What I consider the greater crime, however, is the culture of wear-down that perpetuates this cycle.  How many terrific, smart, passionate people get so worn down by the demands, expectations, disappointments, losses, and low-income of a career in the community and non-profit sector that we lose them after a few years, with a net loss to the community of invaluable experience, momentum, and expertise?  As people interested in the health and vibrancy of our community, it’s poor behaviour to demand that our volunteers and employees sacrifice their own to the cause.

Whenever I hear the adjective “tireless” applied to a community worker, hear jovial references to their round-the-clock presence at the office, see their time and work undervalued, I worry about the future of the organization they work for.  It’s a process of attrition, a death by a thousand cuts.  The fall may be slow, but it’s inevitable.

A community’s greatest asset is its skilled workers; protect yourself, and the important work you do, by avoiding the pitfalls.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, having been involved in the community sector a long time, and often fallen into the traps described above.  As paid staff, volunteer, and Board member, I’ve both asked too much and been asked too much.  There’s not a mistake on this list I haven’t made myself, sometimes over and again.  So, as much to remind myself as to educate anyone else, here are seven strategies for making a positive difference in both your own life, and that of the community!

1. Know why you’re joining the organization.

Yes, it looks good on a resume to say you sat on a Board of Directors or volunteer, but are you prepared to do the work?  To pay close attention to the financial spreadsheets?  To ask questions, and challenge more established people when you have doubts or concerns? To do more than to merely show up?  Sitting there mouth closed and eyes glassy does no one any good, whether you’re a ticket-taker or a member-at-large.

2. Know you have the time to devote to the organization.

You see something you feel is important, and you want to help, and before you know it you’ve committed yourself to a major role without stopping to see if there’s room in your year for another commitment.  Too many times we spread ourselves too thin to be of any use to anyone, and achieve less because we aim for more.

3. Understand and share the goals of the organization you’re joining.

An argument about what route to take from here to Toronto is resolvable, but when they want to get to Toronto and you want to get to Mumbai, there’s no way to reconcile except by force.   There can be as many goals in any given organization as there are people and ideas; read the bylaws, vision, mandate and goals of the organization and find out when those were last reviewed and how often they’re referred to by the Board.  If the group hasn’t looked at them in a few years, or they seem unfocused or unreasonable or don’t represent the current organization or your own goals, steer clear.

4. Be honest and upfront; provide and review information.

By supporting your information and experience with confidence, and being familiar with the issues at hand, you clear the way for reasonable debate and informed decision-making.  The habits of making decisions in the heat of the moment, folding to peer pressure, charismatic persuasion, or the desire to avoid responsibility or confrontation can become endemic to an organization and pretty much always result in poor leadership and bad management.

5. Be firm in defence of your own time, health, and sanity.  Be firm in the defence of other people’s time, health, and sanity.

As an employee, be sure that your understanding of your hours and your boss’/Board’s understanding of your hours is firm – most non-profits expect their staff to work more than they’re being paid for, or demand more than is possible in the time available, which is a certain recipe for burnout.  As a volunteer, particularly a Board member, make sure that what you and other volunteers are asking of each other and your employees is reasonable and conforms to existing labour laws (you’d be surprised at how many community organizations have no clue about employee rights).  Steer your organization towards a stable working environment; try to find ways to offer benefits, decent pay, and reasonable expectations to employees.

6. Choose your battles carefully; outline your strategy to the people you work with.

Organizations, like individuals, are likely to over-extend themselves.  Is it more important to run a fund-raising event or write a grant?  Which items of your programming are most essential and important and which are continued due more to tradition or habit than demonstrable impact?  Is the org accomplishing what it exists to do? Assess the work you’re doing, and try to focus on the  strategies which best support the goals of the organization.  Withdraw from commitments or programming which take more than they give back, even if it means a loss of funding.  Consult with your team, create a strategy, and maintain a dialogue so that everyone involved in the organization and served by it can access and understand the choices that are being made.

7. Monitor your own engagement.

Sure, you started out passionate, committed, and invested, but that was then.  Have your goals changed since you’ve gotten involved with the organization?  Do you find yourself less interested in this work than you were?  Do you think your time would be better spent elsewhere? Don’t feel guilty about withdrawing if you’re no longer engaged in the work; some people can sustain 25 years of interest and passion, but they’re in the minority.  Change when you need to.

So it’s not news that the big guys, be they record labels or tv stations or newspapers or media conglomerates, have lost their game and can’t seem to get it back.  Talking to an acquaintance who works on the fringes of a major record label, I hear the same worn-out melodrama – piracy is ruining everything.  I was surprised that anyone still thinks so; certainly, none of the musicians I’ve spoken to seem to be worrying about piracy – in fact, most of the smart ones are giving songs away for free.  The more I look around, the more I see the big labels and the media that serves them as impediments to success, unless the planets align and you happen to be one of the slender minority of mega-stars that they’re willing to push.

That model – a few large corporations controlling the major distribution outlets for all culture – is fairly recent.  And like any system that relies on too little diversity, it’s hugely vulnerable as the world around it shifts and develops.  Just as nature develops new and nasty diseases to attack factory farms, human technology develops to attack factory culture.  Old media have managed to keep a stranglehold on the mainstream through a number of new technologies, but perhaps (a girl can dream) their slow-moving monoliths are no match for the flexibility and adaptability of the internet.  

Conan O’Brien, as part of his exit deal, agreed to stay off tv for a few months while Fox consolidates its audience for a renewed Jay Leno Tonight Show, a move that makes sense in the old media paradigm.  They don’t want Conan mocking them from a platform like The Daily Show, or stoking the furnaces of the internet love/hate machine.  They want to slow his momentum in the only way they know how; by keeping him off of the airwaves.  But while he can’t appear on television, Conan’s not about to sit and stew; he’s got the momentum of the internet behind him, and he’s channelling it into a terrific idea -  a live tour.

