Beautiful Losers

An avoidable confrontation with a cyclist. Poor judgement. A tragic death. A former provincial attorney general and  rising political star crashes like a falling  meteor and is saved by the net of….a public relations firm. The saga of Michael J Bryant is the story of the All-All American boy. Charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death in a busy downtown Toronto street… 

After the perfunctory call to the lawyer, the next dial was to  a high powered communications company, Navigator Limited, to soften and shape the damage, turn a negative into a plausible and reignite the trajectory of the client into a higher orbit of truth and lucre. This is a media phenomenon. ” Navigator Limited senior partner Robin Sears confirmed Mr. Bryant had retained the top tier communications firm to represent him”.

Michael J. Bryant, 29/8/09

” It seemed like the driver was trying to shake him off because he turned really suddenly, put on the brakes, jetted it one last time and then all you hear is three thumps and then the guy falls on the floor”. Although the former Premier of Quebec, Rene Levesque, ran over a homeless war veteran in 1977 with no charges being laid it could be argued by an intellectual like Andre Breton, that the incident never happened. Fictive discord.

What if the death of bike courier and father of four, Darcy Allen Sheppard was an imaginary happening. Michael Bryant was the man who never was. The entire confrontation, chain, link and series of small decisions over a period of years led to that fateful moment. It was a complete illusion, a form of dream with no basis in reality.

To take the theme of French philosopher Andre Breton, ‘‘ Who knows if this other half of life in which we think we are awake is not a sleep slightly different from the first, from which we wake when we think we are sleeping. What is this trial instigated against real life under the pretext that sleep gives the illusion of this life, an illusion discovered in waking, whereas in sleep, real life, supposing it is an illusion, is not criticized in any way, not considered illusory? … because drunks see double, that for the eyes of a sober man the repetition of an object is the consequence of a slightly different drunkeness.”( Communicating Vessels)

The surrealism proposed by Breton is appropos and antidotal to Bryant’s leadership with Invest Toronto, a world of imperative practical necessities demanding of constant attention. Breton’s case against realism and materialism were based on these attitudes being hostile to imagination and any intellectual and moral advancement. Mediocrity is the rule. The conclusion of magna-reality has to be violence since it cannot support itself independently forever.

Satan Devouring His Children, Goya, 1824