as PDF

The Varsity
MAgazine
vol. VI NO. 2
January 28, 2013
The Varsity publishes the Varsity Magazine
three times a year. Each issue is based around a
specific theme. The Dialogue Magazine looks at
conversations and communication, investigating
how back-and-forth exchanges inspire artists
and define our relationship with the arts, not to
mention each other. Enjoy reading, and look out
for our next magazine, coming mid-March.
A place to talk
James Maiangowi
pg 6
Creepin’ conversations
Assunta Alegiani
pg 11
DIALOGUE
Behind the scenes,
beneath the pages
Murad Hemmadi
pg 12
Recording
a scene
Madeline
Malczewska
pg 16
Digital
dialogue
Damanjit
Lamba
pg 14
illustration from Athanasius Kircher’s Turris Babel
Letter from the editor
We’re talking, but are we listening?
Probably not. The truth is it’s sometimes easier to just tune everything out and look ahead. If
you’ve got to get something done, it can be simplest to keep your head down, not listen to outside
voices, and try to get working. Trying to figure out our lives as university students, we barely have
time for others or just assume that we know what’s best for ourselves. Right now, it seems like the
aspiration of most young writers is to craft the perfect personal essay: a piece that will reveal how
exciting and interesting their life is. A piece that involves no interviews or real outside research,
but instead draws on the rich tapestry of the writer’s past, perhaps with a phone call or email to
an old friend thrown in to confirm a stray detail. To be honest, when I read an article or loosely
fictionalized story along these lines, I’m just frustrated that I couldn’t come up with a viable idea
for a piece of my own.
Of course, personal stories with strong narratives have their place. But to be able to continue
to write, and not just recount some weird night two summers ago, you need to put yourself out
there, interview and listen to people, and attempt to understand any contradictions that you
encounter. In other words, you need to participate in a dialogue.
In choosing dialogue as the theme of our arts magazine, we wanted to take a chance to look
out at the world. Yes, inward refection is an essential part of processing life, but our overall
interactions with art and other people are built up from the small conversations and exchanges
that happen everyday. Our writers turned their attention to the role dialogue plays in creativity
(turn to pg 12 for Murad Hemmadi’s article on the conversations that feed the process of
ghostwriting), and how it shapes our connection with art (Damanjit Lamba’s piece on online
communication between artists and their audiences, found on pg 14). They even raised the
question of whether conversation itself can be considered a form of art (a bartender and a
hairstylist give their perspectives on pg 9 and pg 20, respectively).
The magazine is also about how dialogue is changing. You’ll note that while the musicians and
photographer that Lamba interviewed are better connected to their fans than they would have
been just a few years ago, there are no bands or collectives in the article. Immersed in fast-paced
digital media, is face-to-face dialogue simply impossible? On pg 8 Sophia Costomiris reflects on
the difference between digital and print dialogue, highlighting thought-provoking, and frankly
scary, points about how the way we communicate is evolving. This magazine may not contain clear
answers to these doubts about the future, but that’s not the point. Instead, our aim is to get you
asking questions and starting discussions, maybe even arguments. Enjoy the magazine!
Simon Frank
Varsity Magazine Editor, 2012-2013
visualizing
Dialogue
Babel isn’t such a bad idea. Strip the story down to its bones
(there isn’t much to strip anyway, it’s only nine biblical verses
long), and it’s about people with the capacity to communicate
enough to build something big.
In our last magazine issue, we strove to present the
different experiences of the night. The time between sundown
and sunrise contains infinite stories, and displaying them
demanded emphatic difference.
This time we’ve taken another tack. Dialogue requires
diversity, but it also demands enough in common to talk to
one another. The stories in this magazine approach dialogue
in drastically different ways, but at their core they’re all about
communicating with each other. We’ve tried to reflect this in
the shape the magazine has taken, paring down visually in
order to let them speak for themselves, to each other, and to
the reader.
Get conversating.
The Design Team
2012-2013
The Magazine Team
DESIGN EDITORS
Suzy Nevins
Dan Seljak
[email protected]
MAGAZINE
VOL. VI
No. 2
Contact
21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306
Toronto, ON, M5S 1J6
Phone: 416-946-7600
thevarsity.ca
EDITOR-in-Chief
Murad Hemmadi
[email protected]
MAGAZINE EDITOR
Simon Frank
[email protected]
ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
Brigit Katz
[email protected]
PHOTO EDITOR
Bernarda Gospic
[email protected]
Production Editor
Alex Ross
[email protected]
Managing ONLINE EDITOR
Patrick Love
[email protected]
SENIOR COPY EDITOR
Catherine Kabasele
[email protected]
ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR
Minhee Bae
[email protected]
VIDEO EDITOR
Wyatt Clough
[email protected]
ASSOCIATE MAGAZINE EDITOR
Damanjit Lamba
ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR
Nathan Watson
ASSOCIATE Arts & Culture
EDITOR
Danielle Klein
ASSOCIATE Online EDITOR
Sofia Luu
COPY EDITORS
Elizabeth Benn
Lois Boody
Zareen Din
Karen Fuhrmann
Aisha Kakinuma Hassan
Mohana Sarmiento
Michelle Speyer
Jasmine Vallve
Catherine Virelli
Miranda Whittaker
FACT CHECKERS
Zareen Din
Jasmine Vallve
Catherine Virelli
DESIGNERS
Ethan Chiel
Pen Long
Natalie Morcos
Suzy Nevins
Josh Oliver
Dan Seljak
Shaquilla Singh
Nathan Watson
Cover
Suzy Nevins & Dan Seljak
Table of
Contents
Nathan Watson
PHOTO &
ILLUSTRATION
William Ahn
Minhee Bae
Bernarda Gospic
Wendy Gu
Janice Liu
Nancy Ji
Jenny Kim
Contributors
Assunta Alegiani, Zoë Bedard, Ethan Chiel,
Sophia Costomiris, Emma Fox, Simon Frank,
Bernarda Gospic, Murad Hemmadi,
Danielle Klein, Damanjit Lamba,
Alanna Lipson, Sofia Luu, James Maiangowi,
Madeline Malczewska, Ishita Petkar, Alex
Ross, Dan Seljak, Katrina Vogan
Special Thanks
#TheAvenue, David Hayes, Keane Stewart’s
Keen Kookies, Britt Wilson, Zach Worton,
Glenn Danzig, Peter Birkemoe, Chingy’s
Holidae Inn music video
Business Office
Business Manager
[email protected]
John Fountas
Advertising Manager
Tina Yazdi
[email protected]
Advertising Executives
Victoria Botvinnik
[email protected]
Nick Brownlee
[email protected]
Sofia Luu
[email protected]
Maokai Shen
[email protected]
JANUARY 28, 2013
3
Learning to read the signs
The development and use of
sign language
Article by ZOË BEDARD
Photos by BERNARDA GOSPIC
For as long as there have been people there has been sign language,
in some combination of hand
shapes, body movements, and facial expressions.
One of the earliest references to sign
language in literary history is found
in Plato’s Cratylus, when Socrates
declares, “If we hadn’t a voice or a
tongue, and wanted to express things
to one another, wouldn’t we try to
make signs by moving our hands,
head, and the rest of our body, just as
dumb people do at present?”
A strongly held misconception
about sign language is that it is
somehow reliant on the principles of spoken language, and
is simply a translation of spoken
word into gestures.
In reality, the only element of
sign languages that is influenced
by spoken languages is the manual alphabet. Not considered a true
component of sign language, the
spoken alphabet can be finger-spelt
to spell out proper names.
Sign languages have developed
almost entirely independent of spoken languages. This is most clearly
seen in the United States, Canada,
the United Kingdom, Australia, and
New Zealand, which share English
as their dominant spoken language.
However, American Sign Language
(asl), used in the US and Canada, is
almost unintelligible to those who
know British Sign Language, used in
the other three countries. The grammatical structure of asl has more in
common with spoken Japanese than
it does with English.
When you find yourself on a night
out and can’t make yourself heard
over the loud music or noisy patrons
why not try communicating with
sign language instead?
On the right are step-by-step instructions to signing some common greetings.
The universal language?
Learning about the legacy of Esperanto
Article by KATRINA VOGAN | Illustration by MINHEE BAE
‘‘What’s your name?’’
‘‘Nice to meet you’’
About 2 million people worldwide greet the
new day with a “Bonan matenon!” and say
hello with a “Saluton!” These people are
speakers of Esperanto, the world’s only constructed language.
In the 1870s and 1880s, a Polish scientist
named Leyzer Leyvi Zamengov created Esperanto in an effort to construct a language
that was equally accessible to all people.
The language would be uniquely consistent.
“All natural languages have exceptions of all
kinds and various quirky features, which accumulate as the language changes and is subject to internal and external influences,” Elan
Dresher, professor emeritus of linguistics at
the University of Toronto, told The Varsity.
“But Esperanto had no history and was constructed with the aim of being easy to learn,
so, as far as I know, no exceptions were built
into it.” This regularity extends into Esperanto’s pronunciation rules.
Proponents of Esperanto claim that the
consistency of the language means that Esperanto is uniquely easy to learn, and moreover,
that it is universally easy to learn. Dresher
isn’t so certain: “One might think that it
could be adopted as a kind of ‘neutral’ language that is equally easy or hard for everyone, but that is not the case. Esperanto is very
heavily based on Indo-European languages…
And of those languages it is more like Spanish and Russian… I’m not sure what appeal it
would ultimately have as a neutral international language.” Additionally, Dresher notes
that should Esperanto become used worldwide, dialects and inconsistencies would develop as a result. “In short, if [Esperanto] is
successful and becomes widely used, its own
success will undermine its original purpose.”
Speakers of Esperanto undoubtedly feel differently. There are many organizations worldwide dedicated to the promotion of Esperanto: Canada’s is the Kanada Esperanto-Asocio.
There are local clubs in Ottawa, Toronto,
Montreal, Halifax, Victoria, Edmonton, and
Calgary. There is also a Quebec Esperanto Society. Toronto is home to a weekly Esperanto
discussion circle. In a notable intersection of
Canadiana and Esperanto, a young William
Shatner starred in the Esperanto film Inkubo
(Incubus) before he became famous for Star
Trek. Vivi longe kaj sukcesu (Live Long and
Prosper)!
www.esperanto.ca/toronto
4
the VARSITY magazine
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W
hen asked how
the lettering of a
comic helps tell a
story, Britt Wilson laughs,
then gives fair warning.
“You overestimate just how
much I think about what I’m doing.”
That isn’t to say she doesn’t take it
seriously, at least some of the time.
Wilson is a Toronto-based illustrator, who has done everything
from illustrating book covers to lettering for a run of the wildly popular Adventure Time comic series.
She has even taught classes about
comics at Little Island, the kidfocused younger sibling of Toronto
comics hub The Beguiling.
Wilson does work that involves
either only lettering or only illustration — her job on the Adventure
Time issues, for instance, is just lettering — but she explains that they
constitute an organic whole. “I’m
still pursuing both of them pretty
heavily… I do a lot of cartooning and
graphic novels right now, which has
also led me to do more lettering, because as I do more lettering for [my
projects], people are seeing it and
wanting it for theirs.
“I would never want to give up
one or the other. I love them both
equally… They’re one and the same
for me.”
Wilson’s stylistic integration of
lettering with illustration is a large
component of her success. Her style
is whimsical and bouncy, hence the
appeal of her work to children, but
it's not without an edge. “It’s hard because I love swearing. I actually was
trying to think of a pseudonym for my
kids' things because I do love doing
children’s things… But I hate that I
CHIEL &
Article by ETHAN
Speech bubble
DAN SELJAK |
by JANICE LIU
can’t swear
in front of children and that there
are only so many potty
jokes that are appropriate
for the under-nine crowd.”
This consistency in visual style
is present, but it isn’t really a conscious decision, nor is it Wilson’s primary aim. Whether she’s working on
comics, illustrations, or editorial cartooning, her work is united by what
she calls a ‘current.’ “It’s not something that I think about consciously,
but it does come though... I don’t necessarily try for it, it just happens.”
The process isn’t smooth, though.
The answer to a question on how
often Wilson hits a creative block
comes immediately: “Oh my God,
every day,” especially recently as she
has been working on a graphic novel, which she has to write scripts for.
Wilson’s studio is in her apartment,
and long hours working in a room
with only her cat for company can
make an outside voice the key to
breaking the block. Sometimes the
key to a breakthrough is walking
away, or simply showing the work
to someone else. Creative blocks
happen more rarely with lettering,
though, which “tends to just go.”
Wilson isn’t the only illustrator
and letterer for whom things seem
to flow organically. Zach Worton,
another Toronto cartoon artist, has
his own reasons for being organic.
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY Zach Worton
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY BRITT WILSON
“It’s hard because I love swearing. I actually
was trying to think of a pseudonym for my
kids things because I do love doing children’s
things … but I hate that I can’t swear in front
of children and that there are only so many
potty jokes that are appropriate for the
under nine crowd.”
— BritT wilson
“Everything doesn’t need to be perfect all the time. It’s, y’know, I think
comics are, they have their own life. I
don’t think they’re just drawings and
words on a page; there’s something
way more to it than that. And I think
when people try to make it too perfect it becomes disingenuous, to me.”
