PROCRASTINATION

Procrastination is like masturbation. At first it feels good, but in the end you're only screwing yourself.
- Monty Python (?)


Those who know me well (and even not so well) are probably well aware of my tendency to procrastinate. I put things off until the last minute, manage to get them done (usually), but not usually to my satisfaction. I've tried for years to figure out this peculiar and at times destructive behaviour (with the help of a couple of shrinks) and have come to this (these) conclusion (s):

1) I'm lazy, stupid, untalented and ugly (I don't believe this now, but I did for a long time. I realize now I how damn handsome I am!)

2) I have a tremendous fear of failure. If I don't try hard enough, I might not succeed, but I won't fail too badly either.

3) One possible manifestation of my ADD is a paralyzing inability to bring a project to completion. I start things with great enthusiasm, energy and concentration. I'll get through 90% of it, and then I'll sometimes sit for what seems like hours at a time, trying to find the right word or chord or whatever, even though there are another perfectly good words or chords or whatevers at the tip of my tongue, and this overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety comes over me.  Sometimes, I can't break out of it, and I go onto playing minesweeper or read a magazine, just to make the dread go away. It's been like that for as long as can remember. I've found coping mechanisms in the past few years and it's better. It's one reason I wanted to do this blog.  I thought that daily routine of writing would allow me to stave off the demons. But no, they have returned in full force. For the past 3 days, I haven't been able to write a word. I haven't been able to do very much of anything actually. I promised myself, that no matter how shitty and badly written and spelling and grammar-mistake riddled it was, I would write and post an entry today if it killed me, and it looks like I just have. James 1 - ADD 0.

COMING SOON

I'll get something up tomorrow. It was a very busy day, between crew drill, organizing the talent show and playing Sims3 for several hours (man, that shit is addictive!). I was just in the crew bar for a couple of hours, and had a group of 20-somethings buy me beer all night. So no, I haven't written anything today. Except this.

MUSINGS version 2.0

Dear James' face,

First off, I want to thank you. I appreciate the fact that you haven't really wrinkled up yet.  Sure, I'm not that happy with the bags under the eyes, but generally, I've got good skin. However, I thought that frankly you'd be done with the zits by now.  I think it might go against nature to have both grey hair and pimples at the same time.  Would you mind checking the rule book for me. If I'm wrong, I'll let it go, and keep on using the Teatree face wash from the Body Shop.  But if I'm right, would you mind seeing to it to get rid of them? Especially the big ones that take about a month to go away.

Thanks,

James.

P.S. Talk to my back too. Kthxbi!

SO IN LOVE from KISS ME KATE - COLE PORTER

My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director.

-Cole Porter

Cole Porter wrote a myriad of love songs, none so beautiful as this one. Sinuous and delirious, it is almost entirely built upon one melodic motif – the semitone, and one rhythmic motif – da daaah daaah.  The high note of each phrase is one semitone higher than the last, so the effect is of mounting tension and passion.  It reaches it climax on the phrase “I’m yours ‘til I die!” and slinks down inevitably by semitones, insistently repeating the words “So in love”, so that, in the end, you have no choice but to believe the singer. It is truly the mark of a master craftsman and artist to be able to create so much with such simplicity.

The words in bold are the high note of each phrase. Listen how each climbs higher than the last.

Strange dear, but true dear, when I’m close to you dear,

The stars fill the sky. So in love with you am I

Even without you, my arms fold about you.

You know, darling, why.

So in love with you am I.

In love with the night mysterious,

The night when you first were there.

I love with my joy delirious when I knew that you could care.

So taunt me, and hurt me, deceive me, desert me.

I’m yours ‘til I die!

So in love, so in love, so in love with you, my love, am I.

I’m also including the first page of the song from the score. I’ve annotated  all the semitones in the melody and in the accompaniment with a shaky yellow line.

This is Shirley Verrett from a 1985 recital. I looked for ages for the marvelous Kathryn Grayson/Howard Keel recording from the movie, but it's nowhere to be found on youtube. Shirley's pretty awesome, though.

MUSINGS version 1.0

Getting old is not for sissies.
-Bette Davis


Dear James' body,

Why can't I lie down on my stomach anymore? It was my favorite way to read - lying on the bed on my stomach. I always fell asleep best when on my stomach. But now, if I'm that way for any length of time (more than 5 minutes), I can't stand up without my back going into spasms. I had a massage 6 months ago, and it took me 10 minutes to be able to stand up straight afterwards. I've been exercising regularly (well, ok, once in a while) and generally, my back has felt better than it has in years. So what's up with that? Could you stop getting older?

Much thanks,

James.

PS if you could one more little favour for me: Talk to my eyes and tell them to get rid of the bags. kthxbi!

LONG ISLAND ICED TEA

Honey, someday when you're a little older, you will be introduced to something that is extremely seductive but fickle. A fair-weather friend who seems benign but packs a wallop like a donkey kick, and that is the Long Island Iced Tea. The Long Island Iced Tea makes you do things that you normally wouldn't do, like lifting your skirt in public or calling someone you normally wouldn't call at weird times

- Lorelei, the Gilmore Girls

My first encounter with LIITs came in 1991. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Spontaneous Combustion had just closed A Little Night Music, and the cast and crew were enjoying post-show revelry at Aziz Mulay-Shah’s. His parents had a posh house in Westmount that could comfortably accommodate several dozen drunken kids and various quazi-responsible adults. Aziz, who is a year older than me and who today is a diplomat living in Dubai, was already aspiring to a metrosexual lifestyle, and could always be counted on to introduce us to the finer things in life as he then understood them (On New Year’s Eve 1995, he cooked Tandoori Chicken for 25 at a sit-down banquet at Phil’s decaying upper Westmount mansion, which by midnight’s knell had devolved into a Bacchic bender. I lost a pair of boots and a fair amount of my dignity at that party). He asked my mother if she had ever had a LIIT. My mom, who was and is not a drinker (save for the occasional Harvey Wallbanger and the ever-present quickly-emptied bottle of Bailey’s when we went camping) said that she loved iced tea but had yet to try the Long Island variety. By all accounts (including hers), she loved them, since she had at least 3 of them. I don't remember much of the rest of the night.

