Blog 15…November 2012.

Used to be that if you saw a guy with tattoos (and it was pretty much always a guy) you could be almost sure he was a sailor, a biker or just out of the slammer. Today tattoos are ubiquitous (you see them everywhere as well) and have become more or less a fashion statement – a recent New Yorker cover showed Mitt Romney getting his changed to reflect his flip – flopping policies. Tattoo parlours used to be sort of sleazy places, now one of several in my neighbourhood looks like a chic hair salon .

Tattoos have been around for at least 5000 years but they were first spotted in modern times by Captain Cook on one of his voyages amongst the people of the Pacific Islands. I get a bird’s eye view in the changing room where I swim and have to keep from staring at the array of images and the imaginative way they adorn female anatomy.  In the warm weather the horizon widens and I can feast my eyes on body art on the street, the bus, even, I hear, the office.

In primitive societies, tattoos denoted social status, family rank or tribal affiliations. My not so extensive research (n= 10 or so) has revealed many reasons for people to ornament themselves, using their own skins as a canvas to memorialize friends and family members who’ve died or pledging love forever like a valentine. They can be a reminder of a personal mantra “There’s nothing wrong here” or as one person told me, marking the spot of a painfully memorable injection.  There are a growing number of young descendants of holocaust survivor s honouring the suffering and survival of their ancestors with their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms…an indelible act of remembrance.

In psychological terms, tattoos can disguise a shameful body or take possession and control of a body that feels overwhelmed. A body that’s hated can be changed and lovingly decorated. Getting a tattoo can be a rite of passage or an act of empowerment or rebellion, a protest against authority or a badge of belonging to a group (more likely Hell’s Angels than the YMCA). It can be a mark of courage or a creative act to customize a body to reflect who inhabits it

There’s also the issue of how visible the tattoos are. A friend of mine has a discreet small yoga sign on her shoulder that peeks out from under a sundress strap.  My cousin got a tiny astrological glyph on her cheek (the facial one). Some are even more subtle with the deliciously titillating thought that they are only seen in intimate moments.  Or there’s the all - over look, back front, arms, legs, even faces.

Whether modifying the body is rooted in some psychological place or done in a more playful way with a sense of personal adornment, tattoos seem to be here to stay, in more ways than one.  Alessandra Lemma’s book Under the Skin is a very good read if you’re interested in exploring the topic further.

Blog 14…October 2012

You know how you never go to see the attractions in your own city until someone visits… well, this summer I had a houseguest from Bangkok and we explored a couple of Toronto's little treasures together.  First, the Bata Shoe Museum where we took  a look at the glamorous shoes that Roger Vivier created for Christian Dior. On the floor below, we saw how the footwear of indigenous people reflected and accommodated their environment.  

After lunch, we searched out the Textile Museum of Canada (buried on Centre Street near the bus terminal).  There’s always something fascinating there - war rugs, prayer shawls or a range of costumes. This time it was Dreamland, a look at our Canadian landscape, with elements of thrift, beauty and utility from Quebec catalogne to Red River coats to the rugs of the Gagetown hookers. A particularly moving tableau showed two sisters embracing in the bareness of a Saskatchewan prairie.  Both of these small places are easily accessible, not expensive and definitely worth a visit, even without houseguests.

The tables were turned recently when I was in Helsinki and discovered a very special show in the City Hall lobby that I introduced to some local friends. It was also fun to talk to the staff there about our Toronto City Hall designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell.  

The show features the work of Helja Liukko Sundstrom and celebrates her fifty years as ceramic artist with Arabia Pottery. As well as designing many of  Arabia’s signature pieces, she’s a wonderful story teller who has written and illustrated a dozen children’s books -  the stories reflecting  the joy and sorrow inherent in our lives as well as the uniqueness of Finland's history, landscape and culture. 

In the current show, she’s moved into adult material with a tribute to the role women played on the production line at Arabia.  In one series of ceramic panels, she’s rendered images of women leaving their children in dark early hours and arriving at the factory gates to work until the shrill of the 5 o’clock whistle when they head home, again in darkness, to cook dinner and prepare for the next day.

