Late – nearly Halloween, 2012

Received an email from Alan who lives in England mostly. He comes over here to Canada from time to time but his home is over there - still has a foot here though and Canadian pals who are always glad to see or hear from him. The other morning, it was a Sunday, his email name popped up in the cue on my screen. New emails come in darker than the ones already read. The number 1 sits beside the inbox icon to the left of the list of emails. Laurel has 1078 emails that are still in bold. She’ll never open them. Won’t click on them. They are from advertisers for this and that, stuff from schools, I don’t know what all. My inbox is clear. The only dark emails are new emails. All others are either deleted or left in the already read colour – not bolded. Don’t know what that means really. Not sure it has to do with anality. Maybe. For some reason I keep the lawn cut around the inbox icon. Just the way it is. Going with it. One other communication technology story that comes from Alan is wrapped in this. He was shooting a TV series a handful of years ago in the south of England somewhere. It was one of those pockets on earth where because of topography, location of transmitter towers, satellite positioning, internet connection was extremely poor. It ran from spotty to non-existent. He wrote about his experience. At the end of each day he’d wrap at the set then go to the highest hill in the village. He’d wonder around up there with his cellphone holding it with an extended arm trying to grab a signal that would allow him to get his messages. His phone made a blurp sound when he happened to catch one. Rare. A mystery. Joyous even. He’d wander this way and that and catch his messages like fish on a line. One afternoon he spied another person doing the same thing.

In his latest email he talked about places that grab hold and never let go. My experience of being here is about uncertainty with shades of endeavour, hope, love and despair woven in. I know I don’t know…much of anything. I will leave this place not knowing most of what there is to know.  Club Vagabond is a joint I stayed in the mountains of Switzerland when I was young and it feels like an apt description of my experience of being here. I vagabond from this port to that hilltop. I’m not in any hurry, god knows, but this will all come to an end and what will have happened? What was I up to? What am I up to? Contact has happened. Time has happened. People in my life has happened. Alan talked about a theatre in Liverpool. He said it was a place that once you’d been there you yearned to go back. It smelled of kippers because of the bistro next door but there was something about the place that held you in its grasp and just never let you go. He did a workshop there 30 years ago and there are times when the phone rings now that he wishes it was the theatre asking him to come back to do a job. He called these places centres of the universe. And there’s more than one. There’s a bunch. They all can’t be centres of the universe but in another way they all are. Maybe our time here is about finding a place or a handful of places. Pieces of land, water, where we feel at home. Welcomed. Challenged. Free. Comforted. Safe. Big. Insignificant. All of those things. A centre of the universe. Sure. Then there are those places that are centres of the universe to a bunch of people. Not just you. You share it with them. Like that theatre in Liverpool. Like this theatre in Blyth. 

Last night as I lay beside Laur in bed in the dark in Toronto I mentioned a song by Greg Brown entitled Hey Baby Hey. Turned out that Laur loves that song. I'd heard it earlier in the day on the drive into the city. I got out of bed, Ruby wasn't happy, she had to move. She settled into another corner of the room with a ladened sigh. I sat at the desk and tapped in the title on the computer and found a version buried inside the chips and circuitry sung by Robin Lee Berry.  I pressed play and returned to the sheets and Laur. The computer screen lit my way but soon dropped to black. Laur and I lay there in the dark, Ruby asleep beside us, and we listened to the song. I think it's terrific and I love what he has to say about being with another, about sharing the journey. The ups and curves, the quiet darkness, and the too bright sun sometimes. We listened and then drifted off to sleep. The song led us there. Our many years together allowed for it to be enough.

Here is what we heard...

The sea was rollin' in slate gray

I looked at you and I looked away
I was cryin'
Because I was happy

I didn't want you to see
I was afraid of such mystery
And afraid of losing
So afraid of losing

Later on on a balcony
We had a good talk and we felt free
I was comin' to you from far away
Light was dim but you showed me the way
In your arms all I could say was
Hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

My heart was torn I'd made up my mind
I'd keep to myself and just be kind
And need nothing
Just need nothing

Love my folks my kids my friends
And make it on through to the end
No more suffering
Over loving

You get to me like old time religion did
In my heart when I was a kid
You're sweet gospel music to my ears
You know how to ease all my fears
And from my heart to yours all I can say is
Hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

And as we go on through the deal I
I know that we won't always feel
Real wonderful
Life ain't like that

But I want to stay right by your side
Check out the view enjoy the ride
Together
With all our loved ones

I want to plant a little garden with you now
Take care of a piece of the earth somehow
And tend it when we're old and gray and
Try to straighten up and say, well,
I'm so glad to see you today

Hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

I'm working on this community play project entitled A Country Carol. It's based on the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. I've adapted the story and set it in a rural community in Huron County, Canada, in 1899. It's the coldest winter on record. The new century is nigh. The Boer War rages overseas. Some local lads did go over to fight, two didn't come back. In a village of 800 losing two young men is significant. The war is mentioned only a few times in the piece. Bob tells Fred that Tiny Tim is following the war closely. Fred has enlisted with the Royal Canadian Regiment from London and is going to Africa to fight a month after Christmas. In our story he doesn't come back. He's one of the fallen. We will be performing this play in Memorial Hall and I thought the local military angle was worth a mention. I've also changed the names of the characters to reflect the local scene. Using street names in Blyth I've made Ebenezer Scrooge, E.B. King. Bob Cratchett is now Bob Dinsley, Jacob Marley, Jacob Morris and so on. Because I'm working with community players, people who are working at other gigs for the most part, the rehearsal is a bit catch can. Two nights a week for a couple of hours and a 4 hour shot on Saturday. There is a 6 year old in the cast, and an 80 year old. There are a number of teenagers, a smattering of young and middle aged adults. It's been interesting. In every sense. I have a lot of respect for this group, something that has grown over the process - they never say no and will give anything a try.

The idea I've presented them is that the entire story is a nightmare. (Until the end when EB wakes and it's Christmas morning). We begin in darkness. Then a small bit of moon-glow comes up revealing EB King asleep in a brass bed. He stirs restlessly. His guilty conscience causes deep rumblings inside. It's Christmas Eve like in the Dickens but E.B. is asleep from the get go in our little adventure. Soon after we meet EB - the Chorus enter. Dressed in long dark coats, mufflers, various hats of the period, carrying lit candles, they come on singing Silent Night. (I've taken some liberties with the music). They seep and sweep in from the house, from the wings, the balcony, everywhere. They are 30 men, women and children, and they are all emanating from E.B.'s guilty mind. Two Chorus spin his bed, finally easing it off stage. From the Chorus step two farmers (this is a running gag) who complain about the cold. They return to the Chorus as Bob Dinsley steps from their midst. He goes into the offices of King and Morris and begins his ciphering. E.B. fresh from being spun off stage re-enters in a long dark coat. He has to push his way through the Chorus to get to where he wants to go. The Chorus not only block his progress but sing and wish him a Merry Christmas. EB still sports his nightcap and beneath his dark coat he's wearing only a nightgown. While everyone else where's boots, EB wears slippers. Everyone, with the exception of E.B., comes from the Chorus and disappears back into the Chorus when their specific task is over. The Chorus provide all of the sounds, - the wind, the bells, a dog barking, a shutter slamming, anything we need. They are the boys at the school, the workers at Fezziwiggs (Hammiwiggs in our story - there is a Hamilton Street in Blyth) and everyone and everything else between.  The blanket from E.B.'s bed provides a spooky sheer that covers Jacob Morris' face when he makes his appearance. The bed, on wheels, is like a spinning time machine as the various spirits take EB on a Cook's tour of his past, present and his potential future.

We've been working on movement - walking in place, moving in slow motion, varying tempos. It has been amazing to watch this group throw themselves into every exercise. It's gotta be strange for most of them. But to their credit they've offered themselves up to the journey and I've been really appreciative of that fact. It has been tricky to get people to commit to the project as my asking has come very late in the season - most people are already booked. Some want to be coaxed but I've stopped doing that. There is a steady crowd of enthusiastic individuals who show up for each and every rehearsal and they will lead this story to the boards over in the Hall. I was at a loss as to who would play the lead, EB. But a woman, Connie, has proven herself up for the gig.  She's doing an engaging job - getting more comfortable with every rehearsal. It's been interesting to watch her arrive, get lost, and then arrive again. She's not intimidated - neither by the size of the role nor the strangeness of it.

One of the sidebar bonuses of doing this project is the math of figuring it all out - from the get go through to the final note, it requires a great deal of attention. That's been very cool. We shall see how it all turns but helping create this play has been one of my favourite things since returning to Blyth...

It might be in the movie Down by Law or another movie - can't recall. Whatever the film it has Tom Waits talking to a bunch of teenage boys in a diner. His question to them at one point is growled in his Waits-ese - 'how many summers you got left boys? How many summers?" It landed then and resonates now. Here I am at the tail end of another Sunday. One of 2,008 and hopefully counting. I used the calculator on the computer to figure that out. I think I can cut about 156 of them for the first three years of my life. Things were pretty much happening all of the time in those years and most of it had to do with full, empty, hot, cold, tired, wet, soiled, etc. So lets say the Sunday count started after I'd experienced 156 of them having no idea a Sunday from a Tuesday back then. So Sunday when I was aware, and I'm giving myself a lot of credit to say I had a clue when I was three, was a church day. And that ran until I was 17, when I left home. So that's 884 of the church Sundays. To be honest there were a bunch of them after I turned 16 that weren't spent at the church. I'd sneak into the back of the place, grab a bulletin (that was proof of having been there) then go down to Smith's Farm Dairy and drink milkshakes with Harvey Boyko, another Church truant. The Sunday for a while had a family swim component over at the indoor pool at the YMCA (in the fall winter and spring). There were Sunday suppers with beef and Yorkshire puddings and such pretty much every Sunday of the 884. Summers were unique. The two Sundays during the holidays my old man got from the CN were different. We'd seek out a church but we were usually a long way from home. If we couldn't find one we'd stop by a tree, or one of those miniature highway churches with nobody in them, and give praise.  Jobs put an end to the holidays - Sunday was often a work day or the end of the weekend with Monday looming like a hammer about to come down. School years saw me cramming on Sundays, or on the phone, or playing football, hockey or some sport. After I left home Sundays kinda slipped back to the three year old Sundays. I stopped going to church. I was full, empty, hot, cold, tired, wet, or besotted. I traveled on Sundays. Then in my mid twenties Sundays got all Miles Davis - long walks, love letters, movies at night. Laundry - always laundry. Sunday had developed a feel. It was quieter. It was a day to regroup. Maybe I'd been shown the Sunday way on all those church visits - dunno.  Over the course of one winter in Victoria I'd call Bob of Bob's Buzz for Bottles and he'd bring over what he hadn't consumed with his pals the night before and we'd drink and watch football. Sunday is a culture. It's a thought that can descend anytime in the week. It's developed in me over 2000 times. And now here it is another Sunday in the long line of Sundays. Got up late today. Made coffee, listened to some music, wrote a bit, read the paper. Then I went for a long bike ride out into the country, passed a big flock of sheep and a lot of soil turned over in prep for winter. I did laundry. Made a roast beef supper. Talked to Laur on the phone. Twice. Listened to the Yankees lose to the Tigers. Guess it's pretty much Sunday as usual. I wonder how many Sundays I have left? Hopefully a flock.

Sunday now. Feinstein and Rose Clooney sing Isn’t it a Pity on the computer here. I think it’s a Gershwin tune. Lovely piece and sung by two fine artists. Simple piano accompanies their voices as they sing the melody together. The thing about Gershwin’s writing, or Cole Porter, is that the lyric is so smart. There is a sense of humour that combines with a late grey autumn melancholy. The longing in the song Isn’t it a Pity and its mate playfulness are set at a perfect pitch.

You live long enough it might be your experience that the many colours of emotion stop being primary and begin to reveal themselves in all of their many shades. Not sure it’s good fortune that has a young person tripping into the many shades too early. I know there are some who go there because of an intense desire; there are others forced there by tyranny. But if time is allowed, the experience of any primary colour in all of her richness is best explored when young. Save the shades for later. They’re always there but the eye is naturally drawn to the full colour, not the pale variations that sit alongside and all around. Not to the lighter versions that eventually disappear into all colour or no colour at all. And what’s the appeal in that anyway? What are they but a paler version of the trueblue? They’re a weaker thing. The notion of subtlety isn’t often in the rock and roll so why bother with it? It’s too quiet. Too faded. Easy listening, of little interest…

When I was younger, just another kid in the neighbourhood, things were presented from above, from the parents, teachers and such, in pieces. There was something called a curriculum that was being adhered to. I sort of knew this but mostly didn’t. Grade 5 had some math presented alongside pieces of science and history – bizarre cocktails served up by our teacher-bartenders in dizzying ways. “It’s time to take out your geography books,” Mrs. Ferguson would shout two seconds after we’d been left on the outer shores of an epic journey through chapter 3 of our Math book. We’d go from long division to the Amazon basin in no time at all. It was very scattergun and perhaps built that way to keep us confused, off balance. Each year had its long to-do list. All sorts of shit was offered to us, to memorize, to worry about. And things were built on. At least that was the theory anyway. Grade 2 Phonics gives me pause and leads to this digression. I always thought the word Phonics sounded like fun. The book’s cover had a bunch of tumbling jolly elves along the sides. They were all smiling, had on their little pointy hats. They were short adults but looked like they might be good for a game of flag football or setting a forest on fire. The grind of Phonics was about as happy as the spoonful of cod-liver oil my mother insisted we take from Remembrance Day through to the 1^st of May each year.

I went to a building marked SCHOO – the L had been knocked off, a fact that was often commented on, but nothing was ever done about it. Not great advertisement for education I don't think, spelling anyway. Year in and year out I got pushed up the line regardless of my marks. I think I was sent on to the next grade because there was a fear, given my ever evolving size, that I would no longer fit into the desk of my current year. Some things did get my ears to prick up though. The story reading that happened in grade 7 right after lunch. Our teacher, Mr. Padfield, would pull out a book, the 39 Steps comes to mind, and each autumn afternoon he’d read a bit of the story for a half an hour or so. It didn’t feel like school. It felt like we were goofing off and we were being led to the goofy by someone who was supposed to be in charge. Perhaps this was my first introduction to the shades? Dunno. The primary colours I lived in wouldn’t have been defined as that. I just wanted to get outside and run around. I wanted to smash stuff or run fast or climb a tree or have a snowball fight. Everything felt immediate and was. Waiting for my paper bundle on a corner of Downsview Street where the evil 13 year old, Eddie Farar, would lay in wait whipping whomever, whenever, made the waiting of papers an immediate adventure every single time. The primary colours were often red from the blood running from my nose and the yellow of the tears streaking my face.

The primary colour is always there whether we acknowledge it or not. The experience of the shades, offer beauty, are worth time, can be like a poem. Long love. A considered hike. A drive across the prairie. Shades of primary. Beautiful. Pain too arrives in shades.  I wonder if it allows for a deeper understanding of the rich colour? I wonder if the shades, if far enough out, can leave me unconnected to the source? A blend is the goal maybe. Like the song I just listened to – a pair of artists singing in perfect melody, a blend of the longing in the song Isn’t it a Pity and its mate playfulness are set at a perfect pitch, primary and shade all in one…

Dunno. But I’ll leave it there. 

Road and sky...

I drove from Toronto around 5.30 late this September Sunday afternoon. The sky was in a real state. Busy. Purple mountain clouds all bearded and weirded rolled and weaved with thick grey rain clouds. I could see where the shower began and where it ended. The colours of the clouds surrounding the grey were yellow, kind of shy orange and a fire red past it’s best before. The sun appeared to be lingering, too lazy to go, maybe desirous to keep things properly lit. Sometimes the rain clouds would appear directly overheard. Precipitation would drive across the highway in sheets, my wipers on full so I could see where I was going. But the rain never lasted.  Dry highway. Wet highway. All the way to Blyth highway. It was a spectacular autumn sky - powerful and mysterious and probably explainable by someone. But for me on the drive it was just beautiful and awesome and humbling. Corn and soy stood in fields on my right and left, cows and their calves would appear from time to time in fenced fields, sometimes a donkey, some goats, flock of sheep. This is the beginning of my year in the country… 

First Sunday in the Ville and just returned from a bike ride to Auburn about 10 K away. Beautiful day, lots of hills, fields of corn and soy on my right and left, farms up long lanes, cows, dogs barking from places unseen on occasion.

Exertion + spirit + sun + drift = very fine.

I came around a corner and on the steep of a north hill a large herd of cattle, their arse ends pointed my way, caught my attention. They were bunched together and moving slowly. Brown and white, black, black and white cows living on a Sunday, moving toward a grassy slope. Later, near Auburn, three jersey cows reacted to my 'moooo' with moos of their own, a doberman raced along a fence line, silent but intent on me the rider. The pedal home, with the wind at my back, made it a fast trip.

Sunday evening coming right up - roast in the oven, a glass of cold Russian beer, and some tunes on the player. Best to you all...

an old blue...
I knew someone once but over time lost touch. It was just the way it went for all of the reasons that wents occur. Another acquaintance, during periodic holiday calls, would tell me how my old friend was doing. She had been in a great deal of tumble with twists delivering her wide, out into some real hard-scrabble. It took almost everything she had to keep it together. But she made it.  Saying it thus is so simple - I know it was anything but. She's a very fine person. Fierce. Courageous. Loving.

Back 30 years ago when we were in each other's company regularly I found myself in a rehearsal hall - the final run of a play she'd written happening in front of me. The time was fall, late afternoon. There was a bit of last sun glinting through the dirty windows. In the room there was a table of stage managers, me and the director, a technician. The actors had been rehearsing for a few weeks and this was the final run before moving from the hall to the stage. They were on it. It was a run for them and they knew it. It was athletic. One of the monologues was spoken by an actor as the last of the days light faded outside. His character stepped on and began to talk about the feelings he had around the hour of 4:30 p.m. He talked about when he was young returning home, his mom away working to provide, the house quiet, groan of a clock, hum of a fridge. He'd shout HELLO and I'M HOME to nobody. He pretended that there was someone there to greet him, someone there to respond. As he grew older he continued to experience the blue of 4.30 p.m. Coming home from work, his wife still away, it caused him so much tension, filled him with so much loneliness. He reached a point in the monologue when he couldn't stand being alone anymore and he dropped like a stone and cried. He bounced back up but the moment of his dropping was so powerful, so true, it moved the entire room.  It was startling. It was a thing of beauty. Never forgot it.

That experience, that writer, live in an old blue and as long as I can recall, shall also remain in a very real present...

Day 3 of the new gig is upon me. I'm having one more home coffee, Santana plays on the computer, Oye Como Va. Commenced the knock-about yesterday - the aim being a stop by and chat at every door in Blyth - to reacquaint with people I've known but lost touch with. Or to meet for the first time as many of the local citizenry as I can.  It's been interesting and I suspect will continue to be so.

It goes something like this. I knock. And someone appears in a darkened hallway staring back at me - Who is this guy at my door? What could he possibly want? A salesman of some sort likely. Could be from a church... or what? He's smiling and nodding his head like one of those fake puppies - what could he possibly want with me? Maybe he'll go away. Nope. Still there. Nothing to be done but open the door and see what this guy wants.

"Hi my name is Peter Smith and I'm the new Artistic Director over at the Blyth Festival..." and it goes from there. Sometimes I sit in a chair and chat. Sometimes it's little more than an introduction standing on the porch. Sometimes no one is home.  But when someone is in rez it's always a connection.  One of the doors I knocked on yesterday had a bulldog answer by flinging himself at the screen. No barking, just dog enthusiasm. The door blasted open and the animal and I were standing with nothing but air between us. He seized the opportunity to bolt for the lawn. He did about six ringers going around 30 miles an hour on each turn. Then he came back to me, his whole back end involved in a wag. He appeared to have a smile on his face. I managed to get him back inside the house, after he'd had a pee against a tree. Peeking inside, the TV on, I shouted a HELLO. Nothing. I went across the street to another house and looking back saw a fellow coming from the house with the dog. HEY, I shouted, how're you doing? We had a nice chat with the dog banging into my legs looking for pets - that he sometimes got.

Onward for more knock-about-ing today. See what she holds...

