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Holy Birthday to You (and me).

Posted by :James Howden On : November 13, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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It was a fine day yesterday, hanging out with the Bahá’ís as the community and its friends celebrated one of the Faith’s holy days, the birth of its Founder, Bahá’u’lláh.* He was born in Tehran in 1817, and it occurs to me to imagine that the twelfth of November eleven years from now will be a big day in the Bahá’í universe. (And baby, better stand back when those crazy Bahá’ís start celebrating…!)

Okay, so there probably won’t be a need for riot police and pepper spray, but I like partying with the nine-pointed stars and their friends anyway. The courtesy never fails to refresh, the greetings are warm and the laughter comes easily. (In fact, I found the conversations so good that I forgot to elbow my way to the dessert table. Shocking omission, yes, but I’d warmed up with a neighbourly lunch before the afternoon bonanza.)

And it’s important fun, if that’s allowed. (Too often, there’s a nearly iron-bound divider between amusement — must be extreme, loud, trivial — and social betterment — must be stern, humourless and apocalyptic.) Yesterday, it was. Solemn prayer beside the balloons. Learning along with every second conversational giggle. One aspect of community education is key: we’re understanding, steady by quick, how to not just tolerate but to venerate, to celebrate diversity while we stand together on the essentials. So a 15-year-old classical violinist shared the stage with a young white gospel singer, and exuberant African drumming and singing followed the plaintive strains of traditional Persian drumming, singing and the plucking of the tar. French, English, Arabic and Farsi were spoken. It was a smorgasbord. (Thank-you, Sweden, for that tasty word.)

(* Yes, faithful readers, give yourself a bonus point in the standings if you correctly identified Bahá’u’lláh as the “Persian exile” in the November 11 post. Give yourself two points if you hit the link either time.)

Remembering Iran

Posted by :James Howden On : November 11, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I  read a reference to James Baker today, that long-time American political operator who’s been well below my radar for years. (Admittedly, my American political radar runs on a Commodore 64.) Mr. Baker is in the news again because, along with Robert Gates, the replacement for Donald Rumsfeld as U.S. Defence Secretary, he is a member of the Senate’s “Iraq Study Group”, an apparently marginalized group which is suddenly relevant. What really piqued my interest was a suggestion that the Group might be leaning, in its efforts to advise the President on how to deal with the dreadful Iraq situation, toward rapprochement with Syria and Iran. Now there’s an idea which is shockingly logical: consult with the neighbours. I hope somebody listens.

But now hear this (the tragedy of speechwriting, exhibit A): many people can’t hear mention of Iran without the malignant mantra “axis of evil” echoing around in their skulls. (That the apparent author of the phrase, David Frum, is Canadian is not a cause for flag-waving chez nous.) That Iran is a troubled state with shaky governance is obvious. I am only too aware of some of the political and religious repression that goes on there, but I also appreciate Iran’s mighty contributions to world civilization. The Zoroastrian and Bahá’í Faiths were born there, and some of the fairest fruits of Islamic civilization grew in Persian soil (including the towering mind of Avicenna – Ibn-Sina – a “renaissance man” who pre-dated the Renaissance by hundreds of years). Cyrus and Darius, as we call them in Western histories – Suroosh and Daryoosh would be more nearly correct – are only the best-known kings of a Persian empire that was the greatest of its age. The poetry of Omar Khayyam and especially of Hafiz are landmarks of Iranian culture. In my small contemporary experience, I know some of the sweet expressions of Iranian cinema, music, cuisine and their perfection of the art of courtesy. I see beautiful faces, generosity and a deep pride in their rich and ancient culture. There is so much more to Iran than nukes and turbaned mullahs.

All of which is a long-winded introduction to a brief report. At the National Library and Archives this week, there was an intriguing chance to reflect on other aspects of Iran. (Thanks, once again, to the folks at the Ottawa Writers Festival.) Jean-Daniel Lafond – known in much of Canada mainly as the husband of our Governor General, Michaëlle Jean – is a prominent documentary film-maker, and he showed and spoke about his 2001 film Salám Iran: A Persian Letter. It follows the return of an Iranian Canadian, living in exile since the revolution, to his mother and his motherland after two decades away. Lafond collaborated in this film with the writer (Persian Postcards: Iran After Khomeini), translator and Iranophile Fred A. Reed, and in early 2004 the pair returned to Tehran. It was the eve of elections that would spell the end of the Khatami reform movement and instal the hardline conservative regime of President Ahmadinejad.

Lafond’s and Reed’s interactions with ordinary (and extraordinary) Iranians resulted in their newly published book Conversations in Tehran. I haven’t read it yet, but I was impressed by these two men. They are worldly, compassionate, scholarly and curious. I detected no particular axe to grind, although it was clear that they hope for more openness and less theocracy in Iran, greater understanding and appreciation of the country everywhere else. M. Lafond was slightly limited by the event taking place in English, but nevertheless spoke well. Mr. Reed, meanwhile, is an understated and moderate presenter but a marvellously articulate and, in his quiet way, an intensely passionate one. He loves Iran and Iranians with such intelligence and force as to silently rebuke anyone who would think of that as “consorting with the Enemy”.

