It’s not heaven, it’s the old Met Grill. I like the colour of the lights
Ask any writer and he’ll tell you, or she’ll tell you, that beginnings are easy but endings can be brutally difficult. I was thinking of this last week in regards to the final scene of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s life. I don’t know if it was tragic, exactly. I suppose there can be tragic accidents. Certainly it was messy and far from elegant. And so very sad. Not at all the kind of ending anyone would want for their worst enemy, let alone an artist who touched so many lives during his wonderful career.
17 years ago or so, Phil, as I knew him, and I both ended up at a play-reading marathon sponsored by the Manhattan Class Company, which took place at an old monastery on the far end of Long Island. (That I got a ride out there with the amazing Kathleen Chalfant is another story entirely. What a truly beautiful woman she is. That was a brush with greatness like no other.)
At that time, Phil and I were near, at least, the beginnings of our careers. I had had a couple of hits in Calgary, and those plays were being done in other theatres across the land. I thought I had done well to get the attention of a New York theatre and an invitation to such an event. I was there with my play A Guide to Mourning. Phil, who was certainly in the ascendancy of his career, was cast as Rex in my play, a down-on-his-luck-but-loveable-loser-of-no-fixed-address character who comes back to the family home on the occasion of his father’s death. (The play is published in Two Plays by Eugene Stickland by Red Deer College Press.)
Well, if you know his work, you would know such a role wasn’t too big a stretch for Phil. He actually looked the part. He gave a wonderful reading, and genuinely seemed to like the play. I always hoped that the company would produce it and get Phil to play the part, but for a number of reasons (which I never really understood), that never came to be.
Over the course of that weekend, we heard a number of plays read. We lived rather communally in the monastery, taking our meals together and generally getting to know one another. It was really a magical event in my life.
(Isn’t it strange to think how in only ten years, Facebook has changed our ability to stay in touch with one another after such events have ended. “I’ll add you on Facebook,” we say, and we do. But back then, people didn’t really expect to stay in touch, and we didn’t. I only retained one friend from that weekend, a director from New York. We still stay in touch, but not on Facebook, by email. Oh, and I once emailed Kathleen, and she even remembered me and wrote back.)
On any account, back on Long Island, in the evenings, we would haul a big metal tub full of ice and beer down to the water’s edge and there we would congregate around a bonfire as the sun went down and the waves of the Atlantic Ocean washed up on shore.
Well, I’m not the kind of person to leave when there is still beer in the tub, so to speak, and neither was Phil. For at least two nights, we were the last two standing, or sitting, probably, enjoying a few beers and some conversation under the canopy of stars after all the others had gone off to bed.
It was just the way it would be between two guys, a writer and an actor, say, just hanging out. He was hardly famous at the time, although soon to be so. And I was just a playwright from a city in Canada that some of those New Yorkers had never even heard of. We weren’t out to impress each other. We were just chillin’, in the best sense of the word. I’m not saying he was my best friend, just that for that brief period of time we got to hang out together, I genuinely liked him. He was a good guy. His death saddened and somehow diminished me. I know so many people who feel the same.
Sometime after I got home, back in the day when I was still married, my wife, Carrie, was watching a movie on tv. I walked through the room and wasn’t I surprised to see Phil on the screen? And so I said, “Hey, that’s Phil!”
She looked at me rather coldly and said, “Phil? That’s not Phil. That’s Philip Seymour Hoffman.” I had never known his full name, or if I had, I had forgotten it. So I said, “Whatever you want to call him, he and I drank a mess of beers on Long Island last year.”
End of conversation.
So it seemed that Phil had gone his way, obviously right to the top. I returned to Canada and we produced A Guide to Mourning at Alberta Theatre Projects with Dennis Fitzgerald playing the part of Rex. Dennis was every bit as good as Phil had been in the role. And come to think of it, Dennis and I drank a whole mess of beers together, too! Our production even won some awards and the play went on to be produced a number of times, mostly in Canada, but never in New York.
Throughout the intervening years, I saw so many examples of Phil’s escalating fame, and I was so happy for him. While he was becoming a household name and a true celebrity, my life didn’t really change that much. I was a father, still am. (A good father, not such a great husband.) I taught. I kept writing plays. I wrote for a newspaper for five years. Now I’m waiting for another new play to get produced (it will be my 19th) and have started work on a new new play. I’m writing a novel. I’m writing this blog. But I don’t really expect any of these things to change my life or lead to the kind of fame that Phil had.
Admittedly, over the years, when I struggled to pay my rent, there were times when I must have envied Phil and his flirtation with what Tennessee William called “the bitch-goddess, success.” But now I just feel bad for the ending that he had and I realize that I don’t have it so bad myself. It reminds me of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.”
And so, bereft of fame and fortune which so far have eluded me (especially fortune), I will soldier on, towards what ever end awaits me. I don’t mind if it doesn’t come anytime soon, as I feel I still have much work to do. But whenever it comes, I will hope for a better ending than Phil got for himself.
I took this in Moose Jaw on a trip back a few years ago.
Last weekend I gave a reading and conducted a workshop at the Rascals, Rogues and Outlaws Writers’ Conference presented by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and the University of Saskatchewan at the U of S in Saskatoon. My fellow readers were novelists Catherine Bush from Toronto and Rosemary Nixon from Calgary (currently living in Saskatoon) and poet Alex Porco who now hangs his hat in North Carolina. I believe we all acquitted ourselves admirably and those in attendance seemed to come away with something to think about. Maybe even some of them were inspired by what they saw on stage to go home and take another shot at writing the Great Canadian Novel.
