JOCELYNE CHAPUT - FILM EDITOR
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words I needed

11/24/2016

 
 This is precisely the time when artists go to work.There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art. 

- Toni Morrison, read entire text here

exceptional journalism from the NYtimes

9/1/2016

 
I'm blown away by the recent piece Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart, a chronicle years in the making, presented as an entire issue of NYTimes Magazine. In terms of form I am reminded of a documentary approach, i.e. following different people in different locations for years (reminiscent of 'Iraq in Fragments'). Beyond observation, the piece provides an illuminating roadmap for those like me who need to be reminded of certain 5 Ws e.g. an overview of the Kurds, of the Arab Spring, of US involvement... I learned more about conflicts in the Middle East from this single piece than I have from traditional reporting. The whole functions as a constellation of sorts, where lines between events become more clear while ultimately pointing to the overwhelming scale of things.  I got my hands on the print version and wish it had been bound into a solid book. It deserves to be. 

making space for insects: not a bad idea

7/26/2016

 
Picture
from 'The Pearl', by John Steinbeck
Picture
the second shot in 'The Look of Silence', by Joshua Oppenheimer

as we near summer, I stumble into a snowstorm

6/10/2016

 
Picture
from 'Snow Falling on Cedars', by David Guterson
Such vivid writing! And thanks to Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, we can appreciate it all the more. A few of his  5000+ photomicrographs below. Some originals were on display at the BAMPFA's 'Architecture of Life'.
Picture

Anne Carson laments empty pools

5/4/2016

 
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from the short story '1 = 1' , in NewYorker 01/11/2016
Here is a perfect companion photo I took.

flashback to the sign I faced the many times I waited for the bus

4/10/2016

 
Picture
Sign by Raymond Boisjoly. Photo from Catriona Jeffries Gallery.
This was on Hastings St in Vancouver. The sign is no longer there, nor the gallery below it.
Link to this work on website of Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

giant birds in Brobdingnag

4/9/2016

 
I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe in those solitary walks that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard’s distance, looking for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them.  I remember a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand with his bill a piece of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast.
- Lemuel Gulliver, in Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'

The stresses on precision. Such certainty!

4/4/2016

 
The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
​- Johannes Kepler
If I call stones blue it is because blue is the precise word, believe me, and be equally assured that the color of stones can be very well distinguished by starlight.
- Gustave Flaubert, translated from French ("Si je mets bleues après pierres, c'est que bleues est le mot juste, croyez-moi, et soyez également persuadé que l'on distingue très bien la couleur des pierres à la clarté des étoiles")

another type of cabin in the woods, described by Alice Munro

4/2/2016

 
"Shops, to these [shop owners], are what a cabin in the woods might be to somebody else - a refuge and a justification"
​- Alice Munro, from the short story "The Albanian Virgin"

a superb short doc by a teenager living in a refugee camp

2/1/2016

 

a satisfying pairing of two passages from Murakami's 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' 

1/18/2016

 
Picture
*this one reminds me of film editing...
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*... and this one is like watching a film.

"an enigma hiding in plain sight" in San Francisco

12/6/2015

 
I was lucky to catch Jennifer Castle performing at the Hemlock Tavern this past September. I've been meaning to write a post about her because she is one of my favorite singer-songwriters working/touring today. Stuart Berman at Pitchfork says it better than I can:
Jennifer Castle is an enigma hiding in plain sight. On the surface, she’s a Canadian singer/songwriter like so many others, often performing with just a guitar and a stool, singing songs that conjure bygone country, folk, and blues traditions and that are lyrically steeped in richly detailed agrarian scenery and the travails of being a working mom. But Castle’s music is not so much of the earth as floating above it, untethered to the natural order of time and space and often eschewing typical verse/chorus/verse structure to roam according to its own wandering spirit. As Lou Reed famously sang, “between thought and expression lies a lifetime,” and that’s where Jennifer Castle’s songs live—that grey area where observation mutates into rumination, and where the physical world dissolves into psychic terrain.
​http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19652-jennifer-castle-pink-city/
Alone on the tiny backroom stage with her semi-acoustic guitar, she plunged us into the vibrant world I had previously encountered through her recordings. I highly recommend any of her LPs. Her latest, Pink City, is one of those records I keep going back to on cold nights with warm lighting. Here is a song (and video) from that record:

a bird in Newark Airport in the prose of Joyce Carol Oates

10/24/2015

 
Picture
From the short story 'A Brutal Murder in a Public Place' by Joyce Carol Oates, found in McSwenney's 37.

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