Also Cool Mag Turns Two!

Lately, it’s felt like there’s not enough time to catch up on life, and at the same time like 2019 was last year. October 29th marked our second birthday, and in the spirit of pandemic time not being real, we’re celebrating fashionably late to our own party. 

While it still seems unreal that this project has taken on a life of its own, we’re incredibly grateful for what it’s become. We still check every notification, freak out when we see someone wearing our merch in public, and are genuinely shocked (in the best way possible) when someone says, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of Also Cool!” For a long time, this project only existed on our laptops, in our emails, and had barely broken into the real world, never mind the mainstream music and media industry.

Despite another year of unpredictability, we are grateful for friends like you. We’re slowly starting to meet you all in real life at events or by happy coincidence out in the world. This project continues to evolve with our community, and we are so fortunate to share our achievements with people like you who believed in our values and philosophies from the beginning. 

Some milestones from this past year include the launch of our podcast Also Cool Sounds Like on N10.as, starting our radio show on the virtual airwaves of FSR, being named as one of Montreal’s best magazines in Cult MTL, hosting panels with Fierté Montréal and Hip Hop You Don’t Stop, playing a live stream with Shift Radio, hosting an exclusive screening at SAW in Ottawa, working with the local legends at Mothland, covering FME in Rouyn-Noranda (after years without live music, RIP), watching our Co-Founder and Creative director Malaika speak at the 2021 edition of Artpreneur, and––of course––every interview, special feature, newsletter and meme dump in between. 

Oh, and we also launched a Patreon, where we send our Patrons cute snail mail letters, personalized playlists, and more! Sign up here <3

We feel very fortunate to be at a place where our publication can grow without compromise of its DIY grit and devotion to our community. We’ve gotten the chance to work and grow with so many incredible contributors over the past two years, and we can’t wait to keep expanding the team.

With that being said, we’re looking ahead to a bright future and hoping to take our project to the next level. Lately, we’ve been asking ourselves, What do we need in order to grow? What does our community need from us? and, most importantly: How can we share all this, and our platform, with you? 

It goes without saying that the last two years have been demanding, because of you-know-what and the trials and tribulations of life in general (we will never hold back from telling you all that this publication is run by real people who all have day jobs, on a volunteer basis). Regardless, this project is what has kept us going in dark times, and what has helped us believe that people really do care about the creative community that surrounds them. People want to love the city they’re in and discover other creatives who are just like them, and if we can have a hand in helping with those connections, we will do everything in our power to keep that DIY spirit alive.

We’re so excited about planning for this next era of Also Cool, and will hopefully be seeing you on a dancefloor very soon. As always, if you want to get involved in some way, or just want to chat, we’re an email or a DM away. 

Anyways, what we’re saying is that knowing that you all still pick up what we’re putting down is a tremendous gift, and it is our honour to keep this platform enlightening, inquisitive, and cool.

Until next time,

XOXO Also Cool

Doulaing During a Time of Uncertainty: Lena Ford’s Journey Through Birth Spaces as a Montreal-Based Doula

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Artwork by Liv Meek AKA Regularfantasy

Editor’s note: The following article explores themes that readers may find distressing, including medical racism and death. Reader discretion is advised.

In our latest feature, Concordia University student Celia Caldwell interviews Montreal-based doula Lena Ford about her career in the birthing field. In their three-part conversation, Caldwell and Ford discuss the important (and often unrecognized) work led by doulas in birthing spaces, and how systemic inequality and the COVID-19 pandemic Impact professionals and clients alike.

I. DOULAING YOURSELF

Celia Caldwell: What made you want to become a doula?

Lena Ford: Around age fourteen or fifteen, I realized that I was fascinated by pregnancy. I thought it was the most intriguing yet bizarre thing and I knew that I wanted to be involved. In high school, I would watch birth videos from the glow of my screen. My classmates hovered over my shoulder and scoffed, Why are you watching birth videos? 

As time progressed, I learned about doulaing. My parents had a doula when I was born, and now she is my mentor. A lot of people think that being a doula is a gateway to becoming a midwife. While that can be the case, I am more so interested in the emotional side of birth. 

CC: Can you talk a little bit about what doula training is like?

LF: The most reputable household-name in North American doula training is DONA. When I read about DONA, I didn’t know if it was a good fit for me. It mostly entailed readings, and it was a weekend-long in-person training. So much of this work consists of educating yourself on how to naturally bond with, react to, and care for people. The idea of only having a weekend of training made me uncomfortable. 

