Zen Canadiana

Funland's Demise

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:21:00 +0000

My colleague Jesse Michaels has written nostalgically about the demise, just this past week, of Toronto's Funland Arcade. His post got me feeling a bit nostalgic myself.

On the face of it, this is a local story, but in its heyday, Funland was a magnet for teens from far and wide. I remember my buddy and I saving up our money one summer in the early eighties to take a trip down to Toronto on the bus from our little village north of Parry Sound. Our destination was simply "Yonge Street," roughly between Queen and Gerrard. It was a legendary place.

That notorious strip included dozens of head-shops, where we spent our summer wages on funky clothes and posters, and ogled the paraphernalia. We never would have dared to buy or bring home any of the bongs, bottles of Rush, Freak Brothers comics, switchblade knives or syringes that gleamed beneath the glass counters, but they formed our impressions of a wild world beyond our woods.

Naturally, we hit the Eaton Centre next - already wearing the weird clothes we'd bought. I remember someone pointing at us on the escalator, saying "check out those break dancers!" We were as surprised as anyone; we thought we were dressed like heavy metal rockers.

And then there was Sam the Record Man, which closed a couple of years before Funland and to a lot more fanfare. These were the days long before the Internet, when a few radio formats dominated the airwaves and when kids from small towns were largely out of the loop. Just having looked through the wares at Sam's would earn us wizard status back home. For we had seen mythic, mystical things: every Led Zeppelin album, including the mysterious Presence - in one place. I bought every one I'd been missing, on tape. I have them still.

Coming out of Sam's my buddy and I got another Yonge Street eye-opener. We'd already seen hookers and hawkers and buskers, dope peddlers, probable pick-pockets and gay men wandering down from Charles Street holding hands. Any one of these sights would have horrified the church-going old-timers back where we were from. But what blew our young minds was the sight of people pouring out of the Dundas subway entrance as a squad of firefighters struggled to get in. Word was that someone had jumped into the path of the subway train.

It was all part of the adventure for us. We sauntered in to Lick's for a famous burger (we knew they were famous because the sign said so) and were treated to the mad chorus of burger-flippers singing out their orders. A great place to rest up and pore over our purchases, Lick's still exists as a chain, but that location was torn down and paved over years ago to make way for Dundas Square.

And now it's Funland going under the axe. I don't know how much money I had left in my pocket by the time we got there on that long-ago day, but I know the blinking, buzzing buzzards of the almighty arcade feasted on my remaining cash. Frogger, Centipede, Digg Dugg, Defender... the video games of a bygone age. That was our last destination of the day before trudging over to Bay Street to catch the milk run bus back to Parry Sound. The pings and boings echoed in my ears on the long ride home up through the farm country north to Barrie, and on into the rock cuts of cottage country all the way back home.

I can't claim the old Yonge Street strip was a glorious place, or that head-shops and arcades were great places for young guys to be hanging around. Still, with the demise of Funland, another small piece of my youth is gone, and it aches just a little bit to see it go.

Beneath the Skin of This Street

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:46:00 +0000

My dad grew up in the house I live in. He's never considered himself a storyteller, but I've treasured every mention of his childhood in the old East End.

Take, for example, brick streets. I grew up scrambling over pink granite boulders among white pines and scrubby oaks up around Parry Sound. So my dad's occasional mention of the milk-wagon pulled by a single horse, clattering over the streets of this neighbourhood has always been an exotic image for me.

I've seen a few red brick streets, elsewhere in the city. But the red bricks of MY street existed only in my dad's stories... until this summer. Thanks to the road crew that's been crunching and grinding for the last few weeks, the asphalt has now been scraped back in a few places. And guess what?

There are bricks beneath the skin of this street! The old street, the street of story and of memory, has been lying underneath the surface this whole time. Funny what you find, when you peel away the layers.

That's my van in the picture, with the canoe on the roof, calling me to some happy adventure among the woods and the waters of the north. But right now, I'm hearing instead the sound of a horse and wagon, and just imagining the feel of a cool glass bottle in my hands.

