Rss

The Accidental Reader

Posted by :James Howden On : October 19, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , ,

When it comes to books, serendipity often trumps my usual fussy inclination toward list-making and order and the sternly beckoning Should-Reads. I’d heard about John Banville’s novel The Sea, because it won the Booker Prize for fiction in 2005. For English speakers other than Americans, the Booker is the pre-eminent literary prize in the world. (American writers aren’t eligible, and in any case they have their Pulitzer Prize, which I’ve heard carries a bit of heft in the excited States.) I hadn’t read a Booker winner since 2002’s Life of Pi (Yann Martel, one of two Canadians to win*) and 1998’s Amsterdam (Ian McEwan). The Sea jumped into my view as I passed the Express Read shelf of my fine local library (Only seven days ‘til $5 daily fines!).

Banville, an Irishman, has the reputation of being a writer’s writer, a maker of quiet but exquisitely told stories with craftsmanship abounding. Several of the blurbs of praise on the back cover testify that it is not a “page-turner”, that the admiring reader is compelled to read slowly, and often to re-read especially delicious phrases. It’s the “how did he do that?” factor, familiar to devotees of Michael Jordan or Stevie Ray Vaughan. As an avid student of writing, this factor has steadily slowed down my reading pace since my early twenties. (I’m trying to re-teach myself how to read quickly so I can get through sports pages and other journalism more efficiently.)

It took me some time to warm to Banville. It was clear immediately that he’s awfully good – he’s been Booker-nominated before, and I doubt he sells hugely – but I wasn’t swept into The Sea until about midway through. (Of course, this might have been due to my giving it only my tired moments, or to coming at it after an extended period of reading only non-fiction.) The narrator is not an awfully sympathetic character, at least not initially, and his story flips relentlessly from his elderly present to the recent past to one epochal adolescent summer. Banville also attempts the difficult feat of giving voice to a man who comes to self-awareness only late in life, and we realize things often at the same time as the narrator does. He’s diffident, often unsure, bitterly self-critical and even dismissive, and despite the beautiful turns of phrase he is often a hard guy to spend time with. But I found the challenges – including the experience of coming across entirely unfamiliar words in fiction (the narrator is an academic), which most of us don’t do much after the age of 19 or so – more than worth it. The book is less than two hundred pages long, and the first three quarters compellingly prepare the ground (but not the reader) for the revelations of the home stretch.

I want to read it again. I wanted to start right away, but the library was beckoning. If I am to follow the wisdom of the “read it before you own it” school of book buying, The Sea is a great candidate, besides containing writing that any writer is likely to want to experience again. On the other hand, I now have the complete list of the Booker short lists and winners since 1969, and there are many MUSTS included on that list. I’ll approach them systematically, at least until the next bout of accidentalism strikes.

* The other was Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin, one of her four nominations. You can collect your prize at any good bookstore.

ODY: Week 8 (56/365). The Whole Fam-Damily.

Posted by :James Howden On : October 16, 2006
0

Category: On Second Thought

Tags:, , , , ,

I began the week with reflections on a family reunion. We’d booked a room in the seniors’ home where my sweetly declining Mum is glowing out her days. I made a grander-than-usual entrance because I was carrying a guitar case, which got the attention of the nieces and nephews. Lots of questions. (Mine: “What, you’re not reading my site?! You obviously need to get rid of your life – of course I’m playing the guitar!”) And yes, eventually, flushed of face and nervous as a 16-year-old knocking at the door with a corsage in hand, I played a little where people I know and love could actually hear me. I played clumsily and it didn’t matter a bit.

There was never live music at family gatherings when I was a kid. There wasn’t music, period. Neither our parents nor any of the five kids played at all. The next generation has done better. My children are the fathers of this man’s music-making. My sister married a quiet and stubborn man who taught himself to play guitar, and their girls play piano and more. Now there’s a son-in-law in the mix, a live-wire entrepreneur, guitarist and sometime recording engineer, and Jer was all over me. (He was like Dave the TVPI, my son and first teacher, except with Mediterranean hairiness and more manic energy.) He was very encouraging, and had WAY too much stuff he wanted to show me. (I hadn’t known how well he played.) This all let me off the hook of actually having to play for him, which was way too fine with me, but I did learn some interesting little twists on the G and D chords, as well as other stuff that may resurface sometime down the road. (I’ve already forgotten. Indigestion of the mental kind.) I have so much to learn, and it was fun to learn with a newly-minted nephew.

