Leonard Cohen Day

I drove to Kingston and back today, and much as I love the Limestone City, I find the drive tedious.

Not today though, because today was Leonard Cohen Day on the CBC in honour of his newly released album, Old Ideas (which, incidentally, I am listening to right now as it's being streamed live all day). From here to just this side of Kingston, where it got unbelievable fuzzy, and again on the rather treacherous journey home, every few minutes was a clip or a song from Leonard.

This week, I've been teaching poetry to college students, and have been struggling with how to get them to just read it and enjoy it as so many of them seem to have negative attitudes toward what poetry is and what it means. I think tomorrow I am going to take some of Leonard Cohen's work in with me. For inspiration, as I try to elicit their poetic responses to the world around them.

In the meantime, here is one of my favourite of Cohen's songs/poems. I really like the stuff I heard off his new album - such as this - but I'm going to go with this classic.

Music, Animals and Attitude: Erik

The school our children go to has a band. Starting in grade 4, the students get to pick an instrument...clarinet, flute, drum.

Anna, as soon as she hit Grade 4, knew she wanted to play the saxophone. Grace, only now in grade 3, already has a trumpet. But Erik...well, he can be obstinate, and he didn't want to just play any instrument that the school taught. Erik wanted to play a trombone. Never mind that their music teacher was only teaching treble clef instruments. Never mind that he has never before showed any musical inclination. Never mind that no-one in our family plays a trombone.

True to form, he's figuring it all by himself. One note at a time.

Touch The Earth Lightly

There are so many beautiful churches in Glengarry, and St Andrew's United in Martintown has to be one of the jewels. The church is old, very old. It sits up from the road beside the river looking for all the world like it grew up there, and not (as so many churches today do) like it was foisted on its surroundings without thought to beauty or peace. Rough and weathered gravestones tumble around, at once reminding us of the fleeting nature of life and the paradoxical continuity of it.

We participated this morning - for the first time ever - in a Good Friday church service. It was held in St Andrew's United on behalf of the United and Presbyterian churches in Martintown. The Reverend Andrea Harrison cleverly wove an Earth Day theme into the Good Friday service, reminding us that we all cause great suffering to our planet and need to find ways to live in harmony with it. She invited us because Anna recently participated in a speech competition and spoke about the importance of standing up for the environment, and Andrea kindly asked Anna to do part of her speech again today for the combined congregations.

There are lots of things I could say here. About the service; the music (which was amazing); about how Earth Day isn't about saving our world which has been here for millenia, but is about saving ourselves from our own stupidity; about Anna, her siblings and friends and their "green" outlook (they just started a Going Green in Glengarry club) as they face an environmental crisis they are not yet fully aware of.  But I will save all that for another day, and leave you with words from one of the songs sung this morning, which I think captures the essence of the crucifixion of the earth theme.

Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently
Nourish the life of the world in our care
Gift of great wonder, ours to surrender
Trust for the children tomorrow will bear

We who endanger, who create hunger

Agents of death for all creatures we love

We who would foster clouds of disaster

God of our planet, forstall and forgive.

Thanks to Rev. Andrea Harrison for the invitation, and to her and Rev Ian MacMillan (of another beautiful Glengarry Church) for the service.

Wicked

Short and sweet... I am writing this at 11pm on Saturday at the Business Centre of the downtown Toronto hotel where I am staying with two university friends for the weekend. We just got in from seeing this play:

And it was wonderful.

Music to cook by

I have a house musician. She serenades me while I cook. Provides homework ambiance. An evening musical interlude.

Okay, okay, it might be better if she knew more than two notes.

But one day she'll be playing In The Mood.

Only 8 more notes to go.

Days of Summer

Summertime...and the living is easy...

The jazzy notes tumble out of the open window and here on the porch swing, in this instant, it seems true. Summer is easy - no need to match clothes for the kids for school....they toss on shorts over their swimsuits and are off;  dinners tend to be simple...barbecues and salads, and fresh ripe berries for dessert; bed time has more flexibility....we are often up until close to sunset biking or playing croquet in the coolness of evening.