And I'm still right at home.

Syrup Flavoured

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:12:00 +0000

The syrup at the Parskville Shriners' club Canada Day Pancake Breakfast is syrup flavoured. Which is to say, it's not real maple syrup. No one grumbles on that account, any more than they grumble about the orange-flavoured orange drink, or for that matter, about standing in line for a half an hour to lay down six bucks on the breakfast. Or maybe it's truer to say they might grumble, a bit, but they don't complain. There is general agreement that it's a heck of a deal, for two pancakes hot off the griddle, two sausages, fried frozen potatoes and a whole lot of butter. A grey-haired guy actually spreads the butter for you, carefully, between the pancakes and everything, even if it means slowing down the line a little. And you can have as much syrup as you want.

Plus, it's for charity."Helping the burned and crippled child," the sign says. A dozen or so older gentlemen are really working hard to help that child, or maybe it's children. They had been at it for a couple of hours already, laughing and kidding each other and flipping pancakes by the score, by the time my folks and my kid and my mom's cousin and his wife and I shuffled up to get served. The fellow who plonked our pancakes onto paper plates winked and said he'd lost count after the first six, but I heard later they set a record this year: over four hundred people fed. After all, who doesn't love a pancake breakfast?

By the time we tossed our plates and cups in the garbage there were sirens sounding from up on the main drag, meaning the parade was starting. Even these days, with everything changing the way it is, there's nothing that gets people to turn out like a parade. Except maybe fireworks, but that's later. Even if the parade is sort of... parade flavoured, it is something to see. Even if the clowns are guys some people sort of recognize and the kids don't know how to talk to them. Even if there aren't so many marching bands and there seem to be a whole lot of car dealerships and local politicians. People in the parade, still wave, and throw candy, and people watching the parade, still wave back, and send their kids out into the street to scramble for the treats. And everyone wears red and white, and some wear funny hats with maple leaves on them. I wore my Canadian flag shirt. Why not? After all, who doesn't love the maple leaf?

I liked the guy on the unicycle, and the float full of old railway jiggers and a velocipede. They're trying to get the line running again up to Port Alberni, my mom said, which would be great. I looked fondly at some well-behaved ponies with kid cowgirls on them, and rocked out slightly to the Christian rock band where the one guy had a Gene Simmons wig. I laughed out loud to see the bag boys and cashiers from the Thrifty's store running formations with their shopping carts up the street. They worked hard at that, everybody said so. It really showed. True, my daughter was a little bit bored and it was really hot in the sun and there was way too much space between the floats. Big deal. After all, who doesn't love a parade?

We missed the Legion going by, which is probably just as well, because I always get emotional when I see them marching, but they do tend to give a parade some gravity. Without them it seemed slightly cartoonish, and when I saw one stern-looking old chap with his medals and uniform, walking backward against the flow for some reason, I wondered how he made sense of what he saw. Not to pick on the Shriners - they did such a great job on the breakfast - but a busload of them dressed as shieks pounding drums and honking squawky trumpets while one guy rides a golf cart modified to look like a camel puts a weird spin on Canada Day, for me.

But maybe they don't look that weird to the locals, especially the old-timers, in a place where these things are still sort of familiar. What does look weird to them, is the gang of ~~young~~ geeks carrying a banner reading "Jedi Legion." Ha! There's one dressed as Darth Vader, with a ~~plastic~~ lightsaber and everything! You can scoff, but kudos to ~~him~~ her, because it's got to be bloody hot in the shiny black helmet and cape. There's another one in full-on Tuskan Raider regalia, horns on his head, teeth, turban and all, plus an Obi-Wan Kenobi guy, and they're gone before I can see who the others are. People run out from the crowd to get their pictures taken with Darth Vader, and I get choked up for some odd reason, partly out of relief that the real Legionaire has disappeared by now, but partly also because the Jedi are showing signs of taking this thing seriously. And I have to admit, they make more sense to me than the "sheiks." It's an age thing.

