from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Wed, Jan 3, 2007 at 1:35 PM
subject Foreign Affairs more hindrance than help; Une nouvelle station de radio naît en Afghanistan, diffusée du Canada
Dear Stephen,
Happy New Year! It sounds as though your year started rather interesting, what with that woman in her car crashing through the barriers of your winter place in Gatineau trying to score a meeting. Did you think it was me? Apparently it didn’t work. What is the best way to meet with you? I suspect calling your secretary and setting up a meeting should work.
We arrived safe and sound last night, deciding against spending the day in Québec City, despite the sunny, almost balmy weather no the Tintin exhibition at le Musée de civilization. We stopped in Riviere du Loup for groceries and poutine, which was a treat. Claudine has now embarked upon another fast. I’ve declined to participate as I just can’t stand the salt water flush. I’ve vowed to eat more fruit instead.
I have a ton of backlogged gallery stuff to do, so had best get cracking.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Fri, Jan 5, 2007 at 2:14 AM
subject Chief quits prior to expected report; Myriam Bédard est de retour au Québec après 13 jours en prison aux USA
Dear Stephen,
I have bad news. My grandmother is dying, or at best, taking a turn for the worse. My dad drove to Nova Scotia yesterday but couldn’t actually see her because the Norwalk Virus has caused a quarantine at her nursing home. He stayed with Trevor last night. Claudine and I drove out to have tea with my mom. My dad’s side of the family is a bit disorganized; last night my dad couldn’t track down my grandfather, who could have been at a number of relatives. As you know my grandmother has suffered from cancer and most recently Alzheimer’s, which is a nasty disease. Now we wait.
In other depressing news I heard today that a couple I had met in Halifax some years back, Paul and Helen, from the band Piggy and animations, were shot in their home in New Orleans early this morning, and that Helen has died. They have a two year old boy. They were both tremendously gifted and giving people. Paul, a doctor, had set up a sliding scale health clinic and Helen, an animator and filmmaker, gave workshops for free. It is a tremendous loss and I feel terrible for their families.
I worked today, thinking it was Friday and wondering where everybody was. In fact, since Tuesday I have been a whole day ahead. It turned out to be a late night. I should get to sleep but I’ll try to read a bit from Cloud Atlas, as the next book club meeting is happening at my place within a month and I only just started.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 11:11 AM
subject No injuries after B.C. plane crash; Les professionnels de la santé ont été mal protégés contre le SRAS
Dear Stephen,
Sorry for the delays. I was whisked off to Nova Scotia on Sunday with my parents to visit my grandfather. My grandmother passed away Friday night, peacefully, in her sleep. In many ways it must be a bit of a relief; after ten years with progressive Alzheimer’s she was barely recognizing my grandfather, let alone anyone else in the family, or friends. What a surreal experience it must be, perpetual dreamstate. The visit with my family—we stayed with Trev and Tamara, stopped to visit Vicki and Peter on our way back from Bridgewater Monday night—was also a bit surreal and dreamlike. The men on dad’s side of the family are not the most communicative in the world. Lots of silences and occasional humming. My great Uncle Ron has been staying with my grandfather and they had made rabbit stew. Mostly we looked at pictures, watched mom and dad’s cycling video and watched the weather channel.
Work was good last weekend though. I managed to make my rent in tips, from Thursday-Saturday. They were late nights though, especially Saturday. It looks like the DJ night is picking up, even our sales eclipsed Friday. Had noodles with DJ Fred at Shanghai Noodle on Union Street at 4am. Like I said, late nights.
Finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell while on the trip, at least I can check that off my list of things to do. There are a gazillion backlogged events for the gallery, three press releases had to go out this week alone. This month everything is happening in threes. I need to learn to scale back. It is difficult because other times I feel like I’m not doing nearly enough. Like deciding on the film series a month in advance to get better publicity.
