Squid Ink

THE FABULOUS MS. FAUX FAUX FEAR

2011-10-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

Some extravagant fear has seized my chest this morning - too big and expensive for the space I can offer it - Alive and showy and hungry for attention like a drunken Drag Queen on the wrong side of town. Despite my best efforts these sad creatures sneak in through the side doors, all brash and feathered with lies, bent on ruining the show. She is here this morning wrapped in bruised colored boas because I am going into a new situation and that's when she does her best work. But I know her now. They used call her General Anxiety Disorder but that seems a bit much. She is just a part of the great human rainbow of emotions.

I call her, Ms. Faux Faux Fear. I'll let her do a number, but only one. Then I'll put her back on the Greyhound bus to Montreal.

New story written for Richmond Maritime Festival

2011-08-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

Since the Boathouse stopped talking

by Jan Derbyshire

I was told this boathouse used to tell a good story. I was told that wood absorbs words, like bones carry stories. That’s what I was told. And with bone if the stories they hold aren’t told, they die forever with the teller. With wood, if it is not listened to, carefully listened to, the stories it holds fade and crackle and then go quiet. I was told it is words that weather wood, not rain or wind.

This may be true. This may have been what the Murakami Boathouse wanted to tell me last week when I came and stood still and listened because I was asked to tell a story about this boathouse and I didn’t even know what a boathouse was, let alone a Murakami Boathouse.

But even if this is true - that the Murakami boathouse used to tell stories , this is no longer true. I tried to listen for stories. I really tried. Last week. I tried for a two whole minutes. Nothing. Not a word.

So, since the Murakami Boathouse stopped talking, I’ll have to make it up as I go. I imagine the Murakami Boathouse use to whisper Japanese folktales about fishermen saving tortoises that later save them. I googled Japanese Fish stories. When I couldn’t hear the boathouse talking, I googled a lot of things like Japanese fishing boats and salmon and sushi, I was hungry, and Murakami. I did this hoping to float a story to the boathouse that it had never heard. But my attention span is short, I gather the wood of words but I am an impatient builder. I come from a generation of tweets and googles and the world wide web. I have at my fingertips all the information for all time and all histories .

Tweet: Murakami is the 35th most common surname in Japan.

The most famous Murakami is Haruki Murakami who used to run a Jazz bar and now runs marathons in between writing novels.

Lesser known Murakami include The 10th century Emperor Murakami and the animator Jimmy Murakami and Shingo Murakami from the popular Japanese boy band Kanjani8, and Takashi Murakami the artist and Masanori Murakami the first Japanese baseball player player in the America’s major League. The Murakamis this Boathouse is named for, came from Japan and built boats to troll the ocean for fish. But you knew that.

Tweet-I don’t know how to feel about fish

Why did you stop talking? Maybe a boathouse can only hold so much of humankind’s stories before they just shut up.Maybe you stopped talking one wall at at time. In the 30‘s, right around the time the salmon stopped running in the Rhine River in Germany, that wall had nothing left to say.

Later in the 80’s when the last cod were fished out of the Atlantic on the east coast of Canada this wall went quiet. In the last two decades every wall has just gone mute as fish stocks disappear. The roof went quiet just last week when he heard the headline on the cover of Time Magazine. The future of Fish -Will Fish Farming save the last wild food. The roof probably wanted to tell me the story of the last wild men, and the dangers of fishing and the difference between fishermen and farmers and how could they have become the same man ? But it was late and no one was here to listen and anyway, the last time the roof talked he scared an old lady, a tourist from Pittsburg who went home and said there is so much marijuana in BC that it hangs like fog in the air and everyone is stoned all the time and I myself got stoned and heard a boathouse talk.

Of course. I’m making this all up. My imagination runs away with me in here. Blame the Boathouse. I can’t help but feel that it is almost a necessity to tell fish stories in a boathouse.

Tweet - Fish story - a fib, a fiction, a lie, a cock and bull sort of thing, An absurd tale passing off as true. A whopper.

Would you believe this tale Murakami Boathouse? One day the oceans will be all fished out, one day very soon. Then fish will be farmed in little rows like floating tomatoes and they will all grow to the same size and taste tame. If I told you that we would keep eating it, this planted fish wrapped in our favorite sushi rolls and cones and wouldn’t really even know the difference would you believe that fish story?

Tweet- Vancouver has 257 Sushi restaurants, more per capita that the city of Tokyo.

Yes Murakami Boathouse, we eat Sushi for a treat.

Tweet: Sushi- Originally fish was packed with rice as a way to ferment and preserve it.

It didn’t look like it looks now. You would laugh. Now it looks like fancy food buttons or fish bouquets. And Sushi originally came from the Mekong River District and spread to China and then Japan. Google said so. Back in your day Murakami Boathouse, the Japanese built the boats and caught the fish and the Chinese worked in the Fish packing plants and no one met in a Sushi restaurant for a friendly meal. But you know all that and so much more. You used to tell those stories.

But you don’t know the half of it now Murakami Boathouse. There are no simple buildings like you anymore with simple men building simple things in complicated times. We move to fast now to know your stories of wild wood and wild men catching wild fish.

I try to imagine sitting down in the middle of this boathouse, two of the walls turning into a big book, two of them into the arms and hands of an old Japanese man holding a book and telling me an old old story from the old old days, like the one I found on Google.

Japanese Fish story

Oh but first there was also a story about how the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. But frozen is not fresh. So now they put live fish in fish tanks on board with a little shark inside each tank that eats a few of the fish but keeps the others active and fresh.

