Mary Margaret O’Hara has also been a favourite of mine for a very long time–I found out about her through Martin Tielli, who was influenced by her. They both appear in this clip from the CBC’s Black Widow: http://forcessweetheart.tumblr.com/post/112255705/mary-margaret-ohara-mattys-lullaby-via

Martin vocally “samples” her famous song “To Cry About” at the end of his “Midwinter Night’s Dream” to chilling effect, and there’s a great Tragically Hip/Rheostatics cover of the same song. I have other odds and ends of that nature lying around if you would like.

b) Un– your experience of sewing sounds like mine with knitting.

At Chez Zen we used to make “sushi salad” which was all the vegetarian ingredients layered roughly in a big wooden bowl—the shortgrain sticky rice sprinkled with vinegar/sugar, strips of tomago and nori and red pepper and cucumber and avocado, black sesame seeds on top, tamari on the side. All these are still white-person “sushi” but nonetheless mighty tasty if you’re not near the real thing.

I think there was a brief time when sewing had that pure-mindless-techne quality to it; and it mostly still does; but also sometimes it can become kind of hair-clenching. Usually when I am thinking about it (i.e., overthinking it) instead of actually doing it. When I actually do it, there’s like this major wave of relaxation that hits me and I’m all: ohhhhhh, yeah. This is actually something I like to do.

And frankly the same is true of writing.

my party sushi recipe it taking a glass 9 x 13 cooking platter and lining it with saran wrap then building the sushi backwards starting by lining the bottom with thinly sliced lemons, then smoked salmon, daps of wasabi then rice, more saran wrap, apply weight evenly over the surface to compress, invert the whole mess onto a countertop remove the saran wrap and slice it into rectangular sushi shaped bits…

cooking helps me to feel creative when painting does not, though it lacks the sort of mimetic effects of personality or thought or soul or some such thing, it is techne pure and simple, where art making is poesis, or something other or some such drivel anyhoo look I boggarted your blog… sorry mon ami! I guess I should go back to grading papers