We went to see the Filmpix presentation of “For your consideration” last night. It was humorous and laughable, I needed that as I’ve been feeling morose again as of late. We met Katie there and she came back to the apartment for paella. Remember my New Year’s Resolution? Well last night was the first night but I forgot one of the ingredients and mis-read the recipe and was baking the paella when it was in fact a stove top recipe. But it still tasted OK, at least Claudine and Katie told me so.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Sat, Jan 13, 2007 at 11:35 AM
subject Many may be in limbo due to obscure rule; Lucien Bouchard considère que les questions de Crop étaient trop carrées
Dear Stephen,
I am so angry at Rogers right now. That stupid company had an automated voice call me and immediately put me on hold for five minutes. Why did I wait on hold, you might ask? Morbid curiosity. You see, Rogers called me last week, but even though it was a real person, she couldn’t talk to me about my account. Why? Well, it seems that the last time had a major blow-up with them I placed a password on the account, and of course now i can’t remember it. Do you know what she told me? That I would HAVE to go to a Rogers outlet WITH photo ID AND a bill from a third party to verify that I was me before they could tell me the “very important news” about my account (I was guessing that a payment was late). Of course, you can probably imagine what my reaction was to this. I laughed and told her it would be the absolute last thing I would ever do, and wondered aloud who she thought she was talking to, since she called my number. Anyhow, after the five-minute hold this morning another Rogers rep cheerfully informed me that the payment I had made through my online banking on December 20 had not been received. Somehow she felt at liberty to discuss these details with me without asking for the mysterious password. She also told me that my next bill would be due on February 1 but that our long-distance has been suspended because of the amount outstanding. Stephen, I’m telling you this sort of corporate shenanigans drives me absolutely bananas. It doesn’t help that I am already in a terribly foul mood. Have been since yesterday morning.
I don’t know if I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed or whether it is an accumulation of negative energy, perhaps certain stars aligning to rain bad luck down on me, but yesterday was terrible. I felt it from the moment I crawled out of bed, realizing that I hardly had time to do anything more than shower, dress, eat and then head to work. That sort of cyclical scheduling burns my britches; working late then getting up in order to go back to work. Claudine and I had lunch at the tea room and it was full of white-hairs and spending the money annoyed me. Ran into Joy Crosbie though and we finally made arrangements to have her pick up her painting and give me some money.
Went to the Parking Commission with the letters from my dad and from Bill verifying that we live where we do and that we are the principal drivers of the ’99 Corolla. Unfortunately did not have the registration with us so of course will have to come back. We have been lucky though and even with the 2-hour streetside parking during the day have not received a single ticket. Fingers still crossed.
Went to the building and there was a pile of mail. The grant results from the September competition! Guess how many we received. Four? No. Three? No. Two? No. One? No. A complete strikeout. Four planned projects, not a lick of funding. Just fucking great. So we either stretch the shoestring even tighter or it becomes the straw that snaps the gallery back. My back. Fuck this town, Fuck the Canada Council, fuck Bev Oda and fuck your bible-thumping government.
So the next package was the beginning of my homework for jury duty with the CC, which is of course confidential so don’t go spreading it around. I have a shit-load of reading and grading to do before I even arrive in Ottawa for the first of February. It will pay well, which is nice for a change. Of course, being paid as a professional for my work once in a blue moon is nice but only highlights the discrepancy of the rest of my life: tending bar. And of course being unable to secure funding for my own projects, which makes me question my own artistic integrity. So needless to say I was angry at being at work last night, angry that the same people show up, angry that out of the blue everyone decides to come at once, as if they lack independent thought, like the uptown citizenry exist as some sort of borg collective. Angry that Jess was late and angry that she was there at all, as it meant 50% tips. Angry that she spent her vacation in Europe, then angry at myself for feeling jealous and angry for feeling powerless about my situation.
In fact, all week I’ve been mad at myself. I’m starting to think that I’ve really boxed myself into a life I don’t want, but I can’t figure out what it is that I want. Claudine has plans for travelling this year but I am hesitating. We had tentative plans to get married in the spring / summer but I doubt it will happen, which means telling all our friends and relatives that it is postponed, yet again. She wants to be back in Montréal so bad and it is depressing us both to still be here, robbing us of the ability to see the positive side of the city (it does have one). I’m nervous about moving, though I can’t tell exactly where my nervousness exists. Somewhere around being perpetually poor, to not having adequate job prospects, to speaking bad french, to not paying my taxes, to being always behind, something like that.
Anyway, what do my problems amount to, a hill of beans?
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 11:41 PM
subject Winter weather marches through Canada; Dérèglementation des services de téléphone: les consommateurs sont inquiets
Dear Stephen,
I had terrible, frenetic nightmares last night, waking up at least three times, once completely dripping in sweat. What causes such feelings of anxiety and dread? As a result of a restless night I slept in late this morning.
Worked on the skateboard deck off and on today. I finally decided on an image of you. I’m taking the image from a lame Reader’s Digest interview with you. I never realized how right-wing biased they are, but the interview was more like pro-Harper propaganda than a balanced interview.
We still have our Christmas tree up, though the decorations are packed up. Yours?