The LIIT has become my mixed drink of choice, at least when someone else is buying.  Oddly enough, I only drank them sporadically until the summer of 2008, when I was sailing in the Mediterranean. I was in the disco on the Zuiderdam, and Dom and Chris ordered me one.  Yummy! And they have more alcohol than you realize at first. I would often judge the passenger Karaoke contest, an ersatz American Idol, if you will. I played the Simon Cowell-type. The judges would get free drinks, and the bartenders would replace it as soon as one was finished.  The more I drank, the meaner and funnier I got. The best LIIT-induced line I said was “That was so bad, it gave me cancer!”  I’m not quite so funny when drunk on beer.

Here’s the recipe. L’Chaim!

THE ARGO BOOKSTORE

Everyone called him Mr. George.  Students, my high school English teacher, old men, young women, dear friends, maybe even his mother. Everyone, that is, except my father, and by extension, me. We called him John.  My father, a 23 year-old lapsed-Irish Catholic-socialist-hippie-draft dodger from Boston, came to Montreal on July 14^th, 1969 (Bastille day), and promptly made friends with the owner of the bookstore across the street from the bar where he worked. Named after Jason’s great mythic ship, the Argo is a Montreal institution - a tiny crammed store, with ceiling-high shelves, full of literary classics, modern literature and novels by Canadian writers. Many college professors would order their course books through the Argo, and its downtown location and proximity to the 2 English universities made his store a popular favorite.  Even after all these years, the Argo remains, seemingly impervious to the giant chains such as Chapters or Indigo, (4000 copies of The Da Vinci Code? Check! Mediocre coffee-cum-dessert? Check! Taylor Swift’s latest oeuvre? Check! Heroine by Gail Scott? Ummm…. Better check the Argo), unobtrusive and modest, yet holding steady against the storm .Yet all the store’s charming merits would have been for naught were it not for the warm and reassuring presence of its owner – John George.

In 1976, I started kindergarten at F.A.C.E.S., an alternative elementary school located right downtown in a grand old building called Victoria School.  I was the only child who lived in my neighbourhood, so the school bus would either only pick me up or drop me off, and then only 3 days a week. How or why this arrangement seemed satisfactory to my parents, I cannot guess. But it meant that if I were in the morning group, I would get picked up, but there was no bus to bring me home. I would have to wait for someone (either an aunt or uncle) to pick me up and bring me back. This would have to be done after work.  A dilemma indeed.  So when Leona Hersovitch, our teacher-cum-tormentor sent us packing, Jeffrey Casselman (what ever happened to him? I wonder if he remembers me…) and his grandfather would walk me across the street and around the corner to the Argo.  Now, to say I was a hyper child is putting it mildly. However, I was fiercely intelligent (no false immodesty – I was already reading at a grade 4 level) and profoundly curious, qualities which must have appealed to John, since taking care of a 5-year old at his store must not have been that conducive to good business. John would promptly affix the “Back in 5 minutes sign” and we repaired through a natty old curtain to the back room, where we would have a little snack of tea and ginger snaps. So, what other wonderful things do I remember? I remember learning to count on his old-fashioned cash register (which to this day occupies a place of honour on the shop counter), pushing the levers and guessing what the totals would be. I remember being particularly entranced by the ‘No Sale’ lever, and wondered what it was for. I remember reading “Where The Wild Things Are”, and wishing I were Max. I remember the Dover colouring books in the rack by the counter – fascinating in content and unattainable (my parents will have to confirm this, but I’m sure I must have asked for one every time someone came to pick me up. I did get one occasionally as a special treat.). I remember the fact that my father had a running tab, and would order books from John that no one else carried. I remember the giant tomes entitled “Books In Print” that were published every year that sat to John’s right. I remember his calm manner, his gentle stammer, his hushed, breathy high pitched voice with a hint of a sing-songy prairie accent, his bemused laugh, his bulbous red nose which got redder and redder as he got older, his absolute devotion to Charles Dickens (and the twinkle he got in his crinkly eyes when he talked about Great Expectations), his fierce intellect, and above all, his unabashed, unparalleled love of books.

John died a few years back, and there was a lovely tribute to him in the Montreal Gazette. I felt guilty that I hadn’t popped by to see him more often. For on the rare occasion that I did, I was always greeted with a warm smile and some words of wisdom, and I felt truly happy. John had insisted to my parents that I had no need for school – that everything I ever needed to know was readily available to me on those shelves. He was probably right. And as much I love what I do, as much as I’ve enjoyed and learned from my travels, I think – No. I know - I would be just as happy behind the counter at the Argo (perhaps happier? Why quibble?), for I can think of no profession as marvellous and as noble than that of bookseller.  



PIC 1 - My mother, John George and me, Île Ste-Hélène, Summer 1971.
PIC 2 - Argo bookstore interior

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Exercise freaks... are the ones putting stress on the health care system."