In 2011 Drawn & Quarterly published Worton’s longest work to date,
The Klondike, a set of fictionalized,
interwoven stories about the Klondike Gold Rush that took place in the
Yukon at the end of the nineteenth
century. The comic was popular with
a niche crowd, drawn in by historical
interests and Worton’s unique take
on storytelling. “It’s not an actionpacked adventure story western. It
was told very deliberately as a historical book. History isn’t always exciting... I didn’t want to make it something that it wasn’t. I feel like there
was enough action, enough tension
in it to be compelling.”
Worton’s careful approach shows
in his work. His illustrations are tight
and meticulous, though crowded
when they need to be. By his own
admission Worton's style is heavily
influenced by European artists like
Hergé or Mœbius. It shows in his lettering too. He writes in clean, capital
letters, except for the errant “i,” which
is consistently lower case. Sounds
such as yelling or loud noises (like
gunshots) are represented by larger
variations on the same lettering style,
sometimes using double lines for emphasis. Worton’s letters are shaped in
the same fashion as his stories are,
to portray what is necessary. They’re
meant to tell stories as they are.
Worton and Wilson both work
by hand, and find that it brings a
higher calibre of artistry to the final product. While Wilson knows
artists who do amazing digital
work, and though she occasionally
uses digital means to speed up her
process, she finds that working digitally detracts from the satisfaction
she gets in creating her work. “I’ve
played around with doing vector
lettering either by just altering an
existing font or by drawing something and tracing it into illustrator.
It’s just that I feel less organic, I feel
less involved in it. And I’m always
...not in love with the final.”
Worton, meanwhile, voices concern
for how the reader experiences digital lettering that is juxtaposed with
clearly analogue visuals. “You can tell
when something is done by a computer. It’s too perfect, it’s too clean.
There’s no real heart in it, I feel. It’s a
cold bunch of pixels printed on a page..
If you look at any comic you’re going
to find imperfections always. Giving
it the illusion that it’s something that
it’s not is doing it a disservice.”
Good lettering plays one of two
roles. It either communicates with
the audience by becoming invisible, allowing the actual text and
pictures of a piece to resonate, or
it stands on its own, adding emotion or a mood to an otherwise
boring typeface. Both of these
roles mean working with the rest
of a comic, either by blending in
or by sticking out. The best thing
anyone can do to realize this is
simply to look closely. As Wilson
puts it, “I think the graphic novel
and the lettering are very important. One isn’t necessarily more
important than the other... It’s
worth paying attention.”
JANUARY 28, 2013
5
Lgbtout’s continuing efforts
to provide a safe space on campus
for dialogue and self-discovery
Article by JAMES MAIANGOWI
6
the VARSITY magazine
S
alome is on stage, and Salome is beautiful.
It’s early in the night and there’s a slight
crowd huddled together around her in the
club, no more than a couple dozen people upstairs
total. Heads nodding to the beat. It’s early, with
only a few drifts of conversation — “Did you hear
about So-and-So?” “No, can’t be, that’s so unlike
him, but then, I remember this one time, in September” — fading in and out of earshot. It’s the
Village on a Thursday, Ke$ha’s on the speakers,
warbling, “Let’s make the most of the night like
we’re gonna die young,” and that’s good enough
for everyone here right now.
Salome is on stage dancing and she’s a vision
from the ’40s, all dark flowing hair and severely gorgeous glasses. She’s good, too good for this crowd,
too good to be on so early in the night, too graceful
in her slight flourishes for them to notice, too funny
in split-second poses for them to laugh, too sharp
for anyone to catch her edge. The crowd just stands
around, mutely devoted, watching her dance, applauding the odd provocation (slap on the bum,
wink and a kiss) tossed their way. Her hair comes
down, her shawl comes off. The crowd cheers.
The lgbtout execs are standing around in
one corner near the tables, quiet in conversation.
Doug’s manning the ‘door’ tonight, right by the
stairs, and after a smoke outside Rochelle joins
him handing out gift bags, greeting people as they
come up. There aren’t many yet. Second floor of
Crews & Tangos, 10 pm, and it’s quiet. Josh is by
the bar, polishing clean glasses. Matthew’s by the
tables, looking thoughtful.
“See, usually — last year, yeah — we had them
Fridays,” he says, hands neatly adjusting the brochures and cards on the table, sec pamphlets, upcoming events. “But the Barn closed down over the
summer, most places already have schedules set
up way in advance, and this was the only time we
could get an event, so...”
So here we are. Lbgtout’s first Homohop of the
year, mid-January, on a Thursday, at a different bar,
no cover charge, and no longer an all-ages event.
It’s survived, and the lgbtout execs in charge are
mostly familiar faces from last year, but it’s so different now, not just slightly different but almost
outrageously so. Just about everything but the
name is new. “It’s still around,” goes one argument.
“But at what price?” goes the other.
And then, there’s the added
worry of money. Without cover,
the Homohop’s only way of making money tonight is drink sales. If
things go well enough, Crews and
Tangos will agree to host it again.
If not, the Homohop goes away for
what might be a very long time.
There’s a tension in the air, not
nervous exactly, but ‘what ifs’ and
‘I hopes’ are on the tips of tongues,
as everyone bustles around trying
to get the place in order. Homohop’s still around, yeah, if only for a night, but what
about tomorrow? The atmosphere’s full of these
sorts of questions: The drop-in’s going well, at least
compared to last year, but are we ever going to get
new space? What about the execs? Will tabloid fervour about sec and their party at Oasis Aqua Lounge
spread to other campus groups like us? A hundred
and one things to worry about before the music and
the lights take over and the party can start.
People are coming up the stairs now, Doug and
Rochelle hand out the gift bags one by one, and suddenly there are no more gift bags. Josh is pouring
drinks as fast as they’re ordered, and there’s finally
some movement on the floor: small groups, three or
four people at most, have started dancing. Salome
twirls on the dying bars of ‘Die Young,’ poses and
winks with great camp style, and the night begins.
***
The Varsity: When?
Doug: I came out when I was 15 in high school in
Venezuela — actually, I was outed by this creepy guy.
Ayyaz: I was not out in Qatar.
TV: What was that like?
Doug: In the end it really didn’t matter, ’cause I
had already been coming out to a few people. Being
gay isn’t something I’m going to hide about myself.
Ayyaz: It was not something that was talked about
in Qatar. There were no real labels of that sort there.
TV: But I mean, how was that for you back then?
Doug: Yeah, it was really hard for a while, as the only
out guy in the school. I went from basically being unknown to being ‘The Gay.’ Even my teachers knew.
Ayyaz: [Pause] Some interesting dynamics in
high school, yeah.
TV: Country-wise, I mean … how is it like?
Doug: It’s sexist as fuck; macho culture is the only
thing there. There are some gay people there but
there’s not really much [of] a community. Very clandestine organizations. There’s a march, but going
there is such sacrifice.
Ayyaz: One of the things with Qatar is there was
greater acceptance of not being hypermasculine, or
anything like that. There’s more affection in Qatar
between men — I should say, between heterosexual
men. Two men holding hands is not considered an
issue at all. You don’t see that here at all.
***
When I heard this magazine’s theme was ‘Dialogue,’
I said “huh” and that was that. After a thankfully
abandoned attempt to say something intelligent
about the Socratic dialogues, I decided to try a new
angle and trundled over to the lgbtout’s drop-in. I
needed inspiration, and old newspaper instincts die
lies,” Cathy said of the drop-in centre, which aims
to give them space to talk about it. Quite a few
people, including several current and former execs in lgbtout, have first come out publicly in
the centre.
“There’s also a social need and a great social
value in having a social space for lgbt students
on campus,” she adds.
Of course, lgbtout is a student group on campus, so life can be complicated and uncertain.
Right now the drop-in centre serves as both a social centre and a place for people to talk over their
problems, hopes, and fears. Sometimes the mix
works well, but other times…
After a long, enjoyable conversation about
lgbtout and what they do around campus,
I realized I’d forgotten about why I came and
improvised a question about dialogue at the centre.
Both Cathie and Ayyaz stared at me in openmouthed wonder for several seconds, before
Cathie said, very gently, “That’s the whole point,
sweetie. You can talk here. You can ask.”
I made a mental note to avoid stupid questions
in the future, and asked Ayyaz, who had mentioned he was from Qatar, if he had the time for a
quick interview later in the week.
***
TV: What’s different in Canada?
Doug: The fact I can be totally myself here is a
little overwhelming.
Ayyaz: There’s a huge emphasis on the idea or
label of ‘being gay.’
TV: How so?
Doug: Due to the fact I can be myself here, I’m
starting to discover more about myself. It’s been
such a beautiful experience. I got a chance not
just to be the ‘gay guy.’ I am gay, but back home it
wasn’t like that.
Ayyaz: It’s difficult to say exactly, but here
there’s more of an emphasis on going with the
prevailing majority idea of what it means to ‘be
gay.’ There’s less freedom in
a sense — remember earlier,
about ‘coming out?’ That’s a
very western thing. In Qatar,
the idea of ‘coming out’ just
doesn’t exist.
TV: So for you, identities are… ?
hard. I knew a couple people who worked there, so I
figured maybe they could say something about dialogue and give me a lead, or inspiration, somehow.
I met Cathie and Ayyaz at the drop-in centre, located under a neat arch in University College just
off St. George. Both are executives and volunteers
for lgbtout. Cathie joined this year, while Ayyaz
joined in 2011.
Lgbtout which was founded in 1969, is the
oldest university lgbt group in the country,
and does much of what you would expect an
lgbt group on a university campus to do: organizes social events, provides references and
support material for students with questions,
and runs the drop-in centre, which currently
functions as a catch-all conversational centre
of sorts.
“Overall there is a huge need for a space for
people who aren’t out to their friends and fami-
Ayyaz: I find it problematic
to say that I identified with the
‘gay identity’ because I felt that
I would be misunderstood —
that’s something that comes over
from Qatar, because if you’re interested in men
that defines all of who you are. The same things
apply in Canada — if you’re gay here then it can
feel in some sense that comes to define the entirety of your personality to other people.
***
Identifying as something is emblematic of our
generation, and you and me and everyone we
know is a beautiful and unique snowflake, and
yet somehow we’ve already found a problem:
what happens when a person’s group identity
clashes with their personal identity?
I won’t get hilariously out of my depth theorizing about identity here, but something Ayyaz said
about the western ‘gay identity’ struck me.
CONTINUED PG 10
JANUARY 28, 2013
7
Reading between the pixels
How digital media is changing the way we communicate
Article by Sophia Costomiris | Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
A
t home over Christmas, my father came into my room and
declared I was spending too much time on the Internet.
Showing him the emails I was writing did nothing
to assuage his feeling that I was wasting time that could
be better spent. It wasn’t the solitary act of writing that
bothered him, but the medium I had chosen for it. I ribbed
him and called him a Luddite, because his complaint ­— that
digital texts are an inadequate way to communicate — is
mind-numbingly ancient, the literary equivalent of shouting
about “kids these days.” Even Plato lamented that the
written word rendered focal memory obsolete. But perhaps
my dad had a point. There is a distinction of more than
format between writing a letter and dashing out an email,
or spending 10 minutes crafting the perfect tweet. I began
to wonder: does the medium in which we write to each other
change how we communicate? Could it even change what
we choose to say?
Anyone with a university semester under their belt is probably familiar
with Marshall McLuhan’s exhortation that “the medium is the message.”
My father’s worries aren’t unfounded: when Facebook-chatting or
emailing, I simply click lackadaisically between my 11 Google Chrome
tabs. Browsing the web encourages a flightiness of attention that
can result in serendipitous discoveries, but the experience of writing
or receiving a letter is a sort of lexical solipsism — there’s only one
communique existing at a time, only one text which is realized by the
act of reading it. Digital communication naturally emphasizes the new:
your phone buzzes with a new text before you can even hit send; you
can follow a Twitter livefeed of a sports event and its ensuing riot. This
flightiness is rewarded on the web, because the brain can easily make
intuitive connections between pieces of information. Compare this to
the physical act of writing on paper, which forces the writer (and the
subsequent reader) to temporarily immerse themselves in individual
texts in order to absorb their information.
Maryanne Wolf, a professor of childhood development at Tufts
University, has said that humans were never meant to read. Each
new reader’s brain must create its own method of reading; learning
to read and write is not an automatic process which humans are
as predisposed to as, say, spoken language. Rather, it is an “open
architecture,” and how we learn to read depends on the formal
structure of the language read (for example, readers of character
languages which use logograms, symbols for entire words or
syllables, such as Chinese, rely more on visual memory), as well
as the time we put into learning how to read. This means, writes
Wolf, that learning to communicate in a digital medium, where
a shorter attention span is rewarded, could have dramatic effects
on the fundamentals of how we read and write to one another. In
300 milliseconds the brain can access a huge array of visual and
semantic information, which allows us to decode what we are
reading, but it takes another 200 milliseconds for us to further
process what we have read, to begin critical analyses of the text.
The way we talk on the web rewards skipping this second step,
8
the VARSITY magazine
meaning we often don’t absorb or analyze this new information:
in high school anatomy you might have been told to write out your
notes, in order to better retain the names of 206 bones, but you can
skim an email without fully absorbing its content, facilitated by
the physical act of scrolling.
