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Kyo Maclear Kids

Messy Things Blog

Sep 12 2012
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Upcoming Events

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October 11, 2012
WordFest
9:30AM. “First Calgary Financial Book Rapport (Gr.1-3).”
Children’s event with Mélanie Watt.
(John Dutton Theatre, Calgary Public Library.)

October 11, 2012
WordFest
1:00PM. Visit to Douglasdale School.

October 12, 2012
WordFest
9:00AM. Visit to East Grey Elementary.

October 13, 2012
WordFest
11:00AM. “Family Reading Circle.”
Children’s event with Jeremy Tankard.
(Fish Creek Library, Calgary.)

October 13, 2012
WordFest
3:30PM. “Exile and Exodus.”
Reading and discussion with Vaddey Ratner and Kim Scott.
(Vertigo Theatre Centre, Studio, Calgary.)

October 14, 2012
WordFest
11:00AM. “The Ties that Bind.”
Reading and discussion with Shree Ghatage, Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Vincent Lam, and J. Jill Robinson.
(The Banff Centre, The Kinnear Centre -KC 203, Banff.)

October 15, 2012
Vancouver International Writers Festival
6PM. Annual Literati Gala.
(Fairmont Waterfront.)

October 16, 2012
Vancouver International Writers Festival
8:00PM. “Grand Openings: The Alma Lee Opening Night Event.”
Reading with Rawi Hage, Marie Darrieussecq, Junot Díaz, Nuruddin Farah, Simonetta Agnello Hornby and Gail Jones.
(Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright Street.)

October 18, 2012
Vancouver International Writers Festival
10:00PM. “High and Low and All Around.”
Children’s event with Sheree Fitch.
(Improv Centre, Vancouver.)

October 27, 2012
International Festival of Authors
2:00PM. Reading with Bill Gaston, Rawi Hage, and Tanis Rideout
(Lakeside Terrace, Harbourfront.)

October 28, 2012
International Festival of Authors
2:00PM. Roundtable (Reading Like a Writer) with James Clarke, Christine Pountney and Susan Swan. Antanas Sileika hosts and moderates.
(Lakeside Terrace, Harbourfront.)

November 8, 2012
Brampton Public Library and the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA).
7:00 PM. Public talk.

November 16-18, 2012.
Salon du Livre de Montréal.
More details to come.

February 7, 2013.
The Eighth Annual Book Lover’s Ball.
(The Fairmont Royal York, Toronto.)

March 19, 2013
Heliconian Club Literary Lecture Series.
7:30PM. Public talk.
(Toronto Heliconian Club, 35 Hazelton Avenue.)

March 27, 2013
The Kama Reading Series. (Fundraiser for World Literacy Canada.)
6:30PM. Reading with Safia Fazlul, Eva Stachniak, and Richard B. Wright.
(The Park Hyatt Toronto.)

Sep 05 2012
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Listening to John Cage

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I’ve had a few Cage moments this year—riding the subway in New York City, standing at a busy Toronto intersection, staying on a beach in Halfmoon Bay. In each case, I’ve been swept up by aural happenstance. Strange music in the urban unquiet, accidental symphonies in the wild open air. From bicycle bells to persistent cicadas, I was suddenly hearing all the things I don’t hear because I’m too busy.

The other day I saw a friend who works in the social services sector. “All my life I’ve felt that I need to talk and dole out advice,” she said. “This summer I decided to do something different. I decided to just stop and listen.”

What does it take to listen without conducting or interfering? The writer in me often wants to speak her piece. But lately I’ve also been heeding the counter-voice that says “Shhhh.” You know, the wise voice that says: “Listen. Receive. Don’t be so quick to declare, to offer, to prefer, to make, to fix, to do. Let go of your small mind.” (Yeah, that voice.)

All of which to say: What better way to celebrate John Cage‘s 100th birthday today than in silence, for four minutes, thirty-three seconds?

What better way to remember than to be part of that Cage-ian gesture of listening, stretching across time, holding a space for other living and breathing (and coughing and snorting) beings? As the anarchic genius himself once advised: “Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire.”

(Photo: David Tudor and John Cage in Japan, 1962. Photographer unknown.)

Jul 31 2012
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Remembering Chris Marker (1920-2012)

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As many others this morning, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Chris Marker. He was such a notoriously private man, so playfully elusive, he loomed so large in my mind, that I was shocked to see a photograph of him in the newspaper. Could it be that Chris Marker was a mere mortal? In all the years that I had followed his work (from Sans Soleil to The Koumiko Mystery and beyond), how could I have gathered so little biographical information about him? (What I “knew” before today: He worked with Alain Resnais on Night and Fog. He named himself after a magic marker.) Now I have a bit more data (thanks to the obituaries) but none of it changes the essentials: Marker was a brilliant shapeshifter, an artistic visionary, a true anticolonial globalist. Throughout my twenties, he was very important to me. I rushed to see his films whenever they were screened (too seldomly) at Cinemateque. I even used his work as a litmus test for potential boyfriends. I will forever hold him in my pantheon of inspirations and mavericks. Chris Marker may have been a mere mortal but he was one that aggrandized my notions of what it means to be a creative and empathetic person.

