Greetings From Entre Ville

Entre Ville is a web art project based on a heat wave poem.

It was commissioned by OBORO, a Gallery and New Media Lab in Montréal. The commission was made possible by the Conseil des arts de Montréal. In 2006, on the occasion of their 50th anniversary, the Conseil solicited commissions of new works in each of the artistic disciplines that it funds. Tasked with selecting the New Media commission, Daniel Dion – Director and Co-Founder of OBORO – felt that a web-based work had the most potential to be accessible to a wide range of Montréaliase for the duration of the anniversary year and beyond. The commission included a four-week residency at the OBORO New Media Lab.

OBORO Studio 3

Entre Ville launched at the Muse des beaux-arts de Montréal on April 27, 2006.

Un 50e anniversaire – En ville et sur l’île
Pierre Vallée – Le Devoir – Édition du samedi 29 et du dimanche 30 avril 2006

On April 27, 2007, exactly one year after its launch, I will present Entre Ville: this city between us at MiT5: creativity, ownership and collaboration in the digital age, the fifth conference in MIT’s Media in Transition Conference series. MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. April 27-29, 2007.

This conference paper was a joy to write, a testament to what a pleasure it’s been to represent OBORO and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. I’ve posted a slimmed down presentation version on Entre Ville [click on the Bibliotheque Mile End] or follow this link: Entre Ville: this city between us

Entre Ville

Summer is coming. Step into the heat.
. . . . .

Easter Bunny of the Apocalypse

Sun blows snow through a hole in slate grey sky.
The highway glows, a wet, white-light tunnel.
We speed toward the apocalypse –
Alexis riding shotgun, me at the wheel.

So, there’s snow during the apocalypse…
Um, I hate to break it to you, but that’s ash,
From all the bodies. Burning in Hell.
Oh. What do I know?

The answers to two of the Four Questions:
On this night we eat only unleavened bread,
and bitter herbs remind us of our slavery.
But about Easter? I know very little.

On Good Friday a Jewish friend takes me to
a dance show called The Screaming Popes.
We drive the costume designer around town,
pestering her with Christianity questions:

So what happens on Good Friday?
Jesus gets crucified.
Why do they call it Good then?
Shouldn’t it be Bad Friday, Sad Friday?

Total Bummer, That Really Sucks Friday.
What Are We Going To Do Now Friday.
Are the stores open on Friday?
And if so, what time do they close?

Saturday night at The Communist’s Daughter
a jazzy trio plays in the window.
The bartender is also the singer
and all four tables are full.

So why is this night different from all other nights?
After the last trumpet solo the place empties out.
Surely Easter and its opiates have no sway
over Communist’s Daughter patrons?

It’s the biggest game of the year,
I explain to an American friend, who’s also a writer.
He lives in Toronto now, but can’t root for the Leafs.
Not least of all for grammatical reasons.

Despite much beer drinking and yelling
Easter Monday brings no resurrection
for either the Habs or the Leaves.
Hockey fans hang their heads.

And where does the Easter Bunny fit into all this?
Surely, when giant bunnies lay chocolate eggs
and then hide them from children
the end times are near.


. . . . .

poisson d’avril

March came in lamb-coloured at least, on curly white snow feet.

And went out like a liar, savannah bright sun looking lion roaring heat.

Tripping cold feet, tricking me into scarf and sweater instead of jacket leather.

April’s first folly finds me in bed with a hot head cold.

Mais, en français, avril premiers with a fish not a fool.

I guess the poisson’s on me.
. . . . .

Accordion Times

Saturday night we set out. Even though we were tired and some of us were cranky and we didn’t really know what to expect. Up a down-way street. Heads lowered, we leaned into the nickel and dime sized March wet snow. Down under the CN overpass, a right onto Bellechasse, and then east, east, east.

The best place for a Nova Scotia kitchen party in Montreal is the Petit Patrie. A dog, a trumpet and a piano. Two fiddles, a mandolin and a drum. Three accordions. Four small children. As far as I could tell… they were all moving so quickly.

