience I’m having in these classes.

Connections: The mind is wonderful.
‘Cross-cultural’-art-science-social-historical-special-temporal-everything, try to maximise the number of connections. There is no grand narrative just what we have connected ourselves.

Looking at a single piece on its own we make connections with our previous experiences, a 2-way conversation between our memories which are continually decaying, reforming, reconnecting and the piece itself. We of course intermediate secondary internal dialogs between aspects the piece itself.

When we have the picture, the sculpture and ‘us’ there is a 3 way conversation which perhaps changes the way we make connections. We create a relative meaning between the objects as well as between us and the objects themselves: Once, while comparing drawing to sculpture, I’ve created temporal, young and old, relation and another time a ’symmetrically tense’ spatial relation.

An uncensored and sensorially heightened conversation provides more opportunities to make the connections. We can’t make strong connections between unknown censored-quantities for example.

If we are unedited do we choose the most pertinent examples, the most refined words, and the ‘correct’ tone to articulate the connections we have made?

What connections do we make once someone else spots another way of interacting with a piece of art other than the conventional? I was whisked away to a Japanese garden from Morph saying the words “…a moment of serenity” before the first ‘gong’ sound was even made.

We invite you to ‘dialogue’ with a Canadian luminary on the international literary scene. Poet,novelist,professor at York University,and Griffin Prize finalist, Priscila Uppal’s recent writings deal with physical disabilities,health care,and medicine.In this vein she served as poet-in-residence at the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010,and again at the Paraolympics. Her research and publications uniquely place Prof. Uppal at the crossroad between literature and atheletics.

We hope you will join us as:

Professor Norman Cornett leads a two-part series on the “Medical Poetics,” of Priscila Uppal.

Tuesday,04May,18h00-20h00

Saturday,08May,13h00-15h00 with Priscila Uppal.

Location: galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Contact: reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com tel.[514]849-5844

Cost:$50[all taxes included]; $40[students with valid ID].

Yesterday’s dialogic session with the sculptor Vanessa Paschakarnis was a very rich experience. I left the gallery with the images of particularly Ariete and Capricorno, two of the “horned beasts,” in my mind’s eye as I walked home. The session opened in a surprising way for me, as I had not participated in the exercise done with the seminar participants previously. We put our blindfolds on and then heard the sound of gongs, as two of Ms. Paschakarnis’ sculptures, entitled “bells” were struck, one at the far end of the gallery and then the one in the recess in which we were seated. Images came to mind of Zen Buddhist monks striking a gong at the top of a mountain, as well as images of Christian convents and monasteries where nuns and priests were being called to prayer. I could only imagine this particular sound in the context of announcing sacred time. I wondered if this had to do with the quality of the sound itself or if the powerful images of films I had seen determined this association. I wondered how “free” my imagination could be with the kind of powerfully determined associations the medium of film has the ability to shape in us.
It was interesting to see the encounter between the seminar participants’ response to Ms. Paschakarnis’ works and her own experiences of them. I felt that many of the sculptures invited physical engagement with them and I wonder how much of that feeling is due to the way the sculptor used her body in making them, the way they were placed in the gallery space and how much this was due to the fact that we had engaged in a physical exploration of these works, while blindfolded.
Ms. Paschakarnis said that she wanted the sculptures to feel familiar yet rest unfamiliar. Although the beast heads felt somewhat remote, somewhat abstract as they had no clearly articulated eyes or mouth or other features of a beast’s head, yet I felt simultaneously a sense of resonance, a sense of their speaking – particularly the horned heads. They had a feeling of ancientness in them, of something beyond time, and I’m wondering if that’s why they seemed to touch some deep layers in me. Something in me responded to that powerful primal energy in them.
I will be sorry to see these sculptures leave the gallery, both for the sculptures themselves and for the way they relate to and shape the space of the gallery, in such an organic, pleasing way.

Home

Why is it the exit signs all head here, the next
room this one, no matter how many times
you slam the door or cry “out-out-out!”
Priscila Uppal

There is life & then you die
not before newness repeats,
repetition squanders
days in a life intention-less as
that bleak way you waved
your mother off, so involved
in where you’d got to without
recognizing it was home again –
home but the building looked different,
the furniture in the front room lacking
the polished look things had
in a flooded childhood linked
to groping dreams
of petty independence –
home & a force of psyche
levelling difference in a flash
only to leave you flailing
among memories hidden
in the echo chambers
of the balking soul,
primary questions
in the ecology of aging
turning away from
sad, blank proofs –
home & how to recognize
you need to belong here
as much as you need to flee
the arm-wrestling past, a small nod to
who you are now stumbling
in by the screened back door carrying
gifts to selves gone missing…

Professor Norman Cornett leads a two-part series,Reasonable Doubt,on the work of prizewinning short-story writer and novelist,Madeleine Thien.

Tuesday, 11May, 18h00-20h00

Saturday, 15May, 13h00-15h00 with Madeleine Thien

Location: galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1434 Sherbrooke west

Contact: reception@galeriesamuellallouz.com tel.[514]849-5844

Cost: $50[all taxes included]; $40[students with valid ID].