And I know how he feels. I have much to be grateful to Iran for: some of my most deeply cherished friends and co-workers, for one thing, and for a Persian exile’s vision of peace and hope that keeps me sane, that helps me walk a faithful path with (fairly) intelligent feet. Salam, Iran, indeed. May it be so.

ODY: Week 11. Cryin’ the Blues

Posted by :James Howden On : November 7, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Thanks and congrats to those of you who read all the way through last week’s long and sentimental entry. Even Old Dogs miss their Mums. (And their Dads, too, although that is not news for this wrinkled puppy.) It was another week of plugging along in the OD Year, and although some of my practices weren’t as inspired as I would like, I am fairly astonished to report that I’ve played guitar for 77 (and still counting) consecutive days. (May discipline be contagious: today’s Day 3 of my new stretch ‘n’ strength routine.) And PERISH all thoughts of what I can’t yet do…

I have been thinking about my peculiar way of going about learning to play, which is slow and inside-out. I haven’t been as interested in the quick score, the easy song that I can play and say “Whoo-hoo!”, as I have been with trying to really understand what I’m doing and develop a solid base of skill. I’d like to be more hungry to attempt and master new elements of guitaristry, but I want to win Tortoise Style. My old high school football mentor, Coach Woody, had a dismissive term for those who started fast, pedal-to-metal but couldn’t really sustain their interest and commitment. “Sprinters,” he’d snort. With ankles like mine, speed is no longer an option, so I’ll enjoy this ponderous pace and whatever milestones (hmmm, metre-stones?) I can reach. Eagerly. Son Ben, the IA, has some concerns about my GG’s group teaching method, with its emphasis on learning some of everything over our ten weeks together, giving us enough “so that you can teach yourselves the guitar after we’re done”. The IA is not a fan of this approach. He thinks there’s way too much material, and not enough short-term objectives to reach and be inspired by. I can see that point, and I want to get smarter about really mastering a few fun and recognizable tunes. Still, I like the depth of the foundation I’m getting, and I’m in this for 365. We’ll see.

I heard an interview last week with Dunstan Prial, an American journalist, talking about his 2006 book The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music. I was fascinated, especially by Prial’s description of a 73-year-old, nattily dressed Hammond shuffling to a Carnegie Hall microphone in 1984 to introduce Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble. Vaughan, that blazing comet of the blues guitar, was only the most recent discovery and protégé of Hammond, a list that started back in the ‘30s with a black guitarist named Teddy Wilson and a white clarinettist named Benny Goodman. The list went on. Count Basie. Pete Seeger. Aretha Franklin. Bob Dylan. George Benson. Bruce Springsteen… For Prial, Hammond had a brilliant ear, not only for musical genius but for the great social milieu in which it might be heard. And in a business noted for bottom-line, flavour-of-the-month heartlessness, it was intriguing to hear of Springsteen’s gratitude for the warmth and inspiration of Hammond, and his lament that such a culture no longer exists for young artists.

Can’t tell you too much more about the book, but I picked up the Double Trouble recording from Carnegie Hall, and how would you explain this? (How do I?) Hammond introduces the band, bullied to shorten his remarks by an impatient audience. (Even Prial, who was there that night, wondered who IS this old guy?) Then Stevie and the lads launch into “Scuttle Buttin’”, which Prial described as “a lightning storm of circular blues scales played at earsplitting volume”. My throat tightened, my heart raced and my eyes leaked. OH, MY. On the Six Nations Reserve near where I grew up, there is a widespread embrace of the blues. (Aboriginal experience and an identification with the blues! Go figure, eh?) And among a lot of the young men I used to coach and teach, there was a near-worship of Vaughan. Though I’ve always liked the blues guitar, and am a particular fan of the great and tragic Roy Buchanan, I’d never gotten all the way into SRV. I knew about “Pride and Joy”, of course, but hadn’t really heard the licks in a hungry-eared way. But wow. Where’s all that weeping come from? I love the feeling in the blues, the plaintive longing that is so haunting in Roy Buchanan alongside his explosive, note-bending creativity and speed. And perhaps my own learning has helped me understand a little better what these guys are doing, and to know at an intestinal level how much they had to sacrifice, how fiercely they needed to love, in order to be able to Do That Thing. 

And maybe I was choked by the certain knowledge that I will never be able to play like that. I adore skill, dig virtuosity. The democratic note in punk-rock philosophy – hey, anybody can play, and everybody should! – is a fine thing, though it sometimes goes so far as to be perversely snobbish about skill. But I admire excellence and I WANT it, though it chills me blue to be so savagely reminded – but hey, thanks, Stevie Ray, and God bless — how far away I am from it.

