Ode on an Earworm

Kansas in their heyday

Late in the afternoon yesterday I realized that, for no readily apparent reason, I had for hours been humming Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas (contrary to what you might think, the word "My" does not appear in the title). Not the whole song, either: just the melody of the verses and not so much that of the more famous chorus. It was lodged in my brain so deeply I don't think a full frontal lobotomy could have excised it. It was such a bizarre choice of music—not that any earworm can ever truly be a "choice"—to be stuck in my head that I turned it into a sort of "Twenty Questions" with Sarah to see if she could guess what song was tormenting me. (She could not.) It wasn't until much later last night, after we had returned home from watching our friends' daughter's ringette game in Richmond Hill, that I found myself sitting at the computer, playing a recently downloaded game (Bejewelled 3) from Big Fish Games, when suddenly the light went on. The game has one of those looping, shifting kinds of electronic soundtracks that play in the background, the kind where the music is repetitive but not too repetitive so it doesn't become annoying. At one point I started whistling along with a sixteen-bar phrase that seemed to pop up every several minutes and it struck me that what I was whistling was....you guessed it: Stairway to Heaven. Ha ha! No, of course it was the opening verse of Carry on..., for even though that wasn't the exact song playing behind the game, eight of the sixteen bars were close enough that they put the whole My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine plagiarism case to shame. Once I had solved the "mystery" of why the song was stuck in my noodle, of course the spell was broken and I immediately stopped humming it to myself. Ha ha, again! As you can imagine, it's still rattling around in there today. I can't remember what time I ate lunch, but I know all the words and syncopated rhythm changes to that song inherently. There really should be a way to harness that power for good and not for evil.

The Clock

The promotional still for The Clock

Yesterday Sarah took a holiday from her work and we finally got down to the Power Plant at Harbourfront in Toronto to see Christian Marclay's incredible work of visual and sound art, The Clock. (Sarah had already tried to see it once by herself, hoping to catch what is rumoured to be a pretty spectacular set of clips at midnight a few weekends ago; alas, the lineups were too long and she gave up around 1 a.m.) I can think of several words to describe this amazing piece but the one that does it the most justice, in my mind, is "riveting". We had more than a vague idea of the wonders awaiting us as Sarah's Mom, Evlyn, had been to see it quite a few times while it was on display at the National Gallery in Ottawa. But no matter how well she or, indeed, anyone else attempted to describe the power of Marclay's masterpiece, this is something that one absolutely must experience for one's self. On the subject of those attempts at capturing the essence of The Clock, I have read quite a few of them for myself—including the rather mundane blurb in the Power Plant's own program—but the one I found the closest to accomplishing the feat was one written by Daniel Zalewski which appeared in The New Yorker in March of this year. It's a rather lengthy read but it does not simply focus on this single creation of Marclay's; I feel that the exploration of the man behind The Clock broadens and heightens the entire experience considerably. Despite my concession of the futility of attempting to understand the impact of this artwork, I am stubbornly going to proceed to describe my own experience yesterday afternoon, because this wouldn't be much of a blog piece if I just said, "We went to see The Clock yesterday" and left it at that. That's what Facebook and Twitter are for!

On Quiet Souls with Deep Feelings

I had a very "Stand By Me" moment last week. If you are not familiar with the movie, it came out in 1986, directed by Rob Reiner and based on a Stephen King novella. The film's narrator is a writer around the age of forty, taken back jarringly to a summer when he was twelve by reading a newspaper account of the death of an old friend from that time. In my case, I'm at least ten years older than the protagonist of Stand By Me and the age I was yanked back to was sixteen.

I received in the mail last week the Fall 2012 copy of The Root, the alumni magazine of my high school, University of Toronto Schools (UTS). I was absentmindedly leafing through it when I came to the "In Memoriam" section near the back of the periodical. It was there that I learned of the passing (by way of cancer) of a woman who had been in the level behind mine, someone I hadn't seen nor spoken to in well over thirty years but who holds a very special place in my heart nonetheless. She was my date to the UTS Formal in my graduating year and, in point of fact, my first date period. If you saw any pictures of me back then, you'd know why.

I knew I was going to have to create a post about her passing and I wrestled with whether to list her whole name in this piece. Because this won't really be about her life (a life I did not share so it would be presumptuous of me to think I had any right to speak to it here) but the brief part of it that we spent together, I decided to just use her first name, which was Leslie. If you know me (or her) well enough, you'll be able to fill in the rest; if not, I wish to respect the privacy of those who have survived her.

