The Mystic Beast

At the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia. I liked this statue so much I used  drawing of it, by Ed Varney, on the cover of my book, The Mystic Beast.

Notes on Photography (unrevised) Three

William Notman studio, on Bleury in Montreal, 1875

13. After photography was invented, it was a fairly easy process to have one’s portrait taken. The recording of someone’s appearance--their portrait--was democratized so that even working class people could now afford a photograph of themselves. A camera could take a perfect likeness of a subject at very little expense. The change this effected in art is that the artist was no longer only an artisan or someone who was “objectively” reproducing a scene, or a person’s image; instead, the artist was now primarily expressing his own inner perception, his vision, of what he was painting. The invention of photography helped change the role of the artist.

14. Who is to say what art will last and what art will be forgotten by future generations. I had no idea that Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali—two artists whose work never much appealed to me—would be even more famous after their deaths than they were when alive. I remember Louis Dudek saying that only time determines what lasts and what is forgotten regarding the arts; years later, I read the same comment by T.S. Eliot.

15. I am an amateur in photography, I have no intention of trying to sell my photographs or even exhibit them beyond what is on this site. I don’t own a digital camera and my “darkroom” is the drugstore where my film is developed and printed. A few of my photographs have appeared on poetry book covers, but I have never made anything of this or even mentioned it to anyone until now.

16. My photographs are either documentation with respect to my work on family history or an expression of an emotional, psychological and spiritual state. My photographs are possibly an addendum to my work as a poet; being a poet has always been my self-definition.

17. My concern in art—what I am concerned with in my work as a poet and as someone who also takes photographs—is the soul and spirit, the inner being, and how this manifests in daily life. My vision in art is a development along a continuum from when I began to write to the present moment.

18. Three quotations:

Nature is a world of symbolism, a rich hieroglyphic book: everything visible conceals an invisible mystery, and the last mystery of all is God.
                                                                        —Christophe Ernst Luthardt

Rabbi Burnam was once walking outside the city with some of his disciples. He bent, picked up a speck of sand, looked at it, and put it back exactly where he had found it. “He who does not believe,” he said, “that God wants this bit of sand to be in this particular place, does not believe at all.”
                                                                        —Hasidic story

A good man finds every place he treads upon holy ground; to him the world is God’s temple; he is ready to say with Jacob, “How dreadful this place!” This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.
                                                                        —John Smith

19. A public open-air exhibit of Notman's photographs taken in the 19th Century, which can be seen on McGill College Avenue between President Kennedy and Ste. Catherine Street, celebrates memory and Montreal's history as it is recorded in Notman's photographs. The importance of photography in Montreal is evident in Notman's work, whether in books that reproduce Notman's photographs, at the nearby McCord Museum where Notman's archives are housed, or in an exhibit of his photographs that is open to the public as is this exhibit. Notman is still the preeminent photographer of 19th century Montreal.

20. My cameras: A Kodak Brownie, used in the early 1960s, with which I took black and white photos (was it 127 film?); a Kodak Instamatic 100, 1963 to 1977, took mostly slides; a Nikkormat FT2, used from 1977 to the present, bought second hand from a neighbour, Lenny Ganz, now rarely used as too heavy to carry; various Olympuses from the mid-1990s to the present: a Stylus Epic (still used), a Stylus 80 (still used), another Stylus (given away), a Trip XB40 AF (free for opening a bank account and no longer used). For a while I used disposable Fuji cameras, bought at a pharmacy, that cost about $12.00 each and included processing. All of these cameras gave good service.

At Blue Bonnets Racetrack in Montreal

A View From St. Joseph's Oratory

A Home in Los Angeles, California (3)

Farewell, Artie (text)