This is what I wrote when asked to write our responses to the last half of Priscila Uppal’s book of poetry, Traumatology:
Traumatology, pp. 56-105 6 degrees of imagination Schachar May 8,2010
I have no idea how to let this poetry reach me. I read some of the poems to a friend who writes poetry herself and reads a great deal of it. She had a hard time herself. When I described my difficulties with it, she said it reminded her of a glass mountain that had no toehold. I thought it was an apt image for the frustration I experience in reading these poems. Example, “Examination”: I can’t get behind this first image “pencils perched, the clock strikes millennium” etc. What is this about? How do these various images connect with each other? What is the theme here? The 2nd to last stanza talks about the exam being: On being human. How do the earlier images relate to it? I feel as though with most of these poems, the poet is making a conscious statement, they feel very thought out, cerebral, but I rarely understand what that message is.
In the later part of the “Spirit” section, there are some poems I like better, though again, I don’t understand, for the most part the message that I assume the poet wants to convey. For example, I like “My Past Self Took a Trip to Korea,” somewhat. Although I don’t get what was in the poet’s desire to communicate, what made her write this poem, at least there is a narrative thread running through it, and images, and so some distant part of me as a vague sense of something meaningful – some very distant part of me, like a taste on the tongue one can’t quite decipher or name. I also somewhat enjoyed “Restraining Order.” Again, there are images formed in my mind when I read it, a thread I can grasp that runs through the poem. However, I am left curious about the relationship between the poet’s soul and brain. Messy unpalatable emotions unacceptable to the brain that wants all to be rational and acceptable? I do like the way this is embedded in the image of the stalking soul, lurking by the water fountain, with a poodle in tow, with a restraining order, the brain afraid to cross in front of windows, rarely picking up the phone.” I suppose this is not the way to approach poetry – a very difficult medium for me – but I wonder if the various parts of the image also have a logical connection to the central theme – or whether the image, once born in the imagination, initially the carrier of the message, is given rein to continue living its own life autonomously, with no necessary connection between the details and the theme. Example – the soul’s heavy breathing on the phone, its lurking by the water fountain, with a poodle in tow. Is that an image taking on life independently of the author’s will, or do these details have a meaningful connection with the theme, adding something to it? One of the poems whose message is clearest, I feel, is the one entitled “To Control Time is to Control the Universe.” It’s one of the few I like.
——————————–
I didn’t want to go to the dialogic session with Ms. Uppal. Reading the poetry was such a frustrating experience for me, always having my sense of inadequacy, my “poetic stupidity” staring me back in the face, feeling – she’s such a cerebral poet, there’s nothing there for me. I was very tempted to write Morph saying I wouldn’t be there. I also realized, though, that just when something feels so terribly difficult of access to me is just when I should force myself to go and see if another door can open, even a bit, stretch my experience, my understanding, myself. So I went, saying to myself as I went out the door – “God, this is something I just do not want to go to, what a drag!”
I am so happy I did go. What a reward for pushing myself beyond my comfort zone! One of the first doors that Ms. Uppal opened for me happened during the discussion of the poem “Lean into Uncomfortableness.” Ms. Uppal talked about what prompted the creation of that poem: listening to police being given a lecture about dealing with domestic violence, in which they were told to “lean into the uncomfortableness.” This then sparked in the poet the impulse to play with coupling movements and states of mind, or being. I was astonished to hear how much playfulness had been the driving force behind that poem. That drove home for me how my certainty that there is one message behind the words, an idea, that the poet is attempting to convey, leads me off the track and keeps in place a solid brick wall between poems and myself. It keeps me from letting go and playing with a poem, letting the poem touch me in the way it will. As Ms. Uppal reminded us, it’s not as though the words were a code behind which there is a message. The words themselves are what poetry is about. Why write poetry otherwise?
I enjoyed hearing her tell about the Olympic athletes’ response to her poetry. As she said, we often put athletes and poets into an artificial kind of opposition. The athletes were hungry for the poetry she wrote about their various sports. I appreciate the way Ms. Uppal’s poetry goes out into the world, mirroring and responding to the life around her, rather than restricting herself to inner states of being. Her poetry is engaged with the world and people around her. I like that.
I wondered about my expectation of the kind of logic I wouldn’t demand of images – a non-internal kind of logic, that I expect from poetry – one big message.
I read some of the poems again this morning, and with a number of bricks knocked out of that damned brick wall, I found myself enjoying what had simply felt like a tortuous exercise before.

The brand

“Some worlds have erased suffering
as a matter of progress and course. Others
build temples to it, brand it on skin.
I think eventually I will give birth
to mine in a faraway cave and teach it
to hunt.”
Priscila Uppal

Suffering as a collusion waiting to happen –
the mythology of suffering,
affliction & its grimy subtext
in a faraway cave learning to hunt
down perpetrators – subjects, objects,
the bad thoughts on the good day,
the incisive insult self-inflicted,
mania that yields not much more
than ratty guilt, cold inching
up.

Cries for retaliation
against what’s unforgiving
are equally unforgiving
right up to the moment
the primal leaves off
tallying injustice, the exaggerated
suspicion of the other – us & them –
& oh the insatiable need to hear someone say
“It’s ok – more than ok –
more than more than.”

Suffering a kind of eager glossy
on a nullifying night you confess
you know joy but it never gives half as much
as suffering. The hunt continues,
perpetrators wrap oily arms around
your whimpering shoulders, there is
a song you want to sing to bring down
the solid house that won’t house suffering,
a shadow world of cave walls where it’s ok to murmur
“Suffering is dead – long live suffering”

Definition of Subpoena

Compartmentalised words, pools of language, splashes of ‘speak’: Beauty, ugliness, a lexicon storm, a vocal awakening.

Symbolic restrictions and the convergence of the mind, body and soul: The end result should be useless. Demagogues won’t get their hands on it.

Limited, unlimited, limitable, Illimitable.

Please hang around. Don’t change. It’ll talk to me. I’ll make terms for it to talk to me. I’ll create a language for it to talk to me. I’ll translate its thoughts.

Dialogue, selfdialogue, underdialogue, dialoguing, dialogued.

How to mourn? Am I morning correctly? What is a successful outcome? How long? How many arguments? How many tears?

Mourn, mourner, overmourn, undermourn, unmourned.

Alternative name: Witness Summons (UK Law)

Stream-of-consciousness response to the first 55 pages of traumatology by Pricila Uppal.

Initial words

Harvest – Unhappy with her body
My Stomach… – Why don’t you look after your body?
Training – Death as an Olympic event
A Referral – This woman has issues
Health Tips – She wants to hide
Puberty… – Wanting to love
My love…- Competitive
Sex therapy –the confusion of advice, the confusion of nature
Intimacy – worried about letting herself go
Spell for… – her mother failed her
Deadline – coldness in the ‘real’world
The genius- no idea what this is
Threatened- grey brain tissue
A definition – what’s on tv
To be found…- bad movie
My computer…-She needs to do something else for a bit. Have a spicey brownie
Not even – my body is not technology
Big Paw – Ominous dark cloud
10 ways… – Impatient in love
Now that all … – relax; again!
Picnic – feeding the ants
The old debate – hoping not to fall into the family cycle, pleased to have escaped it
Permanent resistance – the failure of returning to the beginning
Competing memories – confusion of thoughts, confusion of past
History… – togetherness
Unbearable – sadness
Think outside – further reading needed
My father’s – lots of LOVE! (father)
My mother – many possibilities
I know… – helpless
Life sentence – reality check x 1 million
Memory – unhappy times
Ostrich – tired
Word Origins – ouch!

Free Basing

Wow. I want to say this woman has baggage. A difficult childhood with rotten memories which haunt and taunt until today. Shes become unhappy with her body, unhappy with potential motherhood, all seemingly strong reactions and not measured responses. I feel that she is shouting the words, shouting to be heard, shouting to say she’s different, shouting to her family from which she counts her escape a success.

I’m attracted to the words, I want to help, I don’t want to help. She’s making sense of the world in her own way. I don’t understand it, I relate to some observations, some I laugh at, some I have sympathy for.

Why these words, why this order, why these observations, why such technical language, it makes the words appear ugly and unloved. What is her relationship with the words, does she like them?

There are hints of love, she wants to love, she’s loved too strongly in the past giving her a big reality check and making her mature.

Why did these words come to her, are they recent thoughts. I feel like there is lots of unhappiness and bitterness and resentment. Is that always with her? Why doesn’t she write nice things, why is the beauty in the world cast to one side? I want to shake her…

Why do I need to read this. Why are the poems public, how can I learn from her words. I have learnt that pregnant women are often horny.

Why does she love Canada? What is her relationship with India. Does she wonder what she would have become in india?

Why is poetry so depressing? Wheres the sense of youth, optimism, adventure.

My poem:

Why is poetry so depressing?
Youth, optimism, adventure are
All wonderful worlds to loose
Ourself

We think these, they keep us alive
Why not write them
Why not celebrate them
Why not cherish them

Death is not fun, I understand
Cancer is not fun, I understand

But there is balance
That’s why we live

God sakes”

The hope chest poem

“Your toes have no hope. They will die,
and we will wonder why the grass does not bend.”
Priscila Uppal

No dead bits in my vegetarian fridge
unless you count the screaming carrots.
I found such life in a woman a century old
on the cusp of her death, laughing like a sunny
pineapple, alive as any understudy
plotting a star’s demise.

