from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 11:21 PM
subject Morgentaler named to Order of Canada; Dion en mission pour vendre son Tournant vert à l’Alberta
Dear Stephen,
I am still alive.
The installation is taking long hours, and the last couple nights I’ve gone out with the tech crews—nothing too crazy, mind you, but it still makes the days long.
I can’t get into details at the moment, other than to say I’m being good, and concentrating on work, and smoking too much, and not eating as well as I’d like. Though tonight was an impromptu tech dinner grâce à Phoebe, and we all ate at le Roi de Plateau. Which was good food, but still more french fries.
I had hoped to go to the free Bran Van 3000 concert at Place des Arts but everyone piled in the van and we headed to the super studio instead, which was alright, a bit more relaxed. There was a band from Philly playing at Lab Synthése but I found them a bit too intense.
I must sleep now.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 6:43 AM
subject Canadian military denies reports of wounded soldiers; Dion en mission pour vendre son Tournant vert à l’Alberta
Dear Stephen,
And just in case you were wondering, I seem to have developed a subtle yet strong infatuation with Sandrine, one of the French technicians. You know how some people just seem to be attractive to certain people? It feels that way with her, that I can sense the magnetism. But of course I am letting most of this occur in my head, and manifesting nothing. Besides, I think she and François might be having a little flirt, which would be good for him. After all, I am married, and love my wife, and she’s coming back to Montréal today. There is the artist talk by Sophie Calle tonight and afterwards I’ve been invited to the special dinner. Unfortunately I can’t bring a guest. Do you think I should skip it so I can spend the night with Claudine? Apparently I almost lost my spot at the table, especially after the article debacle, but James made sure I have a spot. I could try flirting with Feist. Anyway, I have to go now and pick up the last column from Warren. Another last-minute change to the exhibition layout was to sheath the four columns in the middle of each floor with MDF and paint them white.
-chris
from Prime Minister/Premier ministre <pm@pm.gc.ca>
to chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
date Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 7:56 AM
subject Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet du Premier ministre
hide details Jul 3
Reply
Please know that your e-mail message has been received in the Prime Minister’s Office and that your comments have been noted. Our office always welcomes hearing from correspondents and being made aware of their views.
Thank you for writing.
Sachez que le Cabinet du Premier ministre a bien reçu votre courriel et que nous avons pris bonne note de vos commentaires. Nous aimons être bien informés de l’opinion des correspondants.
Je vous remercie d’avoir écrit au Premier ministre.
>>> chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com> >>>
Dear Stephen,
I am still alive.
The installation is taking long hours, and the last couple nights I’ve gone
out with the tech crews-nothing too crazy, mind you, but it still makes the
days long.
I can’t get into details at the moment, other than to say I’m being good,
and concentrating on work, and smoking too much, and not eating as well as
I’d like. Though tonight was an impromptu tech dinner grâce à Phoebe, and we
all ate at le Roi de Plateau. Which was good food, but still more french
fries.
I had hoped to go to the free Bran Van 3000 concert at Place des Arts but
everyone piled in the van and we headed to the super studio instead, which
was alright, a bit more relaxed. There was a band from Philly playing at Lab
Synthése but I found them a bit too intense.
I must sleep now.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 9:20 AM
subject Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan; Zimbabwe: Harper veut des gestes concrets
Dear Stephen,
Thanks for your reply last week. Sorry I haven’t written since before the opening; it’s been wild. The day of the opening at DHC we caught word that Feist wanted to perform in the gallery itself, and not during the invite-only party afterwards. So after the show was all set up, lit, cleaned and ready, James, David, Tod and I were cleaning up the kitchen to prepare a little green room for the diva with the incredible voice. And in the end it was better, as it felt more like a surprise, and for the general public, those that managed to be in the right place at the right time, a nicer gift.
The party afterwards was held at one of the Science Centre pavilions, lots of food plates, open bar with great wine, and great tunes from DJ Octoboobies. It all wound down at the respectable time of 11pm, so most of the tech team headed to Sala Rosa, which we closed at 3:30am. Then Clo and I went for poutine gratiné at le Fameoux. It was nice to be up with daylight.
Friday I went in to work for a little bit, mostly to set up opening and closing instructions for the gallery attendants and look for my wallet, which I noticed had gone missing. Had a long lunch with James and Sarah. Had some keys to one of the technical rooms copied. Came home, to Oboro, and got ready for the MTL Vice party, a fundraiser of sorts for Annie to help pay for her education. She had thought she had paid off her student loan but surprise! There was a chunk of money from her interest-free period that was not really free, just deferred. DJ Octoboobies was there again, and Cheryl put a little band together and sang some songs. I had a nice little flirt with a super-cute graphic designer named Alex, then met up with Clo, Caro, François and Alexis at l’Inspecteur Epingle for a nightcap.