Enid Mary Elizabeth Howden

Posted by :James Howden On : November 5, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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I’d been waiting for this call, off and on, for several years. When we gathered in 2001 to say our goodbyes, we were only slightly more surprised than she was when my mother awoke from a near-coma and wondered, wide-eyed, “Am I still HERE?” But when Big Sister called and said, “I think you should come right away,” I wasn’t ready. I had packing to do, work that felt urgent, a little boy to prepare for a road trip, and a head and heart to examine. I knew Mum was more than ready to leave this world behind, and I wanted to be in hearty and complete approval.

About halfway to Hamilton, Pam called again. “Where are you? Do your best, but you might not make it.” I got misty, but kept on driving while I murmured my requests to other kingdoms. Sam was awake in his booster seat, and unusually quiet. He knew whatever a six-year-old can understand of death. I felt the sweetness of solitary meditation, purposeful motion and the best of company, all at the same time. And about 45 minutes later came the last call. “She’s gone. Don’t rush. Be safe.” So I missed Mum’s last moments, missed the bedside family choir (off-pitch, no doubt!) and their send-off hymns and hand-holding. And that was all okay with me. My heart was fine, my goodbye felt whole and good, and the best farewells at this point were spiritual ones, anyway. Knowing it would be a late-night Howden festival, I tried to get Sam to sleep. I told him the 86-year tale of Enid M.E. (Skinner) Howden: her sisters, her work, her husband, her interests, her five children, and those 13 grand-kids. Well, there was no sleeping there, especially as we got closer to number 13. Sam loved that story.

Sam finally did fall asleep briefly, while I met his big brother Will at the Hamilton bus station and headed for Idlewyld Manor, where Mum had lived out her final and steadily declining months. There were no more hymns, but her body was still in her bed. She didn’t look much different that night, the 26th of October, than she had when I last saw her alive on Thanksgiving weekend. Not much was working for her then. Her legs were useless except for restlessness and discomfort. She was hugely weary. Daily activities, for this sociable and energetic woman, had become very narrow and limited, and the world beyond her bed was often alarming and incomprehensible. Except when her family was by her side. It was so easy to bring joy to her, and sometimes even a good old joke. She could recite Psalm 23, her high school fight song, and Portia’s mercy speech from Merchant of Venice, in which she’d starred a mere seven decades before. She thrilled to see the faces of her children. She’d nearly never had a bad word to say about anyone, and now she had nothing ill to say of her life or its end. She was distilled spirit.

So I sat with that exhausted shell that had been my mother dear. I sent more beseeching out to wherever it is that prayers go, and got a little more specific with my requests. I called for a warm welcome for Mum from my father and from some of the departed ones that I have most admired. Among them was the Canadian Bahá’í pioneer Mary Maxwell, later known as Ruhíyyih Khanúm, who was on one of her epic journeys when her vehicle broke down in an African wilderness. She turned to her companion and said, “Well, whom do you know Up There who was a mechanic?” (Now that’s a specific, a practical kind of faith. That’s humour and grace on the rocks.) Also among those souls I called upon to welcome Mum, though, was old Cleveland Indians star Rocky Colavito. She had been an Indians fan long before the Blue Jays received her loyal allegiance, and this was a bit of spiritual whimsy that she would have enjoyed. I certainly did, though it was slightly compromised by my later discovery that Mr. Colavito is still among us. Now, Mum must have really enjoyed that.

Diana took the train down to join us for the weekend of family plans, story-telling, laughter and commiseration. All sweet. The family gathered to bury Mum on Monday, October 30th, and I walked very happily around the streets of my home town on that sunny day. My bride, my littlest boy and I got back to Ottawa the next day, and I wrote this quick note to our friends and neighbours.

My lovely Mum died last Thursday. She was a great lady and an example of some of the best and most important things in life, say I, and she will continue to be, especially in the way of her passing. “I have made death a messenger of joy to thee; wherefore dost thou grieve?…Death proferreth unto every confident believer the cup that is life indeed. It bestoweth joy, and is the bearer of gladness…” I have never known the reality of these beautiful words (from Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words and from Gleanings) as much as I have felt them with Mum’s death. She was a “confident believer”, a steadfast Christian who was open to all and accepting of the many paths to the Creator. “I’m content with my lot,” she had told me near the end, possibly her last words to me. “I’ve had good kids.” Her “wonderful family” was the thing that she remembered and treasured, and all the disappointments and difficulties of her life, even the very limited physical/mental life she had for the last couple of years, were nothing to her. She was unafraid to die, and she was grateful in the midst of all. She was loving and generous and the doors of her house and her friendship were wide open. It was a sweet goodbye for our family and community of friends, and a radiant departure by Enid M.E. Howden. 