No dead notes in my last song
though I’m sure there are folks who would
beg to differ. A song can cause such
disconnecting anxiety, even made up
of gentle words, hoping choruses –
“don’t look now – here comes the pain.”

The dead bits in my old trunk
are sacred, bring me to on claustrophobic days
via the softness of worn fabric, yellowed photos
& the scent of potpourri more imagined than present
even as good memories prove once again
to be anything but simple, innocent.

No dead men floating where children
could be playing, no lint between those naked toes
on spongy muck shivering. We have our lunch
in a cloth bag, a child exploring the reeds
approaches in Mickey Mouse sneakers, all
our nerves predict rebirth, funerals…

Barren

“So many things, he thinks, that we carry all our lives, in the hope that what we know will finally redeem us, that we will find something that abides, even now, in the indefinite, the uncertain, hereafter.”
Madeleine Thien

Yearnings I can’t undo –
slant rhyme earthy
as a clay pot in which
water pools & stills
oblivious to perfection.

Or my never-to-be-born son
trickles through a headache,
holds momma in his arms,
calms all her fears
by nearly being.

There’s something in the saddlebag
of a lonesome cowboy somewhere
that I’d like to get my hands on –
gift for my diapered mirage
stamping two year old feet in the kitchen
tireless as a wish but far edgier, indifferent
to how to lace up the thick
shoe of right & wrong.

Pastiche of small intentions:
clapping soft sticky hands,
upsetting the soup bowl,
groaning calypso,
pagan-scented in the bath
supremely in the nude.

Probably as important:
the way the empty world waits for you
angry with mortality –
crooked as a knuckle –
moot flesh offered up
to embrace, embrace…

Here is my free-basing response after finishing the book Certainty by Madeleine Thien.

Wow. What a ride. Rapid changes in time, forwards, backwards, repeating, filling in blurring descriptions all which help tie together this wonderful story. Everyone is given their time to be the main character, everyone matters, everyone’s story grabs you, and then you find it’s yourself that can’t let go.
Philosophies, science, nature, concepts of infinity, tied in with heart-breaking real relationships, tied in with history, tied in with vast geographical distances, all described with a wondrous literary dexterity. I loved this book. Reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez…
For the majority of the book I felt like I was standing right beside the characters as the plot unfolded, feeling their breath, willing them to succeed, mourning with them through loss, joyous with their delight, tranquil with their peace.
I could have read more. The countdown of the last 50 pages was hard, I didn’t want the story to end and I treasured every page. I feel like I need to read it again. To lift the timeless philosophies and observations from the book and to explore they further. Randomness of the forms of snowflakes. Infinitely long Mandelbrot contours and the concept of how much you zoom in, to understand people for example, there is always infinitesimally small substructure for which we have no access. Time bends and curves and folds onto its self and everyones stories are connected. One beautiful final salute to Bertrand Russell who said on philosophy that “[it is] a means to teach one how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.” Magic!
The descriptive passages make me want to drop everything, lower myself into the ocean, the still water, under moon light, and listen to the schools of fishes..The harmony this book conjures with nature and even beyond with social interactions is mesmerizing.
I wish I could make more sense of it. I which I remembered every detail and passing thought in the book as the incisive insights into nature and the human condition seemed so pertinent that, if I didn’t appreciate them myself, I would be lost soul. How can we appreciate all these aspects and build them into who we are. Do we have to wait to be old to realise. Can I have them now? How do I explore them: consecutively? Simultaneously? by chance? I’m sure life is like zooming into the boundary between convergence and divergence on the imaginary plane to discover the pattern keeps fractaling. To fail to zoom, spatially and temporally, is a failure to appreciate beauty on a different scale and for me that is the resounding image this book has left me with.
I must not stop my stream of consciousness. I’m itching to start exploring for myself. Thank you book!

Note

Hi morph – reading the State of Mind link this morning I was surprised by how some of us find pain an unsuitable subject for poetry to such an extent that it makes poetry unpalatable – made me think of Tolstoy saying something to the effect of a happy family having no stories – i.e. the real includes much unhappiness, unhappiness is something we may repress but can’t abolish. Actually, I got the impression that there was also a problem with the aesthetic at issue in the case particularly of Priscilla’s work – that the juxtaposing of various images which for me take on meaning via contiguity is not something some people appreciate. It’s funny, I love all kinds of verse, from the thick to the watery, trying to read each in a way I think takes into account the aesthetic at issue. Not to say I don’t have favourite writers, only that I go to the poem trying to be open to the cerebral as well as the sensual, not to mention the sonorous or what ever other kind of soundscape is there to be experienced.

I think what I find hardest to take in verse is what strikes me, for better or worse, as content included almost exclusively for gratuitous shock value. Not to say that I don’t misunderstand & misjudge at times – definitely not – only that texts exploring the dark may ring as “true” &/or “beautiful” as texts exploring the light. Actually, I guess because the world we live in is so difficult on multiple levels, I can sometimes dislike a poem for lacking tensions that for me are key to authenticity, if that makes any sense – not all poems without said tensions, but some to be sure. It does strike me that perhaps my relation to word art is as much influenced by given temperament as by experience of word art, meaning at least as much is a given for someone like me as it is a product of learned response.

The sweetness of people in the flesh versus the darkness they lend to the page: isn’t that the way darkness acknowledged can impinge on the psyche for all the “right” reasons? I am not particularly judgemental of so-called “self-absorption” re the way I understand self-absorption – that is, not caring only about the self but rather witnessing for myriad other selves. Is it because I’m middle-aged by now so that the youth in me (sparkling) goes directly to empathy when confronted by the dark – don’t know, am querying…Atlantis xx (would love to see you write something on the State of Mind link…)

Certainty (for Madeleine Thien)

A psychiatrist was faced with a hospitalized patient who believed himself dead.
The psychiatrist decided one day to challenge this belief, asked the man
“do dead men bleed?”. “Well of course not” answered the patient.
The psychiatrist then proceeded to prick the patient’s finger.
Out came red blood. “Well what do you know” said the patient –
“I guess dead men do bleed”…
(A psychiatric anecdote)

What have you identified as surface
that was really depth – who
passed through your warp
only to further warp –
is it story or fission – what
& what for, the noblesse
in a colourless gesture –
I’m watching you watch me,
the comedic is an itch.

So dead men do bleed
especially in pamphlet song –
& live men? The way they bleed?
Such a warring of jagged opposites
leaving us curled around worn-out
symmetries – we call in a voice so little
it gets swallowed whole – talk
a great slogan & nothing lasting –
not even in the sense dead men’s nails
seem to grow.

What have you identified as documentary, spilling scrabble….

Under the pineapple tree that never grows here,
appetite – beyond the call of the weathered,
beauty. I am calling for backup without
any noting of red light or stop sign – calling
& no fan of psyche cruise control
as I line up, weary, in the caught-up line,
the weather that cares only for falling,
an automatic alert sealing breakage,
love & why this is all the product
of uncertainty…

voici un petit text inspiré de la partie où Madame Thein disait : “Also, that she had not gone far enough with the characters, not been dramatic enough in the expression of their feelings, not enough rough edges.” – shachar post 202

Is rough & edgy more powerful then a soft, delicate?

