Singing With the Boys

a description of sorts as to where I am… can be found here

I started Singing With the Boys when I was at the artists’ colony at  St. Pete’s Benedictine Monastery in Saskatchewan. I named it this because I was singing the offices with the brothers as much as I could. A meditative, shared humanity.

Lately, I’ve been “singing” with the boys of a far different ilk. The Canadian forces Infantry. I am one of five artists chosen to be a war artist with the Canadian Forces Artist Program.

an amazing experience… if you’re at all curious, check out   www.warpoet.ca

thanks to Brenda Schmidt, the great Sask. poet (see blog, alone on a boreal stage), I read this posting by someone called Dr. Ursus, a physican/poet living somewhere in Canada.

http://drursus.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-i-tell-myself-sometimes.htm

a profound commentary on grief,

this year, grief has circled like a brown hawk above us, our family

- and why should we be different than any other family?  

I suppose our great challenge however, is that unlike most, we have a rather unique situation in that we lost our beloved 26 year old to the northern Pacific. we shall never see her again. nor her partner. 31 years of age. capable. good. strong. lovely. why do the good die young, we ask, or is it that we are all good at 26? or maybe it’s their very goodness that magnifies the loss? 

and how do we grieve when we will never know the date of their death? how they died? with just the wide sea as their witness? literally fallen off (or into) the face of the earth

and sometimes I wonder what they saw on that raw ocean that they became a part of, what truths, what revelation, or was it simply nothingness

and where does that leave us but to continue to live, to witness, to love, to sometimes just put one foot in front of the other…

a month ago, I attended one of our fallen soldier’s funeral. and it wasn’t the shiny brass buttons, the lone piper, the tenderness of his platoon mates as they hoisted his coffin onto their shoulders, kneeled gently so as not scrape his casket on the lintel as they entered the church, that touched me, though that was certainly moving. no, it was the NASCAR stickers peaking out from under the Canadian flag cinched tight around the box… that somehow in death, this soldier’s personality, humour, carried on…

we grieved our girl this summer. it was a hot, gorgeous blue sky day in August for which we had prepared for several weeks. flowers. food. notices. service. hymns. it should have been a wedding and not a funeral. it should have been… it should have been… there is Ursus’  ”door of despair” opening for me in those three words…

in a parallel universe, maybe the wedding did happen, after all, we saw it in our minds that day – C. looking so beautiful, long dark curls… some of us even dreamed of her dress…

is this despair to imagine this? grief’s “torture”, as Ursus describes…
 

anyway, somehow we made it through the funeral (no body, no date, just nothingness and imagination), adjourned to the parents’ home and had one hell of a party… a musical family, we sang, played music, my daughter played fiddle, we ate, we drank, we laughed, we wept, we even did the bloody Chicken Dance (oh there’s that damn wedding image again) because it was one of our girl’s favourites… until 4 a.m.

for one night, we danced on death, saved our grief for all the tomorrows

attended a Town Hall meeting put on by the local arts community who are all in a tizzy vis-a-vis cuts to arts funding and the perception of censorship by the current federal gov’t.

the meeting was a futile effort I’m afraid as it was a case of all in attendance singing the same melody (cliche tm)… the Greens, the NDP, the Libs. all in attendance, but no Conservatives – and honestly, who could blame them… I’m sure it makes far better sense to spend a Sunday night knocking on doors and kissing babies, than coming to a theatre just to get yelled at or possibly physically attacked (this is BC after all!)

for a bunch of creative artists, the whole endeavour was stunningly lacking in creativity. a panel of candidates and a panel of artists or arts organizers, 3 minutes each and debate. over a dozen speakers, we were a bit done in by speaker #8 or #9… for some reason, the arts community tm seems to think that if they use biz-speak, e.g. $8.3 billion to the GDP blah blah blah, that they will have more credibility… and the candidates on their part, droned on about how they will do this and this and this if this and this and this happens… yeesh, to think I missed a dinner with the in-laws for that…

anyway, I looked around at all the people dressed in black on stage and in the audience and counted fewer than ten people under the age of 40 and 0 people of the non-pale complexion (and we live in a city absolutely alive with 1st nations artists)… and maybe that’s an interesting bit of info right there… the +40 gang have grown up on grants while the -40 gang have pretty much got used to not receiving grants and have gone about their art using whatever they have at hand to make a living or ? from it… witness independent music artists… they’ve been recording and distributing their art for years and years… and how many of them have ever applied for gov’t funding? and what would their chances be at successfully receiving that funding considering who serves on selection committees and who are the usual recipients (and I have observed this across the disciplines)… 

anyway, this morning in the Globe and Mail a really interesting article on Jean-Daniel Lafond, the GG’s husband. a filmmaker, playwright, critic etc., he makes the following statements and I think he’s onto something…

