Colin Ellard - You Are Here

Running in place

I know I haven't posted here for a while now but I have to tell you the pace has been hectic over these past few days.  My book is now released and on sale in the United States and the publicity has been fun so far (except for coping with some unfortunate time shifts -- being on the radio at 6 AM -- if my mother were around to know I'd been involved in such a scheme she'd laugh and laugh).  I spent a few hours with a really fun group of NPR people last week wandering the suburbs and parks of Washington DC.  And this week I fielded some extraordinary questions and stories about getting lost on Neil Conan's Talk of the Nation.  I noticed an interesting difference between the callers in the US and callers on a similar show I'd done in Canada.  Canadian callers, almost without exception, told me about their very good sense of direction.  American callers were almost the opposite -- eager to share stories of difficult wayfinding times.  I think the most likely explanation for the difference has to do with the way that the call-in challenge question was worded, but I also wondered whether we Canadians might have something of a rugged outdoorsy reputation that we feel we have to defend.  I think my favourite story on TOTN, or at least the one I remember most vividly, came from a man who reported having been lost in Japan and having had a difficult time eliciting directions from anyone except for those who were intoxicated.  He thought the reason might have something to do with people not wanting to embarrass him by sharing publicly with him the fact that he was lost.  The story has made me reflect more deeply on cultural differences in our understanding and uses of space.  These differences affect everything from how we organize our domestic spaces to how we navigate through a city or design a park.  I need to write about some of this soon.  In fact, as much as I'm now acquiring a taste for talking about my writing, I'm beginning to miss writing.  This is a good sign.  I had a discussion some time ago with someone in publishing where we talked about the strange rhythm of life for a full-time writer.  We bury ourselves away for two or three years while we work on a manuscript, and then the book is released to (if you're lucky and you have good people helping you) a lot of attention and requests for interviews.  Suddenly you have to manage this mad transition from the seclusion of the writing place to the exposure of the market place.  Even for someone like me who has a day job that involves lots of contact with people, this has been jarring and disorienting at times.  But also very addictive.  Much like Amazon rankings.

Speaking of the day job, many fascinating new opportunities are brewing, including one that was set in motion yesterday which involves a bewitching combination of real down-to-earth applications to thinking about how we build things to ethereal ruminations on what built space is and how it affects our feelings and movements.  Eventually, I'll have more to say about it.  But right now, after waking up in the middle of the night to go on radio (would it have been easier to have just stayed up all night?), I need to pull my thoughts together and go earn my daily bread.

Different Drummer

I'm speaking at Richard Bachmann's Different Drummer series on Tuesday May 26 at 930 AM.  I'm hoping to get a proper looking note up on my website but just in case it doesn't happen in time, you heard it here.  The book talks are here at LaSalle Pavilion.  There's already been some rumination that I might get lost on the way, but it ain't happening. I'm going wired for location, and I know the territory somewhat.  While I finish my recovery from an unexpected and quite nasty little bug, I'm also writing a short piece for the Ontario Professional Surveyor Magazine.  I was at first taken aback by the request but of course it makes sense to me now.  It also brought back some lovely memories for me.  My dad was a surveyor (though not the land type).  So maybe my fascination with the size and shape of things has some ancient roots.

University of Waterloo Book Launch

The UW book launch went very well, I thought.  Lots of familiar faces, some new ones, and a few people I hadn't seen for quite some time and was very, very glad to see again.  Compliments of grad student extraordinaire, Deltcho Valtchanov, here are a few pix. 

All of my children managed to come to the launch, some of them at great personal expense (i.e. hours of pay docked at their jobs).  My little ones are especially engaged with this process.  Pictured here, Mei Ling, my youngest daughter, supervises my signing.  She and her brother MacLaughlin (whose hair is just visible to my right) play this adorable game where they sit at opposite ends of our big dining table and pretend to be mom and dad.  At dinner the night before this launch, they started in.  Mei Ling:  "How was your day, dear?"  MacLaughlin:  "Oh, terrible.  I only got 22 hits on my book."  This madness has been going on for about 2/3 of their lifespan so far.  I'm not sure what I've turned them into.

A little tip.  Always go to book launches.  Especially if you're hungry.  The cake was fantastic.  I had to sneak my piece while my wife Karen was engaged with the merchandise rather than keeping a vigilant eye on my blood sugar.  I can only get away with that where books are involved.  She's a textovore.

Pandemonium at the cake table, though some of my favourite peeps are looking over at the man with no cake, eyes filled with pity.
Here I am talking into a microphone that may not have been turned on, and taking a fair amount of abuse for wearing the same jacket as in my author photo.  I thought it could become a trademark, or maybe even a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom, like Nick Cage's snakeskin jacket in Wild at Heart.  But apparently it's not working.  Next book:  something with wearable computing.  LEDs that signal my heart rate maybe.

Local launch

I'm actually pretty touched that the local on-campus book joint is putting on a launch event for my book and even more so by the good friends and colleagues who helped bring the thing about.  There are so many things I'd like to express, but I know that the words that come out of my mouth will never match up to the ones that come out of my fingertips.  I've never completely understood the difference, but am old enough now that I'm ok with it.   I'm more of a writer than a talker.  I've just closed my office door now to think a little bit about all the people who would have loved to see my book on their shelves, but who won't get the chance.  I'm reasoning that if I think about those people now, I won't get caught unexpectedly by their memories tomorrow.