If I find it slightly surreal, imagine how my twelve-year-old daughter feels. We talked about it, after we decided the parade was mostly done and headed off to Starbucks. (My dad said it might not be that busy, because Parksville is more of a Timmie's town). How do you add up the kids from the karate class, kicking in formation; the flatbed with the fake campfire and the guys in the marmot mascot costumes; the giant truck from the concrete-pouring company, the Mountie in red serge with an emtpy holster gabbing on his cell phone off to one side? What would you tell someone from, let's say Spain, for example, is going on here? We both just laughed. You could never explain Canada based on this! And we walked home in the sun, with a stop at the playground, and spent the rest of the day just reading and relaxing in the shade. After all, who doesn't love a day off in the summer time?

But with the benefit of a supper of salmon, new potatoes, fresh green beans and a glass of Niagara white wine, I think I know now how I would explain this to a real stranger. I'd say all this kooky stuff, all the flagwaving and floats and funny behaviour are sort of like syrup flavour. You can't always get the real thing, you know. But this stuff is sweet, and you can have as much as you want, and anyway, it's for a good cause.

Gotta run. The fireworks are about to start. There's a barge out in the bay, and they're blasting Bryan Adams from a tape player somewhere, and everyone from all over is crowded onto the beach to watch the show. After all, who doesn't love fireworks?

Happy Canada Day!

Shh, I'm Sleeping

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:48:00 +0000

The sky was the blue of memory this past weekend, the sun was the gold of good old days.
The rain washed sighs and signs and sins away.
There is a certain heaviness of warmth on the wind that erases care.
I bathed in it, floated on it.

This will be the fortieth summer of my life.

It landed as lightly as a butterfly, all surprise and delight in the late morning on Father's Day.

I laughed in the woods with my daughter. We shared our books and our jokes.
We blinked in the campfire smoke by the Ottawa River.
There was sunshine and brunch on a Sunday.
We have our ways and our days, and they are beautifully perpetual.

I begin to suspect that I came here to dream, and the ones I dream came here to dream too, and they dream me.

I dream you.

Canoe Corporate Video Follies

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:07:00 +0000

The sales and marketing departments at work shot a corporate video highlighting the work of our editorial team at Canoe.ca. As always, some of the best bits were the ones that didn't make the cut.

One thing this blooper reel shows very nicely is the great sense of humour that is a prerequisite for working together so closely.

Here's our team in all its glory - from the cutting room floor!

Alberta Bound!

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:23:00 +0000

Every once in a while my web work sends me out into the real world for a great adventure.

In 2002, I did photo, video and text updates from the jungle for Eco-Challenge: Fiji Islands.

In 2005, I rode the rails as the web guy for Valerie Pringle and "Canada's Greatest Ride."

Last year, I blogged my way across Canada by plane with Phil Keoghan for "No Opportunity Wasted."

This year, I've made my merry way onto the bill at the Canadian Association of Journalists' Conference in Edmonton.

I'll be rubbing elbows with some highly esteemed journalism professionals, and I hope to do my part by sharing some of what I've learned online over the past number of years.

I also anticipate with glee the sweet smell of poplar trees in springtime, and a chance to connect with some of my old missing pieces. I'll keep you posted about that.

Watch the Twitter feed (Blackberry Blossoms) for quick hits from the road.

Was There Ever Such a Spring?

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Live performance at the Red Brick Hotel

Was there ever such a spring?
The robins in the treetops sing,
The water trickles in the creek
The sunshine lights upon my cheek
Just like a butterfly
With wings to fly where you and I
In dreams might dare to soar

From leaf to leaf, the warm breeze
As fair and careless as you please
Like laughter, tickles every tree
Like music, swirls in harmony
As insects hum along
A splendid song, of chords so strong
All nature seems to roar

Wholesome, heartfelt sweet delight
At blue skies burnished sapphire-bright
The warm sun smiles through wisps of cloud
A seagull swoops and whoops aloud
While far below its cries
The echoes rise, of sweet surprise
And lovely laughter's ring

Flutters through the forest fair
On puffs of perfume in the air
Above a fragrant flowered field
Where blushing blossoms bow and yield
To what the wind would do,
Like me to you, in homage to
The wondrous whims of spring.

