Well, well, well. We almost made it through the holiday season without a visit from Mr. Grumpypants, but he finally showed up at the downtown Co-OP liquor store a few days ago.
Because he was kind enough to take time from his busy schedule and visit, I have invited him to be our guest blogger this week.
I am so impressed with his writing, by the way, that I am going to use a version of this blog in the novel I have accidentally found myself writing. But you get to see it here first!
So without further ado, some thoughts from Mr. Grumpypants . . .
Yes, I am in line
I was in the Co-op liquor store buying a bottle of wine.
The store was moderately busy.
I think I joined the line at about the fourth position and they had three tills open so it was all good. Or so I thought.
One guys had a bunch of stuff so that was going to take some time. No worries.
Another guy looked like one of those people who always manages to make the transaction much more complicated than it needs to be, but still no worries. I was in no hurry and had been home writing all day so it was nice to be rubbing shoulders with humanity again. As it were.
The customer at the third till finished his transaction and so we all advanced in line. By now there were several people behind me.
And then I felt a tapping on my shoulder.
I turned. It was the woman behind me in line who had tapped me. I looked at her. She looked at me. And then she asked in a very needling voice that rose about two octaves at the end of her question, “Excuse me. Are you in line???”
Are you in line?
She was kind of hunched down a little and smiling up at me with a look of utter insanity on her face. I was so taken back, stunned in fact, that I could only gaze down on her from about a foot above her and look into her eyes for signs of intelligence. But I found none.
For we had been standing here for 5 minutes or so, in line, waiting to buy our booze, and if I was anything at that moment, if any of us were anything at that moment, we were all surely in line, me as much as anyone else.
Are you in line?
I was nothing, if not in line. I had no other function on the planet, in my life, at that moment in time, other than to be in line. I have many uncertainties in my life but at that moment in time, while I was lining up, I felt quite certain that I was in line, but now that certainty had been undermined by this women asking me if in fact I was in line.
As a member of the line, as a person in line, I had no past. Who cares what I had accomplished in my life previous to my joining the line? And I had no future as far as the line was concerned because once I was out of the line and had made my purchase and left the store, in terms of being a line-stander-inner I would have ceased to exist.
Are you in line?
Oh, I wanted to say, yes you stupid bitch what the fuck does it look like, of course I am in line, do you think I just happened to be standing here winding my watch and a line formed up around me without really including me, of course I’m in line, I’m nothing other than in line, I have no future, no past, I’m just fucking standing here fulfilling my present tense, in the living moment function of being a guy in the line, what kind of stupid fucking moron idiot would even think of asking a person in line if he’s in line, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Are you in line?
I paused. The other people in line seemed to hold their collective breaths waiting for me to reply, I paused until the pause had become a silence, then I paused some more, still looking directly into her eyes, causing her to wilt somewhat, I waited until the pause before my answer became the most excruciating silence in the history of mankind, and then I very softly said, “Yes, I am in line.”
____________________
Well, happy happy!
I asked Mr. Grumpypants to leave us with an uplifting song for the holiday season. Here’s what he came up with! Enjoy!!!
Christmas lights in a park near where I live in Calgary.
I was telling an interesting story I once read about George Frederick Handel to some friends the other morning in my favourite coffee shop. They seemed to find it interesting and I hope you will too.
We were (well, I was) talking about the fact that great art is often born of arduous circumstances. This is why I sometimes have trouble with the rather new age take I see on art and artists on my Facebook, for example. I know that it is an exalted calling, but I would have to say that more often than not great art comes from profound despair, even grief, not great joy or happiness.
The best example I know of this is Handel and the writing of his famous (especially this time of year) Oratorio, Messiah.
From what I understand, the story went like this. Handel had moved to England and had scored some magnificent successes, making him a fairly wealthy man relatively early in his life. He decided to invest his money in a publishing venture and ended up losing his shirt.
(I actually run a small publishing company, B House, here in Calgary, and I can tell you there is no better way to lose money, while investing heaps and heaps of time and money and energy and everything else, than publishing. So it was, so it is till this day.)
