Saturday Afternoon

Outside the tiniest of snowflakes float. Inside, sunlight from the window hits the dust motes hovering above the hot air vent. The furnace has kicked in, rumbling melodically from the basement. The fridge hums. The cat on my lap purrs. I flip a page in my book. I notice the soft sound of my rough fingertips moving over paper. I breathe in. I breathe out. A gust of wind outside now. The snow scatters—the last of the autumn leaves dance. The cat shifts her weight, resettling on me. I breathe in. I breathe out. I turn the next page.

Inspired by the afternoon. Photo by NetPix.

Words of Wisdom

It was over, that was obvious. The band was falling apart. He sat despondent in the empty studio, feeling spent, empty, without ideas, uninspired. Clearly he would never write again, never move others as he'd always done before. He felt grief at the thought. “Woe is me,” he mumbled, tinkling the keyboard in accompaniment, “woe is me.” He repeated the words, voice rising, voice falling, again and again, lamenting. 

      After several hours Mary, the kindly old cleaning lady, looked in from the hall. “Oh Paul,” she whispered. “Poor darling! Just let it be.” 

      McCartney startled and straightened at the piano . . .

Inspired by The Full MAPL. Image from a photo by Max Scheler.

Winter Whiteouts and Memory Blizzards

The theme is music and I’m supposed to follow the lead and the cursor’s blinking and I’m stewing over whiteouts and car rentals and another trip to the frozen prairie to move a loved one into long term care. I made the fateful decision and now must see it through—and I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing for the blog.
     Suddenly I overhear a snippet of an old song on seasonal rotation and the memories come flooding. Lost and out of reach to her, suddenly vivid and alive to me. Yes, I‘ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

Sheet music by Melrose Music Corp., ca. 1943. Author’s note: To accommodate travel requirements, I wrote this contribution before Nancy posted her delightful ode to summer flowers. On the day this appears on the blog I will be in Saskatchewan, where in December there are no snowdrops but those falling from the sky.

What kind of music do you like?

To answer this question, I mentally ran through my—I was going to say Spotify playlist, but who am I kidding?—CD collection: Sarah Vaughan, jazz and opera compilations, Edith Piaf, Guardians of the Galaxy and Shrek sound tracks, Christmas muzak, Stan Rogers, Queen, some Beatles, Mozart, Maroon 5, KD Lang, Joni Mitchell, The Clash, MuchDance 2009, and a well-played double-CD set of Jesus Christ Superstar show tunes, the lyrics of which are drilled into my kids’ heads for life. Do I have any discernible musical taste at all? “Ugh, well...,” I stalled, but thankfully the conversation had moved on.

Inspired by First Church of Christ, Superstar.

Eglinton West

Two-hundred tons of aluminum and glass meet 500 feet of rail and concrete at speeds that can approach 55 miles per hour—and yet for all the brute force behind it, the first sound you’ll hear at the Eglinton West station is a strange, slow trill that echoes up and down the tracks to tell you the next train is coming. It’s the sound steel might make if it was allowed to sway free in the breeze; a celebration of release from the long, cold wait; a song, high and sweet, that tells me I’m finally on my way home.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

Oh Yeah! It was (sorta) like Lightning!

Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz is playing. As part of the grade eight end of school party, Christine, Carolyn, Cheryl and myself performed an interpretive dance to that tune. We wore cut offs, white T-shirts and tinfoil lightening bolts and were backed up by boys dressed in full KISS drag. Mike could inhale butane from a lighter so he got to be Gene Simmons, and bless him, stayed in character by shouting sexually charged remarks about our behinds. This was 1976 and I was thirteen, so any complement, however boorish, worked. In that moment, I was truly a Fox on the Run.
Photo: Cheryl Dowhan Metcalfe

The Shadow Stranger

Behind you, a stranger waits in the shadows. Not with a knife in hand, not with oiled whispers, nor with a trenchcoat lined with knockoff watches and a tale of woe. A quiet stranger, a stranger like you but unlike, with a left side like your right and vice versa. A stranger who kneels beneath your chair and leans her forehead against the wall, who licks at its white leaded paint and tastes the white as darkness, and dark as light. She hopes you’ll play a record soon. The sound of all that silence in the room just deafens her.