In this instant, the living is easy.

But that is mostly because I have a knack for enjoying the moment and pretending there is nothing outside of it.

In this space, there is no half-acre garden to re-mulch, no weeds to pull, no flowers to deadhead and nurture. There is no hay to bale, no sheep to tag, no grass to mow, no driveway verge to trim. The mud room does not hold the remnants of a school year's worth of artwork and books and papers to be organized, and dressers are not overflowing with pants and skirts and shirts and sweaters that will be too small come Autumn and need to be sorted.

In this space, we are not planning camping trips and beach picnics, a week at the cottage and a canoe trip into the wilderness. We are not counting down the days until the Highland Games or the Williamstown Fair - must-do things in our summer. We are not still working, and grocery shopping, and heading off on hot sultry nights to sit at the site of a soccer field and watch the kids play. We do not have eight family birthdays to celebrate before September.

In this moment, in this space, in this instant, there is only the sweet jazzy belief that summer is, in fact, easy.

Food for a Winter's Afternoon

A friend of mind posted a recipe on her blog for heartwarming vegetarian fare she called  Gypsy Soup. This ancient secret family recipe, she claimed, was too good not to share.

Even reading the recipe made my mouth start to water. It sounded like a perfect soup for a cold day, and before I knew it I was envisioning a clear wintry afternoon and a snowshoe hike along the sheltered line of trees that runs the length of the river.

In a split second, my mind's eye captured every moment of that afternoon - the lingering scent of pine, the crunch of snow, and the return to a fire-warmed kitchen filled with the wafting smells of  tumeric and sweet basil. Ladeling soup into pottery bowls and eating it at the golden pine table as daylight fades to long blue shadows outside the french doors, and the music of Aviva Chernik fills the house.

It made me stop and reflect on the nature of food in our lives. How food at it's most basic may just be something to sustain us, but taken further is something that nourishes not just body, but spirit as well. It's too easy on hurried days to put food on the table without much thought, and eat with even less, our mind on getting out the door to Cubs or a book club meeting. But with just a little bit of reflection, it can be so much more.

Christmas Songs

Christmas songs....aah! We love them because they make us joyful. Because they hold memories for us, reminding us of when we were children ourselves. Because of the meaning they have, or the sentiment they express, or the feelings they create.

It's difficult to choose favourites, but here are some of mine. These are the ones I can listen to over and over, and without which, it  just wouldn't seem like Christmas:

Traditional Favourites
Away In A Manger
O Little Town Of Bethlehem
Silent Night
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Adeste Fidele
O Holy Night
Angels We Have Heard On High

Other Favourites
A Time For Peace - Roger Whittaker
Holly Leaves and Christmas Trees - Elvis Presley
White Christmas - Bing Crosby
C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S - Jim Reeves
At Last I'm Ready For Christmas - Barra MacNeils
Christmas In Dixie - Alabama
Tender Tennessee Christmas - Amy Grant
Christmas in Killarny
Have A Holly Jolly Christmas
Silver Bells

Honourable Mention
The First Noel
River - Joni Mitchell
Snoopy's Christmas - The Royal Guardsmen
Kids - Kenny Rogers

Theme Song

My drive to work is 12 minutes along old fashioned, unpaved, country lanes. Surrounded by farm fields and forest, dirt paths and wildlife, tumbled stones and maple trees, I enjoy every moment of it, and since Andrew downloaded this song to my IPod for me, I enjoy it even more. I drive more slowly, just so I can hear it again.

In my mind I am not on my way to a corporate job dotting environmental "i"s and crossing innovative "t"s, but am off cross country with James Herriot and Siegfried Farnon.

I knew I should have been a vet.

