Where to begin, eh? Sometimes the simple things become utterly complex on account of the interrelated nature of events and memory and friendship and even where we came from.
Let me start by saying that my friend Aydon Charlton passed away last week. Aydon was a family friend, as we might say, and yet more than that. His parents and my parents were good friends back in the day, in the old north end of Regina,Saskatchewan. He was older than me by perhaps a decade or so, more of a friend to my older brother Tom than to me. Yet through our family connection and our church, St. Peter’s Anglican (since desanctified) we knew each other.
When I arrived at the University of Regina English Department, Aydon was very much present, completing his MA. I may not be remembering this correctly but I believe his thesis was on Wilkie Collins, which was unusual enough to be memorable even all these decades later. (You know doubt remember, dear reader, that Wilkie was Charles Dickens’ great companion, and the author of a very fine novel, The Woman in White.) (Among others.)
We were part of the same cohort, acolytes of an eccentric, charismatic prof, my namesake Eugene Dawson, as well as his colleague, Ray Mise. They were Americans, exotic to us Saskatchewan boys, I guess. They were hard drinkers and so we learned to be too along with learning a few things about literature and literary criticism. I think I can say that Gene had more influence on my development than any of my other teachers. Aydon probably would have said the same of Gene, but maybe including Ray as well. It was an interesting and profound introduction to the world of arts and letters, to say the least
You can say what you like about Facebook, and it would probably be true, but it brought Aydon and I together years later and we had some good conversations over the last few years. He was fond of sharing photos of his parents, and I would be sure to comment as I remembered them fondly.
In a few of those exchanges, Aydon told me the story of his father turning an unassisted triple play at the St. Peter’s annual church picnic. Remembering some of the congregation of the time, choristers and lay readers and the like, that didn’t seem like that big a deal to me, but in Aydon’s mind it was one of the great athletic feats of the Twentieth Century. It was obviously important to him, he told me that story at least three times. Who was I to argue?
This picture is of me in my Senators Little League uniform. It was a good team year in and year old, coached by the legendary Joe Resch whose son Glen played goalie for the New York Islanders and the Colorado Rockies. During one of my seasons with the team, I fell into a miserable hitting slump. There didn’t seem to be any hope to get out of it. I began dreading our games.
One evening, Aydon’s dad Phil came over to our house, not to visit with my dad, but to see me. He had with him a Sports Illustrated magazine with an article on hitting by the great Ted Williams. A little research tells me that it was likely the July 8, 1968 issue featuring “Ted Williams on the Science of Hitting” on the cover. Phil gave me the magazine, saying “I hear you’ve been in a bit of a slump. Maybe this will help.”
I read it. Did it help? I’ll say! I distinctly remember the next game coming to bat in one of the later innings when Joe Resch turned to the guys in the dugout and said, “Here comes Stickland again. He’s 5 for 5 tonight! Man oh man!” The power of the written word, friends.
When Aydon told me the story of Phil turning the triple play, I countered with the Ted Williams story. It was a funny kind of bonding, later in our lives. All the more poignant now that he’s gone. Aydon was a good man with a brilliant sense of humour. Requiescat in pace.
A tribute to the Blue Jays and their return to the World Series. And to remember and honour Aydon and his dad, Phil.
There is of course the physical voice created in the throat of the individual which may be pleasant or otherwise. There is also the authorial voice,that of the writer which although silent, through the words on the page insinuates itself in your mind. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
The reason the man with the screechy voice (see yesterday’s post) and I were talking in the first place was on account of the Portugese author Jose Saramago, in particular this book, Skylight. Mr. S.V. and I share a love of Saramago and his work which is enough to override any concerns I might have with his vocal production.
It might shock you (maybe you should sit down!) that Saramago’s novel All The Names is my favourite novel, period. Don’t ask me why — it just is and that’s all there is to it.
Yet I don’t recommend you rush out and buy it. It’s not an easy book to read, in fact none of his books are, with sentences that run on for hundreds and hundreds of words and paragraphs that go on for pages and pages. It can be a little intimidating. Most of us prefer to see a lot of white space on the page and Saramago doesn’t give you very much of that. Still, for serious readers, All The Names is, in my humble opinion, well worth the effort.