I’m not excited because I want to go to these shows myself – I’ve never been a fan of big-venue shows, and I can’t seeing myself queuing with a gazillion other people for the chance to see a tiny Conan O’Brien be funny at a distance of several parking lots.  But I think it’s exciting, because it’s so smart,  so progressive.  In this brave new world, you can only really sell what can’t be easily controlled or duplicated by a third party – essentially, yourself, your physical presence, the things you’ve worked on with your own hands.

I know I’ve gone on about this before, but it excites me.  North America has spent a good couple of decades huddled in our homes in front of glowing boxes, and while I love tv and the internet, they’re never, ever going to get close enough to touch my love for live performance.  As someone who goes out and sees a lot of shows, be it theatre, dance or music, I know I’m in the minority, and I think it’s a damn shame.  I believe humans crave connection; we’re herd animals, and anyone who’s ever been to (or run) a good music venue or  festival can attest that the music is only about a quarter of the equation, the hook that gets people interacting in a space together.  I think that, as a culture over the past 30 years, we’ve forgotten how much we crave and are inspired by face-to-face interaction.

So to see a tv star with the sort of name recognition of Conan O’Brien setting himself up to be with his fans in live, physical spaces around the world, it fills me with hope.  I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of this sort of thing in the future, as bigger stars start to pull away from old-media ideas and conditions and start moving into the future – a future where those large, central cultural clearing-houses crumble and make way for smaller, regional groups that can connect with the world with fewer resources.  Watching OK Go leave EMI this week, and Conan hit the road for a live tour, it seems like a great time for those of us who long for diversity in our culture, who don’t love the monoculture of the big media outlets, and who understand the importance of the experience of live art.

It is, honestly, an exciting time to be down at the grass roots, a hopeful time to be an artist.  We don’t get a lot of that, so I’m going to celebrate.

Okay, I have a lot of theories, and I try the patience of my long-suffering friends by expounding on them, often over whiskey (neat), sometimes while one or another of those long-suffering friends keeps me from plunging sideways into a bonfire or through a coffee table.  Even when generously marinated in Ireland’s finest, I exhibit perspicacity and blarney than amuses more often than it angers.  At least, that’s how I choose to  remember it in the clear light of day.  It is the only explanation for my continued rescue from the fate that awaits those who are unrestrained in both consumption of whiskey and expression of half-baked opinions, though perhaps I should give more credit to the kind natures and loving hearts of my friends.

But this is one pet theory I’ve cherished for almost a decade, and I think it’s ready for the slightly more public forum of the world wide web.  I’m not sure the world – and, in particular, Canadians – are ready for this; it’s controversial, it’s going to inflame strong opinions and, no doubt, passionate debate.  So, before I go on, I implore you to keep it civil in the comments.

My friends in the United States may not be aware of this, but in Canada, ‘north’ is a place the is completely subject to interpretation.  To some people, mostly Torontonians, I live in the north, even though I’m actually more eastish in relation to them.  To me, Sudbury and North Bay is the real, no-foolin’ north (it even says so in the name), and Thunder Bay has true northiness.  But what I rarely stop to consider (and I think my southern Ontario neighbours are with me on this one), is that most of Canada is north of all of the places I’ve named, and that actually none of them are even north of the 49th parallel.  Kapuskasing mocks the northiness of Thunder Bay, and Nunvavut sits secure in the knowledge of being the northest of us all.

So, to simplify; people think we’re all north in Canada, we think we’re all north, and everyone north of each of us thinks everyone south of them is the southiest.  Add to that the idea that being a southern Canadian is like having cooties forever, and then being a southern Ontarian is like cooties to the power of infinity.  We’re lame.  We’re not aware of how lame we are, but everyone else in Canada knows it like they know where you get a double-double and where you buy a two-four.

But the North, oh that mystical place of story and song, ski-doo and caribou; it gets into the blood of the Southerners that go there and sits as an ever-present longing to go back to the North.  I see the far-off look in the eyes of my friends, and I know they’re thinking about the North.  Their voices get soft and their expressions get dreamy.  And in my heart, I think I get it, how a country can be so alien to your experience and yet feel so much like home.

I’ve never been to the North, but I’m with them in spirit.  Except for one thing.

Moose.

For a long time, I didn’t believe in moose; I thought they were the emperor’s new clothes.  Yeah, I’ve met people who say they’ve seen moose (mostly musicians, and you know how they are).  Hell, I even been told I’m eating moose (tastiest figment of someone else’s imagination ever).  But for a long time I figured it was like the Blarney Stone; originally a joke played on the British oppressors by the subjugated Irish, it turned into a fine way to make a punt.  I thought that what the Blarney Stone was to the Irish, the moose was to Northerners; a wink and a nudge, and a bit of a laugh at the expense of gullible Southerners.  Yes, I’ve seen pictures, but I’ve also seen footage of the moon landing in 1969 and the Fiji mermaid.  And if that’s not enough to tell you that there are complex and nefarious conspiracies at work to manipulate us daily, then please remember that Keanu Reeves had an acting career.

After a time, I realized that this was bigger than just some fun at the expense of Southerners.  There are pictures everywhere.  The moose has become almost as recognizable a Canadian icon as the beaver.  Thousands of people claim to have seen moose majestically tramping across the northlands.  It didn’t take me too long to put two and two together – and when I did, I was more disturbed and unsettled than ever.  Since then, I’ve made it my mission to ensure that whenever the topic of the moose is broached, I try to make sure people know the truth.