If This House Could Talk

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, radio producer Peter Stock of CIUT asked me if he could tag along on my walk home from work. He'd heard the story about me living in the home my dad grew up in, and wanted to share some of the sense of history that inspires me on a daily basis.

So Peter joined me on my walk home. We started at my workplace, Canoe.ca.

That's just around the corner from the warehouse my grandfather worked in, which we also visited.

Taking about an hour to do my usual 25 minute walk, we wound up in south Riverdale in the old row house that's been in the family since 1888.

There we chatted about history, family, carpentry, and legacy, occasionally joined by my curious and vocal cat. If you have 8 minutes and 45 seconds, feel free to bend an ear to these snippets from our conversation - mostly about the house - as heard on Take5 one Wednesday morning.

Hope you enjoy it.

Red Brick Hotel: Live Recording!

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:14:00 +0000

Remember all those times I said it was crazy to do a live recording? Me neither!

Tomorrow, the Warehouse Workers are making radio, the newfangled way, in that glorious old watering-hole, The Dominion on Queen.

Raise a pint. Sing a song or two. Enjoy an afternoon excursion to the streets of old Corktown, where streetcars clang and the neighbours say how-do-you-do!

Tape rolls at 3!

The Taste of Victory

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:58:00 +0000

This is a memory of a victory. Like all great memories, it's blurry, and beautiful, and will last a whole lot longer than the moment it recalls. And I want to savour the taste of this one, while it's still fresh.

The moment was yesterday. The setting was Doug Harvey arena in the neighbourhood known as NDG, Montreal. The scene was a championship ringette game between bitter rivals, the fierce and formidable Pointe Claire, and a ragtag bunch of lovable local girls. One of those local girls was my daughter. Like her team-mates, she's a good kid: smart, funny, pretty well-behaved, and really earnest on the ice. You wouldn't call her, or most of the girls natural athletes; rather, they're kids with big hearts and a whole lot of character who have doggedly tried to put the lessons of their parents and coaches into practice on the ice.

Those lessons - about effort, perseverance, patience, fair play - seldom pay off in ways that are obvious to eleven-year-olds, or even to grown-ups. How often does hard work go unrewarded? How frequently does fair play get short shrift? How many times have we seen nice guys finish last? Too many for my comfort, and like many parents, I pass along my lessons with my fingers crossed. Here's hoping it turns out the way we all wish it would be...

And yet yesterday, it really happened. Against a team with all the trappings of success - sharp uniforms, severe discipline, a squad of vocal and determined parents - somehow our girls managed to dig a little deeper. This NDG team that started their season in last place didn't think of themselves as a team of destiny. They just listened to their coaches, turned up for their practices, supported each other on the ice, kept having fun and refused to give up. All the losses they've suffered -and some of them were brutal- couldn't stop them. The stinging early goal by Pointe Claire in this final game wouldn't stop them. Being down by one with 27 seconds left to go didn't stop them.

They kept at it, doggedly refusing to give up the game, as they've consistently done. They potted one more; brought it to a tie; scored two against none in the shootout, and became a legend. A local legend, to be sure: no bigger than the banner that will be raised to the rafters of Doug Harvey arena. But that's pretty big. Big enough never to be forgotten, by anyone who was there to see it.

Let's face it: we grown-ups know that life is long, and hard, and championships are few and far between. Sadly, the rules of living rightly often fail to pay off in obvious ways. Not this time, and not for these girls. This team was coached and managed and mentored with strength, with humour, with commitment, with pride, and with faith. True, these qualities pay dividends -but they do not always produce medals and banners. Medals and banners are really rather rare.

But yesterday, there were medals for every girl on the team, and a banner to raise to the roof. It truly couldn't have happened to a nicer group. When these girls skated that banner around the rink, it might as well have been the Stanley Cup they were hoisting, and for this proud dad, it sure felt like it. Credit Pointe Claire and their coaches for being class acts in defeat: they made an arch of their ringette sticks for our girls to skate beneath as they left the ice victorious. But here's to the girls who won the game. No honour was ever more richly deserved.