Tweet - I still don’t know what to feel about fish. Or sharks.

Where was I ? If the he Boathouse was still talking.

There was once a worthy old couple who had only one child, a son, who was their pride and joy. The son's name was Uraschimataro, which means in Japanese, 'Son of the island,' He was a good fisherman, minding neither wind nor weather. One morning, he hauled his well-filled nets into the boat and saw among the fishes a tiny little turtle. He was delighted with his prize. Suddenly, the turtle found its voice, and begged for its life. It said, 'what good can I do you? I am so young and small. I would so gladly live a little longer. Be merciful and set me free, and I shall know how to prove my gratitude.' Now Uraschimataro was very good-natured, and besides, he could never bear to say no, so he picked up the turtle, and put it back into the sea.

Years flew by, and every morning Uraschimataro sailed his boat into the deep sea. But one day as he was making for a little bay between some rocks, there arose a fierce whirlwind, which shattered his boat to pieces. He was a powerful swimmer, and struggled hard to reach the shore.

He saw a large turtle coming towards him, and above the howling of the storm he it said: 'I am the turtle whose life you once saved. I will now pay my debt and show my gratitude. The land is still far distant, and without my help you would never get there. Climb on my back, and I will take you where you will.' No sooner had he sat on the turtle’s shell when the turtle proposed that they should not return to the shore at once, but go under the sea, and look at some of the wonders The young man held tight. The turtle stopped before a splendid palace, shining with gold and silver, crystal and precious stones, and decked here and there with branches of pale pink coral and glittering pearls. The inside was lit by the blaze of fish scales. It was the palace of Ringu, the house of the sea god. His daughter, the Princess Otohime beheld Uraschimataro and her heart was set on him. She begged him to stay with her, and in return promised that he should never grow old, neither should his beauty fade.'Is not that reward enough?' she asked, smiling, looking all the while as fair as the sun itself.And Uraschimataro said 'Yes,' and so he stayed there. For how long? That he only knew later.

And only the story teller who carries that story in his bones knows what Uraschimataro knew later. Google didn’t know. Maybe Murakami Boathouse knows but isn’t telling.

Tweet: One fish two fish red fish blue fish

Murakami that Japanese novelist I was telling you about that runs Marathons ? I wonder if, when he’s running he ever thinks about that famous fish of evolution. You know that first one that wiggled up to the side of the ocean grew legs and left. I wonder if that fish knew all along where we were heading. The farming of fish. The loss of need for fishing boats and fishing men.We use nets to catch information now. We fish and fish and fish for words and and never get our fill.

Ma - A Japanese word that means an interval in time and space

(Silence at least 20 seconds)

Tweet-Anybody up for Sushi?

From the collection-Athiest Lesbian Love Letters to God

2011-07-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Dear God- What frightful times on planet earth as teen aged swimmers are gunned down and famine swallows the horn of Africa and yet another celebrity chokes to death on the price of fame. I am finding it difficult to contain myself in this world, to be where my hands are. As a general rule of thumb I don't listen to the news, But I was driving home on the sea to sky highway when I chanced upon CBC radio and heard of the shootings in Norway. These things grip me in a way I'd rather they didn't. It's visceral, like an angry bird clutching my heart in his talons. I struggle to stay on the road. The sheer, horrific fact of how out of control life is, how random and violent it can be. Meaning drops out of frame when I picture this event. Guns and hatred, a devastating mix so easily put in the hands of a madman. This particular madman is saying his actions were atrocious but necessary. He wanted to start a revolution to prevent Islamic people from immigrating form what he sees as his country. He kills people to say he feels betrayed by his fellow countrymen in positions of political power. This morning I walk along the seawall trying to make some sense of it all. I pass two women in burkas walking behind two men. I see only their eyes. I have no idea what they believe only that they believe in you God, some version of you. And this belief or way of believing is different than how others believe in you. You are so many things to so many people and because of this there is hatred and violence and wars of various sizes. In the faith of my childhood I am asked to believe that nothing, nothing in God's world happens by mistake, everything is happening exactly as it should. I can not even begin to wrap my tiny mind around this idea. And so this morning I sit on the beach before work. I am aware that I am one of the luckiest people on earth to be able to do this. I sit and hear the voice of the water. Saying what ? You are here. Life goes on. I look to the mischievous crows for some comic relief. I want to thank someone for all the silver and grey in the water this morning, for all the inky clouds and the wind. If I thank you I risk the temptation to humanize you, to see you as some Super Father who should have been there in Norway, In Africa, in Amy's hands holding the pills. You should have done something. It is all too big to think about so I watch people stroll down the beach. They are tourists, you can tell, slowed down by a fresh sense of awe at the sight of the ocean and the distant outline of the islands to the west. A couple, a little older than me tries to breath it in. I imagine they have been together a long time. He hangs back taking pictures and she goes right to the waters edge. I seem to feel how deeply she wants to feel this place. I seem to feel that she wants to be changed somehow or maybe reminded of something she's forgotten. I seem to feel that she wants to believe in something. She has come here to relax and it's not working. Her husband comes near, too near and she gives up her stillness to move on. We want things when we want things. We are not so good at taking things as they come. She reminds me of myself staring down paintings in Paris. I wanted so badly to get them, to understand them. I felt so bad when I couldn't. This is the human trick, God's practical joke. We crave understanding and we can never have it. I pray to something I don't understand to help all the world in all its grief today and I thank this same thing for all the beauty I can see today. I am crushed by the idea that I need to believe but can't trust how childish this act of believing feels.