I figure our various times are in us one way or the other. Within our little person, our manufactured guy, our wide-eyed innocent, our cataloguer - all our everybodys - from not just our beginning but from our parents and theirs before them and before them and before them - woven into a fabric so old the dust that it turned into is so far flung it drifts on an ocean wind, is wrapped in the sands of a Namibian desert, and could even lie beside the feather in the hallway. That mysterious chain that has us in situations, in places, on journeys, with significant others, has always taken my breath away - for better and for worse.

When I was 18 I read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It spoke at a time when I could listen. One story within the many stories involves a secondary character - name of Wemmick. He is a clark in the employ of the inscrutable lawyer, Mr. Jaggers. Here's the gist of that tale - Jaggers has been instructed to give Pip money from his Benefactor. Jaggers has handed the responsibility to Wemmick. When we first meet Wemmick he is a buttoned down up-tight piece of officiousness. Pip is a little afraid of him and rightly so. Wemmick deals with some very serious clients/criminals with precision accompanied with an almost cold-hearted attack. One afternoon as Pip is picking up some much needed coin Wemmick asks if he would like to join him for dinner and the weekend. As a reader I agreed with Pip's trepidation - what could that possibly entail? Not wanting to be rude, or bite the hand, Pip agrees to the request. Wemmick, in his officious manner, tells Pip to come back at 5. On the dot. Pip shows up at the appointed hour and as he and Wemmick leave the law offices Wemmick deals out information to the various miscreants who linger about - scaring Pip even more as to what could lay in store. They begin the long march toward the city limits and with every step away from the workplace Wemmick becomes more animated, more congenial. By the time he and Pip approach Wemmick's house Pip is told not to be surprised by a cannon blast that is imminent. Wemmick's dad, a character he calls The Aged, fires off a small cannon as his son approaches each evening. He then lowers a little draw-bridge that leads over a small creek toward the cottage Wemmick and the Aged call home. Sure enough the cannon sounds, the bridge is let down and Pip passes a delightful weekend in the company of the two gentlemen. On the Monday morning as they walk away from the cottage - it is all joy and happiness but as they get closer to town Wemmick begins to assume his other character. By the time they arrive at the law offices he is completely transformed.

That's a little bit like us I think - Wemmick at work and Wemmick at home and all of the Wemmicks each step between. Whatever the worlds you're coming from, whatever the worlds you're going to I wish you a safe and loving journey.

I arrived in Blyth Ontario last night as the sun was setting. Woke this morning and began the gig of interim AD of the Festival. A day of greetings and play readings, plenty of talk about next summers slate of offerings. After locking the office door late this afternoon I got on my bike and rode 10 k to the next town over and then rode back. The air was sweet with life, the crops high and healthy, dogs sometimes barked as I rode past farms, there were hills and flats, straight-aways and bends in the highway, all a part of the experience. There's plenty always going on, a field that appears calm is full of busy life, a road that sits empty has ghosts floating up and down the line, in the ditches alongside and in the air above. Quiet has its own volume. A truck or car hurries past giving me a bit of space to continue pedaling. Back home now, night 2 is on and rolling toward bed...

New to this world of blogging and not exactly sure how to treat it I thought I'd attempt the energy of a kitchen conversation over a 24 hour period. See how that goes...

Kitchens are where so much life transpires. They are vital places in my experience. They're the location for preparing food and often the place where the equally important practice of eating what has been prepared occurs. I've had some of the finest conversations while washing or drying dishes in a kitchen. I've been silent beside another as she cried about the loss of a loved one. I've been called from every other room in the house, from the backyard, from over the phone, to come to the kitchen. I've eaten alone while reading a magazine or book. I've read and left written notes on the kitchen table.

Coming home late from a long trip, having been away a long while, I walked into my kitchen, the light above the stove quietly illuminating the room - more like a street-lamp on a snowy night. The fridge hummed, but there was little other sound. On the kitchen table, leaning against a chipped soup bowl with a pair of rose heads floating in water inside it, was an envelope. On the cover was my name in a left-handed handwriting from someone I loved, and love, very much. Opening the envelope, I pulled out the card from inside. The photograph on the front was a shot of the open prairie in autumn. Wild grasses, a blue and curving world, clouds like the wisp of old man hair. It was beautiful. The note inside, "tried to stay up but was too tired...happy anniversary, honey. Love, L. Then at the bottom of the card was a single word, always. 

Kitchens...

It begins

Embarking.