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I’m Not THERE, Either

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

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Montreal again. Trench coats and young white males and guns again. School kids in terrified lockdown in classes, or running into the streets, or hitting the floor of their cafeteria. But especially, it seems that a desperately alienated and angry young man (or maybe more than one) has decided to do something about it. The something involved automatic weapons and people he probably didn’t even know. The it? God knows. But I’ll bet it has to do with uselessness, and toxic blame, and utter disassociation from lives and problems and wounds other than his own.

This time it’s Dawson College, part of Quebec’s CEGEP system of trades and university-preparatory schools. These are 16-19-year-olds in a large downtown school of more than 7000. Many of them are living away from home for the first time. How disoriented are they today?

Something about the conjunction of learning and murder, of striving youth and senseless death, is unbearable. It looks like the police took down one of these pathetic excuses for manhood, but it’s still not clear if he was alone. (He makes a fine argument for the benefits of suicide. Maybe we should have more respect for merely self-destructive behaviour among the young.)

But there is blood on the walls of another Montreal school, and stains on students and families that no pressure-hose will ever wash away. Four dead so far, they say. A dozen others in various degrees of distress. At least it’s not 14, as it was at L’École Polytechnique in 1989. So much to grieve, so much to rage against in the dying of youthful lights.

ODY: 24/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 13, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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So, no more F7 for awhile. (Oops, wait, no. It’s just F.) I need A7, B7, D7 and E7 for Another Blues Riff, a strummed one this time, that the IA sent me yesterday. I tried all four of them separately tonight. Each one sounded like a bag of cats,  just swung at varying speeds. Conclusion: I am nowhere near this thing, and four new chords at once was a ridiculous thought. D looks manageable, on first fingering.

Conclusion the Second: I should not try to tune my guitar, any guitar, by random fits of intuition. I couldn’t hear much change in each individual string as I tried to figure out which way to turn the knob, but even these ears could hear that familiar chords sounded worse than ever. Bags of cats being, say, nudged repeatedly across a hardwood floor.

ODY: 23/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 12, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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After a largely pointless and haggard day, I didn’t want to practise tonight. Calvin Junior required considerable maintenance and the odd holler, and the Old Dog was having trouble managing even the well-established trick of getting a six-year-old boy to sleep. (Come on, man, you should be able to handle this on the fourth go-round!) I just wanted to crawl into bed with The Poisonwood Bible. (Good novel. It’s got me.)

Ever notice — this is the way it is for me, at any rate — that it’s hardest to keep the promises we make to ourselves? Practise I did, though, the full 30-minute monty. The blues are smoother, but I’m going to blame my broke-neck Dégas for the muddiest chords I’ve heard in a week and a half. Sigh. The Itinerant Artist, though, good as his word, had sent me an email with nine new chords to try, along with a renewed insistence that I get regular lessons. I was nearly obedient. I made the call to the Ottawa Folklore Centre, a remarkable place whose musical offerings of various kinds I virtually toured this afternoon. I’ve checked the bios of their guitar teachers. I’ve ranked them according, largely, to their facial hair and what I can read of their Genuine Guitar Chops in their eyes. Ah, vanity.

By the way, I tried F7, sort of a modified barre chord. (Yes, the learning goes on. I now know how to spell “barre” chord, which brings me zero percent closer to ever being able to do one.) And 45 seconds trying to make my fretful fingers do the F7 thing brought them to a spooky spasm of rigor nearly mortis. All in all, though, it was like somebody once said about golf, or some other frustrating form of alleged amusement: a bad half-hour at the guitar is better than 30 minutes of spectacular dishwashing.

ODY: 22/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 11, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Today is full of commemorations of massive murder, but the IA had more urgent questions. “He taught you bar chords? Those are hard! Jacob still refuses to even try them.” Jacob is Ben’s friend. Ben, eldest son, Itinerant Artist, was having his long-distance chance to hear how the Old Dog Year is going. He’d only been back down from the Arctic for a week or two, no Internet connection yet but the phone works. He’s a gentle pile of bones, but the IA did had some strings to pick with what the Teen Vegan Punk-rock Intellectual (his bro) had chosen to start me up with.