I wanted to look for something else. I was told through my friend’s mom —who is a midwife— that a well-known doula in Toronto named Sasha had a training program called Awakening the Village. My eyes lit up because Sasha was my parents’ doula. Sasha and I had never talked before; she hadn’t seen me since the day I was born. One morning, I called her and said, “I don’t know if you remember me, but you were at my birth in Toronto.” 

It was lovely coming together. We were both emotional and I felt at home with the idea of her as my mentor. The training is a weekly meeting on Zoom. I’m just so grateful that I had the opportunity to do this because, obviously, we learned about practical skills and how to best support people. But the emphasis is on doulaing yourself and working on yourself before you can do this for other people. 

That [approach] has been so incredibly helpful, and now I am a part of the Alumni Program at Awakening the Village. I can jump in and out of any call that the new cohort is attending. It’s an amazing community.

CC: I oftentimes feel like doulas are not recognized for their labour. I think the work can go unseen or not receive recognition from the general public, and even people within the birthing field like midwives and doctors. It can be perceived as an almost invisible labour, especially with home-births because they take place behind closed doors. In general, there is a patriarchal pressure to keep the process of birth and anything post-birth private. How do you grapple with not receiving recognition from others? 

LF: This is a field that is not recognized very much at all. Midwifery is completely discredited. To this day, it is still not regulated in both Prince Edward Island and the Yukon. Doulaing is even more undervalued than midwifery. I experience so many different types of births. Whereas, if you’re a midwife, more often you’re experiencing a specific kind of birth. If you’re an obstetrician, then it’s a specific kind of birth. 

A doula can show up to any birth space, so I think there’s a hard-line when we’re not medically trained and we’re not supposed to give any sort of medical advice. I think finding that line is difficult, and it’s so incredibly hard to make yourself seem worthy, especially in a hospital space. 

Half of the work is just trying to prove that we have a place in the birth space. Especially with the whole rise of the medical-industrial complex in Western society. All of the emphasis is on the doctor, the baby and what’s going to make the process of birth the most efficient. None of the emphasis is placed on the birth-giver and their well-being. There is an enormous clash between medical professionals and the individuals that are offering the birth-giver emotional support. 

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II. A HOME-BIRTH IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 

CC: You mentioned to me that you attended a birth in April of 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, when the entire world didn’t really know what to make of COVID-19 yet. Can you tell me about this experience?

LF: My client was planning on giving birth at the hospital. I met her and her husband right before the pandemic, just two months before their due date. This was daunting for me because I was going to have to navigate the hospital system for the first time. 

I feel more drawn to home-births, but I was excited nonetheless. When the pandemic hit, hospitals were, and are pretty much still, only allowing one support person in at a birth. Oftentimes it is the partner, but in certain situations, the primary person would be the doula if the birth giver does not have a partner. With only one support person in the hospital, doulas were being shut out. Even worse; some people were forced to give birth alone, which was the most heartbreaking thing for the birth community to hear. 

This generated lots of discussion on the doula-related Facebook groups that I am involved in. There was a conflict between wanting to respect the hospital’s COVID-19 restrictions and ensuring that our voices were being heard. 

As I scrolled through paragraphs of doulas’ stories, I thought to myself, We do deserve a place in the hospital, we are essential. One can look at it like, It’s all fun and games. We do our grounding meditations and we bring our essential oils and we let our clients relax on us. One can easily stereotype a doula. However, if you see the stats and do the research about postpartum, you will see that we change lives. 

It was challenging because I didn’t want to scare my client, but I needed to prepare them in case I wasn’t allowed to attend the birth.

I said, “I still want to be on call. I still want to know when she’s going into labour, so I will be available by phone if you need me.” At 11PM, the day after my client’s due date, I received a call from her husband. 

He calmly said, “Hi, she’s having contractions. Also, we just decided to have a home-birth. Can you come?” 

CC: What did the home-birth setting feel like and look like?

LF: The bed took up the entire room. We were all shuffling past each other. The husband felt uneasy about seeing his wife in an extraordinary amount of pain. It was tense, but we all had to keep that at bay for the sake of creating a calm environment for my client. 

The entire experience was rather eerie but, also, so incredibly beautiful at the same time. Their son was fast asleep in the next room. My client didn’t want to wake him up, but I told her, “You have to release whatever you need to release.” The reality of birthing in a city, in a high-rise with neighbors nearby, heightened the tension.