There was chocolate cake and cream soda in the snack bar after the game, among the screams and the hugs and the handshakes of kids and adults alike. That was the taste of victory for the girls of the NDG Atom C Ringette Squad. May the memory of that victory always be as sweet!

What God Said

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:43:00 +0000

The trouble with the word of God is that someone is always coming along and messing up the letters, so that the message becomes hard to read, and often harder to understand.

The words on the sign in the photograph might be translated "Bunnies don't lay eggs" or possibly, "You forgot to send your Mom a lily," or even "Give thanks for the weekend off, at least, whatever you may or may not believe about Easter."

Whatever the meaning, it's obviously important, since the words "I meant it" are clear. As for authorship: the signature is unmistakable. And who but God would sign something in God's name?

Soup and Sandwich

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:21:00 +0000

Soup and sandwich. Ask yourself when was the last time you tucked into that classic combination? Was it yesterday or forever ago? Tim Horton's or a Sloppy Joe's diner somewhere?

It was yesterday for me. It was in the midst of the blizzard of the winter of the century (so far) in the old Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Phillips Square in Montreal. The timing could not have been better for stumbling into a fifth-floor department store diner that I'd believed was long gone into history.

I'd first heard about the double-horseshoe woodgrain formica countertop with the bright blue stools way back when I was a university student in Montreal in the early nineties. It was a rumour then, and over the years it became a myth. A lunch counter in the Bay, in this day and age? It got shadowy. It slipped in and out of being real - I went looking for it more than once, and couldn't seem to find it.

What floor was it supposed to be on again? Could it be that loud, plain cafeteria on the seventh I'd investigated only a year ago, a place so uninviting it defied legend? Not possibly. Maybe they'd torn it out and replaced it with an inferior version. That is often the way things go, after all.

Not this time. Yesterday at about 2 pm, feeling peckish and weary after a Secret Excursion into the depths of the underground city on a blustery day with an eleven-year-old spirit guide, a maze of intuitive turns and a long series of escalator rides brought us up to to Boys Wear in the Bay. A sign stuck to the wall with Scotch tape caught my eye: "Soupiere," it said, with an arrow pointing back in time... and there at long last... where it has been forever, apparently, was a little lunch counter dressed up for dinner in bright blue and shiny brown.

We each had a soup and sandwich. They have a fine selection of both and not a whole lot else. I had a coffee and my spirit guide had lemon marangue pie with vanilla ice cream. We ate in the quiet hush of lunch counter patrons everywhere, and walked out into the wind again with full bellies and red cheeks.

People were wandering around lost and lonely, cursing the winter and slipping in the snow. They don't know nothin' about a soup and sandwich, is their problem.

Those poor people.

The Leafs in the Neighbourhood

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:29:00 +0000

Silent movies from Withrow Park, where the Leafs held a practice for a crowd of excited neighbours and school kids.

Click here to see photos of the Leafs outdoor practice!

Marquee Performance

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:11:00 +0000

Details here

See you there!

My Wonderful Affliction

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:36:00 +0000

I 've just finished reading Oliver Sacks' latest book, Musicophilia. Sacks is famous for writing interesting anecdotes about the brilliant and the strange people whose peculiarities and mental anomalies help illuminate the mind for the rest of us.

I've said for years -respectfully and only half-jokingly- that living with music is a bit like managing a disability. I need to accept it, build my life around it, find resources to care for it, manage it, be careful not to overdo it, and all that.

Sacks' writing makes it clear that music, at least for many people, is a kind of disorder, or at least, sometimes goes hand in hand with disorders of the mind. It can moderate other disorders; it can even outlive language and memory. People who can barely remember their most recent moments can sing whole suites of songs from the distant past. It is a poignant fate, that of the constant musical present tense.

In still more horrific cases, people are afflicted with what seems to me the worst disorder of all: the inability to hear or understand music as an emotional vehicle. They just hear sound, stripped of all value, all nuance, all glory. This seems to me an unthinkable state of loss. I would feel like the child victims of those ghastly experiments in the Golden Compass: as if my soul had been torn from me. It is unimaginable.

