I am preparing for a performance this evening with Calgary Poet Laureate Chris Demeanor at the ironically named Oilman’s Review (volume 5). I mentioned this event in my last post. It’s taking place in the now defunct Indigo Store in Mount Royal Village which I wrote a post on about a month or so ago.
This promises to be a wonderful event, featuring local (one would be tempted to say “neighbourhood”) painters and songwriters and poets and other artists who have joined together in a celebration of the arts and art making in its various forms. I know that many of my friends and associates from elsewhere in Canada and further afield would be amazed at the activity that goes on and the support for it here.
I spent a number of years as playwright in residence at Alberta Theatre Projects, a company that must be responsible for birthing more new Canadian plays than any other in the entire country. Other companies such as One Yellow Rabbit, Lunchbox, Downstage, Sage, Ground Zero and others I’m forgetting (sorry) have all made a tremendous commitment and contribution to the development and production of new Canadian plays.
At the same time, there is great energy and vitality in terms of original creation in other art forms as well. Alberta Ballet, for example, is currently remounting its original work “Love Lies Bleeding,” a fortunate collaboration between artistic director Jean Grande Maitre and Sir Elton John. Earlier this season, Calgary Opera premiered a new opera, Moby Dick, the latest in a series of new operas created under the their inspired artistic director, Bob McPhee.
I became involved in the Spoken Word Movement here over the last few years, as my writing focus shifted somewhat from playwriting to poetry. There is a very strong core of Spoken Word and Poetry Slam artists at work here in Calgary. For anyone interested in this, I highly recommend The Spoken Word Workbook edited by Calgary’s own Sheri-D Wilson, published by the Banff Centre Press.
Having run a jazz night at a local bar for a few years, I can personally vouch for an amazing pool of talent in that field. But it’s not just jazz — blues, rhythm and blues, rock, folk, country, you name it, all are alive and vibrant in Calgary at a surprisingly high level.
And then there’s painting and sculpture and drawing and photography and all those other art forms that flourish here. it’s beyond the scope of this post to do them all justice.
Anyone who continues to think of this city as a prairie backwater filled with rednecks is really so out of touch as to be laughable. If you don’t believe me, hop on a plane and come on down. I’ll show you around myself.
But that’s not really why I am writing all this, at a time I should be reading over my poems and getting nervous about the reading I’m about to give. I am writing about some sad news from north in our province. the much beleaguered and maligned Fort McMurray, home of the famous or infamous oil sands, or as they might better be known as, by their old name, tar sands.
I read this bit of distressing news from artist and blogger Michelle Boyd today on her blog (As the Whorl Spins):
At 11:30 this morning, the faculty of the Visual and Performing Arts programs at our local college (Keyano College) were rounded up and given 15 minutes to clear their offices, then escorted from the premises by security. They were not met with by the administration and gently informed that their programs and jobs had been cut. They were not given pink slips. They were not even notified by email that this was their last day at work. They were escorted out. By security. Like common criminals.
These people had done nothing wrong. The plain and simple truth is that the Board of Governors and the new president of the college crunched the numbers and the arts lost out to in-house training provided for the oilsands industry. Plain and simple. Money talks, and the arts walk. Every. Fucking. Time.
We artists in Alberta have a rather uneasy relationship with the oil and gas industry, I’m sure if asked, most of us would admit to a great uneasiness about the entire industry, especially when we try to wrap our heads around the environmental carnage that goes on in the tar pits in the Fort McMurray area, where Keyano College is located.
And yet, many of these companies are at least in part responsible for the fact that we have such a vibrant arts scene in the province. They write the cheques, and many of the cheques have a lot of zeros on them.I myself have been the beneficiary of the corporate generosity that we see coming from the oil patch.
And then we read something like this, and the relationship becomes a little more uneasy. These days, it’s hard not to think that the arts are coming under attack, more and more. Those of us who work in the arts tend to feel vulnerable at the best of times, and events such as this one at Keyano College don’t help. Many of us supplement our incomes with teaching and every program like this that closes makes it all the more difficult.
So, where are we headed, exactly? You tell me. I honestly don’t know anymore . . .