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III. SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY & RACISM IN BIRTH SPACES 

CC: What is the most rewarding part of being a doula? Or can you think of a rewarding moment that you’ve had?

LF: Being present for someone else’s birthing experience is as much of a gift to me as it is for [my clients]. 

At the end of the day, when the baby arrives, a tranquilizing wave fills the room. Everyone releases a sigh of relief. All of the intensity that once consumed the room floats away when the baby begins to cry. At that moment, you are overwhelmed by human life. My mind is submerged in disbelief by the birth-giver’s accomplishment.

Though I want to make a career out of this and support myself, I recognize that the birth community needs professionals to do labour pro-bono as well. At the same time, I also know that birthing experiences for white people are so incredibly different than for Black, Indigenous and racialized people. So, it is important to make space for doulas of colour to connect with their communities, as some clients of course prefer a person of colour to support them during their birth.

The statistics are appalling when you see how many people of colour die in childbirth due to systemic racism. One thing that excites me about this work is that I have the opportunity to step into birth spaces and do what I can for my clients. But, I also know that I don’t have all of the answers, and it’s not necessarily me that needs to be the one to support them.

Learning to be a doula has honestly changed the way I live my life. I am learning to reach outside of myself and give my all to someone else. Doulaing has given me the gift of holding space for other people. I am having a hard time finding the balance in that too.

I think what’s interesting about this job is that I will never not be learning. It is incredibly daunting to reflect on. I see that in my mentor and in other doulas that I have spoken to. I’m going to come across something new in every single birth that I attend and every family that I work for.

Celia Caldwell (she/her) is a Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal-based writer. She was born and raised in Nacotchtank/ Washington, D.C. She currently studies Honours English & Creative Writing at Concordia University. She was the Development intern at PEN America. In the fall of 2019, she was the Assistant Outreach Coordinator at Vallum Contemporary Poetry Magazine. She is interested in the intersections of poetry, journalism, mental health awareness, and learning disability politics.

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Liv Meek is a graphic designer, DJ and music producer based out of Montreal.

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This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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The Second Edition of Debaser's PIQUE Takes-Over Arts Court on September 11th, 2021

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PIQUE poster by @mouthoftiger, original wordmark typeface created by Moritz Esch

The second edition of PIQUE, a new forward-thinking artist-driven music and multimedia arts event series produced by Debaser, offers up music, art, comedy and drag in its hybrid in-person/online program.

The multi-level building-wide arts event and digital program takes place September 11th, 2021 in-person in and around the Arts Court and Ottawa Art Gallery buildings, and online at thisispique.com.

PIQUE’s second edition will be a hybrid event featuring live in-person outdoor performances, indoor screenings and installations, a skill-sharing workshop, and a virtual program of audio-visual works available on-demand. PIQUE is produced by Debaser, Ottawa’s leading independent and underground music presenter.  

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PIQUE poster by @mouthoftiger, original wordmark typeface created by Moritz Esch

PIQUE is experimental in form and content. Its second edition features:

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Live performance by Polaris Prize-winning rapper and producer BACKXWASH with original set design by Méchant Vaporwave

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Photo courtesy of Debaser

An immersive audio/visual play by Vancouver-based experimental artist/composer Debby Friday featuring AI deepfake tool Holly+ (developed by musician and researcher Holly Herndon)

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Photo courtesy of Debaser

Live performance by Toronto spitfire “rapper supermom” and scene builder Sydanie, curated by Shaya Ishaq

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Live performance by Toronto-based RnB and electronic pop artist Quinton Barnes with visuals by Justin Atkins

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Frosty Valentine by Jesi Jordan

A site-specific performance by drag artist, pop star and “retired cartoon” Frosty Valentine with her animatronic back-up singers, live dancers, and projections

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Photo courtesy of Debaser

A playful immersive audio installation exploring childhood diary entries by local artist and composer Yolande Laroche

Virtual video performances by innovative artists New Chance, La Neve, Abdu Ali and Amanda Lowe, which will be screened in Club SAW at the in-person event

Photos courtesy of Debaser

Live performances by local artists Jules Filmhouse, Lady Charles, and Randy Schmucker

Photos courtesy of Debaser

Pass the Vibes logo

“Infinite Vibes”, an intro to DJing workshop, curated by Shaya Ishaq and facilitated by QTBIPOC-centring artist collective Pass the Vibes

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Photo courtesy of Debaser

Guest curation by interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer and world-builder Shaya Ishaq. Her solo exhibition, Library of Infinities, is currently on display at the SAW Gallery.

