A writer finds excuses to write and challenges himself or herself to try out different genres. Some of these exercises are aesthetic games with self-imposed constraining rules, such as in "Repetition, he said, she said." Others deviate into popular culture using the tools of one's trade: for instance in making a linguistic analysis of Norman Bates' madness (depicted in Hitchcock’s Psycho) in "Psycho Lingo."
I began writing for Canadian Art strategically. I was fed up by the Art Gallery of Ontario's advertising campaign around their Andy Warhol Supernova exhibition that I actually found insulting towards Warhol. And its marketing ploy extended into the intellectual hubris of this re-packaged exhibition. I decided to hit back where it hurt most—with the bourgeois readership of this magazine that was the AGO's audience. Obviously, I had fun with this satire and continued to write a series of articles over the next few years for Canadian Art in this lighter vein. The articles, though, are serious and they remain some of my most favourite of all I have written, such as "Elegiac Pantomime."