I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She’s had a number of guest posts over the time she’s been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled “The Death of Barrington Street?” and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul’s post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you’d think I’d have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn’t remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building’s official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. ‘Cause I’ll be getting to the point any second now.

When I looked at those pictures of the Green Lantern restaurant, taken in 1941, I very nearly audibly sighed. The shiny newness of the tables, counters, seats, and fixtures made me want to step into the images and experience what it would have been like to sit there, order a meal or a coffee, and watch the people go by. It all just looked so… nice.

How weird is it to suddenly feel nostalgic for a restaurant that opened a couple of decades before I was even born? Well, it did operate into the sixties, but I don’t remember ever going there. Even if I had, I would have been extremely young, and the shiny newness seen in those pictures would have long since faded.

The whole experience of finding these photos and reacting so strongly to them reminded me of how much we romanticize the past. I know I often think fondly of times gone by and wonder what it would be like to visit times before my birth. Sometimes I want to pick a spot, stand there, and move progressively back through the years so that I can see the changes unfolding backwards.

Intellectually, I know that the past was not better. Previous years of my life all had good points and bad points, ups and downs, high and lows, just like the present time does. And some day down the road, I know I will look back upon 2010 with the same gauzy filter through which I now gaze upon my childhood.

So why do we do it? Why do we remember selectively? Why do we idealize past events and put them up on pedestals built of nostalgic longing? Why do we filter things so much? Is the present really that bad?

Well, I have my theories about that.

From what I’ve observed, people tend to get more nostaligic as they get older. This applies not only to people I’ve met, but also to myself. The older I get, the more stuff I have in my head, and the more stuff I have in my head, the less attention I have for the world around me, and the less attention I have for the world around me, the faster time seems to zip on by.

Remember when you were a kid? (Yes, let’s get nostalgic for a moment here.) Remember how long the Christmas break was? Remember how long the summers were? Remember how each school day dragged on and on? Time was different then. There seemed to be more of it. Even the pleasant days lasted longer.

That’s because there was less stuff in your head back then. Less worry. Less planning. Less responsibility. Less distraction from the moment. You were free to soak it all up, see it for what it was, without all the voices in your head tearing your attention away from it.

We talk about the carefree days of childhood. And for a lot of folks, that’s pretty much what they were. Obviously, not everyone has the same experience. Childhood was a nightmare for some people, and they look back with a different filter entirely. But for many, thinking about childhood brings back fond memories. We might not have been free of cares, but we certainly had less of them.

As we grow older, however, and accumulate knowledge, skills, and responsibilities, our attention is more frequently hauled away from the here and now. And so the present becomes something less than it could be. We miss the moment because of our inner time travel. We fret about the past and worry about the future. We go over and over things we might have done differently and try to plan things we can’t possibly control.

And suddenly, the present is not so great. But it’s not the present’s fault. We’re clouding it with hurts from the past and uncertainties from the future. The poor present moment doesn’t stand a chance.

And therein, friends, lies a profound irony. As much as we look back on certain past events with pink gauze over the lens and sigh about how much better things were back then, we are simultaneously corrupting the present moment with ghosts and shadows of past events that just weren’t that shit-hot at all.

Today, I purchased a book entitled The Secret Pulse of Time. It’s a science book, and it looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. I’m looking forward to it, because, well, I’m a little obsessed about this whole time thing.

As I’m sure many of you are as well.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(And, in keeping with the nostalgia theme, not to mention the time theme, here’s a live performance of “Time” by Pink Floyd.)

Okay, that didn't sound so good. I'm tall, but I'm not giant, and I occasionally drool when food is particularly tasty, but I don't slobber. However, I am a big fan of the Ellen.

The fact that she's from my hometown has nothing to do with it. Okay, there's little twinge of civic pride in there somewhere, but it's quite overmatched by the gobs of appreciation I have for her talent as an actress. "Frighteningly talented" was the phrase I believe one reviewer used.

Juno was the film that launched our Ms. Page into the spotlight, but she'd been working like a fiend in the industry for years prior to that. She's been acting in film and television since she was ten years old. Being a Canadian, she's done most of her work so far in Canadian productions, which means she was "under the radar" for much of her career.

The fact that it takes Hollywood's attention to "legitimize" Canadian talent is a thorn in our national side. It's a blister… a weeping, festering, foul-smelling blister that oozes green pus down the side our collective leg. It's a sorry situation, and it's made all the worse by a political system that doesn't recognize the inherent value of its artistic community. Good Canadian productions are made despite the cultural climate here, not because of it.

So kudos and cheers to Ellen Page for sticking her head out of the murky cesspool that is our national cultural identity. She is one of the latest of many "exports" we've loaned to the nation to the south of us, and I think we can all manage to drum up a little bit of Canadian pride in that fact at least. We've given a lot of talent to Hollywood, and Hollywood is the better for it. From Donald Sutherland to Michael J. Fox to Mike Myers and Jim Carrey, so many talented Canadians have made their mark on the box office and the airwaves that it's becoming hard to count them all.

Yes, we take great pleasure in their accomplishments. Yes, it's nice to see the "local boy or girl make good". But every time that happens, every time another Canadian talent has to go south to make his or her career, it's another nail in the coffin of the Canadian film and television industry. Actors (and musicians too, for that matter) have a tough go making a career in Canada. And that's not just because we don't have the population. That's only part of the story.

Canadians make good films. They also make good television. But it's difficult. The infrastructure is simply not there. Not in the same way it is in the U.S. The Canadian government has a long and sorry history of ignoring the arts and marginalizing artists. Our current government is probably the worst to date in this regard.

Art and culture define a nation. Politics and business do not. If you want to know what a society is like, read its books, look at its paintings, watch its films. That's how you get a decent snapshot of what its people are like. That's how you get inside the collective head of the society. That's how you connect with the people of a culture you might not know well.

So, now that I've gotten all that pent up frustration out of my system, I'd like to finish off by thanking Ellen Page for her contributions to Canadian television and cinema, for remaining a Canadian, and for continuing to keep a residence in her hometown of Halifax. She's a stunning example of Canadian talent, and her forays into Hollywood cinema have not only strengthened the projects in which she's been involved but also raised the Canadian cinematic flag a notch or two higher on the pole.

Here's to a brighter future for Canadian productions and to a long and illustrious career for home-girl (and home-skillet) Ellen.

End of rant.

Gesundheit.

(And here's the trailer for Ellen Page's upcoming film Whip It, co-starring and directed by Drew Barrymore, and coming to theatres October 2nd.)