Saturday had planned to leave by 10am max but it was more like 11:30. I remembered when I saw David at the Oboro party that I had most likely lost my wallet when I crawled under the floor in Gallery 4 to pull down a blind. To access the windows, one must crawl under the walls through the 14″ gap under the floor. So I went down to the gallery and lo and behold there it was, in plain view under the first floor panel I pulled up. Then I had to leave the van keys with Simon, who wasn’t home but I left the keys inside one of his windows.
The drive was long, a tad tedious at times, but mostly relaxing. Uneventful. We saw a moose on the shoulder of the road between Fredericton and Saint John. They really are practically invisible, like black holes almost, only with eyes.
Yesterday we went to New River Beach with my brother Aaron and Stephen and Monica. Ran into Eleanor King and Stephen Kelly randomly on the street; they were coming back from a vacation on Grand Manan and were looking for Taco Pico before heading back to Halifax. Saw Meghan briefly, in her new studio with her new work, which is really good. She’s preparing for the Toronto Outdoor Art Expo, which happens next week.
Saint John was foggy and cold, but the valley, where my parents live, and the beach in the other direction, were both warm and sunny. After a brief repose on the beach we headed to Ossie’s lunch for fried clams. Then it was back home, through the perpetual fog belt and then home for salad (all the food at Ossie’s is the same colour: deep-fried beige) and backyard fire in the fireplace.
Today we’re heading to the cabin on the Kingston Peninsula. I might only be sending you email on the weekends, when we come into the city to work at happinez or see friends and family. I’ll write throughout the week, maybe even by hand, by a scanner to keep copies, and send you the actual letters. This is one of my potential summer art plans. Sending you letters by water bottle in also an option. We shall see.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 10:29 AM
subject Green shift targets the rich: Liberal; Preston Manning entre au Conseil des académies canadiennes
Dear Stephen,
We’ve survived our first few days out in the wild. Well, it’s not really wild, there is just an absence of electricity, Internet and running water. But Debbie’s cabin has so much more: a well-designed, super-comfy living space, propped up and jutting towards the water, little Knapp Lake, and nothing else around except for trees and peace and quiet.
Monday was our first night at the camp. We visited early, but then spent the day in Saint John gathering the rest of our supplies. One of the Gondola Point cable ferries was down. We took a drive to the other end of the peninsula but just missed the ferry to Milledgeville by 3 minutes: unlike the others, it has a regular schedule, leaving every hour, on the hour.
In typical Saint John fashion, we agonized over where to eat. We had a hankering for past, thought about Thandi’s or maybe Opera, or Sebastians, but settled on Boilerworks. The meal was fine, but all the restaurants here are too expensive for what they offer. Except for Taco Pica. Heck, even the beer—a Stella—cost almost $7 apiece.
We stopped at Meghans’ parents’ house after getting groceries at Superstore. It was her birthday. They were having a birthday bonfire. We didn’t stay long; the drive to the camp is dark, rocky, uneven and mostly dirt. But we made it OK.
Tuesday was our first full day at the camp and it was a blend of exploring and settling in. We took the boat to Katie’s cabin across the lake and sunbathed for a bit on their dock. Claudine has been knitting and jogging and doing yoga and reading. I’ve been reading and chopping down the odd dead tree for firewood. We’re working on some art projects for a show Jo Cook is putting together called Psychic Amateurs. Our battery pack hasn’t arrived yet so we can’t put our solar panels to optimum use, though they work well on the radio. When it is sunny.
Wednesday we started to built a dock out of spare wood underneath the cabin. The lake is not pleasant to walk into but with the dock some twenty feet out, the surface becomes a little rockier and less mucky. Aaron came over for supper and we barbecued and made rice on the stove inside. We’ve been eating rather well. Everything takes a little more time to do, but everything feels a little more rewarding and fulfilling. Just thinking feels more productive.
Thursday the sun broke through, and we finished the dock. We used spare planks from underneath the cottage. We scrubbed it down and then scrubbed ourselves at the end of it. The dock makes it easier to fill buckets and wash ourselves. We had sex on the drydock beside the boat, which had been our workshop. We’re on a good, daily routine now.
We’ve finished our art projects for Jo’s show. Claudine made a set of wooden runes with french accents burned onto them, and knit a pouch to hold them. I painted a figure from a Tarot pack, the Valet of Cups, on one of my Tim Hortons handmade paper. We’ll mail them off tomorrow from the city. We have dentist appointments in the morning, and then errands to run all day. We’re hoping to meet up with friends at happinez in the evening, and see where that takes us.
The bullfrogs grunt all day long, but the sound really commands the entire lake during the evenings and nights.