The IA is a musician and a sometime guitar teacher – and he’ll go back to his music degree sometime, too, I’m sure – so he has a little stronger background than the TVPI. (But I can learn from anybody. At any distance.) He had praise for my efforts, including a truly catastrophic attempt to play the blues over the phone without a warmup. (I haven’t played it that badly in at least a week). 

“You’ve played every day on a broke-neck garbage guitar? For how long? That’s a victory right there!” Thanks, IA. And you’re right about another thing, too: an experienced, face-to-face teacher might not be a bad investment. One wandering phone call brought encouragement, a promise of emailed chord diagrams to expand my repertoire, and also inspired a pretty satisfying guitar workout. So maybe feedback helps. So maybe I do need more regular and immediate instruction. But hiring a teacher? Well! That does seem like rather a public commitment, don’t you think?   

ODY: 21/365. Is It A Habit Yet?

Posted by :James Howden On : September 10, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It’s three weeks of daily practice, and my fingers are getting organized and a little tougher. I can now make chord changes, from E major to A minor to A major. They’re clumsy, but I’m sometimes surprised to find fingers almost where they’re supposed to be without lookin’ at ‘em! “The Blues Riff” is coming along; had a few short stretches tonight where the rhythm was consistent and I was just playing, not thinking. (Reminded me of the advice of a veteran teammate back when I was an over-earnest leadoff hitter for a hotshot fastball team: “Howdy, don’t think too much! You’ll hurt the ballclub.” Okay, Rip. Heard you then, hear you better now. Isn’t that always the way with advice to the young?)

And the last couple of nights, I’ve started to pick out an old standard rock ‘n’ roll bit. (Is it from “Blue Suede Shoes”? Could be.) What I’m hearing is Chicago’s Terry Kath winding up a wandering solo jam with something familiar in the Live at Carnegie Hall album, aka Chicago IV. It’s another cliché for my arsenal, and hey, it’s almost enough to make an aging canine believe in a renovated repertoire…

I’m starting to have a little more fun, and this may even be habit formation of the constructive kind.(Cool!) And the Old Dog Year has only 49 weeks left.

ODY: 20/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 9, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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So I went for a plod this afternoon, and it was better than usual. The ankles only muttered at me today, no screaming, and there were even some short stretches where I was running on autopilot. So, a little rhythm, for a change. Oh, and a Sign From God.

Okay, I don’t actually believe in angels, at least not the It’s a Wonderful Life kind or the Touched by an Incredibly Good-Looking Television Angel kind. (Why do we want angels to have bodies, anyway? Oops, hey, I can feel you starting to worry. This is Old Dog Year: My Quest for Midlife Guitar Glory. You haven’t stumbled into a theology ‘blog. Trust me. I know a really roundabout way to get there.) Besides, the guy with the sweatshirt was hunched over as he walked, and he looked tired, anxious and lonely.

But on the other hand, he was wearing a sweatshirt with “MUST” embroidered on the chest. I didn’t know whether it referred to a tech school or a personal imperative. (Or the stifling odour of attics or armpits.) Not that I’m utterly self-absorbed, not that the entire world exists to prop up my private obsessions, but even lonely old men in parks remind me that I MUST play my guitar tonight. So I will. Even I can read a sign like that. Day 20. (Only 345 to go.) 

ODY: 19/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 8, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Howden’s Law, Article 17 Subsection B: When you’re an Old Dog trying to learn a New Trick, it’s always good to have a six-year-old around. 

