Love – Page 8 – Rant and Roll

Who’s the boss?

Picture the summer of 2005.

Where were you? What were you doing? What were your passions? Your obsessions?

Who did you love?

Who did you love?

I was twenty years old, fresh out of my second year of university, and living in Halifax.

Marc and I had been dating (and living together) for just under two years. Knowing that I would be spending the next four months across the country away from the small little home we were building together had left me heartbroken. Although looking back, I am confident that on some subconscious level we both knew that it was these long stretches of time apart that was keeping our young love alive.

Having just applied to (and been accepted by) the Creative Writing program at UBC, I felt like my whole life was falling into place.

I was reading everything I could get my hands on, exercising too much, and working two fantastic jobs.

The first was at a fair-trade coffee shop where I made adequate espressos and sold delicious pakoras. The second was at a local bar where I worked the door Wednesday through Saturday nights. Basically my job was to flirt or strike up conversations with individuals as they entered the establishment, in the hopes of convincing them that they really did want to pay the cover charge, when really they probably just wanted a drink or dinner. My take-home was determined by how many people I got through the door.

And I was really, really good at this job.

Can you imagine? I was getting paid to talk to people and listen to great music. It was my dream job, incarnate.

I witnessed a lot of really weird things during those four months. There was the man who unscrewed the light bulb from the fixture over his table, placed the bulb in his briefcase, and then lit up the giant candle he had brought from home.

A man once tried to pay me to steal one of the bar’s paintings for him, and even left a twenty dollar “deposit” wrapped around the stem of the white wine glass he had ordered for me on his way out the door.

A young man once careened in the bar and breathlessly asked if he could hide out in our restrooms. After about half an hour he emerged, only to tell me that he had been evading two bike cops who had caught him and his friends drinking up at the Citadel.

Gordie Sampson hit on my underage sister, and I learned that Gordie Sampson is a tool.

I also saw some of the most incredible live performances from some of the East Coast’s most wonderful performers.

Ron Hynes played a beautiful, intimate set, and everyone in the bar sang along to Sonny’s Dream. When he died last year I cried remembering the magic of that evening.

Jeff Goodspeed was always a treat and the week that we played home to the Halifax Jazz Festival’s “late-night venue”, the proverbial roof was blown away each and every night.

But my most favourite part of working this job was Wednesday nights.

Because Wednesday nights meant Matt Andersen.

And Matt Andersen always meant a huge crowd of people who really, really wanted to pay the five-dollar cover.

But even better than that, Matt Andersen meant the most beautiful blues.

I would have worked at that bar for free as long as it meant that I was allowed to sit there for three hours and listen to him play.

Every night, during his cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’, I would walk over to the end of the bar and lean against one of the pillars that framed the entrance to the dining room. Just closing my eyes now, I can remember so clearly how the music would wash over me.

Run through me.

How the hairs on my arms would stand on end, and my eyes would tear up, and how part of me wanted that moment to last forever but how the other feared that if it did my little heart might crack in two.

Matt was also a gentle giant, who would pick me up and drive me to the bar if he’d see me walking on my way downtown. He would ask me about the books that I was reading and the subjects that I was studying in school.

It never occurred to me to stop and think how that summer was real life (and not the undergraduate make-believe in which I was firmly ensconced). Now I wish I had the foresight to tell Matt how much I loved his music and made the effort to stay in touch.

Tonight my parents-in-law are at Matt’s concert at the Vogue downtown. Marc and I bought them tickets for Christmas and I am so incredibly excited for them to experience his music for the first time. I can only imagine what an amazing show it will be.

For me – I am wrapped in warm blankets and sipping tea, listening to Youtube compilations remembering those make-believe days and warm summer nights.

And I hope I can introduce you to Matt.

And that you will love him. Wednesday nights, and every night.

Rub-a-dub-dub, one maid in a tub

Somewhere along the way I started to like baths.

Now.

First, please, do not conflate baths with bathing. I think I have committed to the record enough times my utter obsession with cleanliness that there should be no mistake on anyone’s part to that of which I write – however, it is always best to err on the side of caution when it comes to these things, lest I be construed as some sort of horribly unwashed miscreant, who only now, in her thirtieth year, has come to appreciate a good scrub-a-dub.

No.

I have always, always loved to be clean.

What I haven’t always loved is one method to which this purity might be achieved.

Chiefly – baths.

I’ve even written a pair of entries chronicling my distaste for sitting in bathtubs, long waxing eloquent on how easily overheated one becomes just lying there, awash in your own filth and sweat; how horribly hard it is to read in that semi-reclined position, and never really knowing what to do with your hands, as they slowly freeze to death while the rest of your body steams itself alive.