Thanks for reading
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On Saturday May 5 at the site of the defunct Indigo Store in Mount Royal Village here in Calgary, a group of artists, musicians and poets known collectively as the Oilman’s Review (V.5) are presenting a group art show. It’s a fundraiser for the Calgary Inn from the Cold Program, a very important program that helps shelter and feed homeless families in Calgary. (There’s a copy of the poster with all the info at the bottom of this post.)
I seem to have gotten myself involved and will be reading some poems and having some kind of slam style competition with Calgary’s Poet Laureate Chris Demeanor. There will be a silent auction for the works of art being produced for the event as well as live music. From what I know, the event is not licensed but the Metropolitan Grill is just upstairs.
I love the concept and energy of this event. I like that different artists are coming together to create something for a good cause. It’s always seemed to me that if you put enough creative people in the same room, anything can happen.
Maybe after the tension of the recent election, we could all use a good blow out.
Well, here’s your big chance.
One of the pieces I’ve been asked to read is my earliest poem.
Finding this masterpiece led to a rather warm and not always so fuzzy Sunday afternoon, going through a big suitcase (above) full of my journals.
The suitcase contains about a hundred or so of my completed journals, but I probably have another fifty or so kicking around my apartment and my office at St. Mary’s.
The earliest one is this one, which I started while I was in Grade 12, back in 1974. It’s full of very, very bad poetry. Now I understand why many artists actually burn their journals. Suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
.
I found an extremely lugubrious poem (what an EMO boy I was!) which I am prepared to read at the Oilman’s Review this Saturday night. If you want to know what the poem says, you’ll have to show up in person. See you there!
Thanks for reading . . . .
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My friend the poet and photographer Jude Dillon accompanied me recently on a shopping expedition to Divine Decadence on 17th Avenue SW for my annual spring acquisition of a new pair of Converse All Stars — aka Chucks.
At the front door of Divine Decadence. Obviously I’ve already been next door to Reid’s Stationers where I bought a notebook which I did need and a fountain pen that I didn’t need.I have so many fountain pens now that I don’t need, but I can’t seem to help myself. The same could be said of Chucks. This pair I am in search of today will be pair #4. Oh well.
Atop the stairs preparing for the descent into Decadence. A tad apprehensive, perhaps. It’s a major undertaking that I don’t take lightly.
Holy Moses! Decisions, decisions! Do you ever find that too much choice can lead to paralysis?
A Prufrock moment: Do I dare wear a pair of peach-coloured Chucks?(Or are they tangello? Or is there such a thing as tangello Chucks? What would Prufrock have done? Or for that matter, Elliot? An existential conundrum . . .)
The lovely Megan helping me with the all important decision. We consulted for several hours, I had her people call my people, they did, they took a lunch, I took a nap, but when I woke up I was hungry because I hadn’t had my own lunch. Buying shoes can be exhausting.
The moment of truth. Yes they had the style I wanted and they even had my size, which is no small feat, so to speak, when you’re size 13. A small village of small people could live in one of my shoes. A hamlet. I wonder if Hamlet wore Chucks? If I were directing it, I’d put him in the exact same pair as I’m buying for myself.
Lacing up! This black on black style was recommended to me by my daughter Johanna Stickland who is the most famous fashion model I know and whom I trust entirely as my fashion adviser. She’s in Portugal right now, in case you’re wondering. But she’s going to Concordia in the fall to study photography.
Success! Over the years, my definition of success has become admittedly somewhat narrow. But you can never have too many shoes!
Hopefully I have enough in my account to pay for these suckers! I was once on a date and I had to stop off at the ATM to get some cash. I told my date I wasn’t sure if I had any money in my account. But then I took some out. And so she asked me how much I had in my account and I said around $1,000.00. She said, “So you don’t really know within $1,000.00 what your bank balance is?” And I said “That’s right.” She just shook her head, and then we had a drink.
The photographer. This is as much of the mysterious Jude Dillon as you’re likely to see.
Love yourself: why not? Better than the alternative! A nice reminder. Our trip to Divine was a lovely interlude. I make no secret that I love to support local businesses. Divine is an institution on 17th Ave., the people are friendly, what’s not to like? By the way, Megan asked me to put in a plug for their big sale coming up called Midnight Madness. It’s on April 27th from 7PM till Midnight. Everything in the store on sale up to 80%! (Details at divineplanet.com)
(I think I’ll head back and reconsider those peach coloured high tops)
Thanks for reading!