Pique is produced in partnership with SAW, Ottawa Art Gallery, Firegrove Studio, Ottawa Fringe, Artengine, DAÏMÔN, Digital Arts Resource Centre, CKCU FM, CHUO FM, Apt 613 and Also Cool Mag and is supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, City of Ottawa, Ottawa Community Foundation, SOCAN Foundation, and FACTOR. 

Tickets are pay-what-you-can, with a suggested donation of $30-$50, and are on sale now on Eventbrite

For more information contact: Rachel Weldon at hello@debaser.ca

Check out PIQUE’s fall edition schedule below

Debaser

Website | Instagram | Facebook

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Your Canon is Dead: Exploring Trickhouse Press and Virtual Oasis

Front cover of Virtual Oasis. Designed by Dan Power

When I think about the future, I admittedly drift to something ominous. Today’s youth must concern themselves with disenchanting realities: the rise of hyper-capitalist overlords, crises and collapses in every corner of the world… it’s easy to feel jaded with what could be.

But the future has also brought new opportunities for innovation, for tomorrow’s visionaries to tear it down and start anew. This era of interconnectivity can breed possibility and creativity like never before. This is the philosophy that guides Trickhouse Press, an online indie publishing press – particularly with their collection Virtual Oasis, a “dream shared between machines both fleshy and fibre-optic”.

Trickhouse Press and the Defense of “Weird Work”

Trickhouse Press is the brainchild of Dan Power, a Lancaster-based creative who takes inspiration from the gaps he longs to fill in the publishing industry. Trickhouse was founded during the UK’s lockdown in July of last year. Power notes that the press’ goals are “...to offer high-quality books at low costs, to treat each book as an object in itself, and to try and upset the stodgy UK poetry establishment by dropping books which are risky, playful, inventive, and wilfully going against tradition and convention.” 

One principle of the press is that its only physical components are the publications themselves – submissions, sales and promotions occur entirely online using their webpage and Twitter. “I like the idea of these objects coming out of the ether,” Power shares, “like the digital has transferred into the real world when usually it's the other way around.” These relations between the digital and the physical are of key interest to the press, both thematically and in operations.

Each Trickhouse publication is treated as its own entity, bearing no resemblance to other releases and with no universal stylings for publishing design or format. Each publication carries its own creative philosophy and purpose. As Power puts it, “...each book is treated as a project in itself, and not like another gem in the press' crown.”

Front cover of Sticker Poems. Designed by SJ Fowler

Power is committed to taking the attitudes and processes of today’s creative outlets and flipping those on their head. “I want the press to be a space where weird work can be treated as something other than a novelty,” he explains, “and put on a level footing with the rest of the contemporary canon.” His perspective is inspiring, and much-needed on the scene – creative experimentation is not a cultural phase, but a longstanding and respectable tradition.

Power also expresses that the press holds a deep appreciation for aesthetics, and how “...visual culture forces language to adapt.” Trickhouse aims to “...stretch the definition of a poem as far as it can [go] by playing into the visual properties of the words as much as their meaning or contents.” He offers i know god is watching by Crispin Best as an example – a ludicrous collection of Minion memes accompanied by existentially-strained musings. These memes, a dialect within the digital language of boomers, are re-examined as vessels concealing the heaviest weights of the collective psyche. If this sounds ridiculous, yet believable, good – Trickhouse has delivered on its promises.

The first season of Trickhouse Press’ publications. Photo courtesy of Dan Power

Virtual Oasis: A Human-AI Anthology

Building off of these values and goals is Virtual Oasis, a poetry collection published by Trickhouse Press this past April. 

Virtual Oasis is primarily an exercise in ekphrastic poetry, with human writers taking creative direction from AI-generated photographs and compositions. Creative submissions came from across the UK, representing contemporary scenes in Glasgow, Lancaster, London, and a few places in between. Power observes that “...the poems [in Virtual Oasis] tend to be more conventional, although the variety of the approaches ... and previously untapped source material allow [the work] to feel fresh and striking.” It humours me, how I underestimated these adjectives.

Going into my review of the collection, it was made clear that every stylistic choice in Virtual Oasis serves a purpose and warrants consideration, further obscuring the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence. The main idea is to suggest something far more reciprocal than AI as a source of creative inspiration – AI is in itself a creator, capable of mutual exchange and possibility.