New Work

2011-07-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

Dog of Your Understanding
July 28, 29 and 30
15-minute walk begins at The Wall Centre, 1088 Burrard Street (at Nelson)
1pm to 5pm

Harvey has been waiting more than 140 dog years since he was told to 'wait here'. His master is calling but why should he come running now? To complicate things here wasn't here when he was told to 'wait here'. He needs you to take him for a walk so he can try and find his master.

This Queer podplay uses the history of Vancouver's West End as a backdrop for a modern, playful, and endearing story. PodPlays are site–specific radio plays that take participants on a walk through the geography of the city and the urban obsessions and imaginings of the commissioned artists. Much like you would listen to an audio guide in a museum, audience members borrow portable media players and are guided on a walk by narration that combines story, music and directional cues. This is an intimate theatrical experience that will reveal a Vancouver you won't find in the tourist brochures.

Written by Jan Derbyshire, Music by Yawen Wang
Featuring the voices of Peter Anderson and James Fagan Tait

Produced by Neworld Theatre in association with Screaming Weenie Productions
PodPlays created by Neworld Theatre with PTC
Production partner: CBC Radio One

Dog of Your Understanding is part of the PodPlays 125 Series, supported by the City of Vancouver's 125th Anniversary Grant program.

Tickets: 778.840.7132 or visit us online | Sliding scale $5-10 No one will be turned away for lack of funds

www.neworldtheatre.com | www.screamingweenie.com

Part of the cultural programming for the 2011 Vancouver Out Games

My Editor

2011-06-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Theo, my fiercest critic is happy to report that I am back at my desk and writing. I am working on the revisions to Wabi Sabi workshopped last month and a new play In Service of the Wife for a little look see by an interested theatre. So much has been happening that I have neglected this blog and despite my inattention the blog has agreed to grow up and become a website currently under construction. The short of it is that Funny in The Head was well received in Dublin and a grand review or two was had. Wabi Sabi busted open and is running fast with ideas I never would have come to on my own. Thanks for the room in Hackney. Check Recently Said and Done to read about Thumpalumps and Blockheads, a community/collaboration project with a bunch of super cool Home learners in New Westminster and check Upcoming Events for information on Dog of Your Understanding, a new podplay I wrote commissioned by Neworld Theatre/PTC and Screaming Weenies to preview in June, Project Corndog, a new Tallulah Winkleman site specific play, I'm directing on a farm this August. And new stand up, Fifty Fifty, for the Women in Comedy conference this August at SFU.Stay tuned and see you soon in www land.

Wabi Sabi

2011-03-10T16:27:00.000-08:00

Jan's newest play, Wabi Sabi will be work shopped in London England, May 9-13 with the incredible Julie McNamara and her new company Vital Exposure. The play was first workshopped this February at the Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver, B.C. with dramaturg/director Heidi Taylor and actors Sean Allan and Karin Konoval. Wabi Sabi is part of the Mercy Gene project, graciously funded by Canada Council for the Arts. Many thanks to all who have helped get this piece this far. It takes a village to raise a play.

Off to the UK

2011-03-10T15:51:00.001-08:00

Funny in the Head has been chosen to be part of the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival. Jan Derbyshire will be performing her latest solo show May 2-7 in Ireland. Gay Ireland, Amazing. Funny in the Head was originally commissioned by Stage Left in Calgary and was performed as part of the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver last year.

Sanity for Beginners -Today's Lesson Psychotic Profits

2011-01-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

In 2009, antipsychotics proved quite popular, not to mention profitable

Americans are plunking down more money than ever to medicate themselves. In 2009, according to a new report from market research specialist IMS Health, we spent 5.1% more on drugs than we did in 2008 -- for a total of $300.3 billion.

Here's the company's press release, with a quick overview of prescribing trends and what's driving the growth in sales, and an Associated Press story.

To cut to the chase, go straight to the list of the top therapeutic classes of drugs. Sitting pretty in the No. 1 position are antipsychotics, with $14.6 billion in sales. They're followed by proton-pump inhibitors at ($13.6 billion) and lipid regulators ($13.1 billion).

Speaking of lipid regulators (called "cholesterol drugs" by most people), the bestselling single drug was Lipitor, with $7.5 billion in sales. It was followed by Nexium ($6.3 billion) and Plavix ($5.6 billion). Here's the list of the top 15 drugs, in terms of sales.

Want more data? There are also other drug charts -- all offering useful snapshots of today's medical field and, perhaps, society in general.

For a look at the marketing of a newer generation of antipsychotics, there's this L.A. Times article: Atypical antipsychotics: too hard a sell? It begins:

"About a year ago, patients began trooping into the office of UCLA psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter, asking whether an antipsychotic drug called Abilify "might be right for them." Few appeared to be delusional, plagued by hallucinations or suffering fearsome mood swings. Mostly, they were depressed or anxious, and frustrated by the pace of their recovery.

Leuchter wondered what was up: Depressed patients didn't usually seek out drugs used to quell psychiatry's most disturbing symptoms.

What was up, he soon discovered, was spending on a new advertising campaign touting Abilify as an "add-on" treatment for depression. For the first time since the arrival of a new generation of antipsychotic medications -- six drugs called the "atypicals" because they work differently from the earlier generation of antipsychotic drugs -- the makers of one, Abilify, had been granted the legal right to market to a vast new population of patients beyond those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder."

For an explanation of the larger trends in our love affair with prescription drugs, there's this backgrounder from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Note the related links to information on pricing, overall healthcare costs, the comparison between U.S. and Canadian prices and more...

