She Said, ‘Johnny You Got Big Eyes’

In the NYT Magazine’s “Screens” issue, coming this weekend, some prominent types name “Moments that Mattered” in their encounters with flat, candescent images of all sorts this year. Novelist Heather O’Neill picks the above YouTube video, titled “Dance Dance Revolutions Co.,” and tells a touching story about it and her daughter. As she says, the song (”The End of Poverty”) is by Toronto band Tomboyfriend (see the Zoilus entry about chief ‘boyfriend Ryan Kamstra earlier this week). But she neglects to mention that the video itself was created by Toronto artist (and Zoilus comrade) Margaux Williamson using found YouTube footage of teenagers dancing in their basements (as she explains here); it was shown in an exhibit at Harbourfront in Toronto earlier this fall.

(Margaux was also inspired by YouTube in her full-length video, Teenager Hamlet 2006, previously mentioned here.)

But what O’Neill says of it is lovely and true: “Each time you watch it, you have a different favorite kid. They flail their arms around and gyrate their hips and completely, completely let themselves go. … the side of them that just lives in the moment and laughs all afternoon and feels a rock song the way adults never can and spends all day looking for the most original way to shout out: I am here! I am me!.”

Speaking of “I am here! I am me!” and of Harbourfront, try tonight or tomorrow to catch one of the last two performances of Hospitality 3: Individualism Was a Mistake, a performance by ex-Torontonian, now Montrealais, Jacob Wren and PME-ART’s , in its world premiere. I’ll be there tonight.