Everything Else #3
Exploration
Hi, and welcome to Σverything Σlse #3. Think of this as one of those newsletters families in movies send out at Christmas, but instead of family updates, it’s just nonsense. With these newsletters, you can expect:
A personal update: you in weird cities -> ode to your car
An essay or short story: Errors of Nature?
Some photos: Spooky in Black and White
A list: Halloween Spoo-ctober Film Fearstival
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Welcome to the fam,
AF
What’s new?
I miss going places.
It’s not that I am bored at home - Andrea and I keep busy and have loads of little projects and activities we can do. It’s also not like we have all this free time right now that we’re looking to fill. In fact, I have enough things to do that I’ve fallen off pace to hit my book-reading goal for the year. And yet, despite all of these distractions, I’m agitated. Maybe that’s what this newsletter is about.
In the Before Time I would cross Hamilton nearly every day. On bike, I would sometimes take the long way, taking inventory of the active middle-aged folks on their day off, shuffling along the trails hugging the escarpment. Other days I would watch the bus turn from pumpkin to chariot as we’d enter the downtown core, drop off our service employees, and pick up our starry-eyed Leaders of Tomorrow. Some of which were probably hung over. Some of which couldn’t stop bumping their bag into me, or wouldn’t make room so other people could get on.
I can’t say I miss going into campus every day, using city transit, finding a clean public washroom, or leaving my cat/dog/S.O for long stretches of time. No, I think I’m aching to explore.
**
~intermission~
If love be-ith a car,
porting thy heart to minest
then be in on the wheels of Mercury
and it will deliver me unto the Grand Marquis
A stage!
Or a nest.
Give us sheltered rest in Love’s parking lot,
behind a Waffle House,
or a Kentucky churchyard
Remember it -
shuttling us deep, into the South,
and deeper still into our own kingdom
of inside jokes and indoor voices.
Find us here, behind doors and gates now rusted shut.
Errors of Nature, Part 1
One of my favorite places in Hamilton is the Antique Mall on Ottawa Street. This is a 3-floor building made up of dozens of “booths” that can be rented by antique and vintage sellers who display their wares. The best part is that the booths are completely unattended, and all transactions are done with the cashier on the ground floor. It’s really just this big, previously owned department store.
Among the maze of rusted housewares, broken typewriters, bins of gummy rubber wrestling figures, VHS tapes, and actually some pretty nice reclaimed barn boards, you’ll sometimes find treasure. For example, there’s an old Super-8 camcorder I’ve been checking in on for the last year or so. There’s also a booth of actual WW2 Nazi shit, but I don’t really want to talk about that right now.
If I leave with anything at all, it’s usually a piece of clothing. But my true passion lies with the literature. I could easily spend hours siftings through the nearly discarded books, magazines, and comics, and if left unattended, I’ll look for signs of the previous owners on the inside covers, in the margins, or in the form of dog eared pages. It’s like detective work, trying to figure out what someone (who to you, can only exist in theory) thinks. And that’s how I found this:
Perusing (and I mean actually perusing, not sifting) through stacks of pamphlets and magazines one day, I came across this striking and gorgeous booklet. It was small enough to fit in a pocket and slipped in with full-sized books and magazines, but it's thick, crisp cover printed on vibrant red cardstock caught my eye. It pulled me in, and only upon closer inspection did I see the image hidden in the Rorschach-esque ink blot on the cover.
The contents of this booklet were even more intriguing.
There was very little publishing detail available. The opening pages simply say “Errors of Nature” by Millie Wilson, New Langton Arts, 1992. The following pages look like the spread above. The left page of each spread is simply a number. #1. #2. #3. Like exhibits. The right page looked to be a sequence of statements, enshrined on a bright red “plaque”, fixed on wood. Each wooden page was different.
The enshrined statements provided little enlightenment. “arrive after dark in closed gondolas”. “frequently left handed”. “mix melancholy music and slang expressions”. It’s clear that this booklet is about generalizing a group of people. It’s not clear who they are or why this was assembled.
