Thomas King at the Museum of Anthropology for Canadian Literature.

I found out that the video of my MRI is about to hit a thousand views. It’s weird knowing that so many people have seen the inside of my brain…

That was my third MRI, the first when I was 10 years old. The year before, I’d started getting pretty severe headaches that varied between short-term sharp pains and occasional migraines. Without going into too much detail, I was “the sick kid” growing up; I’ve got a story that describes it fairly succinctly.

A couple years ago in Toronto, I ended up getting in touch—after a couple coincidences—with my best friend, Kurtis, from when I lived in Nova Scotia. I hadn’t seen him in over 15 years, but we ended up hanging out at C’est What? until the wee hours of the morning chatting and drinking. He’d been speaking to his mother on the phone earlier in the day and relayed part of their conversation:

Kurtis: oh you’ll never believe this! Remember Matthew Gruman? He’s in town and we’re hanging out tonight
Kurtis’ Mom: Matthew… the small guy who was sick all the time? He’s still alive?

Followed by one of those amazing moments where all the friction disappears from the room and gets immediately filled with uncontrollable laughter.

Anyway, point being that it wasn’t a huge surprise that I was headed to yet another specialist. They couldn’t figure out the problem, and I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes the year later so the headaches were played off as a symptom. Diabetes, by the way, is a lazy doctor’s best friend as nearly every symptom in the world can be blamed on the patient’s “poor control.” At an rate, diabetes was a more pressing problem, and moving to another province a couple years later supplanted any follow-up.

But they never went away and, in grade 11, came back in full force. I caught the Sydney Flu, a very bad strain that year and the cause of my hospital stay, and the headaches were exacerbated. I dealt with lots of acetaminophen, but the sharp headaches got sharper and the migraines got longer, so I went to a neurologist.

Dr. Rosenblatt, as Jewish and blunt as his name implies, sent me for a number of tests including another MRI. His diagnosis was “there is trauma on the brain, but we don’t know what it is or what it’s doing.” Also, it turned out that I’d become addicted to acetaminophen and had to spent a week of horrible headaches without pain-killers. After my body was “flushed,” he put me on different medications, with none of them doing anything. After he hit the tenth he gave up, said there was nothing he could do, and that I’d have to deal with them.

A few years ago, after dealing with nearly 20 years of daily headaches, I went to see another neurologist who sent me for MRI #3. I’d asked for a copy of my MRI the last time—I’d heard that Anne Rice made yearly tee-shirts from her’s and wanted to do something similar—but was denied. This time I planned to be as charming as possible and get my brain scan so, when the technician had to adjust the head brace to accommodate my nose, I instantly made a joke about it being the Jewish genes.

Somehow, he’d never heard the stereotype-that-isn’t-a-stereotype about Jews having big noses and I had to explain that I’d made a semi-racist joke, but it was OK since I was Jewish. That was awkward. Anyway, he told me that it’d cost $120 to get a copy of the MRI, but I could wait a month and pay half that. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it, but went to the lab secretary anyway to see if some charm would work better on her. Success! I got a copy of it for free and eventually walked out with very high resolution pictures of my brain.

Yet again, the tests came back inconclusive, but I least I could do something with the results this time. So I went home and started looking through the images, figured a way to export from the included propriety software, and pieced them together as a stop-motion video. Cex’s “Take Pills” seemed like an appropriate soundtrack.

Just last year I was contacted by someone named Ann, who claimed to be the “Europe based curator for AYACC – Asian youth Animation & Comic Contest. It’s the biggest animation festival in China right now.” She wanted to use the video in the “Science Animation” category, and sent me details about how to submit the film and a biography. It seemed a bit sketchy to me. But since she contacted me through Vimeo and not email, I sent a courtesy note back saying that she could use the video if she wanted, but I wasn’t going to mail in a higher quality version or send a biography.

To my surprise, she wrote back saying she’d still love to use the video, but needed a bit of information about me to go along with it. I checked her out and she seemed legit; bizarre. So I wrote back again saying that she could use the video, sent her a link to a bio I had elsewhere, but made sure to mention that I doubted I had rights to the actual image scans (the hospital probably did) and I definitely didn’t have rights to the soundtrack. She wrote back saying she was checking into it. I still don’t know if it was ever screened in the festival.

Original post.

Outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on February 14th, 2009.

Steps towards recognizing great street performers:

1. Remove headphones
2. Stay and listen
3. Record a video
4. Empty pocket change

The Flying Club Cup is a website featuring live versions of all the songs from Beirut’s album, “The Flying Club Cup”. The videos, by La Blogothèque and The Take Away Shows, are filmed in various places around Brooklyn, NY. Really incredible.

Found on my hard drive (late 2007). This is what I do when I’m alone.

Still unsatisfied with static music videos, the Arcade Fire have gone and made another incredible interactive video for their new single, “Black Mirror”.