“Things that Quicken the Heart” (for Chris Marker):

1. Art that is ostensibly about one thing (i.e. African art) but really about another (i.e. French colonialism). See—Statues Also Die.

2. Any filmmaker who bravely wears his/her heart and politics on his/her sleeve. (“Trying to give the floor to people who haven’t got it, and, when possible, to help them to find their means of expression.”)

3. The Narita Airport protest scene in Sans Soleil. (A man I knew appears for a brief moment.)

4. Any artist who knows that digression and free association are not simply formal strategies but are ultimately ways of reaching beyond the known and sanctified to the mysterious and marginalized.

5. The moment in The Koumiko Mystery when Chris Marker (in Tokyo for the ’64 Olympics) settles his camera on a face in the stadium crowd, that of a young Japanese woman named Koumiko.

6. Any artist who loves cats enough to use one as his surrogate. (See—Agnès Varda’s The Beaches of Agnes.)

7. Any filmmaker who is admiring and grateful enough to create paeans to peer filmmakers. See—A.K.: Akira Kurosawa and One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch: Andrei Tarkovsky.

8.

(Photos: Still from La Jetée; portrait of Chris Marker.)

Jul 25 2012
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Final Flourish

By Blog, Uncategorized

Many years ago, I worked in an arthouse cinema as a popcorn girl and one of the perks of the job were the free movies I was allowed to watch. One film I remember watching again and again was a beautiful biography of James Baldwin called The Price of the Ticket. According to the film, Baldwin was known to write late into the night, and often in the midst of boozy socializing. One evening, Baldwin’s lover sauntered into his study just as Baldwin was typing “THE END” (to Another Country). Just imagine: six letters to cap off HUNDREDS of pages and YEARS of work. Was there fanfare? Did Baldwin run victory laps around the room? Apparently not. Baldwin simply added the final page to his pile and when he was satisfied, he stood up and rejoined the party. When I heard this story, I thought: I’d like to be like that. I’d like my work to unfold without fuss, to exist amid the flow of the world. I would like to be a relaxed but firm finisher.

I was recently reminded of Baldwin when I saw this video.

Just watch how Glenn Gould finishes a performance. Watch his final hand movement, the way he snatches his fingers back from the keyboard as he reaches the end. If you watch other Gould performances, you will see the same shocking confidence and definitive stop. In some cases, his hand gesture is so dramatic and reflexive it is as if he has just experienced an electric shock, or been burned by the accumulated heat of his performance. For a queasy finisher such as myself, Gould’s certainty inspires awe and envy and gives me something to aspire to. One day I will end something firmly, with a bold flourish and maybe even some happy off-key humming! Until then, here’s to joyful and wonky beginnings…

For more thoughts on endings, see here and here.

Jul 09 2012
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Kindly Surrender: Thoughts on Collaboration

By Blog

I love collaboration. Collaboration is a window flung open to the skies. It’s a bulwark against stasis, a kind surrender to the unexpected. No matter how much I may enjoy working alone (toiling away in my dingy garret), collaboration reminds me to keep the windows open and let the light and air through. No one thrives in solitary confinement. My creative introverted brain is always replenished by outside visitors.

As a picture book writer, I have come to await that moment when I must relinquish my story. I have come to await it not as someone anticipating the end of something but as someone rushing towards the beginning.

Here is something I have discovered. A good collaborator will decorate your ideas and prettify your pages. A great collaborator will take your unfinished notions and put them through a process of enhancement and enchantment so astonishing that, by the end, they’ll have whisked you off to an even-better invented world.

I count my lucky stars that I have been blessed with great collaborators. Both Isabelle Arsenault and Matte Stephens make art that balances sophistication with playfulness, and cleverness with heart. Matte’s particular approach is to take familiar objects and people, and re-arrange them in surreal and delightful ways that are not obvious at all. Isabelle, widely celebrated for her beautiful depth of detail, has a terrific knack for using white space, a lot of white space, active white space. She has taught me that the best illustrations give room for, rather than confine, the imagination of the reader.

Isabelle and I have done two books together. In both instances, I have watched her move from initial sketches and mood boards to finished art. I have seen her go and live inside a story, exploring the emotional intricacies of a scene with a focus that might make some wonder if she was applying the Stanislavsky Method to illustration. Her intuition astounds me. She often seems more attentive to the inner workings of my stories than I am.

Here’s an example. There is a revelatory moment at the end of Virginia Wolf where Virginia is transformed from a wolf back into a girl. Isabelle used a clever visual trick involving silhouetted wolf ears and a large bow. Let me just say that I did not write or foresee this transition at all. Isabelle found it inside the story and, happily for everyone, it has become the crowning touch of the whole book.