I’ll say this for Mr. S.V. He’s a reader. He’s one of the few people I know who has read Saramago and can have a serious conversation about him. AND SO IT CAME TO PASS that the other day we ran into each other at the coffee shop and fell into talking about literature and JS from P and I asked him if he was aware of the book pictured above, Skylight. He was not familiar with it and so I gave him the down and dirty as I will do for you now, dear reader, to reward your patience for having read this post for the last three hours or however long it’s taken you to get this far.
Skylight is actually the first novel Saramago wrote. He was in his early 30s when he completed it. He sent it to a publisher in 1953. The publisher lost the manuscript. It was only found in 1989 when they changed offices. They said, “It would our great honour for us to publish this manuscript,” to which Saramago replied. “Thank you, no.” He was already famous by that time, although still a few years away from being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998.
According to Pilar del Rio in his introduction to the novel, “Being ignored by that publishing house had plunged him into a painful, indelible silence that lasted decades.”
During his lifetime, he never approved the publication of Skylight, but kept it on his desk for years and years. His explanation for this, from later in the introduction: “No one has an obligation to love anyone else, but we are all under an obligation to respect one another.”
It was finally brought into print in 2014, after he had passed away in 2010. In Saramago’s words, it was “the book lost and found in time.”
In my mind it’s a fascinating story of how one of the world’s great authors was silenced for so long by what may well have been a clerical error.
Mr. SV was intrigued by my description of the book’s history. I offered to lend it to him and even found it and carried it around for a few days before I saw him again. In the meanwhile, he had ordered it from somewhere and read it. As I mentioned, he’s a great reader.
At the height of my fame (notoriety?) I appeared on the Google Earth image of Caffe Beano in Southwest Calgary. You could say I was hanging out there quite a bit at the time.
I’m not sure if I’m alone in this, but I have always been very sensitive to the tonal qualities (or lack of) of the human voice. It is said that beauty is only skin deep, but in my experience, it has more to do with the quality of a person’s voice than the quality of their skin.
Someone wrote a critique of a piece by, I believe, Beethoven saying it sounded like a cat’s claws on a window pane. I can’t remember the exact reference. It’s probably in Diana Rigg’s great compendium No Turn Unstoned. (Great book if you can find it, a collection of incredibly negative reviews of great works of art, particularly theatre. Yes, the same Diana Rigg who starred in The Avengers.)
Well, that’s just a variation of the tired old “nails on a blackboard” saying which probably doesn’t resonate as much now that we have whiteboards and colourful markers instead of blackboards and not so colourful chalk.
A horrid, terrible, irritating voice. If I hear that I run the other way. It makes me wonder, are such people aware of how grating and offensive their voices are to others? Do they never think of doing something about it? Voice lessons, for example? It’s a problem that can be fixed. I know these things. I studied with the great voice coach David Smuckler at York University in Toronto. Many moons ago now, Johnny. (Or whomever.)
(Where are we going with this, Eugene? Focus, man, focus!)
This is all by of saying that I know a man whom I see at Caffe Beano from time to time with a high screechy voice. It’s so pronounced I was describing him to a fellow patron (trying, after years of knowing him) to learn his name. I mentioned the voice and the fellow patron (whose name I don’t know) knew right away the person I was talking about.
I was looking for him because I had a book for him. That book will be the subject of Vox Humana 2 so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, I had written in my journal a description of the voice that became so, shall we say, fluid that I believe it may qualify as a literary conceit, along with Mr. Eliot’s etherized patient. This description longed to be freed from the pages of my journal and was really the impulse for writing this post in the first place. So here it is —
He has a voice like a rusty gate swinging open in the late afternoon of a cloudy day in autumn with the wind and swirling leaves. Someone in a long black cloth coat has pushed the gate open. We can’t be sure if he’s coming or going. Presumably there is an old house beyond the gate but whether our friend in the long black coat is returning, say from work, or heading out, perhaps to the library, we will never know.
Remember to check for part two of this fascinating discussion of whatever it is.
When I decided to resume this blog of mine, my wife who is from the Philippines got very excited. She had seen something on Facebook about a Filipino who was making millions of dollars from his blog. Lots of flashy cars and beautiful beaches, attractive people in various states of undress. You get the idea.