Building Beauty: Forty Part Motet

Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet is a musical piece of art that was staged at the National Gallery of Ontario’s Rideau Chapel. I have never heard or seen it, although obviously have heard of it, and something about it must have appealed to my subconscious mind as the other night I dreamed about it

It’s a relatively simple concept: Janet took Thomas Tallis’ 1573 composition Spem In Alium, a 40 part motet composed for eight choirs or five voices, and had it recorded by a cathedral choir with each of the 40 voices being recorded onto a separate track. These 40 voices are then played back through 40 speakers set around a room or hall.

It’s a deconstruction, if you like, of the music. If you stand in the middle, you can hear it as a whole. However, as you make your way around the room, each speaker gives a disjointed performance, proving that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The artist herself says, "While listening to a concert you are normally seated in front of the choir, in traditional audience position. With this piece I want the audience to be able to experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers. Every performer hears a unique mix of the piece of music. I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis. You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you when all of the singers are singing.”

But I particularly liked what A Washington Post article (2005) by Blake Gopnik had to say: “In "40 Part Motet," you get a shock when you realize what strange things go into building beauty. But also a reaffirmation of the miracle of art: Fragile human effort, almost painfully awkward, can come together into something worthy of divinity.”

Building Beauty. I was stuck by that. Because it’s kind of what my life is like. Surrounded by what can sometimes be harsh and often discordant noise (the third interruption by a child while I’m soaking in my bubble bath; the barking of the dog at an innocent leaf blowing across the driveway, the rattle of an overloaded washing machine, all of these at once, etc.), it’s easy to crave solitude and the peace of a white room.

But maybe the lesson Janet Cardiff wants us to learn is that together, all these things make a masterpiece of beauty and perfection.

We just need to see it whole.

Mamma Mia

I am unabashedly unapologetic for admitting that I saw and thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Mamma Mia recently.

It made me laugh. It made me feel joyous and happy. It made me feel good. It made me want to move to a Greek Island and sing Abba songs on the beach.

I thought the critics missed the point when it came to the singing. I'm sure the director could have picked perfectly pitched actors for all the roles, but the beauty of the movie was that it didn't have to be perfect to be good. Life isn't like that. Life isn't always sung in tune.

And Mamma Mia was about life. About Kairos (to use one of my favourite ancient Greek concepts, referring to the qualitative nature of time as opposed to Chronos, the quantitative nature of time).

I loved it. And I'm still singing Abba songs a month later.

Full Disclosure: it could be said that I have a slight bias towards any movie with either Pierce Brosnan or Colin Firth in it, and this one had both, and if they could only have featured Harrison Ford as well, my day would truly have been complete.

Suddenly Getting Country Music

Not a huge country fan here. I liked it enough as a teenager, but don't really listen much.

But last night, I understood suddenly its appeal.

You should know it's boiling hot right now in Ontario, and I got home from work to a house full of wired kids on their first day of summer holidays. We rushed to get their soccer stuff on and rushed to soccer - only to discover it had changed nights to accomodate the school prom.

Had I checked my calendar, I'd have know that.

The air conditioner in my van just broke, so I was driving Andrew's Golf, and on the way home, feeling slightly out of sorts (a feeling not helped by ERik in the back saying "well, it wouldn't have happened if you were more organized!" - he's right, but needs to learn to pick his battles!) so I turned up the radio to hear a country CD mix Andrew had made.

And let me tell you, nothing beats stress like singing along to cranked country music while driving too fast along country roads.

Give me two pina colada, I want one for each hand - yep this sounded good
Set sail with Capt. Morgan, though we never leave dry land - I'm there with you, Garth!

Felt MUCH better when I got home!

Get Up & Go

One thing I'm loving about my Ipod is that I can set playlists. Music to run to. Music to study to. Music to cook to. But my favourite by far is the one I created last week: 8 songs that have made my life better, my mornings less chaotic, and my days more organized.

