I am an admirer of Larry McMurtry’s work, and at some point I hope to address it. But the passage that reflexively brings McMurtry to my mind is written by Tom Wolfe, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I expect the young boy mentioned at the end is James.
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| RIP Larry McMurtry, June 3, 1936 – March 25, 2021 |
Since I have pondered the condition of the newspaper at some length this link gets its own post — Freddie deBoer sorts out why the newspaper industry is tanking, and why its writers are up in arms over Substack. He contends it ain’t just jealousy and hypocrisy at work — it’s displacement.
Thanks for the title, Leonard.
Took a road trip up to Ottawa the weekend before last. Visited my brother-in-law and his wife. They’ve managed his Stage 4 past the initial prediction. He is the same man I’ve known now for almost 30 years. He is a very different man from the one I’ve known for almost 30 years.
I experienced an inner tilt during that visit, and that’s how I’ve been walking through the past 14 days — at a tilt. Can’t quite put it into words. Like my brother-in-law, I am becoming a different man. And I’m the same guy I’ve always been.
Behind the blue-and-white velvet rope I’ve been posting pictures of my personal lye-berry. My shelves are a mess — kinda alphabetical in spots, but not really. I’m sure I’ve alienated everyone with OCD. But those are the shelves and bookstores I’ve always loved the most — the ones that almost make sense. They’re the most like life.
Life. God help you if you’ve got OCD.
Stuff I’ve been pondering:
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| Transference: it's strictly a one-way affair. Isn't it? |
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| Still am. |
A guy down the hall overheard, poked his head in. “This is the station that inspired ‘The Spirit of Radio’ by RUSH,” he said. We’ve been friends ever since.
When I got homesick I might turn to Q107, Toronto’s AOR station, similar in format to Winnipeg’s 92 CITI FM (so similar, in fact, that Brother Jake Edwards skipped the 'Peg to be the morning man for Q a few years later). But when I got terribly homesick, I tuned in to CFNY — to remind myself why I was in Toronto.
Spoons, Boys Brigade, Images In Vogue, Blue Peter leavened into a mix of British acts and a few American ones — also Dub Rifles, who could not be heard anywhere in our home city. This was it, this was the good stuff. I was exactly where I belonged.
I wasn’t, of course. I returned to Winnipeg and spent the remainder of the 80s being lost in the city of my birth. And I didn’t miss CFNY, because CBC FM had launched this crazy late-night show called Brave New Waves, with Brent Bambury. He and his cohort played music that was, in fact, even further out on the edge than what CFNY served up. BNW could afford to — it was funded by the tax-payer, and broadcast at an ungodly hour.
My friend Kaz would record the show on a 120 minute cassette. He’d hit “Record,” doze off, then wake up when the “Record” button snapped out, and flip the tape for the next hour’s worth of content. I took occasion to borrow those cassettes, and the many LPs and CDs he purchased after listening to Bambury’s show.
When I moved to Toronto in the 90s CFNY had become a different thing. The morning “personalities” were snarky and mean, signalling an end to the empathetic curiosity that showcased music nobody else was playing. It still billed itself as “alternative” radio, but my psychonaut co-worker in the bookstore basement would sneer whenever he heard it. “Alternative to what?”
Bambury hosted Brave New Waves into the mid-90s, then stepped into a higher profile at the Corp. I had tuned out by then. Kaz was mailing me mixed tapes from Winnipeg that were painstakingly curated affairs. Indeed, I was becoming increasingly aware of a cultural fermentation in my old hometown that put to shame my adoptive — flashier, blander — city, the supposed Centre Of The Universe.
The last item Kaz sent me was a CD filled with hundreds of mp3 files. Napster was in the ascendant. I was living in the country. An era had definitively closed.
No complaints from me — hey, internet radio is a great thing! Aquarium Drunkard is always worth a listen. Dani Elwell, CFNY’s last good DJ, has her own thing going on at Mixcloud. And I’m holding out hope that Spotify’s terms of use for music and podcasts will entice Darko back behind the pop-filter.
But a smidgen of well-placed nostalgia is worthy of protection and projection. This post was inspired by James A. Reeves’ magnificent remembrance of Detroit’s Electrifying Mojo, and Graeme Thomson’s salute to Lou Ottens, inventor of the blank cassette tape, the innovation that liberated music for my generation. Also: “Nobody thinks they’re the only freak in the world when they hear Throbbing Gristle” — Brent Bambury reminisces.
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| Maybe the keyboard is the problem... |
Words are not showing up for me, alas. Fortunately there are all kinds of good words being spilled elsewhere. Here’s what’s got me cogitatin’.
The best thing I’ve read this week:
Participating in a Star Wars movie seems to be quite the liberating experience — after the fact. If there is one actor associated with any portion of this enormous franchise who has not, once all the receipts have been tallied, talked trash about their installation into the franchise firmament I’ve yet to make their acquaintance.1
And I don’t mean to make that sound like a bad thing — it’s just remarkable, is all. Any of these principals walking off any other fished project will smile and deliver the Entertainment Tonight talking points: “Such an incredible experience!” “I think what we did here was unique.” “It was a dream to work with these people!” etc. With Star Wars we get Carrie Fisher saying things like, “George Lucas ruined my life,” and we still feel like she’s holding back.2
Over at Mel Magazine Tim Grierson surveys the post-production fallout and flat-out declares what seems to be the niggling thought in the brain of every Star Wars fan: The New ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy Wasn’t Worth It.