Beyond the conference itself, the weekend hit at me at a deeper level, at more or less a patriotic or nationalistic level, as for me in going back to Saskatchewan, I was going back home. Of course I’m from Regina, the Capitol, the Athens of Saskatchewan, and as such am normally bound by the traditions of the province to sneer at Saskatoon, but in this instance I was only too happy to dispense with that rather empty ritual. (Just this once, mind you.)
I am of the finest Saskatchewan pedigree. My father’s people came over from England in the very early days of the 20th Century. Grandpa, whom I never met, set up a forge in the bucolically-named town of Maryfield in the south-eastern part of the province. My mother’s people had homesteaded around the same time in the Alsask region. My grandma and grandpa eventually bought a farm in the Broadview area and that’s where my mother was raised.
My mom’s dad, William Hunter, was said to have been a mover and a shaker in the formation of the CCF Party, precursor to the NDP. I once heard a rumour that the Regina Manifesto was actually typed on his typewriter, but I have no way of proving that. You can see I came by my politics honestly.
By the time my sister and brothers and I came along, our mom and dad were living in the old north end of Regina, in the shadow of Taylor Field. Well, two blocks away. When they moved in, it was a prosperous working class (with pretensions to middle class) neighbourhood. By the time they moved out, down to the south end, it was called by Maclean’s Magazine the worst neighbourhood in Canada. Well, things change.
When I was in university, at the University of Regina, I was a pretentious, mustachioed, tweed-clad, pipe-smoking twit with no greater dream than to get the hell out of Regina and move to Toronto. And I did that. I went to York University and got myself an MFA in playwriting and dramaturgy at York University.
It grieves me, as a westerner at heart, to say that I had a great time in Toronto and that I believe it’s one of the best cities anywhere, in any country. But it really is a wonderful place, at least it was back in the ‘80’s. And yet, I looked around me one day, actually I looked above me, and I couldn’t see the sky, and I realized I hadn’t seen it for some time. So I moved back home in the late 1980’s. Really, on account of the sky.
I tried to make a go of it, but those were disasterous times for Saskatchewan economically. I tried to make it but I just couldn’t. So when I had an offer to have a play of mine produced in Calgary, I did like hundreds of thousands (yes, literally) of my fellow Saskatchewanians have done over the decades and took the Trans Canada west to Calgary. And here I have been now for 20 years.
Where does the time go?
Coming to Calgary led to two of the best writing gigs in the country, at the time. First, as playwright in residence at Alberta Theatre Projects and then as a feature columnist for the Calgary Herald. (Sadly, neither really exists anymore, in quite the same way. This blog is in many ways a continuation of that column. I haven’t figured out how to get them to pay me for it, though.)
When I began at the Herald, my publisher told me there are over 300,000 people in Calgary originally from Saskatchewan. It’s often referred to as Saskatchewan’s biggest city. “So govern yourself accordingly,” he said. And I did. I wrote primarily to a Saskatchewan audience. Well, pan-prairie on any account. But don’t get me wrong. I never would have had the type of career I’ve had if I hadn’t come to Calgary when I did. I was in the right place at the right time.
I have many good friends in Calgary and I love the city. It drives me nuts sometimes, but any city will do that. It’s a great city, a great place to live. After all, 300,000 of us Saskatchewan immigrants can’t be wrong.
Still, in going back to the homeland, something tugs at the heartstrings, some kind of inherent sense of kinship, of belonging, that exists quite beneath the realm of thought or awareness. I suppose no matter where you grew up, you feel it when you get back to your original home.
It’s healthy, I think, to celebrate that feeling. I always say, if you want to know where your home is, look at your health card. That will tell you all you need to know. But when I look to my heart, I know that my true home will always lie a few hundred miles east of here.
There’s a poem that I made from a monologue from a play of mine that I meant to read on the weekend, but that I never got around to. Don’t worry, I’m not about to keel over and die, at least I hope not, but the poem sums up the elegiac feeling I’m referring to. So here it is again. (Looking over at my poetry page, I am reminded I read this as part of my eulogy for my mother at her funeral a few years back.)
Home
It’s an issue of space.
You start out on the farm,
That great, vast prairie
To run and tumble in
The endless horizon
And the great dome of the sky
Boundless, unfettered.
But your mother calls you back
Back into the house
And it’s a big fine house
With many rooms
Sheltering a family, a home.
And then you muddle around and
The space around you expands and
Contracts to the seasons of your life
Your enterprise.
Yet at a certain point
You feel the walls begin
To close in around you
From a house
To an apartment
To a room in a home
Until finally
You are left
In just the smallest of spaces
A wooden box
And the prairie opens up
And you are lowered down into it
Home again
The circle complete.
______________________
Thanks for reading.
Here’s my old buddy Jack Semple, one of Saskatchewan and Canada’s finest musicians. This is from the Ironwood here in Calgary, but he still lives back home. We went to Scott Collegiate together, back in the day.
An arty shot I took of downtown Calgary. The Calgary tower was originally known as the Husky Tower, emblematic of the importance of the oil and gas industry in the city.
Neil Young and his Honor the Treaties tour is moving west, arriving in Calgary this Sunday evening. The tour has certainly opened a conversation here in the heart of oil country, and in my own case, raises questions about the sponsorship of the arts, and in some cases of individual artists, by companies in, as it is known out here, the oil patch.