-Rush Limbaugh, June 12, 2009

I was a sickly child. It all started when I was born 3 weeks premature (at 8 pounds, mind you! I was fat even then), breathed some amniotic fluid into my lungs, and was put in an incubator for a couple of weeks. I almost didn’t make it. At 2, I had my first asthma attack in conjunction with the croup (I was apparently the first recorded case of this particular double whammy at the Montreal Children’s Hospital).  I was in an oxygen tent for 2 weeks. I almost didn’t make it.  In 1978, when the whole family was in Ireland, I had an asthma attack so severe that I was given a shot of cortisone, which naturally cleared it right up.  1980 was an astoundingly bad year, having had at least 5 severe asthma attacks, double pneumonia (for which I was hospitalized for 2 weeks), a gash in my left knee that required 11 stitches, and a broken arm. I had just started taking piano lessons, and I refused to stop playing. So a week after the initial break, a routine x-ray found my arm was healing badly, so my arm had to be rebroken and reset, which required putting me under and an overnight stay in the hospital. I was at the Children’s so often, the nurses knew us all by name.  During my high school years, I broke 4 fingers, had several more asthma attacks, had Mono twice, and developed a case of severe bursitis in my right elbow that took 3 weeks and 4 doctors to diagnose. It’s a wonder I’m still here. However, since I turned 18, I have been either very healthy or very lucky (Kenohorah tsu tsu tsu!), and aside from a few minor cuts and bruises (including a metatarsal sprain when a car ran over my foot and I fell backwards onto my hand), I’ve been able to steer relatively clear of hospitals. Absolutely all of the care that I received (aside from the medication) was 100% free.

Having a healthy society means having a productive society. If someone doesn’t have to worry about going to emergency without wondering if they’ll be able to eat for the next month, then we’re all better off. Someone with a nagging cough might refrain from going to get it checked out because they can’t afford it, only to discover 6 months later that they have lung cancer. Treating that lung cancer might bankrupt them. People with chronic and pre-existing conditions might forgo their medications that month, because otherwise, rent won’t get paid. I have many friends who work for small companies or who are self-employed who don’t receive health care as part of their work, and who can’t afford to pay the tremendously high costs for private insurance. In a nutshell, many of the arguments against US health care reform state that people who are less well off shouldn’t be sponging off of those who are financially more secure. Fair enough. But what about people like my parents: Solid tax-paying middle class people who worked hard and selflessly for their children. I would venture a guess and say they could have afforded health care insurance. But that would have meant no vacations, no piano lessons, no cello lessons and horseback riding camp for my sister, no occasional meals out at the Pique-Assiette. As it was, we never had a lot growing up.  We weren’t sponging off society. But it is a very real possibility that if we had lived in the United States, I might have died. More than once.

Health care is a right, not a privilege. I think it is a travesty that most hospitals in the US are run for profit. When you have a society that is able to medically take care of its less fortunate members, then everyone benefits; Fewer days of work missed means happier employees which in turn means higher productivity. Almost every industrialized nation in the world believes this.  And now, in an historic vote, the US has passed a Health Care reform bill. It’s not perfect by any means, and there’s still a long way to go. But it’s a good first step. 

P.S.  Rush Limbaugh promised to move to Costa Rica if the Health Care bill passed (Costa Rica, BTW, has universal health care). Let's help him remember.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102672403103333

STAR WARS

Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?

-Princess Leia

Star Wars is the first movie I remember seeing. It was 7^th birthday in 1978, and my dad took me to the Westmount Square cinemas in the basement of an office tower I now know to have been designed by Mies Van De Rohe (I would never have noticed such things then).  I had been going on and on and on about wanting to see it for months! Star Wars was everywhere! Never before had I, or anyone else, seen anything like it.  The opening scene still takes my breath away. When rickyd and I were driving cross-country in 1996, we stopped in Winnipeg, and saw an Imax movie about special effects in which George Lucas had reshot the scene. Seeing that iconic scene on the giant screen awakened the little boy in me; I may or may not have let out a squeal, and I may or may not have shed a tear. (I did and I did.)

George Lucas, in one of the most remarkable attacks of prescience in the history of man, negotiated from 20th Century Fox 40% of the net box-office, ownership of all sequel rights, the final cut, and most importantly, all the merchandising rights, all in exchange for a tiny director's fee.  And like every little boy, I bought wholly into the merchandising; from me alone, Lucas was probably able to get his kids braces. I had every action figure, a sand cruiser, an X-Wing fighter, a Millennium Falcon, and I think may have even had a Barbie-sized Luke. I even saved up my allowance for a couple of months specifically to get a Boba Fett. (Oh, if I had only kept all that. I’d be rich!).

I’ve seen the movie at least 50 times, and most probably more. Truth be told, The Empire Strikes Back is a better movie, and in fact one of my favourites of all time.  But Star Wars is the first to have captured my imagination so completely.

       

These are the Westmount Square towers, reveling in its mid-century modern glory!

The opening scene. Zap! Pow! Whoosh!

GIRAFFES

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

-Frank Zappa

Giraffes are awesome because they are noble and calm and awkward – everything I aspire to be some day (when I turn 40, I guess. I have a head start on the awkward part).  Their bizarre construction seems to suggest God is playing a little joke on us.  I love the goofy look on their faces, and the way their jaws move lazily from side to side when they chew.  I love their prehensile grey tongues, and their knobby backwards knees. I bought a giraffe hat for my nephew Max at a zoo in Thailand, and was not so secretly disappointed that there were no adult sizes. I wore it anyway.