“[Fundamentally], it’s a problem of education… We need to sensitize people to the importance of the arts. Don’t forget, culture is oxygen. we have to protect it [and spending on it] is not a waste of money. But it’s a dead end to make a confrontation between artists and politicians. The only possible end is demagoguery… It’s very safe for a politician to destroy culture. We have to go further with education…” and so on.

of course it’s easy to make statements… but hopefully GG hubby takes the time to get out there and mentor and present and sponsor and not just yack…

those are a few thoughts

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman. Emile Zola

the old adage about performance being 10 per cent inspiration, 90 per cent perspiration, so true. this week back to dance class… technique, coaching, choreography, bata de cola, the latter looking so beautiful, so elegant, a skirt with 16 meters of fabric which the dancer must “fly”, all the while maintaining amazing posture, line, keep in compas… make it look natural/easy. 

so why do we practice such an esoteric art form? I’m not sure any of us can quite answer this… it’s our addiction/our passion… the thing that makes difficult times bearable and good times, amazing… it’s both a celebration and a salve.

easy? not at all. hard physical and mental work. years and years of practice that only now are beginning (and the operative is beginning) to pay off. 

all I know is that it makes me a better writer. a better human being. that the artform speaks to me on a very deep level. that without exception, my fellow dancers all have a story to tell. this is not hobby, this is not recreation, this is central to our lives. and that it takes a lifetime to begin even a tiny bit of mastery is not

daunting. Not one little bit. in fact, this is the gift.

oh and anyone worth her weight in flamenco will note the hands… more work needed. much more… so it goes…

yesterday, a doubleheader of the distinctly unfortunate kind – not one, but two friends’ obits in the local rag, the times-colonialist (yes, this city stuck in Empire I’m afraid). 

the first, a friend killed on his motorcyle on a placid, late summer early morning ride. 

a cup of coffee at a favourite spot, back on the bike to head home. no traffic. no rain. just nice straight road, the light of 7 a.m. august (soft/crumbling at the edges). an SUV from out of nowhere. too fast. done. and a coward that couldn’t even stop to look at what he had destroyed. now there’s an 11 year old out there without a father.

the next night another phone call. I didn’t return as it was too late and was still in shock. but bought the paper yesterday to read my friend’s obit and saw Jimmy’s. oh crap, now I know why G. called me and left an urgent “call me”. another gone. and Jimmy, always one to put a smile on my face. this kind of person, pure gold.

so last night. I prepared a feast. good food. wine. good company. laugh and cry. my daughter played her new fiddle – a beauty of Manitoba maple made by the great Metis fiddler John Arcand, one of our country’s national treasures. what else can we do in times like these?

and this morning. I pick up an old companion for sad times. E.B.White’s The Points of My Compass. Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South. “Dispatches of a self-appointed foreign correspondent who elected to stay home”. sure to cheer me. I unpacked it just last week, finally getting to boxes packed before we left for Edinburgh 4 years ago, and left in storage. unpacked and fortunately, mouseless.

so I’m off to mid-1950’s New England for the morning. Fred, the smelly dash-hound, the chickens, the storms off the Atlantic, the world before air conditioning, laptops, television actually…

little escapes in 5000 words or less.

no more MacApple rants, but I just can’t help it… for those of tender sensibilities, please skip this post as I pare the fruit

last year after many years, I took the dive (nosedive) into MacWorld tm. I plunked down 1600 loonies for a piece of shit called a MacBook… one of those black numbers that goes with everything…

long story short, after 3 functioning months the thing quit on me unexpectedly, wouldn’t reboot, and alarmingly began strobing and buzzing. now any idiot could tell that it was a crap unit. any idiot but the helpful tm. folks at Apple-”Care-less” tm. who basically told me to suck it up, go without a computer for days while I got it fixed etc. etc. (too bad about the deadline and didn’t I have a spare p.c. hanging around that I could use, and by the way that’s going to cost you more money…) and who tried to make me feel as if I was trying to rip them off because I asked them for a replacement for their shoddy equipment…

hours on the phone to Apple Care-less tm. resulted in no satisfaction… they wouldn’t even give me the name and address of the president… one of their local reps. was a prick, ditto one of their authorized repair shops whose frontman did everything to make me feel like a total idiot for wanting a tool to work… wait a minute, just what does that tool do for work anyway????… finally, after trying to get the shop that sold me the MacBook in the first place to replace it and failing, I had to resort to a really pathetic strategy… getting a man to get me the replacement computer.

yep, a certain F., captain of industry who happens to spend thousands and thousands on computers and equipment at the shop had to make the call and basically browbeat them into taking the turd back… and they did and the minute I booted the new one up, I knew what a MacBook

should

sound, look, feel like. I’m still not happy with the company and want to throw things at the t.v. when I see one of their smug ads and tell everybody I meet what I think of Apple tm.