So brace yourselves: moose aren’t animals.  They’re robots.  Developed in secret by CSIS, moose patrol our northern borders spying on the activities of the Russians, the USA, and any other unCanadian activities hovering around our northernmost border.

Think about it!  How perfect a defense system that masquerades as a relatively harmless mammal?  Who watches the moose?  Besides naturalists, I mean.  But look for yourselves – the way they move, almost too graceful.  The awkward construction of their bodies.  Those giants antlers!  Are there more perfect antennae to send and receive communications?  Did nature make an animal with a satellite dish on its head?  I think not.

But Candace, I hear you saying, moose have been around for thousands of years, they are in many parts of the world, and have been a part of indigenous cultures as food/clothing/etc.  Exactly!  Now you’re starting to grasp the scope of this vast Canadian Conspiracy!

You see, CSIS aren’t just some bumbling bunch of sweet Canadian semi-spies; they’re a dazzlingly powerful and surprisingly technologically advanced super-power, seamlessly controlling the fate of the world via time travelling moose robots.  When you begin to consider, the pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly.  How is it possible that Canada, with its abundant natural resources and pot-smoking, free-loving socialist hippie health care has been allowed to stand relatively unmolested for so long?  You can see that over the past 200 years the United States have been eyeing up our true north strong and free like a frat boy gazing at a fresh keg.  How has a country with the world’s largest standing army held off on a second invasion?

I’ll tell you why: they’re afraid of our moose-robots.  Last time they crossed our borders with expansionist intentions, we whupped ‘em.  We burned the original White House down and pushed their troops back all the way to New Orleans.  If you don’t think the moose-robots played a part in that, you’re buying in to the Federalist agenda to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.  Why else would such a great country appear so much on the national stage as a pack of buffoons or, at best, your pot-smoking middle brother who lives in your parent’s basement, breaking up family fights but otherwise kinda lounging?

It’s all a ruse; far from being one of the most peaceful nations on earth, Canada is in fact the puppetmaster.

Even Stephen Colbert, himself a high-ranking NSA official, paid homage to our mighty moose-robots recently during his time at the Vancouver Olympics.  Let me tell you, they’re scared, torn between fear and desire.  The look at our tasty fresh water, our rolling acres of pot and lumber, our beautiful gay weddings and our thrilling ice hockey and they want a piece of that action.  Who wouldn’t?  Only one thing is stopping them: only one thing is saving this country from invasion.  And so, while I disapprove of their secrecy, I have to tip my hat to the clever tactics of those CSIS super-spies.  Your average Canuck can sleep peacefully in his or her bed at night, kept safe by our sleepless patrols of robot moose.

Despite my healthy respect for the skill it’s taken to pull off this massive ruse, I’m still dedicated to the truth.  And now you know, friends: pass it on.  Don’t be duped.

I think those first few years I must have been a bit weird; assigned a drug with a name that implied it would work (Effexor – now with even more effex!), I found I’d traded one kind of miserable for another, though it was a more bearable misery.  I wished for a switch to flip, a miracle, a fixer.  I wished (oh, I still do) that they could find my depression and cut it out where it lies. We tried different drugs, different doses, and eventually I found that what really helped was Omega 3-6-9 capsules and exercise, and everything improved dramatically after that.

But lingering at the back of my mind is the fear that I’ll slip, or that the Omega’s effects will wear off and I’ll be back where I started or worse.  I’ve read the literature; Clinical Depression is theorized to essentially scar your brain, making it easy to fall back into the chasm you’ve hauled yourself out of.  I don’t mind being sad sometimes, but that unvarying sameness of depression isn’t sadness.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s not the same as being sad.  I look back at it with a horror that motivates me now to ensure I never go back there.

So I turned to a section of the bookstore heretofore ignored; the self-help section.  Ugh, I know.  I’ve read books on clearing your clutter with Feng Shui and the science of happiness; I’ve done The Artist’s Way thrice (differently useful each time).  I’ve read acres of text on a variety of  subjects, from recovering from mental blocks to overcoming addictions.  Because, much as Depression is a medical condition, it’s also a habit, an addiction, a way of living.  The familiar, comforting awfulness of depression is a security blanket – a certainty – where the world of overall happiness and possibility is a terrifying no-man’s land.  It’s the Devil I know; it’s the lover I can’t quite get over.

Reading Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook, I see that the techniques employed to overcome drug and sex addictions are the same techniques, differently framed, that I find in The Artist’s Way, which makes perfect sense. I also see that once he cleared up his issues and began seriously working on them and his addictions, his focus was freed up to work on success, and he achieved that in a relatively short time. Not that he hadn’t been having successes before that; you generally don’t get handed tv shows. But he’d always kinda been a fringe fuckup until he got himself in hand.

Positive thinking comes off as hocus-pocus and silliness, as does a lot of this self-help stuff, I know. But I think it’s often in the wording, and in the way the basic concepts are described. And also in the scorn of people whose half-attempts lead inevitably to failure; you can’t discount the contentedly miserable, and how much they try to ensure that other miserable people stay cosily with them.

Breaking addictions and habits, overcoming fears and blocks, often has to do with figuring out (without all the noise and obligations and sense of unworthiness and whatever other garbage you’ve got screaming around in your brain) what it is you want, and making plans to move forward in that direction.  And then going there.  And that’s positive thinking in a nutshell.  It’s not magic, it’s not some massive Secret.  It’s just that if you intend to do something, you’re much more likely to do it than if you put off thinking about the future and never really take steps to do anything in particular.  I can wish to win the lottery all day, but if I don’t go buy a ticket, I certainly won’t win.