P.S. I know I'm coasting a bit with these last couple of entries. Not everything's gonna be deep and philosophicalistic-like.

My nephew Max with the hat that transcends generations

MULTI-COLOURED SOCKS

My socks DO match. they're the same thickness.

-Steven Wright

Never run in the rain with your socks on

-Green Day

One can never have enough socks.

-Albus Dumbledore

Being a musician, I often have to wear head-to-toe black. As I find that to be insufferably boring, I have, in recent years, been given to little flights of fancy, slight deviations from to path if you will: embroidered shirts, pin-striped pants and funky shoes (usually Docs. Are Docs still funky? Thank God they’re back in style). To top this off, I never wear plain black socks.  Life is way too short for plain black socks. Here are pictures of a few of my favorite pairs.

PERFECT MOMENTS

If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors for you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

-Joseph Campbell

I can’t begin to tell you the huge amount of work and planning that went into this blog. I’m not looking for kudos or accolades, but it helps you to understand my character a little bit when I tell you that I love to make lists. It seems much of my life is spent writing things out in point form and then never completing any of the tasks I set out for myself. (In fact, though I spent $70 today, I didn’t buy one solitary item from my shopping list. I’ll have to pick up razors tomorrow.) I have at least 8 notebooks full of musings on this opera I’ve been writing since 1994. Have I written the opera? No, not yet. But I’ve written about it. Microsoft Excel is fantastic software that can make you feel like you’re accomplishing a great deal, when in reality, you’re not. I have spreadsheets for Blogged Arteries delineating all my posts from here until August, formatted alphabetically, thematically and by date of post. Why? Well, maybe if I have proof in front of my eyes that I’ve already put a great deal of thought and energy into this, then perhaps I can actually accomplish something. But today threw me for a loop - in a good, nay, great way.  I’m straying from the path and taking my eye off of the prize. I’ve thrown the list out the window (temporarily, natch…), and I’m a better person for it.

One of the most perfect days of my life was spent absolutely alone (I love solitude, and will probably be another post sometime in the near future). It was the summer of 1994, and I was living in Charlottetown PEI whilst working for the C’town Festival. It was my day off, and I had walked into town for a bite to eat. The sky was unashamed in its azure nakedness, and the sun was clean and warm, but not hot enough to induce beads of sweat. A salty breeze floated in from Peake’s Quay, the smell of generations of fishermen in its puffs. I could feel the salt in my bones with each breath.  I walked down to the seaside with my falafel, and sat on the rocks, waves splashing at my toes. I took out a notebook, and began to write. I can remember exactly what I wrote then, 17 years ago, every word. If I close my eyes, I can even see my scribbles and doodles. I stayed for 5 hours, and watched the sunset, a magical moment in a magical land.  Never before and rarely since have I ever felt so serene and complete. Experiences like that don’t come often enough in our lives. Maybe they do, or maybe they try to come, but we’re too busy and distracted to accept them.

I’m actually having a similar moment now. My day began shittily enough – I went to the medical centre to have my first Ventolin treatment in at least 22 years. I’ve been feeling like hell for the past few days, and though most of my symptoms are gone, the cold has lingered in my chest, and has brought with it a wet hacking cough and an uncomfortable wheeze. I felt much better afterwards, and was prescribed an asthma pump by the cute crew doctor who told me to come back and see him in a couple of days - so things aren’t all bad (Note to self: Get sick more often). I felt well enough to spend the day walking around Sydney, and was on my way back to the ship when I decided to have a little rest. That was 5 minutes ago.

I’m sitting on a wharf-side bench in Darling Harbour  – surrounded by people, but absolutely alone. It’s 8 pm and the sun has just set. I am finishing up the last few bites of a scrumptious green tea gelato. Others are either talking intimately with their companions, or, like me, alone and watching in quiet contemplation the reflections of the neon lights dancing in the gently rippling water. I can see tiny bursts of flame out of the corner of my left eye as a man juggles fire for a huge crowd of appreciative onlookers. A woman just sat down next to me, taking a large tome from her satchel. An adorable young gay couple are eating hot dogs, holding hands, obviously infatuated with each other. A couple of tourists ask to have their picture taken. Swarms of teenagers leaving the Imax theatre are discussing Avatar. Despite all the people and the elevated highway directly behind my head, it is so peaceful here. Even the seagulls have ceased their infernal squawking.  I don’t want to leave. Ever. But alas, that’s the trouble with perfect moments. They’re moments. Fleeting glimpses from Mother Earth to remind you what life could be like all the time. And if that sounds like a negative statement, it isn’t at all - I just can’t wait for the next one.

As I get older, I find that I’ve been more able accept to these things as they come, instead of squandering the precious serendipity away. I mean, perfect moments could be everywhere: relief and pride after playing a particularly good solo, the cockiness after getting the once over by a good looking guy, the joy seeing new pictures of my nieces and nephew on Facebook, the melancholy when Buster barks the same bark every time I come to see him after several months away, when my heart skipped a beat as I tasted pasta sauce in Florence that was exactly like my grandmother’s, or even the relief at happening on a pair of pants that actually fit me right, These things are everywhere around us - in all the mundanity and didacticism that surround us  every day. We just have to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. I was lucky enough tonight to have opened my eyes and heart to capture one this evening. Le sigh… Peace out. 