This is a topic rarely discussed by artists, other than privately, over a few beers, as it speaks to an uneasy tension that we have learned to live with – the need for funding for expensive art forms such as theatre on one hand, and on the other, an uneasy and growing awareness that this money represents some very serious devastation of the environment, especially in the Fort McMurray area in the northern part of Alberta. Not to mention the ongoing and similarly uneasy tension between oil companies and first nations people in the area.
It’s a balance that is so delicate that it is rarely “officially” spoken of by artists; nor is it often dealt with as content for artistic expression. I can attest to this. I set a play of mine, Midlife (2002) in the corporate offices of a Calgary oil company, but it was hardly critical of the industry.
Except I have to admit that the play contains this speech, made by Jack who is an oil company executive to explain (lie) to his wife why he is coming in at 5:00AM:
There was a situation . . . A crisis. Yeah. There was a crisis. In production. That sounds reasonable. A crisis in production. International implications. A corrupt dictatorship. Violations of human rights all over the place. Atrocities. They hung a poet. Same old story . . .
An oblique reference to Ken Saro-Wiwa that probably got a laugh. Although obviously meant to be ironic, I’m not sure how I feel about that now.
I published around 250,000 words in the Calgary Herald in a column in which I could write about anything I chose, but I never chose to the write about the oil patch. My writing appears in many other publications, as well as this blog, which represents another 100,000 words or so. But I have never written about the situation. Until now.
I arrived in Calgary 20 years ago. I made a splashy entrance, having written a hit play for Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites ’94 Festival (titled Some Assembly Required) which at the time was sponsored by Shell Oil. Oil company sponsorship of the arts was all new to me. I had spent my formative years in Saskatchewan, where there was very little in the way of oil production and not a lot of talk about it. It was all about wheat and potash, back in the day.
I left Regina to attend York University (MFA, 1984) in Toronto and remained there essentially throughout the ’80’s. I suppose I was a typical self-absorbed young artist in those days, more concerned about making my mark in the world than anything else. One organization I worked with at the time, Frontier College, got involved with Imperial Oil for sponsorship of one of its programs, but that certainly didn’t lead to any awareness of where oil came from or how it was produced, Imperial or otherwise.
I don’t know if I was simply naïve, but I had very little frame of reference for the political or business climates of Alberta when I arrived on these shores a few decades ago. But make no mistake: when you live here, it’s all about oil and gas. It drives the economy and to a certain extent the entire culture of this city and the province as a whole.
Early on in my tenure as Playwright in Residence at ATP, in 1995, over in Nigeria the above-mentioned writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed and the reportage at the time and since certainly implicated Shell Oil in what has since been recognized around the world as an extreme travesty of justice. Obviously, we writers are a little sensitive when one of our fellow scribes gets strung up, and suddenly I was a little uncomfortable with my new gig.
One evening, I had the opportunity to ask an executive from Shell about the situation and he explained to me that the incident had nothing to do with his company, Shell Canada – that it was Royal Dutch Shell, or Shell International, or some such. And he agreed with me that it was a terrible situation, but there was no sense at all of culpability on behalf of the Canadian company.
Well, friends, so much for my inquiry. If I felt any moral outrage I suppressed it. Here in Calgary, I was in an extremely fortunate position, the envy of playwrights around the world, to be paid to write plays, and not only write them, but then to see them produced by a good theatre company in a beautiful theatre. After all, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Shell gave way to PanCanadian Petroleum which doesn’t exist anymore which in turn gave way to Enbridge. All of these companies have supported the arts in Alberta. In the case of Enbridge, no one can deny their generosity or their community spirit. They are, as they like to think of themselves, good corporate citizens.
On one occasion, I happened to be in the office of a senior VP at Enbridge, interviewing him for another publication. It was a cold morning in Calgary. From his office high above the city in one of the glass towers downtown, we could see the smoke rising from the chimneys of a thousand offices and homes, and as we looked out at the city from his office, he said to me, “Everyone loves to hate us. But no one wants to wake up in a cold house on a day like this.”
Looking back at the situation here only a few years ago, you could say there was a golden time in Alberta. Oil production was driving the economy, making it probably the strongest in Canada, and beyond, and there was sufficient support of the arts and other community endeavours so that those of us not involved in the industry could see the benefits and overlook the problems.
But lately, it’s become harder and harder to overlook the types of concerns that Neil Young and company are addressing as their Honor the Treaties tour wends its way west into the heart of oil country. Even an impartial observer would have to agree that the mega projects up in the Fort McMurray area are hardly beneficial to the environment, to put it mildly. And as the environment of the northern boreal forest is very delicate, the risk of irreversible devastation seems very great: an accident waiting to happen, if it hasn’t already.
Factor into the equation the fact that these lands are the home and habitat of first nations people, who may or may not be benefiting from this industrial activity, depending on whom you talk to.
And then, if things weren’t complicated and explosive enough, we now find that our federal government seems intent on shutting down all scientific monitoring of the situation, leading many Canadians, especially those close to the scene, to believe that the fox is now monitoring the situation in the hen house, and will be sending us impartial reports from time to time.
At times, it’s hard to believe we are talking about Canada — the true, north strong and free — and not some third world dictatorship.
Enter Neil Young. He is certainly not making any friends for himself in the oil patch, but I hardly think that was his goal. Whether you admire him or revile him, he has opened up a dialogue and done what we like to think an artist does in our society – he’s held up a mirror for us to see ourselves from a different perspective. But this could only have been done, I think, by an artist who doesn’t live in Alberta (or even in Canada) and who is in no way dependant on our economy for his own survival.