He makes a compelling case — and I am 100% in that group of viewers disappointed by the sidelining of every single POC character, putting the emphasis on a Rey and Ren storyline of dubious value. But does it render the entire exercise null and void?
Here’s an alternative possibility — since we’re still talking about it four years later, maybe people will come around on The Last Jedi. And maybe that will generate storylines people want to see.
Though, honestly, what do I know? At this point I am forced to admit I am completely out-of-step with what Kids These Days expect from the SWU. For instance, it seems universally accepted that Solo was a well-deserved failure. I disagree. It had its weaknesses — binning the entire first act would have improved the film immeasurably — but to my eyes it still rates as the most entertaining SWU flick since The Empire Strikes Back. But I repeat myself.
In other SWU related reveries, I bought J.W. Rinzler’s The Making Of The Empire Strikes Back.
Why, you wonder? And why so late? Well ... the Kindle version had been on my Amazon wishlist since its release. (Long pause.) If I had had the remotest inkling that the window would close on the Kindle purchase ... well, I now have my regrets.
I don’t exactly regret purchasing the book, however. It is a pleasure to read, narratively taut, gossipy where it needs to be, and super-informative. Lovely pictures, of course. But wow it’s a monster. And I don’t need that.
Anyway, it will be a snap to finish. And already it has disabused me of a conviction I’ve held for decades: that pulp writer extraordinaire Leigh Brackett was almost solely responsible for what worked in the story. Rinzler makes it very clear, with physical evidence, that Brackett’s influence on the final script of TESB could best be quantified in the negative. She wrote the first draft, which Lucas then utterly covered with red ink. Lucas definitely knew what he did not want to see, and this script was largely it. Indeed, reading the pages provided I wondered if she’d even seen the earlier movie. An unlikely possibility — and an uncharitable thought. Unbeknownst to the Lucasfilm bunch Brackett was in an advanced state of Stage 4. That she was able to hammer out a cogent script at all indicates a heroic intensity of focus.
When she died before rewrite, Lucas took over. And what we see is a remarkable convergence of his script with director Irvin Kershner’s invitational attitude toward his actors’ ideas — aided by uncountable others who threw in their best to make the film be what Lucas, and we, needed it to be.
1 Although, now that I think of it, Ewan McGregor has been a remarkably magnanimous statesman for the SWU.↩
2 My favourite response from the current principals is Oscar Isaac, saying the only way he’ll ever re-enter the SWU is “if I need to buy another house or something.”↩
In contrast to Orphans Of God, an earlier Mark Heard tribute album, the artists collected for this 2017 album are A) of a piece, and B) carefully marshalled into cohesion by producer Phil Madeira.
A) The Artists. When I first encountered the track list I was familiar with enough of them to recognize a universal bent toward Americana. Heard was contrarian to his core and would likely bristle at being thus pigeon-holed. And, fair enough: his final album was driven by a recent obsession with the electric mandolin and has a track or two that could qualify as Celtic Death Metal (he’s not here to defend himself, but any of his many devoted fans are free to call me out on this). Regardless, the musical vein Heard mined was indeed Americana. To continue the metaphor: sanding down a little of Heard’s aural prickliness burnishes the natural lustre of his work. These were the right people for the job.
B) As was producer Phil Madeira. The album is a finely wrought whole — an outstanding anomaly among tribute albums. A handful of tracks graduated immediately to my current playlists — Birds of Chicago, Lily & Madeleine, The North Mississippi All Stars, Buddy Miller and Over the Rhine are particularly stellar interpreters. But there is not one track I would ever dream of cutting from this line-up. I enjoy listening to this album from beginning to end.
This might just be the best possible introduction to the music of Mark Heard. Or, for those who never quite cottoned to his voice and delivery, it might be the best vehicle with which to consider his work. It is, finally, a lovely and perfectly tailored tribute to a challenging and sometimes difficult artist.
Further links: I have meditated on Mark Heard before, here and here. The Christian Humanists devoted a podcast to exploring a (dubiously edited) “Best Of” album over here and Michial Farmer surveys the Mark Heard catalogue here. And I am indebted to movie critic Christian Hamaker for introducing me to this album.
This image, lovingly curated from the digital version of the second Hellboy omnibus, exemplifies one reason why I think digital comic "books" are superior to their physical ("analog") counterparts. I don't have the physical product to compare, but I'm willing to bet there isn't the same manipulation of depth of field in the analog book, originally published in '98.
Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the mid-1980s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was required reading in a required Rhetoric course for first year University students in Winnipeg. An excellent choice: in the letter the “how” of King’s appeal cannot be separated from the “what” — it is a raw, elegant, and forceful demand for the listener not just to take action but to join King and his allies in their particular fight for freedom.
King situates the letter at the centre of his book. The first third of the book lays out the social context that eventually imprisoned King and inspired his letter. The final third points a way forward to freedom in America — here it is striking to note how vigorously King argues on behalf of collective labour.
In the main, King writes to set down his side of the story in this particular civil rights conflict, not just for posterity but to persuade the moderates urging caution and arguing against his radicalism. In his efforts to persuade, King does not often name his moderate opponents — a charitable move that leaves the door open for conversion, but which also slackens the force of the narrative.
It would be a mistake for the reader to expect the entire book to speak as powerfully as the letter does. King’s choices are pragmatic, even virtuous, standing as an example to emulate. King’s letter demands response; King’s book requires consideration.
View all my reviews
In the summer of '90 I took a third-year Uni course in 20th Century Canadian Literature. Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers was required reading.