There is a winter storm (finally) that dumped snow on the city today and tonight. I walked the the parking commission office to finally get our parking permit—$11 until the end of April, can’t beat that—and of course I had a ticket when I got back. We finally stretched our luck. I’ll contest it tomorrow because I think Andy, the man in charge, will see the irony in getting a ticket on the same day as a pass. I could fib and say that the windshield was covered in snow, but he might check the time. Maybe he won’t. We’ll see.
Now that we’re totally ensconced in car culture we screened “Who Killed the Electric Car” tonight in the gallery. I actually had to drive to the West Side to get the spare key lock box key from Peter and Judith as I had of course locked the gallery keys in the gallery last night after the Motion Ensemble performance (which was a great show, BTW, if you are into new and experimental music). The roads were some slick! Didn’t see any accidents though.
The documentary is good, sheds some more light on just how evil the car and oil industries can be, and knits together a nice thesis for who was complicit and why. What are your thoughts on the electric car? Maybe there should be less subsidies for oil companies and more for finding alternative and more renewable forms of energy. I’m just saying.
Anyway, I’m going to try to get to bed before midnight and continue with the book “A short history of nearly everything”. I’m on the section about the mystery of life, you know, proteins and stuff.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 4:12 PM
subject Downed Victoria trees are no windfall; Le gouvernement Harper fête son premier anniversaire au pouvoir
Dear Stephen,
Happy Anniversary.
Sorry I haven’t written lately. As I write less and less often and more and more sporadically it becomes harder to remember to even do it. And I’ve been really busy lately.
The Homegrown Skateboard guys arrived late Thursday night to set up their part of the Artists on Board show. It all came together quite smoothly; John and I had hung most of the boards to be auctioned on Wednesday, Rae helped on Thursday, everyone pitched in on Friday, and the opening was a resounding success. Despite nasty weather—it rained, then turned to snow—the gallery was packed for a solid two hours, and there were some decent bidding wars started, though not everything received a bid. I was pulling double duty and was in the bar more than the gallery, as Jess stayed in Fredericton. Working with Peter has a different flow. The bar wasn’t that busy and Peter offered to close so I could catch the Fussy Part at Elwoods with the rest of the crew. We all ended up at Saigon Noodle until almost 4 in the morning.
I had volunteers scheduled to sit in the gallery on Saturday so Claudine and I rented snowshoes and took off into the country. We found a random place on the side of the road near the Village of Gagetown and hiked a small mountain. It was fun, even when Claudine fell into a small brook. Luckily only her legs were wet and she was wearing wool pants. We ate at the Hammond River Café on our return to the city and I relieved Jess for supper at the bar. Went to see Children of men with Claudine and the skateboard crew. Heavy! Intense, heavy, dark movie. Went back to the bar to see if Jess needed help but the crowd didn’t materialize. I now fear that the Midnight Mix will be in jeopardy as Peter won’ see the value in paying a DJ each week. We need to promote it more. This city just isn’t ready for something simple yet sophisticated like this. Grrr.
Today we’re cleaning the house and preparing for a Murder Mystery we are hosting. Rich and Kate and Stephen and Monica are coming over. The game is called Murder in the Orient and we all have to wear cheesy costumes. I stopped at Value Village this afternoon before getting groceries to pick up a few items to add to my costume.
Anyway, I’m off to finish vacuuming the apartment and help Claudine with preparations.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 10:09 PM
subject Travellers need passports to fly to U.S.; Ségolène Royal ne doit pas tenter influencer les Québécois, selon Charest
Dear Stephen,
I’m hitting another blue streak, a deep blue funk. Can’t find the motivation to do anything, and everything is coming to a head. My CC books arrived, there are about seven in total, I have to read and make comments on every application, I’m already feeling overwhelmed and over my head. I have paintings to make for Peter Buckland’s small works show and I can’t get started. I have the mural proposal to make for Nougatine et Chocolat and I can’t find the will to put pen to paper. About the only thing I’ve done lately is gather the materials for the first big gallery mail out, the two catalogues we finished in the fall. Big deal.
Claudine and I are finally planning the wedding (well, she took control of that, too), which is also causing stress, because it essentially means we are fixing a date to pull out of Saint John and I have to cut ties with the gallery before really getting it off the ground, or getting paid. I’m pissed off at everyone lately, I’m mad at this town and mostly myself for getting myself into this situation. I don’t like that my source of income comes from sucking up to people in a bar for tips. It’s degrading. And I hate that I’m still in debt and the gallery has no money and that I’m responsible.