(Honestly, you can imagine how surprised I am that Whirlpool has never scooped me up to do all of their advertising copy writing.)

However, this summer I had a horrible biking accident wherein I almost ran over a four-year old boy, and in my attempt not to take his life, I ended up taking a few years off of mine. I shredded my left arm and leg, and took a very scary knock to my head that once again reinforced my absolute infatuation with my helmet.

Overall, I was left pretty shaken up.

The utter worst of it all was the fact that my skin was not just a grated mess, but one chock-a-block full of gravel and dirt (beautifully mixed in with my literal blood, sweat, and tears) which meant that as soon as I arrived home I was sent straight to the bath to soak my wounds in epsom salts and self-pity.

And how did I ever endure the full-body sting.

But, strange as it might seem, it was that summer afternoon, spent in that incredibly vulnerable position (there really can be nothing more helpless than sitting nude in the bath, your body a kind of delayed sunset – as it slowly changes colours at different times and paces – wracked with pain, and overcome with astonishment at how life can and should never be taken for granted) that I realized with surprise:

“Wow. This is actually kind of pleasant.”

I didn’t really think much of it until two days ago when I arrived home after a very long and very tiring twenty-five kilometer run into Vancouver. Arriving at Granville Island I was a perfect mixture of happiness, awe, and trepidation. The mercury that day was hovering just above freezing, and I knew that I was probably going to get chilled on my way home, no matter how quickly I made it to transit. Just walking to skytrain I had to keep rubbing my hands on the back of my neck, as I could feel the slow sting of the cold creep into each one of my fingers.

On transit I listened to music and cursed Translink – the one time I had hoped for an extra-heated train car seemed to the one time it would not be available.

When I arrived back in New Westminster I spent the last of my energy reserves to run home, sticking to the sunniest sides of the streets, taking short, quick strides, and hoping that my tired muscles wouldn’t balk at the steep hill that marks the way back to our house.

The only thing I could think of the entire time was the piping hot bath (complete with epsom salts) that I was going to take as soon as I walked through the front door.

Two steps into the living room and I was already disrobing, throwing my sweat (and now frost-ridden) clothes into the laundry basket. I turned on the radio in the kitchen, grabbed a fresh towel from the linen closet, and turned on the faucet.

It was all I could do to not climb in then and there (but the cool porcelain of an un-filled tub would probably have killed me) and I was not about to expire after twenty-five kilometers in my recovery bath.

The water was wonderful, and my time in the tub left me feeling light, limber, and completely rejuvenated for the rest of the day. I slept like a baby that night, and the next day was able to run a fast 5k and bike eight.

So it came to nobody’s surprise (myself being nobody here – call me Odysseus just this once) that after this morning’s fog-ridden, freezing run I found myself once again not only sitting square in my bathtub, but reading at that.

I honestly don’t know what to say.

I guess people really do change.

So to everyone whom I resoundingly ridiculed over the last sixteen years of my (now ended) bathlessness – I apologize, and beg of your forgiveness.

I was wrong.

I embrace bathing (in the context of sitting in a bath, by myself, washing my physical and metaphorical wounds.)

But don’t even try me on hot tubs.

I’ll need another fifteen years to even consider them.

If music be the food of love

Oh hi.

I haven’t written in about six thousand years, and for this I apologize. Profusely.

Please know that as per my other absences of significant length, this here blog was never far from my mind, and in truth I was often struck by ideas and stories that I wished desperately to share, but I just never seemed to be able to glean enough time to just sit down and write.

Over the past three months I have started a new job, run a few races, recorded some radio shows, bicycled many, many kilometers, and repeatedly told myself whilst looking in a mirror “HOLY HELL I REALLY NEED TO DYE THESE ROOTS.”

(Still haven’t done anything about that last item, alas.)

Anyways, what I really want to expand upon at this moment has nothing to do with my brunette self valiantly battling against my bottled blond, and everything to do with music.

Namely, the world-transcending, soul-shaking music that makes us weak-kneed, and wet-eyed. The music that stops you dead in your tracks so that twenty years on you remember the exact moment when you first heard that song.

The music that seemed to save your life, or make your life, and the music that continually gives you life.

The music so perfect that it makes your heart ache with such a sweet melancholy you would swear it was magic.

That music.

A couple of weeks ago I read the awesome “We Oughta Know” by Andrea Warner. Part memoire, part music criticism, it looks at how four Canadian women (Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morisette, Celine Dion, and Shania Twain) dominated the cultural landscape between 1993-1997. It’s a wonderful read – poignant, smart, funny, and incredibly relatable.

For me, reading about Warner’s love for McLachlan was like looking into a mirror (and seeing less roots, and more my tortured fifteen year old self who found so much solace in Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.)