Like many of my colleagues and friends, I am not comfortable with the development of the tar sands, the way it is happening and its effect on the environment. I am deeply troubled by the war on science currently being waged by our federal government, which will make it increasingly difficult to know just what is happening up there, exactly. And I am concerned about the fate of aboriginal people in the area.
Yet at the same time, I am not prepared to be a total hypocrite about the matter either. Most playwrights I know, for example, (myself included) would find it extremely difficult to say no to a production on account of support from the oil patch of the producing company. I haven’t heard of it happening yet.
For my own part, I’ve been working on a novel this last year which to a certain extent shields me from the question of corporate sponsorship which I suppose is a blessing and a curse. And yet, I received a grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts to complete that novel last summer. I’m not so delusional to think that that money didn’t come, one way or another, from the oil patch.
At a dinner party the other evening that was attended by a number of people, none of them directly involved in oil and gas production, I asked if any of them (if any of us) could honestly say there is no oil on our money, no smears of bitumen on the bills in our pockets. No one could.
So where does that leave us?
Well, as artists, you would have to say in admiration of Neil Young for shining a light on a dark and ugly issue. As citizens, it becomes a little more complicated. Everyone likes to have a roof over their head, everyone likes to eat, everyone likes to drive their car or truck to work. (An addiction I overcame 2 years ago, for what it’s worth.) How you can accomplish any of that in Alberta in 2014 in isolation from the oil and gas industry is a mystery to me.
Personally, I doubt that it can be done.
And so, it would seem that the uneasy tensions will persist. But at least now, thanks to Mr. Young and company, we’re talking about it.
Thanks for reading.
I wanted to share my favourite Neil Young song here (Powderfinger) but would ask you to watch this brief video on Ken Saro-Wiwa instead.
I made a rookie mistake the other day – that is, I ended up in a crowded restaurant alone at the Friday lunch hour. Anyone who is single, often solitary as I am these days, will tell you that the Friday lunch is one to avoid at all costs. That’s when people from offices and businesses and whatnot go out together for lunch, exacerbating the aloneness, if not the loneliness, of the solitary diner. Or luncher, as the case may be.
I should have seen it coming. As I say, it was a rookie mistake. But rather than give into the alienation and isolation that such a predicament can engender, I cleverly multiplicated myself, Sybil like, into several different personalities and held an informal meeting of EugeniusCorp®™ . The minutes of our meeting are as follows.
El Gordo (the Big One), CEO of EugeniusCorp®™ welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming. He said he was “deeply honoured” and “humbled” to be involved in such an “extraordinary, extraordinary” (yes, he said extraordinary twice) venture. No one really believed him.
He continued (droning on and on) saying that he felt that the EugeniusCorp®™ brand was actually “gaining some tractionvis-a-vis market recognition,” citing the unexpected friend request from a hot babe in Ontario on LinkedIn as evidence of “continued growth and prosperity.”
At this point, someone threw a chopstick at El Gordo and he sat back down and thankfully shut up. Next up was the beleaguered and faintly-reeking-of-gin CFO to give the financial report.
“You’ve seen the numbers, gentlemen, and the numbers tell a grim story,” he intoned. “Harumphs” all round, downcast eyes all round. “I would remind you that there are two sides to our ledger, gentlemen: expenses and income. One of these is very full, and busy, robust, even. The other is very, shall we say, ‘thin,’ barren, austere, even. I don’t have to tell you which is which. At the rate we’re going, we’ll soon be scavenging for rotten vegetables in the dumpster behind this very establishment of we wish to eat.”
He finished his report saying, “There will be no spring rolls today. And no pop: water. That’s where places like this make all their money: on the pop. And not bottled water either: tap. GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.”
This gloomy report brought a heaviness to the table, but then all present realized it was actually a much rosier report than we had last year at this time, so the proceedings continued, tinted with a shade of “cautious optimism.”
Then came the report from the head of the social committee, who rose and simply said, “Nothing to report at this time.” And sat back down with a heavy sigh.
The COO reported next, saying that the physical plant was a mess, the laundry is out of control, the vacuuming has been shoddy, the right crisper holds something that looks like it is in danger of mutating into a new life form, and the sink is full of dirty dishes. An informal motion was passed to at least take care of the laundry, as EugeniusCorp®™ was running out of clean underwear.
The educational outreach finally had some positive news with word that the EugeniusCorp®™ Writing for Millions®™ course being offered at St. Mary’s University College was well subscribed and that the instructor was managing to stay one chapter ahead of the students – for now.
The Governmental affairs officer gave a brief report on the state of the Canada Council proposal. “Like peasants working in a field of mud in the Dark Ages,” he said, “we look for signs and portents in the flight patterns of birds and the moss growing on the trees. Not that there is much moss in downtown Calgary, but you get the idea. We check the mail everyday, but still no word. All we can say at this point is that no news is good news, but such hopeful thinking hardly pays the rent.”
Finally, the production manager gave his report. The output for EugeniusCorp®™ of late has been “prodigious,” he stated, lying through his teeth. Citing the inclusion of an Instagram photo in Avenue Magazine this month, he said “Our hard work is starting to pay off. This, and the many well-crafted Status Updates on Facebook are a testimony to the discipline and work ethic of EugeniusCorp®™ as a whole.”
When asked about the progress of the novel, the production manager reminded all assembled that it took James Joyce seven years to complete Ulysses, and that “you can’t hurry great art.”
