I feel like I’m overdue for my bi-annual gratitude rant. So here it is. I spend a good portion of my time thinking “why do I do what I do?” It’s not lucrative. It’s labour intensive. It’s repetitive in some ways (though not as much as some other ways of earning a living, admittedly.) And then sometimes, I get an epiphany about how important and special it is to work towards providing space. Just that. Giving space, holding space. Whatever…
So TONIGHT is the NIGHT!! Lisa So and I will be grabbing a piece of cardboard and a sleeping bag and #SleepingOut in support of Covenant House Vancouver. Why am I doing this? There are many reasons. I have experienced first hand the hopelessness and helplessness that is trying to support a loved one with mental health and addictions issues. There are so many brick walls and obstacles. It’s so hard to know how to help. I spend a majority of my time in…
Must be a full moon, the neighbourhood is lively tonight. On my walk back to the studio, there were two guys bent over a man on the sidewalk, checking his pulse. “He’s fine, just drunk” one of them told me. I decided to call it in anyway. He was bleeding. Notably, he was missing his index finger, long since healed. When the ambulance arrived, they managed to get him upright. At which point he proclaimed “You’re an asshole!” to the…
Snow is both annoying and awesome. It’s the same with all local universal changes in weather, and other things. It really intensifies the social fabric. Yesterday I was in a major hurry (me? no.) and was having trouble getting out of a parking spot and a guy jumped out of his car and offered a push. Today a car rolled through an intersection and would have smoked me, except it was kind of in slow motion so I had plenty…
I’m struggling right now, with an ethical, conceptual dilemma. A few weeks ago, I had an idea for a photo exhibition. I wanted to showcase community, as it occurs, within the walls of my studio, but also within the boundaries of my neighbourhood, my community. I learned that there was a photographer that lives a couple of doors down, who has been documenting the space outside of his window for the last couple of years. I went to see his…
So this thing I wrote got published! Here it is: ON VANCOUVER’S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE COMMUNITY Denise Brennan owns and runs Creative Coworkers, the coworking studio where Misfit Press plies its trade. We invited her to be the first guest contributor to our blog and to share her stories about the studio’s neighbourhood – Vancouver’s complex Downtown Eastside. In this post, she tells us how her experience of living here affects how she thinks about things like community, security, and humanity. Last…
This is a post about why I do what I do with my life right now. It’s about me, and my experience. But mostly it’s about you and me. Many of you have been around for the last year of ups and downs. It has been a roller coaster – a fantastic, terrifying, soul searching cluster fuck of near failure and near success. Of doubt and of confidence. Of making choices, some great, some not so great. It has been…
I’m Home. I’m Home because my mom is beginning to die. I’m home for 12 days and two are over and all we did is eat and sleep, and smoke and talk. And 2 out of 12 days are gone already. And maybe that’s all that’s left. My mom already died once, or maybe more times than that. Taken by peculiarity and random, inexplicable choices; that left me, and us all, reeling in chaos; questioning our own grasp on reality…