Most of you wouldn’t know my mother, so I hope you’ll indulge me this little remembrance. I couldn’t help myself. My older sons, Ben, Will and Dave, helped to carry her body to its resting place next to that of my father. I was strangled with pride in these terrific men and with love for all my family.

(I also wrote about Mum as part of my ODY web log. It’s a mid-life odyssey, and the loss of a parent is archetypal even in the midst of writing about a dysfunctional relationship with a guitar. It’s here.)

ODY: Week 10. 70/365. But I Never Played for my Mother…

Posted by :James Howden On : November 2, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Monday. Gordon (the guitar) and I had a nice long bedward session. Michael Enright was interviewing the astonishingly young, beautiful and good Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the radio. (In Half of a Yellow Sun, she writes of the birth of Biafra in the ‘60s. Sounds powerful.) I like my right hand. I can get much more into the BlissyZone with finger picking than with chord changes. Male multi-tasking!

Tuesday. It was game 3 of the World Series, the first of the playoffs that I’d seen. First of the year. (Unbelievable. I still love that strange, timeless, slow game. I raced home from October school days to watch the Series as a kid. I played seriously into my 30s. I can still feel the bat in my hands, awake or asleep, in a way that I doubt a guitar will ever match.) Carpenter pitched brilliantly, and that turned the Series for the Cards. I watched over at my friends’ house, where I found not only a working television but that my buddy Fanfan is learning to play bass. Potential collaborator. I played long and lots. Had the room to myself ‘til the seventh inning, then the bullpen got too loud. These folks, two of them born in Canada, knew far less about baseball than I did about guitar two months ago. I tried to save them.

Wednesday. Lesson Night at the Ol’ Ottawa Folklore Corral, and it was a good night in the Old Dog guitar saddle. (How’s that for a mangled metaphor?) Asked questions. Got answers. Further to my mind-boggled reaction to the chords from last week’s “Study in E”, GG (Kurt the Guitar Guru) was able to quickly teach me the remarkable “E minor 11th” chord, which can also be played as “G 6-9”. It’s the opening chord to “Hard Day’s Night”, for one thing, and I’ve got it. Sounds good, right? Actually, it doesn’t. It’s ridiculously primitive. It’s just a brainless right-hand strum without a finger on the fretboard. (Ohh. I knew that.) The GG had lots to say about more significant things, like finger shapes. Learning to feel the chord shapes is the key. Sliding from one chord to another based on shapes, not notes, means that skilled guitarists are sometimes seen as “idiot savants” by other classically trained musicians. While they have had to learn the individual notes to a chord, good guitarists can intuit new chords quickly by adjusting their finger shapes or moving them up or down the fretboard. (I think that’s what the GG said. Musicians, forgive me when I know not quite what I am talking about.) 

And then came Thursday. “I think you should come right away,” Big Sister said. Our dear Mum has been in steady physical decline for the past several years, and it looked like she was doing her final taxi toward spiritual takeoff. And she was. I took care of what I thought I needed to, including being ready for a funeral, packing for my youngest son and preparing to practise the guitar for however long we would be away from home. I grabbed Gordon, met Calvin Junior (and his own versions of Hobbes) at the school bus stop and hit the road running. We didn’t quite make it, but I had some quiet moments of reflection in her room, where her body still lay.

I didn’t think much about music. Aside from her love for hymns and her comically poor singing of them, music was never a big part of our life together. Baseball? Hockey? Books and books? Absolutely. When I was a kid, though, Mum would make occasional reference to my hands: “Look at those fingers! You’re going to either be a surgeon or a concert pianist.” Well, I did almost get into medical school one year, but musical virtuosity was unlikely since lessons were never even suggested. It occurs to me that my impracticality stems more from my mother than I had thought. She’s always been a woman of grand dreams, and her vision of a generous, funny and welcoming family life was realized in the most vivid way, especially in the generation of her 13 grand-kids. Later, as we shared Enid stories, someone told of a young writer friend who had told Mum of an ambition: to win a (remotely conceivable) literary prize. (It might have been the Pulitzer.) Mum’s response was characteristic and quick. “Why not the Nobel?” Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? (Enid Howden quoting Robert Browning. Time and again. Burden and blessing.)

So, decades after I began to notice my own rabid interest in music, and after years of fascination and envy at the musical progress and accomplishments and satisfactions of my own kids, I embarked on this Old Dog Year. I decided to do something about a hypothesis I’d had for awhile. Maybe I am a bit musical. And with my athletic ability in free-fall, maybe I should work at something I can get better at in mid-life, without a need for youth or functional ankles. ‘Cause they ain’t comin’ back. I now feel that among the many lofty and wonderfully principled ideas my Mum had planted in me, this seed of musicianship was among them. It wasn’t well-nourished, mind you, but it was there. It was the classic “castle in the air”, which another strain of my childhood had derided. Quit your dreaming, boy. Get down to business. What a little absent-minded professor he is! And I hated that stuff, that accusation that I was cloud-bound, impractical, a dreamer.  