-- Tami Dennis

Photo: It's not an antipsychotic, but Lipitor is no slouch in the sales department. It led all drugs in sales.

Nanowrimo _We Won We Won !!

2010-12-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

My old Buddy Jeff Norgren and I challenged each other to complete a writing challenge: tap out a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. He did his work in the sunny balms of Mexico and I sat it out in the rain in Vancouver. We both feel good about getting into the deadline groove again and I was happy to return to the practice of daily writing. Jeff and I have been long time friends and are in the habit of inspiring each other. We first met at Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary when Jeff had left his career as a geologist to go to art school. I was his best man when he wed Deb, his lovely artist wife and current tamer of Mexican Feral cats. Jeff's drew on his Albertan experience to slap down the first draft of The Republic of Banff. I strung together a few run on sentences about two completely different women becoming odd friends when they both lose their breasts on the same day. I call mine Tits. Congrats to all who tried, and to all who won. And special special thanks to my friend Jeff and my friend Deb.

Sanity for beginners -Todays lesson -sarafem

2010-12-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

Thank you Eli-Lilly for giving me some stand up material for my set at International Disabilities Day tomorrow Night at The RoundHouse Community Centre. I'm on night around 8:20 or so. Before me a fabulous line up of all kinds of us with dis and dat abilities. And seriously check out this ad.

2010-11-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

Writing under the attractive and gender neutral pseudonym, J. Murray, my new novel has begun. The working title is TITS. I signed up with Nanowrimo, the National Novel writing month website. The goal is 50,000 words in November or 1,667 words a day. So far so good. Excerpt follows.

I count backwards from 100. 100 - Breasts, 99 - jugs, 98 - tatas, 97 - abbott and costello, 96 - torpedoes, 95 - melons, 94 - headlights, 93 - coconuts, 92 - boobs, 91- airbags, 90 - tits. And with that I am gone, I am out, I am away, I am between the wake and the dream , under the unfluence of some gas that keeps me suspended in disbelief as they do what I can’t even think of right now. I imagine gloved hands and a masked man releasing my breasts, my tits, that sprout wings and fly like the little birds of the same name. My tits fly joining thousands of other tits, freshly freed and migrating north. Why they fly North way stumps Discovery Channel’s finest scientists, but fly north they do. It has something to do with self preservation. Fat doesn’t do well in the heat and fat is mostly what tits are made of. They all fly north and nest together, forming a mountain of tits that throws off an extraordinary amount of heat that is actually the cause of melting ice caps but no one can dare admit it. That’s how many tits are being cut off on a daily basis as the breast cancer numbers rise and the women line up without question for the treatments. Enough tits to speed up Global warming beyond even the most catastrophic predictions. My tits don’t want to become part of this huge breast mountain and so they continue to fly but are soon shot down by duck hunters in Saskatchewan who are deeply perturbed and slightly turned on by the birds they bag that afternoon.

If you'd like to read as I go let me know and I'll send you the daily goods.

Don't forget to check out other upcoming events. Live show 'Humanitales November 16/17. In Vancouver and Victoria. Pay what you can.

Humanitales

2010-11-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

HUMANITALES

...stories that are sexy, funny, and real.

Join us for an evening of storytelling with Jan Derbyshire, Julie McNamara andDavid Roche.

Vancouver: Tuesday, Nov. 16 at Storyeum, 151 West Cordova
Victoria: Wednesday, Nov. 17 at Eric Martin Theatre, 1900 block Fort Street

Tickets: pay-what-you can at the door.
Reserve by email: info@kickstart-arts.ca or by phone: 604-681-5788.
Doors open 7pm; shows at 7:30pm.

VALUE VILLAGE AT THE VANCOUVER FRINGE SEPT.9-19

2010-08-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

If anthropologist Margaret Mead was on a budget and all she could study was the random stuff bagged up and sold at Value Village, what clues might she discover about humanity, about what matters and what doesn't, about the things that get left behind and what that all means? Hard to say. She's dead. But comedian and playwright Jan Derbyshire isn't dead. She's alive and well and cheap and bought 2o Value Village bags and found some funny stories and some dramatic characters that she's happy to tell you about. Audience choice for the bag of the show and the room configuration it's told in. (court room, therapy room, class room, emergency waiting room, board room. Small new works in a small new room.

Part of Boca del Lupo's Micro Theatre Series at the 2010 Fringe.

Check out showtimes and location on upcoming events

Turkey in the Woods

2010-07-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

CLEAN SHEETS -Play Reading series

Co-presented with Screaming Weenies Productions

Admission by Donation

Monday August 9
7:30 PM

Turkey in the Woods

by Jan Derbyshire

Hale's lover, Peaches, wants to tie the knot. Hale wants to throw in the rope. On the advice of her questionable therapist, Hale, hoping to solve some of her commitment issues, decides to go home for Thanksgiving Dinner for the first time in ten years. Hale's mother decides not to have dinner around the dining room table but outside in the woods, just like the pilgrims. The tract of land she chooses for the festivities is surrounded by a rifle range. A burnt comedy for those with a certain type of humor. A drama for others. Lesbian Friendly.

At the Roundhouse Theatre

Minding the Hindenburg

2009-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

There are mornings I wake up to the alarm and mornings I wake up to the alarming; confusion, severed thoughts, anxiety knocks, doubt is all drunked up and looking for a party.

The Hindenburg wants to fly.

Dreams had me wandering through mossy hallways, opening door after door, unable to find anyone who loves me. There are plenty who say they want me but that's a different matter. When I start to cry they laugh and go off to suck each other's bits in the corners.I worry in my sleep, obsessing about how much I have to do and how little time there is to do it.

