Postal Strikes and Existential Crisis(es)

To My Youngers,

So the post office went on strike last Friday. Not the old-fashioned sandwich-board, oil-drum-fire, scabber-filled, country-stalling general strikes of old, but instead a rolling strike meant to (hopefully) inconvenience us enough to (hopefully) make a point. I’m still trying to decide if it will be (has been?) effective at either.

My favourite response to this ‘whole ordeal’ (if we can even call it an ordeal at all…) was a friend’s facebook status: “Oh no! A Canada Post strike!? That will totally affect my daily life. Just like when the typewriter factory went on strike and all the monocle franchises shut down.”  I think it pretty perfectly sums up the first reaction of your average Canadian (right down to the self-effacing take on so called ‘important things’). I found the post pretty durn funny, but I don’t really know how I feel about the strike itself... A few people responded with good reasons why they were upset about it (not receiving pay cheques, trouble invoicing or mailing out merch) but on the whole everyone seemed to agree- Not only was this rolling strike not really going to affect most of us, it is just downright humerous.

I myself bemoaned having to use a fax machine to send some government-type forms (like being forced to watch a movie on Betamax), but in all honestly, I was a little sad that I wasn’t more upset at the temporary (if spottily temporary) inability to send actual physical things through the mail. I can be a bit of a neo-luddite at times- I own three typewriters, a super-8 projector, a tape deck, and a collapsible overhead machine. I love old things. I love old technologies. I love winding film, and watching for cigarette burns, and setting type by hand. But I also love being able to talk to my cousin on skype even though he lives halfway across the world. I love being able to take my entire music collection with me anywhere I go. I love viewing vlogbrothers videos and being inspired by my modern metropolis. I love being able to watch Dr Who the day its aired on BBC and not having to wait weeks and weeks to borrow a tape of it recorded off of a friend’s Space channel… I’m sitting on a cliff on an island in the middle of a lake, writing this on my laptop and posting it online- Can I really simultaneously do that and mourn the loss of the importance of the postal service?

Is it possible for us to still value a method of communication (in the original sense of the word, everything from roads to photographs, to mail, to texting) if it ceases to be the most useful method? Is there an actual place in the world for things that no longer have a use? The obvious answer, logically speaking is ‘no,’ but that just doesn’t seem to be right. What about Art, and Film, and Music, and Literature? What about Bicycles? What about Chocolate? What about… everything that makes life interesting? But how do we tell what’s what- what’s worth keeping and what just isn’t?

I think that the rolling postal strike has made a point, but I’m not sure that it was the point they were trying to make. Maybe we are at a place where physical mail just isn’t really needed anymore.  Maybe my former thoughts on importance and usefulness are antiquated and no longer reflect my view of the world. But the idea of not having a National Mail Service makes me pretty sad, just like the idea of closing down all the typewriter factories and monocle shops. But what if their time has simply come, and all the being-sad-about-it in the world isn’t going to stop anything.

Then again, vinyl hasn’t sold this well in over thirty years…

-E

Capturing Time - Modern Art and the Interconnectedness of Everything

To My Youngers,

Though I've lived here for almost five months, I had yet to make it to the Art Gallery before last week. Wandering around the Modern Art wing all of those old familiar feelings came rushing back- joy, excitement, glee, wonder, and -possibly most importantly- connectedness.

I know that a lot of  people don't like Modern Art, they don't feel like they 'get' it, or like its just a waste of time. They look for reasons, they look for facts, they look at how much money was spent, or how much it doesn't look like a photograph. They say to me (or to whomever will listen) "What the hell is it supposed to be!?!? I mean I could paint that!" not even aware that their difficulty with 'understanding' Modern Art is in the questions they are asking. It is not that what but the why that is important. Why did the artist choose to create what s/he did? Why did they choose to show it to us like this? Why does it matter to them (or to me)?

As we walked past painting after painting, sculpture after sculpture, I found myself telling stories about the artists, desperately trying to explain (expose? unearth? explore?) what they were trying to convey- not an absolute thing, but an idea, an intangible feeling or thought, difficult to picture in words or capture in traditional ways.

Further into the maze of rooms we happened upon a lonely Giacometti sculpture sitting amongst a slew of Impressionist paintings. Seemingly sad and morose, it stood out against the cheerful canvases, awash in glowing colours and lively brush strokes.

Giacometti is my absolute all-time favorite sculptor. His pieces make me feel like I'm seeing a part of the world that is usually invisible. Its what I'm trying to do when I draw things- anything- trying to capture a moment, trying to capture the invisibility of time, of existence. Not in a big metaphysical way, not like I'm trying to be groundbreaking or incredibly innovative- just for me. So that I have something to remember, some proof that there was something intangible, some way to hold on to the whistling.

 

Giacometti Sketchbook Cover Drawing -EJamieson2011

I once wrote an essay on Giacometti for a university Art History class. I don't really know how good the finished product was, but I do know that the writing of it was a life changing experience for me- Discovering that there were others who felt the same way as I did when they looked at Giacometti's work, people who felt like they were seeing into the ether, they were seeing the space, seeing it. One author, Peter Selz, put it so succinctly and beautifully that, for me, his words are now inseparable from the art. He described Giacometti's sculptures as "barely able to withstand the onslaught of the void," a tangible representation of how we live in the physical world. As if all the space had been squeezed out of us and all that was left was still holding together, beautiful, and magical and just a little bit sad.

I know that a lot of  people don't like Modern Art, they don't feel like they 'get' it, or like its just a waste of time. It used to make me sad. It used to make me angry. Now I just hope that there are other ways in which they see the things that can't be seen, and stay stuck together against the onslaught of the void.

-E