So, Handel had lost his shirt, and in England in the 1700’s when that happened they put you in debtors’ prison. He was living in a cheap apartment in the east end of London literally waiting for the bailiff or the beadle or whomever to come and take him to prison.
As you can imagine, he was extremely depressed about the turn of events his life had taken, and as I understand it, was resigned to the possibility there was no way out of it. He was broke, and going to jail and that was that.
I’ve always thought this would be a good scene in a movie. We see Handel in his slum apartment, perhaps sitting at the kitchen table, staring into the middle distance. Perhaps he is thinking of the great successes of his life, such as The Water Music, written some 25 years earlier. He could have been thinking of literally hundreds of works he had composed over the years. Handel was very prolific.
So there he is, at his table in his grimy kitchen, and from his point of view we hear the outside door to the apartment open, and then footstep approaching down the hallway. The footsteps stop at his door. Close up of Handel’s face. Close up of the door. Back to his face. Then there is a knock at the door. Handel sighs, slowly getting up from the table slowly. He opens the door.
The door opens slowly, revealing a man clutching some papers. But these were not papers to serve in Handel’s arrest, Rather, the strange visitor had with him the libretto for an Oratorio based on the life of Jesus Christ. He wondered if Handel would be interested in composing the music for it.
Handel was. Of course, he didn’t know how much time he had, and so in a fit of inspiration fueled more by despair than anything else, he composed the entire work in less than three weeks. If you listen to the music carefully, you discover it starts off quite gloomily, often in the minor key. It takes some time to reach the sheer exhilaration of the Halleluiah chorus. By the time you get there, though, you know you’ve been on a hell of a journey.
And this, my friends, is all by way of saying Merry Christmas. I know there is incredible pressure to feel the joy, the love this time of year, but obviously for many it can be a time of great sorrow and loneliness. I know, I’ve been there. But to this I can only say, have courage, have faith, sometimes things work out better than we can possibly imagine.
Whatever the case, I hope you find some small inspiration in my little story of Mr. Handel. (And I apologize heartily to any Handel scholars who happen upon this.) On any account, here’s a wonderful rendition of you know what . . .
The magic ingredients for my most amazing Christmas cake.
I’m not usually one for Christmas baking, but an invitation to a pot luck tomorrow has prompted me to try a recipe I saw the other day on Facebook.
This involves laying down a layer of cookie dough, then placing Oreo cookies on top of that, then pouring on a layer of brownie batter and then baking the sonuvabitch. This invitation to a sugar-fueled psychotic episode is indeed what I’ll be talking to the pot luck.
It’s the perfect dish for a bachelor such as myself to prepare because it all come in tubes or boxes. Assembling it is more a matter of chemistry than it is of baking.
To make it my own, as they say, I plan on dumping a box of Smarties in with the Oreo layer, just to add a bit of colour. And some extra sugar.
Just in case it wasn’t sweet enough.
Doing this Christmas “baking” reminded me of a column I wrote for the Calgary Herald a number of years ago, in which I didn’t do much other than pass on another recipe sent to me by my friend, Jennifer. (I’m still amazed at the I got away with in that column for the Herald!)
I couldn’t find that column anywhere on my computer, but I did find the recipe on the internet. (I don’t know who wrote it, originally, but I hope they don’t mind me sharing it.)
So here it is! Hopefully it’s an inspiration to anyone doing some Christmas baking.
You should really try this recipe before the holiday season has ended.
Good baking!
Christmas Cake Recipe
You’ll need the following:
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
4 large brown eggs
2 cups of dried fruit
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of brown sugar
Lemon juice
Nuts
1 bottle of whisky
Sample the whisky to check for quality. Take a large bowl. Check the whisky again. To be sure it’s the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.
Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add one teaspoon of sugar and beat again.
Make sure the whisky is still OK. Cry another tup.
Tune up the mixer. Beat two leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Mix on the turner. If the fired druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry it goose with a drewscriver.
Sample the whisky to check for tonsisticity.
Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Who cares?
Check the whisky.
Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table. Spoon the sugar or something. Whatever you can find.
