Thursday, Dec 7th, 2023

I haven't written here in a while.. I took some downtime from social the last couple of months, and I guess this gets lumped into that.  I should update on something wonderful I have started doing.. live readings and workshops for kids! What an incredible experience to get to inspire kids and teach them about how they can use their fear and turn it into courage (a main underlying them in my stories).  My first workshop using the animated books with musical scores was at Touchstone Academy in late October. It was nothing short of.. amazing. Those kids touched my heart. 

Friday, Oct 20th 2023

Had a wonderful time hanging out with the staff at Indigo last weekend..can't say enough about how smart and fun they all are (even the swifties) ! We almost sold out of the first book, I met a surprising amount of other writers and artists and we had great chats...one little girl was sooo excited to get my book that made my whole weekend !                                                                Huge thank you to Miranda and Indigo staff for having me, my books, and our animated films on display.

Wednesday, Sept 15th 2023

Another journal note from my three years stay in China.. the day before 2020.  Calm, peaceful. 

2019. 12. 31.  An Old Photograph 

I saw a frozen pool of water that felt like a very old, living black and white photograph. The hundreds of willow leaves were perfectly caught in the morning light (as it was just a feeling of non-colour with so many shades of grey or darkness), some falling or floating, some landed at the pool’s bottom like little Chinese boats shipwrecked there. There were sprays of white in the frozen water that looked like creases formed in the photograph.  Many rocks were given a heartbeat by the warm, frozen stillness.  A lighter was only half way in the ice, the other half oddly colourful, undecided on immortality. The pieces were waiting for some director to yell ‘cut’ before they slipped into Spring and continued on with their tinkle, or their bobbing, or their molding decay. 

Wednesday, Sept 7th 2023

My show at The Imperial was postponed today till a later date.. more on that later, but the reality is we are not quite ready yet. It is both sad - cause I really want to do the show but it takes actual years to build something like this - , and exciting because greater things are coming, looking forward to sharing more info soon!

Sunday, August 27th 2023

Cinematographer Tyler Warren Ellis has been putting all of his technical and creative abilities into two 18 minute animated films for my books ('animated books' might be a better descriptor) that will be presented at my show at the Imperial Theatre. Not to mention, Andrew MacRae,  through Hemmings House Pictures, has provided very special animation work that has been added to the mix. I’ve never had the pleasure of being the director for films (animated books) like these before, and without Hemmings House, or someone as highly skilled, knowledgeable, talented, and dedicated as Tyler Warren Ellis, it simply wouldn’t happen. I can’t wait to show everyone who comes out! I really can't say enough about Tyler and how important he has been to my show... he has been there since day one, providing exceptional technical feedback and knowledge and creative input. It's a special thing to work with him as he knows how to beautifully translate all of my ideas and also provides a plethora of great ideas of his own. He is always willing to take on new challenges, learn new things, develop new skills.  Simply put, he is a wizard of extraordinary magic. **Rachel Kidd deserves a lot of credit for how  (I believe) wonderfully these films are turning out as well given she wrote the scores for them, and the music placements for each shift between animated illustrations are (I believe) extremely well crafted. It was a delight work with Rachel on those scores, as working with Rachel is like nothing I've ever experienced. I mean, it's ridiculous what she can do and the beauty that pours out of her musically (more on that in an earlier journal note). The combination of Adam's illustrations, Rachel's music, and Tyler's videos... well, it's like being a kid in a candy store for me Directing with such extraordinary individuals. What an actual treat. I make sure to sit down and pinch myself.. and if this is a deep dream that requires a stronger force than a pinch, well, I choose to stay dreaming. 

Thursday, August 17th 2023

I have been working with these highly gifted pros this past week.. Tyler Warren Ellis, Jenny Godin, and Sean Boyer. From cinematography, to puppetry, to qlab.. all things creative or technical, three amazingly gifted, passionate, and solid humans to work with. 

Sunday, July 2nd, 2023

I was in China in 2020. Interesting to see my perspective change so quickly in these journal entries from January to February 2020.. and how drastically my perspective changed over the coming months.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           2020.01.29.  
                                                                                                                                             I saw many hidden faces on the street, on the bus, in the mall, in the underground passages throughout the city. Faces hiding from a secret, veiled thing, looking to take lives, not many lives, but one life dropped on the great sea of social media is enough to cause waves that lap on the furthest shores. The masks worn to hide the many faces were of a large variety and colour - some helpful, some not, some useful masks worn with the knowledge of their usefulness; most unhelpful masks worn without the knowledge of their uselessness. Others walking about with no mask at all, in great defiance, no more aware of how sensible this is than if it were a genuine plague. Some walked around with their mask under their nose, as if it was half sensible to do this and stay comfortable (god dammit). Many shops closed, shuttered, in great fear, lest death come to their doorstep and find them happy and cheerful and disobedient. Others were sensibly open, wary, but not stupid, knowing a certain form of death does not knock before he senses fear and so better to go this way than endure death twice. I saw smiling eyes under the masks, flirtatious eyes, curious eyes, bored eyes, desperate eyes, seeing eyes, stupid eyes, and eyes that were happy everyone was finally joining them on their great sense of fashion. Perhaps following them.  I saw fear - the crossing of the road to avoid coming too close. I saw fear in me - the waitress picking up and pouring more water into my dinner glass that I will now no longer drink from. I felt discomfort - the uselessness of my smile and the missing humanity that grows from a smile, the contagious cheerfulness more deadly to all things gloomy than the coronavirus is to man. I felt this uncomfortableness especially because body language is so important in a world where my tongue means so little. I saw simplicity and grace in the working Chinese who must carry on, even the ones who were afraid to be outside their homes. 