For along time, I tough that being edgy was keeping me closer to the truth of what is. I was sure that a certain softness was synonym of insouciance. Yes, no way that depth & lightness could be part of a same experience. It was one or the other, not both.

Until I crash so profoundly into darkness. The reason : I was cultivating depth with an edge & a rough edge. Because so often I was accuse to be careless about the “important” things since I was inclined to react with softness to dramatic moments.

Why so?

There’s not one true answer to that, but if I try, I would say that putting more weight on a already difficult circumstance never felt appropriate to me.

Also as a child, it was an escape door to a feeling of helplessness when I was expose to a situation that was way to much complex for me.

And because one of my most basic belief, since ever, is that life is a true wonder, challenging, demanding but still, so rewarding. So what good reason could we have to feed ourselves again & again with drama, guilt, despair, all those things that bring us & keep us onto our knees, instead of rising up to the occasion to learn from it, transform & integrate it?

Today I would add to this list that, after many years of suffering from chronic pain, my experience is that rough & edgy never lead me to the truth of the matter on the path of deep healing. The opposite. Rough & edgy keep me at distance from my own vulnerability. It seems that I was wide open, straight to the point, since I was able to be so bold, but most of the time, the truth is that I was preserving myself from being totally open to what was shaking me.

Because, in all those years of falling apart & recovering, I learn that, to face all those tremors a human being will face in its life time, I can only do so if I approach myself, or the other, with great, great delicacy. Otherwise, there was always a part that wanted hide somewhere, somehow, a part that was too scare to face the pain, the lost, the nonsense, the atrocity of what was believed or lived.

So in my own experience, only great delicacy, as in great compassion, have provided a secure, wide space to welcome what was there, whatever was there. And by doing so, creating the possibility to reconnect with the difficult parts of my life, bringing conscience to them & sometimes, hopefully, releasing them. It was the quality of that soft, loving presence that made the whole difference. Made my mountains move, or my rocks weep & flourish.

But to be really fair, I have to say that rough & edgy was true very often at the beginning of the movement, since it is never easy to start processing those shadowy parts of ourselves. Rough & edgy help me when I would have preferred to avoid the whole thing, keeping me firmly centered in my intention. But after that I had to move on to soft & delicate, like in a breath, so that the knot was able to melt down & leave the place to more depth, more beauty, more truth to who I am.

Certainty – Madeleine Thien

Up to page 140
Free-basing

I want to keep reading this now. I don’t want to pause at pg 140 for a couple days. Maybe I should have paced myself.

I’m really drawn to the story, or the multiple stories that are being told simultaneously.

Imagining Vancouver, walking false creek, Inukshuks at English bay, Chinatown and the downtown eastside all with the north shore mountains as a background are all quite vivid to me as I’ve lived there. I keep picturing the grave or marker to be in Queen Elizabeth Park for some reason. I think I went in the 2nd hand bike shop on dunbar, I lived at dunbar and 21st street. In addition the style of writing was easier to follow in the Vancouver parts.

The story in chapter 2 I found hard going, the plot jumped, loose descriptions, uncertain character observations, Matthew dreaming and not thinking clearly left chaotic images in my mind…I don’t know what a rubber plantation looks like so I think I’m imagining fields of corn instead. The subject matter in this chapter is also equally unclear to me, I’m not familiar with the battles over North Borneo and the book doesn’t help too much, it leaves you in the dark, it leaves you confused. What was Matthew’s father doing to help the Japanese? The circumstances under which Ani lost her parents completely escape me now. Maybe this was supposed to be difficult to grasp of maybe I simply missed it.

The problems that are occurring, actually all aspects of the relationship between Gail and Ansel are much easier for me to relate to and imagine compared to the circumstances that brought Clara and Matthew together, lots of courting and getting to know each other are quickly passed and they end up in Chinatown in Vancouver without too many details about their feelings. I’m drawn much closer to the thoughts and feelings of Ansel and Gail.

I love the additions of scientific and medical terminology and problems. I love that the characters use the logical outcomes of scientific thought to justify social interactions and existential beliefs.

The book conjures so many images; clouds, snowflake, Mandelbrot sets for example. I feel like this book is making my imagination fire on all cylinders.

Some things are ever so sad, yet so beautiful, e.g. cooking once every 2 days so to not make too much food for him and his departed wife.

I really don’t like that Gail is dead. I don’t feel like she deserved it. I bet she was wonderful. Not really sure what she looked like as we found out later that Clara was from Hong Kong when I had her as a frail old white lady up until that point. Our preconceptions can be very strong. That’s unfortunate.

I had so many great and vivid memories brought out reading this. Like the book says, some people lose the ability to access memories for various reasons. In a similar vein the most subtle and unassuming references can trigger sections of hidden memories. I thank these chapters for providing and facilitating that for me too.

What is the history of North Borneo? I need to look that up now. There’s another lot of ignorance on my part. To be honest I’m not even sure what Tuberculosis, I’ll look that up too. I’m very excited already to meet the author, to learn her background and how she came to write such a wonderfully rich book.

Have I written enough? I don’t feel like I’ve given the book justice. I wish my thoughts and imaginations could all be conveyed but for the moment they are lost, or perhaps inaccessible. Perhaps they’ll come out again as I continue reading. Maybe I should have commented after each chapter or after each strong emotion or at the same time I had an impulse to pick up my guitar or make a cup of tea.

I’m still a little confused about the Inukshuk being the symbol for the Olympic Games when the Inuit are from the far north. I think it’s the coastal Salish who lived near present day Vancouver, why don’t their symbols get a look in.

Maybe I should move back to Vancouver. I feel like it is much easier to feel in touch with nature over there. I feel stuck in this city sometimes.

I felt quite irritated in the last few classes, working on the poems of Pangborn Defense. I don’t understand these poems, don’t like them. I find them too cerebral, too difficult to understand or feel. I can’t even get the pleasure of images, since images don’t come to me in reading these poems – they’re too dense, heady. What I really enjoyed, however, in yesterday’s seminar, was hearing how different people perceive poetry differently. One person described how the soundscape (if I’ve understood what was said correctly) carried them further ahead than their thoughts could follow. I found myself wondering what that soundscape felt like to the person. When they said the sounds were like music, I had a hard time imagining the sounds of this difficult poetry as music, but wished I could put myself in the person’s skin so that I could understand their experience and hear the music that felt beyond my reach.

Another person talked about their kinesthetic approach to poetry, how the lines and images are first experienced by their body, and only then absorbed by their mind (again, if I’ve understood correctly – if not, please correct me). They got up and illustrated the way their body would incorporate (as Morph reminded us – incorporate – corp – body) a certain image, which could then be grasped by their mind, (or spirit?). I found that fascinating, wondering how abstract lines could also be anchored in the body in this way. An idea went through my mind – what if I approached a poem either through painting to it or moving to it? Morph said the participant’s description of their process gave him an idea – and I wondered if he was also thinking of having us move to poems. I hope so, then I could get out of that very unpleasant feeling that I have before me something that is completely undecipherable, way beyond my reach, like a well-defended fortress I have no hope of breaking into, defeated, and angry that things are so difficult of access. If there’s a bit more of a ramp – I can make the effort to go further into it, as in Prof. Uppal’s poetry. After the dialogic session with her, I felt quite different, and approached her poetry quite differently. But I can not imagine the dialogic session with the author of Pangborn Defense leading to quite the same result. This poetry feels impenetrable to me. With movement – I could forget about trying to make sense.