It's pretty hectic in the mornings at our place. Andrew is out by 5 some mornings, and I'm left to make sure the kids are dressed, have had breakfast, have packed lunches and homework and notes in their bookbags, have fed the dog and cats, and somehow get to the end of the lane to meet the school bus at 07:30 am.

And some days - okay, many days - it sounds something like this:

No time to dawdle. Finish your breakfast. Have you put the milk away? Don't forget your homework. Where did you put your mittens. The bus will be here in 5 minutes. Let's GO!

Until this week, when I put my brilliant Get Up & Go playlist into action. 8 upbeat songs over 30 minutes. When the first notes of Who Let The Dogs Out start blaring at 0650, they know they need to be getting dressed. Green Day and Coldplay songs are good for eating breakfast, and by the time Blackie and the Rodeo Kings roll around, the bowls are being loaded into the dishwasher. Three more songs to go - lots of time to load up bags and run back upstairs for whatever it is we've forgotten. The rule is that when Great Big Sea begin to belt out End of The World, you'd better be wrapping up whatever else you're doing because when the song is done, it's time to put on coats and boots. With a 10 minute post-playlist window, we have time to find that missing mitten, grab the recycling box, rebraid messy hair, toss in a load of laundry... and still make it to the car and down the lane with minutes to spare.

I confess I get tired of the same songs in the same order every morning. But the kids love it. They thrive on it. And it works. The best part is that I don't have to say anything at all - the songs set the pace, and mornings have become a lot easier.

Young and sweet....

Can there be anything cuter than watching Anna dance around the house with her pink ipod, singing (loudly and slightly out of tune) the words to her new favourite songs.

And those songs are…? I hear you ask.

Abba songs.

“Honey, I’m still free, take a chance on me.”

And of course

“Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen…oh yeah”

Hey, I always liked Abba.

Bravo! A Christmas Concert

'Tis the season ...for school Christmas concerts!

Oh, the good old hockey game, is the best game you can name

And the best game you can name, is the good old hockey game...

You know - that time of year when we parents cram ourselves into pint sized chairs in a school gymnasium and watch our offspring sing, dance and entertain their way through an evening of songs and skits.

Even the most cynical have to admit that despite muffled voices, serious faces, the odd case of stage fright, and the helpful whispers of teachers from the wings, school concert nights are delightful. There is unbridled innocence and exhuberance about the younger grades and the older grades manage to infuse Christmas meaning into their rap performance leaving you believing there is hope for the future.

Here are the apples which fall from the tree...

We took the kids' great-grandmother with us, and she loved every moment of it. She waved at all the children on stage, and many of them waved back. She clapped with the music, before the music, after the music, and sporadically during the music, and often, some of those sitting around her would clap too as if in support. She had a wonderful evening.

Yee haw, do-ci-do...it's a cowboy Christmas

(doesn't he look happy?)

We are lucky at our school to have a marvelous band, and the quality of the music was one of the highlights of the evening.

And at the end of the concert, we were able to say with pride, Bravo!

Until next year.

Adios and not goodbye?

The CBC is taking away my favourite morning show, Music and Company. It’s in reruns for the summer, and come fall, will be replaced.

I’ll miss it, dreadfully.

Music & Company plays a range of classical music, but the real treat is that the music is punctuated by the witticisms and commentary of the show’s host, Tom Allen who offers up anecdotes and turns of phrase both droll and informative.

The good news is that Tom will be back in September in the same time slot. But the music will change and that is not necessarily good. I’m withholding judgement for now, but I fear CBC is on the same path as some mainstream churches – and in trying to appeal to all, will end up appealing to none. For the most part I like my music –– like my religion - straight up. Evolving with the times is one thing – but changing mid stream is just plain annoying. And so while I like a wide range of music, when I want classical I want classical, when I want country I want country, when I want Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, I want Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. And in the mornings, I want classical, not a diluted version of what the CBC thinks will appeal to the masses.

For the summer, I’ll enjoy the reruns. And in September…I’ll keep my fingers crossed.