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I have just finishing up teaching another playwriting class, this one known as ENGL 371 at St. Mary’s University College here in Calgary. As often as I have taught such classes, I have at least a rough idea in my head of how it might go. In fact, you might think that we followed some kind of rigid plan, known these days in academic circles as a syllabus. But with this ENGL 371, such was not the case.
Good thing too, because in my mind in a creative writing classes, the syllabus is really a worst case scenario. What one hopes for, as an instructor (and no doubt the students do too), is for some kind of divine intervention to throw the whole thing off course and take you to places you never dreamed of being in. And that’s what happened with a handful of amazing students and me this semester.
The original plan was for us to follow some classic texts as we explored the mysterious and arcane process of writing a play. As we followed Hamlet and Willy Loman and those strange creatures in urns in Beckett’s Play (please check this out for yourself on YouTube, it’s amazing!) and even Luke Stike from my own play Writer’s Block (maybe not an actually classic, but you get the idea), we would learn how to write dialogue and monologues and scenes and learn about raising the stakes and all about status and of course conflict and the rest of it . . .
A little ways into the semester, we were invited by Alberta Theatre Projects to attend the dress rehearsal of their co-pro of a play called Good Fences by the Downstage Theatre Ensemble.
Seeing that play changed everything for my class and me and for the course we would find ourselves on for the duration of ENGL 371. When we got back to the classroom, we talked about the process of collective creation. I asked the students to use the “clustering” technique in their notebooks to come up with some ideas that interested them. When we came back, there was a true consensus that what interested everyone was gender identification and the extension of that, relationships of the romantic variety. (No big surprise, they’re university students, after all.)
And so we spent the rest of our time writing scenes, monologues, poems and even songs along these themes and Hamlet and all the rest of them soon went out the window. Funny, once the students were focusing on a subject that really engaged them, things like dialogue and structure didn’t prove to be a big problem. They just took care of themselves, somehow. I gave some feedback and talked about things like keeping the stakes high and reminding them that the dialogue they were writing had to be spoken by human beings, but by and large, more and more, I just got out of their way and let them run with this idea.
Well, sometimes, maybe at the best of times, teaching is nothing more than just getting out of the way and letting the students take the initiative. I had the faith and confidence in my students to do that and they didn’t let me down. I can say modestly that some of them told me that ENGL 371 became one of the most meaningful and dare I say inspirational classes they have ever taken. Less is more, indeed. It wasn’t bad for me either!
We presented our findings in the form of the script, 59 Minutes, at the fabled Auburn Saloon on Monday evening for an audience of 50 or so family and friends and fellow students. To use the popular vernacular, we rocked. At one point in the evening I had to shake my head and remind myself that the people up there performing were, after all, merely students who had signed up for a creative writing class.
Yet, as they performed 59 Minutes is was clear they had reached far beyond that. For that 59 minutes on Monday evening, there was magic in the air and anything seemed possible.
The members of ENGL 371 rehearse "Booty Call."
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Morag.
Morag Northey is offering a gift of cello and voice meditations to the citizens of this city. I witnessed her today at Memorial Park Library, but if you wish to experience her performance you will need to go to St. Mary’s Cathedral, Mondays at noon, until the end of April. I started out with my notebook and pen in hand, but after not too long I went into some kind of trance. What follows is a transcription of the notes I made and I have included a photo of my notebook at the end of this post. Thanks for reading . . . .
Morag/Meditation
Morag is beautiful beyond reason
Full of such beautiful music and we are lucky enough to sit quietly by
And hear what spills out
Would you believe the skill involved
To make something seem so simple and effortless?
The clock on the wall says high noon
A faint gong sounds
And suddenly we are on
Like monks in a temple in the mountains
Wearing robes and all that monkish madness
Morag plays
In fours, one note
Then dropping a fifth
An open stringed chord
Then dropping an octave
As she sings above the strings
An ancient tune that is at once new
Yet has always been sung in just this way
Just this way as it is now
(And then I seem to slip into some kind of trance)
We are in a marketplace
In an antique land
The water lapping against the shore of a river before god
A call to vespers
Bearded figures crossing a courtyard
Garments rustling
Bare feet pounding into the dirt
As the light fades from the sky
And a wind blows, fragrant
Who dares to live outside the enclosure of time?
And steam rises from the river
Back in the early reaches of time
Before the spirit of time was broken
There is no greater purpose
Beyond the emptiness of this moment
(Last time I checked I was a child
Now I seem to be an elder of the tribe)
And after the chimes have sounded
An end to this, for now
Morag hugs me and says
“The hardest thing is to take your ego out of it.”
For what is left
Is what is left
That’s all.
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"I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
One of my jobs these days is teaching what I would call “culturization” to a class of internationally educated professionals at a place called Alberta Business and Educational Services. (Please see my post from last August, Work Work Work.) While we focus mainly on the English Language, we also spend a lot of time talking about the culture these new Canadians find themselves in. Naturally this week we spent some time talking about Easter, which in turn got me thinking about Good Fridays and Easters past and how it was celebrated in this part of Canada when I was a child.
The religious aspect is very different now from when I was a kid, say 9 years old as I was in 1966, whereas the secular side seems pretty much the same. No big surprise there, as we have changed from a fairly religious society into a secular one over the course of my lifetime.
I was raised in an Anglican household which is hardly charismatic or fundamentalist, but even so I remember Good Friday being a very serious day. Certainly in my early years we attended church on Good Friday, although that seemed to taper off as I got into my teens. Well let’s face it, the whole thing tapered off when I got into my teens. The deal made was that after confirmation, around 13 or so, you could make up your own mind, and so like most of my friends, I made up my mind not to go anymore.
If I needed any “confirmation” that I was on the right track, it came when I got to college (around 1976) and read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We all read it back then, us artsy types, as we shifted our sense of the holy from religion to art. That book, maybe more than any other, influenced my decision to spend my life in the realm of aesthetics. Back in 1976, such a pursuit precluded religion of any description. At least for many of us it did. I don’t think much has happened to change that in the last 40 years or so.
And yet I remember with some lucidity St. Peter’s Anglican Church in the old north end of Regina on Good Friday as it was in the 1960’s. Obviously there was no theatrical tradition in Regina at that time to influence my decision years later to become a playwright (the Globe Theatre, like so many Canadian theatres, was founded in the early 1970’s), but the church provided plenty of dramatics. The image I remember most vividly was the black crepe that covered all of the crosses and other iconography on Good Friday morning. “Somber” doesn’t begin to evoke the feeling it helped create in the church for that particular service. Although my mother was hardly strict, even at a young age I could tell that unwarranted displays of levity would not be appropriate and would be dealt with severely. I’m not sure that I was able to grasp the religious or theological significance of the day, but I knew something good was not happening, which in my youth made me question why on earth they called it “good” Friday in the first place.
But then things got turned around in a few days, thanks mostly the intervention of the secular component of the holiday, the Easter Bunny. This was Santa Clause’s leporine counterpart who as I understood it eschewed a reindeer-powered contrivance and simply hopped from house to house delivering chocolate bunnies and chickens and jelly beans and the like to all good children, everywhere! (We had no idea at the time that other children elsewhere in the world weren’t just like us.) He even took the time to hide them in shoes and under pillows and other places that were so clever some years we’d be still be finding stale confections well into the summer – the piano bench! My baseball glove!
It may not seem much but in those days, citizens of this part of the word did not regularly stuff themselves with sugar-based edibles. Chocolate was still something of a special treat. I read somewhere that the average serving of a Coke around that time was 8 ounces, and you might have one only a few times a week. Nowadays an average Big Gulp, a staple of some daily diets, is something like 32 ounces. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, or the slushy-berg. (The need North Americans have developed for sugar is beyond the scope of this post, to put it mildly.)
On any account, Easter came. I’m not sure when I was young if I really understood the concept of resurrection – I probably didn’t understand the concept of death, if I even do now – but importantly, beyond the religious aspect, it came with chocolate and yes, the church was transformed, the black cloth all gone, flowers everywhere, the congregation belting out a wobbly Halleluiah Chorus, hugs and handshakes all round and even the minister was smiling down on us; back home some new clothes to wear, the big meal prepared, the Lenten abstinence having come to an end so the wine was flowing (but not too much!), the air blue with cigarette smoke and pipe smoke, my brother still alive and my grandma arriving and slipping a quarter into my hand which in those days went a long way at the candy bar or, if one was of a literary bent, and being already overburdened with chocolate, towards the purchase of two Archie Comics . . .