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21June-09July 2010 daily

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NORM SIBUM – PANGBORN DEFENCE, pp. 1-34
6 degrees of imagination – Schachar – May 25/10
I tried reading this aloud, to see if it helped me glean anything from this poetry. It didn’t help & I stopped and just continued silently. I’ve never read anything so dense in my life. I might as well be reading physics, for all I understand. I am impressed by the poet’s erudition, by his impressive vocabulary (when I have time, I’d like to go through every word I don’t know & look it up in the dictionary) and his impressive familiarity with so many areas of knowledge – mythology, philosophy, science. It could take me a life time just to look up every reference. But I don’t believe he’s showing off. I feel as though all this knowledge is so integrated that these references come to him naturally.
What spirit, mentality, does Meredith represent?
I get very little from this – an angry criticism directed at the way the world is, particularly criticism against the US, its culture and politics. But for the rest – it’s way beyond my grasp. Even the images are too heady for me, they’re cerebral, not sensuous images that I could visualize. There are so many images, references juxtaposed together in one whole sentence or image, each sentence like a prism with so many facets to it – it’s incredibly dense – so much so that I really can’t be bothered to even begin to untangle it. Each sentence would simply take hours of effort.
The only thing I like is the very dynamic angry tone. I imagine I’d agree with his criticism, if only I could understand most of it. In fact, I feel regret that these poems are so difficult for me to understand. I can feel the power of the images and spirit. I just wish I could understand what they’re saying. From the tiny bit I can sense, I feel that I’d be interested in what the poet has to say. I looked up Pangborn – the 1st aviator to cross the Pacific, and the name of a company. Why this name?
The end of p. 34 is in the middle of a verse – so I read on to p. 35. And I imagine that this is the key of the collection: “And all the world shall dance to America’s tunes, A caricature of God fattening on its heart?”
6 DEGREES OF IMAGINATION MAY 28/10
NORM SIBUM: THE PANGBORN DEFENCE
At p. 42 for the 2nd time. Again, started reading it aloud thinking something on another level might sink in – but then I could take in even less what I was reading, so I went back to reading it silently again. I thought as I neared the end of the book I might get some glimmers of meaning – but didn’t. All I can say is that the poet is engaged – politically, and with the state of the world, its madness, and America’s running of the world, an uncaring president who has no use for thinking. And it’s angry. I like that he’s engaged and that he’s angry. But I don’t like that I can only understand one line out of a hundred, or more. That there is a clear message seems so strong to me, that I feel as though someone could translate that clear message into prose, so that I could understand. Of course then it’s no longer a poem, and the images he builds his ideas in are lost – but frankly, I would prefer to understand what he’s trying to communicate.
The cultural, historical, etc., illusions, are so jammed thick – they’re like the building blocks of the images. How many readers has he got who understand all of these references? I wonder if I sat at my computer & looked up every one of these references & understood them – would some meaning come through? I’m not sure. I’m familiar with some of these allusions and they still don’t give me a clue as to what he’s trying to say.
Why did he choose what he calls “Lunar” to address his poem to in this 2nd part?
Actually, on 2nd reading, there is one page from which I can grasp glimmers of meaning, p. 45. I feel the sadness in it. Unless I’ve misunderstood, I sense the pain of a disillusioned idealist, someone who had initially felt that “no living thing lives and dies In vain” and can’t bear hearing others argue so, now that he himself has had to make the painful discovery that it is not so, and suffer the loss of that illusion. Maybe that’s why the violence in the image: “Tell me again that no living thing lives and dies In vain, and I’ll turn the argument, so much so I’ll snap its neck.” It’s a violent image, snapping the neck of the argument, and reminds me of the angry almost violent tone of the opening poem, at the notion argued by some that “life can’t defeat the wise man, the one who’s prepared.” I wonder if the poet longs to be able to retain the illusions he had once, and therefore needs force to keep himself from clinging to them.
Whether or not I’ve understood something that’s in the poem itself, or only projected my own very subjective meaning onto it – it brings to mind how when I felt some illusions, some meanings, some ideals slipping away from me, as they began to fray at the edges, and I would feel such loss, I would hammer at them even more forcefully & aggressively – perhaps so that I could be in control of their loss, the how and when of their loss, rather than have them ripped away from me from the outside – an unbearable violation, a violence imposed. I have to hammer at them to stop myself from clinging to them. I’ll lose them before they lose me, heart that clings and head that knows that the substance has left, that it’s only a shell by now. I’ve caught myself making slips of the tongue that show the heart still clinging – saying the exact opposite of what the head is propounding, and feeling like a fool, a betrayal to the cause. And then I have to hammer even more strongly. The heart’s loyalties don’t scream as loudly, the way my head does, and slip in here & there surreptitiously – you could almost miss it – but it won’t cave in to the head’s attempts to defeat it.
I don’t know. Why does the poet protest so loudly? What ideals, about humanity, perhaps, has he had to face losing, that he hammers his messages across so strongly? Maybe this is a complete misreading of this poem, and maybe I’m just projecting my own experiences here – but it’s a relief to me to finally find some response in me to these poems, besides the anger and frustration of not being able to understand what I assume are very clear and coherent messages.
I would like to spend more time with page 46, try to understand what the poet is saying. I’m frustrated that I can’t: “Come on Lunar, and we’ll do the streets…”
I suddenly imagined the poem as a painting and saw it full of geometric shapes, but with very strong sharp brilliant colours.
Why Crow, after Lunar? Because crow is connected to decay, a harbinger of death? This is a powerful image:
Powerfully, she makes that bike go; and it cruises
As if there’s more to living, Crow, than we suspect,
She a golden girl of a land of shining plague.
At first I miss the juxtaposition of the “gold” and “shining” with the word plague. And then when I take it in, it shocks.
I wonder if he’s talking about the things we chase after in life, like mirages, that we’re brainwashed to chase after, that glitter and seem as if they’ll make a life – but in fact lead to a deathscape empty of meaning?
Going back & forth between the rare passages where I imagine I can glimpse some meaning, helped by the feeling tone in them – and then long passages where I understand nothing, except that there’s complaint about the way the world is, in particular America – its culture, politics.
I also find powerful and sad the lines on p. 61, about the woman who’ll be putting her cat down:
Now and then we need a reason
To cry over the humdrum, to bury a bird
Or some other pet, some poem, lock of hair in a crypt
Of the keepsake earth. It’s horrible to say and it’s good to know
That something other than rape and pillage,
Torture, greed and imbecile statecraft
Shall occasion it,”

I wonder if the shrill angry tone has to do not so much with his pain and difficulty in letting go of perhaps formerly held ideals but maybe because he longs to yank us up out of our blinding sleep.
Again, I feel the same kind of pain at these words:
…for everything’s blind,
Be it passion, bit it murderous intent, be it a gene
Doubling itself – be it infirmity or health,
Fruition, decay, the virtues seeing but virtue
While vice sees but what vice perceives.
And so it goes, your rage against chance
Misplaced and futile,”
Chance versus some intelligent design, some meaning. Can meaning be found where chance rules? I’m struggling with this theme in my own life now. I find it so difficult to conceive of chance behind certain events, in my life and others’ as though intelligent design, even if designing pain, in some way at least offered some illusion of meaning, or perhaps the illusion of control?
Well – some of my former irritation seemed to have disappeared by the end of this book. I suppose I could read it again in time, and see what happens. One thing for sure though – I would certainly be curious to look up one reference after another, of those I don’t know (most).