Quietly, in the background as he so often is, was Silent Paul, my brother-in-law. It has sometimes seemed that we didn’t have a lot in common. Our professional collars are of a different colour and our world-views sometimes far apart. If I am words and ideas, he is hands and things. But as the years pass, we find each other more and more when the clan gathers. (I admit that he annoys me mightily with that flat belly of his, but he has good qualities, too.) Later that day, he sidled up to me as we were about to hit the homeward road. “Keep pickin’ and grinnin’,” he said. A noble, quiet man says a lot with a little, and among all the reasons for enjoying playing the guitar, here’s another. It’s sweet to share a common cause with a brother. We sometimes run together when I’m down home, and now we have another avenue of DOING that we can share. Paul’s friendly and kind, but not much for sitting around and talking. He runs a huge crane in a steel mill. He works on his own car, restores antiques, installs his own hardwood floors. He envies my letter-writing, but I would like to have built a house and home like he has. Now we have a new thing that we can do together. It’ll be fun to learn with him, too, and I have another motivational deadline. I want to be a lot better by the next family gathering.

Back home, my next lesson was a slap in the head. I felt out of it. I couldn’t keep up with the chord changes that every one of my eight fellow bumblers seemed to be doing far better than me. Guru Kurt said the kindest thing: “Chord changes are the WORST. Nothing will bring out the I SUCK! in you better than them.” The whole week was a real plateau time where I couldn’t see much sign of progress. Some of this, my occasionally rational mind tells me, is because of Kurt’s method, or at least my response to it. I’m trying to learn many chords and techniques and note reading and rhythm reading all at the same time. He says that he wants to give us, in this eight-week group lesson, everything that we need to know to teach ourselves the guitar. He gives us a lot, assuming that we won’t be able to absorb it or quite keep up, but the plan is that we’ll have habits and a strong set of materials to keep on plucking after the course is done. Beyond that, though, I also have to hammer away at the repetitive strain of going from G to C, C to D, D to A (and on and on) over and over and over again. (“But play songs! Make up stuff! Have fun!” insists the TVPI by phone. There’s a balance.)

My final family lesson of the week came from the six-year-old. Sam has adopted the old broken-necked Dégas as his own. He keeps it simple. He started by holding it upside-down and playing left-handed; I might’ve left him that way, but he’s very clearly a right-dominant boy. I showed him how to hold a pick, and where his left hand might go (he didn’t care for much detail), and then he whaled (and wailed) away. I listened furtively while he composed his first song, strumming the same non-chord and singing the same flat and sweet little melody for every line, no matter how long it was. I’m a Dad. I found it brilliant:


I was alive since 2000 / I was alive since 2000 / Most of my friends weren’t even born / Thomas wasn’t born ‘til October / But I was born on April 6th / And I didn’t know them when I was a baby / But I didn’t even care if they were babies in their mommies’ tummies / ‘Cause I didn’t even have friends yet / But we lived next door to McDonald’s / And we were pretty close to a play structure…”

The next song in his repertoire involved more aggressive punching of the strings, while the lyrics came from the latest number-one-with-a-bullet grade 1 schoolyard song. (The part I don’t get is that he goes to a French school. As Ottawa’s francophone parents say, we have to promote and protect le français. In a city like ours, even kids who speak only French at home can pick up English like they do a cold.) And here’s how it goes. It starts off with an echo of Queen’s ever-present “We Will Rock You”, and then wanders into the ancient rhythms of nearly all the chants that every kid learns on every playground.


We will, we will, you know what? Kick your butt!
All the way to Pizza Hut!
I don’t care if you dare,
But don’t forget your underwear!

 

Words to live by, and an I can do it spirit to learn by, too. Thanks, little buddy.

ODY: Week 7. Of Dogs and Six-Strings.

Posted by :James Howden On : October 10, 2006
0

Category: On Second Thought

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,

It’s a fun stage in the Old Dog Year, having now spent a first full week with my new guitar. The chords that have sounded so discouragingly now ring, when I can get my fingers organized, with an undeniable sweetness. When I bought the Walden, I also asked about how to get hold of the guru, KW. I’d missed the second lesson, and wanted to know what I should work on. Guitar Guy just laughed. “You can’t get hold of Kurt.” Oh. The Guy had some good words, too. The advice: repetition, repetition, repetition. “When you’re watching TV, listening to radio, talking to people, just play simple stuff. Over and over. Brainless. Just let your fingers learn by doing it over and over. That’s it.”

My old boss has a book out, and in it she talks about a life-long affection for opera. Radio 2 had an interview with her the next day, where the talk was all music. So I took up the Guy on his suggestion, flipped on my bedside radio, grabbed the Walden and played A Blues Riff and Travis Picking and a few quiet chords, which is how I found myself accompanying Maria Callas from a 1951 recording of La Traviata, as well as a really swell tenor (I forget) doing an aria from La Bohème. (I don’t understand the lyrics, but I was flushed with pride that I actually recognized the aria. Yay, me!) Then Cohen. Then Lightfoot. My noodling had sounded better beside operatic singing than it did as an accompaniment to Gordon’s guitar. Sigh.