The back of the book provided some clues, but still left me wondering. What is New Langton Arts? It appears to be based in San Francisco, or was. Likely an art gallery or college perhaps. But what is the meaning of the booklet? Only 1000 were printed in 1992, but someone #788 (hand numbered) made it to Hamilton, Canada. The acknowledgements refer to all of the “errors” in Millie’s life. Is this an homage to a group to whom Millie belongs? And whose quotes are these? And who was the original owner? I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.
Some photos - B+W
A few semi-spooky black+white photos this time. AK and I are still learning to develop our own film. Only b+w because it turns out to be very difficult to find commercial colour developing chemicals.
Before we started playing with black and white photos, I was pretty turned off on the whole idea. I guess I saw it as a bit artsy-fartsy and pretentious. I still kind of do, but I am starting to understand some of the positives of black-and-white.
Anyway.
Early in the quarantine, AK and I went on a variety of “day trips” to have an excuse to leave the house. A lot of the time we’d just drive through the small towns around Hamilton and gawk at the old, sleepy, and shuttered storefronts. A lot of the trips were justified as “location scouting” and inspiration-gathering for future photo shoots. So we kept our eyes peeled for spots.
After a long day of meandering along highways of long-driveway’d country houses, we came across a field lined by short stone walls topped by a couple horse head busts.
I thought it looked like the front gates of a disused fairground. AK thought it looked like a place we needed to come back to.
Not long after that drive, AK had the urge to recreate these busts in the form of a mask. I don’t remember exactly how that decision was made, but over the course of the week, she constructed this paper mache headpiece in the photo below.
While we first spotted this property in April (May?), it took us until September (October?) to finally get back to it and take the shot. And it was purely accidental that we shot it in BW. I’m pretty sure we assumed we had taken the camera loaded with colour film.
Either way, I ended up being very pleased with how some of them turned out. I think the photo ended up pleasantly spooky, and the extra contrast helped out with shooting at dusk.
We ended up fleeing after only a couple shots when dogs on the property spotted us and came howling down the driveway. I’m sure we would have been fine, but I was glad they had so much ground to cover.
The sun was setting as we took our last horse photos, but not too far away there was a crumbling churchyard with the graves and everything. It was dark when we got back to it, but we figured we would try to take a few more spooky photos while we were there. For some reason AK had a taper candle and matches in the car, so we gave this last one a try. I had not expected to pick up anything, but the candle threw just enough light and AK sat so incredibly still, our 2 second shutter speed managed to grab this ultra-grainy ghostly photo. Maybe my favorite one from the whole roll.
A Third List: Halloween Spoo-ctober Film Fearstival
By the time you read this, you will have likely made a comment about how the Christmas season starts earlier every year. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to celebrate Christmas yet. I’m still thinking about someone else’s birthday. The Devil’s Birthday. Good ole’ October 31st. Halloween.
This year I tried to watch one horror movie a night leading up to the Big Day. I didn’t quite make it, but I did find some great movies I hadn’t seen before or simply forgot about. Below is a list of stand-out films from my very first Halloween Spoo-ctober Film Fearstival
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014, subtitles): “Residents of a worn-down Iranian city encounter a skateboarding vampire (Sheila Vand) who preys on men who disrespect women.”
The Love Witch (2016): A love letter to kitschy drive-in horror, witchy women, and dating just-go-see-a-therapist men.
Ghost (1990): Maybe a stale take, but I think the real story here is a super hot androgynous couple.
An American Werewolf in London (1981): I’m not a big horror buff, but I wonder if this movie kind of invented the horror-comedy genre. Heavy scenes of introspection, mixed with levity. I read some amount of bipolar/depression themes into the werewolf trope that really hit hard.
The Blair Witch Project (1999): I accidentally started watching the recent re-make. Or is it a re-boot? Either way, the first scene read like James Bond getting his tech from Q.
Host (2020): A short, ok story. Bonus points because it was a) made start to finish during quarantine, b) was filmed completely over Zoom, and c) is about having a digital séance.
**
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buh-bye,
AF