Full Stream of Consciousness response from the poem Lunar Cycle until the end. (I read out of order however)

Genesis
Free-Basing
Concentrate; just write something, it always difficult to start. I enjoyed reading and free-basing with the poem in the last seminar so I’m going to start by doing it to genesis.
I don’t really know who Jehovah is, the word retainers too, this makes for a bad start. Wiki tells me that Jehovah is the proper name for God, retainers seems to mean servant in this context. Abraham and Isaac were the servants of God. I’m not sure how they served him; I guess if god put them on earth it makes more sense, they can relay his word to people, do some general housework if necessary.
Abraham and Isaac offered a divine product, lured a potential buyer and then switched the celestial goods at the last minute to make up for prior losses. In the process of which a conundrum was solved, using unconventional cheap comedic means, the answer lying on a rock in the middle of a thicket.
Gets dense again
What are the gist and the top dog beasts of the high priest of the zoological? Doesn’t sound right. Zoological is an adjective. Doest fit. High priest of zoology, High priest of the ‘noun’ surely, any noun.
Seems like an attack on Charlie Potts is about to take place. Are history and art creeds? Is anything like a creed or anything like history or art supposed to be thwarted from crime scene jurisdiction.
Charlie Potts was a poet, a projectivist poet. A busy man, why realtor, he seems to have said that perhaps America’s powerful position will change, and is being posed the questions what if it doesn’t for the next 1000 years.
I don’t know how all this Charlie Potts business ties into the interesting start with gods, patriarchs, conundrums. We ended up having a poet being responsible for facing the problems of today. Not one thing can be left responsible, left to confront the problems, it’s is a shared responsibility, Charlie has had a varied experience, a make-up seemingly a melange of different peoples, he gets the baton.
Different approach for Fantasia for Harriet O’Riley. Read first, then free-base.
I notice we read this before. Well, I feel like I read some of it before, maybe a few sentences and the rest has been cut out and pasted in. Did Morph deceive us, did he mix a poem. I doubt it. Perhaps only a couple images of the poem were transmitted by the hippocampus into synaptic bridges. The rest stored as short term chemical or electric imbalances which faded away. 7, plus or minus, 2.
Reading this again I imagine some kind of Noah’s ark sequence or sailing up the Amazon: A mad but beautiful woman standing proud on the bridge barking out orders and flirtations, a woman unknowingly in control, fallen in to this position by a disapproving observer.
I would like to draw the boat somehow.
Now that I’ve done two short poems I need to do a long one I’m a little bit intimidated: Lunar Cycle.
I love the first verse. It has a wonderful rhythm, I missed the meaning but the sounds the words and grammar make it exciting. I feel like these are to be read out. I’ll continue reading them out to myself.
The second verse is short but has a beautiful balance to it, a slight tipping of scales, the friction in the fulcrum enough to hold it back. Oblivion the Empiricist: Sounds like a title for a Paulo Coelho novel. Love lost in the sands, oblivion taking samples and thoughtlessly scattering it to make links most difficult.
The third verse is stunning, I finish reading ever so slowly and softly, the man who fled to London in an earlier poem, enjoying a pint of ale on the bank of the Thames. I’m taken to the oxford vs. Cambridge boat race, spoilt Londoners and Oxbridge students lining the north bank of the surrey bend and lining the bar of the black lion public house collegiately waiting for a fresh pint of ale.
The river Thames triggers many many thoughts, would make for quite a list.
There’s lots in the forth verse, the minor 4th. I glossed over it though. I’m on the terrace, at the pub, sipping the beer beside the man. Far from American troubles yet surrounded by them. Past, present, all too present.
A more ‘traditional’ looking and sounding poem in the 5th, the major 5th, except for the ex president bit. I do feel far away, I have no firsthand experience of these presidents. Nothing second or third about Kissinger, Nixon mainly because of the film Frost-Nixon. I do like politics but, as many do, hate it at the same time. I just watched Russian Politians press voting buttons for absent members of the Russian house, yay democracy, yay choice, god it drives me nuts.
Its fun, the 6th, a intense London trip, with crashing thunder and great rains providing a curtain to the day’s proceedings. What a wonderful city, everything to everyone, nothing to no one.
V7. Back to business, literary pursuits, forget Nixon, why is he in Hammersmith station? There’s a shopping center there, is there a bookshop, is there a literary dream, a London passion, English culture refined, bollocks it is, it’s a dream, an unreality, a city whose fabric perhaps vibrates to words of Dickens and the poems of Shelley, or a city of graft and noise which traps and beats, a mixed city, London.

V8. I’m with Dylan.
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!
Raw passion. Angry. Shouting

V9. This is going on now, getting a little bored. Want to finish the poem but notice that it goes on for a few pages. Cup of tea time.

V10. Fire broached the human limelight. Incroyable. The start of some beautiful words. I’m energized. I want to write. My roommate’s friends, flood into the apartment, robed and excited…They’ve left now.

I don’t want to pass this one. I’ll make a note and read it again after I’ve finished the book.

I don’t know how to proceed. I’ll pick my favourite lines from the remaining verses.

By way of sacrifice, stained the first Italian temples.

The light of the moon brassknucles your bruisable gaze.

Materialism of pimps and the delusions of whores.

Walked where the parrots flew, the pines charges.

I’m really starting to get into this now. The language-scape, the flow, the emotions, the music of the words, the visions – stick a pin in me – I wouldn’t feel it.

Keats, I weep for thee Adonais, romanticism, full circle. I want to travel to an antique land. I’m getting lost in the classical world, falling in after Noam, Shelly, Keats and more people who I would have know had I studied classics.

The richness, a bounty, spoiled by words. Lands and times begetting dreams of shadows cast. Awake thee and shine.

I’m now reading standing up, wandering around the apartment, restless.

1st verse on pg 40. Back to present day, modern language, the romanticism of the past erased in a second by the house-cleaning turmoil. Please take me back again.

Next verse. Depressed, sad, stuck, discontinue and rest.

Next: Stacking, Inuksuks between the tide pools, crashing them with waves, what happens when you dismantle an Inuksuk again?

Does gravity have an elastic analogy? Can it stretch endlessly? Can a djinn make a dent in the infinitely tense fabric?

Last on pg 41. I get the sense of poetry being a ticking of boxes affair. Pull the right strings, trigger the right memories and you’ll have yourself in print.

Last on 43. Powerful. Rat race and norms, breaking them if one wishes, with a call to Rome. The republic is dead, the pax has folded, only a scratch on the minds of the focused commuter. Daily headlines, daily maximums, recipe of the day, of another day and likely the fucking next.

Histories tangled, now and then, all one in the future, all liked by the learned. Make a scratch, reflect, topple the likes of whom you admire, all for one, one for all.