Easter truly was a time of joy.
Thanks for reading . . . .
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I took this shot using the Hipstamatc App on my iPhone. This is what we call a lucky shot. It's taken on the steps of Grace Church by Caffe Beano.
I find it alarming to contemplate the dark thoughts some people carry around in their skulls on even the finest day. Even more alarming is their need to share these thoughts with anyone and everyone they come in contact with. Like a contagion, their gloom is spread. I always have my notebook and pen with me to create a sanitary barrier to such walking, talking contaminants. Yet, occasionally, despite my fortifications, they manage to penetrate and gain access and in the blink of an eye I too am infected with whatever bacteria they are spreading.
Why, it happened just yesterday. I quote from my journal, which in this case was not enough to protect me from infection:
Some of the people around here are starting to really piss me off. They seem compelled, driven even, like the Ancient Mariner, to share their grim stories with me.
The other day, an acquaintance of mine felt compelled to tell me about his “levels.” I have no idea what these levels pertain to, and furthermore I don’t care. Now for some reason, I know what his levels are (I believe he said 20, but 20 what, exactly, I have no idea) and now I know that at 20 they are dangerously low, or high (I can’t remember which). When pressed about my own levels, I said, “I don’t have any levels.” He replied, “Everyone has levels.” “Not me,” I said. “Are you telling me you don’t know what your levels are?“ he asked? “That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” I said, packing up my notebook and pen. “You better get to a doctor and get your levels checked,” he cautioned. “After talking to you I better get to a bar and get a drink is more like it,” I said, on my way out the door.
Suddenly I was in the wrong, not knowing what my levels are. Yeah? Well, fuck you and fuck your levels, too.
There’s always someone with a grim story to share. Today it was a person of only the most fleetingly insignificant relationship to me who felt the need to share his concern over his taxes. “Here we go,” I thought to myself, slamming shut my notebook and closing up my fountain pen.
And so began the drone of the taxes – I now feel I know as much about this man as his accountant, maybe even his wife! – droning out the cheerful chirping of the newly-returned robins on an otherwise fine spring day.
It may come as a bit of a surprise for some of you to learn that I occasionally darken the doorway of a particular church in southwest Calgary. Don’t worry, nothing too serious, just the Anglican Church. Catholic lite, one might say. All of the ceremony, none of the guilt. The 10 Suggestions. That kind of thing.
A few years ago, we had a visiting minister come in when our own man fell sick one Sunday morning, and of course we in the congregation were all mightily miffed about this. “Who’s this asshole?” we were all thinking to ourselves, especially as the sermon began. We were used to our own man Brian’s sermons which are mercifully short and always peppered with a few off-coloured jokes.
Well, the replacement preacher stood up there in the pulpit and glared down at us long enough that we were all squirming in our pews wondering collectively “What fresh hell is this” (to quote Dorothy Parker) when finally he spoke and this is what he said:
“When did you stop living and start dying?”
This was met with a somewhat lengthy and extremely uncomfortable silence. When, indeed? Maybe the hardest part about living is to embrace it, and the hardest part about dying is to ignore it.
Don’t get me wrong, at the slightest ache or pain or change to the intake/output ratio I am hardly one to suffer in silence. Just last week, on this very blog (in the poetry aisle) I waxed eloquent about my impending death, these musing being the result of a mild flu I was suffering through.
But you know what I’m saying. There has to be a limit. Sometimes – in the immortal words of my friend Bob White, quite often aimed specifically at me –sometimes it’s best just to “shut the fuck up.” Especially when you’re talking to virtual strangers, who, when you get right down to it, don’t really care anyway.
As for death and taxes, I’m trying my hardest to avoid both of them, thank you very much – even on a conversational level.
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The peeling letters on the awning indicate that even the owners didn't care about this place.
The Indigo Spirit store in Mount Royal Village has closed and few will mourn its passing. It’s hard to say now if it was a matter or arrogance or ignorance, probably a bit of both, that put landed the country’s biggest chain of bookstores, where they presumably know what they’re doing, in one of the best locations in Calgary and yet managed to fail and fail miserably. And so now they are packing up the last of their remainder books and stealing away. The beast is dead and it died not even with a whimper.