I’m a big fan of dogs, fiddles and accordions. Less so of small children. But these were free-range kids, with little or no interest in adults and their goings on. They had their own party plans. They climbed the couch mountain. Waved their painted paper batons. Spun like tops, crouched like dogs, played dead on the floor. For twenty seconds or more. Then sprang up quite alive again to hunt down two-part piano harmonies and/or wheat-free cookies.

We random grown-ups were left to our own devices. We sat on the floor. Drank French wine from Beartrix Potter mugs. Read a How To Train Your Dog book. It’s too late, S. said. Our dog’s nine. Tunes unfolded. Keys were negotiated. Fifths were found.

Two smallish girls, aged five or six or so, discovered the hostess’s necklace collection hanging from a pegboard. I was enlisted. Because I was sitting right there. But soon turned double agent. For the hostess, supervising. For the girls, reaching, untangling and admiring. It’s hard to say what language we were speaking. French, English, Polish, Hand Gestures. A translator was brought in to invite me run up and down the hall with them. Someone, somebody’s mother perhaps, explained: She’s a big person, she might not want too. So they brought me the last wheat-free cookie instead. And later one of them hid behind me in a game of hide-and-seek. Surely, in little girl land, this is a huge complement. A great honour.


. . . . .

what’s that smell?

Spring is in the air:
A dubious proclamation to make mid-March in Montreal.
One must interpret the signs creatively.

I lost my winter gloves.
That may mean another cold snap’s on the way.
And I lost my travel umbrella
So maybe there’s a voyage in my near future.
The jury’s still out on that one…
Fall grant results are in and spring deadlines loom.
Daylight savings time came into effect early this year.
But I keep sleeping though that extra hour.
Tax time is also in effect; my office floor is a sea of receipts.
The federal budget came down stinking of electioneering.
The provincial election campaign stinks of provincialism.
Is this a three-way race or a three-legged race?
Canvassers ring our door-to-door bell in record numbers.
Mild weather helping to get the vote out.

The annual Saint Patrick’s Day snow has all but melted.
There’s not much green, no buds, no leaves, no sun, no flowers.
But at long last an English bookstore has sprouted up in Mile End.
Perhaps that’s not a sign of spring, but surely it’s a sign of something.
Welcome S. W. Welch. By the time the fresh paint smell fades
the neighbourhood will be in full bloom.
. . . . .

home… makes sense.

I wrote in a short story once about a character who: The more he travels the more home makes no sense to him. That was fiction. I’ve been away a lot lately. I’m back now. And home is making good sense to me. Here, I can cook whatever I want for dinner. And I have so many more clothes and coats and shoes to choose from than I do on the road. This makes the weather so much easier to deal with. In my hometown, I run into people I know and we chat right there on the street – what a good system. Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the dépanneur. Home is where other people know what a dépanneur is. It was mild out, for Montréal in March, so I walked down to The Word. Home is The Word. In Montréal I walk everywhere, because I can. Makes sense. Walking the dog, I ran into another old friend on Fairmount Street. Home is walking the dog. I’m so happy to be back in town I don’t even mind that spring is taking so long. No buds on the trees yet. But the traffic lights are almost ripe. Excessive nonsensical signage always reminds me of Montréal, so somehow even this sight made sense to me yesterday:

Perhaps because, as Montreal poet Anne Carson writes in The Life of Towns: “Towns are the illusion that things hang together somehow…”

She goes on to say: “There are regular towns and irregular towns, there are wounded towns and sober towns and fiercely remembered towns, there are useless but passionate towns that battle on, there are towns where the snow slides from the roofs of the houses with such force that victims are killed, but there are no empty towns (just empty scholars) and there is no regret. Now move along.”

Montreal may be all or none of these towns, I don’t know. I’m just happy to be here.
. . . . .

in memoriam

In 1986 MC Shan released a song about the housing project where he lived (Queensbridge) entitled The Bridge, which became a tremendous hit:

Ladies and Gentleman
We got MC Shan and Marley Marl in the house tonight
They just came from off tour and they wanna tell you a little story about where they come from
The Bridge(scratched) (3X)
Queensbridge

Up the street in Queensview I was busy turning fourteen. America was pushing two hundred and ten. Carvel ice cream birthday cake melting on the countertop, we watched 4th of July fireworks from my grandparent’s 10th floor bedroom window. Grucci specials exploded over the twin towers. Firecrackers, gunshots, and sirens sounded up close and personal in the Queens streets below. And something else. Something else had to be going on somewhere. Graffiti tagging, all night ghetto blasting, and maybe some b-ball trash talking in the D.S. Park.