The cover design of Virtual Oasis is a callback to cyberculture, with a Windows 95 WordArt banner and a shore of vaporwave gridlines. While this aesthetic hit its peak years ago, I interpret its purpose (and that of the title) as something precursory to comfort the reader with technological memories. I feel stretched between visuals of the near-past and approaches of the near-future, leaving me with a sense of disorientation that fits perfectly with the freefall of what’s to come.

AI-generated image for “to the woman on the Zoom open mic who started crying” by Rhiannon Auriol. Photo courtesy of artbreeder.com

A first look inside leads to a subverted oasis. All images for the collection were taken from artbreeder.com, a machine learning-based art website that relies on the ‘remixing’ of existing database images to generate new––and increasingly obscure––creations.

Cross-bred mutant pigs stand with assertion amongst a floating pool of sea anemones. What appears to be both a bird and a banana gapes at me from the depths of a sapphire sea, because why not? I am fascinated by the simultaneous freedom and limitation involved in deciphering this imagery. Does this technology ruminate on failures and successes in the name of creativity? Do the authors?

Regarding the collection’s typeface, Power notes a deeper consideration:

“The font was chosen to resemble code text, since in this anthology the poems function in the same way as lines of code - just as code was read and processed by a computer to generate the images we see on one page, the poems are read and processed by a human reader to generate mental images on the other. In this way, the distinction between artificial and natural intelligence is called into question, as the reader is asked to perform the exact same task as the AI.”

This reflection weighs heavy on my sleepy brain. Let’s see what this reader can accomplish.

AI-generated image for “Leaving is a sense of breaking contract” by Naomi Morris. Photo courtesy of artbreeder.com

Flipping through the collection, the reader is subjected to the same system crashes faced by technology. I naturally––unintentionally––fixate on the pieces that my brain can make sense of, but every passage is worth the mental exercise. 

Accompanied by a knock-kneed girl with distorted attire, Naomi Morris’ piece “Leaving is a sense of breaking contract” describes personal habits of independence and detachment. I take comfort in its relevance and the synergy of this collaboration.

Matthew Whitton’s “from [ ] [ ] of what remains, With little else [ ] [ ] who complains?” stems from what appears to be a tilted desk lamp illuminating crimson-red walls. This postmodernist piece situates the function of a poem as a lighthouse meant to both highlight and obfuscate literary messages:

“...and what is our purpose, of course, but to say this: that the poem illuminates, without necessarily clarifying, the stream of revolution, which is, at once, an overturning and returning, and our metaphor of the lighthouse, therefore, is not a happy accident or the smug self- assurance of the perfect image; no, it is at work in the poem itself: steadfast, reliable, the light alights always on the same point, but always in motion…”

AI-generated image for “from [ ] [ ] of what remains, With little else [ ] [ ] who complains?” by Matthew Whitton. Photo courtesy of artbreeder.com

In fact, it is more fulfilling to make one’s way through the thickest fogs of experimentalism that the collection deploys. These entries revel in the syntax errors, ensuring speculation and deep reflection between reader and artist. Somewhere in the contents of James Knight’s “Drone” is commentary on modern technology’s ever-changing forms and functions. This piece is inspired by a similarly chaotic corruption on the AI’s behalf, involving an almost-collage of a disfigured entity strolling through clouds.

Visual Oasis has not done enough to dissolve my skepticism of artificial intelligence – but fortunately, that is not its intention. The collection pushes boundaries and challenges the mind to meta-rationalize its definitions of artistic merit; it prepares us for the future and appeals to our past. Virtual Oasis rejoices in the imperfections of both man and machine, delivering a coherent collection that only sometimes makes sense.

AI-generated image for “Drone” by James Knight. Photo courtesy of artbreeder.com

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VIRTUAL OASIS

An anthology of human-AI responses

Edited by Dan Power

Trickhouse Press

Lancaster

April 2021

Featuring the creative work of Alex George, Calum Rodger, Dan Power, Denise Bonetti, Emma Bolland, James Knight, Kirsty Dunlop, Maria Sledmere, Mary Clements, Matthew Haigh, Matthew Whitton, Max Parnell, Memoona Zahid, Naomi Morris, Nasim Luczaj, Rhiannon Auriol, Robin Boothroyd, Sam Riviere, Sameeya Maqbool, Scott Lilley, SJ Fowler, T. Person, and Vik Shirley.