Grease the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees.
Don’t forget to beat off the turner!
Throw the bowl out of the window.
Check the whisky again and go to bed . . . .
_____________________
Goo night, and shanks fur weeding!
(And if you thought all of this was strange, check out this clip of Tom Waits on Fernwood Tonight!)
The Stardale girls receive their amazing Christmas stockings from Ried’s Stationers full of Christmas goodies.
When I teach a course in contemporary drama, I always include the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. At the end of the class, I get my students to vote on their favourite. In this survey, which contains many of the great plays since Ibsen or Chekhov, Death of a Salesman always come in first or second, usually first.
That the story of a down on his luck salesman penned over half a century ago should resonate as it does surprised me a bit at first. Clearly, it still speaks to young people so many years later, a different time and a different place.
The heart of it, I think, has something to do with a speech by Willy Loman’s wife Linda that goes as follows:
. . . I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person . . .
Attention must be paid. Surely one of the reasons we go to the theatre or study literature is to come across lines like this one that transcend their context and possibly become dictums that can influence our behaviour and how we go about living our lives.
No surprise to my readers, I am not here to talk about Arthur Miller or Death of a Salesman, at least any more than I already have, other than this idea that attention must be paid.
Last night, I attended the Stardale Aboriginal Girls Christmas party. (I wrote about my teaching experience with the girls in October in the post titled Do No Harm. You can find it in the archive section on the left side of the screen.)
Their confidence and charm and humour came through in all aspects of the evening. So much care and preparation went into the Stardale Christmas party that when I arrived and saw all of them dressed up to the 9’s, I almost felt like running home and putting on my best suit. (If I had a car, I probably would have!)
The girls actually got up and performed some theatre improv games. They’ve been working on theatre and acting with Jamie Dunsdon and the folks from Verb Theatre. (They do so many things, they work with so many great people, it’s impossible to list them all.) I was impressed that they could get up and perform in front of a bunch of people the way they did. Of some of them, an old theatre gentleman like myself could actually say, “She’s got it!”
All in all for a host of different reasons, it was perhaps the finest Christmas party I have ever attended. No matter what else happens to me this Christmas season, I have a warm feeling from last night that will last me through the holidays and well into next year.
Many of the girls end up at Stardale after a horrendous journey earlier in their lives that would simply debilitate many of us. I’m sure they have their own bleak moments, same as the rest of us. And I know they have many rivers to cross yet as their young lives unfold. You have no idea how much I admire them for their courage and spirit. But last night, at least for a few hours, everything in the world seemed right.
Looking around the room at the staff and volunteers who help make Stardale work, your eye is always brought back to Helen McPhaden, the director of Stardale, whose energy and enthusiasm for this program is nothing short of infectious, probably it’s even miraculous.
I realized last night – and this is why Linda Loman’s speech was going through my mind – that Helen, more than anything else she does, pays attention. If she has an agenda other than the good fortune of these girls, I’ve never seen her push it on anyone. Stardale is not a government initiative or a program run by a board of education. It is, more than anything, one extremely well-intended and generous person, with the help of many of her wonderful friends, paying attention to a group of girls that we, as a society, tend to ignore. To our shame. To her credit. To their benefit.
Attention, attention must be paid. And in this case, it is.
I have no photos of dead dogs, so here’s a cool one of the moon instead.
The Dead Dog
There was a lady – you remember – standing on the side of the hill with a dog on a leash.
“Help me,” she said.
“What is it?” you asked.
“My dog is dead,” she said.
And you looked down and saw for yourself that the dog on the end of the leash was indeed dead.
It may have crossed your mind that with the dog being dead and all, there was no real need for the leash, but you were too polite to say anything. Certainly, she was too distraught to hear any kind of criticism from you at the moment. Yes, she was distraught, tragic even, in keeping with the situation, although it could be argued that the death of a dog might be an unfortunate event but not necessarily a tragedy.
