For the past few weeks, I’ve been contending with what my doctor has now diagnosed as an ecotopic arrhythmia. Unlike tachycardia, which is the more serious version of an irregular heartbeat, mine is the benign sort. It’s not necessarily life threatening, though it can be if it intensifies. The sensation is of my heart missing a beat occasionally, not all the time, but with some frequency. It gives me pause, to say the least. The blood work, cholesterol tests, liver and kidneys are all good. Blood pressure is low, but a healthy low. It’s stress related more than likely. Now that I’ve cut out caffeine and reduced alcohol consumption to just about nil, things seem somewhat better. However, there is this strange sensation that my heart will just stop at some point, and not start again.

The funny thing is, I’m not particularly frightened by this. Yes, yes, I get somewhat put out when it happens, that goes without saying, but in quieter moments, after it passes, I think of the bigger picture.

Sure, I’d like to stick around for a bit longer, for all sorts of obvious and not so obvious reasons (hey I’ve got a girl who loves me and wants me around as well, and I’m keen to give her as much of my love as possible, which is really reason numero uno). You should pardon my tone here. I’m very matter-of-fact about this, which might seem odd. But I’ve got just cause, I think. First of all, I’m happy to have been to all the places I’ve been, to have met all the people I’ve met and to have done all the things I’ve done. Never did I imagine that once I’d finished highschool I’d go to Montreal, travel to countries like Western Samoa, Thailand, Japan, the Netherlands, Estonia, the UK, Turkey, and India, live in places like Australia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and now New Zealand. All of these experiences often astound me, when I take time to ponder them and what they’ve meant to me and how I got to where I am now. There are regrets and I’ve done and said things that I wish I could repair somehow, of course. Apologies need to be made and a few more thank yous as well. This goes without saying. Overall, however, I’m content with where I’m at, and I still have time (methinks) to sort out many of these niggling concerns.

Of course, when you put it into my general world view, it could be seen as all for nought, really, when it comes down to it, which becomes clearer when you consider my second reason:

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in a higher power of any sort. Never have. I’m secular through and through. Which is to say, that for me when the heart stops, so does the rest of the machinery and that’s it. Blackness. It’s as simple and stark as that, really. Nothing to be afraid of, not meeting my maker and being judged fit or unfit to pass through some pearly gates or burn in any fires of perdition, traverse some river or other, or doing anything else that sees my “soul” journeying elsewhere.

There are moments when my atheism gets poked and prodded a bit and I’ll launch into a tirade or two about it. I cast my mind back to one moment, where I was particularly put off when after my father died people kept trotting out platitudes like “Things happen for a reason.” Not for a second do I think they meant to say that he had a bad heart that just gave out; i.e., a medical reason. They meant something else which they thought was consoling, an appeal to another force, as though there is something called “fate” or some divine hand guiding us, one which decided, for some unknown reason, to take my father away (they say these things to console themselves, I think). For me, fate is nothing but a sequence of chance events, an arbitariness plugged into convenient narrative templates that help us make sense of the world, a kind of commonsensical fuzzy logic. Instead, I follow that old school existential mantra that we are condemned to be free, which always sounds grandiose when put that way (thanks JPS), but is really a pragmatic way of seeing ourselves as necessarily and ethically committed to being in this world, not beholden to the promise of access to some shadowy nether region that we should otherwise aspire to.

All of which is to say: I’m not afraid of the dark.

Songs then.

Le G.

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So last weekend I spent my time at Scape, the biannual arts festival held down in Christchurch. It’s been about fifteen years since I was last there, so it was pretty much like seeing the city for the first time. There were vague memories of it, but Cathedral Square seemed about the only noticeable space that had changed. It’s been done up now, with requisite stainless steel style icon jutting out of it. Dreadful thing, really, and frightfully out of scale with the square itself.

It is, they say, NZ’s most English city, which as I’ve noted before, is saying a great deal, as NZ seems to be doing British better than the British sometimes. It also plays host to some of NZ’s most notorious racist movements. It’s an unremarkable place to me for those and many other reasons. It’s creepy, really.

Scape was a decent enough event, but I wasn’t particularly moved by any exhibit or any installation. They were clever more than anything, but they generally stuck to the theme “Don’t Misbehave.” The opening night proceedings were to provide just about the only spark for me, with a Chinese artist charging the stage and reading out his manifesto, calling the festival “The Boring and Bullshit” event, which was not really too far off the mark. Sadly, at the moment I expected to sprayed with pig’s blood or animal entrails, he simply left the stage, his little intervention welcomed with smiles and polite applause. Sad.

The only other ripple in the weekend happened before the symposium I was to lead, when a couple of street artists (from the Netherlands and Finland) were challenged as to why their work didn’t take into account local circumstance (which was not an accurate portrayal of their projects and the manner in which they were inserted into various streetscapes in the end). The other query was lobbed at the organizers, who were there, this one coming from a Brit who was clearly not happy to exchange simple pleasantries or offer up aesthetic platitudes. He was laying into them for what he saw as complacency and safe choices. Well, now, this second critique seems to respond to the first better than the artists could. This is a festival that seems to have loads of money, enough that they can fly the artists over and put them up in the Holiday Inn for $140.00/night for two weeks. The choices made regarding which artists should be part of it cannot be divorced from the simple economics of running a festival like this, one which the city relies on for tourist, and well as local, dollars. And from what I’m told, there are quite a few wealthy NZ eccentrics who will throw money at something like this with relative ease. Anything too out there is simply not going to fly, of course, so one shouldn’t expect too risky in this context. I’m in agreement with the second criticism, in principle, but I didn’t expect groundbreaking; I expected humour and play, which is what I got.

Along this line, then, the Ping Pong Country events were a success. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go down there, but everyone picked up on it and it turned out to be a great event. A lovely installation, too, which will stick around for a few more weeks. It was good to see the Golden Country Boys there and then to have them up here to host a night in Wellington. This too was a success. Perhaps we’ll see more of that here?

Related music:
Tommy Hancock - Tacos for Two
Roy Hogsed - Rag Mop

Le G.

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