I have a full and wonderful life, but my mind often doesn't think so. I feel fear floating all around me like jellyfish, one sting will paralyze all forward momentum. Then I will sink. I try not to think about the peace to be found in drowning. Some unhappy beast inside of me continues to pound the gong of doom. I feel pursued but when I look there is no one behind me; no headless man on horseback, no thirsty murderer. There is only the ephemeral hauntings of unanswered emails and phone calls that take on the shape of monster mouths wanting to swallow me whole. Saner voices wait to be heard, like people standing at a bus stop that don't really have anywhere to go. "It's just a phone call,' they say and smile. The calmest of them all sings his endless tune of perception altering wisdom. 'The only thing that's the end of the world is the end of the world'. I run past him, flipping the bird, cursing his normalacy, his innocent faith that what he says should make sense to everyone. This is a time when connections are what I need but I cut them off like a mad man with a machette; slicing the ropes that hold down the Hindenburg. And everybody knows what happened to the Hindenburg. I am not surprised to find myself in this place of misfired logic and bloated emotion. It has been a busy week full of creativity and stimulation and people. During such a week I gather everything I have done and everything they have said like snow around a rock. When it is done, the weight of it all tips me over some edge and I roll downhill. I gather more snow and then moss at the lower elevations until I find myself sitting in the middle of a public square. If they could see me, I would be an eyesore, not a building and not nature; a man made apparition that took the beauty of nature and twisted it's size and purpose. But they can't see me and that is the thing of living like this, of appearing normal when your mind is mad. I can't expect anyone to understand what's going on inside of me just be looking at me. I could take the time to explain things but that just seems to feed the unhappy beast who likes nothing more than to feast on the meaning of things until there remains no meaning at all. I dressed my body this morning and it took the clothes offered like it was just another day. But it is not my body that will run this day, it is my mind. I will have to watch it closely like a child left alone in a room of knives. I must keep the child amused and distracted. I must try to listen to my calm friends at the bus stop. I must keep the Hindenburg anchored to the ground.

Marie Claire Blais

2009-10-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

I went to hear Marie Claire Blais read last night as part of the Vancouver Readers and Writers Festival. I would never have been able to afford to see her but an early birthday present took me where I could not take myself. As luck would have it we followed her into the reading. She was diminutive and wearing a black baseball hat over a puff of hair that deserved a bigger head. I was sure it was her but was too shy to say hello, overcome by a bit of fan energy and the fact that Marie Claire Blais was wearing a baseball hat. I was wearing a baseball hat at the time and somehow this suggested some incredible similarity between us. She didn't carry an umbrella. No. She wore a baseball hat in the rain, just like me. Thoughts like this insanely linked to other thoughts like, maybe there are other similarities to our heads, maybe words as fine as hers are in my head too. I just haven't found them yet. We followed her upstairs. Her tiny legs sprung off the steps. A peach bag slung over her shoulder, was held back from swinging by her arm. I tried not to notice that she carried a peach bag. I would never carry a peach bag. Why do we crave similarity with our heroines ? I focused on the baseball hat. In fact I jumped up on the brim and sat there, next to her head the entire time. I tried to hear what she was thinking but she was thinking in French which was so disappointing but true, the way things can be sometimes. She read nervously with a thick French accent and her hands were busy holding done the pages on the book and moving down the lines with a folding piece of paper. She seemed almost relieved when the reading was done and sighed into the questions. Her hands free she used one to articulate the shape of the thoughts coming from her. She is full of intelligent things to say and alive and 69. She has been publishing since she was 20. The only thing thick about this woman was the black eyeliner she wore. I couldn't ask a question. I just watched her mouth move with all these smart words coming out and I was so grateful to be there. I always feel strange seeing writers and being around other people who can afford to see them. As we were waiting for Maire Claire Blais to read, one shiny Platinum woman asked another shiny Platinum woman if she spoke French. The Woman parted her lips and flew out some French and impressed the woman who asked where she had learned. 'I studied at the Sorborrne in Paris'. The other woman sucked in her glee and said 'You're so cultured I can't stand it'. I am not cultured but I read a lot because I can. I come to understand books slowly in my own time, borrowed from libraries and savored like gifts, I can't believe I get to have. After the reading my friend got Marie Claire Blais to sign her first novel, Mad Shadows. I just said hello and thanked her for her work and then mumbled something about how my family lost their French when we moved to Alberta. She said, "That's Sad". But Marie Clair Blais is not sad even though she writes of sad, real things. She has a little head full of big French ideas and I wish I could hear them exactly as they fall from her marvelous mind.

Human Writes Wrestlers

2009-04-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

THE WRESTLERS:
The Scared Black Dragon, The Blue Mangler, The Purple Ungraspable, The Ultra Violet Tap Dancer, Silver Mask,The cool blue silent Spirit, La Exterminadora Roja, The Violet Pentuka, The Yellow Gung Ho, The Red Mad Mongolian and Crimson "Killer" Congo

The first play shop for Kickstart Disability Arts was held last night. participants each invented a wrestler and wrote intriguing and hilarious background stories for each. Next week we will write monologues for the wrestlers about what they're missing in their lives, what's in the way and how they'd be irrevocably changed if they got what they wanted. A presentation of the work will happen on April 29th at 8pm in the Cineworks Studio. Email Jan if interesting in attending.

Trouble, Trouble that's Pope -A-Matic Trouble !!