Finished, quite a ride. This poem has brought together so much and vibrated so many dormant memories. Very happy to have read it.

End

Its getting closer to 5pm and I just rushed to finish the book. I didn’t like doing that, I didn’t savour the words of the last long poem Caesars and Presidents for Avrila Lee. I would like some more time, deadline free, to meander through this book. The language sometimes forms a celestial alignment which holds me back with its beauty and makes it difficult to pass.

I have left every prior session with a sense of being energised, informed and that my opinion matters: Saturday was the first session where I left with the opposite sentiments.
Yesterday we saw one approach to make sense of the world and I’m not sure it’s for me. If this is the result of reflecting then I don’t want to reflect. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so judgemental but I chose to do the course and therefore left myself, my ignorance, my naivety, my foibles, exposed. Have I just been fooling myself these past weeks and tricking myself into thinking that I have been doing something worthwhile?
The rejection of our pieces as missing the point and missing the meaning of the poems rocks the heart of this teaching philosophy. Postmodernism was brutally attacked casting our work to be completely irrelevant interpretations of the poems: there is a message to be gotten across and I completely missed it. Has this teaching approach found its limits?
I started to like these poems, now I want to dislike them because of the self-professed intellect and the use of a medium which seems to make it even more pretentious. Does an intense and focused intellectual and cerebral approach really help or just warp the roundedness of what we would consider a decent person?

Proofed

“A man thinks that he might walk, but walks that he might think. Ha!”
Kent Stetson

Does anyone remember Jane Rule’s fine book entitled “The young in one another’s arms”? Remembering the character who walked at the very least 10 miles a day over bridges, through woods, up hills, into the suburbs of west side Vancouver, circa early seventies, all in the name of mental health, well being. I am a walker, a kind of Zen sanity comes over me walking distances, a little shimmer of meditation, mind becoming an instrument watching the thoughts unbidden yet me go by, distance creating calm, walking doing the thinking, the thinking of walking neither profound nor stupid – rather, what you might never have noticed comes to the surface bubbling & companionable, a movement simultaneously spiritual, imaginative, heated, graceful – thought in all its weary slippage revving up ultimately – the grays, the blinding whites, the nurturing greens, the hapless blacks – walking a kind of stark guessing acclimatizing…

Here comes the world, ready or not. There goes anxiety after numerous peddling steps. “But walks that he might think. Ha!” Oh how I get that! It barely takes a moment to touch the cooled down fever of loving existence to get to where the next step could be, & sometimes is, manna – takes no one to lead you out of the dark spaces that litter getting by year after week after day after month – this sobering feeling, all the clutch of dismissal nipping at your healing – walking, & how you take yourself into the scenery until it is more how you breathe than how you focus – how you focus mostly breath & yet there goes the rest of the day, you catching up, all rested, all flushed, all glowing semblance – “A man thinks that he might walk, but walks that he might think. Ha!”

hello again. It has been several weeks since we met but Dr. Cornett tells me your sessions/travels are nearly at an end (for now). I wanted to say again how much I appreciated our very frank discussions and how I have been moved and inspired by your continuing dialogues. I am in Bucharest where I have been talking about Certainty and trying again to articulate all that I don’t seem to know (anymore?) about the book. Thank you Controlled for this line– “To fail to zoom, spatially and temporally, is a failure to appreciate beauty on a different scale” which encapsulates my thoughts while writing the book, but is an idea I had since forgotten. Some thoughts about the rough edges. The book I’m writing now, which tells some of what happened during the Cambodian genocide, has likely coloured my thoughts about Certainty. Writing about violence feels violent, as if I’m trying to pin down something that should not be held in place and studied, that should shake us each time we look at it, that should not be made delicate. I think these challenges are what I was thinking of when I spoke of the rough edges, and of a rawness of feeling. I desperately do not want to make this horror beautiful, and so I feel wary of beautiful language. At the same time, a novel’s language needs to evoke– pictures, feelings, intimacy– and make the unlived, never experienced, lived. Fiction can do this in a way that non-fiction cannot, ie. I think we trying to find out if it is possible to collapse the distance between strangers.
Apologies for these confused thoughts. I send greetings from sunny Bucharest where apparently we are expecting sand to from the desert to cloud the skies.
warmest,
chicken

The world above the sky (up to pg 149)
Free-basing
I can pretty certain when I say I haven’t read anything like this before. I’ve read ‘factual’, dry information about the Norse, native Americans and world religions but never have I read them all spun into a piece of, part fantast, part quite real sounding literature.
It’s almost a rewriting of history where somehow natives and Europeans didn’t try and crush each other, not yet at least, the bloodline of Christ might live on, a goddess meets a god. Wonderfully exotic and hopeful.
I’m not entirely sure what Eugainia is? The old man she was forced or raised to sleep with was the end of the bloodline and she somehow has been given the title of a goddess after her parents were savagely murdered.
The book is wildly descriptive and often difficult to take in, it is magical; however, you start to convince yourself that a spirit world exists.
I don’t really want to comment, I can’t do it any justice, maybe I could copy out those first 7 chapters as my response.
Actually, let’s just erase everything I’ve said so far. I haven’t produced a verb, adjective or anything that conjures or reflects the beauty within the book.
I once heard it said that when you read Saul Bellow you don’t see any point of writing again. Those sentiments come to mind when I think about what I just read.
Maybe a drawing, maybe a poem, maybe a song, but I’m not going to try and match prose with prose.
I’ll turn the other cheek and just continue living in the world above the sky.

Element

“Love, that word, floated in an element so volatile that perhaps even to whisper it would render it totally unstable and it would explode, or, more in keeping with my experience, it would simply evaporate…”
Mary Di Michele

Hiatus from speaking treachery,
the live wire of muted understanding
a capable foe – a long pass in a grinding exchange,
the ending of a heartfelt
deliverance,

See Jane singing, see the clock
on the diseased wall recording.
Now a moment for the thoughts by which
you meant to swarm – now love a scrimmage
of fisheyes.

If I could take you to the source I would.
If there was feeling in the passage I’d name it.
Take what you can from this, it daftly could
disappear in an inevitable moment,
both of us on alert.

Humble beginnings for repartee.
I didn’t come here to tally yet
that’s all there’s here to do.
One more announcement from the belly –
ourselves knotted & straightening.