A second series of 20 panels - each one about a foot square - is a gesture of love and appreciation of  her grandmother’s life, from birth, through schooldays, marriage, childbirth - setting out charming domestic scenes throughout her life to the completion of the cycle with her aging and death, There is a particularly touching panel showing how a few Finnish soldiers disguised in white tablecloths and bedsheets halted the invasion of the huge and powerful Soviet Red army during the Winter War.

I enjoyed the show for the third time with my friend Jussi who enriched it even more for me by pointing out cultural references that had gone over my head. 

This blog is being written with with beautiful Muskoka colours outside the window and is dedicated to him.

Blog 13...September 2012

For me, jazz has always been associated with late nights in smoky bars, but on a warm sunny day this summer, in a beautiful rooftop garden with lush flowers and greenery in the foreground, skyscrapers and traffic in the background, I changed my mind.  Under a canopy of chainmail, surrounded by patients, visitors and staff at the Princess Margaret Hospital, a group of musicians blew, strummed and sang their hearts out for all of us.                                                                                                    

Jazz for the Soul is the brainchild of long time jazz fan Sharon Wright. who has been successful in finding and engaging an incredible range of musicians - duos, trios, quartets, sometimes just instrumentalists, sometimes a vocalist. Many people who participate have been touched in some way by cancer themselves and are generous with their time and talent. My first time there I met a bass player who had once accompanied Anita O’Day… how cool is that?

Princess Margaret Hospital is a diagnostic and treatment centre for people with cancer in downtown Toronto.  Jazz for the Soul is part of Healing Beyond the Body, a Cancer and the Arts Program in the Psychosocial Oncology Department and Palliative Care Department where Sharon works as EA to chief Gary Rodin.

We’re all moved by music, by our mother’s heartbeat, her lullabies, military, wedding and funeral marches and everything in between. Music touches our emotions, memory, intellect and mood like nothing else can. It can give pleasure, reduce pain and release sorrow - no wonder music has been in the air at PMH since Music in the Atrium began a decade ago. The experience was extended this year to include Jazz for the Soul, held every Friday at noon during the summer months in the Max Tannenbaum Garden on the 16^th floor.

Hospital staff have begun to notice that some out patients are scheduling their appointments in combination with the jazz sessions.  Family members and friends who accompany or visit patients appreciate the opportunity to engage in something normal, helping to turn what can be a tense situation into something to share…some pleasure, a distraction, maybe a chance to release sorrow.

Music crosses boundaries of age, language, background, class and physical and mental state.  Watch for Jazz and the Soul next summer, or for more info, contact Info@Jazz for the Soul.com.

                                  And, yup that’s me, wearing green and slumped beside Sharon.

Blog 12...August 2012


Of all the devastations of war, the one that strikes me most forcibly is its effect on children. Many are killed and/or left orphaned and those who survive face a lifetime filled with sorrows and losses that are impossible for us to imagine.

In 1998 I was in Sri Lanka just as the war there was beginning to escalate and move south.  Many children had already been traumatized and I was proud to hear about The Butterfly Garden, initiated by Canadian artist Paul Hogan and inspired by The Spiral Garden at The Ontario Crippled Children's Centre (now known as Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab). It was conceived as a garden of reconciliation and healing for war-affected children bringing various ethnic and religious groups together in an oasis of safety and imagination.  The use of creative activity to engage with people and with life continues to help the children of the area around Batticaloa to grow up with some sense of a positive future and their place in it.

Not thinking of something is the surest way to remain under its influence.  Two other projects involving art and children are more recent and have their roots in countries with ongoing violence and killing... Syria and Gaza. Their approach is to encourage children to draw their surroundings, capturing the horrors witnessed, helping them attempt to cope with their day-to-day situations.  While our children see bicycles, dolls and roller blades around them, children in war zones see bombs exploding, guns and torture.

Looking out at Passamaquoddy Bay on a sunny morning in early August, I’m thinking about how life forces us to deal with changes outside our control. What war-affected children must accept and integrate into their lives gives me a pretty humble perspective on my own.

Blog # 11, July 2012

People responded to the Port Stanley murals with a flood of nostalgia … for dancing to Big Bands on a summer night, for great ships on the Great Lakes, for freshwater fish by the shore and for the gentle life in smaller places back in the day.