The wind blew the tall grasses that grew on the side of the hill. The shadows lengthened as the day waned. The dog lay still, the wind ruffling its fur which was not too short but not too long either. The wind was blowing across the side of the dog’s face, across one big brown eye which was wide open, seeing nothing, seeing everything.
You noticed that the woman was pretty in a forlorn kind of way. You wondered how, under the circumstances, you could find the language to ask her out sometime. For sushi, say, or to see a play. But you suspected that such language does not exist and you were probably right.
“Would you mind looking after my dog while I go down and get some help?” she asked. She offered you her end of the leash, imploring you forlornly with her eyes to take it. What could you do? You took the leash. How hard could it be? The dog was dead.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “As fast as I can.”
“What was it’s name?” you called after her as she made her way down the hill.
She stopped and turned and regarded you enigmatically. Or so it seemed at the time. “Jackson,” she said. And then she said, “Thank you.” And then she turned and continued down the side of the hill.
And then you called after her again: “What’s your name?” But she didn’t turn around again.
You stood there, watching her make her way down. The wind blew and the trees swayed and the tall grasses undulated like there were waves passing through them. The day gave up on itself as the sun sank below the horizon casting the side of the hill in shadow and the temperature began to drop. You felt a chill in the air and knew that autumn was nearing.
“Hmm,” you must have said to yourself. She didn’t seem to be in any great hurry to get back to you. You lit a cigarette. You smoked it. You had to ask yourself what kind of help exactly one might seek in the event that one’s dog had died on the side of a hill. The police? The fire department? Or was there a special if not obscure city department that looked after such things, the boys sitting around a grim little office somewhere, playing cards, waiting for the phone to ring?
The dog lay there, that one big eye staring. Obviously it just lay there. It was getting harder to make out its form, it seemed to be disappearing into the earth, lost in the dark shadows. Just as well it was dead, you decided, for it was a big brute of a thing, a kind of canine killing machine. Not being a dog person in any way, shape or form you certainly never would have been so close to such a dog if it were still alive.
God . . . if it were still alive, snarling at you, baring its dirty fangs, lunging at you ready to rip your throat out!
You took a step back, instinctively, but there certainly wasn’t any of that kind of activity going on with old Jackson. Nothing was going to animate that monster now. Just to make sure, you prodded him gently with your foot, your own body tense, ready to jump away if it showed any sign of life, but it didn’t, it just lay there, and you just stood there holding onto the leash.
You gazed down the slope of the hill to the road beyond, harder and harder to make anything out as the shadows bled into twilight, and beyond the hill the road and the lights of the city began to appear. The moon began to rise into the sky. You knew you had seen the last of her. You lay the leash down on the ground beside the dog’s head, still wary of putting your hand too close to its mouth. As if there were any danger.
“Never touch dead things,” you remember your mother saying, probably at the dinner table, probably over a big roast of beef. No, you had no desire to touch this beast, but you couldn’t help but feel a sense of sorrow around the entire episode, and your sense of decorum demanded a few appropriate words be said to mark the passing of Jackson.
You lifted your eyes heavenward and tried to pray but you could think of no words. You looked down at the dog and said, “Good bye, Jackson . . . I’m sorry.” Never would you have imagined that you would apologize to a dead dog for anything, but it seemed appropriate somehow.
You set back down the hill. You couldn’t remember what you were doing up there in the first place. The wind blew and made a strange hissing sound as it passed through the grasses. The trees swayed and groaned. The lights of the city beyond seemed to modulate and swirl and then explode into a million different colours.
For whatever reason, you knew in your heart that this was the beginning of the end.
The Calgary skyline from my friend Micheal’s almost penthouse. .
Well, we had our byelection in Calgary Centre and I feel because so many people were kind enough to check out my thoughts before hand, I ought to write a few words about how it all went down, and my reaction to it.
If you read my last post (and if you didn’t, scroll down, it’s just below this one) you would get the sense that many people in this riding were hoping to elect a non-Conservative MP (or Reformer or Wild Rose or whatever you wish to call it) for the first time in over 40 years.
In a sense, this election was partly about whom we wanted as well as whom we didn’t want. Even many members of the Conservative Party itself didn’t want the Conservative candidate, and so they came over in droves to support Liberal Harvey Locke’s bid for election.