All in all, a successful meeting and we managed to survive lunch without spilling too much sate chicken soup on our new white shirt.
It looks like another bountiful year ahead!
Here’s a song by a wonderful musician, a wonderful exploration of the number one.
It is January, the beginning of a new year, and as I look ahead I find myself peering into a very unfamiliar landscape and sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder at the randomness and uncertainty of it all.
It’s possible that I inadvertently kicked off a year of change when I got my hair chopped off in mid December. I joke that I’m all about my hair, and to a certain extent that’s true I guess. There’s a sense of public ownership of my hair, which sounds insane but that’s just how it is.
I found this out about five years ago when I got fed up with having long hair and was on my way to get it all cut off. En route, I ran into a couple of friends, both of them prominent businessmen in Calgary. They asked me where I was going and I told them, at which point they blanched and spit out their coffee and expressly forbade me from going any further in the enterprise.
“We can’t have our hair long, by virtue of our profession. We can’t dress all weird and eccentric. But you can, and so in this way we feel we can express ourselves. Through you and in particular, your hair.”
Honestly, I don’t make this shit up, that was actually said to me (or words to that effect) and so I didn’t cut it then, knowing that it had become some kind of symbol that went far beyond the hairs sprouting out from my scalp. Finally, though, I simply had to say enough is enough, and so destroyed the dreams of freedom and rebellion of my friends.
Now I find, people look at me differently, treat me differently. I can’t explain it, exactly, it’s all rather new. But I like it. I like the idea of switching things up and having a new set of variables to work with.
Looking back, last year was really a wonderful year. I received a grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts to finish a novel I had been working on. The novel, titled The Piano Teacher, is about a concert pianist, and so part of my process last summer involved rediscovering the piano, playing a little each day before I started writing.
I actually began my university career at the University of Regina a million years ago as a piano student before switching into English – a move that has served me well, I would have to think. Still, there is a certain nostalgia to going back and playing the pieces I was working on then. Trying to, at least. The fingers aren’t quite as nimble as they were 40 years ago.
Going into 2014, I would have thought it would be straight sailing into the deeper waters of novel writing and publishing – creating a second draft, finding an editor, deciding how I want to go about publishing it, etc. etc. And while all that is still happening, a number of other unexpected things have come across my path, and this is why I say looking ahead, I don’t necessarily recognize the landscape.
One is the possibility of working on a television series – writing, of course – and any more than that, I’m not allowed to say lest I should get my white ass sued off. (Other than to say, I have some very interesting homework.)
The other involves collaborating with a musician friend, writing lyrics for a heavy metal concept album. As you can perhaps appreciate, this is very new territory for me, very new indeed, and one which I never thought I’d find myself hopscotching through. And yet, I find the possibility intriguing, and you know what they say – you only live once. YOLO indeed. But it’s true, you do only live once, and the trick to that is to do things to ensure that you’re truly alive and not just taking up space.
Incidentally, when I mentioned the possibility of this on Facebook the other day, I was immediately swamped with general “likes” as well as the names of specific bands and songs that I simply must listen to in order to gain any understanding at all of the genre. This is a very serious sub-culture and I think my exploration of it will contribute to what would appear to be a fascinating year looming ahead.
Certainty, the arrogance of surety, security as a precursor to smugness – all of these are desirable at some level, yet all are the enemy of the artistic process. Looking ahead, I don’t know whether to shit or go blind; wind my watch or howl at the moon. There’s no road map here. In fact, there isn’t so much as a road.
I wouldn’t have it an other way.
Now, combining the best of both worlds, ie classical and metal music, please consider the following . . .
This photo of the big guy and me was taken in the old Simpson’s store in downtown Regina around 1960.
I didn’t want to leave Mr. Grumpypants sitting on my blog throughout the Christmas season, and so this is just a brief note to wish all of you who read this labour of love of mine the best of the holiday season. And also, to share somewhat shamelessly my favourite Christmas song, featuring the incomparable Jessye Norman.
When I wrote for the Calgary Herald, I always took great pleasure in writing my column at Christmas time. I think my favourite theme was the lighting of candles at the time of the winter solstice – the longest night of the year – and the laudable qualities assigned to four of those candle in the advent season of peace, joy, hope and love.
Well, that still stands, but I would have to admit that my enthusiasm for the season has waned somewhat over the last few years. When I had a family I took great pride (and joy) in finding the perfect tree and decorating it with ornaments collected through the years, many of them from the trees of my childhood.
But for the last few years I haven’t bothered dragging the box of lights and decorations out from the storage room, let alone foraging for a tree. It’s a symptom of living alone, I suppose. Rather like cooking, it’s not so much fun when you have no one to share it with.
Yet, while that sounds gloomy (and there have been years when it’s been very gloomy, indeed) it’s not as bad as it seems. There comes a point in your life when you learn to see beyond the plastic baubles and the tinsel to the heart of the matter, and see things as they really are.
For me, this is the certain knowledge that I am blessed in my life to have a wonderful daughter, a brother and sister and their families whom I love dearly, and so many friends, so many wonderful and distinct friends, such an eclectic collection of talented people in my life, that really, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more.
And so I still go back to those four elusive qualities represented by the flickering flames in midwinter – peace, joy, hope and love – and I wish all of these for you and the ones you love throughout Christmas time and beyond into 2014.
Ahhh, gentle readers, just as most of us are getting ready for the festive season, our hearts and our toes warm and safe as we conspire by the fire and all that nonsense, what rough beast should hove through my awareness, slouching toward Bethlehem, his hour come ‘round at last, than Herr Grumpius Pantalonius, aka Mr. Grumpypants.
Through an obscure clause written into a publication contract I signed years ago with a now defunct publisher in Austria, Bürgerschaäck Publicazione – you may remember they published my third novel titled I Was Happy Till You Came Along Now Look At Me! – which of course went on to sell several dozen copies before the plot was shamelessly stolen and reworked into the highly lucrative Broadway musical, The Wealthy Barber of Seville.
On any account, through that clause, I am at the mercy of Mr. Grumpypants to afford him space on this, my otherwise quite civilized blog, whenever he bloody well pleases, and so without further fanfare, here is his latest missive.
Enjoy!
Despite the raging storm without, I took myself within the warm confines of my favourite coffee shop, hoping to avail myself of the peace and camaraderie therein to lay down a few words in my daily journal. A simple, modest goal, for of course, I am a simple, modest man.
The coffee shop was crowded that day, my friends. Not so much with patrons, but with all of their coats and galoshes and mittens and toques and fancy-shmancy Macintosh computers and their skinny wet lattes etc. etc. etc.
At first glance, I thought my purpose was to no avail, but then I spotted a table seemingly bereft of habitation, and so I made my way towards it, rather like a hungry leopard stealthily making its way towards a bleeding antelope on the savannah.
When I approached, however, I stopped in my tracks, for at the table sat a petulant young boy, busy playing with a new 5 dollar bill, pushing it sadly across the table top, dreamily transforming it in his unformed imagination into 1992 Ford Taurus.
At the table next over, like, a completely separate table, was a person of the female persuasion who seemed to be the young creature’s mother. I stopped. I looked at him. I looked at her. Through what I assumed was very eloquent body language, I stood in the attitude of one waiting for something to be done about something that needed to be done, but with no success.
I cleared my throat. The woman didn’t look up, wouldn’t look up, the boy was steadfast in his purpose of endlessly sliding the five dollar bill across the tabletop to what end, I’m sure I have no idea.
Finally, the woman deigned to looked up, somewhat quizzically, as if it say, “What the fuck do you want?” And so, my words dripping with treacly charm, I asked, as polite as I possibly could, “I wonder if I might possibly sit at that table. It’s quite crowded in here today.”
Well, you or I, dear reader, would have grabbed the kid and the fiver and hauled him back over to the table he should have been sitting at in the first place. But did this happen? Oh no. Oh no no no. Of course not.
Instead, what happened was the woman, using that annoying high nasal whiny voice some parents use on their children, asked the kid, “Would it be ok if the gentleman sits at your table, sweetie?” And then we all had to look at a three year old while he made up his tiny mind on the matter.
Finally, the kid shrugged his shoulders and moved around so he was now sitting on the bench, which is just where I had been thinking of parking my own ass. And then he just sat there and glared at me. Three fucking years old and he already knows he’s in charge!
I looked at the woman, and this is what I wanted to say. “Listen, bitch. Don’t go asking questions of three year olds because the answer isn’t going to be anything any of us wants to live with. Just do the right thing for once in your wretched career as a mother and get your kid to sit at your table with you. And maybe close the fucking computer for ten minutes and talk to your kid so maybe he won’t become a fucking stupid inconsiderate monster like his mother.”
I couldn’t get that out, of course. I could only sputter and stammer as I found myself backing away from the scene of what I considered to be a terrible crime.
I found another table, with time. And then noticed that as patron after tableless patron came by her table, and the kid’s table, that never once did it occur to her that she and her ugly kid were fucking up everyone’s day.
THIS IS A FUCKING SOCIETY, LADY. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. OPEN YOUR EYES AND START DOING THE RIGHT THING FOR A CHANGE. WHAT THE FUCK’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?!
I mean, really. Is it asking too much?
Ahhh.
There.
That certainly feels better.
_________________________________
Well, thank you for that enlightening bit of whatever that was, Mr. Pants.
Now, with your kind permission, I will throw another yule log on the old fire and have another egg nog and we can all get on with our peace on earth, goodwill towards men activities.
It came from a few chance meetings on the street. I ran into Dave Trimble the other day and we had a lovely “Hail fellow, well met” moment and said “Great to see you, it’s been too long, we really must get together, stay in touch, yadda yadda” and then we went our separate ways.
In fact, we parted company quite certain in the knowledge that we probably wouldn’t get together any time soon. It’s not like we’re best friends, although we genuinely like each other and spend time well together. Life is busy and people move on and yet . . . In saying good bye to each other the way we did that day, we were both somehow tacitly acknowledging the fact that in the absence of the Auburn Saloon, we might well never get together, ever again. Sad, really.
For those who don’t know, the Auburn Saloon was Calgary’s arts bar of choice for almost twenty years, which unexpectedly closed its doors just less than a year ago. The Auburn’s history was written in two chapters, really. The first ten years, when it was located in the north side of the Teatro building on Olympic Plaza, and the second ten years when it moved to its final location in the Tower Centre.
During its first ten years, when I was a more than regular fixture there, it was almost exclusively a theatre bar. It’s where we went after shows. Or sometimes before shows. Or during shows. You get the idea. We went there a lot. The whole theatre community went there and this led to a wonderful cross-pollination of artists and ideas that became a critical component in the rise of the theatre we saw in Calgary in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Suddenly Calgary had a theatre scene and the Auburn was its epicentre. I’m not making this up. In 2001, the bar was awarded a Betty Mitchell Award for its contribution to the Calgary theatre community. The award was accepted by its original owner, Lawrence Romanoski and its second and final owner, Jesse Glasnovic.