Then the next day, in the midst of a long conversation with The Big Guy (son number 2, on a surprise visit, not to be confused with the Guy), I called time-out, thought Where’s Walden?, grabbed my new best friend from the basement, and noodled some more while we yacked and yacked. Who says I can’t multi-task? Normally, I can’t keep doing dishes while talking on the phone. I can’t eat and think at the same time. But this seemed to work okay. Gotta listen when young men decide it’s time to talk.

On lesson night, KW the guitar guru showed up with his left hand encased in plaster, having severed a finger tendon doing home repair. The anaesthetic was wearing off, the painkillers were kicking in, but he was there. His eyes were crossed by the end, but his humour was intact. His planned lesson was a little frayed around the edges, though. He has eyes and a mouth painted over the curved end where cast holds the fingers, so his left hand can gesture and cajole like a ventriloquist’s dummy. It can’t do chord changes, of course, but neither can THIS dummy. I felt lost. I am no star in this group of beginners. (Fabulous. Another vain imagining cast aside.) Most of the rest have music experience – piano, sax, trumpet – and so the theory and the reading must be as boring for them as it is nervous-making for me.

My musical education came largely in Mr. Danton’s class on rotary in grades 5 and 6. I didn’t pay much attention, though my eyes got wide when he played “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the piano. He was a painfully shy man, but his mild, Clark Kent exterior sprung holes when he got at the keyboard. (He tried to contain himself, but really couldn’t. Loved that.). Oh, yes, and there was a month, way back when, with a grade 1 piano book. One lonely year of renewed bachelorhood, I lived in a small apartment off my sister’s house, where there was a grandmother’s piano and a bench full of conservatory books. I attacked it solo. I played for nobody. I lasted for a hardworking while, and so staffs and clefs and quarter notes look vaguely familiar to me. But I have so much to (re)learn. Chord changes. Chord changes. Cripes, I’ve always been a bit resistant to change, but this is ridiculous. I tend to labour away at one chord ‘til it’s clean. Then I stop. Then I do it again, on that or another chord. The transition between them, though, is so friggin’ awkward and muddy. I hate that pause, that waiting zone, “for people just waiting”, as Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) once wrote. 

After my lesson, I was down to the International Writers Festival, where the last session of the evening featured three songwriters, playing and talking and laughing about their work. (Jim Bryson is an odd, interesting and very witty performer I’d never heard of; Lynn Miles has a dark and soulful groove that she mines; and oh my, Oh Susanna  – not her real name – was a revelation to me, a great big voice and a quirky but substantial way of writing. I had fun.) I watch musicians a little differently now that I have a little clearer idea of what a guitarist does. Afterward, there was a particular treat.

I’d heard of Six String Nation  before. It’s one man’s quest to unite his country through the instrumentality of a guitar built from sea to sea to sea. Actually, it was built in Nova Scotia, but its materials come from a representative sample of the Canadian dream. Its wood comes from a Haida-Gwaii albino spruce, a Wayne Gretzky hockey stick and the schooner Bluenose. It contains copper from the roof of Parliament, a piece of Rocket Richard’s 1956 Stanley Cup ring, and a chunk of mammoth ivory, 60 bits of our history and geography. Jowi Taylor, the crazy guy behind this sweetly insane idea, has toured all over with the (as yet unnamed) Six String Nation guitar, and it has been played by all the great Canucks – Colin James, Bryan Adams, dozens of others. It has now also had a silly little blues line played more than awkwardly by Yours Truly. (I’ve never played standing up before.) A bunch of us lined up after the songwriters’ show to be photographed with this lovely little machine, and to make our suggestions for its name. (I’ve selected the archetypal Canadian name GORDON: think Gordie Howe, yes, but especially think Gordon Lightfoot, and maybe Gord Downie from The Tragically Hip, or even the name of the Barenaked Ladies’ breakout album, but don’t think about that goofy beaver in the Bell ads. GORDON isn’t as bicultural as I’d like, but it ain’t bad.). I got home very late, but I felt inspired to play ‘til much later in my own wee six-string neighbourhood.)

I began to notice, over the next couple of nights, that the Walden was wildly out of tune, but I couldn’t be bothered learning how to use my new electronic tuner because I was getting to the practice chair so darned late at night, and the Old Dog needs more beauty rest than you can imagine. The E and G chords were especially bad because my remarkable ear had begun to register that the low E string was brutally off. Travis Picking sounded terrible, but the movement and the rhythm are coming along. Nice!