I had to explain to her that my blog isn’t like that. “So what’s it about?” she asked. “Art, experimental art at that, writing, the writing process, steam of consciousness, photography, that kind of thing –” Beyond that I didn’t know what to say. “How are you going to make any money doing that?” she asked. “Well, as usual, I’m not,” I replied, somewhat defiantly. I think she understood.
Maybe I don’t know exactly what this is, this blog of mine. I’m OK with that. The one thing I know for sure is that I’m not about to make a million dollars from it.
The more I think of it, having come back to it again after a fairly lengthy hiatus, maybe it’s something of a scrapbook. Remember those? Fragments, ideas, photos, images, ramblings, musings, sketches, not complete but perhaps leading somewhere, perhaps not.
I like that. Let’s go with that for now and see where it leads us, if anywhere.
“Oh, do not ask ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit . . .”
Last summer here in Calgary, Alberta, we had an amazing thunder and lightning storm. I sat on my balcony — rather bravely because the lightning was flashing and the thunder was booming close by — trying to get a shot of one of the flashes of lightning. All I had to do was hold up my phone and take a pic and I would have an amazing shot of a flash of lightning. Right? Not exactly. I never did get a shot of the lightning, but I managed to get a photo of the top of a building a few blocks away. I showed my failed attempt to a few friends and they thought it was pretty cool, actually. The more I looked at it and thought about it, the more I had to agree, it is pretty cool. Call it “Lightning,” if you want, or just call it a happy accident, which is what it was.
Hello out there, wherever you are. Welcome once again to my all-but-moribund blog.
I see I wrote a post four years ago announcing my triumphant return to these cyber pages, and then nothing. Just an eerie silence. Four years! What the hell? I guess I wasn’t back after all. But this time, I mean business! This time I’m really back, no fooling around. At least I think so.
We shall see and time will tell.
In the meanwhile (ie, between now and the end of time), I share with you some kind of poetic ramblings from my daily journal for your consideration. It is my plan, ongoing, to share some things I am working on, for your consideration. And so without further ado:
(Hmmmm. What shall I title this? October 12, 2025? Sure. Let’s go with that.)
October 12, 2025
OK now son you’ve been here before you know the rules you know the ropes you know what to do you know the ins and the outs and the highs and the lows just keep your head down and your phone in your pocket and your eyes on the page and try and forget that fight you had for the hundredth time and that once again your bank account is as empty as a drunken promise and that tooth ache that is not going away and that summer that is gone with a cold winter looming and the winds have turning cold and try and forget the landlord raising the rent and the politicians who lie and the church that stands empty and your pencil lead that keeps breaking and your hip that is aching and your heart that is yearning and your lungs that are burning and your hands that are shaking and that the plans you are making will surely fall apart and nothing you say or do or think will make the slightest bit of difference in a world steeped in greed and lies and anger and hatred and anything else and everything else none of that matters all that matters is you here now this broken pencil the blank page patiently waiting take a deep breath and begin again —
End of whatever that was.
Thanks for reading! See you soon. I won’t let four years go by the time, promise.
Hello friends. Welcome back to my blog which I have shamefully ignored for a few years now. I’m having a hell of a time remembering how you even create a post, although so far, so good I guess if you are reading this.
If this works — ie, if I am able to post even these few feeble paragraphs — I will return and write something more meaningful in the next few days. Maybe even an excerpt from the novel I have been working on.
I may even try to add a photo just for the hell of it.
If we are friends on Facebook or Instagram, you will be aware that I have been painting lately. I’ve been painting postcard-sized water colours which began as a purely abstract exploration of a horizontal line.
I was doing this to help myself get into the headspace of the Canadian/American artist Agnes Martin. While I was performing Morag Northy’s play 17 in Taos, New Mexico late last year, my interest in Agnes’ story was rekindled and I am hoping to write a play about her next year. (She ended her days in Taos and they have a beautiful gallery of her paintings at the Harwood Gallery.) One could say that in creating these postcards of horizontal lines, I have already begun the process.
Since I started posting them, I’ve been asked by a number of people if they are for sale. At first I wasn’t sure, but circumstances have made me think that it would be very helpful to me if I could sell some of them to friends who are supportive of my various artistic endeavours.
