More decadent times

Look what I found while I was trying to figure out what year . . . Baby One More Time came out:

1. Elton John - Candle In The Wind 1997
2. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
3. Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
4. I Want To Hold Your Hand - Beatles
5. Hey Jude - Beatles

THE GREATEST TRACKS EVER, ACCORDING TO GLOBAL SALES FIGURES AND CHART-EVALUATIONS, AIRPLAY, VARIOUS INQUIRIES, AND THE PERSONAL INTENTION FROM EXPERTS AND REVIEWERS COMPILED AND PROVIDED BY MEDIA TRAFFIC. LAST UPDATE: MARCH 2007 COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 - MEDIA TRAFFIC

Candle in the Wind 1997. Sweet mother of fuck, we live in decadent times. Hopefully it's a badly compiled study. Candle in the Wind 1997 . . . ahead of the Beatles.

On the subject of decadence: last night we went to my favourite square in Brussels, a 'secret' square to all but those who live around it, at whose restaurants we're eating in turn. We went to the pizza place this time, and it was rather magnificent.

Eventually the people sitting next to us asked if we were American, and then sent us a little battery of questions about our respective countries upon being told we weren't. The gist of it was wanting to know if they were good places to make money. I told them they were better than Belgium in terms of being able to accrue wealth - taxation here is jaw-dropping. But as the two of them revealed they were artists (our neighborhood is rotten with artists of one kind or another), I told them not to think about it as while there are markets for art in Canada and Australia, there's nothing like the government support artists receive in most of Europe.

That got me thinking almost as soon as it came out of my mouth. Even in Italy, whose social system is crumbling under the weight of corruption, ineptitude and tax evasion, there's social support for professional artists ensuring that those who are capable of getting work in their field over something like three months, or 50 days have a regular income all year. It's a priority here - fine art, music, and generally spectacles that aren't self-supporting blockbusters are a priority. That sounds like common sense when you consider the degree to which attractive and useful bits of patriotism are shaped by national art. But when I think about that as a priority, as a Canadian, it's shocking, even revolutionary.

In Canada the arts do get funding at the provincial and federal level, and there are grants available to support artists. However, funding is awarded on a project-by-project basis and the grants for individual artists seem to amount to some sort of lottery - they aren't built into a system of employment or sales (in the case of artists producing commodities rather than spectacles) and demand an extremely involved application process. Completely different.

And I think it's much better here. Maybe if we had a system for supporting artists as recognized professionals in Canada, rather than having them enter lotteries and hope for the best while they wait tables or work temp jobs, we'd have the sort of stronger national identity that so many people, especially on the right, moan about far too much. And less of the commercial, sales-oriented pablum I moan about far too much, and have been able to avoid in most part since coming back to Europe.

Well, that's not wholly true. I have heard the new Vanessa Paradis single more time than I care to count, actually, but it's sort of catchy in a breathy crackwhore kind of way, and has decent instrumentation and a cute beat: