To thine own self be true

Another splendid late summer family event

This time around, I’ll flip burgers. DQ cake as usual at the family party with a traditional Jeanne’s cake (from Wpg. childhood–in pic above) to follow after Sept. Radium trip.

(Scamp on left, on stairs where we used to wait for my mother to come home)

(right of twin WW1 houses: my home, Winnipeg; now renovated with a garage where once a rutted driveway led to my mother’s garden; caragana hedge across front now torn out; sidewalk and road paved, no longer crumbling and muddy when wet; my home from 1955-1963 A.D.)

I remember standing in the basement when the coal came rumbling in, down the chute to the coal box below. Later, in the spring, the basement, with its cave-like walls, flooded about a foot deep. The toilet was a primitive thing by the furnace and I remember my Dad carrying me into the basement and foot-high water to use the facilities. It was about that point that he and my mother vowed to get indoor plumbing that summer. That was the end of slogging through water to relieve oneself in the darkest and dankest of basements.

Another memory of having no food in the house (as we lived cheque to cheque, my fluctuating alcoholic-father on unemployment insurance). A Sunday, I told my mother I was hungry (this was something about as close to Dickens as we ever got), and she turned to the cupboards and started taking out basic ingredients like flour, flax, and baking powder turning them into supper. Yeah, we were that poor a mere 60 years ago.

Still another memory in coldest January, coming home from school or the rink, sitting on the floor in the living room by the iron-grille vent, pulling the two chains nearby in an effort to get heat on, to warm up a two-storey house, listening for the iron ghost furnace below to show signs of life, creaking to start, and sometimes not. (An oil furnace succeeded the old one and I discovered the pleasure of thermostats.) I remember going to sleep under damp myriad blankets in the screen-windowed (in summer) extra room protruding out the back of the second storey, the one you stepped down a foot into, the one my father drew Walt Disney figures on the walls with Laurentian pencils to entertain me.

And in winter, waiting a long hour or so after school, on the wooden stairs by the window with my mongrel pet dog Scamp for my mother to come trudging home through the snow, a block from the occasional Portage Avenue bus. Waiting for the most important person in my life who kept us going/alive all those poor lean years. Me, an only-child, latchkey-kid existence with not much more than the key to 271 on a string, forever waiting.

90% of icebergs are under water.

Think of the massive thundering waterfall upstream and the pleasant calm waters of a pool far below.

Or the stranger you pass every day, never talking to them. And one day, on a whim, you stop to say hi, and their entire life history pours out within half an hour, or as long as you stand and listen politely.

Each of us has a history some 90% long and deep that most others don’t know, care about, or never get to hear.

The same might be similarly said about contexts in general–all the things, people, situations, settings, events that define us and create possibilities and opportunities, as well as limits, obstacles, and limitations. These being similarly long and deep, some 90% within us, behind us, around and about us.

“There is more than meets the eye.” Certainly most of Shakespeare’s 37 plays prove that over and over. And appearances can be very limited and deceptive. Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear for starters. “Still waters run deep.” “Nothing is but what is not.”

And a moral gap often that delineates psychopaths and other serious criminals from most other ordinary folk. The Iagos and Ted Bundys.

And, as well, that other strange experience when people look at you and assume or intuit, or perhaps project their desires or preferences into you, seeing what they want to see. The sort of thing that makes us speak or draws to strangers for some inexplicable reason quite apart from “Don’t talk to strangers.”

These people look interesting or attractive in some way. They look like ‘neat’ or ‘beautiful’ people, as we used to say in the ’50s or ’60s. A certain indefinable charisma. You just want to be with these people, be close to them; you instantly trust them with all sorts of private or personal information, even confidences!

Yes, we live on and by surfaces, make snap judgements, automatically dismiss or gravitate toward others, not seeing or knowing their various 90%s of baggage, cumulative experience, and whatever else.

In mysteries, Holmes and Poirot are forever confronted with surfaces, most of them baffling and ambiguous–larger, more pronounced variations of real-life situations. Our pleasures in watching or reading along, come from vicariously untangling whatever human mysteries of a given story. Much the same I think for millions of amateur psychologists out there who become interested in someone and try to ‘fathom’ them and their 90% depths, searching for keys to understanding and explaining to one’s own satisfaction. (You see this over and over in Hitchcock movies like Spellbound or Psycho.)

But always the fascination with and unexpectedly bumping into that elusive, massive, shifting, changing 90% heft. Angels and devils at opposing ends of the continuum. (Desdemona and Iago.) And many a recognizable Othello fool, ‘gull’, or ‘dolt’ trying to navigate his or her way through deep waters searching for the sources of and ‘answers’ to the ever-changing, essentially ‘unfathomable.’

Titanic vs. iceberg. Titanic loses. The ways and limits of the world, man and Nature, particularly human nature.

Canada’s Shakespeare has long been and still is Leonard Cohen. And he is widely and internationally recognized as thus. Canada’s Top Poet and Songwriter since the 1960s. An amazing 6 decade run.

78s were still around when I became conscious about age 2-3 of popular music of the day: “Sincerely” by The McGuire Sisters” and “Dear John”, a novelty record by the great wit Stan Freberg. Radio was still king in the ’50s and ’60s, and my mother even slipped out of the house briefly leaving me in front of an impressive radio console staring at the lighted dial and hearing voices and music of fifties radio programs. When I was about 4, she even called me into the house to hear some of my favorites as “Mr. Sandman” by The Chordettes,”The Glow Worm’ by the Mills Brothers, and “This Ole House” by Rosemary Clooney.

It was pretty much a non-stop soundtrack with my mother’s young aunt’s 78s and the first 45s I’d seen. She had Johnny Cash’s early songs like “I Don’t Like It But I Guess Things Happen That Way” on 45s. These were entire worlds and soundscapes opening up such “Standing on the Corner watching All the Girls Go By”, Gogi Grant’s epic “The Wayward Wind” (used much later at my father-in-law’s funeral), Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons”, Sinatra’s “Three Coins in the Fountain”, Doris Day’s “Secret Love”, Patti Page’s “Cape Cod”, Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune”.  [If you ever want to hear the pre-rock ’50s soundtrack, the 2 CDs to get are Top 10 Hits of the ’50s, Not Now Music).

And the two guys who changed everything in the mid-fifties were Bill Hailey (“Rock Around the Clock”–the opening theme of Blackboard Jungle) and Elvis Presley (his first appearances on the Sunday Ed Sullivan Show); everybody wanted to do rock after seeing those shows. (Later it would be The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show who would change the direction of rock toward England and groups.)

I can remember how my own life changed when I bought my first 45s in grade 5 or 6, travelling downtown in Winnipeg to a record shop (they had them then) to buy 5 records from Lillian Lewis who had just opened her shop on a Saturday. She sold me the 5 for something like 37 or 39 cents! the big three were “Blue Moon” by The Marcelles, a doo-wop band, Floyd Cramer’s “On the Rebound”, and “Bumble Boogie” by B. Bumble and The Stingers–the latter two were piano hits which also illustrated my simultaneous interest in instrumentals and piano as ‘orchestra’ and ‘voice’.

I was in seventh heaven, spinning my discs endlessly for myself, pretending I was a disc jockey, while listening to top 40 and top 50 radio shows in Winnipeg. Things got even better in grade 4 when I became a paperboy and bought my own portable 2 transistor radio which I carried with me on my route 12 months a year, songs of the day everywhere I walked. I can even remember where I was when I heard certain songs on my route, like Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” and the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown” at one address in August on different days. (Later, in grade 11 with the radio, I can remember walking home from my girlfriend’s house on a crisp September evening listening for the first time to Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” , the winner of a three-new song-phone-in vote.)