On the road for weekend family visits, I released Wally from captivity in the forenoon. (It may be a “morning guitar”. And after my earlier vaguely erotic writing about my first moments with “her”, it may turn out to be a guy. Oops!) Looking out over a perfect little lake at Mother Margery’s, I figured out first how to use the tuner. (It works best with the batteries in it.) I twisted my very own machine heads for the first time! (Machine Head. Wasn’t that the name of a testosterone-friendly band in the 70s? Gosh, men are funny. What, didja think we were gonna call ourselves The Tuning Knobs?!) And MAN did the chords sound sweet. Read some rhythms (need to spend lots of time on the reading), played for over an hour. This is what I need this is what I need this is what I need… 49 days in a row. Only 316 to go in the daily company of my as-yet unnamed friend. Um, Walden? Waldo? Wally? (Wanda?) Or maybe even Gordon…

Small Town Sunday Morning

Posted by :James Howden On : October 8, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , ,

Extracted sinfully early – no, at a blessèd hour – from my bed by a small herd of eager critters, I walked out into the world to see a new sun, an old moon, and a heavy dew. My bride and big sister (we’re staying at the Hotel Pamela) had won the sleep-in lottery, so I was accompanied on the morning walk by a three-year-old, black-and-white border collie, and six- and eight-year-old puppies of the blonde, tongue-wagging human variety. It was hard to say who had the most frisky fun, but I wouldn’t bet against the boys.

I’m a city guy now, but these down-home trips always make me wistful for open fields, big yards and giant skies, and for the friendly waves from people I’ve never met. I miss that in Ottawa. After wandering with the puppies down to the edge of town, I left the human ones at the arena, where they could peak in on some Sunday-morning hockey-men while I grabbed some cash at the bank. The CIBC’s promotional posters, complete with a couple of happy Indo-Canadian mortgage holders, look almost exotic in a pure laine Caucasian village like this one. I wondered about what the young farm fella ahead of me in line would think about that. It’s so easy to assume narrow racial attitudes in a place like this, and so unfair. What he did do, once he had his cash, was to say, “’Mornin’. Is that a border collie? Nice dog. My aunt has one a lot like that.”

Just as we all wandered into the parking lot at Tim’s – there are only two stoplights, but 24-hour access to coffee and crullers is a modern necessity even in a place like this – three more sleepy-looking Young White Males pulled in and shuffled out of their eccentrically parked ride. They’d pulled on whatever jeans and rumpled jackets were nearest to hand, and their ball caps had fraying bills, faded colours and illegible logos. This part of the YWM uniform was not, as it often is, the latest bit of pro sports merchandise. These were hats that had actually seen long service on farms or ball fields. (Or maybe just every Tim’s and every Beer Store in southern Ontario.) They could’ve been on a run for coffee after an all-night bush party, but it could be that they were fuelling up to take the soybeans off or hunt some wild turkeys. (Or to go tailgating at a football game. It was a great day for football today.) And then a certain small luxury occurred to me: I like lots of YWMs that look just like these guys did. They would’ve been only a few years removed from the English classrooms that I tried to make tolerable for young men.

Meanwhile, for a lot of Canadians, especially of the female and/or non-white persuasion, the approach of this trio might’ve inspired a little unease, maybe even outright fear. Not so much at a coffee shop on a misty Sunday morning, of course, but I imagined a Friday night down the street from a strip mall bar. Guys like this might be shocked to know that anyone could be afraid of them. Guys like me, though, with a certain size and breadth of shoulder and, especially, a certain kind of complexion, are mainly free from that sort of hovering anxiety. (Yes, I know, unless I’m wandering the dark streets of neighbourhood X in city Y.) That is a small but significant privilege. And yes, this may feel like an awfully sombre little cloud on the edges of a beautiful blue sky, I guess, but it spoiled nothing. It was just something I saw.

Mostly, though, after my last few years of city living, I notice all the strangers in these small towns who nod from their passing cars, and the teenaged girls at the doughnut counter who aren’t afraid to smile at Sunday morning patrons. I smile back at the old fellow by the door as we leave, who grins at me and the border collie. “Who’s gettin’ more exercise, I wonder?” he chuckles. And after all these friendly, anonymous collisions, a van pulled up beside me this morning and a gruff voice barked out. “What’re you doing here?” It was Coach Woody, a resident of this town, probably headed over to the church to set up. He was my son’s high school football coach. In the previous century, he was my high school football coach, too. And what could be better? A little game of catch-up like that is a beautiful thing on a cool fall morning. Everything we threw was a spiral. We shrugged and smiled as the puppies dragged me on to the next tiny thrill.

High Points for LitWits

Posted by :James Howden On : October 6, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , , , ,

Just a few more (lately logged) comments on the Ottawa International Writers Festival, among which will not appear a re-opening of the debate about whether there should be an apostrophe at the end of “Writers” (except to say that it’s an adjective, not necessarily a possessive one, and with the ridiculous littering of apostrophes where they ought not to be, leaning toward exclusion where it can safely be justified is fine by me, so there!) (Was there ever a debate?)