so why am I scratching old wounds? today in the mail, I received my extended warranty, Applecare for MacBook. I was warned by the repair guys at the new shop I patronize (and I think they’re totally great guys and recommend them to everyone… Moore and Associates) that I better get Applecare before my one year guaranteed warranty was up, so I slapped down another $ 335.99 and I guess I’m sort of “protected” for another two years.

what a fucking racket… I mean, you can buy a pretty decent piece of handmade furniture for $ 2000 and the thing will last you a lifetime and your kids a lifetime and maybe and probably even their kids’ lifetime…

yeesh, I better sign off before I start strobing and flashing and… oh, you get it I know…

on a happier note, I’m off to the garrison and to Wainwright this week… let’s hope the muse, that beautiful muse will accompany me!

I asked an audience of poets and prose writers once, “where do you write from?” I wanted to know if there was a place in their physical body that seemed to flint the writing. Later, I got shit from a canlit(tm) writer who told me I was full of crap, ridiculous, juvenile etc. for asking that question. He said it’s all from the brain, nowhere else… “not heart, not balls, not anywhere but the brain”.

awhile back my 11 year old was reading the paper and she told me that the different organs, different parts of the body actually make hormones of different kinds and these hormones send out sensations.
interesting… my 11 year old then told me that mr. canlit was full of crap. who am I to correct her?

anyway, with that in mind, I’d love to know if other writers feel their work comes from a location in their body or does it change or what? I seem to have to walk for at least 20 minutes before I can write clearly… it seems to serve as a pencil-sharpening for me.

that are owned by others (wordpress, blogspot etc.) is that you can’t control dumbass features such as the automatically generated “of interest” list that I just found on my blog this morning. there is also the question of copyright etc. how many of us really read/understand the fine print when we sign up for these things? typically, we are so enamoured with the immediacy and that it’s ostensibly free that we probably don’t think it through to endgame. and ultimately, no one, not even the providers, knows the ultimate resolution of the format.

there is also the long term question of privacy etc. I’ve been in this (internet) game since its early days. in 1991, I was advising clients on the potentials of the internet, which at that time consisted of early NetScape, telnetting, etc. I clearly remember clients laughing at me when I said that there was huge commercial potential in the internet and that they should consider starting or purchasing an ISP. I also remember advising clients that for sake of privacy, they should consider anything they write (emails at the time) to be like a postcard that could be read by everyone who came across it. having said that, over the years I’ve not taken my own advice and have probably left a broad electronic fingerprint for all to see.

finally, along those same lines, one can begin to think about the potential for Orwellian surveillance of thought and association. while a conspiracy theorist might indulge in this, the reality is more likely analogous to East Germany and the Staasi. the Staasi’s broad network of intelligence gatherers (including family members spying on family members and over-reporting) resulted in far too much data. a drowning of data actually. and as an analyst, I recognize that information is only useful if it’s needed/purposeful. still, these are all things to think about.

I think the only answer, certainly to the idea of copyright etc., is to totally own one’s webpresence. to that end, I’m meeting an excellent webdesigner, Mike Gravel (who is also a fine writer, a fine poet), in E’town this month and am hoping to set up my own site for my Canadian Forces project. I’m hoping to post podcasts of my work so that soldiers can download pieces and listen to them wherever they are. I think that’s more appealing/feasible than book format. having said that, I’ll eventually offer a hardcopy version and/or CD/DVD as well.

a tiny pie slice of time for a quick post.

books I’m reading: just finished rereading Sinclair Ross’ As For Me and My House

inspired by my recent 2 weeks in Saskatchewan, I reread Ross’ masterpiece. I first read it as a young girl of 19 and coming back to it so many years later as a mature woman, I’m amazed at how much I missed on that first reading. I savoured each page this time. what a beautiful writer. poetic. he sustains the narrative and yet manages to meditate on place, relationship between man/woman, woman/child, woman/God, woman/herself. equally I’m impressed that he writes convincingly from a woman’s point of view. the only other male writer that I’ve read who managed this, is Brian Moore. I’m thinking of the Passion of Judith Hearne which I am determined to reread again after a few decades.

it’s great to revisit these writers and see if they have withstood the test of time. I was disappointed last year when I reread (or tried) Margaret Lawrence’s The Diviners. something was clunky with it. I think it was the form. I found her memorybank movies (or something to that effect) to be forced. some of the language as well placed it too firmly in the 1970’s to a distraction level.

on another topic, watch the Globe and Mail in the next few weeks. I’ve been interviewed about my position as a war artist with the Canadian Forces Artist Program. all five of us artists are featured.

also, I’ll be featured in the Maple Leaf, the Canadian Forces official newspaper, sometime in the near future.

I have no idea where I’m being sent or when. the hope is for Afghanistan sometime in the next 18 months. I’ll keep you posted.