But although I function reasonably well in this allegedly Real World, I came to understand as an adult that I clearly was all of those things, and an idealist and a hope-filled romantic, too. So was my Mum. And like me, she would have loved Thoreau’s take on dreamers in Walden: “If you build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now build foundations under them.”  So I do, in this case by pulling out my guitar every day. I thought later that I should’ve taken Gordon up and played a little in the stillness of her second-to-last room, but that wasn’t really us. (Among those souls I called upon that night to welcome Mum, though, was the old Cleveland Indians star Rocky Colavito. She’d been a great fan, and it seemed fun; the only problem was my discovery that he’s still alive. Ah, well.) Instead, I pulled out the guitar later at Big Brother’s place, where the clan gathered late into the evening, ostensibly to plan but mainly to remember. I softly fingered all the bits I can do without thinking. It felt a little like love.

Maybe all this explains, in part, why I’ve taken the long way ‘round to being a musician. (Wow. I just said I was a musician. It hardly even hurt! I do feel a giggle coming on, though.) It also took me a long while to become a writer. Chez Howden, it was reading, not writing; baseball, not music; and, in a larger sense, principles that regularly overrode pragmatism. I felt a certain joy in Mum’s passing. It was release from a limited and painful life for her. It was a superb family reunion: everybody was there, and the laughs were legion. But there was more than that, a sense of personal relief and of eagerness to live that I attribute to Mum’s example of both. Relief and contentment at the end of a well-lived and loving day, and a current of eagerness to do what I might to realize her hopes for all of us.

Right this moment, odd as it is, messing around with a guitar seems to be part of that. Amid stories and photographs, I picked some more at Little Sister and Silent Paul’s place the next night. I was a late-night guitar vampire for the next few days, using the quiet of Big Sister’s living room to go through my exercises and exercise my memories. At times it was a welcome escape from thinking, yet at others I felt as mindful as I could be. It was a rhythmically stumbling kind of meditation, peaceful moments to linger on the kindness of dear old friends and vaguely familiar faces from the old home town. Sorry for your loss. Condolences to you and your family. Enid was a great lady…

We stood by her grave — right next to my Dad’s — in the sweet sunlight of a warming autumn day, laying roses and praying and singing. (It was just the Howdens, and we actually sang pretty well, thanks.) I walked by my grandfather’s grave, past my old high school, around some of my favourite tree-lined and leaf-scented streets. Back by the fireplace at Big Brother’s, I spent a good part of the afternoon playing, including a welcome bit of stern rehearsal time with the Itinerant Artist. My eldest son, the IA, is a genuine musician, the Real Instrumental Deal, and has taught guitar for several years. He applied the Kenny Werner learning triangle – got to play slowly, and eventually combine the ability to play perfectly, at tempo and all the way through – in very specific ways to my practising. He beat out a very slow tempo, and insisted I match it. He showed me a technique for practising chord changes that avoids frozen frustration and encourages gradual acquisition of speed. It was sweet, personalized guidance and attention. (He also played, after my fingers were numb, many of the pieces I’ve struggled with, giving me some sense for how it sounds.) I’ve never felt so much at home with playing music.

That night, at a wonderful memorial for Enid H., our words of memory and tribute were in the forefront, but so was music. “How Great Thou Art” was sung with chest-busting force and beauty by a large congregation (there was a stealth tenor among the guests, and we rode his thunder. Wow.). And there are real live musicians in the next generation. Representing them, niece Bethany played a sweetly feeling “Fairest Lord Jesus” on the piano, and the IA followed later with a gorgeous solo trombone rendition – a bit jazzier than that small-town Baptish church has likely heard before – of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee”. I’m decades behind, and didn’t even think of playing guitar on that bill. But I’m on the job, I’m learning, and “if a job’s worth doing,” as Mum reminded us all ad infinitum, “it’s worth doing well.” I never played for my mother, but that’s okay. I am playing for her now, and hope to do it well.

ODY: Week 9. Weak, Overwhelm, Werner.

Posted by :James Howden On : October 26, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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In the landscape of a week’s weak learning, it was flatlands all the way to a horizon that seemed impossibly far for an Old Dog. (All filled up with dreams of competence, not a tree or a fire hydrant of achievement in sight.) There wouldn’t have been much to say, except that two conversations stood out like lonesome grain elevators on Saskatchewan prairie, outposts of interest in a flat but faithful week of practice.

First, let me tell you about the plain. I’m more comfortable admitting that I’m learning to play guitar and letting Gordie take my fingers for a walk where someone might actually hear us. Chord changes still freeze me, though at least once this week I hit the C chord without looking or hesitating. Or thinking. (Not thinking comes nearly as hard for me as thinking clearly. That grey gunk inside my skull is always quivering madly off in all directions.) Nearly halfway through the week, lesson night with KW the Guitar Guy brought four new finger-picking patterns for songs that also added 5 or 6 more chords with complicated names. More chords?!?