Darling Harbour, Sydney Australia. March 19, 2010 - 8:30 pm

PIET MONDRIAN

In Grade 10 art class with Mr. Paterson, we were learning silk screening. I loved art class, even though I had very little discernable talent (Mr. Paterson wrote in my report card one semester: “Working hard to overcome obvious difficulties” I called him on that remark 10 years later). I decided to do a stylised nighttime cityscape, composed of only squares and rectangles. It turned out quite well, and both of us were quite surprised. He said that it reminded him of Mondrian, someone with whom I was not yet familiar. He showed me some of his painting, and a love affair was born.

Perhaps it is because my life is so often full of chaos and disorder that Mondrian appeals so much to me. On the surface, his most iconic work seems cool, controlled and distant. Set against a white background with nothing but right angles, primary coloured squares and rectangles are separated by thick black lines. That’s it. It’s the type of painting that inspires unimaginative suburban parents to declare: “That’s not art! My 6 year-old son could do that!” Well, he didn’t. And no he couldn’t. So shut up.

But look deeper. There’s something unsettling about his work.  It’s almost like the world around him was so chaotic, that the only way to quell the demons was to reduce his art to its most basic and simple elements.  The calm and order he creates is almost violent, and that very orderliness which dictates his work belies an intense turmoil.

Maybe. That’s what I feel today. Sometimes, I see an intense and palpable joy in his art. In Broadway Boogie Woogie, an earlier and more visually complex painting, the hustle and bustle of New York seems to leap off the canvas, with the grid –like lines suggesting traffic, neon lights and skyscrapers.  It actually reminds me of a row of NYC taxicabs at 8 in the morning jockeying for position.

I have been fortunate to see several Mondrians in person.  When you see them up close, you notice things that don’t come across in a book:  brush strokes, pencil marks, and occasional imperfections and deviations in the straight lines. This makes them all the more beautiful to me.  

ST. PADDY'S DAY IN MONTREAL

If you're lucky enough to be Irish, then you're lucky enough
 - Traditional Irish saying

Quebec has a rich Irish history that goes back several centuries. The list of famous Quebecois of Irish heritage is long and deep: from politicians Brian Mulroney (gag!), the Johnsons (Daniel, Daniel and Pierre-Marc) Jean Charest and Paul Martin, to hockey players Patrick Roy and Patrice Bergeron, to artists past and present such as Émile Nelligan, La Bolduc, Jim Corcoran, and my beloved Kate and Anna McGarrigle (and by extention, Rufus and Martha wainwright). Consequently, Montreal has the 2^nd largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world (after New York City), and one of the longest North American parades in continuity, having been held every year since 1824 .  Why hundreds of thousands of Montrealers gather on St. Catherine’s street in the middle of winter for anything is beyond me. (Yes, it’s almost spring in theory, but it rarely actually is in Montreal.)  But gather they do, bundled in their scarves, hats and fur-lined parkas.  We used to go every year when I was a kid. I used to love parades, though admittedly these day I find something weirdly jingoistic about them. Perhaps I've seen too many news reports from North Korea. But I would love spotting the local celebrities who would tun out, the dancing, the pipes bands and the tacky floats (we had nothing on Mardi Gras in New Orleans). We had a perfect vantage point at the Pique-Assiette, for years one of the only Indian restaurants in the city, and one of my dad’s favourite hangouts. I'm not sure why we watched the parade from the Pique, considering it was right across the street from the Cock 'n Bull, a full out-and-out Irish pub (My parents met at the C&B in 1969, and there will be an entry about it at a later date). The owner would make Catherine and me some sort of green drink, I’m assuming a concoction of food colouring, mint flavouring and sugary milk.  I have almost no recollection of how they tasted, but he would always serve them with a flourish and we would gulp then down with relish (the state of mind, not the condiment, which coincidently, is also green). This yearly tradition ended when the owner died suddenly, and I guess we just stopped going.  I’m not sure, I don’t really remember. A few years later, my sister was taking Scottish Country Dancing lessons (she was really good!), and we would go to watch her dance on a float, presumably freezing her conockles off, dressed in nothing but a kilt and a smile.  But it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve gone. You see, I’ve misplaced my parka. 

The piper in front is my old buddy Jeff McCarthy

GYPSY WITH PATTI LUPONE

Hum-ma-na hum-ma-na Billy!

"Patti Lupone" in Forbidden Broadway

When I was younger, and my voice was more forgiving, I could do a passable impression of Ethel Merman. (Big surprise – all queens can do one of 3 impressions: Merman, Carol Channing or Bette Davis.  Most can do all three. I can almost do late period Katherine Hepburn.) Though La Merm was decidedly not much of an artist, she certainly had one helluva voice.  And she never sounded as glorious as she did in Gypsy. Gypsy is one of my absolute favourites musicals. (I would sit though a production with Rosanne Barr and Pauly Shore - I like it that much.)  Countless women of a certain age since have essayed the role of a lifetime that is Mama Rose - from Joanne Worley and Linda Lavin to Bette Midler and Rosalind Russell, Tyne Daly and Bernadette Peters to Angela Lansbury. But none, I believe, so completely and so successfully as Patti Lupone.

Patti Lupone is not an actor one would describe as delicate. On a guest shot on Frasier, she portrayed a Greek cousin-in-law of the Cranes in a manner so over-the-top, that I spent the entire episode worried that she was going to pop out of the TV screen and smash a plate of spanikopita over my head.  I don’t think I would ever want to see her in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Well, maybe as Stanley.  Or the streetcar.