Hip-hop was set out in the dark
They used to do it out in the park

I couldn’t sleep, those stifling Long Island City summers. My grandmother insisted: Insomniacs sleep more than they think they do. I’m telling you, I was up all night pacing the apartment. Well then you would have run into your grandfather and I; we can’t sleep either. Can’t argue with that logic. MC Shan was right:

if you wasn’t from this town
then you couldn’t fight and win

Sleep tight G.F.


Queensview March 9, 2003


Queensbridge March 6, 2007
. . . . .

5.5 Days in New York

A Novel in Point-Form With No Names

Despite many blizzard-related delays, I arrive in New York more or less on time for dinner. My Poor Host listens patiently to the long version of the Greyhound Prisoner Release Programme (see previous post). I tell him the story three times. Trying to nail down the dialogue, I explain. Then I sleep, a turning point in the plot, after all those sleepless weeks at Yaddo.

I spend the morning writing out my Escape From Yaddo adventure. In the afternoon I have coffee with a French Painter friend from Yaddo at the apartment of a Turkish Fibre Artist friend from Ucross. They know each other from before. Setting (important for a later scene): a sunny tenement turned charming studio on Spring Street at Bowery.

At 5PM I meet a Russian Novelist friend at Penguin. He introduces me to his coworkers as his cousin. There’s an office party going on. Though we behave like cousins – interrupting and making fun of each other whilst stealing copious amounts of books and wine and cheese – no one believes we are actually cousins. Perhaps we have too much fun to be family. We head to Astoria for dinner.

Two Jews walk into a Czech Bar during Pork Festival Week. Our vegetarian waitress fights the kitchen staff and wins a plain dumpling for us. It’s hard for us during Pork Fest Week, she says. The Russian Novelist says: I did a smart thing – I didn’t fall in love with you. Yes, very clever of you, I agree. Because now we’re good friends. We buy some Bavarian Pilsner and head to his sub-basement apartment where we spend the rest of the evening reading comics. The Russian Novelist also draws, he reminds me, and is a big fan of Thurber. And a gentleman. He sleeps on the couch and I get the bed.

Breakfast is ready, the Russian Novelist says. Turkish coffee in Moldavian glasses. There’ll be a war! I say. But breakfast proceeds peaceably.

We’re late to meet our Croatian Novelist friend for coffee the East Village, his own fault for changing our date to a time too early for us. The Croatian Novelist, having been cast in the father role, offers up this sage advice: You should sell some good books and then come and teach in Saint Petersburg. Oh, such good advice. Thank you, thank you, really, we had not known but yes, now that you mention it, what a good idea, that’s just what we’ll do. He’s good-natured, our Croatian Novelist friend. So we tease him.

A Russian Novelist, a Croatian Novelist and a very short story writer walk into Odessa. The Pirogues are prefabricated. The ceiling is red. The banquette pleather rent. We reminisce about how we met two years ago in Montreal. We drank free beer together in the hospitality suite at a literary conference in a hotel. And look at us now, I say.

The Croatian Novelist heads off into the day. The Russian Novelist and I go used book shopping. He’s still carrying the books he gave me yesterday. They’re heavy but he doesn’t complain. He is a good boy, the Russian Novelist. We buy more books.

New York is so big. The Russian Novelist lives in Astoria. He’s meeting someone in Manhattan at 6:30 and doesn’t have time to go home in between. So our date goes on about four hours too long. Maybe a good editor will know what to do about this.

There’s a hole in the plot here, where I take a nap.

