Taking Matters into My Own Hands

Fuck! Terminal City is dead, and the Nerve and Discorder are monthlies. This means I can't run my interviews with Brett Larner (playing November 18th at the Western Front) and Eugene Chadbourne (playing November 25th at the same venue) before their gigs -- it just can't be done. Both Nerve and Discorder have expressed interest in my writing (as opposed to the Straight, which just ignores my e-mails), but it's of no use -- Nerve will run a piece I'm doing on Terry Riley, who plays the Chan Centre in January, but it's no help right now. I have one solution open to me to get things out there in time: to self-publish a brief 'zine of my own. That's what I'm gonna do, then -- assuming all goes well, I'm going to spend tomorrow and Wednesday putting the final touches on a print edition of this very blog, which I'll assemble at a photocopier shop somewhere and schlep around town Thursday, Friday, and through the weekend. Alienated in Vancouver is going old school -- we're gonna step back into the realm of print media and perhaps generate a bit of attention for ourselves (uh, that is, for me). Wish me luck.

I'd write about the Meredith Monk show at the Chan Centre last weekend, but this print-edition thing is gobbling up my free time. It was a wonderful show -- they even did a screening of the short film Turtle Dreams, towards the end of a performance of the piece of the same name, which was a delight to see -- and the Chan is a great venue. My one complaint is that it was one of those shows that I've imagined so much in advance of seeing it ("what would it be like to see Meredith Monk play live?") that in a way, it feels like the whole thing just occured in the realm of my imagination; even when it was happening, it didn't feel quite real. Solution to the problem: she should come back sometime, so I can see her again.