I'm also hoping that ALL of my kids along with my long-suffering and ever-indulgent wife will find some way to show up -- though I know that will be a tough gig for some of them.  I just think it would be completely cool to have them all join in the fun - I'm very much aware of how much they've all had to give up to give me the time and headspace to write this thing.  It's strange to think that my two youngest tykes have known me as the guy who's writing a book for about 2/3 or their lives.  Truly, I had no idea how big a part of my life this was going to become.  And as I reflect on that, I have a glimmering of an understanding of the wistful pasted-on smiles I see on some of them when I tell them that I'm working up some ideas for a new book.  

A place for books.

Guest post for Wordsworth books is online.  It took up more time than I had, but was huge fun to write.  I'm a hopeless book junkie.  By the way, I've lost this and it's driving me nuts.  If anyone finds it, give me a shout.

Save Al Purdy's A-Frame

If you come here on a regular basis, you'll understand that I'm a firm believer in the power of emotional resonances generated by place.  There's no question in my mind that the size, shape and order of a built space can affect the emotional states of its occupants and can influence what happens there.  Like Heidegger's Hut and Thoreau's Cabin, there's got to be mystical, intimate connection between the words that found voice at Purdy's Place and the walls and woods where he and his friends found solace.  If you've got a couple of bucks that you can afford to part with, pass them along.

Getting lost in the woods

Ok, it's true.  I did get a little lost in the woods with Colin Hunter of The Record.  But in my defense, it was quite purposeful and it was only for a few seconds.  We were talking about cultivating a playful relationship with space.  Something I find interesting is that we have a deep primal fear of being lost, especially in wilderness.  Our little adventure last week was not exactly wilderness trekking.  We were in a suburban forest not much bigger than a Walmart, but it has lots of undulating criss-crossing trails, some dense wood, and some really nice changes in elevation.  If you become distracted, you can get nicely disoriented.  And I emphasize nicely.  The idea we were discussing was that it might be fun and possibly even useful for people to make themselves more attuned to the size and shape of physical space by deliberately taking themselves into unfamiliar terrain for a little while, purposefully losing their bearings and then doing a little self-monitoring.  In simple adventures like this one, we know we're not going to die of exposure or be mauled by bears.  Worst case is that we spend a little more time than we expected to in leisurely pursuits, and we end up finding things we weren't expecting to.  Not such a terrible fate, and very good for our minds.

Early reviews

It's been great to get some encouraging feedback on my book.  The trade rags first and now today in the Globe and Mail.  One of my biggest fears has been that people would think that my book was a research monograph or a textbook.  It's not.  It's something I wanted to make as accessible as possible so that readers could see both how interesting the research on the biology of space and place is, but also to see how the nature of our engagement with space permeates so many interesting aspects of our daily lives.  There are risks involved in trying to do this, one of the biggest ones being that some people may have difficulty pinning down the book.  One early sign that this is happening is that in a few stores my book has been spotted in some pretty strange places -- the history section (!) for example.  But it seemed a risk worth taking.  The implications of what I'm trying to explain really do extend from interior design to urban planning and beyond.

A couple of points about today's review in the newspaper -- it's truly great to get the national exposure for my book but there are some corrections to be made.  I'm going to assume that if you're reading here you're interested enough in what I'm doing that you'll want the real deal.  First, I'm at the University of Waterloo and not the University of Western Ontario.  No idea how that gaffe could have happened.  Nothing wrong with UWO -- in fact I did my PhD there with a fantastic supervisor who continues to make huge contributions to Canadian science.  But if you look for me there, you're really lost.

Second, the person referred to in the review as Christopher Nold is actually Christian Nold.  To my mind, this is a more concerning error because Christian is doing incredible work and the reader who wanted to follow up might have some difficulty finding him without his proper name.  I can't tell you how many times I've mentioned him at meetings, in talks and a description of his biomapping project always elicits strong interest.  If you read my book, you'll see a few more details and opinions, but better yet would be to go take a look at his very comprehensive website.  I hope that someday we find a way to do something together.  We've exchanged a couple of emails but life is bouncing along very quickly for both of us.  It's quite a ride.

Quiz 3

Third installment of my contest.  The prize is a signed copy of my book "Where Am I?".  This time, I'd like to try something a little different -- audience participation.  I can hear the groans all the way from here -- the death of distance indeed.  But here's the thing:  one of the reasons I wanted to put a QR code on the jacket of my book was to encourage readers to think that they could quickly and easily spark up a link with me.  I have all kinds of reasons for wanting to do this other than prurient curiosity about who's reading my book (though, yeah, I've got some of that).  Mainly, I want to hear your stories to try to understand what it is about us that makes us so darned hopeless at finding our way from place to place (I know, I know....I just wrote a book about something like this and so you'd think I'd have some answers already.  And I do.  Promise.  But there's always more to be learned.).

So here's the deal.  Send me your best story about being lost.  Is there some Bermuda Triangle where you always lose your way?  For me, it's the area around Elora, Ontario.  But this isn't about me.  Is there a particularly hateful building that just doesn't work for you?  Ever missed a flight because you couldn't find your way through the airport?  Ever lost a girlfriend?  Wait, no.  That's different.  I mean unless you really lost her. Tell me a story.  Send a picture if you like (I'd love to see pictures of particularly nasty wayfinding labyrinths).  The best story (and here I'm judge, jury and executioner -- though I may recruit a little help from my son, who's so infatuated by this whole thing that he's made a promotional YouTube video for me) wins a free signed book.  And if you really knock my socks off, I'll throw in something special.  I'm not sure what yet.  Maybe my compass if I can find it.  Email, blog comment, Pony Express, whatever you want.  And if you want me to keep your name off the airwaves, just let me know.  I'm waiting to hear from you.  These books are cluttering up the hallways.

43 38' 58.01" N, 79 22'35.39" W, 01000 HRS EDT April 19, 2009

It's where I'll be, provided I remember my GPS.  Book talk and bacon.