First Real Live Radio Hosting: Mon Dec 28th

Hi thanks to Courtney and Dave and the absence of the real Dykes on Mics I had the opportunity to hots my first live radio broadcast on CKUT. Our songlist is below. We did a queer year in review with a couple of highlights from each of us and a couple of shout-outs to Pervescité, Radical Queer Semain, Axon D'Luxe and Rae Spoon. Check out the drop-down list under Dykes on Mykes for Monday, Dec. 28th-- it starts about 6 minutes in.

As I recall, we started the year on a wave of optimism from the defeat of the Bush régime south of the border and the beginning of what I like to call the Obamarama, right? He was going to stop all the wars, signal the beginning of the end of endemic racism, democratize healthcare and defend human rights for women and gays. He didn’t get it all done, but I do have to hand it to him, on a theme that has recurred several times in the media this year, Mr. Obama delivered a coup against HIV discrimination when in October he repealed the 22 year-old U.S. travel entry ban for HIV positive people. It was one of those funny executive order things where the U.S. president just signs and it’s gone. As of January 2010, for the first time since the AIDS crisis, it is no longer illegal for foreign HIV positive people to step foot on American soil. Countries that still have the ban in effect include long-time human rights favorites China and Saudi Arabia.
Oh yeah and they passed that health insurance bill in Congress on Christmas Eve, but that’s for a whole other show!

There was a new kid on the block in the queer calendar this year, one that gave me a new chosen family and somewhere to be on Sunday nights for 3 months, and that was Radical Queer Semaine! A week of actions, workshops, demos, performances and music that made a little beating heart of anti-capitalist underground queerness beat a little faster last year. Everyone’s major highlights were the openning address by Michael Hendricks on his ACT-UP Montreal years and lifetime of activism, an impromptu workshop by BDSM sexpert Anrea Zanin, a marathon performance art night, a legendary party that transformed the social economy loft building we had rented for the week, and a wonderful Folk as Queers night that brought Rae Spoon and Sarah Mangle to us and showed us the best of St-Henri improv with the Inapprpriate Hymns and Hers.
Our friends from the newly formed group PolitiQ have made it their mission to keep RQS alive again this year. If you’re interested in getting involved this year, leaving your mark or having a mark left on you, contact them at radical.queer.semaine@gmail.com and on Facebook through the PolitiQ group page.

"Homo Christmas" Pansy Division from *The Essential Pansy Division*
"Do I Belong?" Hidden Cameras from *Origin, Orphan*
"Butterflies" Nicki Click from *I'm on my Cellphone*
"Gay Bomb" Axon D'Luxe from *Axon D'Luxe*
"Hot Lips" Pacific! from *Reveries*
"Chica de Metal" Kumbia Queers *Kumbia Nena*
"Come on Forest Fire Burn the Disco Down"
*Superioryouareinferior* l
"Breakdance Hunx" Kids On TV from *Mixing Business With Pleasure*

interesting

A very powerful statement of the level of anti-government and anti-fascist activism in Greece. What is the midpoint, one wonders, between the complacent/complicit bourgeois obedience to S. Harper's régime of ignorance and backward-thinking conservatism which we live with in Canada, and these anarchist acts of violence?
Is it time for mass civil disobedience? Must investigate history of CD in Canada and get back to you.
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/11/23/mass-civil-disobedience-in-australia-and-canada/

Woot.
J

Where are the new "walkers"?

There should be "walkers" to take people to get boring administrative things done: smiling discreet gay boys with bus tickets, magazines, and bureaucratic savoir-faire. N'est-ce pas? I will be their Jordanager

some things for fall

So, this time in keeping with the blog as public diary, we note a few of my upcoming performance dates:

Nov. 28th-29th: www.vihsion.com : a festival and conference of films by and about HIV + film and video. I will made some openning remarks, and host a theatre of the oppressed workshop on the 29th.
Dec. 19th: The Takes One to Know One Salon, an afternoon perfart atelier with 3 other artists, workshop première of *Jordan/Émilienne*, interactive video performance at Interstice, 242 Young St, Mtl.
Dec. 31st, 2009- Jan. 1st, 2010: SWEDING *Key Largo*, a live action no-budget dramatic read-through of the 1948 John Huston b&w film classic with inverted gender roles and little to no rehearsal.

