meadows of silence

Before Nuit Blanche I was sitting at home alone bored with the cats. I walked by Jesses bookshelf and a bright spine grabbed my eyes so I picked it up. I ended up sitting for the next few hours reading The Moustache and drinking Sleeman Light (not so great). The Moustache is a book of memories by Greg Curnoe's best friend George Bowering. Greg was an avid bicyclist, an (pop) artist and was the founding member of the Nihilst Spasm Band. George is a novelist and poet. When Greg was 56 he was biking in London ON and some asshole wasn't paying attention and smashed into him and the other people he was biking with. He was the only one that died. To remember Greg, George sat down every night and wrote down a memory he had of his good friend, then compiled them in to the book modeled after The Orchard by Harry Matthews. I really never want to lost someone I love enough to write a daily thought about, but when it does happen, it seems like it would help a lot.

(self portrait)

Examples of George, on Greg:

I remember one time that Greg and I drove over to Paris, Ont. I was fascinated by Paris, Ont. It was halfway to Hamilton, where David McFadden lived. I had introduced Greg to McFadden. Why not? Several other artists and writers were expressing interest in Paris, Ont. at the time. It had a neat railroad trestle, something like Lethbridge’s, but smaller. Eventually the poet Nelson Ball moved to Paris, Ont. I said whimsically that I would like to live there. It is a pretty little Ontario town. Greg wanted me to move there so we could have the Paris-London Correspondence.

I remember that Greg Curnoe in my imagination, when we werent around each other, was always about a centimetre shorter than I was, but when we were together it looked to me as though he was about a centimetre taller than I was.

I remember that Greg Curnoe liked the word rotten. That's a rotten painting, he would say. What a rotten movie. Greg Curnoe was a rotten correspondent. He always owed me a letter. He would telephone and say there, I dont owe you a letter, or he would telephone and say sorry, I guess I still owe you a letter. When he did write a letter it was a kind of jibe, a twelve-page letter in various pens and pencils on various hotel letter heads. He always did that fast painterly printing instead of a scrawly script. His letters looked something like the writing he liked to put on his paintings. He was a rotten correspondent, but he was a beautiful letter-writer.