The time we had in the original location could probably be considered the Auburn’s golden age, but we soldiered on in the new location. While it remained a theatre bar at heart, the next ten years saw a number of different art forms find their expression in the bar, in particular the Spoken Work Festival, Poetry Slams, Single Onion Poetry and others. From the early days, there was always art of the walls. There was also a brief flirtation with jazz and other musical events. And please, don’t get me started on the dreaded salsa nights.
Such expansion and search for a larger clientele was a fact of life, I guess, and it came down to a question of loyalty underscored by an ongoing financial crisis. The new larger location simply couldn’t survive on the patronage of the theatre community alone; and yet the theatre community often resented the presence of anyone else in their unofficial clubhouse. This was a tension that Jesse had to live with for too long, until finally the thing fell apart. No one’s fault, really. It’s just how it was.
Oh well, move on.
But as Joni Mitchell so famously said, “Don’t it always seem to go, seems you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone . . .”
On any account, a few weeks after my encounter with Dave Trimble, I ran into Jim Leyden on the street. A cold day. But good to see each other. (Playwrights, you know . . . we tend to take a parochial interest in people who have been in our plays. Jim was in my play The Hen House at Lunchbox Theatre a million years ago. (Trimble had been in a ten minute play I wrote even before that.) Yes indeed, the old “Lunchbucket.” Back in the days of Bow Valley Square. Johanne Deleeuw had just taken over. Bob White and I walked over from ATP to do that play. I’m sure the whole scheme was hatched late one night in the Auburn. Seems like a long time ago.)
And so Jim and I said, “Great to see you, it’s been too long, we really must get together, stay in touch, yadda yadda.” We started to walk away, our own separate ways, but then we both just stopped and turned and looked at each other, you know how you do. And then Jim said, “Maybe we should try to get some kind of get-together happening.” And I said “Yeah, maybe we should.”
Long story short, we have.
This Monday (December 16), at the Kensington Pub, we are having an event called The Spirit of the Auburn. Jim said he would make the arrangements, I said I would put something up on Facebook. Although we didn’t want to exclude our friends from Dirty Laundry, we decided on a Monday evening. We figured if we could get 50 people, we would go ahead with it.
We got our 50 people and then some, so we are going ahead with it.
What’s amazed me, maybe not surprised me but certainly amazed me, has been the passion of the activity on the Facebook event page. After a few somewhat cursory inquiries, things have really started to heat up.
Probably the main reason for this is the fact that Brian Jensen got involved. Brian is an honourary Auburn alumni, not only an actor, but a wonderful photographer with many, many photos of the Auburn and its habitués, on his hard drive. After a few days of the existence of the “Event” on Facebook, Brian (and then others) started adding photos on a regular basis and the feeling of nostalgia became palpable.
One interesting thing about the photos: digital cameras and smart phones must have come into existence during the time the Auburn was in the Tower Centre location. Photos from the original location are harder to come by. Except for the one I’ve posted above, taken by Vicki Stroich on the final night of playRights 2000. Seeing that photo makes me think maybe it’s just as well there aren’t more photos from back in the day. What the hell was I doing up there, anyway?!
How to describe, adequately, the importance of the Auburn Saloon in the Calgary theatre community? And how to express our collective feeling of loss? Or our respect and love (yes, actually love) for Jesse Glasnovic?
I don’t have the words. I think we’re all finding more and more that the loss is virtually incalculable on many different levels. I guess we’ll find out on Monday if there’s any forward gear left on this baby, or if it really only exists in the rear view mirror.
It’s easy to avoid or shun the eccentrics who wander in and out of our lives, but I learned a little lesson this week, so I am here to praise the eccentric ones.
For they have the courage to live their own lives as they see fit, without seeking approval from anyone. They remind us to be ourselves which can at times be the hardest thing to be. In this, they remind us of what it means perhaps to be human. When you get right down to it, they don’t give a shit, when too often a shit is given for that which is not worth a shit.
So here’s to those who have taken the road less traveled.
I was reminded of all this the other day when my life was touched by an act of kindness by a true eccentric (not the easiest thing to be in a conservative town like Calgary). He wandered into the coffee shop (Caffe Beano) where I writing in my journal. He approached my table and said, “Hi, how are you?” as he always does, then sat down by himself and I would have to admit that I was secretly relieved that our little “Hi, how are you?” didn’t go on any longer than it did.
I could see him out of the corner of my eye, as I continued to write in my journal. He took out some art supplies from a big seemingly bottomless pocket of his over-sized winter coat and then started working on some kind of project . . . even as I was busy working on avoiding any kind of eye contact with him.
I more or less forgot about him, as I ruminated on my wonderful day. (Not so wonderful really: for this reason we learn to write well, to disguise the stark truth.) But when he gathered his things and came and stood in front of my table, well, I could ignore him no longer, and so I wearily put down my pen and looked to the heavens and whispered under my breath, “What now?” and then condescended to deal with the man.
He apologized for invaded my space, you couldn’t teach a young actor to play low status any better than he was playing it. Then he gave me the little painting that I have posted above.
“Here’s a little present,” he said. “Sorry if I’ve bothered you.” And then he walked away.
Here’s what’s written on the back of the painting (it’s a water colour, 5 1/2 x 7”), as well as I can transcribe it:
To Master Eugene
$$Successful Writer
Thank you!
