Pondering ethnicity

I spent a lot of time thinking about my ethnicity after reading Jocelyn Chan's photo essay on the Radio3 website. It's a topic that's on my mind a lot lately.

Yesterday I spoke to Kwoi Gin, a local filmmaker and cinematographer, whose most recent project was a documentary series on Chinese Restaurants that took him to over 13 countries in four years. We spoke at great length about what it was like for him, a Chinese Canadian to see the breadth of the Chinese diaspora. Kwoi had lived in Asia, worked in Canada and after this documentary series seen Chinese people in almost every corner of the world (look, a Chinese restaurant, in Norway!).

Yet seeing the breathtaking variety of 'Chinese' experience ultimately comforted him and put him at peace with his heritage. This is the message that I want to deliver to Chan, who seemed put off by her inability to rediscover her heritage by visiting Chinatown. Don't let anyone tell you what being Chinese means....It's gone beyond geography, language and in some cases beyond the colour of your skin .

In other news, I'm busily trying to finish up my application to Concordia for their Masters in Media Studies. Here's hoping it doesn't interfere with my blogging.

Weekend reading....

There's simply too much great stuff out there to read. I spent a lot of time thinking about authors and writers that have influenced me how I wrote after reading this NYT Book Review piece asking 14 young authors (including Jonathan Safran Foer and Zadie Smith no less) which writers influenced them.

I loved Jonathan Safran Foer's and Jonathan Lethem's writing. Lethem's memoir on the subway station of his youth in the Dec. 2004 Harper's built on this mythology of Brooklyn that almost all of Lethem's work expands and draws its strength from.

I've also had a love-hate relationship with Hemingway, whom I first read in high school and hated. A Farewell to Arms, was to a 14-year-old boy, a ludicrous tale of war starring an ambulance driver who just couldn't keep it in his pants. It wasn't until a few years later, after a few more years of being force-fed everything from Dickens to Milton to Chaucer that Hemingway's brevity of style and honesty was a bit of a solace after bushwhacking through 500 year old texts or post-modern criticism.

I also spent the greater part of a monday morning contemplating Jocelyn Chan's photo essay on being a Chinese-Canadian and trying to 'rediscover' her heritage in Vancouver's Chinatown. I'll be writing more about this on Wednesday's post. Jocelyn's insightful work and other fabulous stuff is on the Radio3 website.

Leslie Feist, first France soon THE WORLD

Leslie Feist, thank you Toronto Star

Last year I, along with about half of Toronto's indie scene was enchanted by a singer-songwriter by the name of Leslie Feist. A former Broken Social Scenester, she left her humble Toronto existence for Europe where she hung out with people like Peaches before setting off on her own in France. Somewhere along the way she recorded a great little album that seems to have perked the ears of some very scary people (including McDonald's execs). Thankfully she said didn't sell her soul. It's bad enough we've got Le Tigre selling cellphones and the Flaming Lips selling cars.

What's next? The Arcade Fire selling winter wear? Stars selling airline tickets (actually this would beat Celine Dion.... I could totally imagine "Set Yourself on Fire" in an Air Canada commercial).

Oh blog how I missed you!

My blogging over the last couple of weeks has been as sporadic as the internet connection I had in Vancouver. No matter, what's in the past is in the past! We have a new year and new times in front of us. Here are a couple of goals for the coming year, some directly related to this blog and a few more not related.

1) Migrate this blog to my new domain name www.boyreporter.ca (yes folks, soon Boy Reporter will be coming to you from his very own domain name. More details soon)

2) Post thrice-weekly. Mondays, Wednesday and Friday will henceforth be known as Monblogday, Wedblogday and Friblogday. Awkward yes, but so is a blog without any updated posts.

3) Write more. Or at least pitch more. Derek Finkle, editor at Toro told me it was about high time I stopped interning and actually wrote. This is good advice, I'd taken to sheltering myself behind the many 'lucrative' internship opportunities available here in Toronto. All this should now change. I should be posting regularly in the coming weeks on www.torontoist.com, mainly as a visual arts writer.

So stay tuned for more adventures from this intrepid boy reporter.

Boy Reporter in Vancouver

Boy Reporter will be returning to his 'hometown' of Vancouver for three weeks. Stay tuned for posts from the West Coast!

Ken Lum works with photography

Last weekend I went to the Ken Lum retrospective at the Power Plant. Ken's works are deceptively simple. The bulk of the work in this show are large photos paired with large colourful descriptive text. Gallery-going habits what they are today, it's tragically too easy to gloss over Ken's work which means you're missing out on one of Canada's finest photo-artists.

The Ken Lum works at the Powerplant are full of contradictions, complications, subtlety, ambiguity and context. A work like "Mounties and Indians," with its smiling First Nations family flanked by two sentinel like Mounties in red serge tweak some very interesting cultural buttons. While the work is framed like a souvenir photo it's hard not to bring on Canada's colonial history into the mix.

Works like "Steve" and "Melly Shum Hates Her Job" brings the ordinary nature of these people into a direct clash with artistic practice. After all, both Steve and Melly are now shown in galleries all over the world, decades after these photos were both taken.

I would've liked to have seen some of Ken's other work. I remember a series of faux storefront signs that he showed at the CAG a couple of years ago that were also great, but then I guess you couldn't really call the show "Ken Lum Works with Photography."

The Saddest Music in the World

The saddest music in the world might just be Emily Haines, lead singer of Metric, on a piano. My favourite song on Metric's impressive and entertaining album, is Calculation Theme, arguably the most down-tempo, introspective and breath-stealing song on the album.

So needless to say that I was pretty happy to see Haines' solo show last night at the Church of the Redeemer on Bloor. Haines played a set of spare, moving and haunting pieces from, I presume, her upcoming solo album. Accompanied by blurry, out of focus, stills and scenes from the equally haunting Guy Maddin.

Haines' voice, that breathy, vulnerable voice that manages to evoke half-a-dozen emotions with each syllable gave each of these songs a sombre but rich emotional life. Couple this with the psychologically loaded blurry Guy Maddin clips and it's no wonder the audience sat in stunned emotional silence.

This seems like a radical departure for Haines. Someone in the audience was commenting that maybe Haines was pulling a Leslie Feist and giving up her rocker persona for a quieter more introspective sound. With Metric still touring and even recording a new album this probaly isn't true. But now we know what a post-Metric Haines would sound like. Perhaps not the saddest music in the world, but pretty close.

Despistado no more?

In the old days journalists used to wonder the streets, assistants, camera boy, and secretary in tow. Nowadays, most of us are chained to our desks, taking sips from that flask of whisky, bourbon or scotch hidden in the bottom drawer. But nothing beats hitting the streets and burning some shoe leather.

Take for example, yesterday your intrepid boy reporter was on Queen Street reporting. Fine, I was shopping for xmas presents. I spotted a young gentleman in a vintage store wearing a Despistado shirt. Who quickly informed me that a) he was best friends with the band b) that the band had broken up.

The band are currently on their US tour and made quite a splash here at NXNE last year. Moral of this story? Don't get in a van with your best buddies and expect to make it out alive....

Boy Reporter on Torontoist

Your very own Boy Reporter is on new-fangled blog http://www.torontoist.com/ writing about the http://www.nokimono.com/ show going on right this very instant at the Design Exchange.

Also, due to computer problems I might not be posting as regularly. Hopefully Benji will be back from the store very soon and good as new.