We have one of the GG’s own pieces, “Study in E”. It suggests a pleasant little finger sequence – thumb on the low E, then fingers 1, 2 and 3 tickling down to the G string. T 1 2 3, T 1 2 3. Nice! I can do that! But the chords? They start easily enough with an E, but then we jump to an A 6-9 over E (a what?), then an E major 7th, then an E 7th, back to A 6-9/E, then to an A minor 6-9/E (are you kidding me?), back to a simple E and finish with something called an “E suspended 4th” (E sus 4). What the -? I scribbled down the chord diagrams that Kurt had chalked out for us, despairing that soon he’d be chalking my body outline on the floor. Then I breathed. Then I looked at the diagrams, and a dim bulb began to glow over my head. The dreaded A 6-9/E is the same basic shape as E, just spread out and a fret higher. The E major 7th that follows is precisely the same, except two more frets up. E7 and the doubly dreaded Am 6-9/E also have the same shape. And the last transition, from E to Esus4, is a one-fret finger-one adjustment. Hosanna! Weird and complex as they seem, they fit together more easily than I can go from G to C or A to D or, especially, B7 to or from friggin’ anything. (But I love the sound of B7, and can always tell when I’ve hit it right without checking my fingers. And when I get there, I don’t want to leave.) Not only that, but “Study in E” is written such that any picking pattern will sound good. You’ll be hearing it on your radio any day now.

So much for the lone prairie. The first silo, landmark number one, was a conversation with Pejman, who had just moved in to our part of the city. At a community meeting, he volunteered to put together a program for a holy day commemoration. (The birth of the Báb, if you’re keeping score at home.) Right away, he had a rough question for me. “So, who are the musicians in the room? I want some music for Thursday.” I thought, maybejustmaybe I could do some Travis picking as background to a reading, but those changes are so clumsy and it’s only three days away… Yikes. My answer? “Um, ah, well, you know about Daniel’s singing, and you heard Amir on the piano tonight, but other than that, well, can’t really think of anybody. Nope.” Well, I missed a perfect blushing opportunity there. Pej’s probing pulled Farzad and his guitar out of the bushes, though, and so Pachelbel’s “Canon” sweetened our celebration. (Can’t believe my Iranian brother beat me to the punch, but he is quite a way ahead of me. For now...) I was also abashed by young Sarah’s courage, wading through a difficult piece on an unfamiliar keyboard. Must. Embrace. Next. Chance.

Second conversational signpost? The Itinerant Artist, my number one son, phoned about mid-week, and the talk turned inevitably to the Old Dog Year of musical education. Change. Transformation. Transition. My struggles to get from one chord to another – and to resist making that change until I have the chord perfect – are obvious analogues to the bigger adjustments that you or I or anybody might be making. And so the IA had a suggestion. “Let me tell you about the triangle. Have I told you about the learning triangle? No? Well, it comes from Werner, and it goes like this. There are three aspects to mastering a song: being able to play it PERFECTLY, AT TEMPO and from BEGINNING TO END. The thing is, when you’re learning the thing, the best you can do is two out of three, and at first you probably can’t do any of them. So pick a section, and play it slowly ‘til it’s right. SLOWLY. This was a hard one for me to learn at McGill, but it’s so useful.” The IA was a jazz performance student at Montreal’s McGill University. Trombone. (He’s also a fine guitar and bass player, and a decent drummer.) He was referring to musical concepts in a book called Effortless Mastery by the great jazz pianist Kenny Werner. When the need is clear, the book will appear. Gotta get it.

Do a section as slowly as I need to do it well. Do it with a steady rhythm, even if it’s a laughably slow one. Do it until it’s right. Do it perfectly until it’s at a good tempo. Then do it together with the other chunks until I can complete the triangle: Perfectly. At tempo. Beginning to end. My whole life has been about learning, and now I’m learning more about how to learn. It’s all so new and all so familiar. 63 days and counting.

Hitting a Buck Sixty-Five

Posted by :James Howden On : October 26, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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No, members of PETR (People for the Ethical Treatment of Rappers), I’m not talking about Nova Scotia’s baseball-lovin’ hip-hop poet. This is all about my stats, and I wouldn’t be publishing this number if it was my baseball batting average, which would be hitting so far below my weight as to make me cry. (Unless, maybe, it was for hitting against the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter, in which case it wouldn’t be quite so hideous). But on this cool, world serious afternoon, I have just posted the 165th (generally overlong for web logs) entry on this cyberspace obsession in the past year. (And that doesn’t count all the backlogged ones written from May to July that, because of repeatedly being struck out by technical gremlins, I haven’t yet been able to post to the site.) So YAY, ME! I hope you’ll pardon my self-congratulation, but if not me, whom? If not now, whenever?