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| Suitable for framing — or wrapping fish. |
Let’s see: misogyny, pedophilia, perpetual gas-lighting among the protagonists (to say nothing of the author’s stance toward the reader). And “cultural appropriation” is almost too gentle a term for what that novel does with Mohawk Catholic Saint and icon Catherine Tekakwitha. Other trigger warnings apply, but you get the idea. If there is a university on the continent which has this book on a current undergraduate syllabus, I will eat Werner Herzog’s other shoe.
As for the work itself my appetite for this sort of thing is not much whetter than it is for Herzog’s shoe. But I’ve some appreciation for the attitude that insists on granting the permission to transgress. Over at Paul’s place we mutually puzzled over Kurt Vonnegut’s willing forgiveness of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a transgressive writer who never troubled himself to apologize or in any way atone for his earlier enthusiastic embrace of Nazism. My suspicion was that Céline’s transgressive art was atonement enough for the likes of Vonnegut, who viewed human willingness to wage war as the greater transgression by far. For Vonnegut, Ginsberg, Bukowski, Reed and many other “fans” of Céline it was Céline’s eagerness to speak the unspeakable that recommended him. Céline’s transgressiveness serves, in this view, to highlight human frailty — even human preciousness.
I will grudgingly sign on with that POV, though I’ll also be grateful to never read Céline — or Beautiful Losers — ever again.
But it is worth noting, yet again, that transgression sure ain’t what it used to be. Cohen’s novel remains, for the moment, in print. But it goes without saying that no prestige press would touch its like today. Currently Bruce Wagner — a midlist author from my generation whose subtle compassion for his grotesquely flawed characters and their entwined fates has earned him a secure readership — has had his most recent novel dropped for containing a protagonist who refers to herself as “fat,” even aspirationally so. (cf., Air Mail; interview.)
I closed my John Wayne/Gina Carano post with, “This doesn’t feel necessary.” I could append that to this, but instead will direct you to Laura Kipnis’ Transgression: An Elegy — a long-read I cannot recommend too highly. Her capacity for indulging the transgressive work of others is much greater than mine, and her meditation on what has changed, and why, makes for truly excellent reading.
Oh, and also this: transgression, for kids, is catnip. They're drawn to it — always have been, always will be. Here in Canada there aren’t many places for college kids to indulge in Spring Breakers levels of bacchanalia, but Whistler, British Columbia certainly qualifies (NSFW, possibly) — so much so that even Americans come up en masse to get their Break on. And I am struck by an observation made by a Canadian in Whistler’s service industry — “I very much doubt this bunch voted for Hillary.”
Who knows but that a future “Céline” does not currently reside within “this bunch”?
“Fitness” is a relative term. My physical condition could certainly be better — my doctor would like me to lose about 30 lbs, so I’ve agreed not to consult her again until absolutely necessary. And to be fair, my physical condition could also be a whole lot worse.
My COVID exercise routine has been a tad more disciplined than it was prior to lockdown, particularly in the winter months. I have a resistance trainer clamped to the bicycle, and I do not at all mind heading into the basement, donning the shorts and cleats, then opening the window and pedaling myself into a dripping sweat. |
| "Pedal into the light!" |
The ritual of it actually reminds me of my hockey playing days, which I miss terribly. The play, the change-room bonhomie — all a receding memory. But again — to be fair — I do not miss the back pain, which after a Sunday night game was extending further and further into the week. My stationary bicycle may be a lonlier variant, but I still get the workout, a bit of aerobic catharsis, and the coveted endorphin rush.
I also try to adhere to a resistance routine — bodyweight and light free-weights. But my motivation for this workout is somewhere well below zero.
This is a change I never expected. From 16 years old until some point in my early 40s working out with weights was an actual passion. I loved it. The 90s introduced the “Split routine” — I could work out with weights every day of the week (except for the mandatory recovery day, boo!). Aerobic exercise was the motivational challenge back then. Bike to work, walk to the grocer’s. That was about it.
For all this, I was never a particularly “strong” or muscular guy. I had tone, but couldn’t bulk up to save my life. Not that I didn’t try. I had my creatine and powdered protein phase. And at 38 I adhered to a draconian regimen that finally nudged me into the 200lb Bench Press Club.
At that point I realized there was nowhere to go but down. In subsequent years I swapped around various push-pull routines and kept at it. But the days of the One Rep Max were over. Eventually a couple of minor injuries brought another reality to bear — I was now required to apply awareness and care to these routines, lest a workout injury sideline me permanently.
Pedaling is still a relatively carefree pleasure. Headphones permit me to listen to music as loud as I like. And I try to nudge my aging bod through a limited push-pull session at least once a week. But finding motivation for the latter is the real workout.
I’ve been thinking about John Wayne, lately. Or thinking about how my thinking about John Wayne has shifted over the years.
Had you asked me, when I was 18 years old, what I thought of the man I’d likely have said, “He’s a joke,” or if I was feeling ornery, “A sick joke.”
That was 1983, and I was watching Ronald Reagan play nuclear brinksmanship with the U.S.S.R. The POTUS was CLEARLY doing a bad impression of the late actor, and the people who’d voted him in were licking it up with a spoon. I was still a kid. It didn’t seem right. I wanted a more reasonable world than the one I was just developing a picture of. This was politics as B-grade cinema. Wayne was emblematic of the problem — hence, I felt hostility to the man himself.