Photo by Melodie McDaniel
For other posts inspired by this image, see The Mag.

The Truth about Rudolph

My young friend Carrie’s favourite Christmas song is Rudolph. I can’t blame her. She’s grown up in an era of ardent anti-bullying messaging, and is a really nice person to boot. But here’s the thing, Carrie: Exactly when in history has a member of a visible minority group reviled by dominant society and excluded from joining in any children’s games suddenly been hailed with shouts of glee for saving the day? “Then all the reindeer loved him”? Not bloody likely. Odds are they kicked poor Rudolph to death with sharp little hooves the minute Santa went for the gin bottle.

Image: Animated Film Reviews.

Saturday night awakes to the Sibilant sound of Light

Sunday sings a sleepy song. Southern exposure shoots shards of hot white flood-like brightness, blinding the portraits hung on Victorian plum walls. No dark shadows lurking, pure crisp lines dancing undisturbed over last night’s array of tossed lingerie and slightly sipped flutes of champagne whose sparkles fizzled their final pop hours ago. Dormant pools in finely cut crystal becomes alive. Refractions set ablaze a spectrum of color on a skin-toned landscape. It’s a tango, imprisoning a prism of color over flesh barely covered by slippery satin sheets. We ponder the method of this muse that shakes us awake, squinting.

Image by Cec LePage

We all Scream for Ice Cream

There’s a new ice cream man in our neighbourhood. He has the same style of truck and presumably sells the same sort of soft ice cream as Mr. Marigoudakis, our resident ice cream man, but this interloper will never be successful. Not only because he is infringing on our guy’s turf, but because he plays the creepiest music. Mr. M’s tune is upbeat and happy, but this new one is slow and played in a minor key. Picture an ice cream cone dangling by its neck and sad, nihilistic German children forced to eat it and you get the idea.

Image taken from the TORONTOist.

Jump Rope Rhymes for a New Millenium

Skip, Momma Pony’s name is Pounce
Kitten’s name is Clop
Daddy, he cuts heads off
In the barbershop.

Sister likes the breast
Brother likes the thigh
Momma left us years ago
Daddy don't say why.

So, skip, Momma!
Skip, Momma!
A one, two, three
Back to your little family.

Yeah, skip, Momma!
Skip, Momma!
Anyone can see
How you miss your little family.

Sister’s Making MuffinsSister’s in the kitchen
Little Brother’s out in back
Sister’s making muffins
Little Brother's smoking crack.

When Sister heats the oven
Little Brother’s getting high
But Sister’s making muffins
Sugar muffins make her fly.

Image based on Skipping Vinegar Girl by flickrsquared.

A Plot Both Great and Grand

I walked past the plot where my great-great-grandfather lies buried, the Masonic plot at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, established in 1883 by Brother John Ross Robertson to provide for the internment of indigent Masons . . . my great-great-grandfather, the indigent who in 1894, had arrived in style at the Queen’s Hotel, who’d once sung lead tenor in the “Messiah” at Massey Hall, taught at the College of Music, and seen his brief tenure here end at the Home for the Incurables.
     No stone then for Thomas James Burley, so I stomped around long enough to be pretty sure I’d made contact.

Image: Cold Shoulder by Shawn Jurek.

Nexus

Vic, Serge, John, Elaine, Kathy, Skiz and me. What created the Perfect Storm that brought home my six closest pals, all of us just shy of 50 and living all over North America, on the same weekend that my parents’ remains were laid to rest at Ste-Annes? Apart from Rich and I, no one was in town specifically for the burial, but everyone came. John stood over my mom’s ashes and sang a profoundly beautiful song. His partner Chris blessed the tiny coffin. After the ceremony, Kath and I walked the graveyard of our ancestors. Her daughter walked with us.

Mommy Music

On the drive to Tecumseh I heard the coolest cover of Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm. Thrashy yes, but with substance. Dan said it was by Rage Against the Machine. Two minutes into the song I was hooked. I should have stopped there. When I asked him to buy me one of their cds for my birthday I rendered the tune completely lame by association. With only a seconds-long head bang/lap drum I managed to shift that band’s moxie from The Matrix-worthy soundtracker to fluffer band for Hootie and the Blowfish. I’m sorry Mr. de la Rocha, I was out of line.