At the same time, there was a tremendous groundswell of support for Green Party Candidate Chris Turner. It must have been the belief (at least the hope) in the Locke camp that given the projections, a percentage of Turner supporters would come to his side, realizing that it would be the only way to take the seat from the Conservatives.
For that to have happened, the Turner supporters would have had to have been somewhat luke warm in their support for Turner, but what I saw on Facebook was just the opposite. They actually believed they could win, and so they weren’t going anywhere with their vote, and I believe Turner actually did better in the election than was predicted.
And so with no agreement in place, no compromise, no backing down from their belief they could win on either side, they split the vote and the Conservative candidate didn’t even have to sneak in, she sauntered on through all the way to a back bench in Ottawa.
What could have become a great event was as usual in this riding a non-event and today it’s business as usual in Calgary Centre.
Of course there were some interesting outcomes. That a Liberal candidate could do so well in a riding where the term “Liberal” (not to mention the name Trudeau) is not usually heard in polite conversation was encouraging. I thought so, anyway, enough to support Harvey Locke’s campaign and vote for him.
The emergence of the Green Party in this riding was perhaps surprising to many, but not to those who were involved in the campaign. Many of these folks, many of them friends of mine, got their first real taste of success from Naheed Nenshi’s successful mayoral campaign a few years ago. They had won one unlikely victory, and they fully expected to win another. They weren’t just in it for the running. They didn’t win, but they certainly established themselves as a force in this riding for the foreseeable future.
Maybe the most resonant ongoing story with this byelection is that only 30% of eligible voters bothered to vote. I have one friend who lives in a seniors complex who told me only 18 of over 70 people bothered to vote.
“They have nothing to do all day, they complain about being bored, and then they don’t even bother to vote!” he said. This little tidbit debunks the myth that old people vote and young people don’t, especially as I would assume the average age of the Turner camp was somewhere around 30, if even that.
Well, that’s democracy I guess. While nothing really changed this time around, it seems like a lot has changed, and in the next federal election I believe the unthinkable could happen and the Conservatives could lose what has been a sure bet for decades.
Can that happen with two strong contenders like we had in this election?
I doubt it. And I don’t know what would have to happen to change the situation.
A really bad photo of Harvey and me. I’m the good looking one.
I live in the federal riding of Calgary Centre. We are having a by-election on Monday November 26. Though I’m hardly a political commentator I do have a few thoughts on this election that I hope will be of interest, particularly to my fellow Calgarians living in this riding.
What is perhaps most interesting about this election is that this particular seat is even up for grabs in the first place. I have lived in Calgary for almost twenty years, having grown up in Saskatchewan and lived in Ontario before I came to Calgary. My first impression politically here was that it wouldn’t matter who ran in an election, as long as they had a blue sign with their name on it, they would win. (Which is still true to a certain extent – how else to explain the election of someone like Rob Anders in the riding north of here?)
If it was true elsewhere in Alberta, it was certainly true in this riding which includes the neighbourhood of Mount Royal, one of the wealthiest and most Conservative ridings in the country. One doesn’t expect to see any radical change up there on the mountain. I once wrote a play called Sitting on Paradise that actually takes place in a mythical house on one of those streets. The matron of that house, Dotty Beauchamps, says at one point in the play: “Change is never good. Nothing good ever comes of it.” No one who saw the play thought that line didn’t ring true coming out of her mouth.
And so wasn’t I surprised one day this summer when an acquaintance of mine who has been closely associated with the Conservative Party for decades came charging down the hill, mad as hell about the way the Conservative nomination was going? I don’t know all the details but it sounded to me like she thought their process of electing a candidate had been put off course by a decision from the Prime Minister’s Office to inject a candidate into the riding. The candidate who was chosen and is subsequently running was not acceptable to my friend and so she and many of her friends and family have jumped over to the Liberal Party, backing candidate Harvey Locke.