Please feel free to contact me with your comments and questions!
xo, J

Sleeping Crash-tual

The (getting to) sleep phenomenon.
This past month. I went through a phase of contact-lenses-in post-porn-machine laundry-nest crashing after I quit my recent NGO job. Last night (glasses on, thank Dog), I decided to sleep on the couch. It makes me feel like "Busy Daddy".
I guess the WAY we "fall asleep" has a lot to do with how we want to imagine ourselves in waking, we ask ourselves, however briefly and subconsciously, "How do I want to awaken?"-- sometimes I feel it's important to wake up naked, other times (like last night), I needed to feel like Busy Daddy and wake up fully clothed and ready to smoke-drink-coffee and make a list of things I was looking forward to and not looking forward to in the day.
One thing that my dear friend and ex-boss found was really helpful and important in her sleeping ritual (NEVER in a totalizing way, but rather as a tool, as a technique, as a MODE of sleep-preparation), was to get into her bed-ware (flanel nightgown probably) and get into bed and WRITE IN A JOURNAL. Rather than ending your day/evening by EXPOSING yourself to more information and images, why not take the time to let out some of your feelings and thoughts onto a page, in ink, (I know you are a calligrapher, Sensei). The cursive is an imitation of the winding roads of the mind itself, the page will be there, adorned by your words and doodles when you awaken, eyeballs unfettered by contacts (if you decided to remove them), body clad (or not) with materials (or lack thereof) of your choosing.
The fact that your crash-tual (crash ritual) has become a moment worthy of reconsideration is also significant. It represents self-care in the liminal state between waking and dreaming: it is the closest we get to freedom and slavery as resolved dualities within us. It is involuntary self-care.
Bisou,
J

Reconciliation Circle / Restorative Justice

1 - Reconciliation circle will focus on main and most objective harms that have occurred.
2 - Overarching moral/ethical concerns AND interpersonal issues need not take precedence or be discussed
3 - The issue of violence will have to be addressed either in a different context of point #1
4 - In the circle, for the dialogue and justice-seeking to occur, we need at least 2 pillars (i.e. "elders" in the Native/First Nations and Quaker sense) to be present to witness the circle.
5 - All must agree that dialogue and justice are desired by all for the health of the community. Uh-huh. Yep. ALL.
6 - Each party should bring a facilitator/friend, who, without being impartial, is at least not emotionally involved, i.e. has not been harmed or accused of whatever bad thing did or didn't occur. The facilitator is there to help the parties TALK, they are also there because they understand the process and also have a vested interest in the health of the community.
7 - In some models, you have a moderator or moderating tribunal (3 moderators) to help the whole thing happen. In the absence of this element, the presence of pillars and facilitators is supposed to be enough to allow for equal and open dialogue in the interests of justice, forward-looking intentions, transparency, and communal reconciliation.
8 - The Circle is not punitive. End results can be action items, but not necessarily. Broken trust and hurt feelings can be discussed, but the purpose is truly for there to be a communal recognition of what has occurred and genuine desire to move on to be voiced and felt. This will not always occur, but it is at least :
i) Harm reductive
ii) Non-conflictual
iii) Non-punitive
iv) Dialogue-based
v) Egalitarian

Which is more than you can say for many processes.
One key word I forgot to mention was Restorative Justice, that is the praxis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice

Check it out!

Takes One to Know One Salon Nov. 21st 1-4pm

Hi peeps,
It's Jordan with some organizational brio calling.
Saturday, Nov 21st, my buddy Borden has offered his windowless loft near Clark and J-T for our Takes One to Know One Salon, an afternoon atelier of new DIY video and perf.
Here is the game plan:

Get back to me by Nov. 2nd if you are interested!
We will be having a "craft night" meet and greet at my house 4863 Jeanne-Mance, on Nov 7th to make the flier and plan the Facefucking/tech needs.
There will be a door charge but it will mainly serve to pay for people's cabs and/or tech needs. Borden is not greedy about the daytime loft usage.

My idea for this salon is to première new works that we have not had the space or wherewithal to show yet, to show something to a small and appreciative audience that we may want to workshop or dialogue about in the future, to give an opportunity to break the interactive video ice. I will be showing a new, non-cabaret, non-comedic, work called jordan/émilienne about family trauma: yay! It does not matter how short or long or rehearsed or not your piece is: *Takes One to Know One* is about vanquishing panic and paranoia and moving on healing action/performance/memory-making. The only theme is "interactive video". I would invite you to forward this, but I have chosen you special few because I feel you know what I am talking about, and we only have the long from 12-4:45 in total, so we have a max of 2hours for the perf'in.