A few blocks to the south of Mount Royal Village – which, it must be noted, seems to have some sort of curse on it, as it seems to be a magnet for failing enterprises – is one of Canada’s (ie, the world’s) wealthiest and most literate neighbourhoods. All around MRV to the north, east and west are apartments filled with students, artists, seniors, in general people who like to read. One block west is Caffe Beano, one of Calgary’s most literary cafes, certainly the only one with two poetry anthologies to its credit.
Had anyone from Indigo ever bothered to sit in Caffe Beano for a few hours and check out what we were all reading, they might have fashioned a more relevant inventory and sold a few more books. Instead, it came to be known as the book store that had absolutely no books in it of interest to anyone. It was worse than what you might expect to find in a far flung suburban mall at the end of the earth.
All that said, this is no great victory, it’s just a regrettable failure. I have to admit I managed to find a few books there over the years, most notably one of my all time faves, The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. One of the clerks at Indigo, Blair, who became a friend over the years bought a copy for himself and we bonded on that. With the closing of the store, Blair is running back to Saskatoon, apparently having had enough of cowtown. The staff was great and I wish them all the best of luck. They were involved with a doomed enterprise and they all knew it, but they soldiered on.
And so Indigo Spirit is gone. Its passing will go without notice, other than this one. In the words of one of my favourite playwrights, Michael O’Brien: See ya. Hates to be ya.
Shelf Life at the corner of 4th Street and 13th Avenue SW: open for business.
All is not lost in the hood, however, as for the past few years we have been blessed with a truly wonderful independent book store, Shelf Life Books (a link can be found on the left hand side of this page).
Shelf Life is for those of us who live on the south side of the Bow River what Pages in Kensington is for those on the north side. (This isn’t an absolute, obviously. Most of us who have the book habit frequent both places quite happily.) Here the inventory matches the sensibilities of the people in the neighbourhood it is found in, just a few blocks east and a few blocks north of the now defunct Indigo.
Readings abound. Books are launched and prominently featured. Local authors (like me) can be found on the shelves (as it were). They take their place in our community seriously. In fact, just yesterday I popped in and spoke to Will, one of the owners, about launching my volume of poetry, Nocturnal Emissions, in the fall. No problem. I just have to finish writing it!
Last year when Robert Kroetsch passed away, an evening of readings and tributes was held, allowing those of us who knew Robert (he edited an anthology of short stories for Coteau Books which contains my first ever published work) some sense of closure.
In these uncertain times, these troubled times in the publishing world, when who in their right mind would open a book store, we celebrate the continuing presence of Shelf Life in our community.
So we lost one book store that had no connection to the neighbourhood it was located in, that showed no desire to get to know any of us; yet we retained a good locally-owned literary book store and cultural centre that constantly brings together the authors and book lovers who live and work in this part of town and beyond.
It’s another reminder to support our local businesses, our friends and our neighbours. Clearly this is exactly what is happening in South West Calgary. In this particular case, one can’t help but think that for once, the good guys won.
Someone said today is the first day of spring but I thought it was tomorrow. Not that today was tomorrow rather that the first day of spring was tomorrow. Lean in, lean in the wind is blowing and there is grit everywhere dust and dirt and grit the wind blowing it into your hair your mouth your eyes squinting into the weak sun the first day of spring or is it tomorrow? Tomorrow we may well ask is this today or was this yesterday this first day of spring with the wind blowing clenching our jaws shutting our eyes against the fine dust and grit blowing against you always it seems against you never with you well it swirls this wind lean in, lean in heading into spring today yes it must be or maybe tomorrow the sun too feeble to do much good the wind is cold the wind has bite it carries a fine grit with it lean in, lean in you’ll get there yet
Any writer worth his or her salt is aware of audience. You can write in your journal or on your shiny new MacBookPro but until you share what you’re writing with someone else, you haven’t completed the cycle and you’re not really writing. You need to share it. Even if it’s only an audience of one, like your husband or wife or creative writing instructor – until you’re prepared to share it, you’re not really a writer.
