The pilgrimage to Toronto — holy of holies for lit-wits Canadian — continued today, with much to love and great good luck. Martin Levin, Books editor at The Globe and Mail, had agreed to meet the Writer Who Came in From the Cold (of Ottawa), and to the surprise of both of us, I walked out with Teacher Man by Frank McCourt and a review deadline for next week. Yippeeee!! Right up my street. The Walrus magazine wasn’t far away, and its editor hadn’t gotten my emails, but I still got an hour in a coffee shop with Ken Alexander, another former teacher and avid basketball coach (it just took him less than 20 years to escape). Hi, Ken! What he’s doing is a nervy thing, and I admire it. Good mag, too. I want to be on its list of writers, a good list and getting better.
Sitting in a little Chinese restaurant on Dundas, it occurred to me that I actually like Toronto. This small-town boy, in his mid-20s, escaped a year living in TO with loathing and resentment. I hated the place. I got a knot in my gut for years afterward just approaching the skyline via 403 or the QEW. I’d worked in retail (ugh!) at the heart of the garish Yonge Street strip (vulgar, garish, soulless, unkind, uname it…).
And now every time I come here I’m tingling. I want to come again. (New York City shocked me in ’02 by being loveable, Rucker Park right through to the Staten Island ferry, Manhattan to Yankee Stadium.) Queen West, Spadina, Nathan Phillips square. Arty shops, that incredible subway system that gets you all over the map quickly, shows at Hugh’s Room, and all kinds of people. I wasn’t ready for the people back then. My circle was small. My town was small. My town was white. (Six Nations Reserve was next door but it was another country.) I must’ve felt pretty substantial there, and I felt invisible in the big city. I must have hated the anonymity in Toronto – nobody knew my name, either, Mr. Baldwin, not that I’m comparing my comfortable little existential adjustments to your experience – but also the noise and the indomitability of it. It scared me. Maybe that was it.
But today, I wanted to do the Mary-Richards-in-Minneapolis thing, spin on my heels and toss my fluffy hat in the air. Just one fluffy hat short. If I can make it here. And all that. Hey, anybody want to read some stuff? English not good? No English? That’s okay! Here, take a look at what I wrote, you’re gonna love it…
Readers are Leaders was one of the main mantras of my teaching career, and no doubt it also soothed me regarding the undeniable Rightness of my constant hunger for text. But one of my annoying little assignments along The Artist’s Way this week has been reading deprivation. In a life like mine, that’s not such a small thing, actually, and though it has been easy to slip into that mindless groping for typeface, I’ve been surprised by how much I like it. It’s a relief. It makes me realize (again) that reading is not some lazy-boy dodge for me but a ravenous, indiscriminate and chronically unsatisfiable quest. I highly recommend it to the reading-addicted.
“Readers are leaders!” I harangued my classes, but “put the book down and go DO something!” has been a regular jab at my hyper-literate sons and even, now, their book-snaky Dad. “They say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading!” That has long been one of my favourite quotes (I forget who wrote it), but it’s not quite so funny anymore. It’s been good to find new ways to live in the evening, and it wasn’t all Adventures in More Timely Housework (though I even enjoyed some of those). I finally repaired those loveseat cushions. You might say it was only packing tape, but it was Industrial Design to me!
You may not have a Deirdre in your life, but if you ever have the chance, get one. Through no fault of my own, I did and I’m a grateful writer dude. I have My Own Private Deirdre and she’s great, even if I have to share her with everyone she’s ever had at hello. My kids like her kids, some of her friends are my friends — it’s just the best kind of ridiculous luck.
Lunch with her was my little treat for myself this week. She’s a Bahá’í friend, she’s a writer, she was my predecessor at Rideau Hall and the reason I knew there was an opening there (and thanks, Wendy!). She’s one of the best people I know in combining brains and encouragement. Somehow, it’s not as common as it might be, as it needs to be. I came away feeling good, feeling happier and (consider the odds!) smarter. It’s strange, the power of Deirdre. And then I hung out at the Running Room, buying nothing but soaking in that old feeling of athletic camaraderie with strangers who know sport and respect those who know it in return. Good afternoon!
I’ve been working through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, one of the most intelligent and illuminating personal development books I’ve come across. It’s an openly spiritual (and determinedly non-religious) take on the act of creation, and its message is simple: there’s a Creator, whatever you choose to call Him/Her/That; the world may be material but it is infused with spirit (and so are we); creativity is not some hoarded magic bestowed only on the few, but essential to human life and accessible by the many. The book asks a lot – it’s a 12-week program in “creative recovery” and there’s a lot of work involved in finding that free and open acceptance of our possibilities.
And Carol invited me to talk about art and spirituality at a meditative gathering she does in her home. We prayed, we talked about the forms and the importance that creativity takes in our lives – beauty, order, reverence, making, delight – and then we demolished gorgeously adorned trays of spirit-lifting goodies. Sweet. I’ll do that again, even if the food is not so smacktacular. “Tapping the Creativity Within” was our title; sounds like maple-syrup time. And it was, actually. I was suggesting that we need to provide an outlet for the sweet and juicy stuff that unceasingly flows from our spiritual roots to our intellectual (and hand-some) leaves. Nice. I like this image because it makes art something useful, delicious, natural. Sappy if necessary, but not necessarily sappy.
And now it’s 85 in a row for the Ravens. Carleton beat the York University Lions tonight, and their ridiculous romp through all comers is approaching the 88 of the immortal UCLA Bruins teams of Bill Walton, Marques Johnson, Greg Lee and The Coach, John Wooden. (The caveat, which Carleton generally remembers to mention, is that they count (only) regular season and post-season games they’ve won on their way to the last three Canadian University titles. St. Francis Xavier got ‘em in a preseason tourney this year, as the University of British Columbia did last year. And they don’t count their swings against American powers, where this year they played and lost fairly respectably at the legendary Pauley Pavilion of those UCLA Bruins. Glad we got that straight.)