I also have a ferocious hitting streak going with my guitar, having banged on six strings for over 65 straight days. I’m well on my way to hitting three sixty-five, and you can tune in to this epic, this mid-life musical odyssey by going to my “On Second Thought” section. (You’ll be glad you did.) (I’m hopeful.)

Game Three TeeVee

Posted by :James Howden On : October 25, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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I was disappointed when the Cardinals got smoked in Larry Walker’s last chance for a Series ring in 2004. My friend The Don has been a Cards fan at least since Tony LaRussa got there – he’s a fan of coaches more than of players, although he wants eligibility requirements rewritten so that Albert Pujols can go straight to the Hall of Fame this week. So as St. Louis is reborn after their Undead stagger to “winning” their division, it was time for me to actually watch a game. Regular readers will know that, for a guy who loves sport, I have an atrocious television. I depend on the kindness, well, not of strangers (though I have picked up a few games in restaurants), but of whatever friends I can impose myself upon.

I went over to the Sélégers’ place, where my Haitian-born buddy Fanfan required only slightly more basic education in baseball than his Canadian-born wife and brother-in-law. Mind you, he didn’t wander downstairs until about the sixth inning, so I wasn’t able to get too much wisdom in between pitches. He has the athletic eye, though. At first, he didn’t know how a pitcher even got a hitter out – or even know what “out” meant (or retrait in French) – but it didn’t take long before he realized that Chris Carpenter was dominating the Tigers. I don’t mind watching the game alone, but it was fun to help a new Canadian with one of the essential aspects of autumn living, not to mention his blissfully baseball-impaired family.

Good game. Baseball rocks. (Slowly, but it rocks.) Fox’s telecast is good, if a little too busy, and I love some of the inventive camera angles, especially the one embedded in the turf in front of home plate. I don’t have much patience left for commercial television, though. Maybe I take life too seriously, but when one of the major sponsors of an athletic event is a video-game maker, I draw a curmudgeonly line. Sure, there’s always been the irony of sporting excellence being underwritten by performance-decreasing substances (greasy foods, cigarettes in the bad ol’ days, beer forever). But something about sitting through an ad for a thumb-friendly entertainment called “Kill All Humans” made me feel dirty, and a little worried about the mental hygiene of some of my fellow viewers. What kind of audience are they aiming at? How did I get in? Not long after came another promo for a zombie chew-em-up game. Yecch. Makes me yearn for Skoal and Copenhagen commercials. At least there, the fantasy was of killing only yourself with style.

The Heart and the Congo

Posted by :James Howden On : October 24, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Until recently, the American novelist Barbara Kingsolver was best known to me for an article she wrote in Utne magazine, something to do with the virtues of off-grid, off-the-paved-and-beaten-track, off-beat living. Translation? Going rural. Growing your own. A willing ignorance of haste and celebrity and media and the quest for higher consumption. This is how I remember the piece, and it was a thoughtful and eloquent one. I was well aware, though, that this was the Poisonwood Bible woman, she of the large sales figures and the Oprah stamp of literary approval. This may account, along with my own embrace of slow literary living, for how long it took me to get around to the Bible. I should’ve gotten there faster.

It’s a remarkable book, hugely ambitious and earnest and uneven. I found it thrilling and irritating, filled with gorgeous and poetic phrasing (especially in the interior monologues) alongside sometimes clangingly explanatory and unlikely dialogue, with characters both beautifully and cartoonishly drawn. It follows a Georgia missionary family, the Prices, that goes to the Congo in 1960, where it experiences brutal hardship of its own (mainly of its patriarch’s) making, but also that of the Congolese in general as they go from Belgian colony to “independence” under the brutal Mbutu regime. We follow the lives of the Price women, a mother and four daughters, and their mainly male-made problems. The rich characters are the women.

Men do not come off terribly well in The Poisonwood Bible, which when it errs does so on the side of the Nobly Suffering Woman archetype. (It also portrays the dignity of women under hardship in a heart-wrenching way, don’t mistake me.) The ultra-zealous preacher Nathan Price is a bully and a bad advertisement for Christianity, an extremist and even a sadist in his manic, ignorant spreading of a patronizing Word. He never quite feels real, though there are some belated attempts to explain the creation of this monster. (There is no attempt to explain the other bastards at all.) Meanwhile, the two benevolent male characters are upholders of a stainless, if eccentric, goodness. They never quite seem real, either, though they are sometimes interesting.