As I and the world survived a few years longer I read several short accounts of the man, written by people whose politics were fairly similar to my own — Roger Ebert and Joan Didion. I expected a savaging. I read two singular accounts of two very smart and erudite individuals who’d been thoroughly charmed by The Duke.
Reading Ebert and Didion I had to conclude that had I been present at the same table there was a real possibility I too might have swooned. More, it was impressed upon me that this was a possibility not to be ruthlessly quashed, even with people whose politics I considered abhorrent — it’s not like Ebert and Didion left the table having changed their minds about Vietnam.
Ebert and Didion’s affection for the man nudged me toward a more generous stance. Wayne’s work was worthy of consideration and even respect, as was the man himself. Be critical, but take care with it. There may be an element of humanity in all this that catches you by surprise.
John Wayne would not do well in the current environment. Hell, he didn’t do well in his own environment. His convictions re: Vietnam and “Women’s Lib” were wildly out-of-step with the broader culture even in an era as saturated in pitiless violence and reflexive misogyny as 1970s America. But his movies got made, and even lefties could admit to the emotional sway in a send-off flick like The Shootist.
*****
John Wayne’s grandson, Brendan Wayne, works on The Mandalorian. To nearly all intents and purposes he IS the Mandalorian. He has a lovely story about a moment when Billy Dee Williams, curiously enough, channeled the Duke and got the boy moving the way he was meant to.
I haven’t seen so much as a Mandalorian GIF (true say). But everything I’ve read about the show indicates it’s right in my wheelhouse. From '77 to the present I’ve maintained the most compelling elements in the SWU are, in descending order:
It very much sounds like Jon Favreau and company came to a similar conclusion and got the mix right.
It also sounds like Gina Carano was a significant element in this mix.
To be clear, Gina Carano is no John Wayne.
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| Though I've no doubt she'd be every bit as fetching in this outfit. |
For all his political grandstanding and incorrect opinion-spouting, at the end of the day Wayne made it clear he was finally an actor, and if you needed an actor, of all people, to reassure you of your own political convictions you were that much the lesser for it.
Carano on the other hand is a fighter first, and an actor ... well, being an actor is somewhat further down her list of priorities. Indications point to her spoiling for a fight with the Mouse. And the Mouse don’t fight — the Mouse makes situations disappear.
So Carano has had a short and limited role in a show I will never see. And still I’m sad. It sounded like a good role with real potential. The only thing I’ve seen her act in is Haywire, and I thought she was terrific. It sounds like she was terrific in this. From here on out her projects are likely to be on the same level as the Baldwin Brothers. I think we’ve all lost something here. And it doesn’t feel necessary.
I had a two-hour round-trip car ride yesterday. Normally I would commit that time to a podcast or two. But I am currently mulling over a particular problem — additional mental churn seemed likely to distract, confuse, or worse. Instead I switched to music, set the Infernal Device to “Random Play” and put the car in gear.
Fifteen-thousand, one-hundred tracks — give or take one or two-dozen that are chapters from unfinished audio books. Apple’s randomizer can be a bit lazy — it settled on two tracks from Quincy Jones’ Big Band Bossa Nova in fairly short order. Still, I was mildly impressed with the variety on offer, even if I do say so myself. It wasn’t all just my Grade 9 soundtrack, not by a long shot.
And there is need for culling. I am not adding tracks as vigorously as I used to, but I am still exploring new music. And the Infernal Device is dangerously close to full. Surely not all 15,000 tracks need to be so readily accessible?
It’s not an easy call, however. When Matthew Ryan came up I initially thought, “My Matthew Ryan phase has come and gone.” That rasp — just how much can such a limited vehicle communicate?
Quite a bit, it turns out. By song’s end Ryan’s place in the Device’s Pantheon was solidly re-secured.
“Everything Is Awesome,” on the other hand...
Another matter was troubling me — I was listening critically. This song has potential, that one “remains interesting,” the next is catchy enough to stick around. My 56th spin around Ol’ Sol’ is nearly complete. Was any other listening mode still available? Do I still have the inner sensitivity to respond viscerally to a song? Or am I over-saturated into a state of indifference, like an ancient Roman Senator? Can anything reach across this intellectual-emotional distance?
“Well I never will forget that floating bridge...”
Suddenly the volume was up, and I was trying to ape Gregg Allman’s tenor — an impossibility, as even baritone is too difficult a stretch for these basso cords of mine. I didn’t wake up with the awareness that I needed Allman yesterday — but need him I did.
The song probably won’t hit you the way it does me. But that’s the beauty of being human — we have these distinctives, and it’s more than a little cool to keep exploring them to see what still hits the sweet-spot.
Live performance, with band:
New (to me) Music I'm Digging: JASON BIELER, formerly of Saigon Kick (also new to me).
Heard about it via: Devin Townsend's Twitter-feed — Townsend plays guitar on the first single, “Bring Out Your Dead.”
Genre: Prog Metal, albeit unlike anything I've heard in the category.
Sounds Like: Toto and Tool dropped into a Yahtzee cup with Dylan, then shaken and cast onstage.
“But will I like it?”: You just might! Here is Bieler's link to streaming platforms. “Bring Out Your Dead” (track 3) and “Beyond Hope” (track 9) should help you with your cardio intervals, while “Very Fine People” (track 14) is weirdly, deeply moving. If you enjoy those three tracks you too will have no difficulty digging the entire album.
Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years by Michael Posner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Let the man watching me know, that this is not entirely devoid of the con.” — Leonard Cohen, Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen
“Leonard was probably the most seductive man I’ve ever met. Seductive not just to women but to men.” — Aviva Layton
Leonard Cohen’s legacy seems perched at an unusually perilous moment.