In his 1977 work Image-Music-Text, Roland Barthes, a literary
theorist who had been bemoaning the decline of text since at
least 1940, wrote about the distinction between an “author” and
a “scriptor.” Though at the time of his writing the Internet was but
a glimmer in the eye of the US military, this distinction between
the two types of writers aligns quite neatly with the different
mental processes and experiences of communicating on paper
and on the web. Barthes’ “author” is our Romantic concept of a
God-like artistic creator, one who forms an entirely new world out
of their imagination alone. The “scriptor,” on the other hand, can
only combine and re-combine existing texts and concepts in new
ways, never creating anything truly original. Barthes was writing
specifically about books, but we can see similar patterns emerging
in e-communication. According to Barthes, the scriptor has no past,
but is born with the text as it is written. This creates a new openness
for the reader, who can discover in a scriptor’s text whatever she
sees fit, but it also means that it is possible to get by on a much
shallower relationship with the written word. Grammar sticklers
decry the ruin of language brought on by instant communication,
and practically speaking, they are correct: digital dialogue rewards
reactionary speed and relevancy over accuracy and depth.
My father’s distaste for communicating on the web is two-fold:
as a writer, I think he finds the very act of scrolling through emails,
rather than holding them in his hands, to be inadequate, and he
intuitively worries about what Wolf has confirmed, that when
reading and writing on the web we skip those extra 200 milliseconds
of analysis and understanding. As digital communicators, we
choose words for their immediate value because the nature of the
digital medium rewards peripheral attention to the present. This
means that the web provides an amazing platform for minority
opinions and marginalized voices (witness endless articles on
the phenomenon of the Arab Spring and social media) where as
hard texts, like letters, do not. Alternatively, physical texts protect
information in a solid way that is simply unavailable to digital
ephemera, but they are less intuitively accessible.
When we communicate via digital mediums, on Facebook or with
email and texting, we can see patterns of shared thought emerging:
on a cold day, everyone will be talking online about the weather.
Social media urges us to take part in whatever the zeitgeist is
presently, a communal reaction to the current mood. Alternatively,
written communication like notes passed in class or letters and
postcards, is intimate by nature. We hold them in our hands, and
the thoughts expressed by the writer are just for us, the reader. On
the web, topics of discussion tend to be cyclical — what’s trending
on Twitter, what links are being shared, ad infinitum — because our
attention is so divided. No one was addressed directly, so no one was
listening and everything must be shared again.
Bar speak
A bartender discusses the art of conversation
Article by DANIELLE KLEIN | Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
“I’ve worked in probably well over 20 different bars,” Jasmine tells me, as we walk
in the cold night at Hart House Circle, the
CN Tower providing a bright backdrop.
“I’ve been in the business since I’ve been
legally able to serve, and I’ve been in it for
about four years. I’ve worked in an array
of environments such as clubs, Irish bars,
regular restaurants, upscale dining atmospheres — I’ve had a taste of all kinds of
bar environments.
“It’s been a very rewarding experience
past the point of what I thought was just a
part-time job. It’s actually helped lead me
to achieve others goal in my life.”
A seasoned bartender, Jasmine’s demeanour is simultaneously personable and edgy.
Though she chose not to disclose her last
name, Jasmine’s quickly apparent charm
and magnetism makes our conversation
feel like a warm chat between friends, indicative of the reason for her prolonged
success in the bartending business. She
laughs while recalling anecdotes about her
experiences, coloured with intriguing customers and glimpses of the brief melodramas of their lives.
“Working at a bar is like witnessing a
soap opera. It’s very entertaining.”
She describes the diverse crowd of people
who she has met in the workplace. “Many
people may think that working in a bar is
just about serving customers, or you’re al-
JASMINE
ways just making small talk with people,
or these are just one-time contacts, but
I’ve met people from politicians, to business owners, to musicians. Part of the job
of being a bartender is really communicating with the patrons that come in.
“A lot of the time, if you’re someone
that’s very curious about other peoples’
lives, you can learn a lot about people’s
successes, not just their day-to-day lives,
but how their companies run… That was
something that really interested me and
that was why I stayed in that atmosphere,
because I was learning so many different
things about so many different people.”
As a bartender, Jasmine explains, much
of the job consists of socializing and filling different roles for the different people
who come in. In particular, people seem
inclined to reveal personal information
about themselves in an environment that
they perceive as safe; as a result, Jasmine
finds she often plays the part of a therapist
at work.
“You do find people that just need someone
to share their lives with,” she admits. “It’s
funny because when you’re walking down
the street you don’t know anything about
the people you see around you… In a bar atmosphere, you learn so much about people’s
lives and they open up so much… It’s like
you’re the bearer of secrets, and you’re there
to listen and you hear all this gossip.”
Jasmine tells me that politicians and musicians
may come into the bar and divulge details not
disclosed to the public. People typically, however,
come in to discuss regular conversational topics
like “sports, relationships, and people that are pissing them off.”
“A lot of people come in and talk about their own
relationships, or want advice from a younger person or just from an outsider. A lot of times, you can
give that advice. I’ve rarely had a situation where
it was a risk to give advice. It comes with common
sense — you know when it’s the time to bring in
help, but a lot of the time they have the answers
and they need someone to just listen because there
just isn’t anyone to hear them, and sometimes just
someone to lift up their spirits. Sometimes, we’re
the jester.”
With regulars who come in a few times a day, Jasmine says her role involves more than acting as a
therapist or a random person to chat with. “In bars
where I’ve been able to converse with regulars,
you become more than a bartender; you become a
friend for some people.”
Jasmine chooses to limit that relationship, however. “A lot of other bartenders and servers make
good friends with regulars and maybe share drinks
or go out with them. I’ve always left work at work,
but that’s my own comfort zone. There’s been maybe one or two exceptions to that, but I do find a lot
of instances where regulars cross that line. It’s best
to just be friends in the moment.”
Regulars don’t always, however, establish relationships with staff. “There are no rules with regulars; sometimes they come in and just always keep
to themselves.”
While Jasmine often finds that she is able to get a
complete picture of the lives of customers, at other
times, her interaction with them is more discrete.
She simply assists them in a small episode of their
lives, be it a first date, or a minor conflict. She
sometimes acts as Cupid, providing couples with a
discounted dessert, or a secluded corner of the bar
in which to sit.
Jasmine’s cordial relationships with customers
have been known to shift over the course of an
evening at work, sometimes negatively, when situations have escalated as patrons became disruptive,
agitated, or excessively inebriated. “The worst kind
of customer is one that doesn’t have any regard for
the people around them, so that puts me in the position that I have to take care of the problem myself.
If I have someone being too loud, I have to tell them
to keep it down. Five minutes ago, we were friends.
We were chatting and laughing… Now I have to
take that authoritative position and tell them that
they’re going to have to leave.
“Sometimes if you’re a woman or young, it may
not work in your favour, which is when I have to
contact management or kitchen staff or maybe even
regulars, or in extreme cases even the police.”
Jasmine does not want to be a bartender forever,
but she has found the experience inspirational,
and it has impacted her future plans. “This is just
a part-time job since I’m still a student at the University of Toronto, and I hope to be graduating at
the end of the semester. This is a great job to do in
between careers, or if you need fast cash, or if you
want to go traveling.
“I don’t see it as a career because I have a degree
and I want to do something with my studies, but I
have thought about, with all my experience, that I
have a chance at opening my own restaurant, or my
own bar, or something of that nature.”
It’s the conversations that she engages in at work
that truly breathe life into the job, Jasmine emphasizes. “I think, no matter who you talk to, you
can learn something. That’s something I really like
about bartending. You can get advice, or hear cool
stories. There’s always something you can learn,
and there’s always something you can give back. I
think the more exchanges you can have with more
different kinds of people, the more you can grow
from it.
“I feel like I thrive the most with a varied group
of people and that keeps me coming back. I love to
hear what people have gone through and what they
experience with their life.”
JANUARY 28, 2013
9
LIKE what you’ve read?
have questions or comments?
Want to respond?
“SAFE SPACES”
CONTINUED FROM PG 7
write to us!
send letters to the editor to
“It’s great that Canada exists,
that it provides a model in some
respects to other countries,” he
began, and then trailed off to recover his thoughts. “But it’s… It
might seem like a false complaint
that ‘Canada gives you labels,’ but
it’s a real problem.”
Ayyaz identifies as queer, not
gay. Doug identifies as gay. For
Ayyaz, the emphasis here on labels and how they’re used to
define someone is worrisome;
for Doug, it’s less of a problem.
There’s not much of a point in
taking the matter further. Both
have valid and incontestable reasons for feeling the way they do.
But I kept coming back to the differences between the two, differences of identity.
‘Identity’ is forced to play double-duty as both a personal idea
and a public expression. There’s
some undissipated tension here,
some that recognition maybe
the problem will never go away
— it’s structural, in a way, when
you think about all the meanings
a word like ‘identity’ can have.
Maybe there isn’t a solution, or
maybe there is. Maybe the only
way around the problem is to just
keep talking, to just keep gabbing
on with friends and strangers, offering confidences sure to be broken in the morning, to just keep
up the conversations about what
it’s like for you, what it’s like for
me, and just talk talk talk until the
sun comes out in the morning.
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Room 2198, OISE Building, 252 Bloor St W, University of Toronto
www.utoronto.ca/mmpa
***
TV: How has lgbtout been for you?
Doug: It has been so rewarding.
Ayyaz: I think lgbtout has had
a huge impact on my self-discovery; it’s shaped it in a more positive way.
TV: I kinda need to shoehorn in
a quote about dialogue here —
what can you say about lgbtout
and dialogue?
Doug: [Laughing] We’re all very
talkative and opinionated in different ways. It’s great. All the dialogue at lgbtout has made me
realize the world of sexuality and
gender in a much deeper way.
Ayyaz: My hope for lgbtout — for
its future — is that some of the discourses and discussions I’ve started
with the community continue, especially those that look at the intersection of queerness, race, and gender; where all those things collide,
and where those differences need
to be highlighted.
***
Later in the night, the execs are
able to relax. The gift bags, free
to the first 40 upstairs, nearly
flew off the tables. Doug, liberated from hosting duties at last,
is dancing. Natalie’s texting, Rochelle’s out for another smoke,
and Ayyaz is manning the tables.
“Having a good time so far?”
he shout-asks over the music,
and I nod. There isn’t much more
to say right now, it’s too loud for
that, and so we both turn and
watch the dancing for a while.
Looking over the crowd, I’m
still wondering about Ayyaz’s
comments about the ‘gay identity.’ Sure, there are a few common sartorial touchstones here,
some shared reference points,
but that isn’t necessarily a bad
thing, is it? I can’t make up my
mind, and decide maybe I can
spend tomorrow thinking and
talking about it again, but for
now, it’s nearly midnight and the
dance floor beckons.
Soon, it’s midnight, and then
one. The crowd swells, surges, and
subsides in time with the music.
“Starships” by Nicki Minaj comes
on, and then a Spanish-language
club hit we can’t place, and then
the music blurs and blends into
one great, hours-long track. The
crowd is still alive and moving
well into the night, enough empty glasses adorn enough tables to
feel hope that maybe the money
situation’s not all bad, and then,
all of a sudden.
The air is clearing, the floor is
clearing, and it’s not only twothirty, but last call, and suddenly
it’s the last song, and upstairs it’s
back to where it began: a couple
dozen people huddled close together on the dance floor. This
time though, they’re in motion to
the last fading chorus of a song,
and when it ends, as it must, the
lights come up, the music dies,
and there’s nothing left here but
groups of people talking, already
talking and talking about tonight
and today and tomorrow.
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10
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[email protected]
Creepin’ conversations
How a playwright makes the most out of everyday exchanges
Aurora stewart de peÑa
Article by ASSUNTA ALEGIANI | Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
A
few months ago my friend and I were
hanging out in Trinity-Bellwoods.
She was telling me a dramatic story
about a tough family situation, when I noticed a middle-aged man, about an arm’s
length away from us, listening intently. I
shot him a few disapproving looks but he
didn’t even try to mask his curiosity. Finally we moved to another spot. On my way
home, thoroughly appalled at his shameless creeping, I was suddenly distracted by
a couple walking ahead of me, clearly having an argument of some sort. I upped my
pace to hear what the problem was, and
then it hit me: I had just become that man!
And I do it all the time, everybody does. It’s
the reason why reality TV exists.
A testament to the intriguing nature of
strangers’ dialogues is the Toronto Standard
column Creepin’, “a series of mini-dramas
based on public conversations, as overheard
and rewritten by local playwright/director
Aurora Stewart de Peña.” A Stratford native,
Stewart de Peña runs the theatre company
Birdtown & Swanville with her friend Nika
Mistruzzi. They went to theatre school together and began putting on their own plays
in 2006. “I have tried acting but it’s not really my thing,” she says. “Writing is where
I’m most comfortable.” The idea for Creepin’
came after the company put on a bunch of
short plays that made her more aware of the
short time span in which stories can happen.
For about a year now, Stewart de Peña has
entertainingly captured the kinds of mundane exchanges we hear all the time living
in a big city. They take place on the subway,
at Ideal Coffee on Ossington, the Metro at
College and Crawford, or in the entertainment district: places all over the city that
most of the Standard’s readership frequent
or would at least have visited. She says her
mini-dramas are half direct transcription
and half made up. “Sometimes I won’t be
able to be near people or hear all of what
they’re saying, so I’ll hear four lines and
have to extrapolate something from that.
But the craziest ones are those that are
pretty much verbatim.”