Late that night I have dinner in Chinatown with an old friend from Art School in Montreal, his wife and some friends of theirs. Art School Friend and his wife are late because their babysitter was late. Their friends are late because Pell Street is very hard to find, especially if you’re not from New York. Better late than never. We are all happy to see each other and we have a wonderful meal. The occasion: it’s Art School Friend’s wife’s birthday. It’s also Chinese New Year. Happy Birthday and Happy Year of the Pig.

Sunday I meet a Biographer for brunch in the West Village. She’s not my biographer! We’re just friends. We have an abstract and expressionistic conversation. I tell the Biographer how to set up a blog. She tells me how to buy a house in the country. I tell her Yaddo stories. She says: You seem exhilarated and sleepless at the same time, a neat trick.

I’ve accumulated so many books I have to buy a new bag. I shop in between appointments.

At 5PM I meet my Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend from Ucross for an early dinner in the East Village. Is this too geriatric an hour to be eating, she asks? She brings me a book. I bring her a photo album. We pore over pictures of Wyoming and tell each other stories non-stop until it’s time to meet her boyfriend for drinks. An audience! We repeat our stories for him. And laugh so hard we cry. We can’t help it. We’re Short Fiction Writer Friends; even we know short stories are better the second time around.

Bag shopping isn’t going very well so Monday I combine it with shoe shopping. I don’t find a bag, but I do find a pair of shoes. I meet Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend at the Strand. I buy more books. We go for a drink. We cannot understand why we don’t live in the same city. We go to Trader Joe’s. We cannot understand why the line-up circles the store. Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend says it will move quickly. I almost but don’t quite lose my mind. Somehow we endure this ordeal.

Free at last we hike our wine, bread, blueberries and cheese down to Spring and Bowery for a Ucross reunion at afore mentioned sunny tenement turned charming studio. Only it’s not sunny now because it’s night. More specifically, it’s Ucross Reunion Night! We are: our host the Turkish Fibre Artist, Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend (who is actually working on a novel now), Canadian Novelist (who has been living in NYC for nine years), Very Tall Composer (originally from Milwaukee?) and me. We agree: we all look the same. We dine on lentil soup, blood orange salad, wine and cheese, and delicious conversation.

And then suddenly time’s almost up. I run around Tuesday, buy a bag, and pack it. Then out again in the evening for a brief visit with another Painter Friend from Yaddo. We meet at the Frick. I don’t recognize her at first, not in her painting clothes. She has free passes. The collection is so familiar to both of us that we talk our way through it, pausing for our very favourites, until there we are out on the street saying: so good to see you again, saying goodbye. On the way home I buy another book.

Somehow I manage to pack thirty or so new books into what bags I have. More the miracle, in the morning I manage to drag them dead weight the eight blocks up to Port Authority. And I have a mercifully uneventful bus ride home.

I’m home now. And my bookshelves are at capacity.
. . . . .

life on the outside

No trains were running yesterday, but Greyhound said I could get on the 2:40 bus bound for New York City. The Saratoga bus depot is a one-room skank hole. A three-foot high-gloss ceramic statue of a seated greyhound graces one window, a frightening fake tree the other. Man. And you can imagine the cast of characters in there. The key players: An older backwoods looking guy in a tan work jacket. A younger shaved bald kinda lost looking guy, also in a tan work jacket. A large woman in a red jacket, turquoise toque and purple pants. A father and young son duo on their way to Tampa, boor bastards. Two kids waiting out in the car with their mom. And me, fresh out of Yaddo not quite ready for life on the outside.

At 2:40 we learn that the bus will be an hour late. At 3:40, 40 more minutes. We pace around like animals until finally Albany sends up a bus to get The Saratoga Seven, as I now like to think of us. Once on the emergency bus the lost looking tan work coat guy asks me if Port Authority is walking distance to Penn Station. He’s clutching a small sack of books, no other luggage, and I’m thinking: What, did this guy just get out of prison? But I’m thinking it in a fiction writer way, like that would be a good way to describe what this guy looks like. Like he is unused to this world, sent out in brand new ill-fitting clothing and now having a hard time getting to where he wants to go. He wants to go to Long Island. My cousin lives next door to Penn Station. I don’t tell him this, but I do say: You find me at Port Authority; I’ll walk you down to Penn.