When he was alive he traded in adeptly crafted confessions that withheld just enough blood-and-guts messiness to cast doubt on the veracity of their integral claims. He posed as a holy man while pointing directly to the sheer lunacy of any such posture. Leonard Cohen’s public image was, indeed, “not entirely devoid of the con.” But the beauty of the con lies in the willingness of the mark to invest confidence in a patent scam.
Thus far the biographies written about Leonard Cohen have partaken of the con and, paradoxically, sludged the legacy. When in his more frayed states, Cohen would mutter darkly about being an ape amongst apes, but this is rarely an acknowledged reality for most biographers (anywhere). The demand for narrative structure compels the biographer to surrender to The Great Man Of History template.
But Cohen was indeed an ape amongst apes — the beauty of Michael Posner’s “oral biography” lies in its chorus of voices from the tribal collectives Cohen moved through. The reader gets a sense not just of the man but of the enormous haptic feedback chamber he steeped in, as he graduated from Old Montreal, to Jewish summer camps in the Laurentians, to the university poetry scene, to the unfettered bacchanalia on Hydra Island, backstage and on the road.
Accounts are, as Posner immediately points out, often not just contradictory but also maddening. The generosity embedded in Posner’s scrupulous method is his faith in a reader’s ability and willingness to apply their own intelligence and skepticism to what is on offer — to read between the lines and flesh-in some of the spaces with reasonably informed conjecture.
Just one example (which reviewers are getting stuck on): debate over who introduced Marianne Ihlen’s then-adolescent son, Axel, to LSD — was it Cohen? Ihlen and Cohen together? Axel’s father alone? Did this happen on Hydra, or in Mexico? The matter occupies less than two pages in a book that reaches nearly 500, and the only element anyone can agree on is the trauma this inflicted on an already traumatized kid. This of course does nothing to determine who did what to whom, and where. But a page-and-a-half can say volumes about the group mentality on Hydra — where particular attitudes, explorations and behaviours were expected and encouraged.
In this scene Cohen sold himself, most persuasively, as a troubador who’d graduated to social and spiritual expectations that were revolutionary — expectations that, via Media’s Massage, were on the verge of penetrating and saturating the collective consciousness in the suburbs of the West.
All in all, this makes for a truly unique approach to Leonard Cohen. I eagerly await the next two volumes.
View all my reviews
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| "Brace yourself..." |
Over behind the blue-and-white velvet rope I posted this picture of the late Christopher Plummer, with the following text:
An interesting, if seldom discussed bigraphical footnote: after divorcing Patricia Lewis in '67 Plummer was having some difficulty with whipsawing emotions. At the time he was doing a number of plays at Stratford, ON, and took up with one of the local Mennonite communities. For a brief summer ('68) he actually considered converting. He was discouraged by an elder, however, who informed him he would from here on out be referred to as “Kristoff-fa-Pluma-Moos.” They parted ways shortly thereafter.
A loose translation of the Plautdietsch employed here would be “Kristoff-likes-Plum-Soup.” My apologies, dear reader, if you’ve just sprayed your morning coffee.
This painstakingly staged bit of punnery is of a piece with the sort of wordplay our tribe engages in, in our better moments. It’s not to everyone’s taste, of course, and some friends asked for further details of this supposedly historical moment. I finally issued a disclaimer that at no point in his life was this most highly esteemed of thespians ever in danger of being called “Kristoff-fa-Pluma-Moos.”
At this, a friend regaled me of a similar misunderstanding he’d experienced:
“A few years ago some loose bar room talk about the lack of distinctive dress for contemporary Mennonite men resulted in the verbal hallucination of the Mennonite kilt, spelled quilt [sic]. Some days later, someone, and I've never confirmed who (wasn't me), posted a draft Wikipedia article on Mennonite men's quilts, complete with a picture and a description featuring dried pieces of sausage stitched into the garment. A chuckle or two and the draft page was taken down. Months later the page reappeared with reverential seriousness about a forgotten element of Mennonite history.”
Another friend posted visual evidence of the on-line mishap. The first Google page for “quilte Mennonite men’s wear” turns up one Pin and nothing else. I could search further, but what would be the point? For my own archives, then — and your edification! — here are the screensaves of the original (fake) Wiki.
Darko once wondered if I wouldn’t indulge him a list like this. I can’t recall how or why I fended off his advances on this matter, but I know I resisted. Oh well, better late than never —
First concert — I was born into the Mennonite Church. I imagine I was present for at least three Christmas concerts before I performed in my first. But the first concert I bought tickets for with my own money was a Christian band from Kelowna called Quickflight, in the fall of '80. It was a crazy good show, actually — very of-the-moment New Wave. Gary Numan was clearly an influence, as was DEVO and Rick Ocasek. It can’t have been an expensive show to put on, but they found ways to juice up the drama with back-lighting and judicious use of the fogger. Just before the concert ended, one of the singers took the mic, paused, then sighed deeply and said, “You know we’re Christian, right?” Audience cheers. “Well, I’m not really sure what I could possibly add to that.” Two more songs and done. For the next five or six years I went to every Christian rock show that came to town. Nobody touched Quickflight. Fun fact: Quickflight founder Ric deGroot (who I suspect offered the reluctant “testimony”) later joined Strange Advance.