That felt a bit better to complain. I’d go on but it’s just more of the same. I’m feeling angry and spiteful and frustrated and sick.
The fucking snowshoes are still in the trunk of the car, dammit, two days rental fee for nothing. Cripes.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 2:23 PM
subject Canadians donate wells to Afghans; Harper prédit un gouvernement minoritaire si un scrutin se tient ce printemps
Dear Stephen,
Sorry I haven’t written lately. I was depressed last week and procrastinating. Since then I’ve managed to read a bit the CC books and had a conference call, and BTW the whole thing is confidential so forget I’ve told you about it. The Wal*Town film guys came to town Thursday night and stayed at our place, both Jason and Tim were really nice and we had some good conversations, I’ve been thirsty for stuff like this. We took a drive by the refinery, which, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is about to get a twin. The Irvings have announced plans to go ahead with an environmental assessment and all signs—given that they control the print media in this province, and exercise that right through heavily-biased editorials—point to an enthusiastic public all bowled over by the dollar signs. It will probably begin construction in 2009. From what i’ve heard through the grapevine the NBM “one” project might be built by 2014. And I’ve been meeting with Greg Fleet to co-ordinate a series of annual exhibitions on the theme of Saint John 2020. All these dates off in the future make me more depressed.
On a high note, Claudine and I have been narrowing down our plans, set a date for the wedding (June 2, you are invited, if you are still PM, that is) and decided to leave for Taiwan in the fall to teach English for a year. We’ll hopefully summer in France, if we can each save enough money by then. She’s going to Africa next month for over three weeks. Lucky girl. I have to try to use the time wisely to get my own plan of action together, which involves a lot of planning with the gallery.
Anyway, I still have to make a few small paintings for Peter Buckland, organize a gallery-sitting schedule for the 2 weeks I will be in Ottawa, rent the film An Inconvenient Truth for the Monday Night Movie tonight, call my parents to say hi, respond to some email, plan the workshops schedule for the March break ‘zine-making workshops at the gallery with Meghan and the Saint John Boys and Girls Club, pay the rent, plan my own video workshops with the students at Hazen White school that Andrew Miller organized but that I have no clue about, get the Cyclops Library exhibition poster to the printer and the media release on the website, and a half-dozen other time-sensitive matters completed all before, oh, let’s say tomorrow. I fly out on Wednesday.
We’ve been playing racquetball at the Y, which is causing me great stiffness but I like the game. We played with Monika and Stephen last week and ourselves on Saturday. The bar was busy for the private party Wednesday, dead on Thursday, but busy Friday and Saturday. Saturday I took my supper break at Asian Palace for one of the special sushi nights, when Enshin makes great sushi. We talked about Japan, I also talked about teaching in Japan with Mark Hemmings, whose wife taught there and he goes once per year and can even speak it, and also with Usha’s daughter, whose name I forget but she lives and teaches there for the past six years, also speaks it, but now it looks like we are leaning towards Taiwan, but we’ll see. Have to get some applications ready.
Last night I surprised Claudine (and myself, to some degree) by making braised Lamb Shanks. They tasted wonderful but i think I’m going to start eating less meat. At least this lamb was from an organic, family farm. Still.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca,
date Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 2:01 PM
subject Canadians donate wells to Afghans; En plus de Pickton, trois autres personnes avaient été arrêtées
Dear Stephen,
We screened An Inconvenient Truth in the gallery last night. We had a great turnout for the film. Have you seen it? Or been advised on it? Or been told how to respond to it by your handlers? Do you brush it off as extreme leftist-environmentalist propaganda, or does it concern you? I’m embarrassed at the squabbling and arguing between the federal parties at the moment. You’re all like little children, blaming each other for the inaction. Show some backbone and take the leadership reins for cripes sake! Set some hardcore emissions targets and drag industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century. All this blah-blah talk about Canada being a leader means dick-all if you don’t actually do anything. We’re already a global embarrassment when it comes to Global Warming.
Of course, it’s so freezing out today the locks on the car doors were frozen.
Woke up early this morning to try to get a jump-start on things that need to be done. Have 2 paintings on the go, plus the proposal for Nougatine et Chocolat, plus had a Gallery Hop meeting at Peter Bucklands’. Now I’m hungry.
Have been listening to the leaked version of Neon Bible, the new Arcade Fire, set for release in Europe on March 5 (my birthday!) and North America the following day. It sounds good.
I’m going to make some lunch in between coats of varnish.
-chris
DEAR PM 