Nonetheless, Stewart de Peña maintains
that they are rewritten because “there are
times when somebody will say something
really interesting and then they’ll talk about
what they had for lunch for five hours. You
have to make little tweaks.” When she does
have to add something, she tries to stay away
from drawing on personal experience or people she knows. Instead she tries to turn an attribute of that person into a sort of character
development. “I don’t want to impose a story
or my own values on it,” she says.
What makes Creepin’ so enjoyable is how
relatable the strangers’ dialogues are. It’s almost as if by glimpsing into their lives we
can take a broader look at ourselves and
what it means to live in Toronto. Following
the places she writes from week after week
creates a trajectory through the city’s many
distinct neighbourhoods, tracing the set
conversations and emerging “types” that
are very much tied to the character of each
area. However, Stewart de Peña stays away
from generalizing the people she observes.
“People come in types I guess, but at the
same time I’m always surprised to realize
how wrong sometimes you are about someone. You think you know them from one instant, but you don’t.”
A personal favourite of mine is the installment of Creepin’ “Doom of Cyclists,” in
which two women sit on a porch at the corner of Dufferin and Davenport and watch
cyclists repeatedly get off their bikes and
look around in shame because of the steep
incline there. I have cursed that hill many
times and bonded over this with various
people; it’s a Toronto thing.
When Stewart de Peña started Creepin’,
she would try to write as she overheard a
conversation, but creepees always caught
on. “People look out for girls with notebooks, I swear. I had to modify [my approach] and I think it actually resulted in
better stuff, just keeping my ears open all
the time while trying to listen for a tidbit.
It’s made me a better listener for sure,”
she says. What makes her “creep” are moments where something switches, when
an individual has some kind of realization
during a conversation, whether internal or
external, and noticing how quickly that
can happen. She says “it’s neat to see those
turning points that happen so frequently
all over the city.”
After consciously listening in on Torontonians exchanging words and stares for a
year, what are some things she has noticed
about how we interact? “It’s hard to make
generalizations but something that I’ve
noticed about Torontonians is that they’re
very careful with each other.” This isn’t
surprising, given that Toronto is always
portrayed as being the least friendly city
in Canada. “I also think that people lie a
lot. I don’t know them, so I can’t be sure,
but people aren’t, in public anyway, really
speaking from the heart.”
You would think Stewart de Peña hears
from people who recognize themselves in
her articles all the time, but this has yet to
happen. She awaits her discovery in dread;
observing and fictionalizing those around
her has made her more aware of her own
image in public. “I live in fear that people are going to recognize me from the
column and then say ‘she’s really dumb,
she shouldn’t be a writer. No wonder she’s
just an empty vessel, filled up with other
people’s words.’” However, it’s undeniable
that Stewart de Peña has created something unique from the material the city
presents her.
JANUARY 28, 2013
11
Behind the scenes,
beneath the pages
How do ghostwriters capture the essence of their subjects without getting in the way?
Article by MURAD HEMMADI | Illustration by JENNY KIM
U
ncovering international conspiracies,
solving murders, watching a
former British Prime Minister get
shot right in front of him — these are just
some of the things that Ewan McGregor’s
titular character does in Roman Polanski’s
2010 movie The Ghost Writer. The real
world of ghostwriting, as frequent Readers’
Digest contributor and former Toronto Life
columnist David Hayes describes it, seems
a little tame by contrast.
True ghostwriting, as Hayes explains,
is working “from scratch, with somebody
who can’t write at all.” And just like Pierce
Brosnan’s character in Polanski’s adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel The Ghost, the
figures Hayes and other writers like him
work with are looking to tell their stories.
“One way or the other, it always is about
legacy, whoever it is.”
Discretion is a significant part of the job
description, so Hayes won’t tell me about
all the subjects he’s worked with. But it’s
clear from our conversation at his Toronto
home that he has ghosted for some prominent figures, and some real characters.
“We had a discussion with the publisher of how many ‘fucks’ would I liberally
sprinkle through this [book],” he says of
12
the VARSITY magazine
one particular attempt to capture the personality of a subject. “You couldn’t possibly do this and not have a couple. So we
discussed where there were a couple of
good spots where it was particularly effective, the context was really good, so we put
two or three in there.
“They had to be there — if you knew
this guy at all, and you read something
that was supposedly him talking and
[the word] ‘fuck’ didn’t happen once,
you’d think ‘What?’ That would be like it
was laundered.”
Ghosting an autobiography means writing it the way the subject would have
written it, if they had been able to write it
themselves. “The autobiography has to be
written in the voice of the subject,” Hayes
stresses. “A biography is going to be written in my voice as a writer, telling their
story. I want to capture their voice maybe
in quotes and things, but that book would
be written in my voice. That’s the difference — [when] you’re capturing in a memoir or autobiography, you’re capturing the
voice of the person.”
That ‘voice’ or style is often very different from the way Hayes writes under his
own name — a repertoire that includes
three books and feature articles for publications like The Walrus and Report on Business. “If I was writing for Toronto Life, I’d
have much more freedom with the voice
[than with ghostwriting],” he explains. “I
could be a little more experimental, there
could be more personality to the voice.”
Contrast that with the style used for
On Equal Terms, a book by Hong Kong
businessman Zheng Mingxun that Hayes
worked on last year. “With On Equal Terms,
I did not write it the way I would have written a book,” he admits. “I had to write it the
way this 70-year-old Hong Kong-Chinese
CEO, corporate-guy would have written it.
He has no voice as a writer. If he had a voice
as a writer, it would be a little bit dry, [an]
academic type of voice, like what might be
an Atlantic Monthly essay.”
The Economics
On Equal Terms was published by Wiley, a
prominent international publishing house,
and is available at an Indigo near you.
“He paid to have that book done,” Hayes
explains. “And Wiley’s got it out there
all over the world. Most people wouldn’t
know that it’s a book that the author paid
for. I don’t know if they’d care — it’s by the
author. I don’t think most people care how
the book got written.”
Hayes doesn’t receive any money from
sales of the book. “I get a fee, I don’t get
any royalties. The royalties go to the author,” he says. Still, the nature of many
ghostwriting projects means that a fee up
front is often better than a cut of royalties.
“A lot of them are vanity in a sense, or
the company is using them for promotion.
So they’re not selling them, they’re giving
them to clients and prospective clients,
and to employees as a Christmas present,”
Hayes says. “They’re not actually selling
them and making money. So you’re actually not going to make that much of royalties from those kinds of books.”
Samantha Reynolds, the founder of Echo
Memoirs, says that the books her custompublishing house produces don’t often
find their way onto shelves. “Most of our
clients come to us and don’t want their
book in bookstores — that’s not at all their
interest. They have their audience, whether it’s family or employees, so it’s not about
whether it hits bookstores.”
If a client does want to see his or her
book on sale, Reynolds and her team have
to believe the book will appeal to the average reader. “We don’t take that project
unless we have complete confidence that
it will be bookstore-appropriate and that
bookstores will want to buy it.”
The modern world of custom publishing and ghostwriters is markedly different
from the early days of the business. “It’s
what used to be called ‘vanity publishing,’” Hayes explains. “It’s come up a lot in
quality. It used to be very low quality, because nobody serious did it, nobody spent
very much getting it done. They used to be
crummy little books, and it didn’t tend to
be the best writers doing it.
“And today, top writers are doing this
kind of work, so the quality of the books is
higher, and in some cases some of them go
into the store.”
Reynolds mentions a project that seems
to confirm the newfound respectability of
custom publishing. “We’re doing a book
with a client in Los Angeles right now,
and we’re working with a New York Times
number-one bestselling author. So they’re
getting great authors.”
That kind of quality does not come
cheap. “We’re fee-for-service,” says
Reynolds. “Most families and individuals invest in the range of $150,000 and
most companies invest in the range of
$250,000.” But, she points out, that sum
buys a lot of expertise. “They’re mobilizing a team of about 12 publishing professionals that are going to incubate their
story for two years — that’s where they
see their investment go.”
Echo Memoirs produces about 20
books a year. “These days we do about
three-quarters of our work for organizations and companies, so non-profits,
large global companies, and many different types of organizations in between.
The balance is families and individuals.”
Hayes admits that the financial considerations motivate his ghostwriting.
“It’s a money job — I do it for income.
It’s part of my living as a writer. Unless
you’re one of the stars, it’s very hard to
make your living just from doing your
own writing.”
It’s better than the alternative,
though. “If I wasn’t doing this I’d be doing — well I wouldn’t be doing it — for
a woman’s magazine, the sort of ‘what
colours of lipsticks are coming up this
season,’ service journalism.
“People grind that stuff out, and
you can make a decent living grinding
that stuff out. It’s not wonderful prose
you’re going to labour over — it’s service
journalism. So that’s one way to make income, but to me [that’s] harder.”
Screenwriting
Whose story is it anyway?
Ghostwriters are hired for their writing
abilities. Natasha Master used her expertise
in a slightly different area of the custompublishing business.
“The company specialized in working
with people who were self-published authors,” she explains. “So they offered them
various services and one of them was that
you could have your book turned into a
film treatment or a script.”
Hayes, like Master, follows the lead of his
clients. “You’re working for that person.
Whether you’re doing it through a publisher or not, you’re doing it for that person,
so they will decide how they want to put
it and whether they want to put it in, and
what they want to put in.”
There’s room for a ghostwriter to improve or re-work a story to make the resulting book more readable. “I can make
Most people wouldn’t know that it’s
a book that the author paid for. I
don’t know if they’d care — it’s by
the author. I don’t think most people
care how the book got written.
Master wrote those scripts, using the books
of the commissioning authors as source material. “[Screenwriting] is a different way of
structuring a story,” she explains. “There’s a
whole different approach to telling a story;
you have a lot less space to do it in. If you’re
writing in a book format, you can make it as
long as you want, but you’re pretty restricted
in terms of length with a screenplay.”
How much the script deviated from
the source text depended on the client. “That was one of the first things I
would establish in that initial call was
how much leeway did I have to change
things around, how much creative license
were they willing to give me. “There’s a
little bit of back-and-forth in the editing
stage. They’re either comfortable with the
changes you’ve made, or they want you to
stick mostly to their original text. That’s
an ongoing negotiation.”
Like Hayes, Master doesn’t have a financial stake in the scripts she produced. “I
don’t own the rights to any of that work, so
once I hand in my final edit, it’s out of my
hands. I have no idea what’s happened to
any of them.”
Master hasn’t seen anything to suggest
that any of her scripts have made it to the
silver screen. But, she explains, that’s not
surprising. “Some of them were just curious
to see what [their books] would look like in
script form, and maybe not as serious about
developing it for production.”
— David hayes
suggestions that I think will improve the
story. I’ll say, ‘This will really improve the
book, and here’s why, and here’s an example of what it will look like.’ And often
they’ll say, ‘That’s great. Fine, I like that, I
understand what you’re saying.’ But sometimes they won’t.”
One client in particular, Hayes notes,
was particularly easy to work with. Hayes’
first book as a ghostwriter (or co-writer,
since his name appeared on the cover of
the final product) was Canadian figure
skater and choreographer Sandra Bezic’s
The Passion to Skate.
“Sandra was incredibly reasonable,”
Hayes remembers. “She thought about
anything I was suggesting we do, and most
of the time they were sensible ideas, and
she thought they were great ideas.”
Other subjects have been more challenging. “I think in some ways it was harder,
or one might say more boring, with [On
Equal Terms] because I didn’t spend much
time with [Zheng]. I tried to do Skype interviews with him, and it didn’t work too
well over the phone. He worked better actually with email. He just didn’t give me as
much as I needed, so it was a little bit of a
struggle working on that one.”
Hayes notes that ghostwriters don’t necessarily have a deeper insight into their
subjects than the average reader. “It’s
funny, sometimes you learn less than you
would if you were a journalist doing a pro-
file. With [one of his subjects] it wasn’t
my job to dig into everything about who
he was. I wasn’t interviewing a dozen or
15 people who he’s worked with in the
past, who still work with him, who were
influential at some point in his career,
friends, enemies, critics and supporters.
You’d be getting this full picture because
you’d be going outside the subject himself or herself.
“With this kind of book… The person’s
going to give you the side or sides that they
want to put in the book, and as you’re talking you pick up on things, so you do ask
questions a certain way and try to bring
other things out to some degree. But basically, it’s pretty much you and the subject.”
The access that the ghostwriter-subject
relationship provides can sometimes
mean a less well-rounded story, Hayes
admits. “There are lots of profiles done
where the person never spoke to the profile subject at all,” he says, citing Gay Talese’s famous 1966 Esquire article, “Frank
Sinatra Has A Cold.”
“You can sometimes do a better profile
than the ones where you actually talk
to the individual, because you talk to so
many other people that you actually get
a picture [of the subject]. Often when we
do have great access to the main subject,
we don’t do as many interviews around
the person. You don’t need to go quite
as far afield, and some of those people
far afield may be incredibly great people
to talk to.”
Certain subjects, like Bezic, choose to
acknowledge their ghostwriters on the
covers of their books. Others are more
reticent to credit their co-creators. Still,
Hayes explains, it’s not hard to find a
ghostwriter’s name.
“Look at the acknowledgements — if
it isn’t explicit, sometimes it’ll just say,
‘Thank you for the valuable help given to
me by my editors,’ and it’ll name two or
three people,” he explains. “Google their
names — one of them will be the publisher and editor-in-chief of that publishing
house, the other one will be a senior editor at that publishing house, and the third
person will be a writer.