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Trickhouse Press

Website | Twitter

Rebecca L. Judd (she/they) is the features editor of Also Cool Mag. She writes and creates out of her studio apartment in Ottawa, kept company by vivid dreams and a cuddly grey kitty named Dora.

This interview was conducted over email, and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Olive Andrews Shares "I’m trying to tell you" From Three-Part Poetry Series

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy

I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier 

and boiling the kettle and forgetting the tea 

but the floor is warm and I have my lemon shampoo 

there was one day in the spring 

I poured the booze down the drain and put the bottle by the window in the light 

do you remember the night I was up sick 

and feeling very by myself and quiet 

afraid to text I thought you’d be sleeping 

and now you’re here 

and being alone doesn’t fill my brain like that 

as a child to relax I’d imagine 

taking each bone from my body and giving it a good scrub gently pushing it back into place 

but how impossible it is to do everything right 

creating space in my spine is a nice thought 

and really that’s all 

except there’s something right about trying to do better so I try to do better 

and boil the kettle 

Previously published in rock salt, baseline press 2020

Via Olive Andrews

Olive Andrews (they/them) is a poet living in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Instagram I Twitter

This is the third of three poems they have shared via Also Cool. Their work has been published in a number of magazines, including PRISM International and Plasma Dolphin. Their debut chapbook, rock salt, was published with Baseline press in 2020. They are currently interning at Canthius mag.

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy Instagram I Paintings I Design

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Olive Andrews Shares "orange glow" From Three-Part Poetry Series

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy

I spent all night in the bathroom pissing blood and crying

everything painted bright blue even the hardware

and the fan whirring

if I wanted I could give it all up

be hooked by a finger over my bottom teeth

and pulled liked a fish

in the morning now the wind whistles

I’m in the waiting room still bundled and

fantasizing about being picked up

and falling asleep in the car

what would I look like stripped of everyone I love

would the light through the curtain still glow orange

it doesn’t matter we’re all spun together in the washing machine

turning our whites pink

Previously published in rock salt, baseline press 2020

Via Olive Andrews

Olive Andrews (they/them) is a poet living in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Instagram I Twitter

This is the second of three poems they’ll be sharing via Also Cool. Olive’s work has been published in a number of magazines, including PRISM International and Plasma Dolphin. Their debut chapbook, rock salt, was published with Baseline press in 2020. They are currently interning at Canthius mag.

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy Instagram I Paintings I Design

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Olive Andrews Shares "loneliness moments" From Three-Part Poetry Series

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy

loneliness moments

stir the cardamom into your tea and wait

think about weyes blood all day

love yourself silly

all the energy you’ve been searching for

in spring it’s early morning always

you’re out walking

hoping someone will tell you something

dark and heavy

you can sit with for a while

a song comes on about longing

go to a coffee shop and waste the afternoon away

writing nothing in your journal

just watching the pen needle loop

calling landlords

surprised when they’re expecting you

someone says hey three times you realize they’re

talking to you

blocking off the hallway

talking about endings

wondering when they’ll be real to you

the power’s out and it’s exciting

just you and the wood floor and the wind whistling

your boyfriend breathing heavy and the table shaking

finding warmth under duvet

peeling tape up from cardboard

turn your phone off for an hour

wishing the plums were sour

enough to make you pucker

it’s okay until your roommates leave for the weekend

just you and your cat running laps

the frantic dep employee

the neighbour you spot on your walk home from groceries

long enough to remember being 18 again

wrapped up in bed all day

you could have died in that apartment

no one would have noticed

Via Olive Andrews

Olive Andrews (they/them) is a poet living in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Instagram I Twitter

This is the first of three poems they’ll be sharing via Also Cool. Their work has been published in a number of magazines, including PRISM International and Plasma Dolphin. Their debut chapbook, rock salt, was published with Baseline press in 2020. They are currently interning at Canthius mag.

Artwork by Olivia Meek AKA Regularfantasy Instagram I Paintings I Design

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Letter From the Editors: Also Cool Patreon Launch

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Become a patron of Also Cool and support us on Patreon!

We made a Patreon because we want to get to know you better. We’re testing new ways to make our platform more sustainable and interactive. We’re thinking online workshops, snail mail, fun digital goodies, and skill-sharing groups. Most importantly, we want a more concrete and sustainable way to compensate our contributors. 