I first saw Patti live in 1996 when she was playing Maria Callas in Master Class. It was a superlative performance in a mediocre play. I hadn’t been too hot on her previously, my only experience of her having been a performance of Being Alive on the Sondheim at Carnegie Hall video.  I found her voice alternately strident and woofy, and her diction alternately overdone and mushy.  She did have great high notes though.  After Evita, she developed a hole in the middle of her voice, and often seemed to have trouble navigating quieter passages.  But she had nodes removed, and took some time off to retrain and has came back sounding better than ever (presumably having also sold her soul to Satan – there is no other explanation for her singing so well). She uses a chest mix for some of the higher passages now, instead of just blasting through. (Mind you, some of the most exciting singing I have ever heard was Patti’s park and bark. See the video of "Rainbow High" from her final night in Evita. Awesome!)  So when I heard she was bringing her Ravinia-and-Lincoln-Center-tested Mama Rose to Broadway, under the direction of Arthur Laurents no less, I was prepared be dazzled.  I was. So much so, that I saw it twice.

I cannot rave about this show enough.  It was definitely directed as a star vehicle for Patti, and she was indeed dazzling.  There wasn’t a piece of scenery left unchewed. She belted, she ranted, she danced, she seduced, she cried, she laughed, she screamed, she has a nervous breakdown for the ages. And yet, there was so much subtlety (yes, subtlety…) to her portrayal. It was performance for the ages, a role she was born to play. There wasn’t a false note. Despite all the histrionics she can (and has) (and does) indulge in, this was a performance of absolute truth. There were so many heartbreaking moments, made all the more powerful by the tremendous emotional and technical framework she built. And if that weren’t enough, Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti, as Herbie and Louise respectively, matched Patti note for note in beautifully nuanced performances that crackled with energy. And the strippers at the end almost succeed in stealing the show (which they often do). The last 20 minutes of the show were absolutely devastating. I was sobbing at the end of Rose’s Turn, and found myself unable to clap. There were a few, hmmm…. not quite mistakes… let’s say, miscalculations, in the show.  Dainty June delivered a one-note performance, and that note is flat. Her big scene was awful. Truly. And Laurents inserted a couple of unnecessary cheesy bits that get a laugh, but they’re cheap laughs (although my idol, Phyllis Diller, once said there’s no such thing as a cheap laugh). But why quibble? It was perhaps the most satisfying night of theatre I have ever experienced.

This is Rose's Turn form the Broadway production

This is from the 1981 Tony Awards. Listen to around the 4 minute mark for a full voiced belted high G!

This is Rainbow HIgh from her final performance as Evita on Broadway. Park-and-bark at it's finest.

GAUDI - PARC GUELL

Copiers do not collaborate

-Antoní Gaudi

I can’t remember when I first became aware of architect Antoni Gaudí’s work, but I also can’t remember when I wasn’t.  As a child, I thought his buildings seemed otherworldly and whimsical - held up by magic and chewing gum, yet logical and inevitable. It never occurred to me that I would actually ever see them, mostly because (I suppose) I wasn’t sure if they indeed were (or even could be) real.  But I did and they are. And like most works of art, they truly have to be seen to be believed.

The first Gaudi work I saw was, oddly enough, not one of his buildings, but the Parc Guell, a municipal garden in the north of the city. Parc Guell was originally intended as a housing development in the early part of the 20^th century, but only 2 houses were ever built (neither by Gaudí), and they were never sold. Gaudí himself bought one of the houses, and furnished it with furniture he had designed himself.  It’s a short subway ride from the city centre, and then a 20-minute walk up the steepest hill known to man. (There was a bloody escalator – on the hill! - which was broken all freakin’ summer.) My first visit there, I went in the back way by mistake, and it turned out to be for the best. When you go in the front, it all hits you at once. It’s almost too much to take.  But the back way brings you through a forest path, and you catch glimpses – a tip of a tower, the corner of a building, the curve of a bench.  Everything reveals itself to you gradually. And then, when you finally step into the park proper, it takes your breath away.  There are several different sections of the park, each defined by its own aesthetic. When you walk through the entry gates, you’re greeted by 2 pavilions straight out of Hansel and Gretel. The grand staircase features 2 of the most whimsical features of the park: an animal head fountain, and the iconic giant salamander, both made of wildly colourful mosaic. Perhaps the most striking and beautiful aspect in the park is a huge terrace surrounded by an elaborately tiled serpentine bench, all of which is supported by huge Doric columns, some of which jut out at odd angles. Behind the terrace are a promenade and walls built out of local stone, echoing the tress planted with in them. It is a testament to Gaudí’s genius, despite how odd and disparate all the elements are on the surface, that everything fits together, and that it is all integrated into the forest landscape.

The park is always bustling with activity, with tchotchke vendors, street performers, locals needing a break and of course, countless tourists, all of whom seemed to conspire to walk in front of my camera just I had a clear shot of that amazing salamander. (I actually had to photoshop a guy out of the shot I posted here).  Every time in was in Barcelona, I would go to the park. I would buy a chorizo sandwich (mmmm… chorizo…) and a bottle of orange juice and sit on those sensuously curved tiled benches and people-watch It’s my favourite place in one of my favourite cities. 

These are the pavilions at the entrance gate. The one on the right is a gift shop.

These are the serpentine benches.

The salamander, before and after photoshop.

THE X-MEN

Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am Fire and Life incarnate! Now and forever, I am Phoenix!