It had been a late night out with the friends, laughing and feasting and raising our spirits. Calvin Junior – who lacks a Hobbes, but makes up for it with any number of bears and doggies and especially Skyler, the bald eagle and our Sam’s main squeeze – was shockingly cooperative about bed-prep when we stumbled in the front door, especially when I suggested that maybe I’d combine my oh-no-I-still-have-to-do-guitar-practice with his hunkering down. I sang “Advance Guards”, an old sweet song of longing by Seals and Crofts. Can’t play to it, but just the sight of the guitar in my arms was mesmerizing for Sam, and not in any narcotic way. (“Lie down, bub. No questions, just you and Skyler and the CuddleZone™. No, honey, down. Pretend that you’re going to sleep or something.”) Tried. Took my tortured, twanging run through les blues, and looked up to find Sam (and Skyler) wide-eyed and elbow-mounted. “Are you done?” “Yup, that’s it.” And then he clapped. (Maybe Skyler did, too.) Melt my heart and hope to live.

I hit the basement for some more runs and chord changes and absolutely brain-dead strumming, but I’d already had what I needed. CJ Sam has what I’m looking for. He shows me the beginner’s mind. It comes so hard to most of us after about 15, it seems. All that wonder. All that simple acceptance. All those hoorays. Thanks, buddy. You’re a good little teacher. 

ODY: 18/365. Consoled by Blues.

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

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The TVPI, before his departure for the Great (Not Quite) White North of Canada, had written out for his Old Dog Dad a guitar Tablature for Old Dog Dummies. It’s a blues riff. You know it. Everybody knows it. (I think Dave called it “A Blues Riff”.) It was one he enjoyed learning. It made him feel, at 14, like he was actually playing guitar, and he went on to improvise from it and generally make punkadelic mayhem.

I’ve been messing about with it some, but hadn’t quite figured out the rhythm of the resolution part that was supposed to take me back to the beginning of the thing. Tonight, I decided I wouldn’t do anything else until I did. And hey presto! I did!

Now listen. I have, up ‘til now, refused even to play for Calvin Junior and his stuffed and furry friends at night-night. (Point of order: Junior is my fourth six-year-old son. So where’s my Order of Canada?! Where’s my Presidential Medal of Freedom?) But tonight, I ran upstairs, dragged EcoWoman out of the bath, propped her up in an attentive and generally approving posture, and played A Blues Riff. Twice! It was, ah, humilerating. (Exhiliating?) Embarrassed pleasure, rueful excitement. Mid-life learning is a confusing business.  

ODY: 17/365

Posted by :James Howden On : September 6, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Yeah, but then there are potholes in the plateau, too, just in case an old dog thought that a stroll along the flats might be pleasant and restful. Potholes? Maybe not so much that as thick, sucking mud, the kind that slurps and holds on to your rubber boots with every step you try. Sucking muddy plateaus, anyhow!

I’m Not There

Posted by :James Howden On : September 5, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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It’s Labour Day Tuesday and, for the fourth straight year, I am skipping school. It’s about 2:30 p.m., and in the olden days I would have been well into the last teaching period of the day. The Teacher Dreams – can’t find my classroom, can’t find my clothes, don’t know what subject I teach – are over. The performance anxiety – can I still DO this? – had evaporated two minutes into period 1, and I would now be feeling the great fun of a new beginning (even though the marking pile already grows thick) and the eagerness to find out who these kids are and what we’ll be able to do together.

I would be in my element. I might be sitting at my desk watching them write their first journal entry (“All About Me by Me” or “What Am I Doing Here?”) or exercise or assigned reading, but more likely I’d be strolling about, interviewing students, offering random observations, observing the creatures in their unnatural environment. Or maybe I’d be standing at the front, leaning slightly against the chalk ledge, right ankle crossed over the left, rambling on. (The horizontal streak of chalk dusting my butt didn’t concern me; at least once, though, the grommets on my right hiking boot hooked the laces on my left, so that a particularly animated point I wanted to step up and make vaulted me face-first into the legs of the front-row desks. That was a good one. I bowed deeply.)

By this time, I would already have forgotten to send down the afternoon attendance check, so a (usually) cheery secretary calls to try again to get Mr. H. properly trained. But there’s no staff meeting, no reporting deadlines, no rebellious kids (yet), no sense of depletion or the (inevitable) frustration of my most dearly held intentions. Hope springs in an educator’s autumn. This was a great day to be a teacher.