We are a group of four volunteers: Malaika, Zoë, Maya and Rebecca. We all have day jobs, big dreams, and just really love working on this project in our spare time. Also Cool operates on a not-for-profit model, where all the money coming in goes back out to supporting the creatives who contribute their work to it, in addition to covering operational costs like having a website domain, and a podcast platform, and Canada Post’s astronomical shipping costs for merch. 

We believe in creating for each other and investing in each other. Reinvesting into the community has been our objective since day one, but it’s not a complete circle without your support! We’ve been hesitant to launch a Patreon for a while now, especially during this last year when all of us have encountered financial insecurity at different levels. We’ve put a bunch of our own savings into making this work so far, but we’re at a point where we need to ask for your help to keep the dream alive. 

That being said, we aren’t interested in sourcing our budget from methods that deviate from the ethics at the core of Also Cool. Can you imagine targeted ads on our website? We can’t! We decided Patreon would be the best way for us to go, considering that we will still be able to maintain our focus of sharing resources and highlighting the importance of collaboration and solidarity in creative circles. 

We’re offering all sorts of knowledge-sharing and entertainment goodies at every subscription level, in order to accommodate how much our subscribers are able to spend, from $3 to $25. These Patreon exclusives include things like access to special digital content, fun activities, early registration to our workshop series and events, and special edition merchandise. 

We can’t wait to hang out with you on the interweb. And most of all, we can’t wait to keep building the Also Cool community together with you. 

Check out the breakdown of our subscription exclusives by visiting our Patreon profile!

Thank you for supporting Also Cool!

- Malaika, Zoë, Maya and Rebecca

Keep up with us online!

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

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Bearing Witness: Domestic Violence and Working Class Women on TV

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Recreation of a still from Can You Hear Me?, visual by Olivia Meek

Editor’s note: The following essay explores several themes that readers may find distressing, including domestic violence, sexual assault and police violence. Reader discretion is advised. Supplementary resources are provided at the bottom of the essay.

It isn’t revolutionary to see domestic violence on television. Quite the opposite — violence against women is too often an easy plot device to further a narrative, brushing over the real impacts of violence in a relationship. To see a series deal head-on not only with the dynamics of abuse, but their ripple effects in a community, is truly rare. 

I had no idea what I was in for when I stumbled onto French-Canadian dramatic comedy Can You Hear Me? (M’entends tu?). Based on the description and the image, I thought, Oh, here’s another series about young people surviving in a big city. That’s a genre I like.

But Can You Hear Me? is hardly a new Girls or Insecure. The story of Ada (Florence Longpré), Fabiola (Mélissa Bédard), and Carolanne (Eve Landry) is an honest – and sometimes hard to watch – portrayal of the everyday negotiations involved in surviving when you’re young and poor. 

When we meet the girls, Fabiola is working at a restaurant, caring for her mother and young niece. Ada is attending mandatory anger management sessions and occasionally trading sex for cash and cigarettes. Caro is living with a cousin and dealing with boyfriend problems. 

As the first season progresses, we learn more about what has happened between Caro and her boyfriend, Kevan. There’s a rape at a party. Kevan blames Caro for her assault, and is physically violent towards her. The season culminates in Ada attempting to take revenge on Caro’s behalf. 

On the big screen, portrayals of domestic violence are usually limited to thrillers about women’s revenge. Sleeping with the Enemy, Enough – these films typically end with the abused woman murdering her abuser. This trope not only perpetuates violent narratives, but it ignores the cyclical nature of violence. Normally in media, the act of violence a woman uses to get back at an abuser is celebrated, or at least plotted with her friends. “Can You Hear Me?” doesn’t let Ada off the hook so easily. 

Season two picks up with Ada in jail and Caro back with Kevan. Once released, we follow Ada as she tries to win back her friend’s trust, and do the challenging work of supporting a friend in a violent relationship. That labour is complicated by the fact that each of the girls must also do the work of surviving. 

Following her release, Ada is struggling to find her footing. Fab is now employed as a personal healthcare aide and is caring for her niece full time, navigating a complicated relationship with her sister, who is trying to stay sober. Caro finds a job in a bookstore, allowing her time away from her abusive boyfriend. 

Other series have covered the topic of domestic violence. “Big Little Lies” is notable for its veracity and nuance in exploring the subject. But, as much in the media does, it focuses on wealthy white women’s experiences. The trope of domestic violence secretly occurring behind the doors of beautiful suburban homes is more about undoing our notions of the perfect family, or the American dream, than about the realities of violence. Rarely do we see a compassionate and complex portrayal of poor women experiencing violence. The vulnerability of poor and racialized women in the face of violence is either too invisible or too horrible to face. 