• Especially for those who remember well the Air India disaster, and the Canadian implications in other explosions of religious extremism, Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call will be very interesting reading. It dances between Indo-Canadian communities and the murderous background of Sikhs versus Hindus in the Punjab. Sounds good.

• High school English teachers can having a writing life. Brent Leo Robillard (Houdini’s Shadow) has proved it. (Unsure whether to praise or curse him.)

• English professors can write with humour, irreverence and sauce. Randy Boyagoda’s Governor of the Northern Province skewers several Canadian complacencies, institutions and sloppily held ideals.

• While I am impatient with the partisanship and constant posturing that is built in to our governing system, I do have time for the characters in the play. Found Eddy Goldenberg (How It Works) and his discussion of his decades as “back-room boy” to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien interesting. He tells a funny story of Mr. Chrétien’s first social visit with George Bush, where the President’s attempt at small talk (okay, do I know any Canadians?) began with his admiring view of Conrad Black, sworn antagonist to the PM who wouldn’t agree to a Canuck being allowed entry into the British House of Lords. There were several Bush anecdotes, at least one of which is getting some play in Washington (his reference to stringing the source of government leaks up by the thumbs, “just like we do at Guantanamo Bay”.) Interesting from an insider point of view, and also for the sake of humanizing a government process that can seem foggy and far away.

• I had known of Michael Redhill as the editor of Brick, a literary magazine, and as a playwright, but my knowledge of theatre is pathetic. Hearing him read from his latest novel, Consolation, has put a new entry on my must read list. (This may not be a compliment these days, but he reminded me of Mel Gibson a few months after firing his personal trainer.) I enjoyed his turn of phrase as a writer, and found his comments incisive and intelligent. And a bit of a caution: “All writers have diseased egos – and in awards season, it metastasizes”; and “Why publish? I find myself quite perplexed about why I do this.” This is someone I’d like to know.

Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers

Posted by :James Howden On : October 5, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,

FDA (full-disclosure alert): that title is a false lead and a limping excuse to drop my current favourite band name into this and nearly every other conversation. Buddy is a Newfoundland band, three guys that play a mixture of goofy, hearty and sentimental songs from down home. (They would seem to have a solid touring career, playing across the Maritimes and for the Newfoundland diaspora all over Canada.)

But that’s not what I’m writing about. (And I haven’t even heard the lads play, so that’s all I have anyway. Reminds me of the opening to a Cockburn song: Woke up thinking about Turkish drummers / Didn’t take long, I don’t know much about Turkish drummers / But it made me think of Germany and the guy who sold me cigarettes / Who’d been in the Afghan secret police who made the observation that it’s hard to live…) Buddy reminds me that I listened to a trio of terrific Canuck writers last night at the local LitWit extravaganza, one of whom was a rumpled, denim-clad Newfoundland writer named Kenneth J. Harvey.

For son Will and me, Harvey was the intriguing highlight of the evening. Faded jean jacket, flushed cheeks under several days growth of beard, a plain black ballcap pulled low over his eyes, he looked the part of the shy, beery, but soberingly clear-eyed Buddy over in the corner, down to the local Legion Hall. I knew little about him, other than that he’s just now becoming widely-known in Canada despite quite stunning “writer’s writer” international praise for over a dozen books. The guy’s a writing machine, though perhaps not an eager seller. Even by Newfoundland standards, he keeps a low profile (he lives in an outport), and didn’t do terribly well with the excerpt he read from his new novel Inside. (Maybe it was his cold.) But the lead character, an old ex-con, started to become real in my head anyway, and in the following Q&A, Harvey was by turns blunt and eloquent, raw or funny, and always and distinctively himself. We bought the book. We bought him.

The Other Fellers are superb writers, and better performers. Steven Heighton is a prolific and adventurous writer (the new novel is Afterlands, an acclaimed re-creation of the harsh aftermath of an American North Pole expedition) and as cowboy-handsome as he is serious. His was the only book I didn’t buy last night – my library groans with unread but enthusiastically purchased books – though a previous Heighton reading had inspired me to buy his poetry, which I never do. He requires himself to write riskily, to drive himself batty but fascinated by not knowing where he’s going, by writing without a map or a safety harness. I could learn from that. I am.

Trevor Cole is a guy I’ve been meaning to read since Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life was short-listed for the 2004 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. It was his first novel, and I happened to be writing happily, feverishly and anonymously for the GG herself at the time. I was intrigued (and royally ticked off) by his “overnight” success; it turns out, though, that he’d been a prominent magazine writer before that, if one paid any attention to business, which I emphatically didn’t. (And in other news, I confirmed in the signing line last night that my bride’s vague memory of having gone out with Cole once or twice was true. Long ago, friends. No, my competitive irritation comes from his having made the jump to hyperspace so far ahead of me.) Perhaps more important (and more interesting!) for you to know, he’s one of those rare authors with a radio voice and real performing skill. His new novel is The Fearsome Particles, which sounds great, and not only because of his acting. He’s a fine builder of sentences and characters, with turns of phrase that are inventive and often deliciously wry. Because I’m cheap, and because I think this might be a writer I’ll follow closely and therefore feel the obsessive and über-controlling need to read him in sequence, I bought Bray in paperback.