- Jean Grey (aka Marvel Girl aka Phoenix aka Dark Phoenix) The uncanny X-men #101

I have always wanted to be a superhero. I sometimes think it might still be a viable career option.  I regularly spent all of my allowance on comic books (well, at least the portion that didn’t go towards Vachon blueberry pies) - would I have kept them in plastic! But I read and re-read them, usually picking them up from my bedroom floor, the covers torn off, and the corners ripped out, due to an unfortunate pica-like need during childhood to chew paper. (That may be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever admitted in print. I don’t remember when it disappeared, but it was well into adolescence. I often wonder why I did it, and why it stopped suddenly. I haven’t ever had the impulse in at least 25 years. Weird).  My best friend growing up, Koruger, and I would pretend to be superheroes for hours on end, usually choosing characters from the Legion of Super-Heroes for our intricate story lines, which would often last for days.  I can remember when I bought my first X-Men comic. It was right as the Dark Phoenix saga was starting in the late 70’s, a tragic story arc if ever one there was.  Suddenly, I went from being Lightning Lad to Wolverine. Here were people, born with powerful gifts, who chose to be heroes, despite the fact that they were feared and reviled by the very people they swore to protect. They were outcasts and misfits, hated for something over which they had no control – the powers with which they were born. And they also tried led normal lives, or at least lives that were as normal as possible. They ate at restaurants, they went skating at Rockefeller Centre, and they went to dance class. They fell in love and they had their hearts broken. They went to school and they went through puberty.  They also had super-amazing kick-ass adventures and awesome mutant powers. As a young gay boy, I felt a tremendous kinship with the X-Men, feeling like an outcast and a misfit sometimes myself. They showed me that it was not only ok to be different, but that that very difference could bestow important responsibilities.  They also showed me that no matter how alone you might feel, there were always others who felt exactly like you, and that they would be there to share your journey.  The X-Men helped me through some difficult times during my adolescence, which, I know, makes me a bit of a nerd. But I actually yelped when I saw the trailer for the first movie. And occasionally, when confronted by an evil cruise director, I still secretly wish I had optic blasts. Or those really cool adamantium claws. 

The cover on the left was the first issue I ever bought. I think. It was 30 years ago...

RAVEL G MAJOR PIANO CONCERTO

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.
-Maurice Ravel


The violent crack of a whip that announces the Ravel Concerto snaps us out of our reverie and forces us to pay attention. Immediately, the piccolo begins the main jaunty pentatonic melody, accompanied by delicate rippling arpeggios in the piano, syncopated pizzicato chords and the playful pinging of the triangle.  The clarinet takes over with an insistent 3-note melody as the flute bubbles away, while the piano cascades up and down the keyboard.  Tension starts to mount as the rest of the orchestra gradually joins in, instruments piling one on top of the other. And then, over a long piano glissando from the lowest to its highest register, the orchestra almost explodes, taking us to a triumphal dominant to tonic cadence in G Major.  And that’s just the first 25 seconds.

I find it difficult, awkward and somewhat embarrassing to write about music.  I have such a visceral response to some pieces, that mere words don’t seem sufficient.  No matter how precise my vocabulary may be, or how glowingly I speak of it, I can’t possibly capture the palpable excitement I feel when I listen to the opening of the Ravel G Major Piano Concerto. There are so many moments of such exquisite, staggeringly heart-breaking beauty, and so many exhilarating passages that I’d rather play it for you and yell at various points: “Did you here that?!? I love when he does that!” But that’s impossible right now, since I’m here and you’re there.  So I’ll just point out several of my favorite moments.

- Around the 4-minute mark of the 1^st movement, there is a sudden break, and the piano starts a thrilling finger-breaking cadenza that starts at the very bottom of the keyboard and goes to the very top. It only lasts about 7 seconds, but the effect is mind blowing. (Martha Argerich plays this cadenza at such breakneck speed and with such accuracy that after hundreds of hearings, my heart still pounds)

- The Adagio Assai (2^nd movement) is one of the most excruciatingly beautiful pieces of music ever written.  It begins for the piano alone for 3 minutes, a gentle melancholic waltz in which the right hand plays in 3/4, and the left in 6/8. The melody spins its web like a bel canto aria – ever unfolding upon itself, ebbing and flowing, a seemingly unending phrase. 

-The last 30 seconds of the 3^rd movement is the most exciting music I can imagine. There is a 7-octave chromatic scale played by the entire orchestra and soloist in unison, (The piano actually plays the scale in broken minor ninths, which, despite having practiced for 20 years, still escapes my grasp) followed by a repetitive percussive chromatic figure. The movement ends as it begins, with dissonant chords and a big bass drum boom.

Amazing stuff. Give it a listen.

BLUEBERRY PIE

I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.

Fats Domino

When I sat down to begin compiling this list in December, this was the first thing I wrote down. I’m not quite sure why. Don’t get me wrong; I love blueberry pie.  I mean, what’s not to love? But I wasn’t aware that I loved it so much as to have it be the first thing that leapt to my mind when trying to list 365 things that have influenced/enriched my life, and made me the almost-40-year old I am today (and will be tomorrow).

