In Defence of the Dreamer
Can I take of moment of everyone’s time and introduce ScaleDown’s latest guest blogger? Brendan: this is the ScaleDown community. Scaledown community: this is Brendan. Don’t know Brendan yet? Well here’s a little background…
Name: Brendan Houghton
Age: Seven and Twenty
Occupation: factory worker/ writer/ charlatan
Birthplace: Grace Hospital, Windsor, Ontario
Zodiac Sign: Taurus
Favourite Music: All types, early Pink Floyd, Oasis, Black Keys, Miles
Davis, White Stripes, Sabbath, Beatles, Stones, etc.
Favourite Books: Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, A World Made By Hand, Slaughter House Five, Animal Farm, Tao Te Ching, the phone book.
Likes: Sitting, Lenny Bruce, Larry David, Whiskey
Dislikes: Standing, Loud People, SUVsSo, welcome Brendan, and thanks for sharing this great article with us. Who knows? If we treat him nice maybe he’ll stick around?
I would like everyone who is not aware of the website International Metropolis to go there right now, and report back to me when you are finished. It is a website that showcases the many astronomical blunders that our city fathers have committed over the years, and makes me want to invent a time machine so that I may ride a trolley to Kresge’s and buy a pinstriped suit on the way to a horse race at Devonshire Racetrack.
Sites such as the Norton Palmer and the Prince Edward hotel, St. Mary’s Academy, the trolley system, countless houses and the Norwich block, just to name a few casualties are now solely in the lexicon of our oldest residents.
As a child on Christmas Eve, my favourite memories are of listening to my grandfather talk with my great-uncle about old places they used to know. As a child I would hide under our long dining room table and listen to the two of them talk all night long. I have vivid memories of waking up Christmas morning on the Persian rug underneath the table like some bourgeois hobo after a night of gaslight dreams come true. Sadly, Windsor is the victim of circumstance and perpetual political folly. The short-sightedness that was masked as “progress” has now made parts of our city look as if the area was first settled by a group of suburbanites who took a wrong turn at Best Buy in 1996.
This is common in many cities. Take Europe for example. They had the ever-loving snot bombed out of them in WWII by nervous 20 year old pilots for five years and after the last plane delivered its horrible cargo they had to rebuild everything that was gone to smithereens. Therefore parts of London look like the city Charles Dickens loved and hated so much, and other parts look like the backdrop of a Clash video. Parts of Berlin look like something Beethoven would have lost his mind and hearing in, and others look…. well you get the drift.
Windsor, however, was never bombed from 20,000 feet daily; we simply had a lack of vision and artistic sense. We also had the notion that we couldn’t control what the city did with our tax dollars. Now that the distractions of the past (auto factories, hot rods, and the hi-ho) are a thing of the past, this has caused a dramatic turn of attention to our surroundings, and to each other.
This is a good thing. I believe we are on the verge of a sort of intellectual revolution in this city, due to the fact that sites like these exist, and conversations once relegated to quiet corners in a coffee shop are now being proclaimed on high, electronically, for everyone to read. I have often found that what was lacking in this city was a community of artists/writers/sculptors/musicians/crazies, who all supported each other and critiqued each other’s work. We as “dreamers” have long been scoffed at and outright chastised by our peers and even our own families. I have ran into so many people who say “Well, when I was young I loved to write/paint/play guitar, but I stopped because everyone around me either didn’t care, or I was told to ‘get a real job’ so I never pursued it.”
This is a tragedy that could have been avoided if only there was a support system, or a community that they could have shown their work to. Our friends are busy with their own lives and our parents, raised on a steady diet of “you can’t do THAT in Windsor, why don’t you just work at Ford’s like dad, make 30 bucks an hour”, either doubted us, or didn’t want their son/daughter to end up penniless and broke, as “all” artists do. They wanted us to “play it safe”. Playing it safe gets you nothing but a big healthy serving of “boring”.
I’m here to tell anyone who is reading this, who wants to be a painter, musician, writer, sculptor, filmmaker, heck, anything to just damn them all and go and do it. Get up now and just do it. Paint a picture, write a novel, write a play, sculpt “anxiety”, do anything you want to do. Create. Even if no one sees your work, do it for yourself. I tell you this because we will all see in the next few years a community of people who will support you and help you achieve your goals. By then you will have a vast array of examples of your work to showcase. This is why Greenwich Village and the “Beat Generation” were so successful: they had each other and they had nothing to lose and something to say. They didn’t need sanctioned creativity, they needed their art and a venue, that is it.
Some of you might be thinking, “those guys lived in New York City, so they automatically had an advantage.” They absolutely did. But that was 60 years ago, and now we have the internet which negates all other arguments on this subject. Where you live does not matter anymore. People could be seeing your art in Antarctica while giving a penguin a bath. If anyone is actually reading this in Antarctica, let me just tell you how cool you are.
I know, bad pun, now go run around the world in 12 seconds. You can do that there.
Just how am I so convinced that this “phantom community” of artists will somehow emerge? They have always been here, in the basements and dark corners of this city. Now that the laughing and doubting has stopped, and the machines of our past are quieting down we can retake what is ours.
Our art and our venues.
Post Feedback
Rise of the Cultural Creatives! Florida has predicted that this is the way to reinvent post-industrial urbanity, and I couldn’t agree more. If nothing more, it would surely make Windsor a lot more interesting and fun than it already is. We’ve got to kick this downer-attitude and get to work!
Welcome to the ScaleDowners, Brendan. I enjoyed your article very much.
Welcome Brendan! Aw perchance to dream! me thinks …don’t stop dreaming it just might happen!