Last concert — Los Lobos at Koerner Hall, February 22, 2020. Cesar Rosas was MIA, and another band member was in questionable condition. But boy howdy, drummer Enrique “Bugs” González hit the kit like he couldn’t believe he was getting paid for it. By evening’s end the band brought the house down. My wife and I still talk about it.
Worst concert — a difficult category to pin down. I’ve seen performers show up in a bad mood and leave in the same condition or worse; performers and audiences misunderstand each other; performers fight a losing battle with gremlins, etc . . . and most of these shows still rate as something I’m glad I attended. I’ve only left one concert early, though, and that was Steven Wilson at Toronto Opera House, November 26, 2018. No fault of Wilson and Co. — it was I who had arrived in a bad mood, and left in worse.
Loudest concert — no idea. When ear-plugs became easily obtainable in the early 90s I used them without exception, later switching up to these fine and affordable sonic filters. I’ll go with Meshuggah, though, just to reinforce their rep.
Seen the most — David Lindley, with or without El Rayo-Ex. Through the mid-80s into the 90s Lindley enjoyed playing the Winnipeg Folk Festival and could even be financially enticed to mid-winter concerts in the drafty Playhouse Theatre.
Most surprising — my first John Prine concert.
Best concert — again, how am I supposed to call this one? But I am most grateful I caught Steely Dan in '14, particularly since Walter died a mere three years later.
Next concert — I still wonder if I mightn’t enjoy the Festival International du Blues de Tremblant. Or Rammstein.
Wish I coulda seen — Devin Townsend, in his perpetual state of “Honesty Tourette’s Syndrome,” admitted in a recentish interview that over the years backing tracks and click-tracks had reduced his show to “pantomime . . . a karaoke version of what [I was] doing.” The post-Empath concerts were going to be different, and the second leg of the journey would include Strapping Young Lad material and other early stuff, all live, with improvisations from a rotating cast that included band members from Haken, who were warming up the show for him. Basically he out-and-out acknowledged every single misgiving I felt after the very first DTP concert I attended. There was no earthly way I could make it to the February 27 show, and honestly the concert setlist isn’t quite what I envisioned it might be, so I have no regrets — except that everything shut down two weeks later. And now here we are.
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| Patiently waiting. |
Once Removed by Andrew Unger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Andrew Unger’s Once Removed is concerned with the eager accommodation our tribe makes for “progress” and “modernization” — a tricky balancing act for us all, to be sure.
Unger’s young characters brew beer in the garage, put on rock shows in the housebarn, cover themselves with tattoos of Anabaptist martyrs, even earn graduate degrees in post-modern feminism — activities that would have earned immediate excommunication from our forebears. Yet Timothy Heppner and his millennial coterie are ill-at-ease about a history being physically swept away before their very eyes.
Once Removed unfurls and explores an expanse of prairie surrealism unique to Unger. Buildings and people disappear, seemingly overnight. When a mysterious influencer wants to strike fear in the heart of an erstwhile historian, they leave hardened loaves of bread on the front stoop — and it works!
If the satire spectrum runs from merciless laceration (Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain) to humorous-if-discomfiting massage (Stephen Leacock, Mark Twain) Unger tilts toward the latter. He makes sure his characters all receive a good ribbing, and no-one moreso than the hapless narrator. But there is also a maternal care at work — the story finally takes place in environs where an ominous future can be withheld by slow and careful negotiation. Once Removed reads a bit like early Douglas Coupland (a good thing, IMO) if DC had had a passing familiarity with Plautdietsch and an abiding affection for the films of Guy Maddin and MB Duggan.
SLKlassen, our resident Drunken Mennonite, suggests Once Removed may likely have been as gifted a book among the Mennonite set as the recently re-released Mennonite Hymnal. Could be, could be . . . but Unger’s book is the one most likely to get passed around and talked about. And sure, there’s a fair bit of “inside baseball” being played, but anyone with a passing interest in our not-so-humble tribe will find a great deal to enjoy in this novel. Highly recommended.
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When I first began work at the bookstore, I had just concluded some years working and living with people for whom Hannah Arendt was a matter of frequent discussion. Wrestling with Arendt’s ideas is like wrestling with the angel — the reader is the one who’s going to come out of it with a permanent limp.
During a lull on the floor, I asked my friend — a Jew — what she made of Arendt. She arched an eyebrow. “You want to know what I make of Arendt? I’ll tell you what I make of Arendt.” She marched over to the “Biography” shelf, pulled a trim, blue book and gave it to me. “That’s what I make of Hannah Arendt.”
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| "Go on and wrestle with that, sunshine..." |
For my friend and for many Jews the late revelation that Arendt not only had a youthful love affair with Martin Heidegger, but returned to him after the war and remained his devoted and intimate friend, rendered her a sudden and complete non-entity. Her life’s work was now worse than chaff.
For me the matter is complicated — admittedly, largely because I’m not Jewish, but also because Arendt’s work continually re-frames my own politics and philosophy. Heidegger’s might too, if I were better able to comprehend it. To place the matter in some perspective, I will close with Leo Strauss’s observation:
“Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight. But here is the trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.”
These thoughts are spurred by this terrifically frustrating interview with Ann Heberlein, author of On Love & Tyranny: The Life & Politics of Hannah Arendt — frustrating because it flits so lightly around this central complexity/difficulty/or, to use Strauss’s word: trouble. But, hey — it still acknowledges the trouble, which is a start. And it could well be that Heberlein “wrestles with the angel” in this work.
I am looking forward to reading the book, and for that I am grateful for the interview.