I was thinking of the nature of my own audience when I was looking through the origin of hits on this blog of mine this weekend. Now that I have learned how to figure this out on WordPress, I realize I have been miscalculating just who exactly has been reading these words. I assumed it would be people from Calgary, perhaps those who used to read my column in the Calgary Herald, or have seen my plays downtown, or my students, or my many Facebook friends.
Generally, that’s probably the case. And yet reviewing the origins of my hits today, I see I have had six hits so far: three from Turkey, one from Portugal (my daughter, Hanna) one from Canada and one from Taiwan. So clearly, I know nothing about my audience, about who is reading this, or why, and I am once again made to realize just how different the world is now from when I started out in my writing career.
My first encounter with an audience was with a small brave collection of souls who showed up at the old Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery at my Alma Mater, the University of Regina, to hear me read some of my poems on a cold and snowy night over 30 years ago. I don’t remember the circumstances of why I was even asked, I certainly hadn’t published anything, but there I was in with my mullet and my skinny tie reading some poems that have since been lost to the ages.
Terrifying, is all I remember about it. But at least I could see who was there. (And who wasn’t.)
(Making it all the worse, the old Norman MacKenzie Gallery was tucked in beside the Conservatory of Music at the U of R. I had just defected from the music faculty to become an English major. Of course, no one cared. But I hardly knew it that night!)
Around this time, a short story of mine was produced by the CBC and broadcast nationally. I remember being in Toronto and out for supper with some friends (the Campbell clan). We gathered around the radio and listened to my story being broadcast across the country. Who knows who even heard it? Maybe everybody! Maybe nobody. But I was certainly filled with a great sense of my own self-importance that night like I’ve probably never felt since. That night on the subway home, I felt like Pierre Burton or something. It’s hard to impress on readers of this blog at this point in time the importance of the CBC in the development of a writer’s career. The CBC! The production values! Sea to sea to sea! And the money was nothing to sneeze at, either!
That night on my way home, with the sonorous tones of the PROFESSIONAL ACTOR who had read my little story reverberating in my young brain, I clearly thought I was destined to greatness.
Suddenly the entire country was my audience. What could possibly stop me??
There followed a career in the theatre (which as far as I know is still ongoing). The blessing and the curse of the playwright is that you have no choice but to be very aware of your audience. You’re sitting right there with them as they experience your work of art. (Or in my case, pacing up and down at the back of the theatre, sweating it out.) You know if you’ve succeeded, that’s for sure. But even more acutely, you know if you’ve failed.
Public humiliation is never pleasant, and there’s no worse a feeling than to be sitting in the theatre when your play is going down like the Titanic despite the brave efforts of your cast.
Writing for a newspaper is interesting. My column in the Herald came out in the Saturday paper. I remember one of the early weeks, I found myself in a coffee shop watching a gentleman as he read the paper while drinking his morning coffee. I watched and waited. Finally he got to the Entertainment section. My heart raced. He got to the page my column appeared on, frowned, maybe even grimaced, then put the section aside and moved on to Sports. So much for that!
But I guess a few people read it over the years. Recently, I was stopped in the Co-op store by a little old lady who told me how much she loves the column and how she reads it every week. Well, I haven’t written in the Herald for a few years now, so I asked her if she was still reading it and she said, “Yes, every week. Wouldn’t miss it.” You can’t very well call a little old lady a dirty stinking liar so I didn’t press the issue. But you can see it makes it hard to know with any certainty just who is reading what.
And now this. This internet thing. I just checked my hits again and I have a new one, this one from Mexico. What gives with that? Am I on the verge of becoming an international sensation? Or are there simply people everywhere and anywhere who magically or accidentally hit the right buttons so that my blog suddenly appears on their computer screen? Don’t they have anything better to do? For that matter, don’t I? Maybe not . . . .
I really don’t know. I have to admit that I really don’t know who my audience is. If I ever did. So what can I say, but – whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your reasons for reading this – thanks for reading?! As long as someone is reading it, I’ll keep writing it.
See you again soon.
I am preparing for a performance this evening with Calgary Poet Laureate Chris Demeanor at the ironically named Oilman’s Review (volume 5). I mentioned this event in my last post. It’s taking place in the now defunct Indigo Store in Mount Royal Village which I wrote a post on about a month or so ago.
eugene stickland 