“As soon as you see that, [you know]
that’s the person who wrote the book.”
In the end though, the book is the property and responsibility of the person whose
name is front and centre on the cover.
“You’re interpreting to a degree in
ghost- or co-writing and in authorized biographies sometimes, but the subject has
control,” Hayes says. “Ultimately, I am
only putting in what each of these people
wanted to put in.”
JANUARY 28, 2013
13
Digital dialogue
How communicating with fans online has changed the creative process
Article by DAMANJIT LAMBA | Illustrations by MINHEE BAE
I
n an age of self-expression, where many of us treat access to the web as an informal go-ahead
for the title of part-time critic, audiences have more power than ever to share opinions on the
culture they consume. But it’s still not common for fans to engage with an artist’s work on its
own terms. There is a certain expectation that artists will lead the way by distinguishing their
work within today’s morass of digital channels. Fan validation is still a crucial component for
artists seeking meaningful exposure, especially since record labels are no longer the ultimate
arbiters of good taste, at least not to the same degree that they were a decade ago. Spectators
are now the ones who sort through what’s available, tying the success of every artist to their subjective tastes. For this reason, it’s worth re-examining the relationship between artists and their
audience. How does this new distribution of power affect the role of dialogue between an artist
and their audience? We took our queries about this new transparency to a few tastemakers who
are exposed to audience interaction on a daily basis. Our panel includes two Toronto musicians,
Digits (Alt Altman) and Kontravoid (Cam Findlay), Vienna-based photographer Klaus Pichler, and
London instrumentalist/producer, Urulu (Taylor Freels).
Digits: Social media is absolutely essential to everything I do, every single
day, every hour of every day even. It’s
how I’m able to reach the people that
listen to me and how I’m able to promote anything that might happen.
Kontravoid: As an artist starting off, it’s pretty crucial… Putting
music online in the past five to six
years has given new artists the upper
hand ­— they have their music out
there for people to listen to. Essentially, what new musicians want to do
is have their music be heard, attract
a fan base immediately, start playing
shows, and get on with their project.
And as soon as you pick up a fan base,
it directs your project. At least from
my experience, it’s a good insight into
who’s listening to your music and
where they’re coming from.
KLAUS PICHLER: In the beginning
social media played a very important
role in my career, since Facebook was
a great tool to get an overview of who
was active in the photo scene, and
what the most important platforms
were. I used it less to promote myself,
and more to get an overview of online
discussions that would help me start
my career as an exhibiting artist.
Urulu: I would say that it’s almost as important as the musical
14
process itself. About 40 per cent of
what I do is devoted to actual studio time, and 60 per cent is used for
networking, promotion, etc. The
music industry is a game played
through both spectrums.
—
Although its’ now an essential component for day-to-day business, it’s still
not completely conceivable for an artist to tweet, blog, and profile their way
to success. Our panel broke down their
experiences interacting on various social networks.
Digits: Facebook is the most useful, but Facebook has recently introduced a lot of limitations in terms
of how artists can reach their fans,
so it’s not the best. Fewer people
will receive your updates now and
they’ve implemented a system by
which you have to pay in order to
ensure that all your fans see a given update. They’re just doing what
they do. Facebook is still useful, but
I feel like they could be a much better friend to artists. So the best way
for me to reach my fans is actually
still via email. If someone signs up
for my email list, I find most people
will see the updates, and most likely
read them.
Kontravoid: Facebook is probably the main one I use for everything. I get the most responses from
anything I post on Facebook. Instagram as well, if you’re documenting
a tour for example or a recording
session, that’s very strong too, and
it’s fairly new. For me, Twitter’s not
the VARSITY magazine
ArTists Are almost
required now to have a
different set of skils
than they had before,
and they’re expected
to [have them] if they
want to continue making
music. i think this
freedom is only good.
­­— Digits
very responsive. I don’t post things
every single day; I try to only do
posts when it’s relevant.
Pichler: In my case, Facebook was
the tool of choice. There are definitely
other platforms, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, that have their own
communities and also their own
rules, their own pros and cons. Facebook works best for me with its mixture of profiles, fan pages, groups, and
the opportunity to promote events.
One aspect I dislike about Facebook is
its strange copyright and privacy rules
when it comes to sharing pictures.
Something which is characteristic
of social networks… is the economy
of attention. The one who screams
the loudest wins, it doesn’t matter
if the quality of his or her work is
high or low, either way this person
gets attention.
Urulu: It’s all strategy I guess. I
would say Facebook gives the most
reach, while Twitter is kind of the informal step-child for belting out random thoughts. SoundCloud is also
a big one, but more geared towards
streaming than the type of blog posts
accustomed to Facebook or Twitter.
—
We often want a song or a piece of
art to do something for us — it could
be as simple as framing a previously
meaningless object in a new light, or as
therapeutic as a soundtrack for a heavy
heart. But our interpretations can clash
with an artist’s intentions. We wanted
to know how these artists handle misinterpretation of their artistic goals, and
if they feel a responsibility to direct the
discourse around their work.
Kontravoid: People take music
very personally and look at it their
Digits: Artists are almost required now to have a different set
of skills than they had before, and
they’re expected to [have them]
if they want to continue making
music. I think this freedom is only
good. Although, maybe now if a
band that makes really good music
doesn’t get it heard by anyone, it’s
their own fault. But I don’t want to
put it so harshly as that.
PIchler: These ‘opportunities’
you are talking about of course
bring more freedom in terms of
creating your own jobs… But at the
same time, it brings a lack of security too. You have to steadily work on
yourself and your career. Otherwise
you will stand still and literally get
overrun by a bunch of other people.
URULU
Social platforms and digital platforms
are an obvious point of intersection for
artists and fans. We asked the artists
about the role these conduits of connection play in their careers:
Urulu: You kind of have to set
people up with a story behind an
EP or single first, sort of like holding their hand.
—
An audience’s fickleness can be a
source of insecurity. Musicians no
longer work through traditional
gatekeepers like record labels to access
a huge audience and a relatively stable
income. Freelance work has become
the norm for many photographers.
However, this limitless potential can
be both liberating and terrifying.
Urulu: I’m no pop sensation, so
it’s not like I have a massive label
backing me, or a PR team. It’s just
myself, my manager and a booking
agency. The easiest way to think of
it is that you get out what you put
in. Everything is proportionate.
—
Growing up in a world of unlimited
access, artists today can relate to
fans who are experiencing a similar
acceleration of awareness and consumption. Their dual role as consumers
and creators helps bridge the gap between their output and their audience.
Digits: I made music in high
school… The Internet was around,
but it wasn’t the way it is today. So
I wasn’t really being influenced by
everything I could be. Later, when I
started joining bands again, it was
a whole different musical world and
I thought, ‘I’m going to devour all
music ever made,’ which I think is
most people’s reaction to the availability of music on the Internet.
—
Yet this accelerated rate of consumption translates into singles that become
old news in a week and art blogs copy
and paste dozens of pictures each hour.
An awareness of this reality shapes artists’ approaches.
Kontravoid: Stuff is out there to
be discovered whenever people pick
up on it. It’s always new to them,
even if it’s a year since it’s been released. I feel there’s no real wave of
anything anymore. Maybe a couple
of years ago there was a wave of
a certain kind of music, then six
months later, another form of music would be popular. Now it’s all
kind of meshed together and music
isn’t really digested like that anymore. There’s no real scene that’s
dominant. I put my debut album
out in February of last year, and
not really having anything prior to
that, I knew that it was just going to
be the starting point of my project.
I went on tour with Crystal Castles
in October and that’s where I got
a lot of new fans, because it was
all new to them. They need to be
KONTRAVOID
exposed to it, they need to have it
in front of them.
DIGITS
Urulu: I started off like I’m sure
everyone else did, digging through
blogs. I wasn’t old enough in the
’90s to even comprehend collecting
vinyl, so I sort of missed that whole
sweep. Although digital consumption isn’t always the most profitable
outlet, it does however, correspond
directly to touring. I guess, in theory, I could give every piece of music
I’ve made out for free, and still be
able to tour. I doubt this would be
the same for a larger market, like
pop music, but for house music specifically, people want to see you live
after hearing your music online.
—
At the end of the day, dialogue with
an audience is vital for an artist’s
development, be it online or in person. Each artist relates differently to
feedback, and creative decisions can
be influenced by fans’ reactions. The
choice is still ultimately theirs.
own way. Coming from a creator’s perspective, there are fans I see eye to eye
with when talking about inspiration,
and whatever else is behind my music. I just naturally feel a connection to
other artists in the same realm I’m in,
but in general, it’s out there for people
to interpret on their own.
pichler: If a discourse around
your work is happening, it can be
extremely thrilling to just listen in
without actively taking part in it,
because there is the opportunity
for new aspects of your work to be
discussed that you’ve never thought
about… On the other hand, if you
discover that a controversy is rising
around your work and you feel the
danger of it being misinterpreted
on a large scale, you definitely have
to enter the discourse and explain
yourself and your project.
KLAUS PICHLER
Digits: Playing live is amazing.
You can take this very abstract
interaction with people on social
networks and email, and all of a
sudden it’s their faces and you’re
playing for them. It’s a great way to
see how people react to new songs,
just seeing what works, what might
need a slight adjustment. If people
are looking at their feet, shuffling,
and they don’t know what to do,
and they seem confused, that section probably isn’t good.
Kontravoid: I’m working on a
second album and I don’t want to
redo a lot of the stuff that’s in the
first one, I want to build on it, that’s
what I’m always looking to do. For
example, for some of my tracks,
people said ‘I can’t hear the lyrics, I
don’t know what he’s saying.’ Some
of them are muttered, a lot of them
are run through effects, pedals, and
so they’re not very audible because
of the processing that goes on. So I
kind of took that into account and
a lot of the stuff I’m working on
now has cleaner vocals and more
audible lyrics. It’s not really messing with the theme necessarily, but
there are certain elements you can
always improve on. When I started
this, I didn’t really think it would
be pop music, for lack of a better
term. There was the option to go
more experimental so I did lots of
vocal processing, so there’s a lot of
noise and over-driven synths. But
I find that when I look back at it,
it’s like yeah, these tracks are structured in a pop format and people
who listen to that music want to
be able to hear what I’m saying and
know what the lyrics are so they get
stuck in their head[s].
pichler: Making decisions is a
very personal thing for me, and
thinking about possible reactions
is excluded 100 per cent — well,
let’s say 95 per cent, because five
per cent is the pleasant anticipation of how people will react to it.
I do these [photo series] basically
for myself, to satisfy my lust of
creating something new, to renew
my photography with every series.
I will never stop working with this
approach, since it would make me
unhappy if I started producing art
for someone other than myself.
JANUARY 28, 2013
15
Recording a scene
Offerings Magazine looks inward to discover a network for
Toronto’s fringe music
Offerings’
Recommended
Toronto bands
Deirdre O’Sullivan
Ryan Driver
myspace.com/ryandriver
Man Made Hill
myspace.com/llihedamnam
Brian Ruryk
soundcloud.com/brian-ruryk
Tenderness
tendernessmusic.com
Not The Wind Not
The Flag
notthewindnottheflag.bandcamp.com
U.S Girls
usgirls.bandcamp.com
Slim Twig
slimtwig.bandcamp.com
Thighs
thighs.bandcamp.com
The Soupcans
thesoupcans.bandcamp.com
Petra Glynt
petraglynt.bandcamp.com
find out where to get a copy at offerings.ca
Article by Madeline Malczewska | Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
16
Offerings is a free monthly music magazine distributed through
Toronto’s record stores, bookshops, and cafés. The Varsity
sat down with editor-in-chief Deirdre O’Sullivan and layout
designer Andrew Zukerman to discuss their philosophy and
their process.
The Varsity: What are you doing and how is it unique in
Toronto?
AZ: We both come from a background of having our own record
labels so I kind of felt like it was an extension of that. It was kind
of a resistance to the digital side of things. We have all kinds of art.
TV: Is there an audience that you particularly look to get in the city,
or are you really just trying to get a huge number of artists out to a
huge number of people and have people find their audiences?
TV: You do lots of interviews too, right? How do you choose who
to interview?
DO: Have people find their audiences, for sure. As many people
as we can reach is our audience for sure. When we were kids, if
we had known about all of the amazing things that were going
on in secret clubs all over the city we would have been there and
we would have been supportive, but because there was no access
to that information, it was lost to us. Our goal is to make that
information more accessible.
Andrew Zukerman: I guess if someone has something going
on that month.
TV: How do you think the music community in Toronto can
be improved?
DO: It’s largely based on promoting events in the city. So often times
things like electroacoustic music or even folk music, or anything
that would be considered experimental or avant garde. There’s a
pretty thriving experimental jazz scene in the city that we feel is
pretty underlooked by media so our goal is to cover those events,
and the aspiration is to get people to go out to the shows by informing them about what’s going on.
DO: I think that improvement comes from closer networks. In places like New York and London there are large groups of people who
think that what they are doing is the best thing in the universe, and
so I think there are a lot of people who look to those cities to try to
find out what to enjoy and where to be, but in every metropolis and
every small town people can look inside themselves to find what
they seek.
TV: How do you feel that having your magazine in print affects
what you’re doing, and why do you feel that print is a necessary
platform as opposed to online?
TV: What are some current goals for Offerings?
Deirdre O’Sullivan: What we’re doing is trying to create a
catalogue or archive of all the experimental music and arts that go
on in Toronto.