For a number of reasons, much of it going back to the days of Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau and the battle for Alberta oil revenues, it is not easy for these folks to vote Liberal. Yet in their minds it was the only choice they had. In the telling of the story to me, my friend made me understand one critical issue. The old Progressive Conservative Party, the one she had always supported, the party of Peter Lougheed and Joe Clark, to name but a few, is no more. The current Conservative Party is nothing more than the old Reform Party thinly disguised, and to put it mildly, there is nothing progressive about the Reform Party.
What was wanted was a fiscally conservative candidate who was nonetheless progressive in his attitudes towards the environment, the arts, education etc etc, and so enter Harvey Locke.
I first met Harvey in the Auburn Saloon which is the official clubhouse of the theatre and broader artistic community of Calgary. He had with him a book of naturalist art which he himself edited, which is really a lovely published version of the art from a show he curated at a gallery in Banff. Harvey has been deeply involved in the establishment of a wildlife and nature preserve stretching from Yellowstone Park in the south to as far as the Yukon in the north. Not just the preserve, but artistic depictions of it.
To I say I was impressed would be an understatement. An other thing that I find impressive and just a bit surprising about Harvey Locke is that his undergraduate degree from U of C is in French (whoever heard of such a thing!). He is married to a francophone woman from Quebec, with French being the language of their household, so he is a rare example of a fluently bilingual Calgarian. Let me just say, the guy is for real. If you want to check out his resume, Google him. I hope I have made my point that he is a worthy candidate.
With the rejuvenation of the Liberal Party and the emergence of Justin Trudeau, it would seem that Harvey Locke and the Liberals could go far, so far as to form the next government. In the future, with Harvey Locke as our MP, this riding could actually have a strong voice in Ottawa.
For me, I guess because I have met the man and like him and what he stands for, it’s a clear decision whom I will vote for. For a change, I feel that the person I am voting for actually has a chance to win the election.
Had my story ended here, you might expect a big shakeup in Calgary Centre come Monday, but for one thing – the unexpected emergence of Chris Turner, the Green Party candidate.
In the past, a vote for the Greens in this riding, and in many others around the country, would register as little more than a protest vote. I know this, I have done it myself. And yet in this election, Chris Turner has clearly gathered critical momentum making this suddenly a three way race.
Looking at my Facebook, I see that most of my friends in the arts community are supporting Turner. It reminds me of the momentum Naheed Nenshi gathered in the last civic election. In fact, many of the same people who are behind Turner helped get Calgary the best mayor in Canada.
I would never suggest that anyone, even the Conservative Reformers, vote against their own conscience. That said, in my mind there are two very good candidates in this election. (There is also Dan Meades from the NDP who ventured into Caffe Beano one morning while I was there, brave soul, you have to give him credit for running in a riding where he has a snowball’s chance in hell.) Of the two viable candidates from the left, I think that Harvey and the Liberals have the best chance of creating an alternative to the present regime and so that in part is why he has my vote.
My fear is that the third candidate, the Reformer/Conservative, who isn’t so good, who can hardly be bothered to campaign, of whom I have never heard a good word spoken, and who will only be a semi-warm body taking up space on a back bench, will go to Ottawa. The opposing vote will once again be split, and for all the excitement, nothing will have changed after all.
Whatever happens, it’s been an interesting ride. Whatever the outcome, you can’t help but feel that things are changing in Canadian politics.
At his recent concert in Calgary, Leonard Cohen sang his song “Democracy is Coming to the USA.” Could it be coming to Calgary, as well? Let’s hope.
Sometimes change is a good thing, after all.
Thanks for reading.
I’ve taken 20 photos of Harvey, all of them bad. So I just poached this one. Sorry!
Those of us lucky enough to have been at Calgary’s Saddledome on Friday evening were treated to an amazing concert given by Leonard Cohen and his remarkable ensemble of musicians. Thanks to my friend Zenon West, I witnessed this event from front row centre. Maybe it had to do with my close proximity to the stage, or maybe it was just THAT GOOD, but I really believe last night’s concert was one of the high points of my life.