This was one of the Ottawa International Writers Festival’s series called “Writing Life”: three snippets of new books and an engaging conversation with and among the three people who made them. It’s been another good Feast of Words and I’ll be dining again tonight. And if you like writers and writing, you can hear some of the best Canuck authors reading their stuff on a cool new site. (My pleasure.)

Writers Festival Highlights

Posted by :James Howden On : October 3, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,

I read Andrew Cohen’s While Canada Slept about a year and a half ago. He’s an Ottawa man, so though his book isn’t new, he’s here and his book is even more relevant. Questions about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan keep growing with every young man (and one woman) that we bring home to bury. Are we returning to a time when Canada “punches above its weight” as far as international influence goes? Cohen recommends it, from a military but especially from diplomatic and development perspectives. This is a smart and eloquent guy. If he was more prone to performance and less to dispassionate analysis, he’d be a big star in the punditocratic constellation. Punditocratic. a. describing those who make their living by entertaining us with their knowledge. Word of the day. Word to your father. You’re welcome.

Steven Manners has the look of a stubbornly loyal but chronically disappointed pro sports fan. (The Cubs. The Leafs.) He makes Cohen look like a sharpie, a vaudeville showman, but his wryly detached delivery began to grown on me as he discussed his Super Pills: The Prescription Drugs We Love to Take. I enjoyed his historical reminders of how root beer and Coca-Cola starting out as tonics, in the great tradition of Ayer’s Sarsparilla and Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. (For example, only when the forerunner of the American Food and Drug Administration began to investigate why Coke “contains neither coca nor kola” did the company begin marketing it as a mere beverage.) Mainly, though, his book addresses the modern phenomenon that has been called “cosmetic psychopharmacology”: the avid search for and consequently ready supply of meds designed to make us “better than well”. Valium. Prozac. Ritalin. Viagra. The list is long, and the stories around them are a caution. We do love our magic bullets.

After Mr. Manners, I hustled over to fancier digs at Ottawa’s famous Chateau Laurier ballroom to hear my Ol’ Boss, former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. Her memoir Heart Matters is monstrously important for me and all my former colleagues, and is making a predictably big splash in Canadian newspapers and bookstores. Many in the large crowd, I’m sure, were anxious to hear the “state secrets” she has been admonished in some circles for telling. She was not a big fan of Prime Minister Paul Martin, it is now publicly clear, but she dismisses any idea that she’s broken a sacred code. In any case, she didn’t share anything from that part of the book. What she did read was fine storytelling, much of which I hadn’t heard before, about her family’s harrowing refugee experience and growing up an immigrant in a then very white Canada. She is a superb performer, of course, but she read far too long and the subsequent delightful conversation with host Ken Rockburn was far too short. (Yes, she simply cannot do without me. Ahem.) But then again, the line of book buyers eager to have it signed went on and on. I was in it.

The “Big Idea” series continued Monday night with Stephen O’Shea and his book Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World. I was not familiar with O’Shea, but he’s impressive and I’ll read his book. He’s a journalist writing history, and made a point about the importance of being in the place where great events occurred, and not merely consulting texts in libraries. This was perhaps a gentle critique of academic historians and also of our frequent tendency to give greater weight to abstraction and reference than to direct and felt experience. O’Shea devotes much of the book to countering a pervasive fallacy: the idea that war and conflict is what defines the course of history. Most accounts of medieval relations between Christianity and Islam focus on the great battles (“if it bleeds, it leads”), but O’Shea gives considerable attention to the long periods of peace and productive interaction between the two faith communities. He coins the term “Islamochristian civilization”, and terms the historic relationship as “a sibling rivalry, not this dangerous shibboleth of the ‘clash of civilizations’”. And as for “East is East, and West is West”? O’Shea argues, very convincingly, that “the twain did meet, and mingle, and marry”. He eloquently expresses his dismay at the contemporary toxic rhetoric that mixes politics and religion, and especially the West’s ignorance of Islam and its ongoing “fear of the Turk” – a renewable resource, it appears. “Religion, for all its solace, will always be a ready hand grenade for those who wish to make war,” he said. And I liked the following example, thrown off during questioning after his thoughtful and appealing talk. It’s a good conversation starter (or ender!), and rattles some of the slack-minded impressions of Islam into a new context. “Osama bin Laden is as much a Muslim,” O’Shea stated, “as David Koresh and the Branch Davidians at Waco were Christian…” This guy is good. (I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and listening about Islam lately. If you’d like a sample, start here.)  