While it doesn’t shy from the reality of violence and poverty, “Can You Hear Me?” finds pockets of joy in daily life. The excruciating scenes of trauma and pain are balanced with moments of levity. Outside their favourite dive bar, the girls smoke cigarettes and sing along to a song from a passing car. They laugh at the absurdity of life. Laughter is one way the women survive. 

Most representations of working class experiences of domestic violence are delivered to our screens by the reality-documentary series COPS. The police ride-along mainly covers crime in poor neighbourhoods, focusing primarily on Black and Latinx men. “Domestic dispute” segments often involve police arriving at an apartment or trailer park, ridiculing both parties for causing a disturbance, and driving away. The aberration is not the violence, but the noise complaint. 

Can You Hear Me? isn’t anti-carceral or pro-cop – rather, it acknowledges how dangerous it is for the abused person to call the police, and the way police escalate violence. When a neighbour calls the cops, Caro and Kevan both deny any violence. Later on when Caro calls the cops herself, Kevan is arrested, but the violence doesn’t stop — it gets worse. It’s a story about the failing of police as much as it is about domestic violence. 

Without veering into didacticism, the series shows us the abuser’s playbook: isolating the victim from friends; groveling and using gifts to get their partner back; moments where things seem calm; lashing out violently when she finally feels ready to leave. 

The moment someone tries to leave an abusive relationship is often the most dangerous. After Kevan is arrested, Caro eats dinner with her friends and her mother. A moment of joy. The history of violence is just below the surface of their conversation, bubbling up when Caro feels she can speak about her experience, but the women are laughing. For a minute, it seems like Caro is finally free. 

But Kevan, as always, returns with flowers and a fist. It’s the kind of emotional blow one comes to expect from the series, which never lets its heroines (or its audience) off easy. As Ada’s counsellor tells her, “If Carolanne chooses to stay in a toxic relationship, you can’t leave it for her.” 

Even when they disappoint each other, friendships are survival. Caro, Fab, and Ada are all trying and failing at breaking the cycles of violence in their lives. Chosen families break the abusive patterns passed down through bloodlines. 

Caro’s mother, herself a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Caro’s father, seeks help at a women's shelter. This is perhaps the most novel of the portrayals of violence and its impacts on the series. The thriller’s focus on vengeance, the procedural’s focus on police intervention, and the drama’s focus on upper class women mean that domestic violence shelters are almost never shown on TV. 

For a woman with money or connections, it can be much easier to escape to a hotel or friend’s house. By demystifying the shelter, the writers offer a new narrative and option for women, one that involves empowerment without perpetuating more violence. 

It would be easy to make a preachy show about domestic violence, its causes, and the options available to those experiencing abuse. Can You Hear Me? chooses instead to tell compelling and true stories about the lives of working class women. In telling the truth, it exposes the narratives we are afraid to tell, opening up a world of storytelling we don’t get to hear.

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Editor’s note: Below are several supplementary resources that pertain to the subject matter of the essay. We encourage all of our readers to explore these options, and to seek whichever form of help that they may need. Please exercise caution in using these resources on shared computers and devices.

• ShelterSafe is a website that provides information to connect women and children across Canada with the nearest shelter for safety and support.

• myPlan Canada is a free app to help those impacted by abuse with their safety and well-being. It customizes resources for a wide range of relationship abuse concerns in order to develop a safe and sensitive plan.

• SOS violence conjugale is a Québec-based non-profit organization whose mission is to help ensure the safety of victims of intimate partner violence. SOS offers resources in over 25 languages.

  • For those outside of Québec or Canada, SOS offers a comprehensive directory of international resources. This directory can be found here.

• Crisis Services Canada is a collaboration of non-profit distress and crisis service centres from across Canada. Their goal is to assist Canadians struggling with mental health and suicide.

• The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime is a charity that ensures the equitable treatment of victims of crime across Canada. They have a directory of resources for those who have experienced sexual violence, domestic violence, and other crimes.

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Caitlin Hart (she/her) is a cultural critic and writer from Edmonton, Alberta. She is the co-host of the forthcoming podcast The Simpsons: Not a Simpsons Podcast.

Website

Olivia Meek is a graphic designer, DJ and music producer based out of Montreal.

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