And, at around the same time I picked up a new book that piqued my interest from many angles. In his introduction to The Age of Insight, Eric Kandel quotes his countryman Sigmund Freud, “nostalgia reflects strange and secret yearnings…for a life of quite another kind: wishes from late childhood never to be fulfilled and not adapted to reality.”   Anyone who watches Charlie Rose and loves his monthly Brain Series as I do will recognize psychiatrist and author Kandel who co-hosts the series.  Winner of a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his brilliant work on memory storage in the brain, he has an incredible knack for rendering complex concepts accessible - and  the world’s greatest laugh, erupting from somewhere behind his red bowtie. Although he was taken from his native city when he was a child, his soul remains connected to the culture and intellectual life in fin- de-siècle Vienna.  “My heart beats in ¾ time,” he says as he describes the rich and rewarding life and times he was forced to leave behind.

In Vienna in 1900, a group of leaders in science, medicine and art revolutionized the thinking of the time about the human mind and how it relates to art. Explorations were going on at the Vienna Medical School to discover the connection between art and science. Scientists and artists began to question together what we as viewers bring to a work of art, how we respond to it and what’s involved in creating a work of art.   The people involved in the dialogue included, as well as Freud, novelist Arthur Schnitzler and artists Gustav Klimt and Oscar Kokoschka. 

           Klimt's Anita Block-Bauer

One hundred years later, some enlightened medical schools are realizing the importance of including and integrating various art forms in the preparation of their students, broadening their training and deepening their capacity for empathy. Many of you are using art in your practice to help people heal and to explore, define and make sense of their lives. Although Eric Kandel may be leading the pack, many people out there are making the world of therapy a better place with art forms as the medium.

The Age of Insight reinvigorates the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna in 1900 and provides a link between neuroscience and the humanities; a foundation for future work on their connection and relationship to each other. There’s often a need to explain, justify, and clarify why  creative activities are valuable,  usually coming from someone with a scientific (financial) agenda and probably part of a competition for $$$.  Being able to articulate the value of art, whether it’s reading or writing, dance, music, or visual art of any sort is an important part of keeping the ball rolling…this book will help to justify the value of your work, enhance your confidence and lift your spirits.    

And it’s just a few days until the start of the summer Olympic games; Priscila Uppal is on her way to cover it with poems.  We’ll be hearing from her soon.

Blog 10, June 2012

The personalities of places shift and change as time passes: industries close, buildings are demolished and roads are created or widened.  It's all an inevitable function of progress - some popular, some not - but it’s always accompanied by subtle shifts and changes in our sense of the roots, background and purpose of our surroundings.  I was recently in Port Stanley, a small village perched on the northern shore of Lake Erie with the lights of Cleveland glowing faintly in the distance on a clear night (Port Stanley is named after the hockey Cup dude btw).  Around the beginning of the 20th century it was a prominent port with a thriving fishing industry and throngs of tourists flooding the beach in the summer.  In the evenings thousands of people danced to the music of Woody Herman or Tommy Dorsey in two of the largest dance halls in the country. As time passed, trucks replaced Great Lake shipping, local fishermen faced tough competition and when the Stork Club burned in 1979, disco had taken over and it was never rebuilt. The tourists still flock to the long open beach, but most everything else has changed.

The residents of Port Stanley haven't forgotten these important elements of their history though and keep their memories alive with a series of outside murals painted by local artists.

This piece is part of a large heritage presentation covering a wall at the corner of a busy street. The Stork Club has its own museum now, boasting records, music scores, posters and the original grand piano which was played by Count Basie and other jazz greats. The museum also organizes ballroom dancing classes to recreate some of the romance of the era, so we can all brush up our moves. I’d give anything to spend an evening dancing my feet off with my childhood idol Stan Kenton on the bandstand. 

 

The bravery of members of a local lifeboat crew is memorialized on a wall in the harbour recounting the heroic rescue of sailors on an American vessel run aground in a surprise storm in the early 1900's…the men worked all night to save everyone on board. Their courage was rewarded by a tribute from President Teddy Roosevelt and this mural near the site of the incident.

One of the main attractions for visitors to Port Stanley in the early part of the last century was a small railway that took passengers up to the top of the cliffs for a picnic in the fresh air and the magnificent view of the lake and  surrounding area. 