Artie Gold, around 2004

Sunday, September 30, 2007 (diary notes): I walked up from La Cathédrale underground parking on Ste Catherine Street and along Aylmer to Artie’s old place on Lorne Crescent and joined Endre Farkas, Carolyn-Marie Souaid, Carol Harwood, Chris Knudsen, and Luci King-Edwards. Jill Torres arrived a few minutes later with Artie’s ashes in a large blue plastic container, the ashes in the container in a clear plastic bag and the blue container and bag of ashes both in a cloth bag. We read some of Artie’s poems and Chris spread a handful of ashes; then behind the flat where I once stood on the second floor porch with Guy Birchard while Artie was having a fit about something, and threw a coffee mug at Mary Brown who was below us in the back yard (see note below). Artie’s place on Lorne Crescent is a mess now, the back yard area under construction, run-down, dilapidated. It reminded me of my Grandmother’s run down place on Girouard; once it was nice, now it’s not. Then we walked to The Word Bookstore on Milton, where Artie visited and pontificated on poetry on an almost daily basis for several years before he moved from Lorne Crescent. Luci, who owns the bookstore with her husband Adrian, read a poem of Artie’s outside the store. Then we walked across the McGill campus to where the old Mansfield Book Mart was located, it’s now a camera store. More poems were read, more ashes left there. Then, to where Artie lived on McKay, below Ste. Catherine Street (perhaps this was the beginning of his “descent”, the days after Mary Brown told him she wanted to move from Lorne Crescent). Various comments were repeated that Artie had made in which he disparaged his close friends. I wonder what he said about me? Carolyn-Marie said she had archived five boxes of his papers. Endre said there were many unpublished poems on how much Artie hated his mother. Chris said he fell out with Artie when he couldn’t help Artie move to a new place. Carol mentioned how Artie had phoned her to comfort her when she broke up with Endre and then launched into a talk on himself. And Jill mentioned how Artie moved into a place with a newly laid floor but complained about dog fur causing him to itch and aggravate his allergies. Then we walked to Charlie’s American Bar on Bishop (almost next door to Jerry O’Regan and Stephanie Hoolahan’s O’Regan’s Irish Pub), near where Artie used to live, and more of Artie’s ashes spread and one of his poems read aloud. Then we walked along Rene Levesque Boulevard to Chinatown and I read a poem that CZ had chosen, outside the Guy Favreau Building. And then to the Welcome Café which Endre wrote about in one of his books and used in a book title. More ashes spread in an empty lot just south of the Welcome Café. Finally, we ate supper at the Beijing Restaurant (corner of St. Urbain and La Gauchietiere) and CZ joined us there at 5:45 p.m. Note: In “Fort Poetry”, a beautifully written memoir on Artie, Guy Birchard writes: “But Artie’s dissatisfactions were multiple and manifold. Nor was he remotely stoic. He would rail, harangue, and abuse. He took the world’s gravel as deliberate personal insult. To understand all is to forgive all, it has been said, and Mary Brown might be the author of the insight. Artie’s willful psycho-emotional nihilism was no mystery to her. Her savvy, as I’ve suggested, seemed total, utterly unmitigated by what he hurled at her. He quite literally hurled at her in my presence the contents of a mug. If he hadn’t already taken to his bed with some neurasthenic complaint she was trying to assuage with the proffered mug, I’d have flattened him, that time. I couldn’t understand it.” I remember the event very well. I was there, on the back porch, standing beside Guy. What made the coffee mug incident so much worse than it would otherwise have been, was that Mary Brown did so much for Artie, genuinely loved him as a mother might love a son. Living with Artie (letting Artie live with her) could only have been an act of compassion and love by Mary Brown. The only way it could have been difficult for Artie is that at times he may have been reminded of how a mother is supposed to treat her son, rather than the experience that he had of his own mother. But this is doubtful. A summing up: This was a day giving closure to Artie’s death the previous February 2007. We did not mourn Artie’s passing, for his death was the termination of years of suffering that he endured. We celebrated Artie’s great gift of creativity and his exuberance for life; his poems; his talking; his intelligence; his generosity; his insatiable appetite for food and dope. He was always bigger than life, the first real poet some of us knew. Perhaps we also thought of our own youth, gone forever, that we had shared with Artie. It is a cliché but we loved Artie despite Artie, despite the stories of his bad behaviour that seemed, that day, to exceed the positive stories about him. In fact, I heard no positive stories about Artie that day. However, all of our shared memories of Artie were told out of love for him, told with humour and kindness for him. He may have been difficult to take, but we didn’t care, it was “good old Artie” we were remembering. This is testimony to a quality he had that attracted people—Artie’s charisma—that drew people to him. He had true and loyal friends which is a part of Artie’s legacy.

Note: this is my original diary entry for this day.

Farewell, Artie (photographs)

Outside Artie's old flat on Lorne Crescent: (left to right) Carolyn-Marie Souaid, Jill Torre, Carol Harwood, Endre Farkas, Luci King-Edwards, Chris Knudson.




