Those of you with long memories may remember Charlie Farquharson, the alter ego of legendary Canadian actor and writer Don Harron. So popular a fictional creation was he in his time, “Farquharson” would often appear as himself on talk shows.
He also wrote books. Amongst my favourites is his translation of the Bible, Olde Charlie Farquharson’s Testament: From Jennysez to Jobe and After Words. It is a thin book; the back end takes all the prophets and translates them down to one line: “You’re doing it all wrong.”
What’s lost in subtleties and shadings is gained in clarity. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
That line often plays in my head and it was quite loud as I walked through Nuit Blanche on the last weekend in September. Nuit Blanche is an all-night art celebration with huge sections of Toronto given over to hundreds of artists.
This year there was a powerful installation called Museum For the End of the World in the parking garage under Toronto’s City Hall. It was a collaboration between several artists and thinkers, including author Douglas Coupland,
The museum was a meditation on the end times, which are, as always, now. We are at the end right now because of our dependence on technology, our love of consumerism, our choice to separate ourselves from creation and to create false landscapes of data and electronic pulses. In the catalogue Coupland says, “Toronto’s creepy, compressed City Hall parking garage merely highlights the notion of the individual being part of a system that’s larger than themselves, and that has been in motion for decades.”
And through it all, through the dark shadows, the mood lighting, the strange and disturbing dioramas, which were ubiquitously familiar, through the growing sense of horror as we moved for a long time through the subterranean passages, I could heard Farquharson’s prophets screaming in my head, “You’re doing it all wrong!”
That was what these artists were saying to us as well. I could imagine some of the artists sitting under an olive tree, despondent that nobody listens. And they would have had good cause. We the viewers passed by these works, rushing from one to the next, trying to keep some schedule so we could see as much as possible before we got too tired. We stood in front of reflections from our own lives—a Christmas scene, a schoolroom, an office—and cast instant critiques, “That’s stupid,” or, “I don’t get it,” or, “That just creeps me out,” or, “Hey, that’s neat.”
Meaningless, meaningless, the prophets screamed at us. Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. And we responded, “Whatever.”
I’m writing this just as the Thanksgiving weekend starts. The stores are filled with all the fixings for the big dinner; Halloween and Christmas displays are up. Everything screams conspicuous excess. I find myself putting an artist’s frame around these scenes.
And I see the Thanksgiving table, laden with food, surrounded by friends and family. I see the laughter and the stories. And this scene too has a frame around it. I see it as a diorama in a creepy parking garage. And I can hear Olde Charlie’s cackle in my ear.
We may be doing it all wrong, but we’re doing it for all the right reasons. Aren’t we? All that stuff in the eschatological museum, it’s just the way we show our love for each other. Isn’t it?