I’ve dug up the foundations and poked around a fair amount, and now I know what the structure of my life rests on, where I can build safely and what needs to be stripped back down and rebuilt from scratch. So onwards to the ongoing, serious, simple work.

I’ve been playing Wii a fair amount over the past month; the games are interesting and fun and fairly encouraging, and the language of the movement is a challenge without being impossible. But the main focus of the games almost across the board is balance and posture, which I find interesting. It was also one of the first things we learned at theatre school; one of the few useful things I came away with. For years, I’d destroyed shoes and screwed up my joints because I walked on the outside of my feet, and our Movement teacher corrected me, and I practiced the hell out of that. Everyday, walking to and from school, I’d be working to correct my posture, walk on the three balance points of my feet. I think that’s why people get an impression of confidence from me; I still walk with good posture and control. But it took months, and a hundred thousand tiny shifts every day, until walking that way became habit.

My mind is the same as my posture; I tend to mentally walk the wrong way, see things in the worst light, avoiding making plans if the future seems too scary or uncertain or full of possibilities to contemplate. When I allow my mind to unbalance itself like that, focus too much on fear, it becomes unstable, bowed over, and next thing you know I’m crowd-sourcing bad advice and making panicky decisions and accepting overwhelming volunteer commitments. I fall off the path I ought to be walking, meander and flail all over the goddamn place, end up with very little progress once I finally find my way again. For all my hard work, I’m never much closer to my ultimate goals. But that’s starting to change. I’ve become much better at catching myself lately, and correcting my mental posture. Catching those dark, negative thoughts and renegotiating them; remapping the future with every tiny shift in thinking.

But again, it takes a hundred thousand tiny shifts every day, and constant vigilance, and sometimes when I’m tired or something bad happens I relapse and have to start all over again. But even though it often feels like I’m landing back at the beginning, in reality, I’m creating muscle memory; I’m learning how to stay focused, balanced, happy. It gets easier every day, and every failure is steps closer to success than the last failure.

I doubt I’ll ever get to a point where I don’t have to make corrections. But that’s expected; I’m human, and perfection is unattainable. Success is in the attempt, not the conclusion.

In the Christian church, suicide is generally considered a sin, but I think that the act itself is not the thing that is the sin. The real sin is despair; loss of hope, the end of attempting to succeed. I’m sure a Christian would say, the lack of faith in god, which is despair, but as a semi-pretty-much-non-believer, I’m going to say it’s the lack of faith that things can change and that you have the power to change them.

If you look around right now, we are living in an age where change is happening at great speed. I won’t say unprecedented speed; no student of history can say that word without irony, and I’m not sure I believe that there’s been a time when change wasn’t a constant. But we are living in an age of change, and we are very aware of it, and it is unstable and a little terrifying, if you’re inclined to look on it that way. And sometimes I do, and wonder what’s the point in say, going back to school, if nothing I learn will be relevant by the time I get out?

But the shift I make, when I starting talking to myself like that, is to see this as an exhilarating opportunity. I have maybe a good 40 years left in my life to play a part in the massive and wild changes that are happening around the world; changes in technology, in society, a brave new world. The longer I wait to jump in, the less time I have. If I was 80 today, it would still be the right time. If I was 10, it would be the right time. The right time is whatever time it is.

Things will happen, good and bad. Planes will fall from the sky, romances will flare and die, joints will ache and the weather will turn. That stuff’s all going to happen whether I’m happy or sad, passionately involved or fearfully crouching on the sidelines or wearily turning away from it all. The only things I have control over are my thoughts and actions, and they are mine, and I have faith I can change them; I know I can. I’ve done it a hundred thousand times.

1.  Twilight is a huge cultural phenomenon, and to avoid seeing this movie is to ignore the obsession of an entire generation.  Also, years of jokes and parodies which you won’t get because you skipped it.

2.  These movies are a laugh riot.  I mean, unintentional, but they’re hilarious.  Much more funny than most comedies.

3.  Robert Pattinson is pretty hot.

So New Moon.

I was going to write a review and be hilarious at the expense of this movie, but you’ll probably see it, and the humour implicit in Italian vampires who don’t wear any socks and teenage werewolves who never wear shirts will be clear to you.  Instead I’m going to talk directly to the parents of the teens and pre-teens who are going to see this film.

Firstly, don’t fool yourself: this series is not about abstinence.  It’s about sex.  Lots of it.  In the near future.  The whole series is designed to get the readers wound up, essentially, into a dreamy, inexperienced sexual frenzy.  That’s how they sell merchandise.  It’s not rocket science.

There’s probably no way you can avoid having your kid see any of the movies from this series unless you’re raising a socially maladjusted freak.  By hook or by crook, even if you forbid your kid from seeing this film, they’ll find a way.  When they’re older they will probably also get into your liquor cabinet.  So don’t go through all the drama of making these films or books forbidden fruit; you’ve got bigger fish to fry.  Take them to see it.  It’s really not worth fighting about.

But when the film is done, by god, sit them down and have a conversation.

Tell your smart, strong, responsible daughters that they should never let a boy or a man (or any partner) treat them the way Bella (or any of the women) are treated in this movie.  That when they get a car of their own, they are the ones who drive it unless they are somehow unable to.  Tell them that they get to determine who they’re friends with, and when – or if – they stop associating with those friends.  And that if any one ever hurts them – physically or emotionally – they should leave that person immediately.  That they are the master of their own homes, bodies, and possessions and anyone who reaches past them to answer their phone (or who checks their email, text messages, etc.) is seriously overstepping their rights. That anyone who tries to create rules around their decisions about their bodies and sexuality has no business doing so.  That it is not romantic to be at the mercy of someone controlling, jealous, unpredictable, and irresponsible.  That no love is ever worth giving up sovereignty over yourself.