It was interesting, hearing those songs once again, this time sung by the man who wrote them. So many of them I know, word for word. And yet this familiarity comes not so much from over exposure through the mass media, as it might, say, in the case of Bob Dylan; rather it comes from my own listening to his music, first on vinyl then on cassettes and then on CD’s and now on iTunes or YouTube.
Plus, I’ve read the books.
I tell this story, my friends, and it’s true, and there’s something in it about how far we have come as a nation in the last thirty years or so.
When I was studying English Lit at the University of Regina in the mid 1970’s, I took the required CanLit class. For one of those COMPARE AND CONTRAST essays, I planned to write a paper comparing and contrasting (what else??) Dylan Thomas’s In My Craft or Sullen Art with Leonard Cohen’s You Have the Lovers.
But I wasn’t allowed to write that paper. Why? Because I was told that Leonard Cohen was not a major artist. But that was then and this is now. He was major to me, even then, and it would seem he is to the world now.
Listening last night, lulled into a kind of transcendental bliss by the overwhelming artistry of the show, I had a flash that the music and the poetry of Leonard Cohen hit us and move us so deeply because of the two major themes he has constantly and honestly and passionately explored throughout his career: our spiritual quest, and our physical, sensual yearnings, and how we reconcile both within one being. His music hits you in the head and in the guts and everywhere in between, especially the heart.
Leonard Cohen is 78 years old now. Last night’s performance began just after 8:00 PM and went almost to midnight. (Note to self: start doing yoga!!) When he gave over the stage to his fellow musicians for a solo or for a song, he never left to get a drink of water or to towel down – he stood right there, hat doffed, in deepest reverence of the amazing artists he has surrounded himself with on this tour.
Elegant, intelligent, inspirational.
That’s about all I have to say about it.
I leave you with Alexandra Leaving, that was sung last night by Sharon Robinson, who wrote the song with LC. Her performance last night was one of the greatest things I have ever had the good fortune to experience.
I needed a place to store my bicycle for the winter, other than my front hallway of my apartment. I have always been friendly with my building manager (we’re both from Saskatchewan, so how could we not be friendly with each other?!) and had written her an email asking if there was perhaps a safe place somewhere in the building where I could store it until spring.
When I was paying my rent the other day she said it was no problem, to bring her the bike and she would store it in a safe and cozy place for the winter. (Sorry to disappoint my friends in the cycling community, but I just can’t face the thought of winter cycling. God, I hate the winter, it’s only November and I’m fed up with it already but I digress.)
So I brought the bike down and as I was handing it off to her, she asked me if I knew of anyone who was a good piano teacher. She has a seven year old daughter who has expressed a desire to take lessons.
“I know lots of people who could teach her,” I said.
As I said this, I wasn’t letting on that I myself had once taught a lot of piano lessons in a different place, in a different life time. I put myself through the first few years of university teaching piano lessons at the old Arcade Music Studios in Regina. (The biggest claim to fame about that place is that Jack Semple taught guitar lessons down the hall from me. We also went to high school together. But more on Jack another time.) But I wasn’t ready to admit this at this particular time.
“I can ask around for you, if you like,” I said.
“Is it expensive?” she asked.
“It is a little,” I said. You see for some of us, thirty or forty dollars a week is a lot. My daughter was lucky in this, in that my mother bless her soul always paid for her piano lessons, otherwise she might never have had them. For some of us, this is a prohibitive amount.
“Didn’t I read somewhere that you used to play the piano?” she asked, searching, reaching.
“Yes I did,” I said, “But that was a long time ago.”
She was wearing an oversized hat and she looked at me in the eye and removed the hat to reveal a bald head that could only mean one thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Since June,” she said, indicating with her hand her chest area. “It’s just been hard, I had to quit work and it’s just been so hard . . . .”
There was, as we say in the theatre, a lengthy pause. We teared up a little at the stupid injustice of it, the gross unfairness of it, the shitty rotten timing of it all.
“You know,” I said. “I actually have a keyboard up in my apartment. I could probably get her started. It’s been a while, but it’s just like riding a bike, really. If she’d be comfortable and you’re ok with it, I could teach her.”