Love, that word,
we’re not about to dismiss it,
the landing place for fleece beguiling,
fantasy but all the appendages are real,
a hand lifted & the next song begins…

Dear Chicken,
Writing in response to your comments about making horror beautiful, I agree that horror should never be made palatable, digestible through beautiful delicate language. In Certainty, I felt that the delicacy of the language didn’t beautify the horror for me, rather it was deeply affecting because I felt it left a space for me as reader to put myself in the scene, to feel the consequences of the horror, particularly on the children, to imagine and feel. I don’t feel the beauty of the writing took away my sense of the waste and tragedy and horror of war. I feel that in a way Ani and Matthew still live on as images inside of me – as victims of the meaningless horror of war. The shooting of Matthew’s father, with him as witness, hiding, is still vivid in my imagination, as though I had seen it in a film. I think it’s because so much space was left, that I was able to feel as though I were right there, watching the scene closely, feeling myself right there with Matthew, with only his gestures expressing the unspeakable feelings.
I hope we get another chance to have a dialogue session with you before long.
Sincerely
Schachar

6 Degrees of Imagination
Tenor of Love – Mary Di Michelle
First book (up to pg 184)
Free-Basing
I had a fairly warm reaction to the text; I didn’t get sucked in though. I don’t like months and years passing with little hint of emotions felt during these periods. I could start to imagine some of the emotions but the characters felt cold and heartless as we don’t really get to understand them. Maybe it’s the frustration I feel for Rina making mistake after mistake after mistake and to be seemingly be trapped with the emotional intelligence of a 17 year old. Maybe as their rises to fame of the ability to leave children or to be unfaithful were treated as decisions or efforts you could muster up over a bowl of cereal.
It just doesn’t seem real. I feel like I should shake each character, tell them to be honest with themselves and each other and just get on with life. It’s as if they are all very rich successful children that need to be taught some manners and common decency.
I do want to finish the book, I want the characters to grow up, I want the fame to disappear and I want them to respect their families.
I sound like a priest now. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
It bugs me when naive decisions are made, when foresight is no further than the end of a shag, and wealth and fame are protecting and cushioning this foolishness.
OK, I’m done now, sermon over.
I don’t have a problem with infidelity. In fact I have a problem with fidelity. There’s seemingly no biological reason why we should get married and stay with the same partner, they just seem to be the norms the church has put in place.
I just think we should be more open. Rather than having a socially ‘normal’ framework behind which there is a web of lies and deceit.
Shut up controlled, now you lecture is getting on my nerves. I want to throw up.

I’ve always been intrigued by the experience of someone I know who attempted to do a B.A. in musicology at university. The 1st year theory & harmony course had the students of the various divisions of the department all together: composition, music therapy, performance, conducting, music education and musicology. In the 1st year course, students were given one-line melodies to analyze. A point would be given for every valid point made. None for bullshit or padding. One day the professor approached this person perplexed, telling him that he consistently got the highest marks in the class, on every assignment, and that not only did he always get the highest mark, but that consistently, the next highest mark was always well below, creating a large gap. The professor was mystified, because it didn’t make sense: the composers in the class should be getting the highest marks. The professor told this student that he should skip the rest of the 1st year class and go into the 2nd year’s more advanced class. The student did so, and it was a dismal failure. When it came to analyzing symphonies, he simply could not do it. He could simply not perceive structure. While listening to one movement, he could not relate it to those earlier, or later. Perception of structure eluded him when listening. What was missing was being able to take the necessary distance from the music to perceive structure and to have a critical, analytical appraisal of it. I’ve always wondered about that story, and about the various dynamics that lead people to perceive different art forms differently from each other. I was reading Anthony Storr’s “Music and the Mind” where he relates the art historian Wilhelm Worringer’s discussion of two ways, probably related to the personality’s tendency either to introversion or to extraversion, of approaching art (Storr considers this just as applicable to music, and I agree): Empathic identification with the music, making oneself one with it is one way. The other is approaching through abstraction, an aesthetic appreciation that involves discovering also form and order, which requires a degree of detachment from the work. Too much empathic identification with a musical work may make critical judgment impossible. In contrast, an exclusively intellectual, detached approach may make it difficult to appreciate the music’s emotional significance. I guess it’s a question of trying to develop the weaker ability in order to achieve some kind of balance, though probably one will always predominate. If I had another parallel life, this is an area I’d love to spend more time researching. Oliver Sacks’ descriptions of the direct impact of music on the brain, including even that of being able to cause in some patients epileptic fit, is absolutely fascinating. Now to learn something about jazz, a medium that has never felt very accessible to me.

Really enjoyed today’s session – though there was a bit of a rough patch. When I realized last night that today’s artist, Misstress Barbara, wrote the cover song I had such a negative reaction to (since I especially loved the original by Leonard Cohen) I felt some resistance to coming, and I wished I had remembered that these would be read out, while I was writing. I ended up admitting that I was the one who wrote the very negative comments, because given that I had had an exchange with her during break, and felt drawn to her, liked her very much, I would have felt somewhat 2-faced if I had not revealed it was me. For a while I felt misunderstood, as though I were in principle against novel arrangements of pre-existing music, but finally I think I was able to convey that this was not out of principle, but rather that all the various subtle elements of his singing and performing that song had powerful resonance for me, and that I couldn’t bear to hear it an any other context, but that I did not adhere to a global principle of this. Misstress Barbara said in response that I should have said that given that I was so attached to the original, I would not be able to participate in the exercise of stream of consciousness writing. I didn’t agree with her, but her response and others’ as well, made me realize that there was a lack of differentiation and discernment in the way I expressed my dislike in the writing. I had written that it was horrid, and a musical massacre. I expressed it as an objective statement about Misstress Barbara’s song, rather than as a subjective feeling about my own experience of her song. What I should have written, in order to be more accurate was – that it was a very negative experience for me – subjectively – rather than make statements about the music itself, about which I couldn’t be ojective. So the comments were well taken on that particular point. I didn’t differentiate between talking about something as though it were an objective appraisal, and owning my feelings as something purely subjective. So I appreciate being reminded of that. At the same time, it’s a stretch, as the first level of response for me is usually quite visceral, immediate, & emotional. It would require more time to get the distance and intellectual detachment necessary for being more accurate in expressing things. Not easy in stream of consciousness with limited time, but worth striving for.

I asked Albert how he started liking jazz, and he said that it was through hanging with the jazz artists, hearing them talk, understanding the spirit that motivated them. I couldn’t understand how that could be a way in, I had assumed it must be through studying and gradually increasing one’s ability to analyze the various elements, to hear more & more in the music. But I think I got a taste of how hearing the artist opened up the music more. I still want to do the other though, to balance out visceral affective responses with a more detached analytical approach.

Mille grazie Misstress Barbara for a very exciting and instructive dialogic session, and to Albert for providing these incredibly rich experiences.

Dr. Cornett’s Adventures in Jazzing if proving to be yet another extraordinary adventure in expanding my mind… this time about the world of music. In typical style, Dr. Cornett presents us with different facets of a particular domain. One thinks that one “knows” what jazz is, how it sounds or how it is supposed to sound, but in this class we are discovering that our expectations can be misleading and sometimes can even deprive one of some precious gems. That was the case during our dialogic session with Mistress Barbara. Is her music jazz or is it not? I did not think so, but I am far from being an authority on the subject, just that it didn’t “sound” like jazz. What I did discover though is a whole world I was not really aware of; a world that has its own language, reference points and distinctions… which cannot be categorized easily in a box. I found her amazingly refreshing, straightforward, proud about what she does and disarmingly honest. She is clearly passionate about “techno” music and she is not afraid to admit that she is constantly evolving and growing. I particularly want to make a comment about the discussion we had concerning her cover song of a Leonard Cohen classic. I want to tell you Mistress Barbara that I LOVE the fact you did a completely different version of his song because I personally DO NOT LIKE LEONARD COHEN’s singing, and therefore have not really listened to some of the work he recorded. I do appreciate his poetry, but not his voice and because of that I’m missing out. So Mistress Barbara’s version is interesting to me BECAUSE it’s different. You may have lost some fans throughout your evolution, but you’ve gained a new one in me. Thank you for a wonderfully entertaining & insightful conversation.