2009-03-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

Last week, on his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict said that "[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

The Pope's statement is at odds with the research on AIDS prevention, and a setback to decades of hard work on AIDS education and awareness. With powerful moral influence over more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and 22 million HIV positive Africans, these words could dramatically affect the AIDS pandemic and put millions of lives at risk. Worldwide concern is starting to show results and a willingness by the Vatican to revise the statement - sign our urgent petition asking the Pope to take care not to undermine proven AIDS prevention strategies:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/pope_benedict_petition

Dance Marathon

2009-02-26T11:14:00.000-08:00

Thank you to all the student actors and writers at the Vancouver Film School for working so hard on creating and performing the original play, Dance Marathon. Devised and directed by Jan Derbyshire and Andrew McIlroy. The whirlwind creation happened in five days between February 16-20. It was the fifth play building through improvisation class led by Jan and Andrew. This type of collaboration brings out the best or the worst in people. Lucky us, nothing but the best was to be found in the VFS studio theatre for this long and productive week. Alumni can continue to build improvisational story building skills at The Myth Sisyphus Club - Workshops led by McIlroy and Derbyshire, running Tuesday nights through VFS starting March 17. vfs.com for more details.

Sm(all) acts of saying so...

2009-02-26T11:06:00.001-08:00

I feel sexy when I travel through the world with my own eyes. When I see things as they are with my camera, with my pictures on the covers of magazines. My pictures of sexy have never matched the pictures they take as sexy. Sexy isn’t a looking. It’s a feeling - the electricity of being fully alive and present. When I am with my own experience, I feel sexy. Seeing myself with my own eyes and not caring what other people see, removed from the disapproving or the need to be improving. Sexy is the freedom of not needing to deal with the made up thoughts I think other people maybe thinking about how I’m looking. Sexy is rejecting the Object view, the sum of my object parts.

This is to say, I usually feel sexiest when I am alone.

Hiking in the sierra Madre Mountains, just an hours drive outside of Los Angeles. It is July and hot and I am hiking, alone, totally fused up in the work I am doing down here, totally stressed. I fall back to a old, coping habit,get out of town, head for the the hills. The hiking trail is dusty and the fine, red brown earth sticks to my sweaty legs and hands and face. I walk in and out of shade and scorching sun. About an hour in, I come around a bend in the path and hear a river. I walk on and come upon a tiny waterfall. It looks like a Hollywood set, small, build for one, a ledge under the fall, perfect for standing on. I take off my hiking boots and socks and douse myself, singing bad opera like Bugs Bunny in one of his famous cartoons. I put my socks and boots back on and continue up the trail. The heat is so intense, my clothes are completely dry in minutes and the red, brown dirt sticks to me again like cinnamon. I think about going back to the cool waterfall and calling it a day but I want to reach the peak to take in the view of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. I am craving some sort of perspective on the city and it’s place in the world. I think a good view might do it. Half an hour later just as the heat becomes unbearable, I come across another tiny, perfect waterfall, just like the first. I let out a yell of fierce joy and stand under the water again. I have been working in Los Angeles for a month, living entirely in my mind, Cut off completely from anything visceral. I feel lonely and scarred. I am not enjoying the work I do. I am afraid to fail and more even more afraid to succeed. If I do badly I won’t be invited back for more work . If I did well they might ask me to stay. I didn’t want to turn them down but knew I would have to. I couldn’t imagine trying to work and raise my five year old daughter in Los Angeles. She was staying with my parents in Calgary while I fulfilled this contract, this chance of a lifetime people said. But what of this life ? What of this time ? I was filled with the racing thoughts of worry, weakened by a bone thinning stress, going through the motions, keeping up the professional mask to hide the amateur emotion. Very far away from myself. The waterfall tumbled water over me and brought me back to now, back to sensations of dirt, sweat, water, cool, clean. After second waterfall there was remarkably, a third. At the top of the hike I took a long look back to LA. It look diseased, spread out like it was and at the bottom of the a parfait of air pollution. In layers chocolate colored, deep brown and thinning out miles high to the color of faded butterscotch. I stood on a plateau, full of prairie grass. I flopped down and slept deeply for an hour.

I remember thinking on this hike. I feel sexy. Dirt, sweat, water, cool, clean. Dirt, sweat, water, cool, clean. Being in the moment with no eyes but my own. On the cover of my own magazine. Subscribed to by one. So maybe sexy for me is being here. Perhaps I will reclaim the word sexy, make it a synonym for here. I am sexy. I am here. I feel here. I feel no weight or worth in the eyes upon me. I feel worth in me. I feel here. I am sexy. I am here. Sexy is here.

This monologue will be presented at Sm(all) Acts of saying so, works in progress from the latest Myth Universe Project. March 8, 7-9. Herd of Women Studios 1000 Parker St. email colossalsquid22@gmail.com for more info or to reserve a seat.

In Service of the wife

2009-01-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

In the end my parents were paper. That thin, that blank. There was nothing left for me to do but write on them. I took them from their beds and laid them on my desk. There was a breeze coming through the window and so I had to weigh them down with books. I anchored my mother with the dictionary and a thick tome on the History of French Canadians. My Father was harder to pin down. On each of his corners I placed a volume of my Simone de Beauvoir collection and for good measure the few books I’d managed to own on the subject of war. I had to let my pen make my parents up as I wrote. My mother immediately took to the ink , smiling like a baby being caressed by tender story hands. My father was not so easy to write on. He crinkled up, refused to allow the words to flow smoothly. He seemed almost allergic to the attempt and fought with the only thing he had left to fight with - wrinkles and creases.