ODY: Week 6 (42/365). Old, Blue, Borrowed and New.

Posted by :James Howden On : October 2, 2006
0

Category: On Second Thought

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Just picking up Old Dog hairs from your carpet for the first time? The creation myth is here, and the first step is here.

I spent the first part of the week at a training seminar in Toronto, bunking at Sue and André’s place in a cozy Beaches neighbourhood. I’d dragged the guitar along, and kept the faith with some late-night strumming on Sunday. On Monday night, I got caught. André, husband of my wife’s old friend Sue, came home from work late and heard something that reminded him of music in his spare bedroom. He poked his head in to praise Sue for dusting off her guitar. Instead, he found me playing the ol’ Dégas in my underwear. Hurray! Male bonding!

I was training as a facilitator for the Virtues Project , an approach to teaching, child-rearing and relationships that puts fundamental human goodness right up front. Guitar Virtuosity was on my mind. Let’s examine a partial list:

Courage? (Check. Terrified of this thing, started anyway.)
Creativity? (Okay. I am making things. Basement noises. Muttering blogs.)
Enthusiasm? (Muted. Taking a jock approach: never too high, never too low. Should make more whoopee. Not what you’re thinking, though that’s not a bad idea, either.)
Determination? (Check. Day 42, kids!)
Diligence? (Long past due, but duly done.)
Humility? (If I needed more, this newfound clumsiness really helps.)
Idealism? (Larded with practicality and order, but hopefulness leaks through.)
Orderliness? (I have a good place. As for time, though, I shoe-horn practice into the absolute heel of my day, and the night-time, blues be damned, ain’t necessarily the right time…)
Patience? (Man, it doesn’t come easily, but it comes. Haven’t thrown anything. Yet.)
Self-discipline? (42 in a row argues for Yes, but the frayed edges of disappointment try to shout them down. I am disciplining Self to listen more to column A. All those days, whether purposeful or not, count. “90% of life is just showing up,” saith the prophet Woody Allen. I have showed up at fretboard and keyboard.)

Virtues I haven’t the nerve to acknowledge yet as part of this off-key odyssey:

Confidence. (A rumour, a far-away voice. So far, will and embarrassed enthusiasm rule.)
Excellence. (I have, however, just emerged from a pothole in the footpath to the parking lot next to the on-ramp to the road to excellence. That counts.)
Joyfulness. (I hear its giggle, but it runs away when I look.)
Service. (Hard to see what this does for others. Nobody-but-me for the moment…)

Tuesday was Day 3 of the Virtues seminar, and I was presenting some ideas and exercises on COMMITMENT. In part to counter-balance some of the syrupy-sweet or new-age ethereal music that had been played – but mainly to jumpstart my own courage (and humility!) – I went LIVE. I played a perverse kind of musical chairs (If you call that music. If you call those chairs!) with my new best friends. I had them scribbling some ideas in response to questions and challenges, and I (mercifully) didn’t give them much time to write. Mercifully, because their writing time was defined by my playing of “A Blues Riff”, first very slowly (à la Week 2 and 3) and, later in the exercise, as fast as I could go. Going public. Visible (and risible) commitment. (Merde, did I make a lot of mistakes!) Concentration was probably hard for them, as I inserted some startlingly realistic enactments of mock frustration. It was lively, let’s say that, and we laughed a lot. (Commitment is too often a grim, ominous and guy-unfriendly concept.) And that turned out to be my playing for the day, because I wasn’t back to my borrowed bunk ‘til 1:30 a.m., with an important meeting about the Old Dog Year the next morning, bright and early. But most importantly, I chose an intimate circle of gracious encouragement. So many pats on the back, so much praise for this tiny outreach to the Muse of music. I smiled and smiled.

The Wednesday meeting was an assessment of interest about this Guitarzan spasm of learning and all the on-line thinking I’m doing about it. Interest? ‘Fraid not. A busy man had the courtesy to indulge me with a meeting but hadn’t even looked at the submitted collection of entries on the first 31 days of the Old DogYear. Garn! I’ve learned what doesn’t work, anyway. And then it was the long trip home and another exhausted midnight guitar run. Commitment feels strong, though confidence is wobbling. This would have been the night of my second group lesson, but I missed it. I wonder how much farther KW took us.

The end of the week found me back in the beloved basement. Same old stuff. The dullard within. But doing all this repetition feels like early summer days, when the strengthening sun slowly burns off the fog of morning. KW had thrown lots of chords at us, and they’re coming. I’m starting to remember how to configure the C chord, but I’m also hearing what C sounds like and how it speaks to G and D. The little finger-picking sequence that the guitar guru showed us, an initially unruly little gang of 4 notes, began to resolve itself into a smooth and brainless pattern. Look, Ma, no eyes! It’s very relaxing, actually, quite a mind-emptying finger-dance where the digits are starting to remember their steps without my help. Sweet. A little less old. A little less blue.