As well as the historical events captured by artists, many people have commissioned paintings of seascapes and flowers on their fences and the walls of their houses - unlike the surfaces in my neighbourhood, they haven't been embellished by Banksey wannabees.  And a somewhat unsightly couple of remaining oil tanks that are still in use have been made to fit into the landscape with tall ships on their sides.  The harbour isn’t dredged out to accommodate large vessels any more – another one of those losses – so we have to be content with the murals to remind us. There’s a wonderfully vibrant community of artists in Port Stanley and this is a shout out to them for creating a setting that both keeps our past alive and beautifies our present.

 Blog 9,  May 2012

Somebody said  “Every man is like every other man, like no other man and like some other men.”

There’s been a great deal of press lately about the desperate situation in many of our Native communities, most of all those in the northern part of Ontario. There’s also, far too seldom, the occasional story of a Native person who has succeeded, like Gabrielle Scrimshaw of the Aboriginal Professional Association of Canada who I heard recently talking about members of her Association.  She, of course, corrects the picture a bit with the presentation of an accomplished young woman, representing a whole range of Aboriginal people who are amongst us doing jobs, living lives, having families, the things we all do. We’re all alike but unique too…see where I’m going with this.
                                                                                                                                   

The view we have of our fellow countrymen who are Native - and who in fact beat us to it in inhabiting this country - is much distorted.  The ones who are visible to most of us are unfortunate and unfortunately our knowledge often stops there. As I usually do when I’m trying to make sense of something, I turned to books to try and feel closer to Aboriginal people (You’ll notice I go back and forth from Native to Aboriginal and occasionally say First Nations, there’s not much consensus about which is most descriptive and respectful).

Here are some of the writers that I know a bit, there are dozens more to explore, enough to keep us reading for years. Since June is Aboriginal History Month, it's a good time to start watching for things going on and maybe checking out some of these authors.

James Bartleman, a member of the Chippewas of Mnjikaning First Nations was born in Orillia and grew up in Port Carling. After 35 years in the Canadian Foreign Service representing us internationally, he served as Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor from 2002 – 2007. He’s written several books of non fiction both about his experiences abroad and those at home as former Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s diplomatic advisor. His recently published novel As Long as the Rivers Flow tells the story of a small child being wrenched from home and family and taken in a plane to a residential school... it broke my heart.

I have a great memory of Tomson Highway…he came to do a reading for me at Toronto General Hospital when he was just finishing Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing. We thought it would be fun to have the people on inpatient psychiatry do a read through of the play; it was its first performance and it was brilliant. Tomson was born on the Manitoba/Nunavut border and grew up with the Cree and Dene languages before learning English and French. He’s an accomplished concert pianist as well as a successful playwright

 

The child of an Ojibway mother and a Caucasian father, Drew Hayden Taylor  likes to call himself an Occasion... a Special Occasion at that. Growing up on the Curve Lake First Nations, Drew has, along with many other things in a varied career, done standup comedy at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC and been artistic director of the Native Earth Centre for Performing Arts in Toronto. He continues to move us and tickle our funny bones with his recent novel, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass and a new collection of essays, NEWS: Postcards from the Four Directions.   

Richard Wagamese is an Ojibway from Wabasseemong First Nations in northern Ontario.   My first connection with his writing was Ragged Company, which introduced me to a group of homeless people in Toronto whose lives were transformed by winning a lottery. His most recent novel, Indian Horse, traces a man’s life from his early days on a reserve, through residential school to life in a city with a career as a professional hockey player. It’s gritty and tough, with lots of interesting close-up background stuff for hockey fans.

                                                                                                                    

Born in North Vancouver of Cree and Salish ancestry and  a member of the Sto.lo First Nations,.Lee Maracle now lives in Toronto and teaches at U of T.  One of the first Aboriginal people to be published, her titles include Ravensong, Daughters are Forever and I am Woman.  Themes in Bent Box, her first collection of poems which I’m reading now, range from the personal to the natural to the political. I discovered her and her work at a recent reading at the Spadina library, an amazing source of material by Aboriginal authors. I’m looking forward to exploring her work further, also to discovering other native women writers.   Maybe there’s a future blog in store, stay tuned.