We came into the city on Friday to run errands and meet friends at happinez. My day was incredibly unproductive and expensive; the frame I bought for the Tim Hortons piece I’m sending to Jo for the Psychic Amateurs show cost over $80. And we didn’t even mail it yet. Met Judith at her new place she bought with Robert, we took the tour and had some wine before hitting happinez. Met the gang there, Jamie, Stephen, Monica, her brother, and we all piled into Sebastiens for an over-priced, unfulfilling meal. Crashed at S&Ms afterwards, and watched pictures from last summer.
Today we’ll try to finish a few more of our errands, then return to the cabin to shut off the propane. I left the main valve on, and it worries me to leave it alone all weekend. We’ll come back into the city tonight to possibly catch the Sloan show.
-chris
from chris lloyd <dearpm@gmail.com>
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 9:19 PM
subject McCartney fans have no time for politics at Quebec concert; Un sommet des premiers ministres cet automne
Dear Stephen,
We had a mostly unfulfilling weekend (the previous weekend—the most recent weekend was fun, but more on that later). Maybe our expectations were too high. Saturday we went back to my parents’ house for supper with my dad—my mom was away at Choir Camp. Dad and I drove to the cabin to shut the propane off. He cooked up some steaks on his barbecue and we had a nice meal, just the three of us. Aaron was away at a friends’ cottage in Amherst. After supper Clo and I went back into the city, hung out at happinez while Kate, her sister Jackie, and Monica and Stephen went to the Sloan show. Peter was happy to see us and fed us wine and beer all night, and it was nice to spend time with him. Alex is back from Newfoundland for part of the summer and is working a few shifts. I was surprised to learn that she is back together with her high school sweatheart John, and they will be renting a house together on the Rock (he got into Memorial this Fall). A lot can happen in a year, that’s for sure.
Eventually Clo and I wandered down to Long Warf and caught the last couple songs and encore by Sloan, for free, at that point in the evening many folks were drifting home anyhow, and it wasn’t a huge crowd to begin with. The $40 tickets might have kept some folks away. The group of us went back to Katie’s and she grilled up some sausages on the barbecue and prepared a great little midnight snack. Clo and I crashed there for the night.
Sunday was another weird day. Kate, Jackie, Clo and I had brunch at the Garden Restaurant, the one just beside the Falls. We had to be there before 11:30 to catch the breakfast menu. Afterwards we hung around Kate’s place while she and her sis went off to their Black River camp. We were killing time before my mom’s choir recital at 3:30 at Trinity Church. When we did arrive we quickly realized it was almost a regular-type church service, with the choir singing a bunch of the hymns and other songs. It was worth a few giggles and a few cringes; organized religion doesn’t sit well with me. There is something about the mechanical, unified responses, the half-hearted readings, the lack of connections. I appreciate the history and stubbornness of ritual, but at the same time I yearn for something more real and personal.
Afterwards we wanted to take my folks out to Taco Pica for supper but it was closed. We settled on Lemongrass, which was good service but mediocre food. We headed to Judith and Roberts’ after supper and drank copious amounts of red wine and had deep conversations about relationships, the making of Alien Nation, and then a bizarre tiff developed between Clo and Judith and Clo left, Judith climbing through the car window to convince her to come back, and she only came back when there was no answer at Kate’s house. It was a silly misunderstanding about money and art, but it all worked out between them and we spent the night in the guest room.
Monday morning we listened to Alien Nation in the car, then headed around town to run errands. The episode was all about Judith leaving Peter; very raw, very personal, very strange to hear it in Saint John, having spent the weekend with the both of them. We visited Signe and cleared out some of our Tim Horton cups from the basement of 15 Paddock. Bought some groceries (the cheques I had deposited last Monday had still not cleared, an issue I plan to bring up with my bank next time I am in town. If the bank is open on Saturday, shouldn’t that count as a business day?) and headed to my parents’ house. They had just left for Cape Breton to cycle around the Cabot Trail. We worked on some emails and then headed to the cabin.
It felt so much more relaxing to be back at the cabin. The silence, the birds, the sky, sunshine, the lake, the woods, it is all so calming and brings the speed of life down a few notches. Monday night we made hamburgers on the barbecue. Tuesday afternoon we cooked fish, and in the evening I made a stir-fry. I spent most of the day making paper from the Tim Horton cups. I made better progress than anticipated: 7 sheets of standard letter-size. The longest part of the process is shredding the cups and then mulching them, for which I am using a 2×4 to mash the pulp inside a big plastic pickle barrel.
We drained the battery pack already by charging up Clo’s laptop and our walkie-talkies, and then couldn’t get it charged back up. I’d only hooked up 2 of our 6.5 Watt panels to it, so maybe it needs all 4 to recharge throughout the day. I’ll give it a shot tomorrow.