Please let me know if you are interested. I will post this info on thedutymyth.blogspot.com where I will also post all the updates on this proposal. I want this salon to be as inclusive and boundary-breaking as possible for everyone involved, and I hope you are stoked.
xo,

Remember this? Thanks to Amber to Nightwood for featuring me in my pre-blog epoch

http://nightwoodband.com/2009/05/07/dressed-in-black-jordan-arsenault

New semiannual manifesto.

OK Fuck it. The Harper Government is coming down. I'm starting a new chapter of ACT-UP, and I accept my flaws as part of life's unbearable magic. See you in the Spring, with a new minority in parliament, less serophobia, and another manifesto. Bye.

Yes blogging beats Facefuck

Facefuck is definitely an inferior web tool. My "status update" from earlier today somehow didn't save. This has made me feel like I lost part of my subjective narrative, that my own understanding of time and the world is somehow destabilized. Where did it go? Was it witty or cryptic? Did it capture a merely experiential moment or something more like a realization? Who was I then?
You can never, as someone said, put your hand in the same Jordan twice. Ahem. Back to watching Last Chance Harvey and wondering what I lost, and what to snack on so that I will forget about, you know...

Just in anticipation of the Facefuck invite and flier, here is the
line-up and basic info for τριάντα εγκράτεια:

A c t s :
3 : 3 0 M a p l e F a l l s (Mtl)
4 : 3 0 Z s o f i a Z a m b o (Mtl)
5 : 1 5 : C a y l i e S t a p l e s (TO)
6 : 0 0 N i k k i M a c M i l l a n (Outremont)
6 : 4 5 G a m b l e t r o n (Mile End)

7 : 3 0 : S p e c i a l G u e sts

8 : 1 5 A ï d e n C ö k e n b a l z (Bare-lean, DE)

P r o j e c t i o n s :
9 p m : * D e u x d e u x * b y A r a B a l l
9 : 1 0 * n o t h i n g e v e r h a p p e n e d * by J e s s M a c
9 : 2 0 : S c r e e n i n g o f * T h e G a r d e n o f t
h e F i n z i - C o n t i n i s* by V i t t o r i o d e S i c a .

O t h e r i n f o :
Sat.17.Oct.2009
C l e a ' s 3 0 t h ! J o r d a n ' s 1 s t !
4 8 6 3 J e a n n e - M a n c e (+ St-Joseph Ouest)
3 p m - 1 1 p m
I n v i t e o n l y , i n a g o o d w a y . $ 4 c o v e
r w i t h a m o j i t o .
k i t t y k n o w s b e s t @ g m a i l . c o m

You can of course start inviting people, but anyone you want to invite
should also be sent fliers or facefuck invites so we know they are
real friends/fun-lovers and not interlopers! (By that I mean,
un-vouched for interlopers). Hot, respectful, vouched-for and friendly
interlopers will be welcome the day of, for sure :-)

J

Hunting and Fishing

ARRRRRGGGGGGG
That feels better. J

hola / âllo / hello

Caros lectores: bienvenido a mi nuevo blog.
Chers lecteurs: merci de consulter mon nouveau blogue.
Dear readers: welcome to my new blog.

Most of my posts will be in Canadian English, sin embargo, les invito a hacer notas en castellano; veuillez me laisser des notes en langue française si vous voulez.

Things I have loved this month:
- Traniwreck with Aliza Shapiro www.truthserum.org at the Middle East on Sept. 23rd.
- Meeting Camryn from Big Moves (finally!)
- the lady of colour at the *Start Laundry* in Mission Hill, Boston, who told me to "Stay out of trouble"
- Dontà Cheyenne Simmons
- Watching the last 45 minutes of John Hustonès Key Largo on a balmy night in Cape Cod.
- Legal Sea Foods;
- Zobriety;
- Frère Geoffrey at www.ssje.org
- Jess Mac, Stikki MacMillan, Heather Influenza, C.T. Horné and Jessums Barr.
- Jerusalem in My Heart.

Things I have raged against this month:
- Keeping in touch with toxic friends from your past;
- Middle-aged German émigré interlopers putting up Obama posters with Sharpied-on HITLER 'staches (Bonaventure métro, Montréal, 3 Oct. 2009, 11am)
- Passive aggression;
- War, patriarchy, hate, and its discontents.
- Narcissism without self-awareness;
- Bad self-esteem gay bitchiness.

Please post photos and videos of me at your leisure. This is an open-dialogue blog, but the rules of good argument will be imposed: good intentions, non-violence, hate-free and socially inclusive. Gracias / Merci /Thank you!