I absolutely loved this album. (Just typing these words seems much too trite a way to sum up how much this collection of songs meant to me.)

Sarah spoke to me like no other artist could.

As a fervent feminist, who was unabashedly unashamed of my budding sexuality (in a world that heatedly contested both of these things) who was also taller, ganglier, and more pimply than an Ent Wife, this music made me feel sane.

It made me feel beautiful.

It make me feel sexy.

And it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

This weekend Marc and I were up at his parent’s cabin on the Sunshine Coast. One of the best things about this place, besides the overwhelming beauty, tranquility, and perfection of the house and its surroundings, is its EPIC record collection.

We’re talking about music ranging from Nana Mouskouri, to the Rolling Stones, to Rod Stewart, to Swiss orchestral folk tunes, and everything else in between.

But the one record that I play the moment I get there (and then multiple times during our stay) is U2’s The Joshua Tree.

I swear on my life this may just be the best album ever recorded.

I feel like crying every time I hear the opening strains of Where the Streets Have No Name. It’s like an automated response buried deep inside of me.

Marc and I spoke at length about the ways in which music is now accessed – how different is in with social media, streaming, and downloading.

About how crazy it would have been to be a teenager in Ireland in the 80s; about what music would have been available, and how it would impact your life and on so many different levels (individually, social-politically, religiously, etc.)

Whereas today, with the internet, everything is available to everyone all of the time.

Gone is that magic of hearing that one song on the radio, and then going out and buying that album, or that tape, or that CD, and then having your mind blown as you discover all of the other tracks that you never even knew existed.

So much of the initial, magic sense of discovery is not only gone – but the mechanisms of it are no longer even in existence.

And I find that weirdly tragic.

The last time I was completely bowled over (soul-shakingly so) by band was when I had the insane opportunity to see Future Islands and Spoon perform at Malkin Bowl here in Vancouver.

Spoon has been one of my favourites (if not my favourite) band for a number of years, but I only really knew Future Islands peripherally.

Without waxing eloquently at lengthy (and sounding completely hyperbolic in my praise) they were hands down the best band I’ve ever seen in concert.

It wasn’t even because of their music – which was brilliant, and fun, and made me dance like a mad woman of the first order.

It was all because of Sam Herring’s insane stage presence.

I have never in my life seen a performer give so much of himself on stage. Watching him was unlike anything I have ever witnessed. It was pure energy and love.

It was madness, and genius, and inspiring as hell.

The next morning I woke up and ran twenty-five kilometers because everything in my body was telling me to go out and partake in something similar. And I did the entire thing singing Seasons in my head. (Half-smiling and half almost-crying.)

(I realize I may have a problem with this crying thing. But I’m okay with it.)

There have been so many other times throughout my life where I have been struck dumb by some amazing song, or brilliant band, or with how intrinsically perfectly a tune has married itself to a life event or milestone.

And I take solace in knowing that this is not strange.

Because music is so much that which shapes our hearts.

It is what makes our love.

It is our heart.

It is love.

Tickling your fantasy

I used to be an incredible literature snob.

Until about the age of twenty-one, I would only read real books.

“Oh me?” I would snottily opine. I’m a real Dostoevsky, Dickens, Austen, and Grass kind of girl.”

I could never understand why my boyfriend – my brilliant, cerebral and completely badass boyfriend (who now happens to be my brilliant, cerebral and completely badass husband) – read so many graphic novels, and books with picture of trolls, and dwarfs, and dragons adorning their covers.

How could he be interested in such stuff?

And despite his best efforts, for the first three years of our courtship I staunchly refused to crack one open.

“Sorry,” I would say. “I’m just not into that stuff.”

“You really have no idea what you’re talking about,” he’d say. “But I’ll wear you down eventually.”

And wear me down he did.

My first “non-book” (oh how wrong was I!), was V for Vendetta by Alan Moore which blew my brain harder than anything that had come before it (and I seriously thought I could ever again undergo anything as soul-shaking as the time I first read Devils and Crime and Punishment.) Next came the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman which I inhaled in about a day and a half, and then Watchmen, and Preacher, and about every other comic series on which I could get my hands.

It took me a little longer still to get into “fantasy” and “science fiction” (oh how I now loathe our need to classify so much brilliant literature as such!), but I finally caved and picked up A Clash of Kings a few months after my twenty-second birthday.

And once again, I underwent a kind of mind-exploding madness.

How could George R. R. Martin write so seamlessly and brilliantly from one character to the next? How could he be so heartless and beautiful all at once? WHY WERE ALL OF THESE PEOPLE SO AWFUL?