Merry Christmas New Year 2014
My goal is 10,001 Homemade Arts Cards made for the Guinness Book of World Records
God Bless
Pablo Paulo
Then stamped: PAUL SHYKORA
Artist, Writer, Explorer
Card #8, 838 of 10,001. Titled, An Island Season of Joy!
It’s just early December as write this and I think I have already received the best present I could possibly be given: a little reminder just to be myself.
I really don’t need anything else.
(Well, unless you already got me something, I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But you know what I mean. And while we’re on the subject, I’m good in the owl department. Really I am. Thanks.)
‘Tis the season, indeed. If nothing else at this time of year, perhaps we can remember to accommodate the eccentrics and misfits who wander into our lives. And maybe not just tolerate them. . . maybe even celebrate them. What’s the worst that could happen?
Thanks for reading and here’s a great Who song with Bryan Adams that at least obliquely reflects on the presence of the eccentric in our world today . . .
Roughriders by one of my favourite artists, Ken Danby
If you live in Western Canada, at least on the prairies where we still care about such things, you would know that on Sunday the Saskatchewan Roughriders will be playing in the Grey Cup, which this year is being held in that province’s capital city, my hometown, Regina.
I actually grew up in the old north end of Regina, two blocks from Mosaic Stadium, or as it was known back in the day, Taylor Field. (Who was Taylor anyway? I’m not sure that I ever knew. Quick edit at this point: please see Aydon Charlton’s comment on this blog for some interesting notes on Mr. Taylor and other Roughrider lore and legend.)
Growing up as close to the Elysian field as I did, it obviously played a big part in my life and in the life of my friends. On game days, my dad would park his car in the garage so I could park cars alongside and in back of the garage. When I was ten years old or so, this constituted the biggest part of my annual income. I would stand on the street with a cardboard sign, hoping to attract some generous fans from the wealthier south end of town. It was a real bonus if they’d had a few drinks because that usually meant they would be more generous.
My friends and I could actually get into the games in a few different ways. One was by hopping the fence which was a little tricky as it was topped with barbed wire and you had to go quickly to avoid being caught by one of the staff (especially the old geezer we dubbed “sausage fingers”), or by the air cadets who patrolled the inside perimeter, ever vigilant for us miscreants.
The other way, which was safer and actually paid something, was to become a hustler for a man known as Spud Leggett. There was no beer at the games in those days, so you were effectively selling mix to the fans who, generally speaking, may have been a lot of things, but sober was not one of them. I preferred selling pop corn or peanuts because they weren’t as messy as pop. Spud’s pre-game pep talk to the motley assembly of rugrat hustlers should have been taped for the ages, but I remember the bottom line was in fact the bottom line, with Spud saying, “The better yous guys do, the better I do, so get out there and sell, sell, sell.” Or words to that effect.
As I grew older, I became more aware of the players in our community. When I got to grad 8 at old Albert School, we had an actual Rider for our phys ed coach. His name was Dale West and he had been an all star defensive back. Not only that, he was a really good guy. It was a big deal for us to have him as a teacher, a real brush with greatness at that young and impressionable age.
In high school at Scott Collegiate, a knee injury prevented me from playing football, so my dream of actually playing for the Riders some day died early. But I did play basketball. The coach at Thom Collegiate (north end rivals) was Al Ford, probably one of the last players in the league to play both defence and offence. He was a punter as well. It was a big deal to shake his hand at the end of the day.
Over at Central Collegiate, Ron Lancaster was the head coach, and again it was a big deal to play a good game against Central and somehow earn his respect. I also shared a few cigarettes with Ronnie in the waiting room of the old Grey Nuns Hospital emergency ward on one occasion. With were both in for some kind of procedure – you know how it is for us athletes. I think I was having an infected blister on the ball of my foot treated (ouch), but I can’t remember why he was there.
(And yes it’s true, I am old enough to remember smoking in a hospital. It seems like a million years ago.)
Bill Baker, a defensive lineman for the Riders who came to be known as Baker the Undertaker for his penchant to try to decapitate opposing quarterbacks had gone to my high school. He gave a speech at my grade 12 grad.
And so it was in my part of Regina, at least, the team was involved in the day to day life of the community and they were loved, we lived and died with them. When they won the Grey Cup for the first time in 1966, I was 10 years old and I assumed my life would be full of many Grey Cup victories, but such was not the case. The next one didn’t come until 23 years later (Lancaster’s number had been 23, for those who believe in such things) in 1989.
I had been living in Toronto prior to that where the CFL hardly registers, but got back to Regina in time for that Grey Cup. I watched the game at my brother’s house and then as it was a fairly mild night (only -20 or so) I walked home to my apartment downtown. To get home I had to cross Albert Street, which was a steady slow-moving stream of pick up trucks by the time I got there.
Most of the trucks had some good old boys in the back of them, probably sitting on hay bails. One of these guys saw me and said, “Hey! Where’s your beer?” I shrugged my shoulders, showed my empty hands, and he reached down and came up with a Pilsner tall boy for me.
What the hell? The Riders had just won the Grey Cup!
I don’t know what the team means to people in other parts of the province, or in the far-flung region of Rider Nation that literally spans the globe, and I don’t know what they mean to fans in Regina and Saskatchewan today, but they sure meant a lot to me growing up in the shadow of Taylor Field, and they still do to this day.
What can I say? Cut me, I bleed green.
Go Riders Go!
Thanks for reading. Here’s a song by one of my favourite Saskatchewan bands.
eugene stickland 