Tell your smart, strong, responsible sons that they should never – ever – treat a woman (or any partner) like Bella and the other woman in this movie are being treated.  That they should respect the personal space, bodies, and possessions of the people they love.  That they should never try to emotionally or physically hurt the people in their lives.  That breaking into someone’s room while they sleep will land them in jail, as will any of the stalker-type activities that Edward engages in.  That controlling behaviour is unacceptable, and that sexuality is something shared between partners, not the decision of solely one or the other.

Okay, now tell your son or daughter all the advice I gave for the opposite sex, too.

And then, for pete’s sake, tell them that whenever they decide to have sex is up to them (and no one else), and that you know they’ll come to a responsible decision about it, and that you hope it’s with someone who respects them and cares for them.  Tell them that you trust them, and that you hope they’ll use birth control and take steps to prevent STDs.

Please make sure they know where to find condoms, how to get the birth control pill, where to go to get tested for things.  There’s probably a great Women’s or Sexual Health clinic in your neighborhood; make sure they know where it is.

We can’t protect kids by hiding things from them.  But the best defense is a good offense, and your kid is going to be a lot better off armed with the knowledge that what they’re viewing up on that screen, no matter how dreamy Robert Pattinson is, is not an ideal of how relationships work or how people behave.

Hopefully, you’ve got your own arsenal of media that can help you counter-act the effect of New Moon, but if not, I’ve got plenty of suggestions.  Please remember that boys as well as girls benefit from seeing strong female characters.  Generally, I love strong, smart characters regardless of gender, and this list contains lots of both male and female characters who are awesome.

Candace’s List of great movies & television shows to show your teen/pre-teen:

When I was a kid, we watched everything, regardless of movie rating or our age.  I’d consider everything on this list  to be pre-teen appropriate, but you’re the parent; do some parenting, and judge for yourself.

Labyrinth: The protagonist, Sarah, is a bit whiny but in the end rejects the Goblin King’s offer to stay with him and does her own thing.  There are also lots of puppets and song + dance numbers.  Yes, I own the soundtrack.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ignore the movie.  The first three seasons of this TV show contains loads of brooding hot guys and tough, ass-kicking teenage women.  Aside from staking vampires, most problems are solved via teamwork and intelligence.  The clothing is a bit laughable.  Sex is dealt with in a way that I think most kids would benefit from seeing.

Doctor Who: The newer BBC kids’ TV series, which started a few years ago with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, includes lots and lots of strong, female characters who I find pretty inspiring.  It’s chock-full of goodness, plus the Doctor as played by David Tennant is super-cute and a bit emo, and the protagonists rely on brains over force to solve their problems.

Torchwood: A spin-off from Doctor Who, this series is designed for adult audiences and there’s a bit more violence, sex and swearing, but also plenty of strong characters who focus on intelligence and teamwork, again.  Sex is dealt with in an adult way, so less dreamy sighing and more consequences/etc. One of the few mainstream vehicles that deals with sexual orientation and its malleability.

Pride and Prejudice: The original BBC television mini-series; don’t even speak to me of the horror that is Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett.  Snappy dialogue, smart strong women, lots of different relationships explored.

Ginger Snaps: A film about girls reaching puberty, and werewolves. As I recall, it’s a bit violent, but what a great film!  Ignore the sequels.

Girl Fight: Michelle Rodriguez is great in this movie!  It deals with the conflicts you run up against as a tough woman, and what compromises you reach and what you don’t compromise on.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: There’s some really nice adult relationships in this movie; Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh are terrific.  Their characters have all the understated romantic tragedy you could ask for, while also being totally ass-kicking.

I was a kid in the 80s, when TV (and fashion) was awful.  Characters had one dimension; plots were hackneyed and predictable.  Characters didn’t develop, and the end of an episode was like a magic reset button; nothing changed, everything went back to how it had been at the beginning of the episode.  How it had always been.

Online, I’ve noticed that people of my generation seem to be doing this to themselves: casting one facet of their personality in the role of The Interesting Thing About me so they can blog about it and (eventually, I assume it’s hoped) get a book deal or a television show of their very own.  Tech blogs, political blogs, movie blogs, mommy blogs – if you can name it, there’s someone out there blogging about it to the exclusion of all else.  It draws an audience of like-minded people, and soon you get a marvelous infinite recursion*, where the only change is that opinions get more extreme, entrenched and isolated from the rest of the world.

This kind of specialization bores me to tears, and it’s for the same reason that 80s TV did – no character development.  Nothing moves forward.  Once you’re a political blogger, you keep doing that forever, and if you stray from the subject or your opinions change or develop, you risk losing your audience.  So you shore up their opinions and yours, endlessly re-creating the self you were when you started the blog.  I started blogging ten years ago, and if I was the same person I was in university (or playing at being the same) it’d be the tragedy of my life.

Oh hey, Daniel.

If I turned this website into the Blog of Shirtless Men, I’d have a much larger audience.  I can imagine how I’d optimize the SEO (yes, I’d optimize my optimization) and what my markets would be; that’d be the easiest sell of all time besides shirtless women.  I’d probably end up as a “Sexpert” on Tyra giving women (and gay men) questionable relationship advice.  And every day I did that, I’d be ensuring that my mind atrophied and all the things I value in myself withered and died.

Did that seem judgmental or cynical?  I fucking hope so.  Because developing one facet of your personality to the detriment of all else is bad for you and bad for our success as human beings.  And you don’t need to trust me on this one; I’ve got history to back me up.