DO: For me, I feel that that’s more reflective of our personalities and
the people working on this paper. We’re generally very object-focused people — collectors. The idea of something being on the Internet makes it kind of ephemeral. With printed paper, the goal would
be not just today and tomorrow, but in 20 years people can look
back and have a catalogue of what was going on in the city in 2013.
the VARSITY magazine
DO: Our initiatives are subscriptions and once we get those in order
we’ll see where things go, but there are a lot of challenges because
it’s all volunteer-run. We’ve got lots and lots of people involved. February will be our twenty-first issue. The whole point of the paper is
to promote a dialogue between potential audiences and artists, and
the artists themselves trying to find their community for collaborations or connections that come as a result of a paper. That’s what
would make us feel successful.
Food for thought
Bloorcourt restauranteurs talk about the art of collaboration in Toronto’s food scene
Article by ALANNA LIPSON | Photos by BERNARDA GOSPIC
Disgraceland
Who: Shawn MacDonald, owner of
Disgraceland.
What: Disgraceland is a musicbased bar that offers, in addition to the usual meat-based pub
fare, a bevy of vegetarian and
vegan options.
Claim to Fame: The “accommodating comfort food,” which
includes extensive options for
both vegetarians and vegans,
and the $14 pitchers of PBR.
Foodspeak: As a vegan, MacDonald knows how difficult it can be to
find hearty vegan and vegetarian
meals in Toronto. “You know when
you go to a restaurant with a group of
people and there’s always somebody
who can’t [eat meat], so they only get
to eat appetizers all night? Well they
don’t have to worry about that here.
We have lots of vegan options, vegetarian, and meat.”
MacDonald maintains a healthy
scepticism about the food scene that’s
been emerging in Toronto over the
last few years. “I think there’s maybe
too much of a [discussion] going on,”
he says. “Because you get all of the
Food Network followers and it turns
everyone into a ‘foodie.’ Everyone
thinks they’re one of those guys who
critiques food, that they know more
because they take whatever they see
on TV and use it as their own vocabulary and their own sensibility or their
own experience.”
“So they talk about things ‘finishing well’ or ‘pairing with this’ and
about 10 years ago — no, two years
ago — ask anyone what that was
about and they wouldn’t have a clue.”
He says this with a laugh, though,
and adds that one advantage is that
more than ever people are starting to
consider what’s going into their food.
“I think people are talking about
fresh ingredients when they want
to ‘eat better,’ so I think it’s maybe
teaching people to watch what they
eat or to at least investigate what the
ingredients are maybe, and I think
that’s good.”
965 Bloor St. W. 647-347-5263.
Monday–Friday 4 pm–2 am; Saturday–Sunday 11am–2 am
Actinolite
Who: Claudia Bianchi and
Justin Cournoyer, co-owners
of Actinolite.
What: Actinolite is a cozy, 30seat restaurant inspired by
European cooking, specializing
in fresh ingredients with a
seasonally rotating menu.
Claim to fame: Certain items
(such as the pavlova) get
reintroduced by popular demand,
but the menu is probably best
known for its novelty — it changes
frequently to accommodate
what’s fresh and in season, so it’s
rare to see the same item twice.
Who: Rosanne Pezzelli and
Christopher Stopa, co-owners of
Bakerbots Baking.
What: Bakerbots Baking began
as a specialty cake shop that
grew into the local go-to spot for
quality homestyle baked goods
and ice cream.
Claim to Fame: Special-order
custom sculpted cakes, and their
ice cream sandwiches, which
are made from their homemade
cookies and ice cream, and are
available year-round.
Foodspeak: Pezzelli and Stopa
love that people in Toronto are
talking about food — especially if
the food is theirs. “We haven’t spent
one penny on advertising,” Pezzelli
says. “We don’t even have a business
card, but word about what we do, and
the quality of our product has spread
rapidly, in a very organic way.”
Both
owners
credit
their
customers for the fact that pictures
of their food, a few of their recipes,
and numerous reviews of their store
exist on the Internet. Pezzelli adds:
“People know we care very much
about what we offer. They aren’t
afraid to ask questions, or to push
us on an issue, or to share their
own personal experiences. I have
a sacred collection of recipes that
I’ve built up through customers
who wanted us to re-create their
grandma’s walnut cake, sugar pie,
butter tarts — stuff that made them
giggle growing up.”
When asked about her collaborations with Sam James Coffee Bar,
Bellwoods Brewery, and her brother
Arthur (who creates the ice creams),
Pezzelli says: “When you admire and
respect what someone else has created, and you know they’ve put themselves into what they’re sharing, you
want to get involved. We’re all similar
in that we depend on word-of-mouth
and the quality of our products to
sustain and grow our businesses.
It’s always great to sit with Sam and
Luke [from Bellwoods Brewery] and
dream up food ideas, to get excited
about what will get people talking.”
Foodspeak: For Bianchi and
Cournoyer, it’s all about communication and collaboration. As head
chef, Cournoyer often tries to open
up the dialogue about food to people
who don’t work in the industry. As
Cournoyer says: “You can learn from
anyone. That’s my biggest thing.”
Recently, he asked his Sicilian neighbours whether they’d eaten bottarga
(a dried, cured fish roe), and how it
was prepared. They told him about
being served bottarga “with grapes
and bread when we were working in
the fields,” so he developed a menu
based on that response.
Bianchi tells me how much she
and Cournoyer enjoy using their
food expertise to collaborate with
other industries. For example, they
recently worked with Fuze Reps (a
Toronto-based agency representing
photographers and other artists) to
host a ‘Bang’ themed event at the
event space Metropolis Factory. “We
had to work with Metropolis and the
decor of this warehouse, and we had
to then collaborate with the photographers and all of their works so
that the food worked for all of their
pieces,” she says. “‘Bang’ and ‘Rock’
were, I think, the two themes, so the
food had to ‘bang’ as well. We did
some things with pop rocks.”
Thanks to Bianchi’s experience
with the Top Chef television series,
she was able to create a pop-up
kitchen in a couple of days that included satellite ovens and refrigerators. She describes the experience
as “an amazing collaboration of an
agency, reps, photographers, interior designers — it was a lot of fun!”
971 Ossington Ave. 416-9628943. Tuesday–Saturday 6–10 pm
Bakerbots Baking
205 Delaware Ave. 416-9013500. Tuesday-Thursday, 6–10
pm; Friday: 4–11 pm; Saturday, 11
am–11 pm.; Sunday 11 am–10 pm
JANUARY 28, 2013
17
Conducting conversations
David Briskin and Eve Egoyan weigh in on dialogue in music
Article by ASSUNTA ALEGIANI
What qualifies as dialogue? We refer to
many things as dialogue: a conversation
between two people, two nations signalling
willingness to work together, or something
more abstract, an exchange of ideas or spirits. Yet dialogue also exists in concert music,
from how a score opens up a conversation
between multiple subjects — composer, musician, conductor, and audience. To explore
where and how this exchange happens in
concert music, I spoke to conductor David
Briskin and pianist Eve Egoyan.
Briskin is currently the music director and
principal conductor of The National Ballet of
Canada, as well as the director of orchestral
studies and assistant professor at the university’s Faculty of Music. He has worked with orchestral ensembles all over the world and spent
23 years conducting and teaching in New York
before moving to Toronto. Though trained in
standard classical repertoire, Egoyan specializes
in contemporary music and has vast experience
improvising and collaborating with other artists. Their interviews took place separately and
are presented together below.
photos courtesy david briskin and eve egoyan
Eve egoyan
The Varsity: In the documentary The Art
of Conducting, one person says that the conductor has a desired outcome in his head while he
conducts, and he listens whether this matches
up with what is being delivered. Is the orchestra
ultimately a tool for the composer’s artistic vision? Or is there some kind of dialogue?
David briskin
n
Students’ Unio
University of Toronto
of Students
Federation
TV: How is it for you as a pianist?
Eve Egoyan: It depends on the composer,
it depends on the work. In contemporary music practices, especially when a work has been
written with me in mind, that person has an
idea of my sound and my imagination. It’s like
something custom-fitted. Rather than buying a
piece of clothing from a regular store, this piece
of clothing has been made for you. There’s also
more flexibility in the dialogue between the
living composer and the living performer. Often within a score there will be room for the
performer to actually make decisions for themselves and be more of a creative partner… I’ll
have something in mind, it’s a combination of
what I see and what I imagine and what I hear
that my instrument is capable of. And in live
performance that changes, which is wonderful,
because you prepare yourself to a certain point
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David Briskin: I think that description is
very good. One of the roles of the conductor is
to come to a point of view, to convey that point
of view to the orchestra and to essentially build
consensus. That is what we’re ultimately trying
to do, we’re trying to get 90 people on the same
page in service to the music. But I think that
the idea of dialogue goes beyond the kind of
mediation by the conductor, because what happens in the orchestra is, and this isn’t talked
about as much, there is constant communication amongst members of the orchestra, [mostly] non-verbal, it’s in the eyes. The conductor
needs to know when to speak and when to listen, if you will. Musicians sometimes will come
up and say, ‘Thank you for letting us play,’
which means getting out of the way and letting
them communicate and guiding the certain
terms where necessary.
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The University of Toronto Students’ Union is holding its Spring 2013 Elections to fill the
following positions:
Position
Division I
Seat(s)
Victoria College
University College
Innis College
St. Michael’s College
New College
Trinity College
Woodsworth College
At-Large Arts & Science
2
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Toronto School of Theology
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Faculty of Music
Faculty of Dentistry
Faculty of Nursing
Faculty of Medicine
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Faculty of Law
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design (pending approval at General Meeting)
Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
At-Large Professional Faculty
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Division II
Executive
President
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Vice President Internal & Services
1
Vice President Equity
Vice President External
1
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Vice President University Affairs
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the VARSITY magazine
Election Nominations
(All Positions)
Election Campaign Period
Election Voting Period
Unofficial Election Results
Important 2013 Dates:
Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 10:00 to
Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 16:00
Monday, March 4, 2013 to
Thursday, March 14, 2013
March 12, 13, 14, 2013
Times TBA
Monday, March 18, 2013
Nomination Pick-up and Drop-off Locations:
St. George campus:
UTSU Office
12 Hart House Circle
Hours: Monday - Friday,
09:00 to 18:00
Mississauga campus:
UTMSU Office
UTM Student Centre, Room 100
Hours: Monday - Friday
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To run for a position, pick up a nomination package during
the nomination period at the UTSU or UTMSU office.
Please keep in mind the dates and deadlines.
For more information, visit our Students’ Union website
at www.utsu.ca or contact [email protected]
Please note that, at the time of this publication, “University of Toronto Students’ Union” and/or “UTSU” refers to the Students’ Administrative Council of the
University of Toronto, Inc. (“SAC”).
but then you’re in a hall with a different piano,
different acoustic space, and your audience. So
the audience is interacting, too — their listening
informs my listening. And it does feel like a different type of collaboration at that point.
TV: My next question was going to be whether
the audience adds anything to the dialogue you
have created with the composer at that point, so
I guess it does.
EE: Yes, for me, I invite that, because I enjoy that
feeling of connection with my audience and I like
to feel that that moment is that moment and it’s
a communal thing. And it’s actually a very sacred
place. The thing about concert music is you’re expecting your audience to be there, sitting there
quietly and receiving, in a way. That’s very important as a performer, that what is being shared
is a positive energy because it is just something
moving through time. It’s not tangible, so I feel
that I need to respect that, their openness.
TV: David, you have to communicate the idea
you have of another person’s composition to
the orchestra so that they can communicate
this mediated idea to an audience of listeners.
Do you find that challenging?
DB: It’s very challenging but it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s a great privilege to have a life in
music, you know. The reward comes through a
beautiful performance and to be able to touch
other people and to inspire them and to engage
them. That’s what we’re trying to do. An orchestra can play in a rehearsal without an audience
and it’s all fine, but when you have the audience
it completely changes the way you approach it.
TV: Musical notation directs a piece but there is
room for interpretation. Is this space the realm in
which you enter a dialogue with the composer?
EE: Well, you have to think or imagine if you’re a
composer why would you want to give up a certain amount of control? A composer uses notation only as a medium. I mean, if they didn’t want
to risk the translation they wouldn’t be doing that
as an art form. The score is not an exact map. It’s
a map, but it’s not finished and it can’t be because
you can’t notate every single detail. It is actually
the play on the score that is an invitation for that
live moment. So you’re inviting the personality of
your interpreter; the personality of their instrument; where this thing is going to be performed;
whether it’s outside versus a hall versus a café;
and an audience, whether they’re attentive.
TV: I never thought that a composer would
want to give up control at some point. I think
of a composer as having an exact idea of what it
is they want to hear and just writing that down,
and in the process of somebody taking that on it
inevitably changes.
EE: I think that would make for a very bad composer, actually. I suppose it’s similar to writing
a play. You know, somebody writes these words
but every time it’s being read it’s being interpreted differently. You’d say that’s fixed, but there
are so many variables and nothing is exact.
DB: There’s a wonderful book by a conductor,
Erich Leinsdorf, and he wrote The Composer’s
Advocate, a book about conducting. You have
to advocate for the composer through what he
or she has left behind. It’s different when you
have a living composer and working together
on something. The composer has an idea and
imagines sounds, especially in orchestral music,
musical ideas that are spread on a large group of
instruments. When you really put things together it’s almost like cooking; you’re putting things
together, you’re mixing things up.