Specifically, my little publishing company B House Publications has no money and I am out of copies of my award-winning novel The Piano Teacher. In the past, the costs associated with printing the book were very generously covered by my brother, Tom. Well, Tom passed away last year and no one has stepped up to take his place and help me. A number of people are asking for the book and I have no copies left.
You can see where I’m going with this.
Essentially, I’m looking for help to reprint the novel, and at the same time keep myself afloat until I hear about a grant I applied for this summer (AFA) or until I return to Abes College to teach in August.
So, yes, the cards are for sale. They are original paintings, not prints. They are painted on cold pressed Winsor & Newton paper. I believe that a big part of their charm is that they are small (4” x 6”). Nicely framed, they would add a certain charm to your living space without taking up an entire wall.
I know what you’re wondering: how much? Because of the larger purpose of this sale, to reprint The Piano Teacher, I am hoping that some of my friends who are rather heavily monetized will be prepared to dig deep and be generous. I realize that my fellow artists from any field can’t afford to do that, but I would hate to say no to anyone, so basically I’m going to take it on a case by case basis. It’s a sliding scale, as they say. Make me an offer, and we’ll take it from there.
I donated one card to a silent auction recently and it sold for $200.00. I painted another at Rumble House the other night and it sold for $50.00. A third card was traded for a huge bottle of Belvedere vodka which probably sells for around $100.00. Just to give a rough idea.
Because they are postcards, I am happy to personalize them for you on the back. I’ll even send them through the mail like an ordinary postcard if you like the idea or seeing how the wear and tear of postal delivery would alter the painting. Otherwise, I’ll mail it to you in a protective envelope. Or if you’re in Calgary, we can get together and I’ll give it to you in person. For those of you who have already asked to buy a painting, get in touch with me and we’ll get ‘er done.
As for what they look lie, you can see a good number of them on the left side of the page from my Instagram feed. My idea is to get you one I think you will like from the cards I have created.
So, that’s my plan. If you’re interested, best to send me an email at eugenestickland@gmail.com and we can enter into strenuous negotiations about price and delivery, etc. etc.
Has an author ever before sold paintings to pay for a print run of his or her novel? It’s an interesting question. We may be making history here!
Whether we are or not, it would be very helpful and welcome for me to have some support to get The Piano Teacher back on the shelves and have a little left over to get on with other writing projects this summer.
Thanks for reading. Thanks in advance to those of you will actually buy one of these little beauties.
In 2016, cellist Morag Northey approached me for dramaturgical guidance on a work she had in mind, a narrative of her life journey told through the cello with some accompanying narration.
Morag had created and performed the cello score for my play Queen Lear some ten years earlier. We knew we worked well together and so it was a natural evolution.
When we first met about it, Morag presented to me a binder of poems, song lyrics, prose poems etc. etc. she had written over the years. It was 170 pages! With so much material, and given that the narration would need to be secondary to her cello playing, it seemed to me as long as we were working from that binder that very little would come of it.
A few months later, we were invited by Karen Jeffery to develop the work at a residency at the Sunset Theatre in Wells, BC. It was a generous and timely offer. Morag actually forget to bring the binder with her to Wells (thank God, there are no accidents!) and so once ensconced in the Sunset Theatre we began work anew, afresh, unencumbered by that daunting tome of 170 pages.
The result of our efforts is a lean script of some 20 pages that provides a narrative through line and offers Morag the opportunity to share her considerable talents on the cello, as well as vocally, and in this manner tell her story. It is titled 17.
In performance it is a unique situation where the vocals accompany the instrument as opposed to the other way around.
We were invited back to the Sunset Theatre in 2017 to further refine, rehearse and perform the world premiere of 17. It was a beautiful production all around, and anyone who has heard her story and heard her playing at this level has come away from the experience profoundly moved. It’s a powerful piece.
I would have thought, ongoing, that Morag would have found a female performer to do the narration, but she likes the male-female balance of energies, and she likes my voice, and so we have performed 17 on a few occasions since our production at the Sunset Theatre. We even made a recording of it earlier this summer.
