Narrative as Preservative

Have you ever looked at a map of British Columbia? Of course you have. Maybe while planning at trip to Vancouver or the Island. Maybe dreaming about a getaway in Whistler. Maybe you just wanted to see where Kelowna or Kamloops was. Or, maybe in a brief moment you embraced the darkness and wanted to see where Robert Pickton was from.
How many of you have looked at the northern part of the map? How may of you have noticed the part of the province that exists as totally separate from the dull-eyed hipsters slinging lattes, shuddering at out-of-towners calling their home “Van-City”? I’m going to go ahead and guess that, unless you live in the north or know someone who does, very few of you have. What I want you to do, and I’m asking nicely, is get our your map of British Columbia. I want you to put your finger on Vancouver and find Highway 7 going east. I want you to follow it. Go through Kent, head north through Yale and Spuzzum and Lytton. When you get to Cache Creek I want you to go north on Highway 97. Even on the map, without the benefit of British Columbia’s breathtaking scenery, it should already be obvious that things have changed.
Still, I beg you, venture on. No matter how tempting Highway 99 and it’s promises of a return to Vancouver’s culture and coffee houses and boutiques seems, I want you to persevere. Go through Clinton and Chasm and 70 Mile House. When you get to 100 Mile House I want you to stop. This is as good a place as any to take a look around. Get out of your imaginary car, stretch your mental legs. Notice how few roads there are, how sparse settlement seems from here on.
Now, draw a horizontal line through 100 Mile House. Draw it straight through the province, from the coast of the Pacific to the Alberta border. Now fold the map along that line and look at the north as it’s own, separate entity. This is, after all, how most of the people here wish you would see them.
Where you are now is Northern British Columbia. And, if you’re looking, then you see Prince George by now. There it is, being a hub. Not much to look at on a map, is it? I wish I could tell you it was different being here.
It’s not.
When I left Ontario two years ago this week, I wrote a eulogy for the south-western portion of that province which had been my home for twenty-six years. It was bittersweet in that I knew I’d miss it but it had also become blatantly obvious that I had to go. Something had to change in a drastic way and the opportunity to head across the country to a radically new address seemed like the best option at the time.
It was.
Now, as I prepare to leave here, it occurs to me that I will need to eulogize this place: Prince George and Smithers and Terrace and Prince Rupert. This place, far away from the hipster Meccas of the Pacific Northwest—Vancouver, Seattle, Portland. Though this time I do it with a measure of glee, I have to admit, I will miss this place. But I know Prince George will make a better memory than it did a home.

As a storyteller who has adopted Tom King’s axiom “The truth about stories is that they’re all we are” and modified it to the much more simple “We are the stories we tell” I’d be lying if I said I thought places were much more than the stories told about them. Nothing means anything until you can pin it down in words. Already I see a few of you in my mind’s eye, shaking your heads, preparing your arguments.
Let me save you some breath: as a storyteller, this is my thinking and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
History makes everything. History is stories.
In three or four months I will leave this place. While there is some small possibility that I will wind up back here in the north—perhaps Prince Rupert—it’s more likely that when I come back to British Columbia I will be in the south. I am saying good-bye to this place. It will no longer be my home, but I hope to visit again someday.
For the next three or four months I will be, from time to time, eulogizing Prince George and the surrounding area in a series of stories. Because places change. A year from now The Spicy Green might not exist. Books and Company may close down forever. And all any of us will have will be memories. And if you’ve never been to these places, all you’ll have are my stories.
Because, as Chuck Palahniuk said in his skewed guidebook of Portland, Oregon; Fugitives and Refugees: “The trouble with the fringe is, it does tend to unravel.”
This place, my home, is fringe. Even what some would call the “mainstream of society” is fringe when you get this far north. And the thing about an unravelling fringe is that the deterioration doesn’t stop there.
Things closer to the centre become the fringe.
Until there’s nothing left.
Nothing but stories.

The eulogy begins.