When I was a kid, my folks didn’t let us have a lot of junk food.  (For example, we never had sugary cereals [except when camping – when I was allowed my belovéd Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops], but usually had an industrial-size bag of Puffed Wheat in the cupboard. That shit tastes like Styrofoam!). Consequently, I would often horde my lunch money so I could buy a chocolate bar or the like on my way home from school. One of my favorite treats was a Vachon Blueberry Pie.  Even now, years later, I can still taste the cornstarchy filling and lardy crust, molded in an individual-sized aluminum dish. Mmmm… Vachon… One fateful afternoon, when I was about 10, I took a different-than-usual bus route home (I could choose from about 4), and was walking from St. Denis and Duluth instead of Sherbrooke and Hôtel-De-Ville (to most of you, this is a superfluous detail).  I stopped at a dépanneur to purchase one of those blueberry pies. I figured I could wolf it down by the corner of Laval and Duluth, thereby having about a half a block to carefully dispose of the evidence (as I always did), wiping the crumbs and sticky purple goo from my lips before I got home, so as not to arose suspicion. Well, just as I was rounding the corner and shoving the last morsel into my mouth, I ran smack dab into my father, who was on his way to the laundromat.  With my mouth full of pie and my eyes full of guilt, I stammered, “It’s not what it looks like!”  I don’t remember what consequences, if any, there were. But it was probably a few years before I had other one.

My late uncle Anthony, my mother’s only brother, loved blueberry pie. Whenever he would come to Montreal from Toronto, Mom would bake him one. I always looked forward to his visits, not only because he was a great guy, but also so I could have some guilt-free blueberry pie. And now, whenever I have a piece, I think of Anthony.

Here’s a yummy recipe

¾ c of sugar

½ c All purpose flour

¾ tsp ground cinnamon

6 cups blueberries, carefully washed and dried

1 tbls lemon juice

1 tbls butter

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, ½ cup of the flour and the cinnamon. Carefully stir in the blueberries. Pour the mixture into a crust-lined pie dish (if you can make your own crust, good for you. Mine is hit and miss – mostly miss, so I use a ready made one). Scrape the remaining sugar mixture from the bowl, and pour it onto the berries. Sprinkle the berries with the lemon juice. Cut the butter into small pieces, and sprinkle it onto the berries. Cover with a disc of crust, and pinch and seal the edges together. Cut slits in the top layer of pastry. You may want to cover the edges with a strip of foil to prevent them from browning too quickly. Bake for 35 – 45 minutes, (removing the foil for the last 15 minutes), or until the crust is golden brown. The berry juice should be seductively bubbling through the slits. Cool on a pie rack for a couple of hours, allowing the juices to set.  Eat with really good vanilla ice cream in one sitting while watching Mad Men.  Yummy.

HERE WE GO!

“I believe that since my life began, the most I’ve had is just a talent to amuse”

Noel Coward – If Love Were All

I am obsessed with my age. I always have been. When I was 16 and trying to sneak into the Biftek St. Laurent, I prayed to look older. When I was 19, I lied about my age (I said I was 24) in order to get a job as music director for Lady Be Good. When I turned 30, the mother of one of my high school students wished me Happy Birthday, and asked me old I was. I said it was the ‘big one’. She asked “40?” Flabbergasted, I corrected her, politely and with a nervous laugh.  She said that I looked great for 40. So I looked bad for 30?

Well, here I am, 9 years later, on the cusp of 40. Holy shit. I was 16 when my mother turned 40.  Could I really be the father of a 16 year-old child? (Forgetting the logistical improbability of me actually having sired an offspring, would I have been ready at 23 for fatherhood? Would I be ready now to deal with the particular hell it must be to raise a 16 year-old? Would he or she be trying to sneak into the Biftek?)

It is fact, not vanity, when I say that I don’t look my age. True, I am not the fresh-faced Young Turk who showed such promise. But let’s face it; Italian don’t crack either. I have an array of moisturizers and eye creams that conspire to preserve my unpreservable youth. I dress in age-inappropriate clothing (i.e.; Urban Outfitters) in order to create the illusion that I am much hipper than I am in reality. (What is age-appropriate clothing? Could Stacey and Clinton tell me? Should I start dressing from the Arnold Palmer Collection?) I tend to hang out with people at least 10 years my junior (this is often by circumstance, as people who work on ships tend to be younger than me).  And I will admit to some occasional light photoshopping of pictures before posting them on Facebook. Despite all this, I feel that I am ready to embrace turning 40. Fair enough, I may not be turning cartwheels, but I’ve earned my age – every bag under my eye (I have two!), every silver hair (I have a bunch!), every stretch mark (Boy, have I got those!). However, with age, supposedly, comes wisdom (stop laughing!), and I would like to think that as I careen toward middle age, I have (will have?) acquired a modicum of sagacity (Man, is that sentence full of 10-cent words or what?). I have been tremendously fortunate to have already lived a very eventful life, full of amazing experiences. I have also made my fair share of huge mistakes. There are things I’ve done of which I am not proud, and which still haunt me. But those incidences, perhaps more than anything else, have allowed me to understand who and what I am. I am a much different person than I was 10, even 5 years ago. I didn’t really like myself then. I’m now happy with and proud of the person I’ve become and am becoming.

But enough heavy shit. Why Blogged Arteries? (Cute title, huh?) Well, all forms of expression are by their very nature self-indulgent, and I am nothing if not self-indulgent. I thought it would be a good way for me to take stock of my life, to discover new and unexpected aspects of my personality, to re-examine the things that have helped shape me, and perhaps at the same time, entertain and amuse. I intend to keep the tone fairly light, as I am not necessarily easily given to baring my soul (the end of the previous paragraph not withstanding). But I think (hope) that within these pages, the why/when/who/what that is James Huram Higgins, born March 12^th 1971, will bleat out loud and clear.  Fill the fridge with beer and hide your sons, ‘cause 40, here I come!




pic 1 - My 6th birthday. Montréal, Québec.
pic 2 - My 37th birthday. San Juan, Puerto Rico.