I used to coach at summer camps with Carleton’s head man, Dave Smart, before he embarked on his astounding and still fairly young career. It’s as easy to admire and respect the Ravens as it must be difficult to play for such an unrelenting and insistent coach. He is focused, and so are his teams.
I was quite taken in by The Beat That My Heart Skipped at the Mighty Bytowne Cinema last night. A French film by Jacques Audiard, not someone I had known before, but it’s gritty and kinetic and tough-minded. (Much of the dialogue was slangy enough that my attempts to forego the subtitles found my conservative ears missing whole chunks, forcing my eyes back into double-duty. No great hardship, but a slight poke at pretensions of fluency.) It asks the cinematic question: What happens when a restless thug finds in himself an obsession with and a talent for classical piano?
It’s a remake of something apparently very cheesy called Fingers that Harvey Keitel was in early in his career, and I wonder what an American film made of that ending. Presumably, it was much more sentimental than the French one, with a not-quite-redemption scene charged by a brutal return to the life left. I’ve never seen Romain Duris in anything, but he was a dynamo, as deeply believable in this straddling of two utterly different worlds as the film itself sometimes was not (but not often). We cheer for him, are compelled by him, even as we find him a difficult character to like. I’d go again (if I had a teenager’s time).
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And, in an odd but soothing cross-cultural conjunction, I also lucked into the last night for Mary Lou Findlay on As It Happens as I drove away from the movies. [Warning: indignant rantings of an unrepentant CBC Radio-lover to follow. “What do you mean, you don’t know who Mary Lou Findlay is? Next, you’ll be telling me you’ve never heard of Michael Enright!”] I don’t often listen to AIH straight through, but I spent a fair amount of time last evening sitting in parking lots instead of completing my errands. It was a nostalgic journey of the kind I’m profoundly prone to: the best and funniest archival interviews done by Findlay, and warmhearted exchanges with her friend and partner, Barbara Budd. Such good and thoughtful people, such good and thoughtful radio. Fun.
And they’re off! The Canadian federal election has been called. Peptalks, my-party’s-better-than-your-party, the pundits punditizing before there’s much scope for punditocracy. Ah, well. Democracy’s not so bad, you know, although we still have lots to learn about how to do it rather than having it done for us (to us?). But I had a delicious little surge of irony when the first bit of tune-age I played over breakfast today was the Talking Heads album Naked. Awesome stuff, the last vinyl album I ever bought though my kids buy ‘em all the time. Track one on side two is “The Democratic Circus”…
Found out this morning / There’s a circus coming to town
They drive in Cadillacs / Using walkie-talkies and the Secret Service
Their big top / Imitation of life
And all the flags and microphones / We have to cover our eyes
We play the sideshows / And we like the tunnel of love
And when we ride the ferris wheel / We’re little children again
And when they’re asking for volunteers / We’ll be the first ones aboard
And when the ringmaster calls our names / We’ll be the first ones to go…
To sleep
Stealing all our dreams / Dreams for sale / They’ll sell ‘em back to you
On with the show! / Start the parade! / We sang along! / Sweep us away!
It’s political party time / Going down, going down
And the celebrities all come out / Coming down, coming down…
Well, I enjoyed myself.
I’m not the CFL fan I was in the days of Garney Henley and Joe Zuger, Ben Zambiasi and Chuck Ealey. (Does anyone out there know what I’m talking about?) I’ve seen some highlights from the Canadian and National Football Leagues (interesting how the “national” league claims it plays for the “world championship”, isn’t it?), but I haven’t actually watched a game this year. I was determined to at least see the Cup. (I make the same general rule for the Super Bowl, which usually has ten times the hype and half the excitement.) Anyhow, I apparently don’t move in the right circles to wangle an invitation to a Grey Cup party with a decent television, so I ended up working my magic on the rabbit ears and the mighty CBC telecast came through fairly well. Had the living room all to myself. (Sigh.)
The first half was like a lot of Super Bowls, filled with tense athletes and careful coaches and defences preying on the timidity of both. 10-1 at half, a bit of a yawner. Halftime was one of those weird spectacles, where dancing girls and extras are brought around a stage – tiny in the midst of a football field – and the camera operators keep a tight focus so that we at home can’t see what they can: stick figures on a stage playing to a hundred people, acres of turf and half-empty stands (there are more beers and goodies to be inhaled, and incredible quantities of urine to be leaked).
So home’s the best seat in the house, which matters not a whit if you have to watch the Black Eyed Peas. This was my second BEP sighting, and I don’t get it at all. Sure, I’m a forty-something guy who had a James Taylor phase, but I can get hippity every once in a while. Eminem’s a bit toxic, but he’s a talent. I’m getting to know dear old Public Enemy a little, and I actually dig Buck Sixty-Five with a fairly large shovel. But the Peas? Please. Somebody has to explain this to me. (Unless it’s all about a blonde singer grinding with men of colour. Nah. Couldn’t be.)
Anyhow, the second half made me pay attention again: play upon play, lead change after lead change, overtime thrills, a bonehead play by a brainy quarterback. My joint was jumping and I was the only one there. So I may not get the halftime show, if I ever did, but I still get football, Lord help me, and nothing beats the big-balled Canadian version (with its imported American stallions) when it’s at its best.
(Just one more thing: Madame Jean, nice to see you there for the presentation of your predecessor’s famous gift to Canadian football. But if the Governor General is going to honour the champs with Lord Grey’s famous mug, she shouldn’t do it while playing Vanna White — is she still alive and flipping? — to the CFL Commissioner’s Pat Sajak. I’m just saying.)