TV: Many people think all there is to conducting is dressing up in a suit and wiggling a stick
to tell the orchestra what the composer wants
them to do.
DB: That is exactly what it looks like. It really
does [laughs]. I think that a conductor is more
like a lexical conductor. It’s a piece of circuitry
connecting every member of the orchestra with
every member of the audience. It’s like electricity, if one electrical conductor is not working then
it stops, right? So that’s what a conductor really
does. It’s interesting because [beyond] the rehearsal process of teaching the orchestra about
my own idea of the musical work representing
the composer’s intentions, which everyone has
in front of them on the music, ultimately a per-
formance is a completely non-verbal art form.
You mostly communicate through gesture and
through the eyes what you’d like to hear. What’s
remarkable is how much things can change by
not saying anything, but just by just moving in
a different way.
TV: Eve, once you take on a piece, how do you
enter a dialogue with the composer? Do you
choose it by feeling a connection to it?
EE: Or a composer who I’m connecting to, who I
would like to work with, or they come to me and
I decide I would like that to happen. It depends,
there can be a dialogue. Usually what happens
is I’ll learn the piece and if they’re not in town
I will send a recording of my rehearsal process
and then one before it goes into performance. So
there’s a discussion.
TV: Do you prefer to work with a living composer, as opposed to taking on a piece that was
written decades or centuries ago?
DB: I think that’s the most exciting thing. The liturgy of our repertoire comes from the past. With
orchestral music it forms kind of a canon of classical music. So the opportunity to do new music,
especially to work with the composer, is great.
EE: Part of the reason why I play contemporary
music is that I have the freedom to feel I’m close
to the original idea. I’m not guessing. And I’m
not superimposing.
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JANUARY 28, 2013
19
Salon culture
Karissa Barnes
Hairstylist Karissa Barnes keeps
the conversation going
Article and photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
SENECA_INSDegree-Ad2.pdf
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12-12-05
1:05 PM
A haircut is about more than style
or manageability. Whether you’re
going to a corner barbershop for
a quick trim, or getting your hair
done at a fashionable salon, there’s
also a social aspect to the experience. People chat, linger, and relax. The Varsity spoke to Karissa
Barnes, a stylist at Blonde Salon
(82 Power St.) to find out what it’s like
to cut and converse at the same time.
then if you remember, you ask about
[it] and I definitely have clients who
come back to me after four weeks,
and they want to know about a certain thing they knew was coming up
in my life.
The Varsity: How do you start off
a conversation with a client?
KB: I would say close relationships,
just because it does make it that
much better for both of you. I mean,
there’s just more to talk about when
you are in the salon, and makes them
feel more comfortable, more at home.
They like coming back because they
know that you have a friend as well
as [a hairstylist].
Karissa Barnes: I guess you just
start with the basics because you
haven’t met them before, right?
So I guess you start asking them
about what they do, if they live in
the city, different things like that,
maybe about their family or their
friends. And you just kind of take
it as it comes, you just kind of feed
off of their answers… And then
with existing clients, it depends. If
there’s something you knew they
were having in their life going on
or there was something special
like an event coming up, then you
could just ask them that…
TV: How many of your conversations
carry from visit to visit?
KB: Quite a bit. If you can’t remember
what’s going on they’ll usually let you
know if there’s something exciting,
like you would with anyone in your
life, right? You tell them that there’s
something going on [in your life]. So
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20
the VARSITY magazine
TV: That being said, what kind of
relationships do you prefer, close
relationships or relationships with
more distance?
TV: How do you relax a client who
feels uneasy about something,
whether that’s their hair or life?
KB: I guess for their hair, you would
just do a thorough consultation,
make sure that you ask a lot of questions about what they want done,
what they want as an end result
so that you’re covering all of your
grounds, and then just be sure that
you show confidence… And with
their life, I guess you just talk them
through whatever they’re having an
issue with, I mean people do come to
you for advice.
TV: Do hairdressers talk to avoid
boredom or to make their jobs easier?
KB: I would say neither of those,
really. I would say that they talk
just because they enjoy the company of their clients. I mean, it is
really the clients that make your
day when you’re working, and it’s
the conversation.
TV: What about the days where
you’re not in the mood to talk?
How do you deal with that?
KB: I guess everyone has those
days where you don’t really want
to talk a lot, but once you get
into the salon like, I feel… I wake
up, I kind of have a quiet morning to myself and then once you
get to the salon you just kind of
feed off of the vibe that the salon gives. I mean, you come in
here and it’s nice and bright, and
everyone is talking, and chatty,
and the music’s going and it just
kind of lifts your spirits if they’re
a little bit down.
TV: What’s the craziest story you’ve
ever heard?
KB: The craziest story I’ve ever
heard … well … I’m actually not
allowed to share that with you, because we believe that everything
a client says, we [should] keep
in confidence, and we don’t go
around telling all the client’s stories and happenings, and what’s
going on in their life. Hairstylists,
the good ones, don’t typically cut,
colour, and tell.
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Monday, deceMber 3, 2012
VARSITY SCIENCE
science@thevarsi
The promises
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egg freezing
Elizabeth Cinco
VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
hArt house theAtre And the u of t
drAmA CoAlition present the 21st AnnuAl
Until about five years ago, women
seeking to have their eggs frozen
by fertility clinics across canada
could do so only for medical reasons. Things have since changed.
Largely thanks to technological advances, egg freezing can
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success and is now available to
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Social egg freezing (egg freezing for non-medical reasons)
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the VARSITY magazine
The process of egg freezing
assist women who want to ha
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traction of multiple eggs. Idea
woman should have her eggs
zen when she is fairly fertile,
ing her late-20s or early-30s.
eggs are then frozen and sta
storage until the patient cho
to retrieve them. When the pa
decides she is ready, they wi
thawed, fertilized by her ch
partner, and implanted into
uterus. Therein lies the advan
a woman can have her eggs fr
when she is fertile and ret
them under desirable conditio
While quite promising, egg f
ing has its limits. While vitr
tion maintains the quality of
in the freezing process, if a wo
is well past her birth-giving p
the technology cannot make u
the decrease in egg quality tha
companies ageing. a woman w
need to have substantial foresig
use egg freezing before it is too
additionally, egg freezing
nancially and physically ta
LifeQuest, a fertility clinic, ch
es $8,600 for egg freezing, no
cluding egg storage, fertiliza
and embryo transfer. The pro
also requires self-injection
medication for egg developm
which can be physically diffic
Social egg freezing is poise
take off and empower women
it cannot overcome the inevi
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12-11
Native tradition, new theatre
Discussing community, ceremony, and cacao with director Dr. Jill Carter
Article by Ishita Petkar
Photo by BERNARDA GOSPIC
Dr. Jill CARTER
C
omfortably perched in her desk chair, Dr. Jill Carter
laughs as she huddles around the warmth of the large
Second Cup coffee that she holds in her hands. “Sorry
about that!” she says smiling, having just been bombarded
with a myriad of questions from eager students waiting outside her office.
Carter, who identifies herself as Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi, is a
faculty member in the Aboriginal Studies department at U of T.
She also describes herself as an actor, a writer, a playwright, a
student, and a mentor. While lecturing is her full-time job, she
makes sure to include time for her greatest passion, the theatre, and for the stories that can be created on stage.
As an integral part of Native Earth Performing Arts’ newest
production, Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, Carter
knows all about stories. The play incorporates creation stories of different groups of indigenous peoples from all over
the Americas — specifically the Haudenosaunee (Great
Lakes region), Rappahannock (Virginia), and Guna (Panama)
peoples — in an attempt to reclaim indigenous cultures
through art. Focusing on the elemental females portrayed
in these stories, the play is centred on Chocolate Woman, a
Guna feminine spirit associated with the cacao plant.
Carter, who recently received her Ph.D. from the Drama
Centre at U of T, is the remount director of Chocolate Woman
Dreams the Milky Way, and has been involved with the play
since the beginning of its production. Nestled in the warmth of
her office on a blisteringly cold day, she spoke to The Varsity
about Native Earth Performing Arts, and the role of theatre in
the reclaiming of indigenous cultures.
THE VARSITY: How did you become involved with Native
Earth Performing Arts, Canada’s oldest professional native
theatre company?
DR. JILL CARTER: I suppose being a young native woman,
I was drawn to them… My first experience with Native Earth
was seeing Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters, and I remember very clearly how it galvanized me. I came up in a time
when a lot of Native artists came up — you know, people who
wanted to be theatre professionals [but were] not seeing their
role models and… Not seeing ourselves at all on stage. And if
we did see ourselves on stage… or saw what purported to be
us on stage, we often saw some very ugly pictures, so it wasn’t
something to be proud of. Seeing The Rez Sisters changed everything, and it changed everything for a lot of native artists,
but also for mainstream [theatres]… It really put Native Earth
on the map.
TV: So you think Native Earth Performing Arts has been instrumental in jump-starting Native theatre?
JC: Oh I would say so… Although it had its financial struggles, it has been the cornerstone, I think, of native theatre
in Canada. It’s been the place where artists got a voice, and
where artists could become developed. They have a Young
Voices program, and in that program they invite young people who are interested in playwriting … to work with professional dramaturgists … and they do a lot. I mean, they help
young native artists through every stage in their careers. It is
really ground zero, so to speak, still today.
TV: One of the mandates of Native Earth is to encourage the use
of theatre as a form of communication and dialogue. How or why
do you see this as being especially important in communicating
experiences unique to native peoples in contemporary society?
JC: Oh, that’s such a layered question! Twenty years ago, Canadians did not know who [natives] were. Canadians had an
image of us, [but] they knew nothing of us… So having our
artists come out and speak to Canada in our voice, about our
concerns and through our lens was and is still crucially important today… To be the one who tells your story, that’s important. It’s interesting though because the issue has changed.
Yvette Nolan [former artistic director of Native Earth] said,
and I think quite rightly so, [that] at one point, the struggle —
or the question — was, ‘Who gets to speak?’ Now the question
is, ‘Who is listening?’ Is anybody listening? It gets awfully exhausting, educating the main populace… And many [artists]
are pushing back against that and their plays are not necessarily for mainstream Canadians. Mainstream Canadians are
welcome to come, to receive, to be affected, to learn, but their
plays are for their own people.
I often think of theatre as urban ceremony, in the sense
that it unites a scattered body politic. The best of it creates communitas; it creates that sense that we in the audience are connected to each other… The best of it offers real
healing, and permanent transformations, in that we can
come away knowing something we didn’t know before… I
mean, I’m not saying, ‘Go see a play’ and you’re fine! But,
go see this play and something begins to work within you,
that medicine begins to work within you. I think it can also
be a gateway to our culture. So many of us have been separated from our communities, our languages, and a venue
like this can be a gateway in. It can get us understanding a
little more about ourselves and [make us] curious, eager to
push further and go further.
TV: There is a lot of silence surrounding the native community in Canada, especially for the average citizen who
doesn’t go out of his or her way to become informed. Do you
see Native Earth playing a role in filling that silence?
JC: I think it is, but it’s one piece of the puzzle. We don’t necessarily live in a theatre-going nation… So there are those that
love the live experience and who come to see the theatre. But
there are many who don’t, and we know that, and that’s certainly been an issue with Native Earth, an issue that is shared
by theatres across Canada. The one thing you hear from [Canadian theatres] is the struggle, dare I be crude, to get bums in
seats, and to bring people out… So there is always that struggle
and certainly Native Earth has not been immune to that. But
when we think of how many people in Toronto will be touched
and educated by a piece, [it’s] not many. So Native Earth is part
of something that must be larger. However, the thing
about Native Earth is that in its support of plays and artists… it allows that work [to maintain] life after the production… These plays are published texts, they have a life
in remounts and on tour, other theatres take it up, and I
think this can all be traced back to the ministrations of
companies like Native Earth.
TV: Can you tell us a little bit about the idea behind Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way, and how it goes about
reclaiming Indigenous cultures through art?
JC: I’ve been involved with Chocolate Woman since its inception in 2007… It began before that however as a drive, or a need
that Monique Mojica [the play’s author] had. Monique was going through a very serious… Time in her life. [She] required
healing, required something to get up and go on, and began
to look back at Creation stories, and the elemental females of
Creation. And I say Creation stories and elemental females, because Monique is Guna and Rappahannock… She is also by
marriage and adoption Haudenosaunee. Since she has all of
this cultural material to draw on, the show is an interweave.
Chocolate Woman is a Guna figure, an elemental female,
I hesitate to use the word goddess because it’s not the same
thing, but she is this feminine spirit that is associated with the
cacao. Cacao for Guna people is a medicine… But it can also
work at you from the outside in, can shield you from your enemies. So this cacao is really important. [Mojica met] with a
Guna consultant and traditional teacher, who taught her these
songs and stories. Rather than adopting Western theatrical
form, she went back to tradition and ceremony to figure out
how to … tell an ancient story to a contemporary audience,
with contemporary expectations, in a contemporary venue,
but to be able to affect the audience as an original rendering of
the story would have affected traditional people.