Endre reading the first of several poems by Artie that afternoon; Luci and Chris.

Lorne Crescent. Top of stairs, door to the right, Artie and Mary Brown's home.

The back porch of Lorne Crescent.



The Yellow Door Coffee House, on Aylmer, another of Artie's hang-outs.

Luci King-Edwards reading one of Artie's poems outside The Word Bookstore on Milton, where Artie spent many afternoons.

Jill Torre reading one of Artie's poems outside of the building (now renovated) where he lived after Lorne Crescent.

Endre and Carolyn-Marie Souaid.

Trout River, Southwestern Quebec

Marilyn Monroe's Home in Los Angeles

Quarry Near St. Eustache

Edith Sweeney Morrissey, early 1960s.

Ivy Lewis Morrissey, early 1960s.

That Was Then, This Is Now (1)

                                        Photo dated on back: May 2, 1948.

                                Edith Sweeney Morrissey outside of 11th Avenue cottage.

                            Ivy Lewis Morrissey and her son, Herb Morrissey, dated 1948.

                            My Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy (late 1950s).  ; that was then ...

                                                                 ... this is now.

From the mid-1940s to the late 1960s various members of our family had summer cottages in St. Eustache, now a half hour commute to Montreal. In the top photo, my grandmother is outside of the cottage on 11th Avenue that she bought with my Uncle Alex. In the summer my grandmother, Aunt Mable, Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy lived together, escaping the heat of the city. My parents had a summer house built for them, but after my father died in 1956 the house was sold and my mother rented a cottage across the street from my grandmother's. They were happy summers surrounded by family. I was warned to never return to St. Eustache, that it is unrecognizable. They were right. The summer cottages have been winterized, the trees that lined the street have been cut down, and where we swam at the bottom of the street has been made into a park. Instead of summer cottages and country, the area (north of Montreal) is now expressways, big box stores, and suburban housing. What we had is gone forever.

Notes on Photography (unrevised) Two

Alexis Nihon Plaza, solarium, 2013

8. Reading Time and Life magazines in the 1950s and 1960s was a communal experience, shared weekly by millions of people across North America. Life magazine contained wonderful photojournalism, while we all accepted the articles in Time magazine as accurate reports of what was happening in the world. Both magazines (but especially Life) relied on photojournalism. Photography, published in a mass circulation magazine, had a place in our lives that we took for granted; these photographs changed the way we looked at the world and therefore changed our paradigm regarding the world. 

9. Looking at family snapshots has always been an important experience for me. I regret the absence of more photographs of the Irish side of my family, while the English side took many photographs of each other. The earliest family photograph on the Irish side is one of my grandmother and two of her sisters, probably Essie and Edna, with another quite attractive but unidentified woman, and perhaps this woman’s child, and a boy I believe is my Uncle Herb. The photograph suspends in time that moment in which it was taken. Here is this group of people who are stopping only for a moment to have a picture taken (around 1920) and then returning to whatever it was they were doing. 

10. Here is what I am trying to do in some of my photographs: I am attempting to capture a moment of silence and solitude; I am attempting to photograph the moment when chronological time, the finite, seems to give way to the infinite and then returns to the temporal world after the photograph is taken. These moments that come to us are outside of chronological time, and I have attempted to capture them in photographs. I first experienced and knew these moments as a child, sitting with my grandmother in her Girouard Avenue flat. There wasn’t much to do but sit in the space of silence created by an old person; I was never bored, her presence has stayed with me and enriched my life. 

11. As far as I can see, regarding digital cameras, the available technology far exceeds anything most people actually need. My series of photographs of a tree in our backyard, photographed one winter night when it was snowing, were taken with an Olympus camera I was given for opening a bank account. It is the artist’s vision that creates art. 

12. I am also concerned with archetypal images. There are several layers of archetypes, for instance, there are archetypal patterns of relationships (mother-son; father-daughter; and so on); there are also archetypal objects that can be found just about anywhere. It is the latter that I have photographed, the archetypal object (for instance, stairs, trees, water, rivers, and so on), which is also an entrance way to the unconscious or the collective unconscious. My archetypal photographs are meant as visual representations of archetypes as well as psychic openings to the collective unconscious.

Trees by the Trout River

A Home in Los Angeles, California (2)

Edgar R. Morrissey, around 1928

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal

A Winter Night