Seriously, I love this guy.

Consider our good friend Genghis Khan (that’s a great book, btw), who was frankly totally awesome.  Aside from conquering more territory than Alexander the Great (another hero of mine), he also did this marvelous thing where he allowed the people of each place he conquered to (usually) keep their culture, religion, and essential body parts.  He took the best and the brightest people of each culture, and brought them together.  The ideas behind Chinese fireworks and European cathedral bells cross-pollinated and became a major advance in warfare technology – canons.

Or think about the Kingdom of Sicily in the middle ages, where the mingling of Muslim, Christian and Jewish ideas, culture, and people brought about a  distinct flowering of arts, sciences, and culture.  When they started doing stupid things like kicking out all of the Jews, they floundered, financially and culturally (okay, that’s a generalization, and you could argue with me on it, but it was a big part).

Or consider Gavin Menzies’ assertion (in his book 1434) that the Chinese visit to Europe ignited the Renaissance.  The book, like all of his work, is not very well-written but his ideas are kind-of earth-shakingly wonderful.  The central idea is that the Chinese introduced to parts of Europe ideas and learning that were foreign to  European thought, and when those collided they opened new channels that lead to massive leaps in technology, arts, learning and culture (though I think that the Arabs, who preserved copies of the ancient writers and had added substantially to the store of knowledge should get a lot more credit).

Or how Picasso’s exposure to African art completely changed and influenced his style – and all visual art in the 100 years since, around the world (I don’t like his work, nor a lot of Modern art, but I appreciate the change and the ideas behind it).

When different ways of thinking collide, crash, or sit side by each, there is opportunity to move forward, to develop.  This is usually uncomfortable; our assertions get challenged, our sense of what is right and wrong gets upended, people fight, and you often have to admit that the ideas you used to passionately defend were wrong (that’s the hardest part).  For a society, it’s a vital process that leads to financial and cultural success; for an individual, it’s growing up.  It’s character development.

What I’ve been noticing in TV lately is this gorgeous thing where different cultures or ways of being are being shown as doing the uncomfortable dance around how to live together and the changes that happen when they do.  Rome had all these lovely juxtapositions of class.  Deadwood was an exploration of what happens when the normal societal rules are stripped away and everyone – regardless of class – is thrown into a pile in the middle of nowhere.   Glee (and High School Musical, though with a lot less complexity) mostly rests of the tensions between jocks and nerds and whether or not it’s possible to straddle those groups.  True Blood, about humans and newly-outed Vampires explores the tensions between established and emerging cultures.  Heroes, though I feel like it’s gone off the rails a lot, is about internal struggle – what happens when we are changing and challenging the truths that are essential to ourselves – who we are as people, as human beings.

You can’t really say any of that for The Golden Girls or Dallas or Full House.  Sorry 80s TV, you sucked!**

It’s the Generalist who (while they are good at a couple of things) is actively interested in the rest of the world who moves the world forward.  The Specialist might be really, really good at say, graphic design or rocket science, but there’ll be a point where that individuals skill and knowledge plateau, and it’s not really possible to develop any further.   Specialists are great when you have them operating on your brain, not so great when you want your culture to flourish.  There has to be a happy accident, a catalyst of some kind that shakes us out of our complacency, that changes the game somehow.  And we won’t find that if we re-tread the same territory or spend too much time with like-minded individuals.

In the nakedly self-promoting glare of one-topic bloggers the world looks like a pretty terrible place.  Thankfully, I think a sea-change is coming; I believe that Western culture is tuning in to the many blessings of difference, and beginning to reject the extremism that stereotypes and sealed knowledge and an infinite loop breeds.  At least, I hope it’s so.  For my own edification, if nothing else.

*Am I using this term correctly?  I think I am, but I’ve been wrong before.  I mean an endless repetition, like when you point a video camera at a Television.  In any event, recursion is fun to say.  Recursion, recursion, recursion. Infinite recursion is even better; all those tasty syllables! Recursion, from the Latin to run back.

** Am I missing something awesome?  Because I don’t remember liking anything on TV in the 80s, or even most of the 90s. Friends, Beverly Hills 90210, Seinfeld… blech.

I am continuing, as I had planned, as Artistic Director, and stepping down as Executive Director.  Partially for continuity, and to be there in a mentoring role to whomever becomes ED, and partially because I really love being involved with the festival, and the things I’ve always dreamed of doing will be possible if I’m freed up in other areas.  Also because I’ve already started booking acts for next year.

Raging Asian Women were the runaway success; they’re  incredible, and wonderful, gracious people who completely get the festival and the spirit of the event and enhanced it by their presence.  Unity were also amazing; I wish the weather had been better before their set, as more people ought to have heard them, but the first song in particular was freakin’ crazy-good. David Newland soldiered on throughout the entire weekend, inspiring and enlightening wherever he went.  David Simard is always a treat to be around, and his music is gorgeous.  Sheesham and Lotus were fabulous evening hosts, and put on a terrific set (as attested by their CD sales, which were through the roof).   Elliott Brood were brilliant, and the perfect end to the evening, and the super-sweetest guys on earth to work with.

But I’ve been telling people that music is a part of the festival, not the point of the festival, and trying to impress on anyone I talk to about it that the whole point is to work with decent people and create a community spirit that everyone can carry away with them into their real lives.  There are too many good bands out there; I don’t ever need to book assholes, people who are going to be dicks to my sound techs, my volunteers, my hosts, my audience or me.  This is a community festival, not a music festival; this is not one of those horrible, insane events where 20-somethings are herded like cattle into enclosed spaces, charged exorbitant rates for water and food, and sponsors decide and brand every aspect.  This is the sort of festival where you can spread out a blanket on the hill, alone, with friends, or with your family, listen to music you don’t hear every day, soak up some sun and see people in your community out doing the same thing.   The music is what brings people to the park, but what sets our festival apart from anything else in the County is the sense of the broader community.