Other links:
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| Trustworthy amigos? ¡Muy helpful! |
Helpful:
Interesting (and probably helpful in ways I can’t quite name):
Been a rough couple of weeks — happy to yack further, p2p, just drop me a line — so you get a photo.
Reading: Leonard Cohen Untold Stories: The Early Years. I am loving Michael Posner’s oral biography. It answers a ton of questions that every earlier biography has left me with. Just one example — Hydra: what the heck was up with that place? Posner lays it all out. I honestly can’t get enough and am thrilled to hear there are two(!) more volumes in the pipeline (A).
Re-reading: Chance by Kem Nunn. Seems like the novel of this particular epoch, in some significant ways. More to follow, I hope.
Also: Daredevil: Born Again, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, John Constantine Hellblazer: Marks of Woe. Hm — bit of a devilish motif going on here.
Apropos of nothing: DIRE STRAITS: The Studio Albums: 1978-1991, recently released on this side of the pond by Rhino Records. It has been decades since I last listened to any of these albums. On Every Street (1991) has been the big surprise. Back in the day I gave it a “meh.” Today I’m wondering if it doesn’t rate as the band’s most accomplished studio album.
I might say more on the matter, but for now it’s worth noting what difficult competition this album was up against — Nirvana Nevermind, REM Out Of Time, Pearl Jam Ten, Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Dinosaur Jr Green Mind, Billy Bragg Don’t Try This At Home, Hole Pretty On The Inside, Soundgarden Badmotorfinger, plus some whopper albums from some whopper acts that don’t need any further nudging from anyone (especially not me). Thirty years later one wonders how Knopfler’s band, which was always somewhat stodgily at odds with radio playlists, even managed to get played at all.
1991 could count as its own Year of Egress, in some ways.
Also: this was a conversation worth dropping in on. Helped me chill out about a few things. And I know, I know: Andrew Sullivan, right? (Scott must be grinding his teeth.) But hey, true help often arrives via unexpected mediums.
More anon — be well.
Honestly, I have not missed this business of waking up in the morning and finding my newsfeed overrun with headlines generated by late-night tweets. Coincidentally, one of my friends behind the blue-and-white velvet rope has also been uncharacteristically mute these past seven days. This morning he returned to inform one and all it was not a self-imposed exile he endured. Lessons have been learned by all, I am sure.
The surest way we may know, for now, that the January 6 insurrection is a lost cause, is to see that capital is circling its wagons and consolidating a new post-Trump order. One would have liked peace to be made on other terms than this: cutting the deplorables off from their social-media, from their air miles, from their Olive Garden unlimited pasta passes. There is no real justice here; it is only capitalism’s enantiamorphic alternative to China’s state social-credit system. It is arbitrary, discriminatory, and undemocratic. Olive Garden can of course do what it wants, but when society is nothing but an aggregate of Olive Gardens, including the massively hypertrophied Olive Gardens that run the internet, when citizenship has disintegrated into a vast constellation of customer-loyalty rewards and there is no neutral space in which citizens can adjudicate their disputes with the managers, we’ve got a problem — JEH Smith
I’ve been trying to learn a few lessons myself, though I can’t quite put a name to the ignorance that besets me — I am beset by “unknown unknowns.”
If you were a forty-year-old in 1955, your life would have already spanned most of World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic, the convulsive birth of the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, World War II, the communist takeover in China, and the Korean War; closer to home, you would have witnessed McCarthyism and the growing pressures for remediation of ongoing and unresolved racial injustice — for all of the manifest good of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. During those four decades from 1915 to 1955, the nation had faced crisis after crisis, and, had this been your life, you would have known little else but a nation on the brink.
Then, as now, these national trials were rightly recognized as existentially momentous, and then, as now, there was wide and deep controversy over how to make sense of them. Over this span, sensible voices across the political spectrum — John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, Richard Weaver, Peter Viereck, and Russell Kirk, among others — simultaneously worried that the normative resources that underwrote liberal democracy in America were flagging and committed themselves to addressing these challenges. They differed aggressively over how.
James Davison Hunter reassesses these voices and contrasts them with another — that of Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading this I can’t shake the notion that here are the lessons I need to learn. And none of them will be easy.
My weekly custodial rounds are just a tiny fraction of what used to be, of course. Mostly I’m trying to keep a couple of plants alive, and safe-checking against possible damage to the church structure.
Yesterday I headed up to the balcony. It’s an easy place to ignore — with the exception of a funeral for an especially prominent citizen, parishioners haven’t used it in years. It’s a storage space at this point. I checked the windows for cracks or breaks, the various joints for water damage, etc. The building is remarkably sound.
I took a seat in one of the pews and meditated for a few minutes. My eye fixed on the pew’s iron work — intricately moulded patterns of a Victorian bent (the church was built in 1895. These pews would likely be of that vintage).
My mind cast to another local balcony — Sunderland Town Hall, where I have attended many, many Sunderland Lions Music Festivals. Grandparents with mobility concerns typically received pride of place on the main floor, while the more able of us trudged up to the balcony. We swapped places with parents whose progeny had just finished their performance — the stomp of winter boots, the hiss of parkas sliding against each other as we traded places. When our kids finally graduated from all that I was relieved.
I don’t miss it — even the most benign gatherings put me a little on edge. But it was quite a privilege to participate in and be part of this encouragement of local talent. I miss that privilege.
Hopefully after a couple of jabs the privilege returns. Until then the balcony is closed.