It is a very unique piece, quite unlike anything I have ever seen before, let alone been a part of. It doesn’t really fall into any recognizable categories. Is it a play? Yes and no. Is it a cello recital? Yes and no. Is it performance art? Perhaps. A performance piece for solo cello and voice with accompanying narration might come closest to the mark.
Because of its unconventional nature, it’s hard to know where to seek out performance opportunities. We have done a few house concerts, and recently performed at the theatre in Cochrane as guests of the teatro dell eco company there, run by the lovely team of Daunia Del Ben and Lauie Stalker. As always (and if I do say so myself) our audience was profoundly touched by the honesty of Morag’s story and the power of her performance.
And so, as you may well imagine, when a performance opportunity comes along, we are loathe to turn it down. We have now been invited to travel to Taos, New Mexico to perform the American premiere of 17 and as it seems such an important step in our journey with the piece, we didn’t feel we could turn it down. The trouble is, financially speaking, we can’t really afford to go there, either.
The wonderful group of artists in Taos have offered everything, all of their resources, for us to have a good performance there. But where we find ourselves short is in transportation and actually paying ourselves for our work.
The cost of transportation is very high around the American Thanksgiving. If that weren’t bad enough, we have to pay an extra full fare to transport Morag’s cello properly and safely.
And so, to make this happen, to be able to share this Alberta-born, BC-produced work of art with our American friends, we have started a GoFundMe page to offset some of our expenses.
I hope we can rely on the support of our friends in the cyber community to make this important performance happen. If you wish to make a donation, our page at Go Fund Me is called “17 in Taos.” Morag and I have put the link on our Facebook pages. And if it’s easier and less complicated, there is a DONATE button near the top left corner of this page. (It’s yellow, you’d think you couldn’t miss it, but then again, I’ve only ever had two donations, a trend I hope we can reverse now!)
Thanks so much for your consideration, friends. I know times are tough and money is tight in the arts these days, but we must soldier on. This is a great opportunity to share some Canadian art south of the border, but we can’t do it without your help.
Last week, I wrote Dissolve the Society as a personal reaction to a number of situations in the Calgary performing arts world. As you will know if you read it (and if you didn’t, scroll down and there it will surely be), I was angered and appalled and dismayed by the goings on at some of our major performing arts organizations: the ending of the Children’s Festival, the yanking of Michaela Jeffery’s play at ATP, and the ongoing saga of the train wreck that is known as Theatre Junction.
A few things happened as a result of my post. The first, known only to me initially, is that it was read by thousands of people, probably about ten times the number of people who usually read one of my posts on here. Clearly there is a lot of interest and concern in the community and beyond. And rightfully so.
Of the reaction I received through comments, emails, personal encounters, texts and a discussion that arose on my Facebook wall, very little was said about ATP. One of my younger friends who sits on the board of another theatre told me it’s because no one really cares anymore about ATP. This for a number of reasons, I suppose. I was sad to hear that – it was a very special place for me for many years.
One woman who had not heard about the cancellation of the Children’s Festival contacted me, incredulous and distraught. She couldn’t believe that it was true. I assured her it was true, that I’d read the press release. She said she cried when she read about it. And good for her. We should all be crying.
Almost all of the reaction to my piece concerned Theatre Junction. I was frankly amazed at the anger and vitriol aimed at this company, its artistic director Mark Lawes and in particular the board of directors, who seem to have signed on so they could wear their new outfits to the openings as opposed to engaging in any meaningful governance of the place. Typical board concerns such as transparency and accountability are nowhere to be found at the Grand Theatre.
I heard story upon story describing a real nightmare of a situation that has been allowed to continue year after year. How under the watchful eyes of those sage directors a work place so toxic that it actually sounds acidic was allowed not only to exist but to become the order of the day. Repeated attempts by staff to meet with the board to air their grievances about the shit and abuse they had to endure day in day out were ignored or dismissed. An investigation of sorts was launched at the cost of many thousands of dollars, conveniently paid to the spouse of one of the board members. The findings were never shared, let alone acted upon. Nothing changed.
I heard that some of the people who work or worked there cried at the thought of going to work, cried while at work because it was so Dickenseanly shitty, and cried when they got back home again, having endured another day of “shame and blame” and altercations with Mr. Lawes which the staff refer to as “drive-by shootings.”
