Back from la belle province & feeling a bit disoriented & muggy. It was a long & weird weekend with much time spent in hospitals. It took me back to the bad old days of slowing mourning the loss of my grandpa in my adolescence. Listening to ‘adults’ talk about morphine, blood pressure, diets, tumors, chemo, etc. - It all came back to me with one whiff of industrial cleaner & one squeak of latex gloves. No matter how beautiful Montreal all is, & how gracious the family of the Beau, it is never easy to visit people in pain. The only thing worse than feeling helpless while you watch someone suffer is being the suffering party yourself. Enough upbeat typing.
We did take advantage of an amazing exhibit that showcased every single one of Brian Jungen’s masks at the Museum of Contemporary Art. As massive & epic as Jungen’s skeletal re-creations using plastic lawn chairs were - hovering over our heads in a beautifully (if not a bit cramped) display, I prefer the intricacies of his masks & the loaded imagery/messages therein. I couldn’t believe that they had each & every mask he had ever crafted in one room - it was mind-blowing.
Of course we enjoyed the Museum’s permanent collection of Quebec artists’ works - especially the well-curated (tho too brightly lit for Riopelle - his larger, shiner, oil works do look better in the National Gallery) 40-50-60’s cluster…The most pleasant surprise came with the video installation of exceptional music videos. The siren song of delicious & affordable Lebanese fast-food kept us from screening the entire series of videos (plus the fact that we I repeatedly watch the Director’s Label DVDs & had just bought ANOTHER music video anthology in Japan…which I could’ve gotten cheaper here), but we did catch the most recent Rokysopp (What Else Is There) & Malajube (Montreal -40c) clips 
& the earliest vids in the rotation (Queen, Art of Noise, etc). I hadn’t seen Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit’ in years and was still impressed with the freaky faux-futurism & Burtonesque gadgetry.
Anywhoo, the geist of the post is that it was a bittersweet weekend. Such is life - enjoy art, revel in music, take comfort in family & friends, but it does a body good to remember that all we really have is our health. Hope this wasn’t too Yoko Ono for you.
I should start to catch up on abandoned pre-weekend projects, laundry, groceries, cleaning, gym-visits, etc….but I’ll probably troll around YouTube for a couple of hours ‘making up for’ the missed videos left unwatched at La Musee….
A la prochaine,
Meegs
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