It didn’t work. I had all four panels hooked up to the battery pack all day—from about 10am until 7pm. The indicator light still says that the battery is empty. Still, we can run the radio and iPod from it, but really we need the laptops.
Wednesday I made more paper, and made an extension to the dock. It was not really part of my summer plans, but the elongation of the dock has become something of a project. Judith and Robert and his daughter Alex and my brother Aaron came over tonight for supper—we made beer-can-barbecue chicken and potatoes and salad—and I remember speaking to Robert about the dock and realizing how after 2, maybe 3 sections it is still fully functional, but anything more pushes it to the realm of art. Meaning, it could still be functional, but it will be increasingly absurd at the same time. Who needs a sixty-foot dock? What about seventy feet? A hundred? Just how far can I go with this dock business? The lake is still quite shallow, three feet at about fifty feet from shore.
The dock makes me think of the Bridge project that my friend Jeremiah and I made as an art project for the Anna Leonowens Gallery in 1998, where we sanded down the floor of the gallery and then built a ramp from old wooden pallets. Maybe I will look for pallets this weekend in the city, and continue the dock. Towards what end, I can only guess.
The bullfrogs are in fine form Wednesday evening, and most every evening. We have a loud one near the cabin; he seems to be far from his brethren; the rest of the noisy creatures seem to be further south on the lake. We imagine that they are communicating with one another, exchanging stories of their daily adventures; who caught what, ate what, mated with whom, sat in certain muck.
The moon is full tonight. We sat out on the new dock to watch the sky and stars and the sparkling, velvety, almost buttery water. The waves are like a blue-black butterscotch ripple in perpetual motion.
I’m reading Invention of solitude by Paul Auster. I can’t determine if this is perfect or terrible summertime reading. Then again, I spend most of my days shredding Tim Horton cups and turning them into paper, so who am I to judge?
Thursday I continued with my newfound obsession with the dock. I added two new sections, each about 8 feet long. The dock now seems to have a life and mind of its own; it seems to be in the process of choosing which direction into the lake it takes, and of what materials it will be made of. One section is based around a painted sign I found underneath the cabin. The only words are “Build-Grow”, which might be a remnant from one of Dominick’s political campaigns. We topped off this current expansion by adding our IKEA solar lights to the posts. Let me tell you, it looks really sharp at night. Like an airport runway.
Tonight we made an appointment with Judy to see the last remaining cottage on their lake—they just bought a cottage, on Monday—it was part of a rental operation, but over the past year the owner parceled up the property and put up for sale all fifteen cottages. The lake is called (unpronounceable, unspellable : Digdemaguash?) and it is near St. George. It takes an hour and a half of driving to get there. There is a certain quaintness to them, but the last remaining cabin to be sold held little appeal for us. First of all, there is a current infestation of wood ants. But secondly, and perhaps more severe, is the close proximity of the neighbouring cottages, and the motor boats pulling skiers up and down the lake. I think the spot works great for Judith and Robert, it is kid-friendly, they made a pretty good deal on the place, but it isn’t exactly what we are looking for.
What we are looking for is more like what we have at the moment: a rustic, beautifully-constructed, partially finished cabin with no running water or electricity, on a tiny lake with four neighbours, of whom we see rarely, if at all. Something closer akin to Paradise; at times I feel like we are Adam and Eve, alone in a garden of tranquility. We’re going to ask Debbie if she’ll consider selling to us, or at least confirm our rental for next year. But at the same time want to intensify our efforts to find a parcel of land of our own. I’d love to build an Earth Hut, or something similar.
Oddly enough, when I’m on my computer away from Intenet, the time and date automatically reverts to December 31, 1969. A few years ago I even let it continue for weeks into 1970. Despite warnings that “certain programs may behave erratically”, everything seems to work the same as before; the same as during the current date.
Claudine went to Church Point, near Digby, to visit her friend Nicole and some of the other instructors she had met last year while teaching. Kate, Jackie and Rich came out to the Wallace cabin and we had a great weekend crossing the lake back and forth. Kate made fabulous paella on Saturday night, and Aaron and Meghan came over. We built a raft and attempted to run atop a semi-submerged barrel. Found some fireworks and ended the night with a bonfire and a bang.
Sunday morning we had pancakes for brunch, swam a bit, and generally relaxed and/or nursed mild hangovers. In the afternoon I came over to my parents’, washed some laundry and re-charged some gear. There wasn’t really any direct sun on the weekend and there is none in the short-term weather forecast; one of the drawbacks of relying on solar panels.
Anyway, I’m off to collect Clo from the ferry terminal, and then it’s a rather long drive back to the cabin.
-chris
DEAR PM 