“Will you give me some kind of deal?” she asked.
“There’s no better deal than free,” I said.
And it’s not just the money, of course. It’s the convenience of the fact I’m right upstairs, they don’t have to drive for an hour through a blizzard to get to the lesson and then back home again – one less thing for mom who already has enough on her mind to worry about.
And so this morning after a break of thirty-five years or so, I will be offering a piano lesson to the seven year old daughter of my building manager. I used to do it for money, but now it’s about something else, something for more important than money.
Also this morning, when I went out for the morning coffee, the wonderful art work shown above was waiting for me outside my door. Obviously, you can’t put a price on such things . . .
Thanks for reading. I leave you with a charming film clip of Canada’s greatest and certainly most eccentric pianist, the late Glen Gould.
It’s hard to believe it’s been a full year since I made the epic decision to live my life with no car. Last November 1, my car lease was up and my insurance was due and my plates needed to be renewed and so I decided to try going without a car for a while. I didn’t know at that time if it would be possible, especially in a city like Calgary which is hardly a pedestrian’s paradise. It’s the heart of the oil and gas industry and the city has been designed, for want of a better word, for people to drive and to drive a long way, everyday.
Because of the rapid growth of the city, these vast amounts of space that need to be driven for most people to get to work and home again typically become so congested and backed up that there’s now a terrific amount of waiting and idling and burning gas involved in the commute as well. And yet it seems most people here never even consider the alternative.
A car, or worse, a pickup truck, is one of the many things people seem to think they are entitled to here in western Canada. I grew up east of here in Regina, Saskatchewan and like most of my friends had my license at 16 and have had a car pretty much continuously ever since – 40 years! – without ever really thinking about it. (Except when I lived in Toronto in the 1980’s.) Last year, I spent three weeks at the Stratford Festival where I had no car. I walked a lot. I felt better. I lost some weight. When I got back to Calgary all the circumstances were in place to see how it would be to do the same here.
At first it seemed odd. There’s a tremendous amount of convenience and a certain amount of status that comes from having a good set of wheels. And yet, when I got used to it, and started taking public transportation and accepting the occasional ride from friends, it found it surprisingly easy. By the time summer came around and I was able to ride my bike, I hardly thought of it anymore. I soon stopped defining myself from this deficit position – a person with no car – and started to look at those with cars as people who hadn’t yet seen the light.
And then, as I wrote a few weeks back, car2go magically appeared in Calgary, and suddenly, there’s always a car there for me if I feel I really need one. In this whole year, I have borrow a friend’s car twice, used car2go twice and taken three cabs, so by and large I’ve gotten by without a vehicle.
A few whimsical statistics . . . in getting to the C Train to go to places I work and tramping back and forth to my favourite coffee shops and shopping etc. etc. I figure I now walk on average about 10 km a day, meaning I walked the equivalent of Calgary to Montreal in the last year.
This isn’t exactly true though, as I also cycled almost 2,000 km (or from Calgary to Denver), and so on the days I cycled I probably didn’t walk quite so far. Still, you get the idea.
I have to admit, especially when you cycle, it’s hard not to get sanctimonious and even militant in your view towards drivers and their vehicles. But other than a few little scares, I have to admit that I found drivers in Calgary very respectful and courteous. (This is a rare view, I know. Other cyclists have horror stories, and maybe I was just lucky, but I have no complaints.)
After a while, your view of the city changes. You start to see the city as an endless series of parking lots joined by conduits of impatient drivers. You realize that the city was designed for the convenience of vehicles, with very little regard for human beings, let alone those of us who have no vehicles. And when you start feeling that, you start to see the whole place as a giant waste of space and time and resources.
Don’t take my word for it, try it. It will change the way you think of your city, wherever you live.
I’ve come away from the experience with a prayer: Lord, before I die, let me live in a city with no pickup trucks. Especially those driven by little shrimps trying to compensate for obvious deficiencies in certain parts of their anatomy.
Amen.
Thanks for reading!
A section of the bike path I took to work in August and September. Not bad!
eugene stickland 