A Hastily Written Screed Inspired by the Enemies of Reason

Oh for fuck’s sake. You know, part of what seemed great about moving to BC was an escape from Ontario politics. However, after reading this (and, let’s face it: dealing with it in every aspect of political life) I feel the need to set something straight for the wing-nuts out there who want to defend their religious assertions against the godless secular humanists and their theory of evolution.
First off, it’s important to realise that the scientific community uses the word “theory” in a way that Joe Blow might not be familiar with. Scientific theory according to Wikipedia is, “…a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena.” To further explain the uses of the terms “fact” and “theory” in science, in particular in the context of this argument, it is important to know that a scientific fact is an observation made—a measurement or evidence found as the result of an experiment. A theory is an explanation for the observations. In the context of this issue, evolution—the change in inherrited traits from generation to generation—is a fact. The Darwinian framework is a theory for explaining the fact of evolution. A heavily tested theory at that.
So yes, Darwinian Evolution is a theory—a heavily tested theory that has held up for over a century against the constant and ridiculous onslaught of religious fundamentalists. A theory—just like the germ theory of disease, gravitational theory, atomic theory, general relativity and dozens of other scientific theories that we all accept as valid and upon which a staggering percentage of the scientific community has reached a consensus.
But the misunderstanding of a few undereducated dipshits out there isn’t want concerns me. What really has me shit-pants frightened is the way Canadian politics seem to be tipping way over to the right, appealing to a few disgruntled weirdoes who believe that their religion is under attack.
This is how Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 and what’s been going horribly wrong in American politics ever since. With the help of fuckers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the GOP managed to drag the church right out into the middle of American politics—where it never fucking belonged in the first place!
And now, apparently, Canadian politicians are trying to do the very same thing!
Now look, ask my religious friends. I don’t care what religion you practice so long as you respect my right to forgo religion entirely. But the minute you start talking about ending the separation between church and state I start worrying about where my tax dollars are going.
And when you start threatening to teach creationism on par with evolution, I start making Molotovs, okay? It’s ridiculous. And before you get your panties into a God wad, I’ll point out that I’d be just as offended if I thought my tax dollars were going to teach kids that the earth was flat, that the moon were made of blue cheese or that Santa Claus was the first Governor General of Canada.
We hurt kids by telling them lies and saying that those lies are on par with scientifically tested theories.
Period.

I apologise for any spelling or grammer errors as well as any percieved harshness. As the title indicates, though, it is a screed and a hastily-penned one at that.

The seventh rule in the thinking person’s guide to suicide: know nothing and the world will kill you. It’ll save a lot of hassle.

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“Dave, why don’t you write in your blog anymore?”

“Because, I’m busy.”

The truth is that what with the constant trip-taking Monika and I have been doing and the relentless search for a job more dependable (and, hopefully, less soul-crushing) than painting I have barely been able to squeeze out a couple of hours a week to work on Slouching Deathward. Obviously this blog is nowhere near as important as a novel so, unfortunately, it falls by the wayside.
I do, however, tend to get irritated when the blogs I read aren’t regularly updated. Frankly it never occurred to me that anyone reading this blog might feel the same way. To be honest it never occurred to me that anyone was really reading this blog at all.
So I’ll update you on what’s been going on with me lately and in the future I shall endeavour to update more regularly with posts more literary than this one is likely to be.

I recently returned from a trip out to BC's Northern Coast. The trip took me from my humble home in Prince George to the lava beds of the Nass Valley, to Hyder Alaska and to the rain-drenched, foggy costal town of Prince Rupert.
All in all it was an enjoyable journey during which I learned a lot about the history and geography of the area and managed to get some pretty nifty pictures of black bears as well.
Ever been ten feet away from a four hundred pound predator? I highly recommend it—if you’re in a car. Otherwise, it’s probably not a great idea.