Indeed, I can still sit in a restaurant today when a golden oldie comes on and tell whoever I’m with what the song and artist are, what year the song came out, and where I first heard it). An uncanny musical memory and library of pop music from the fifties and sixties mainly.

(just a random sampling of my large autograph collection from the live performers section)

Folk-Country-Popular

Gordon Lightfoot (4)

Bruce Cockburn (10ish x)

Leonard Cohen

Ian and Sylvia (2)

Ian Tyson (4)

Donovan

Bob Dylan

Paul Simon

John Sebastian

Kris Kristofferson

Valdy (2)

Seals & Crofts

Joan Baez

Joni Mitchell

Buffy Sainte-Marie (3)

Judy Collins

Janis Ian

Suzanne Vega

Loreena Mckennit

Fred Penner (went to U of W with; was on the same folk bill with)

Blue Rodeo

Caludh Nua

Rawlins Cross (5)

Battlefield Band

Altan

Figgy Duff

Ranch Romance

Susan Jacks

Roger Miller

Kenny Rogers

Roger Whittaker

America

Ravi Shankar

Ray Charles

Charlie Pride

The Mavericks (2)

Paul Anka

Randy Newman

Johnny Clegg (3)

Rock

The Guess Who (many times)

Burton Cummings’ Deverons (many times)

Randy Bachman (4)

Burton Cummings

B.T.O.

The Rolling Stones (2)

Steppenwolf

The Stampeders (2)

Eric Burdon (2)

Herman’s Hermits

The Who

Ray Davies & The Kinks (2)

The Hollies (2)

The Searchers (2)

The Zombies

The Yardbirds (2)

The Turtles

Sting

The Bee Gees

Eric Clapton

Elvis Costello

Paul McCartney

Neil Young

Beach Boys (2)

Felix Cavaliere (of the Rascals)

Billy Joel (2)

Everly Brothers

Chicago (4)

John Fogerty

Three Dog Night

Paul Revere & The Raiders

Iron Butterfly

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

John Mayall (3)

Jazz

Lenny Breau (many times back in Wpg)

Steps Ahead

Peter Erskine Septet

Joshua Redman (2)

Roy Haynes

David Sanbourn

Mike Stern (3)

Dave Holland (2)

Oliver Jones

John Abercrombie

Jackie Maclean

Joe Lovano

Pat Martino

T.S. Monk

Nicholas Payton

John Scofield

Kenny Wheeler

Tony Williams

John McLauchlan

Ed Bickert

Bill Frisell

Lew Tabackin

Christian McBride

Jimmy Cobb

J.J. Johnson

The Yellowjackets

John Stetch (2)

Tommy Banks (2–I performed with him once)

Charlie Austin Trio (several–I performed with twice)

Andrew Glover (several–I performed with once)

Classical

Numerous, including all of Edmonton Symphony Under the Sky seasons

……………………………..

The ‘Regrets’ (A Short List)

Miles Davis

Stan Getz

Dave Brubeck

The Beatles (though McCartney’s concert was much better than any The Beatles could ever have done)

Manfred Mann with Paul Jones

Glenn Gould

Peter, Paul, and Mary

The Kingston Trio (the John Stewart version)

Johnny Cash

Don Iveson wants a seawall along the river. At last report, though, he was going to drive the valley bums and street people up and down on the funicular to get to his bike lanes and 3-car LRT. If ever there was a primer on how not to build and run a city, he and city council could author it easily.

Edmonton is not Vancouver. It doesn’t need a seawall, bike lanes, and a funicular for the bums to use as an unsupervised mobile bathroom.

“I have a turn for both observation and deduction.”

“I can discover facts, Watson, but I cannot change them.”

“”There is nothing like first-hand evidence.”

“Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.”

“You see, but you do not observe.”

“The little things are infinitely the most important.”

“It is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”

“Crime is common. Logic is rare.”

“Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson.”

“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”

“I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see.”

“I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”

“I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?”

“I never guess. It is a shocking habit–destructive to the logical faculty.”

“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”

“A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”