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Hump Day Poetic Tangent

by Scott H. Payne

A little over two weeks ago I attended a relatively small art festival here in Calgary called the Calgary Blow-Out Festival where I had the privilege of experiencing the work of a whole host of talented artists. I was messing around on YouTube and discovered a series of videos from the Festival, so I thought I’d share.

The piece below by Eric Moschopedis and Samuel Garrigó Meza was my favourite of the two nights I attended (unfortunately Part 2 runs out of tape):

The Festival occurred the weekend after my wedding and at the end of the week of my move (which followed two days after the wedding) and was situated at the tail end of approximately three very hectic months, so I decided to take the “Blow-Out” portion of the name to heart and drank a goodly amount of beer purchased as the make-shift bar as my additional sign of support. This, in turn, lead to what may have been my most prominent sincerity-fail yet, as Eric (on the left) and Samuel (on the right) took questions after finsihing their piece.

After some prompting, audience members threw a couple of, “Where do you live?” and “Is it nice?” questions out. After about the fourth question, I blurted out in a very non-sober manner,

“How do you maintain a sense of sincerity with so many opportunities for irony?”

Yeah, it went as poorly as one might imagine.

Some time aftwerwards, though, Eric approached me and we chatted. In this instance, the roles had reversed and I was the on under the sincerity spotlight. I wouldn’t call my more intimate performance an “epic fail”, but I was, at that point, even more drunk and still burning with resentment from what I took to be the past transgression.

We talked about a couple of things, one of which was the decent turnout for the Festival given that it was the first day of Stampede. I said that I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be, other than maybe home. Eric suggested that I could be out there and I agreed that despite the mayhem the streets made for good people watching during the annual event. “Or you could participate,” Eric offered.

I hear that response in my mind almost daily now.