All I had to work with was some vague memories that I didn’t trust and a cardboard box, full of photographs that used to hold Fabric softener. I wish that on the backs of these photographs, instead of dates and people’s names, diligently scribed by my mother, there were the actually thoughts that people were having at the time the photo was taken. They say a picture is worth a thousands words. For those of use who need words to make sense of anything, a few clues to the mysterious internal worlds of the people we stare at in photos would really help. As it is, each word of the thousand’s worth, must be pulled out of the dark mine. There is intensive labor and the excavated of guesses to find one or two gems that in the end maybe be worth nothing to anyone else but you and your hungry need to know. Photographs aare also guilty or lining up events in time, feeding the illusion that life happens in a straight line. When I think about my parent’s story, I am more inclined to think in circles, full circles rippling into other circles, that once started cannot really touch or escape each other. It is easier now to see why what happened in the end happened. But the precise events that started the ripples, the exact language exchanged between my parents, the actions they did or didn’t take, was buried when they stopped talking. What landed as pebbles, what landed as heavy stones ? I can only guess. And that guess is this story. My parents love story. It is probably wrong on all counts but I need to know some story about them, even if it’s wrong.

To be continued.

Albert Camus says...

2009-01-21T19:44:00.000-08:00

"All great deeds and all great thoughts hve a ridiculous beginning. Great thoughts are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door. So it is with absurdity. The absurd would more than others derives its nobility from that abject birth. In certain situations, replying 'nothing' when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. Those who are loved are well aware of this. But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity. It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the "why" arises and everything begins in the weariness tinged with amazement. "begins" - this is important. Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of the awakening comes in time the consequence:suicide or recovery. In itself weariness has something sickening about it. Here, I must conclude that it is good. For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it."

Albert Camus-'The Myth of Sisyphus' 1955

Stories I finally got around to telling my daughter

2009-01-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

I remember the first time a boy asked me if he could stick his tongue in my mouth. Of course he didn’t say, “Can I stick my tongue in your mouth ?” He said, “Wanna try French kissing”. I thought that made sense. His name was Philippe Gagnon. I thought it sounded kind of romantic too as my mind started replaying scenes from the Walt Disney picture ‘The Aristocats’. I was that totally white, Borg cat, Duchess, rubbing noses with a nice tom under the Eiffel tower. A scene far removed from the tongue jabbing and spit and hard mouthed kisses and the fat lip that I got trying to pull away from Phillippe Gagnon’s amateur attempt at French kissing. I told my mom I got the fat lip at basketball practice.

Then there was David Ratovich. He wanted me to touch his penis in Laurie Sturgeon's basement. It was a game of truth or dare or spin the bottle and we ended up in the laundry room. I put my hand down his pants and felt something hard and prickly. So this was a penis. It felt like a cactus. I knew everyday after that I was different. I had touched David Ratovich's penis. For a long time after I would sniff my hand, so afraid that it might still smell of the sweat that was on David Ratovich's penis.

The next penis I felt was years later and less prickly. The hair it nestled in now was long and flowing and better designed to absorb the sweat. I was drunk at a Halloween party that I'd gone to dressed as a nun. I had the costume because we were doing The Sound of Music at my High school. I was 15 and got really drunk and made out with this guy who had come to the party as a lump of coal. During a drunken romp he smudged black, tarry make up all over my face and body. When I got home I showered right away but whatever he'd used to make himself black as coal, didn’t come out. For a week I had to make up different stories about the black stuff. Then of course I had to tell my mom the truth. Luckily, she only saw the black on my face and neck so that made it easier. I had two beers, I said, and got these smudges making out with a guy I don’t even know, a guy I couldn’t even recognize if I saw him on the street. My mother warned against beers in the company of young men and then concocted something with the shavings of sunlight soap and molasses and brown sugar and that got the blank gunk off. I still felt marked.

Then one day I was downtown and this guy pulls up in a car and says, “Hey Sister, wanna suck my dick again ? Wanna kneel down and pray to the mighty penis ?” I wasn’t outraged. I wasn’t embarrassed. I felt somehow proud, powerful. Inside my head there were all these fat Mexican women saying in Spanish “Come away now Senorita. stay here near the fire and we will keep you warm.” But I didn’t listen to the fat Mexican women. I’d been keeping them in my head since I’d read this novel about a girl who runs away and ends up living with these fat Mexican women. The girl learns to have a simply life and be happy and eat a lot of corn. I wanted that kind of life. I was always living with characters from novels in my head. They were always there for me and sometimes the authors were too, wiser and more trustworthy than any one else in my life at that time. So the fat Mexican women were in my head trying to talk some Spanish sense into me, but there was this real, live guy in a real, live car. I was 15 and wasn’t this the attention I was suppose to be trying to get ?

So, I told the Fat Mexican women to can it. I giggled and flirted and tried on some sexual bravado for the first time. I had after all, sucked his dick. I gave him my phone number. As soon as his car was out of sight I threw up behind a Calgary Herald paper box. When I got home I told my mom that I’d met the piece of coal again and I didn’t know why but I gave him my phone number and he looked older than I thought and I’m pretty sure he was wearing an army uniform and and and.... My mom answered the phone for the next couple of days and when he called she said, “She’s jail bait to you mister.” He never called again. But somehow I remained marked, visibly I thought, for all time, as a woman who now let other’s tongues into her mouth, as a woman who touched and sucked penis. The fat Mexican women were kind enough never to mention it again and welcomed me back to their fire.