And when I say ‘community festival,’ I don’t mean that I only book bands who are from the community (which is not the festival’s mandate, and if I did book only local bands I’d lose 1/3 of our funding), but bands that serve the event in some way – by exposing our community to new sounds and ideas, by celebrating diversity, by cracking open doors to musical styles and genres that you don’t otherwise hear, by presenting music you’d never listen to on your own in a setting without risk or judgment.  My goal is to bring together people from all over our community in an inclusive space where no-one feels like they don’t belong, where everyone is welcome; free, accessible, comfortable, easy-going, and lovely.  I want everyone to see something of themselves reflected on the stage, and everyone to see something completely outside of their experience.

This is the first year where I feel that we’ve really made significant moves towards that vision; I’ve always been proud of the work we’ve done, but this year it seems like we’ve finally found the right format for the festival that will make it possible to achieve that dream.  We’ve got a long way to go, and a million tiny kinks to work out, but I am so proud of the grace and patience and quiet strength of our volunteers, especially our Board of Directors, of the talent, ability and friendliness of the musicians that joined us this year, and the open minds and hearts of the people who joined us in the audience.

Our community: much bigger and more interesting than a scene or a genre.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I mean, the general public have very little criticism; last year I could barely move ten feet without being slapped on the back and told that it was the best PFF ever. The only post-festival complaint I heard was that the t-shirts didn’t have the year on them (we’re remedying that this year!).

But the whole summer had been a barrage of anger from ex-Board members, who hated that we were adding a beer tent and hated that we were moving the festival to Saturday. I couldn’t understand it at the time – I mean, some of these people had campaigned for a beer tent when they were on the Board, and the change of day just seemed like common sense, from a promotions standpoint.

This year I’m getting a lot of anger from musicians who didn’t get booked; like, a really disproportionate amount of anger. We don’t pay all that well (I do my best with the funds I have), we’re not super high-profile. We’re one of the smallest-budget festivals in Ontario. Our audience is almost entirely drawn from people in this County. I was having a hard time piecing together where the rage was coming from.

Some claim that they’re angry because I’m not booking enough local acts, but a glance at my lineup this year reveals, if anything, too many local acts, or acts with local ties (it’s awesome though – seriously – but I might be in trouble with one of my funders if I’m not careful). I generally book about 50% local, but this year it’s a lot higher.
I’ve also had a few out-of-towners rage at me.

But, in thinking about it, and talking to people about it, it seems pretty clear that the anger, the vitriol, are all coming out of the success of the festival. It’s artistically better, more beautiful, better-attended, better organized, more fun, and higher-profile than ever before. I’ve worked on the festival for a long time, and I’ve never heard anything more than the occasional grumble from bands who didn’t get booked until the last couple of years. Nothing like this.

But then, you don’t get angry about not getting booked for an okay, mediocre or shitty gig. We’ve made the festival a good thing, and as a result, people get pissed off when they don’t get in.

So, crazy as it is, I’m going to take every bitchy thing that’s said about me or the Board or the festival by a musician as a testimony to our success. Because if they didn’t care about whether or not they got in, I wouldn’t be doing my job.

While watching a bunch of well-built shirtless men stomp and flail fairly brilliantly around (while the lighting guys went madly off in all directions with the strobe), I was thinking more about the audience reaction than anything else.  Here are 5 guys doing an African dance routine, and here’s an audience of teens and young people pretty much going crazy over it.  It made me think about what tv is doing for artists.

So we have a long history of art for an audience; plays and music and dance have been performed for millennium for paying and interested audiences.  It wasn’t an elitist thing; it was general entertainment.  Sophocles, Shakespeare, the ballet, the opera; they were all popular entertainment in their time.  For the masses.  For the rabble.

The things of our parents’ or grandparents’ time often seem fussy and dull to later generations.  It’s a pretty straightforward progress from cutting edge to cool to mainsteam to yesterday’s news, and some things make the unlucky step from yesterday’s news to elitist fare.   Once they make that final step, it’s unlikely that the edgy hipsters will ever rediscover it.  Live theatre and live dance, and to a lesser extend live music, have become things that are somewhat elitist to go out to.   It’s been like that for decades, so don’t go blaming the internet or tv, those perennial scapegoats in the debate over what gets to be called culture and what gets to be called entertainment.

Oh, that dirty word, entertainment!  God forbid that we should entertain; serious artists not only suffer for their work, but make their audiences suffer too.  We should be bored and baffled by real art.  We should approach an evening of theatre or dance as a trial to endure, almost a matter of pride or a reaction to a particularly stinging dare.  Can you sit through the whole thing? Can you understand it?  And can you talk about it later as if you understood it and the unbelievable genius it took to create it?
In fact, I’m pretty sure that the Canadian publishing and film industries are solidly built on the foundation of that idea.
Anyway.

I think this is all ass-backwards.  Art can enlighten us if it feels like it, but it doesn’t have to and I don’t necessarily think it should.  Art isn’t laughable just because it entertains; and it isn’t laudable just because it fails to.  And more than anything, art is for people – all people, not just phDs or initiates or the rich.