Ah Sey One

Part of a fantastic mural outside of the Harlem Restaurant

Last night Sarah and I went to a fantastic event, "Ah Sey One", organized by Sceneopolis and inTO, and held at the Harlem Restaurant on Richmond Street East. I won a "plus one" entry through a contest that The Grid ran on their Twitter feed last week, by answering the simple question: "What is your favourite song by The Sattalites?" I knew nothing about the event at that time, only that I really love The Sattalites (a long-standing Toronto Reggae band; only Rush is an older Canadian band right now) and that Sarah and I really needed an evening out. But it wasn't just a show by The Sattalites (whom I had seen several times in the past): it was an event which was all about the mood and the mingling. Food was included, as well as two drinks each, and the people at the Harlem Restaurant -- to which we'd never been but will definitely return -- were absolutely fantastic.

"Play Me, I'm Yours"

"Play Me, I'm Yours" piano at the Royal Conservatory

I was downtown this morning for a group information session put together by The Challenge Factory and spent a little one-on-one time afterwards with my "Career Mentor", Lisa Taylor discussing my next moves. (I'll expand on that in a blog post tomorrow with some exciting news.) After we left the L'espresso Bar Mercurio we walked back toward Avenue Rd. along Bloor St. On our way we came upon a piano, sitting outside in the sunshine, next to the steps of the Royal Conservatory building, with the words "Play Me I'm Yours" displayed prominently on its face. A young lad had just finished playing this piano and had stepped away as we approached, his position on the bench being immediately taken up by the woman you see in this picture. I assumed it had something to do with the Conservatory itself, but when I spoke to Sarah about it later she told me that it was part of a much, much larger art project and that there were pianos all over the city of Toronto.

Nora's Lists

Nora Ephron, 1941-2012

Two days ago the world lost Nora Ephron due to complications from the leukemia she had been battling for several years. I didn't know a great deal about her other than I enjoyed many of the movies she had written and/or directed over the years, but in scanning the myriad tributes to her over the past two days I have come to realize that she was looked up to and admired by women - and men who name themselves as feminists - the world over. I never gave much thought to the strong female leads of her movies, nor to the fact that she was a rare animal, a "woman director" in Hollywood; in my defence, it simply didn't seem "out of the ordinary" to me, not because I have my head in the sand but because when the social order starts to feel "right" to me I have a tendency to be soothed and not shocked by it. These tributes, appearing on such diverse online sites as The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor (Ms. Ephron was Jewish), are remarkable to read now, as fascinating and insightful as the incredible volume of tweets sent out over the same period of time lamenting her loss. She seems to have been a rather quiet hero, neither shrill nor obvious, just a woman who believed that women had been shortchanged forever and set out to subtly change the way of the world.

Après hier soir, le déluge*

In case you didn't believe it was raining here

Well, I've been asking for rain and we finally got it. It's pouring out there right now - I think I might even hear a little hail. No thunderstorm, though, which is too bad because they can be pretty thrilling from 200 feet in the air. Instead we just have wind and that's not a very good thing in our apartment. There is a leak that nobody has been able to fix somewhere near our sliding balcony doors and when the wind is coming from the east (like it is right now) accompanied by a heavy rain, water tends to enter into our dining room and bubble up through the tiles, like the opening scene in The Beverly Hillbillies. I find that metaphor quite apt because I feel like a hillbilly most days living in this building! In any event, the humidity had long departed our area by last night so I am a bit surprised by the ferocity of the downpour today. It is supposed to rain through the weekend, too, which I don't ordinarily appreciate but it's been so dry here that I'm not the least bit upset with that news. Also, Sarah is taking Monday and Tuesday off, so that can be our weekend (think: Zoo trip). Also also, the drum circle pounded away until well after 11 PM last night; rain means we won't have to put up with that nonsense on Saturday or Sunday. Always a good thing.