The trip up the coast actually planted the seeds for a very interesting novel. The details have been growing in my mind at a rate that could only be classified as “phenomenal.” I’m very, very excited about it. So excited, in fact, that it will supplant the novel I planned to write once I finished Slouching Deathward. (That novel, Anathema Magic, will go ahead eventually, I assure you.)
As for this new idea: I’ve plotted a non-linear narrative by merging the concepts of First Nations oral tradition, interviewing and journaling. I don’t want to reveal too much yet—at least not until I begin working on it in earnest (meaning after I’ve finished Slouching Deathward). I will say this much:
It will require absurd amounts of research on my part to make it in any way believable. Because of the narrative techniques I’ve chosen to use I’ll also have to plot the story more carefully than I’ve ever had to do before. It’s a daunting task to be sure but one I look forward to undertaking.
The birth of this story is largely influenced by my irritation at the Canadian publishing industry. If you’ve ever read the submission guidelines of Canadian indie publishers you’ll realise that “Canadian Content” is a phrase often used and seldom defined.
I’ve always felt that stories should have broader appeal and speak to the world at large instead of being marked by the intensely (and, truthfully, jingoistic, bullshit-laden) nationalism that seems to define Canadian art. If I’m going to write a satire I’m going to deliver my message to the whole world, not just a few yahoos in the north.
This novel will be my Official Canadian Content novel. It will at the same time poke fun at our obsession with our own Canadianess and speak to Canadians directly in a way that I hope people from other places can appreciate as well.
There’s Indians and Sasquatches in it—that’s how fucking Canadian it is.

Those of you who know me well know that I’ve had ideas for several novels floating around my head for a while now. I’ve got at least four or five in there that have been bouncing off the bone walls of my skull for two years or more. With the inclusion of this new novel I’ve decided to start keeping detailed notes on the ideas that whip through my mind on a regular basis. There are a few reasons for this:
First, while I have, in the past, had no trouble keeping the stories straight in my head I’ve recently found myself confusing various plot points, settings and characters with the wrong stories as I consider them. I won’t say I’m getting old but my mind certainly isn’t as sharp as it once was. (Alcohol? Drugs? I suppose it’s possible…)
Which brings me to the second reason. I have heard many authors remark that while the execution of writing a story becomes easier with age, one’s creativity often wanes. In other words, writing the novel becomes easier—coming up with the concept and plot of the novel gets harder.
Being as that I have a half a dozen novels and twice as many short stories in my head at any given moment and am constantly coming up with new ideas and ways to explore different narrative techniques, I figure I ought to get them down while I can. Particularly the stories I know I am not yet skilled enough to write. Y’know, throw a net over them before they can get away.
The third and final reason for this is the growing complexity of the plots I come up with. It’s one thing to sit and let a short story marinate in my mind without writing it down for weeks. However, when one starts considering a longer story or a novel and allows that story to gestate for longer than, oh, say, ten minutes, it tends to mutate and become intricate at an exponential rate. If I don’t write it down how can I expect to remember all the facets of a plot?
Am I afraid that this will take some of the immediacy and impulsiveness I so love out of the creative act? Of course I am. Is it worth risking losing a great idea to the abyss at the back of my mind? Fuck no.

So that’s it for this update. I intend to use most of this weekend to work on rewrites for Slouching Deathward as I want to get it off to a publisher before Christmas. Monika is a way for a multi-day hike through Jasper Provincial Park in Alberta so there’ll be no distractions (besides internet porn and Facebook) and I’m feeling “writerly” rather than “masturbatorly” so the odds are in my favour.
I’ve got a couple of short stories that'll be ready to come out of the oven soon. I’ll probably post the rough draught of one of those when I finish it.

It’s funny. I know now that I am less than four months away from the end of my sentence here in Prince George and I’m starting to think I might miss the solitude here. Sure, it’ll be fun to be back in Ontario for a while—and something I dearly NEED. But I’ll miss the hours spent writing merely because I don’t know (or care for) anyone enough to hang out with them.
It’s true: I’ll never be totally happy.
And if I was, I’d probably kill myself. An artist, I am told, thrives on conflict.
I tend to agree.