Reverend Price’s deeply oppressed wife, Orleanna, is a poetic voice of bitter hindsight, and the voices of two of her daughters are the narrative highs and lows of the book. The mute and brilliant Adah is a fascinating creation with strange, gripping perspectives on the occasionally comic but relentlessly painful events of the book. The lovely and skin-deep eldest daughter, Rachel, is the counterbalance to the female heroism mentioned above. She became increasingly annoying to me as the book went on, so unrelentingly vain and self-absorbed was she. My vain imagining is that Kingsolver just had too much fun skewering the vacuous cheerleader belles of her own high school days. (The malapropisms were amusing at first, but Rachel’s verbal mistakes get wearisome. Her comments about language students working on their French “congregations”, well, okay, but when she complains about someone not having the simple “confederation” to get drinks for everyone in the room? I’ve now forgotten the most irritating examples; suffice to say that they begin to smack of Kingsolver trying way too hard, or having too much fun, or not knowing when enough was enough. Let’s blame the editor.)

About midway through this 650-page saga, the bloom came off what had been a terribly thorny but breathtaking rose. There were too many points to be made, too many clumsy character assassinations, social criticisms and historical observations that burst out of their literary clothing and lay there naked on the page. I was actually angry, at a certain point, because so much of the book had been so movingly, compellingly done up to that point. The story just went on too long, tried to do too much. But once I relaxed enough to accept what Kingsolver had in mind, I was able to enjoy the weaker back end of the book, though not quite with the wonder and alarm of the first half. Okay, she’s indicting the entire enterprise of African exploitation, American ignorance and materialism, male weakness and chauvinism. Let’s go with that. So I did, and I learned lots of history and context and continued to find narrative brilliance in some of the several narrators. The conclusion moved me again, and I felt content with the ending.

And a funny thing. (This reviewing of literature, I must say, is a strange and troublesome effort. I’m being forcibly reminded of what the producers of Brick, a literary magazine, place in the front of each edition, a quote from Rilke: “Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little appreciated as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them.” There is a wonderful lot to love in The Poisonwood Bible. That sounds lame now. Well, and there’s this, too, which should undermine some of what I wrote above: Barbara Kingsolver is a fountain of good writing, and even with respect to novels, only part of her mighty flow, the score is BK 5, JH 0. So there.) So reading, thinking about books we read and remark on: you know what? Aside from its frequently stunning portrait of the colonial project, I may remember this novel most for something that precedes it. In Kingsolver’s introductory remarks, she ends in gratitude to Steven (her husband?) for his belief that “a spirit of adventure will usually suffice…” I love the brevity and punch of that line. Of course, it most spectacularly did not suffice in the individual mission of the crazed Nathan Price, nor of the European and American mission to get from Africa what they wanted. But for this pale adventurer, the words are branded on my brain. They’re beside my writing desk, too.

World Series? What World Are You Talking About?

Posted by :James Howden On : October 21, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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My buddy Fanfan didn’t have a clue. (Work on your French nasal “a-n” if you want to pronounce his name properly in your head.) Though he loves sport, and was my video connection, player biographer and technical guide to the World Cup last summer, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. “Hé, Fanfan, tu es excité pour le début de la Série du Monde?” His face was delightfully blank. “La Série du Monde. World Series. Tu sais, le championnat de baseball?”  His growing grin said why do I need to know anything about that?

Here’s an odd little sporting artefact of history and geography. Fanfan comes from Haiti. On his half of a small Caribbean island, le foot is everything. The other half is the Dominican Republic, an absolute assembly line (no wait, an open pit mine) for baseball players. (It is estimated that one in seven major leaguers, and an incredible thirty percent of minor league ballplayers in the U.S., come from this poor and tiny nation. For a politically charged view of this, take a trip to the edge of sports .) Fanfan was a bit surprised to learn how dominant the D.R. is in baseball, because “when we play them, we win 10-0, 15-0.” He was talking soccer, of course. Has anybody written the history of the island in sporting terms? Are there any geographical reasons for the ancestors of slaves to have talented feet in the west of Hispaniola and beautiful hands in the eastern half of the island? What colonial distinctions led to Haiti siding with the world’s athletic consensus, while the Dominican turned its sporting eyes to the great American pastime? (Am I the only one who thinks about stuff like this?)

Be that as it may, Fanfan couldn’t name a single baseball player, I don’t think, let alone know that the Detroit Tigers were facing the St. Louis Cardinals. (Small “World”!) He knew everything there was to know about the big game between Manchester United and Liverpool, mind you, and he could have given me a detailed breakdown of the title race in the German Bundesliga. But baseball? Who cares? Well, in the communities he’s involved with, there’s pretty much nobody except me. It’s funny: baseball is more international than it has ever been, with many Asian players alongside the majority of American and Latin American ones. (Also, there are more significant Canadian players than there may ever have been, even though the Cards lost Larry Walker to retirement.) But in an international city like Ottawa, there have probably not been pockets of apathy this deep about baseball since, oh, World War II.

I still have baseball dreams, though. I don’t follow it as avidly as I used to, but hey, it’s the World Series! I may not know the complete starting lineup of either team, but I do have a lot to teach my footy Haitian friend about the mysteries of bat and glove. Besides, he has a way better TV than me.