After burning through the entire Ice and Fire series (in what was then it’s most current incarnation) it was GAME. ON. The floodgates were opened, and it was nothing but a steady, raucous and ever more passionate ride filled with Bradbury, and Asimov, and Heinlein, and Tolkein, and Guy Gavriel, Scott Card, and Neal Stevenson, and Susanna Clarke, and so many more (and more and more and more!)

And then, ladies and gentlemen, Marc introduced me to one of the most brilliant, gut-busting, world-creating satirists English literature has ever known.

He brought me the world of Terry Pratchett.

This man made me laugh, cry, think, pace, question, believe, and most of all read.

My goodness did I love to get lost in his worlds and read!

To this day, I always know when Marc is (re-)reading a Pratchett book because of the sonorous laughs that all but explode out of him.

He’ll then read the offending passage aloud and we’ll both cry-laugh together. More often than not, we’ll just end up reading entire sections of the book to one another.

These truly are some of my most treasured literary memories.

And so when I found out last Thursday that Mr. Pratchett had died (via Guardian update from my mobile phone) I immediately phoned Marc to tell him the news.

I couldn’t even finish my sentence before collapsing into my tears. I sobbed straight into the receiver, my whole body wracked by a terrible, melancholy palsy.

And then, in the most Pratchett-ian of fashions, I was immediately catapulted back to laughter.

Marc, speaking slowly into the receiver, said, “This – this makes me really, really sad babe. But – unfortunately I have to go. The arborists are here.”

Because, of course, we were having the dead cherry tree removed from our backyard, and yes, at 8:13am on a Thursday morning, the arborists had arrived to facilitate that removal.

I immediately burst out laughing, even though my tears kept streaming steadily down my face.

I cried for the better part of the entire day, and I really don’t think I’ll ever get over the loss of such a brilliant, kind, compassionate, passionate, and life-changing man.

But I know that I, like the world, am so much better off for opening my mind, heart, and soul to his beautiful works, and the zany, madcap brilliance of Ankh-Morpork.

And like Marc before me, I’ll continue to encourage people to read his works.

So that they too might laugh. And cry.

But really mostly laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

These women. These women.

A very happy International Women’s Day to everyone!

This year’s UN Theme is: Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!

I encourage all of you – everyone reading at home, as well as those on transit (or in-transit!); everyone hunkered down, or waking up; everyone navigating this amazingly complicated conundrum of a world we call home – to picture all of the brilliant, powerful, and brave women in your lives.

How have they impacted the world? How have they changed your life?

How do they impact? What do they change?

What makes them extraordinary?

And how do you picture an empowered humanity? What can we all do to ensure that these visions are no longer just visions, but reality?

Here are some of the brilliant, beautiful, and brave women in my life.

My amazing mum Donna, who, as an arbitrator for the federal government, wrote and oversaw many ground breaking decisions in the early 1990s on pay equity and discriminatory labour practices across Canada.

My sisters: Jessi – newly minted red seal chef, business owner, and new mum-extraordinaire; Kate Woznow – dedicated activist, non-profit director, and triathlete.

My sister in-law Mel, who is so very incredibly strong (both on the inside and outside) and who is unflinching in her belief that we can all make impacting strides to better our world.

Her mother, Valerie, valiant and fearless feminist whose work continues to support and inspire academics the world over.

My formidable mother in-law Cheryl, who in light of the discrimination she faced as a teenager after her family immigrated to Vancouver from India in the 1960’s is now one of the greatest champions of multiculturalism I have ever met, and who in 1973 co-founded the The Door Is Open – a drop in centre on the Downtown Eastside, that is still open today at its present location at 255 Dunlevy Avenue, in the heart of East Vancouver.

I would be remiss not to touch on my great aunt in-law, Flo Curle, who was the first of my husband’s family to immigrate from India in the early sixties. A single woman, she moved to Vancouver and sponsored every single member of her family’s residency to Canada.

My sisters in-law Veronica and Vanessa: two women passionately dedicated to our environment and education, as well as the high-seas (Veronica) and circus silks (Vanessa).

My step-mother Susan, who as a conscientious and exasperated American does what she can to move her birth county in positive direction.

To my amazing colleagues at Big Sisters, who fight tooth and nail every day to ensure that young women all across the Lower Mainland have the opportunity to be matched with a life-changing friend and mentor.

My own Little Sister Melissa, with whom I have been matched for almost seven years. This young women has grown into a confident, excited, hard-working young women, who takes the world by storm each and every day.

To my outstanding, heart-bursting friends who transform and deconstruct; who build, breathe, and believe in a better today and even better tomorrow.

And finally, to all of you reading. To every woman who wakes up every day and makes change, kicks butt, loves herself, loves others, smiles brightly, laughs loudly, dances madly, cries freely, jumps blindly, catches discretely – for all who are unapologetically her, and her, and her.

This is for you.