We in the arts like to think we are kinder and gentler than people in business (the real world, if you will) but it’s not true. In some cases we can be worse, much worse.
In a truly ambitious program of enlightened self-interest, through a number of imaginative initiatives including skimming off a percentage of donations before they ever hit the Theatre Junction books – with the board’s approval and blessing – Mr. Lawes would seem to have accumulated a small fortune by most of our standards, all the while presenting some of the most tepid and self-indulgent theatre this city or country has ever seen, pawning it off as high art. Oh yes. There is a lot of anger in the community aimed directly at that man, and deservedly so.
People who have worked there are so fed up (and demoralized and confused and miserable and bullied) that they are coming forth and telling their stories. I have only heard a few of them, but let me let you, friends, this is a fucked up mess.
One such person who commented on my blog is Tonya Lailey. I asked her if she would share her comments in a more public manner like this and she replied, “Go for it. I say nothing that is not true and ask some simple questions. I am happy to have my name attached . . . this is not even the half of it.”
These are Tonya’s comments on last week’s post:
Thank you, Eugene, for speaking publicly about the unfortunate state of some of Calgary’s public arts institutions.
I worked in fund development at Theatre Junction Grand for four years. I resigned in July because working there had become absurd.
You use the words “mysterious and bewildering” to describe your sense of the goings on from the outside. It was not much different from the inside.
The board’s behaviour is, was and had been incomprehensible. For two years we, the administrative staff, challenged the board in person, by email, by phone, relentlessly, to address the following:
Why so little has been done about the fact that dozens of people had left Theatre Junction’s employ deeply disturbed by their experience working under Mark Lawes (22 people during my four year tenure alone).
Why the investigation into Mark Lawes’ behaviour, conducted by a spouse of a board member, did not result in a report that was shared, not even with the then executive director.
Why Theatre Junction has had such a devastatingly small patron base and yet the artistic programming remained extremely limited.
Why no one on the board seemed willing to make the connection between the toxic workplace experiences of past employees and the small patron base.
Why so many resources were dedicated to Mark Lawes and his artistic associate and partner Raphaele Thiriet and so few directed to local artistic development.
Why a new executive director Guy de Carteret (hired in 2016) who transformed the workplace culture to be positive, who encouraged independent thinking and creativity and who had a novel and outward-facing, community-driven vision, was fired in May.
Why the board insisted that Guy de Carteret and Mark Lawes “get along” despite the fact that no prior executive officer had been able to “get along” with Mark Lawes.
Why almost none of the people who committed major funds to the capital campaign to renovate the Grand has had an enduring presence in the organization.
Why the main theatre’s namesake, Jackie Flanagan, is not a patron.
Why Workshop restaurant’s lease is so favourable to Workshop that it costs Theatre Junction money to have them in the building, putting the non-profit in the position of subsidizing a business.
This is but a peek into the “mystery and bewilderment” we had hoped to help to unravel, to air and to overcome.
Arts organizations are most often brilliantly resourceful. I have seen us turn scraps into feasts again and again. The issue is not money. The issue is one of values and leadership.
Sadly, when past staff had the opportunity to speak with the CBC this summer, the story became about money.
The context needs to be understood and grievances aired if the Grand were ever to have the chance to become the culture house it has claimed to be since 2006. It could be wonderful.
*
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchdogs? Who will guard the guards? Whom do you turn to when the people who are in a position to do something do nothing? The people I spoke to at Theatre Junction turned to me and I felt an obligation to share this sad saga with all of you. If, as a community, we demand that something happen, maybe the board of directors will finally start acting responsibly and things will change. Otherwise, that block of 1st Street that once seemed so full of promise will continue to be a lonely wind-swept stretch of road.
In my opinion, under a full moon at a lonely crossroads at midnight, someone should drive a wooden stake through the heart of the rotten venture. Get rid of the whole lot of them. Then bring in an elder and smudge the place and start over.
Maybe then we’ll start seeing some meaningful theatre in downtown Calgary again.
n 2016, cellist Morag Northey approached me for dramaturgical guidance on a work she had in mind, a narrative of her life journey told through the cello with some accompanying narration.
eugene stickland 