“Bonkers” seems to be the euphemism I reflexively reached for in 2020, to the point of overuse, possibly. And yet I shall continue using it, I think. All the other synonyms for “insane” are, like the root word, tilted toward the tragic. If I have to endure the tragic, well, so be it. But where choice is permitted I will eschew the tragic whenever possible. After all, I’m not a kid anymore — “bonkers” it shall be.
Some years ago I picked up Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut at the Dollar Store. Lee Marvin was the draw, also Gene Hackman and Sissy Spacek. And Prime Cut is . . . one bonkers movie. Beautifully shot, languidly paced, garishly festooned — and utterly, endearingly bonkers.
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| "And you may ask yourself: 'well ... how did I get here?'" |
I’ve re-watched it a bunch of times over the years and it never fails to charm, primarily because Marvin sits at its centre, a placid and eviscerating Shaolin Buddha, serene in a maelstrom of insanity. Do I mix metaphors? I am compelled — this movie is just that bonkers.
Charles Taylor also loves this movie. He does a terrific job of situating its critical stance toward its particular epoch — the epoch of Nixon’s “silent majority,” which sent an entire generation of its corn-fed sons to carry out and be run through the meat-grinder of the Vietnam war.
On The Hoof, On The Barrel: “On Prime Cut” By Charles Taylor — one of those essays/reviews I wish I’d written.
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| My latest Dollar Store acquisition. Here's hoping it'll be... |
“It has been compellingly said of Jordan B. Peterson that he is a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person is like. I would not say the same of René Girard, at least not without modifying the formula: he is a practically-minded person’s idea of what a theorist is like.”
Justin E.H. Smith’s “Hinterland” is currently the newsletter I most look forward to reading on Sundays (usurping Warren Ellis’s, now self-cancelled in consequence of a rapaciously roving and blinkered libido). Yesterday Smith took on René Girard, whom I’ve gassed on about from time to time, often for reasons loosely akin to Smith’s — Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley venture capitalist extraordinaire, is a former student and vigorous evangelist of Girard’s, which is kinda, well ... bonkers.
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| I promised my wife that by post's end I'd tie Chuck Girard to René: keep reading! |
Smith is a fun read — for a tenured prof he’s a surprisingly engaged and engaging hep-cat. In his newsletter he keeps his prose limned of academia-speak — it’s clean, like Orwell’s newspaper prose, albeit with frequent enough quotes in a given source’s native tongue to keep Smith’s pro bona fides from receding entirely from view. For newcomers Smith’s words-on-the-page will likely conjure clipped British tones: amused, peeved, aloof — dude’s an academic, right? But once you actually hear him, the voice never leaves your head. He’s Californian through and through, and his cadences and vowels stretch and flatten similarly to Erik Davis’s Sativa-burnished drawl.
And Smith is cheeky, which is a plus. Profs get grumpy in their 50s — Smith isn’t quite there yet, but he’s dropping hints he’s close. When Smith huffs, “If we were living in a culture dominated by grown-ups ...” well, who is the Chronicle of Higher Education to disagree?
Getting back to yesterday’s newsletter: I have but passing acquaintance with both Thiel and Girard, but the tie that supposedly binds them has always struck me as suspect. So it brings me great pleasure to watch Smith gore that particular hot-air balloon, causing it to founder on the hillside as its wealthy passengers rub their bruised noggins and search for the next source of uplift.
And yet, and yet . . . reservations rear their nettlesome heads.
Smith’s measured equating of Girard to Peterson is a canny near-perfect triangulation of mimetic desire (bravo, sir!). Neither Peterson nor Girard require my defending but I kinda feel like the average slobs grokking them do, just a bit — kids, mostly, College/University types in their 20s. Dudes, more often than not. Smart enough to read widely but not hardly practised enough to read well.
“A dumb person’s idea of what a smart person is like” — sure, okay. And maybe Lenny Bruce is a humourless person’s idea of a funnyman. But these characters happen for a reason.
Reading carefully is an acquired skill, and a person doesn’t often learn it in university. Kids coming out of uni these days typically claim they have learned to read “critically,” which I take to be another way of saying they have learned how to sort out what they’ve read in a way that pleases their profs. Certainly that’s how it worked for me in '89.
When unaccompanied by adults most university texts — at least the ones in the Humanities — are primed to nudge young readers into depression or mania, or both. “It is however somewhat a shame that the everything-explainers, the hammerers for whom all is nail, should be the ones so consistently to capture the popular imagination,” sighs professor Smith. Fair enough. But in an age of perpetual anxiety everything-explainers like Girard and, yes, Peterson can throw a little sand under a kid’s tires.
The everything-explainer’s universe is explicable — threatening, horrible, terrifying to be sure, but also navigable and even reassuringly (if all-too-briefly) wonderful. In this universe a reader is not required to regard and discard 6000 years’ worth of competing histories, religions and literature due to their recently tarnished rep as aids to hegemonic class oppression. Within this shifting body of knowledge is, potentially, a key or two to wisdom and maybe even some consolation to be gleaned.
Smith suggests “practically-minded” has its limits, but hey it also has its uses. Let the kids keep reading these everything-explainers. With a little luck they’ll get to the footnotes.
Other reading: Rock 'n' Roll Preacher and fourth-cousin once-removed Chuck Girard breaks down triangulation of desire, and Christ the final Scapegoat. Alright, so I didn’t make good on my promise to my wife. But check this: David Perrell did a lot of legwork sorting out Peter Thiel’s Religion. Perrell is thrilled. I am ... horrified?