Kemp and Michael were good enough to pass along their photos from last night's wonderful evening. I don't have much commentary to add after yesterday's post, so I'll just showcase the pictures themselves here:

Music of my Life

December, 1961. My first Christmas. My parents wanted to send out a "photo card" to all their friends and relatives with their new bundle of joy figuring prominently. But there was a hitch: the best my dad could coax out of me was a sort of wry smile....until he hit upon the brilliant idea of plopping me on the carpet in front of his Heathkit (with Wharfedale speakers) and putting some tunes on. Like magic: I start grinning and babbling like a little maniac, resulting in the incredibly minimalistic picture you see here. Frozen in that moment in time, the expression of unbridled joy on my face makes it impossible to overstate the impact music was to have on my life from my very first years. It's the passion that drives me, it's my life's blood and it's never too far away at any given moment.


This week a friend asked me to take part in a survey he was doing on his blog; he wanted people to list their 10 favourite songs of all time. Now, I have owned (and, for the most part, still own) literally thousands of albums in my life on vinyl, CD or cassette. I have a few hundred 45 RPM singles in my collection, too. Add to that the many songs I have purchased on iTunes or...ahem...not purchased through other electronic methods and I think you see my dilemma. It's a lot like asking someone to name the favourite of all of his or her children, or the best 10 breaths he or she has ever drawn. But I promised I would give it a try and it took up a good chunk of my evening last night. Because I spent so much time on it - and because I honestly have nothing else to write about today that doesn't revolve around the Ford brothers (yeesh) - I figured I would make the work do "double duty" and post my choices here on my blog as well.

Happy Record Store Day!

Several years ago - in 2005 at the age of 44 - I was lucky enough to manage this record store in the Beaches in Toronto. It was a dream job and, even though I was only running things there for about 7 1/2 months, I will remember it fondly for the rest of my life. Music has always been my biggest passion and the opportunity to come in every day, choose the "soundtrack" for the store, talk to the music company reps and spend my time among people who shared this passion was the highlight of my wide-ranging employment history.

The Kid

Gary Carter would have been 58 yesterday. Sorry I'm a day late with this, but I wanted to share this amazing video put together by Montreal rapper Annakin Slayd.





Gary Carter, AKA "The Kid": one of my favourite ball players of all time.

Full Moon Rising

I'll admit it. I am a lunatic. Although I mean it in the late Latin, lunaticus form of the word. For as far back as I can remember I have been profoundly affected by the waxing of the full moon, each and every month. No, I don't grow grotesque quantities of hair and suffer from an overpowering urge to slaughter lambs but I am affected nonetheless. I can usually tell you that it's the night before a full moon without looking at a calendar simply by the otherwise unexplainable surge of adrenaline in my body and sudden uplifting of my spirit.

I used to wonder, when I first worked out the cause of this phenomenon within me, whether that was the reason I was so fascinated by the Apollo program when I was a young boy. Perhaps it was the other way around, too, but I find it difficult to imagine that such an effect on my psyche would be "man-made" and not sublimely natural. In any event, I hung on every bit of information I could get about every single moon launch NASA ever made and all I wanted to do as a young man was become an astronaut. I now think this was not because I wanted to go into space (although that was certainly part of it); rather, it was more likely that I craved an opportunity to walk on the moon. (This would likely also explain why I never really paid that much attention to the Shuttle Program.)

Last Saturday Was Funked Up

I realize I'm kind of being anti-chronological here, but I wanted to give a couple of shout-outs to some friends of mine for events of the past weekend.

First of all, I posted last spring about the tribulations I was going through while coaching in the East York Minor Hockey Association (where I had been doing so for 9 years). Things became so bad that I decided I had had enough and took this year off. (Well, in point of fact I said "I am not returning if the convenor isn't replaced"....and pretty much had to keep my word when the old guard all returned.)

My coaching partner, Jeff Seccull, was able to see past the nonsense and did return, coaching the Philadelphia team of 11- and 12-year-olds once again. There were finally some changes made to the way the EYHA "balanced" the teams during the season - ironically, changes that were brought about specifically because of my diligence a year earlier which cause some strife in the league and which the convenor grumpily alluded to in an early meeting this year (according to my sources!) - and as Jeff is easily the best coach at this level the league has had in years, of course his team won the Little Stanley Cup last Saturday. Here's a shot of Jeff with the Cup - the first time he has ever won it!

I very much missed coaching this year and especially working with Jeff. Congratulations to him and the Philadelphia team for winning the championship - and I greatly appreciate him letting me know they were in the finals so Sarah and I could make our way over and cheer them on the past two Saturdays.