And a LOT less borrowed, broken-necked Dégas guitar because, on Sunday, I finally pulled a Major Commitment Trigger by buying A NEW GUITAR. My guitar! I wanted to dance and giggle but, to my credit (or shame), I took it all in stride. It’s a Walden guitar – a D550, baby! – a solid-topped beauty that I got on sale for $200 at the Ottawa Folklore Centre. It’s a folk guitar, not low-rent classical as the Dégas was, so the strings are metal rather than nylon. The B and high E strings are like razor wire, so there is another level of fingertip toughening to come. They’re also the same colour as the – what is it, the pick-guard?—that guitar-body armour below the sound hole, so these eyes have trouble picking them out. Guitar Guy at the OFC spoke warmly and knowingly about my Walden, and I feel good about this machine. I bought a stand, an electronic tuner and a humidifier, none of which I know how to work yet. The humidifier is a fairly simple and obvious thing, though I hadn’t considered how dryness could affect a wooden instrument. I’m not sure how it sits, so that’ll be Question 67 or 68 when I go for the next groupthink lesson in a couple of days.

It’ll be fun to show off my new lovely, but I’m scared to play with her. She makes sweet and unfamiliar sounds that my borrowed love was incapable of making. The music we made was obviously much more full and rich, but I strummed as if I was nervously coaxing melody from a crystal vase. I missed the Dégas. This new friend doesn’t yet sit comfortably with me. I wanted to whale away with my mock solos and percussive energy, but I felt nervous and reserved. I wanted things to feel comfortable right away, ‘cause heck, she’s beautiful, she has a gorgeous voice and body, it’s a fresh and exciting start and besides, that first date had cost me a pretty penny! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that there were those awkward pauses in the conversation, that I was unsure about how to treat her and how she might respond to my overtures. It was a tense kind of fun, though, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing each other again.

Writers Festival Day 1

Posted by :James Howden On : October 2, 2006
0

Category: At First Glance

Tags:, , ,

One of the highlights of my year is a big shindig of word people talking about their words, and word-ivores like me snuffling contentedly at the word trough. As a writer, libraries can be overwhelming and bookstores – especially that big used bookstore downtown, with all those dried-out husks of once-hopeful publication – can knock me down and dishonour my remains. The Ottawa International Writers Festival does me good, though.

I’m inspired by great sentences. I’m inspired, in an odd but clear way, by the ordinariness of the people. When the writers are great, I’m inspired to believe that I could be good, too. (It took me a surprisingly long time to realize the degree to which I idealized, nay deified, writers. Traces of outworn idolatry remain, but the WritersFest helps me cleanse the sanctuary.) When the writers are mediocre, a less noble inspiration turns my crankiness: if (s)he can do it, NO MORE WAITING for me!! It’s not exactly righteous anger, but it’s a deformed cousin of it. Details at eleven. (Or whenever I strap myself to the keyboard next.)

ODY: 35/365. Weekly, Not Weakly.

Posted by :James Howden On : September 24, 2006
0

Category: On Second Thought

Tags:, , , ,

I showed off my calluses today. Sitting in a seminar, engaged in a getting-to-know-you with Kim, I mentioned the Old Dog Year, that there’s a trick with a guitar that I’m learning to do. She plays, she composes, and so she had that warm and knowing interest. “Five weeks. Nice. How’s it going?” I offered her the fingertips of my left hand, and pointed out their toughness with bashful pride. She smiled. She got it.

Yes, there are moments when a chord comes out clean, or when the picking fingers work with a mind of their own. I slide into automatic pilot, a brief patch of detachment when I can let go and listen to what my hands are doing, no strings of wilful insistence attached. Easy. But one of the most valuable signs of progress is a blunt and fairly stupid one, but I like it: I have hard fingertips. My calluses remind me, when the guitar or even thoughts of it are distant, that I’m putting in the work. It’s like being able to catch a hardball in the palm of your glove without pain, cutting and jump-stopping in basketball practice without fear of blistered feet.

My belly is softer and rounder than I ever thought possible, but my digits are tough and nimble. I’m a hard-body! (From the palms out) Today makes five full weeks in which I have strapped myself to a chair and Done the Thing each day. Nearly ten percent of a year. Victory is mine! It is good to look back on 35 days of required clumsiness and see what small advances have been made. I’m proud of you, Old Dog! Good stuff! I almost said that out loud, and came dangerously close to actually believing it.

The thought of picking up the guitar every day is a pleasant one now. I’ve made friends with it, and it’s teaching me well though it cares not at all. I’ll keep the streak going, but I think from here I’ll record my progress weekly. Until Week Six.