Tag: William Burroughs

Animating Arthur

The Lipsett Diaries is one of my favorite National Film Board animated shorts. Screened as part of the Canadian shorts series at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the work is a brilliant interpretation of Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett‘s life and work. It covers his short, tragic life with equal parts gusto and respect, and imaginatively captures the inner torment and outer brilliance of the Oscar-nominated director.

Award-winning director Theodore Ushev spent a good deal of time manically drawing each frame in The Lipsett Diaries. Yes, he drew it. By hand. We spoke about this pain-staking (if rewarding) process during TIFF, and we also explored the vital role music plays in Ushev’s creations. It’s fascinating to listen to him talk, in Bulgarian-accented English, about his passion for Polaris-nominated band Besnard Lakes & as well as Godspeed You, Black Emperor. It really hit me, in speaking with him, about how the two artistic forms I consider the oldest -art and music -have the exhilarating power of reaching past nationalities, experiences, places, and circumstance, to go straight into the territory of the heart, where logic stops and feeling starts. This sense definitely plays into his work.

Lipsett, Animated by CateKusti

We also discussed Stanley Kubrick‘s letter to Lipsett upon the latter receiving an Oscar nomination for his landmark film, “Very Nice, Very Nice” and the creative way Ushev animated this amazing moment -as well as Lipsett’s unique (and kind of hilarious) reaction.

Ushev and I were particularly keen on yacking about the extent to which the deceased director set the standard for later cinematic (and artistic) experimentation in North America. Lipsett was truly a trailblazer in terms of his cultural contribution and unique vision; he utterly anticipated Burroughs’ cut-up technique, had a keen eye for unusual storytelling, and he was one of the few North American filmmakers to embrace surrealism in the early 1960s.

Arthur Lipsett’s death in 1986 came too soon, but, as Ushev’s piece seems to whisper, his artistic spirit is with us now, more than ever. The marriage of sound and art has never been more short -and more sweet.

Old Anew

Recently, I’ve had an urge to go through my old journals. Perhaps part of it is narcissism, but a much larger part is about returning to a time when writing came easily – when it wasn’t a job, but a joy. Creative writing -poetry and prose -were my forte, and in the 90s I was on fire with inspiration. Thanks to a few points in the right direction (courtesy of some rather incredible people, poets and writers themselves), I immersed myself in waves of words -I swam merrily through the oceans of worlds created by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Delmore Schwartz, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, WB Yeats, Pablo Neruda, Gwendolyn MacEwan, and a fine Irish poet by the name of Rhoda Coghill (and that’s a really, really short list).

I can’t say what changed between then and now -I still write occasionally for myself but I find a much greater sense of peace, fulfillment, and wordless, “winged joy” (to quote Blake) in painting. It’s probably no accident that my interest in visual art came about as a result of my passion for writers; I even wound up working in an art college in 1998. My passion for writing lead directly to my passion for painting; words lead to the wordless. It makes sense.

Still, in finding a sought-after journal of mine from ’98 this morning, I was struck by a mix of feelings. Nostalgia, of course, was one reaction, but it was the writing that hit me; here were the breathless words of a young woman in her 20s, trying to make sense of an evolving identity in a strange environment. It feels so good to look back at an older/younger version of yourself, to accept that version unconditionally, and appreciate how far you’ve come since. Growth is really measured in small moments.

Here’s a little nugget that made me laugh: I am not profound. I am merely wordy. That was then; now, I’m wordy for a living, but profound? I’m not sure I care anymore -which somehow seems like some kind of growth. And to quote Rumi, “your grief for what you’ve lost holds a mirror up to where you’re bravely working.” I like that.

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