There has always been painters, sculptors, writers, printmakers, film makers, photographers, actors, classical and contemporary musicians, ceramists, weavers et al in this city and they are hardy bunch and they have out lasted almost everything that this has built and still do and will be around when things are a changing!
Ask the Windsor Star why their sports section reporting on a daily basis is larger than the reporting of the arts in this community because only lackards and slackards become artists if they can’t get a job on the line in this city and this city!
In Windsor this hardy bunch have always it seems flown under the radar but they’re there, always have been. I was in art school at the University of Windsor, when visual artists in protest against the Art Gallery of Windsor’s and its policy of not showing local artists (something that goes back to my dad, a visual artist in the city who took on Ken Saltmarche and that same policy when the AGO was at Willistead in the 1950’s) formed ArtCite an artist co-op. Then came Common Ground, Printmakers Forum all by volunteers and manys a night doing Bingos!
All the above work at a second job, an economic reality of the life, even my dad and mom worked a second job to raise and feed us but pursued their painting careers. The economic fact in Canada is that only about one percent (if that!) of our artistic community makes a full time living making their art. I worked on the line at Ford in the 70’s while I tried to establish an artistic career in this city and painted in spite of the general non acceptance by this city administration and general public as most do today.
The irony of this is that they need us today in our cities, more than we really need them, it would be nice to be needed but according to Councilor Gignac in this year’s budget deliberations: “The free ride is over!” as She states so well for the mayor and the general population and is the main attitude of most Canadians.
Every artist dreams of making a living with her or his art form but when art education and understanding are severely lacking in our educational institutions and in the community, it has always been an up hill struggle to get there.
It is the love and joy of the artistic, creative spirit and adventure that drives us, if is was just economics then most would get job and be done with it!
Will an empty assembly line and derelict factory tell our story …only if an artist thinks it will.
Welcome Brandan to the family!
I agree that the artists MUST start to make noise for themselves and start to promote their work.
As we have seen from our city “leaders”, the “free ride is over” (according to Councilor Gignac and Eddie Francis)! That whole (insert sarcasm) $35,000/year is gone!
So I really hope the artists start to work as a collective group and get their showings out to the public for all of us to enjoy. It is about time Windsor starts to flex its artistic muscles…and we can because we have some fantastic artists out there.
Here’s an interesting thought. Why haven’t we had an art showcase along the waterfront? Not only does it give a pleasing environment to see our local artists work, but it also brings people downtown. Imagine that! Thinking outside the box!
About me, I’m a reference librarian and subject specialist at the Central Branch of the Windsor Public Library. Subject specialty I collect and maintain the collections for the Fine and Performing arts (books, CDs, scores, et al). I grew up in the arts communities of Windsor and Toronto (50’s to the present), am a visual artists, and a musician, I play the Irish flute and the bodhran with a group of amazing friends who do it for the love and no money! Another hidden group in Windsor! I have a BFA and a MLIS.
I also have the greatest personal collection of arts and culture reports that nobody reads or pays heed to about how important the arts are to a community and know first hand of the travails of being an artist in this city and this country. Harper has cut 60 million in arts funding so far in the last three months …that surely tells how much he loves the arts in this country. I wonder if he learned it from city hall!
From the magazine Municipal World:
CULTURE: The Heart of a Sustainable Community
Nancy Duxbury, Kaija Pepper. Municipal World. St. Thomas: Sep 2006. Vol. 116, Iss. 9; pg. 5, 4 pgs
Culture is an avenue through which many socio-cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of a community are embodied. Culture is also a resource to draw upon in building vibrant, resilient, and sustainable communities.
Every community has a unique cultural expression, built up over time, which is strengthened and enriched with each new contribution. These cultural contributions are wide-ranging, encompassing performing, visual, literary and media arts; library, archive, and heritage resources; and socio-cultural activities.
A community’s cultural elements and contributions are important resources that can be used as anchors and foci for a variety of policy and planning efforts. More and more, governments and community organizations are using culture as a tool for economic development, and as an element of social policy to foster social inclusion, cultural diversity, rural revitalization, public housing, health, ecological preservation and sustainable development.
Cultural resources are crucial to both good governance and individual well-being. Thus, cultural considerations and resources must be integrated within a community’s sustainability plans and initiatives. Sustainable community development is not only concerned with retaining local industries, services and resources, but also with doing so in an environmentally, economically, socially and culturally beneficial manner.
Identifying a community’s key cultural elements is a basic step in community cultural planning and policymaking, and in integrating cultural considerations within community sustainability plans. Such cultural elements are both tangible and intangible, and can be grouped under four major headings: physical assets; opportunities for cultural engagement; media; and underlying policy and support programs. Together, these elements nurture and support cultural vibrancy in a community, and help ensure that culture is able to play the most meaningful role possible in the community’s development.”
Amen!
Been reading his articles on WindsorINB and was wondering how long it would take for you to pick him up, Chris.
Thanks for all your kind words, everyone. A sort of footnote to all of this could be that in, lets say, Greenwich Village, they didn’t have any government funding, in fact, their own gov’t thought a lot of them were “commies”, especially in Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac’s cases.
These guys were all friends, and it just grew from there, with the gov’t undermining what they did. Also, they didn’t have any mass media other than some television, the newspaper and radio to spread their work and news of their work. They DID however have the Village Voice, something that really helped create the whole coolness of living in Manhattan’s former skid rows (soho,the village, tribeca, etc) cooler than cool.
One of my visions for this city, in short, is for it to become a really cool art colony type of place. Let’s forget the politicians, they won’t help us at all with this, in my opinion.
Who cares if they dont, it makes it even more appealing in my opinion.