S AINT

2009-01-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

My father regularly proclaims my mother a saint. No one in the land of the living is ever proclaimed a saint by the Roman Catholic Church but that doesn’t stop my father. He makes up his own rules for everything. Pope Smope. I think many people would say my mother is a venerable person, in terms of having an impressive amount of dignity, but not in terms of having attained the first degree of sanctity, a prerequisite for the Pope to even consider you a possible Saint. My mother doesn’t possess sanctity, she can barely claim sanity. Picture a woman grabbing at sand to keep herself from sliding off the edge of a cliff, picture a woman living with an alcoholic for over 50 years.

No one is fooled by my father’s canonizing of my mother, except until recently, my mother. We all know my father calls her a Saint for all she has put up with, for all she has endured. She is a saint because she stays, because she sticks. Saint Glue of the Bungalow.

Today, he will likely call her a Saint because she cut short her holiday and flew home to be with him because he suffered a minor stroke and wound up in the hospital. My father wants this to be the whole story. Poor man, a stroke, a damaged right eye, a driver’s licensed revoked, a steadfast, loving wife by his side. A poor man but a lucky man.

Sometimes it takes an impressive amount of dignity to not be a Saint. My mother told the doctor what preceded this stroke; my father’s binge of alcoholic drinking over the Christmas holidays and the reckless popping of prescription pills. My father was banking on the virtues, Saints never speak ill of anyone, my mother could not stay silent about his vices.

After hearing what my mother had to say, the doctor told my father there was a medium to high probability that excessive drinking over the years was connected to the stroke. He told my father to quit drinking. He revoked his license to drive because of his damaged eye but could not revoke his license to drink. If only it were that simply . The first thing my father did when he got home from the hospital was to have a drink.

I do not believe that my mother told the doctor the truth about the drinking and the pharmaceuticals because she thought it would change anything about my father. I think she needed to hang up the halo, to quit praying for miracles and to just claim the truth for herself. She will continue to stay, she will continue to stick but she will no longer expect herself to be anything more than human.

2008-12-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Things I didn't know yesterday

2008-12-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

Things I found out today that I didn't know yesterday. 1) Companies exist that buy and sell electricty. People who do this job of buying and selling electricity make a lot of money.When I asked, wide eyed how that worked, I was told, "It's very technical". 2) A women exists with developmental disabilities who can sing all the songs from 'Carmen' in French and English.3) A Buddhist exists who made a deal with his parents's kind of Christian God to feel okay about becoming a Buddhist. 4) Thunder exists because of lightening and sometimes sounds like a passing truck. That's what I told my friend who interrupted her story to me, right at the good part to say, "did you hear that thunder?" And I said, "That's not Thunder. It's a big truck." I was wrong about the Thunder. 5) I wonder if a person already exists who is buying and selling the lightening and the thunder and it's very technical too and he/she makes a lot of money doing it?

Words on the birds

2008-12-24T11:21:00.000-08:00

The birds on a wire - all fluffed up and resting from the flights of the day. Like ladies all lined up in the beauty salon. My mother used to take me there when I was little. I would sit and wait and look. Those ladies, those birds on a wire. My grandfather called ladies birds. "There's a nice bird," he'd say to my brother. So I came to think of ladies as birds, especially when all fluffed up at the beauty salon. Their talking was muffled under the hair dryers and they sounded like far away birds chirping and cawing. Sometimes a name would be clearly heard. Mr. Henderson chirp chirp chirp or Mrs.Wingerter caw caw caw. Always this talk of others-the gossiping birds on a wire.

Marguerite Duras on Madmen and writing

2008-12-17T17:24:00.001-08:00

"I meet you, I look at you, I speak to you, I leave you. And then that's what happens: "She meets him, she looks at him, she speaks to him, she leaves him." And then there's the third stage: 'What happened?" And then the last stage: "This happened because it's about me." "In my internal shadow where the fomenting of myself by myself takes place, in my written region, I read that this has happened. If I'm a professional, I take up the pen and the piece of paper and I carry out the conversion of the conversion. What am I doing by doing this ? I'm trying to translate the unreadable by using an undifferentiated vehicle, a egalitarian language. So I deprive myself of the shadow's integrity which balances inside of me, the life I've lived. I take myself away from the interior mass; I do on the outside what I must do on the inside. I mutilate myself with the internal shadow, in the best of situations. I have the illusion of creating order when in fact I'm depopulating, of creating light when I'm erasing. Or else you can create all light and you're crazy. Madmen carry on the outside the conversion of the life they live. The illuminating light that penetrates within them has dispelled the internal shadow but replaces it. Only madmen write completely. That's what it is. Anybody is more mysterious than a writer."

Marguerite Duras 1968

Inklings

2008-12-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

So the colossal squid is weird looking and awkward and deeply shy. I like her. I relate. To deter predators she squirts ink in the shape of her body. It is a decoy, it gives her time to get away from whatever terror she is currently experiencing. I squirt ink too as a way of writing my way out of the terrors. I am neater and less dramatic about it all, my ink originating from a bic pen, but still this small act of expression has turned out to be a favored survival technique of mine. I write to find the truth in my own lived experiences. I help others to write to find their truth as well. We are all colossal squids, I think, wide eyed and frightful and lovely and gracious all at the same time. It is my humble belief that this need we have to squirt stories is a huge part of sustaining our sanity. In my own writing and theatre performances and also in the guiding of other people's writing and theatre projects, I believe we find our true shapes in what is often seen as the diversion of writing and creating. If it is diversion it is a necessary diversion. To give the ink form and function, to share my stories and help others share theirs is among the greatest pleasures I have known.

2008-12-15T15:36:00.000-08:00