2020.02.04. 
I saw the tissue on my coffee table pulled out at the top of the package like a fine, white sail, billowing as it raced around the islands of my books and fruit and ashtray. Yesterday, it was a great wave splashing down, as though the entire ocean had turned to white from billions of these crests crashing into it. I saw my neighbour outside my apartment. We both smiled warmly with mouths tightly shut, as neither of us were wearing masks, both trying to convince the other of our warmth while holding our breath for fear the other might kill us. 
I saw the many paths on the small mountain by my apartment carved out with great care by the feet of many peaceful stories. I saw the great, lofty wire towers, like many gods stretched out holding hands as far as the eye can see. I saw mountains in the lingering sun that sheltered these gods. I saw great buildings, my district, block-out the entire sunset; but the warm lights glowed from hundreds of these apartments as though the setting sun was penetrating the cement structures and pouring through the far side. I saw kind faces, out for a walk on a cold winter day. I saw many oak leaves, dead, but still clinging to their respective branches, hanging there as fake papery leaf ornaments. They felt this way too. It is ugly to look at a fake flower (or leaf) that has the notion, the utter arrogance, to assume realism. But it is beautiful to see a real flower look fake, or a dead one to feel like an ornament. It is the hint of the fairy. 
I saw the sun teeter on the edge of the great precipice and fall into oblivion. It was a special coming of night, where perhaps the clouds along the horizon were thick, or the buildings that surrounded the lower rings of the mountain I wandered cut off the light so abruptly that twilight was strangled from existence and day to night went like a switch. One moment I was dazzled by the warmth of deep blood orange, the next I was in darkness surrounded by millions of city lights. I felt this change deeply, as I breathed in the remaining glow, the ocean to my left, putting my head down for mere seconds before I looked up and it was night and the ocean was swallowed up. That said, past the city, along the mountains, in the far distance, a line of light could be seen gently bending back into the horizon, allowing for a proper twilight in the darker places. 

Wednesday, June 27th, 2023

I often wish I was a bit more like Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, ‘fumbling around’ with my poems with no intention of ever really showing anyone (outside of maybe a best pal). What I mean is, doing art for its own sake. The value of being published, for example, should not outweigh the value of writing. There is nothing inherently wrong with making money. i.e. Michelangelo certainly got paid. The Grapes of Wrath was a best seller that ironically made Steinbeck rich. Making money and receiving peer recognition are not modern-day inventions, and it is a dream worth having. But elements of this vision have spread into our day to day lives perhaps like never before. We’ve (apparently) banished the greedy tyrant but kept their gnawing appetite for ourselves. I would like to learn how to be better at fumbling aimlessly with my pen and enjoying that, without considering all the other stuff, because wisdom says writing a shitty poem for no reason at all—as Vonnegut famously put—is, perhaps, the most inspiring thing in the universe.

Illustration compliments of the incredible Chris Dunn!

Wednesday, May 11th, 2022

A character sketch I wrote inspired by a good friend of mine… he’s kind of a true Huckleberry Finn type.. really looking for that way out..

He was far too content a human being to put pen to paper. His mind danced with poetry and myth in a serene, natural way, leaving him without the void that painfully entices the writer to strip metaphors from life and force them unwillingly onto a page. The writer asks, ‘Why do I write?’ and in quick turn, without hesitation, replies, ‘my pen understands me.’ He had no such need, as he felt understood by the birds, the trees, the rivers, the oceans, and nothing delighted him more than to reflect upon the song these naturally ornamental entities lifted him to, often birthing an untroubled, crystal laughter, his instrument and part to play in the lustrous, ever constant melody.

 If the great pain yet comes, wiping away the happiness he so naturally develops, he may find that a dip in ink and a plunge onto parchment are newly necessary endeavours he cannot forsake. Until that day, let the poetry exist in him as it was meant to: let the mirth and myth not falter or be stripped from life, manipulated onto a page, closed in a book, to exist only when the spine is bent in a singular, solitary fashion, creased in an ever deeper fitting groove. No. Let the metaphor continue to be draped before his eyes without a need to tear it forcefully from its natural setting. Let them both, metaphor and man, exist in their proper place… until that day.

Much of his contentment was furthered beyond most men in this: He desired no followers. Many men, he thought, in their heart of hearts, desire other men to follow them, even at the desert of who they truly are. They often play the part of helper or healer, even in areas of knowledge they have no say, speaking unknown lies from their heart, feigning interests or superficial empathies, for it lends to the hand of power. It is their hell though, he says.  A hell of incessantly, unconsciously casting out for the weak, feigning deep empathy and pity, layered thickly with an oily longing to ‘help’, neglecting their true selves in every step and stage of it. A narcissistic obsession deemed by the world as a superman’s attribute, glorifying; and deemed by the heart as unwanted, depressive, smug sanctimonies: for the perverse rush of obsessive pity simply cannot last. It is sooner or later relieved by an equally perverse sense of gratifying power, neither of which feel to the intensity of real pity or power when felt in such neurotic, unreal fashions. He saw this hell in many men, and wished to steer clear of it at all costs. ‘Follow me,’ he heard them say, ‘I have what you need. I can change you for the better.’ Instead, his mantra persisted and endured, yes, at times forlornly, with the melody of leading no man but himself. Pretending he held in his hand what others needed so they could pretend to heal and follow him seemed in union with insanity. It was insanity, as far as he was concerned. Sometimes he got lonely; but quite often, when in league with a truer path, happiness, he found, was blooming in the undergrowth.