[image from: http://www.listal.com]

Clarence Clemons

Springsteen wrote the lyrics and had the voice, but Clarence Clemons played the sax, and when he did the music flowed like a joyful river. He played it confident and strong; he could dominate and carry a song on his back, but he liked to tease. He knew when to be jaunty and when to reign it in. He had an unmistakable presence and when he played... when he played the music was more than a wall of sound, it was a mural, a dancing, rollicking, playful mural. His sax now sadly fades to silence but echoes still in memory.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

When Disney released Song of the South in 1946, even the NAACP acknowledged the film’s “remarkable artistic merit,” although they were somewhat less than impressed with its idyllic portrayal of the relationship between a master and his slaves on a plantation in 19th-century Georgia.
     Oops.
     Buried deep in this charming mess, however, you might be surprised to find the Oscar-winning, chart-topping hit “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which depending on your temperament, might be a bit like hearing Linda Blair break into “Heart and Soul” halfway through her transformation, or perhaps rediscovering the marching band that played “Seventy-six Trombones” in Triumph of the Will.

Sneaking into the Bar

I snuck in at fifteen. Victor dared me to walk in, plug the juke and chose the sappiest song I could find, then leave through the back entrance. But when I got inside I froze. There was no Barry Manilow. So what was sappier, “All Out of Love” by Air Supply, or one of those falsetto numbers by the Bee Gees? I felt everyone’s eyes on me. I had to decide. I dropped the coin in the slot, punched a button and slipped out as “You Should be Dancing” began to play. “Hey! Whadzat crap?” someone shouted behind my back.

Deliverance

Every time we went canoeing someone would hum that tune. Not hum, exactly, but voice. Dah dah ding ding ding ding ding ding ding... We’d be headed for the boonies, self-contained, hardy, ready for any weather, and that tune would cause instant manic laughter. Rapids, bears, the prospect of hypothermia, of running short of hooch – all those hazards lay before us. Why, on the edge of the wilderness, did the idea of being violated by hillbillies seem hysterically funny? It was definitely a guy thing. Once, I went canoeing with a group of women, and they just didn’t get it.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Mrs. Schlinker, my piano teacher, was a great fan of Liberace. I think he would have loved to have met her. Like him, she smiled all the time and employed his method of highly arched fingers prancing up and down the keyboard, with the ends of phrases accentuated by a flourish of the wrist. This flamboyant style of playing was enforced on all her students. I did not mind. It was fun to add such physicality to my playing, and it was a way of making sure each note was precisely defined. Later I transferred that style to computer keyboarding.


Finding ways to inject playful fun into my routine is really the only way to survive the monotony of office work. Because of my piano training I love typing. It is satisfying to fire off a section of text at the speed of a machine gun, and finish with a flourished hand on the ‘enter’ key. I also like to play number games when making my bookkeeping entries – looking for patterns in number combinations. But I have to be careful with my sense of humour. It always bubbles to the surface in serious situations, where it is not always appreciated.

A Band Playing on the Radio

I discovered Roxy Music’s Flesh + Blood at Skiz’s house. There was something about the combination of Bryan Ferry’s voice and that signature syntho-echo that could make you feel simultaneously sad and horny, ancient and hopeful. That was a terrific coming-of-age summer for me. Skiz, Roger, Gil and I spent the season together, happily taking advantage of her pool, beer fridge, barbeque and her parents’ good nature. This was 1981 and I was already nineteen, I should have had this sort of experience years before, say at fifteen, but I just cannot imagine necking on the couch to “My Sharona.”

I played the copy of Flesh + Blood Roy burned for me when I was driving up to Elliot Lake to see Gerry. Back in the day, I’d bought the album and made a cassette so I could listen to it in the Dodge Dart on my daily trips back and forth from Gil’s house. Two weeks ago I’d sung to “My Only Love” as I drove along highway 108, and it would be the last time I saw my father alive. Time passes so quickly. I used to sing an octave higher than Bryan Ferry, but I don’t anymore.