Dance is an excellent example.  Even a hundred years ago, there were no dance schools – very young kids would be taken to the theatre and would work their tails off in the chorus.  If they were diligent and had talent, they’d move up the ranks in a sort-of apprenticeship system.  Rich kids had dancing masters.  People in villages and towns and cities taught each other new dances.  Dancing was a trade to some, and amusement for others, but it was something for everyone.  In more recent times, there’ve been schools upon schools established, formal levels and grades to attain.  It’s meant producing some really rarefied, gifted, and disciplined dancers, but it’s also meant that dance is the province of the very well-to-do, and people who can’t afford dance lessons and competitions are left out. And even worse, dance is now seen as something so elitist (and boring, and baffling) that very few people would even consider going to see a live dance performance.

Shows like So You Think You Can Dance turn some of that around.  We still have a lot of the rarefied, child-of-privilege dancers, but the audience is  drawn from many demographics, very few of them traditional live dance supporters.  Dance is starting to look like fun again, something people can learn to do.  Dance is starting to excite people, to be relevant in a way that it hasn’t been in decades.  It’s even drawing people out of their homes and into live performance venues.

No art can really be successful if it alienates it’s audience.  Art is communication, and while I don’t believe that all art has to reach the masses, it does have to engage in a dialogue with them sometimes in order to stay relevant.  Those jerks that I’m referring to who brag about not owning a tv are usually the same people who churn out stale ideas and cliquey in-jokes instead of vibrant, relevant works of art. Because they’ve shut themselves off; they’re out of touch.  The shared dialogue has moved forward (in N. America, at least) mostly through tv.  A lot of really breathtaking writing and acting is happening on tv right now, and some really exciting dance.

This is the golden age of television (and comedy, I’d argue), and I don’t think it will last as technologies and economies change.  But while we’re here we should stop and appreciate that huge numbers of regular people across the continent  are excitedly cheering African dance, tango, ballet – something that ten years ago would have been so unlikely to not even cross your mind.

“I hate people who hate Dave Eggers,” said the woman.
“I hate Dave Eggers!” I said.
“Well, I don’t hate you. But it’s so trendy to hate Dave Eggers now.”
“Hmm, if it’s trendy to hate Dave Eggers I may have to start liking him. But I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and I was just like, ‘Fuck you, Dave.’ I really hated him.”
“He writes himself as pretty unlikeable,” said the guy.
“And I oblige him by hating him. I follow his lead. If Dave Eggers asks me to hate him, I’m happy to do so.”

They laughed, and we talked about other things. But I’ve been thinking about  art, and how willing I am to take the artist at their action. If you make some arty film where you focus on just say, the actor’s hands for forty seconds, or close-ups of their mouth, if you use colour schemes that make people uncomfortable, I will oblige you by being annoyed and fidgety and eventually angry.   If I figure that you’ve done this to make some point (or to use the emotions you’re generating) then I’ll accept it, but if not?  I will not shout your brilliance to the hills because I’m intimidated and afraid of looking gauche; I will talk about how your project sucks in some detail and at length, because you will have led me to be aggravated by foisting garbage on me that you know will aggravate. The conventions of a polite society demand, in fact, that I pretty much hate Dave Eggers (well, that one book, anyway) and a lot of other artists’ work, just to oblige them for trying so damned hard to elicit that reaction from me.

Sometimes it’s just incompetence, which I’ll dislike, but a lot of the time artists do it on purpose to be “edgy,” which is Artworld Patois for “I don’t have any ideas but I really want to get laid.”

On the other end of the spectrum, I have the same reaction with formulaic artmaking. “Oh look,” my brain will say “there’s that same standard editing sequence for the fortieth time in this film. Zzzzzz.” And after hearing all 6 chords that the lead guitarist can play in many standard variations, my brain grows weary.   Repeated patterns are great for wallpaper, not so great for art.  I understand that new artists need practice, and that some of that practice has to take place in a public forum where there are people watching.  But I’ve done my time listening to bands who don’t remember to tune and watching films no one bothered to light.   I leave it in the capable hands of the uncritical or the easily amused.  Or the artists’ girlfriends.

In some ways I’m the ideal audience, for artists that want to move forward; I’ve an unbridled contempt for bafflingly arty crap, and a certainty that if I didn’t get it, there probably wasn’t anything to get. I mean, of course I’ve walked away from movies feeling like I’ve been hit by a bomb, dazed and spinning, but taking your time to come to grips with some ideas is a completely different thing than finding it un-relatable or obtuse.   I like to be challenged and stretched and surprised, and some filmmakers can take those conventionally aggravating things and make them speak a language that their audience can find meaning in.  Some can take those familiar 4 chords and turn out some breathtaking piece of music.  That’s experience, that’s knowing your medium and your tools.   But if you’re toying with me, or throwing things together just for the sake of reaction and provocation instead of something with a little more weight and depth (not to mention skill), I’ll file you under ‘jerkface’ with the rest of the artists who ask me to hate their work.

But if I hate something and you ask, especially if you ask over a drink, I’ll tell you in detail why the thing I just watched or heard didn’t work, and what the artist did that screwed it. And I’m willing to admit that sometimes I just don’t like a thing, and there was nothing really wrong with it except that it didn’t appeal to me.

Merlin Mann exhorts us to go ahead and make things, rather than worrying about waiting until conditions are perfect; I agree with him, but I go a step further and say that you should go ahead and make things when you’re not ready, when you’re imperfect, when you’re going to make a lot of mistakes and fail.  But while you’re failing, ask the people who react most strongly why it’s failing – I promise a more useful answer than all the supportive best friends in the whole world.  Because the most useful action you can take as an artist – and the one I am most likely to judge you for – is the action of soliciting (or avoiding) honest feedback.  I know it’s the hardest thing, and I’m rubbish at it myself, but I’m trying.