This is the kind of out-of-the-blue magic that happens when you collaborate: you hand your collaborator a cube and they give you a dodecahedron in return. When you loosen your hold on a work, a communal form of talent takes over. There is room for anything to happen.

Reprinted from Uppercase Magazine, issue 14. Order it now to get a heartful serving of work and words by über-illustrators Matte Stephens, Isabelle Arsenault, Agata Dudek, Jon Klassen, Oliver Jeffers and more!

(Photos: Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss; Jeanne-Claude and Christo in the early days.)

Jul 05 2012
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A Soft Spot

By Blog, Uncategorized

For years I grew up watching my stoic, practical father—a reporter of steely nerves—lapse into spontaneous moments of sentimentality over felines. How cats came to occupy this special place in my father’s heart only became clear much later, when I learned that as a child of four he was placed in foster care. On his first day, terrified by his situation, he hid in an outhouse, vowing to stay inside “forever”—oh the steely will of young children!—only to be distracted moments later from his oath by a curious meowing and scratching at the door.

When he shared this memory with me—a memory that included a vivid description of the black cat he befriended that day—it flew in the face of the image I held of my father as somehow having bypassed childhood, having entered the world as a fully-formed adult. It also explained the heightened affection I had watched him show towards every cat he ever met.

Many of us have cats (and/or dogs) in our lives. They mince or scamper around our homes. They watch and witness, and soften us if we let them. They bring out the silly and playful when life piles on top of us. They calm our nerves when we are fretful and structure our days when we are at loose ends. Shaggy Muses by Maureen Adams explores the role dogs played in the lives of five famous women authors “whose lives were more difficult than we would ever have imagined.” From Emily Dickinson to Virginia Woolf, Adams goes so far as to suggest that English literature would be considerably bereft without the supporting presence of these furry companions.

Like several of the writers featured in Shaggy Muses, my father has never been a fan of humans, whom he generally considers a source of supreme disillusionment. (Nothing like being a war reporter to put you in touch with the baser and unwise sides of human nature.) Given the choice, my father will always side with animals—his annual donations to animal causes being one expression of his preference, the plethora of cat-themed cards in our family being another. And why not root for them? As far as I know, no cat has ever been guilty of screwing up the world.

My father’s extreme kitty-love, his utter mushiness in the face of random alley cats, may be odd but it reminds me that it’s in our nature to be vulnerable. We all have a soft spot, apparent to us or not. Among Buddhists, the soft spot is seen as both a wound that has never fully healed and a breach in our emotional armour, a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re fearful or defensive. I think a soft spot is what makes a person love-able, as in “able to love.” I would never underestimate anything that could bring a scared child to open a door, or that could make a grown man be bravely and demonstratively feeling.

(Photos: Jean Paul Sartre with “Nothing” and Edward Gorey with “Harp, Brown and Company.”)

Jun 17 2012
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On Being Human

By Blog, Uncategorized

I have been thinking lately about the idea of daily practice. And by daily practice I mean the simple and habitual actions we take everyday with some degree of commitment and awareness (as opposed to empty habit or stupor). We all have several of these practices, don’t we? If I were to list my own, they might, on a good day, include: writing, reading, yoga, cooking, mothering, et cetera. But lately I’ve been realizing that all these mini-actions are really just subsets of a canopy practice, and by this I mean, the meta-practice of being human. (How to exist? Where to begin each new day?)

Excerpted from The Beauty is Relentless. To read my complete text, please order a copy here. The book is a great introduction to the art of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby—two very brave and creative humans.

Jun 15 2012
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The Art of Gleaning

By Blog, Uncategorized

Several mornings a week, a woman comes by our house to go through our recycling bin. She is hunting for bottles that can be turned into cash that can be turned into food. Her rattling cart and carrier bags are full of salvaged scraps. Seeing this woman, I often wonder if it’s possible to live on the leftovers of others.

This question was at the front of my mind today. For several summers now we have been lucky to have a group of wonderful men and women drop by our house to harvest our giant cherry tree. Not Far From The Tree has built a community around the activity of gleaning and distributing fruit in our city. The harvest is shared three-ways: between the tree owner, the volunteers, and local food banks/community kitchens. This morning after an hour or more of picking, they left us with this magical yield of luscious fruit.

I am so inspired by our city’s gleaners. As a model of creativity, gleaning is humble and practical, ephemeral and generous. It gives value to what is not considered valuable. It is a reminder of our fundamental interdependence. All it takes is the sight of a person foraging through a bin, a glimpse of a “dumpster diver,” “trash picker,” or “freegan,” to illustrate our cycles of waste and surplus. Scarcity is a lie. There is enough to go around. More is not always better.

“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time….[T]he proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things.”— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.”

Click here to read some gleaning stories, and here to watch Agnès Varda’s brilliant film on the subject.

Jun 07 2012
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Fourchon News

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Isabelle and I received nice news today from La Pastèque. Fourchon (the French translation of Spork) is a finalist for the Prix Jeunesse des Libraires du Québec. The award will be announced on September 22, 2012.

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