JANUARY 28, 2013
23
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UTM S
MED
AGENDA
1. Call to Order
2. Executive Update
3. Old Business
2012 AGM-01: Approval of Minutes
2012 AGM-02: Receipt of Audited Financial Statements
2012 AGM-03: Approval of UTSU Bylaw Changes
•By-LawI–Interpretation
•By-LawII–Membership
•By-LawV–BoardofDirectors
•By-LawVII–DutiesoftheBoard
•By-LawVIII–ExecutiveResponsibilities
•BylawXI–CommissionsandCommittees
4.NewBusiness-ConsiderationofMotionsDulyServed
2013SGM-01:OpposeUnpaidInternships
2013 SGM-02: Examine Winter Residence Fees
2013SGM-03:InvestigateAdditionalMultifaithSpace
2013SGM-04:Condemn“AVoiceforMen”
2013SGM-05:ClubsTownHall&BoxOffice
2013 SGM-06: Eliminate Styrofoam Container Use
2013SGM-07:Presidents’Address&ForumatAGM
2013SGM-08:EndorseIdleNoMore
2013 SGM-09: Extend AGM Notice Requirements
2013SGM-10:ProvideNotice&DeadlineforAGMitems
2013 SGM-11: Student Representation in Governance
24
the VARSITY magazine
2013SGM-12:IncludeInternationalStudentsonGC
2013 SGM-13: Reduce AGM proxies to a maximum of 5
2013 SGM-14: Reduce Nominations for Candidacy
2013 SGM-15: Create Anti-War Coalition
2013SGM-16:ImplementElectoralReform Recommendations
2013SGM-17:RedefineClubs’Recognition
2013SGM-18:LobbyforDiscountedGTA-WideTransit
2013SGM-19:BuildMentalHealthCampaign
2013SGM-20:InvestigateUPASSTransitSystem
5. Adjournment
To see the full agenda, audited statements and motions served,
visit www.utsu.ca
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Ifyouhaveanyaccessibilityorchildmindingrequestsorother
inquiries,pleasecontactCoreyScott,Vice-PresidentInternal&
Services at [email protected]
Cross-cultural
Christmas
Bilingual dialogue in
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Article by EMMA FOX
Illustrations by JANICE LIU
Director Nagisa Oshima, who passed away
this January, is known to have said, “My
hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it.” Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, made in 1983, was his first “English”
film, but it isn’t completely English — the
story is the experience of British prisoners of war in a Japanese camp during
World War II.
Two of the central characters, Captain
Yonoi and Sergeant Hara, are Japanese,
and the other two, Lieutenant Lawrence
and Major Celliers, are British (Celliers,
played by David Bowie, is supposed to have
a faded Australian accent, but we don’t really notice, thanks to Bowie’s understated
approach to everything). The film incorporates both languages, but we hear English
spoken the most by both sides.
The way the characters interact in English involves more than just a verbal exchange. Captain Yonoi, the highest authority of the camp, speaks in English and has
a great technical command over the language, but his expression of it is unnatural. In a courtroom scene, we see the dramatic articulations of Major Celliers’ face
against Captain Yonoi’s, which makes only
the slightest movements. Celliers’ drawnout, musical voice contrasts with the tight
speeches of Yonoi, who speaks like he’s
hitting something (which he frequently
does throughout the film).
The nature of the spoken dialogue reveals
a greater cultural dialogue between the East
and the West, which is one of the world’s
fundamental discussions. The film presents
a number of divergences: each culture’s in-
terpretation of war, how men on the same
side treat each other, and the best method
of punishing transgression. The Englishness of the film’s perspective puts more focus on a few extreme Japanese customs; for
instance, the prisoners are made to watch
a soldier being punished for a homosexual
act commit seppuku, a suicide ritual fulfilled by stabbing one’s own abdomen. In
Yonoi’s mind, this is a privilege to the guilty
soldier, because in the war it is better to die
by one’s own hand, and generally it is less
shameful to die in the war than to survive.
The only Englishman to speak Japanese in
the film is Lawrence, who is familiar with
Japan and has great respect for its culture. He
is called upon to mediate violent situations
several times throughout the film. As Hara
says to the non-Japanese-speaking British
commander in Japanese, “You don’t understand. Only Lawrence understands.”
But Lawrence doesn’t understand. Despite
knowing the language, he appears to be more
tormented and confused by the brutality of
the Japanese officers than any other British
prisoner. Criticizing Yonoi’s ideas of justice, he
says, “You think that if there’s a crime, then
it must be punished, and it doesn’t matter
who is punished.” These punishments, such
as seppuku, are easier for the rest of the British
soldiers to accept, because they assume the
practices of this strange, alien culture to be as
foreign as the Japanese language itself. They
know that the war itself makes so little sense.
It is Lawrence’s unique relationship to
Japan, his human experience of it, which
causes him to expect the Japanese soldiers
to transcend the role of enemy.
Got big ideas?
Want to tell
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25
Intellectual theft, disco,
and Bollywood
Bappi Lahiri and music’s winding international networks
Article by SIMON FRANK | Illustration by William Ahn
You may not realize it, but you’ve probably heard a
Bappi Lahiri song. Regardless, the melodies of some of
his biggest songs will sound familiar — more than a
few of them lift sections of American pop hits. Lahiri,
an Indian soundtrack composer who hit his peak during the 1980s, is responsible for some of the music now
automatically associated in the West with Bollywood.
Kitschy synthesizers, lush string arrangements clashing
with Hindi vocals recorded loud and distorted, drum
machines competing with traditional percussion, and
blaring horn sections, danced out in front of glittery
backdrops — all Bappi Lahiri hallmarks.
Even if Lahiri’s popularity at home and the lyrics of his
music make it somehow representative of India, to think of
it as intrinsically tied to India’s classical traditions would be
a mistake. His songs are a complete fusion, injecting 1970s
and 1980s Western pop into the Indian film industry. Lahiri’s biggests hits, like the soundtrack to 1982’s Disco Dancer
and 1984’s Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki, were released in an
era when socialist India was still mostly closed to outside
business and investment. By referencing or even directly
plagiarizing foreign music, Lahiri brought new genres and
instrumentation into India at a time when they might otherwise not have made it in.
In this one-sided conversation, Lahiri took elements
from pedestrian pop and disco songs, and put them to
use in completely different settings. The brilliance in
Lahiri’s theft was his ability to create new songs from
trashy old material by stretching playtimes, adding new
layers, and radically changing mood and energy. “Mere
Jaisa Mehbooba” from 1984’s Baadal adds female vocals to Herbie Hancock’s robotic hip hop song “Rockit”
to build it into something seductive and creepy at the
same time. “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja” from Disco
Dancer steals its structure from a piece by French disco
duo Ottawan, but strings, plaintive vocals, and a more
propulsive drum machine groove take the song far
beyond its inspiration. “Everybody Dance With Me”
(from a 1978 B-movie named College Girl) tears the riff
from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and lands it in a glammy
stomp, complete with wildly echoing boy-girl vocals.
Lahiri’s more original songs are equally thrilling, from
the infectious call and response of “I Am A Disco Dancer,” to the relentless bass line and out-of-control synthetic tones of “O Beraham Tune Kiye.”
If Lahiri’s songs had only been popular in India, his
story would simply be that of a few good songs and
an amusing anecdote on plagiarism. His soundtrack
to Disco Dancer, however, was massively popular in
Russia and China, indirectly bringing traces of Western culture to the Communist world. Since then,
Lahiri’s songs have looped back into North America
and Europe. While Lahiri was originally the one taking from foreign music, hip hop producers are now
sampling his songs, and songwriters are adopting
his aesthetic. M.I.A. repurposed “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja” into the track “Jimmy” on her 2007 album
Kala, and in 2011 Lahiri claimed that Jennifer Lopez
had plagiarized elements of “On the Floor” from his
1990 song “Sochana Kya Jo Bhi Hoga Dekha Jayega.”
Today, Lahiri is an over-the-top, chubby figure, and
appreciation of his music can unfortunately focus on
its novelty factor. Below layers of flash and outmoded
production values, however, the back-and-forth at the
heart of his music remains captivating for the way in
which he took sounds from the West, presented them
back to the world as Indian, and kick-started a global
exchange of songs and styles.
Stepping on stage
The communal joys of karaoke
Article by SOFIA LUU | Illustration by NANCY JI
Growing up, I learned that you could not have a proper party without breaking out
the karaoke machine. As someone who was and has always been somewhat timid, I
didn’t quite understand the entertainment value of karaoke. It seemed natural that
I wanted nothing to do with karaoke — until recently.
Some people would never consider the idea of singing in a bar full of strangers
without first having some liquid courage. But once you get over the initial fear
of singing, you might find that karaoke is an experience that extends beyond the
individual. You might be alone in your wholehearted attempt to belt out Simon
& Garfunkel’s “Cecilia.” But you should do so in full confidence, knowing that
everyone who knows the song will either be mouthing the lyrics along with you
or assuming the role of backup singer.
Recently, I decided to explore Toronto’s karaoke scene by visiting a College Street
bar that has its own established karaoke night. I spent a bit of time poring over the
bar’s expansive songbook, entertaining the idea of doing a Smiths song. Before I
could even make up my mind, my friend was quick to chime in, reminding me that
I “wouldn’t want to be that person who sang the Smiths.”
He was telling me that if I went ahead with any song from the Smiths’ catalogue,
I would be the buzzkill of the bar. I realized that the point of karaoke is to have
fun. To many, this often means singing songs that are upbeat and catchy. But to
me, this means choosing a song that makes me happy and that I will have fun
singing. Even if it means singing the Smiths, Joy Division, or the Cure — all of
which I’ve sung in the past and I would sing again if given the opportunity to.
I never gave song choice much thought. I picked my songs according to how I felt.
Sometimes my friends influenced my choices, but most of the time they didn’t. The
key to enjoying karaoke is to simply not care. No one is going to judge you for doing
“Call Me Maybe” because deep down inside, they, along with everyone else, will regret not choosing that song. One night, I did a duet of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Shortly after I was done, someone by the name of — I kid you not — Jude approached
me to thank me for choosing that particular song. It’s surprising to see how such
interactions can stem from something as simple as a popular Beatles song.
Ultimately, you will come to realize that there is no point in arguing with your
friends over which song you should sing next. Karaoke isn’t supposed to be as
taxing as selecting courses for next year. You’re not supposed to overthink song
selection because then it becomes a burden. If you’re putting too much thought
into karaoke, then you’re doing it wrong. The essence of karaoke is simple. It’s to
have shameless fun, and lots of it too.
26
the VARSITY magazine
Follow my
lead
Social cues on
the dancefloor
Article by ALEX ROSS | Illustration by WENDY GU
Why do people dance? Some do it for the sake of art; others for
ceremonial and traditional reasons. Most of us dance because it’s
a good way to lose some of our inhibitions and just have a good
time. But a lot of people dance because it’s simply one of the best
ways of connecting and communicating with another person.
I probably wouldn’t have given that answer a few months
ago, mostly because dancing was something that I didn’t really care much about. In fact, I generally considered dancing
somewhat distasteful, and even a little crude. Of course, this
opinion was based mostly on ignorance and inexperience.
Social dancing — especially swing and blues — has completely changed my perspective.
Social dancing is essentially any partnered dancing with a
leader and a follower. Ballroom dances such as the waltz, and the
tango and jazz dances such as the Charleston or lindy hop are all
types of social dancing. The leader often guides the dance, and
the follower mirrors their actions. All social dance forms have
a series of basic steps that must be known by the leader and the
follower, which are then converted into moves that the dancers
can embellish as much as they want. The success of these dances
hinge on the ability of a pair to communicate with each other,
which is often done through touch and subtle movements.
Partnered dancing was first treated as a high art form
during the Renaissance (at least in Western culture). Noble
courts took folk dance forms and formalized them — even
adding codes of etiquette for each dance. Despite the formal
attributes and high social status of such dances (which would
continue into the nineteenth century), social dancing has still
managed to remain relatively informal and naturalistic. Later
dance genres like ragtime, blues, and swing jazz all have a
freedom of expression and level of accessibility that ensures
that they remain popular today.
In fact, it is these social dance forms that first evolved in
black communities throughout the United States in the early
twentieth century that best illustrate dancing’s power as a
form of dialogue. Ragtime, blues, and jazz dances have cut
across social, economic, religious, and even racial barriers. You
continually switch partners during social dances, which means
you get to meet a diverse group of people in a friendly atmosphere. The power of social dancing to completely disintegrate
ideas of superior social status has often made it a catalyst for
change. This is identified by Mark Knowles in his informative
(and hilarious) book The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous
Dances as one of the reasons why political and moral authori-
ties have been so opposed to dancing throughout history. For
example, the Charleston — which became a national fad in
Canada and the United States in 1925 — was often criticized as
crude, lewd, and even bad for your health. Naysayers worried
about the kind of openness a dance like the Charleston was
able to foster. As a big fan of the Charleston myself, I have to say
its critics just didn’t know how to have a good time.
A good case in point for the power of social dancing can
be found in my paternal grandparents, who met each other
through social dance. My grandfather was a recent Scottish
immigrant who came to Halifax after serving in the Royal
Air Force in World War II. My grandmother was a Mik’maq
who grew up on the Millbrook reserve outside Truro. My
grandfather took elocution lessons after an embarrassing
incident trying to order ice cream with his thick Scottish
accent. My grandmother briefly called herself Mary Picton
rather than her actual name of Marie Pictou, fearful of potential prejudice from the other nurses she worked with. But
such worries or distinctions completely vanished when they
met each other on the dance floor. They were just two young
people out having a good time. I’d like to think they were on
to something special.
JANUARY 28, 2013
27
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