So we get to Albany and they’ve got a bus waiting for us, full but for seven seats. We, the Saratoga Seven, board. I’m walking up the isle looking for an empty seat and I’m seeing a lot of big black and brown bald men all wearing new clothes and all holding the same black folder and I’m thinking first America’s draconian drug laws fill up the prisons, and now the Greyhounds. I find a seat in the rear with a skinny girl. Praise the Lord for a skinny girl next to an empty seat. I say: These guys were just released. She says: If they were released they must be fine. She just got into Columbia Law, and that’s her assessment. Christ. I say: Well, they must be in a good mood.

Indeed, it was a very cheerful bus ride. Somewhere in NJ there was smoke break. I saw my boy Saratoga get up to go out with the others. He blended in so well. Of course he just got out of prison. For once my literary imagination was right on the money. But fashion-wise, it was safe to say; he’d been in some other pen. The white boy pen.

We get into Port Authority at 8PM. I find my suitcase and there’s Saratoga waiting for me. Walk down to Penn Station. It’s good to walk, we agreed. Out on the street. Free at last, as it were. He said: Everything’s moving so fast. He’d been sent up for fifteen months on drug charges. Got out yesterday. Out into the post-snowstorm apocalypse. Spent six hours at the Saratoga Springs Greyhound station. Finally got on a homebound bus and finds it full of guys from the inside. I said: They make you? Oh yeah, he said. They give you clothes when you get out, but they don’t fit. Anyone wearing this jacket, he said. I said: I know a lotta guys wear outfits like that, trying to look like they just got out. He said: Longest fifteen months of my life. I bet. Kinda puts my six weeks of insomnia at Yaddo and my one-day snow delay into perspective. So, do you feel reformed? I asked him. Well I’m never doing that again, he said. Meaning drugs I guess. At 8th and 33rd I pointed out Penn Station and sent him on his way.

There are so many morals to this story I don’t know where to begin. Don’t do drugs. Things could be worse. Better late than never. Always talk to strangers. Well, only if you’re a fiction writer. If you can make it TO New York you can make it anywhere. What a way to leave Yaddo. It’s hard, making a new life on the outside. Stay strong kids. Stay in school.
. . . . .

Leaving Blues

Last night was supposed to be my last night at Yaddo. I arrived at my last supper only to discover what the whole rest of the table already knew: big storm headed Saratoga way. How big? Two feet of snow, someone said. I heard anywhere between two and four feet, someone else. Fourteen feet? someone just looking for trouble.

Some guests, once they get here, they never want to leave. Maybe they’re just saying that. Me, after six weeks anywhere I’m good and ready to go. On to the next thing. On to New York City, in this case. I had lunch date I didn’t want to miss. I had plans. But clearly, given the forecast, the next noon Greyhound was not going to happen. The table discussed the options: You could cross-country ski to New York. Or ski-do. Or dog sled! Just stay. They won’t throw you out on the street. Good to know.

I said: Note how I’m valiantly trying to stay calm here.
The table: Did you say Valium-ly?
I wish.

After dinner a painter played barrelhouse piano in West House for a while, which cheered me right up. Then I went back to Pine Garde to pack my leaving trunk. Just in case. Because:

The blues are mushed up into three different ways
One said go the other two said stay
I woke up this mornin with the blues three different ways
You know one say go “baby I want to hang up”, the other two said stay.
Taj Mahal, Leaving Trunk

Anybody that woke up on the American eastern seaboard this morning knows how this story ends. With the whiteout blues. A full on blizzard. But I went to breakfast anyway, because I said I would. To check in with my friend the table.

I’d never been to breakfast at Yaddo before. It turns out that a) you don’t have to get there right at eight, as I had previously thought, and b) they’ll make eggs for you – any kind you want. I had no idea! I love eggs. Each new person who came in for breakfast, I said: Did you know there’re eggs for breakfast here? Everyone knew. I ran into Dan the Snowplough Man in the hallway. He said: I guess you’ll be here another day. I went down to the office. They said: We’ll tell housekeeping, we’ll tell the kitchen.

So here I am. Watching it come down. The leaving blues aren’t so bad.
. . . . .