Rest In Peace Nelly Arcan.

A Quebec author who published Putain and Folle. She passed away a month ago.
I don't know much about her but I wish she hadn't died. And I wish I hadn't initially heard about her through the news of her death.
I know these statements could be seen as volatile. I don't mean any disrespect towards her at all.

New Title Photo.

After 10 months I decided to change the title photo from Jeff Wall's After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue to the above.

Although no one mentioned it, I had a small amount of doubt and embarrassment regarding my use of Wall's photo...in my more cynical moments it felt like I was using his image to brag of my creative prowess, due to the numerous light bulbs hanging above the lone male figure sitting in his apartment.
This wasn't my intention when I first used it as the title; I was in the midst of discovering Wall's photography at the time and I thought After Invisible Man was the most striking piece. And for the art critics who want to pan my former decision based on how I'm attracted to flash more than subtle genius and who want to call 'pearls before swine'...don't.

So now I've switched to another photo I found just as memorable.
I should mention it's not a slight to those who work in cubicles. You might see the great expanse around the desk as a testament to a novelist's creativity, a stark contrast to the labour performed in cubicles...at least that's the stereotype.
It's not true, I don't believe in it. I've just always had an affinity for void warehouses (or devoid, depending on their history...but preferably void). The desk and computer reflect my own lifestyle, but my desk is a fraction of the size and I use a laptop. My desk also doesn't carry as much of an office motif as the one in the photo does. I don't have tape, for instance.
And the fact that nobody's sitting at the desk is an eerie reflection of how I'm not spending as much time as I should on my next novel.

Here were my other choices for the title photo...


This is the Cave of Crystals underneath the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico. You can read about it here.


This is bismuth crystal. There's a copy of this photo that's larger which I almost ended up using...it fit well onto the screen, but the standard black lines on the screen which hold the title photo were sticking out too sloppily to look professional.


Although I really like the snow and power grid in this photo because it reminds me a lot of my childhood, in the end I felt it was another standard sunset photo. Reverberations of what Oscar Wilde wrote about the sunset being too obvious to truly be considered beautiful (which I don't agree with) invaded my thoughts. But I still might use it in the future.


Rest in Peace Roc Raida. I saw him for the first time in Mixtape, definitely impressive.

Draft Collective Reading Series 2009

I was at the Draft Collective reading yesterday afternoon. With only three minutes on the mic (like the other three readers besides me), I read a small selection from Disassociation. The first three photos were graciously taken by Christina Clapperton, who's getting a selection from her upcoming novel published in an anthology entitled Canadian Voices, which comes out November. You can find her website here.









That's a disco ball in the upper middle of the above photo. Is it just me, or can you see a face in it? It looks ominous and smarmy.

These next pictures are of the same reading, but taken from my own camera by one of the coordinators of the event. I'm reluctant to put these up because I also put them on Facebook, and since they're contributing (more or less) to the career I'm hoping to forge I'm wondering if Facebook is going to claim some absurd copyright infringement and demand money from me in the future. I'm not being paranoid; these really are the backwards technological times my generation has to claw and flail through. I've done extensive research into social networking privacy issues and I'm still not entirely sure. But I guess I'll risk it.





There's mysterious occurrences in these photos. I'm pretty sure that black bat-like form in the middle of the above image is a blurry side view of the head moderator coming up on stage to let me know the time. You can't see me reading in either of the photos, but I like them nonetheless...


I was also at the Word on the Street Festival this year, and although I took some pictures they aren't anything worthwhile; it was more me meeting different magazine editors and publishers instead of anything photo-worthy.

The Canadian Authors Association meeting is on the 15th, so hopefully I'll be able to attend it if my new part-time factory job permits. Yes, I work part-time, and go to university, and write, and maintain my apartment's cleanliness and take care of my health and my cat's health as well.