Reading Musicophilia cast some light on how an ordinary person like me might have wound up possessed by songs, as I have been since my very earliest days. Like people with Williams Syndrome, I have an affinity for music that is out of proportion to my abilities to play it. Knowing that, I've always downplayed my skills as a musician, even as I've laboured at the craft of my many instruments and voice. Yet I realized, reading Musicophilia, that one of my little disorders of the mind is deemed by many to be a rare gift, rarer even than the deftness required to play: I can compose melodies. I always have, and honestly, I thought everybody could. Apparently not.

"Compose" may be too strong a word. I just... hear them. I have since I was a child. And once I hear them, I cannot forget them. I can sing you the melody of the first tune I ever thought of, walking home from the last day of school in Grade 3. I just have to tuck the tunes into rhythmic, rhyming words, and miraculously, those melodies are preserved within them forever for me.

As I've grown as a songwriter, I fancy that I've learned to hone this gift. With regard to space, and to rhythm, I have had to work really diligently to expand my awareness and tune my instincts. That's been as much, or more about listening as about playing. Yet as my ability to handle music has grown, I've developed what Sacks hints is an even rarer facility: I awake in the morning with songs fully composed in my mind. Sometimes, they're just melodies, but if I hum them in the shower or scribble into one of my journals, my morning notions may form a complete song in just moments.

This is not, in my view, composition. That's what "real" musicians and composers do. This is transposition. I don't know where the songs come from, whether they're better or worse than any others, or why they choose me. But I am glad they do. Songs are the true children of my dreams, often of dreams I cannot even recall. They haunt me like the loveliest of ghosts.

To give them life in the light of early day is my musicophilia. It is an act of joyous abundance, the glory of many a morning, and one I always greet with deep grattitude. It is a truly wonderful affliction.

I Resolve To...

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Take trains or transit instead of the car.
Bike or walk wherever and whenever possible.
Avoid pop, candy and salty snacks.
Drink no more than one coffee per day.
Drink less beer.
Eat less meat.
Keep "date night" sacred.
Meditate.
Avoid situations that compromise discipline.
Make constant improvements to the home.
Be there for friends and family.
Camp, hike, and canoe often.
Work at writing, music, and performance.
Avoid over-commitment.
Sleep sufficiently.
Listen well.
Communicate clearly.
Avoid rudeness.
Pet the cat.

I Love My Library

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:26:00 +0000

This my current tag cloud on LibraryThing, to which I've become addicted over the past couple of days:

alcoholism, Americana, Andalusia, art, battle, beowulf, biblical history, bilbo, biosphere, blackthorne, brain, Buddhism, bushido, Can-lit, Canadian, canoe, carnal, Catholicism, characters, Christianity, closure, computers, Confucianism, consciousness, cosmology, criticism, crusades, culture, desertion, dragon, dwarf, elf, Europe, evolution, existentialism, feudalism, France, frodo, gandalf, Golden Age, gollum, graphic novels, Great Lakes, grim, harmony, Hinduism, history, hobbit, ideas, inquisition, internet, Islam, Italy, japan, Judaism, language, legend, literary theory, literature, lost generation, mariko, matrix, meaning, medieval, medieval history, middle-earth, mind, Minnesota, monastic, monk, monster, Moses, mystery, mysticism, myth, narration, non-duality, noosphere, Old Testament, Ontario, pacifism, pentateuch, philology, philosophy, poetry, prairie, pride, psychology, radio, realism, religion, rockwellian, samurai, sensual, sensuality, sexuality, Shaper, shinto, society, Spain, spiritual, spirituality, storytelling, Switzerland, synthesis, terse, theology, theory of art, theory of mind, thought, toranaga, visual art, wa, war, watershed, worldview, writers, writing, zen

I feel as though the wind had just drawn a crude, but clearly identifiable portrait of me in the sand.

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:57:00 +0000

Joy to the world,

May your days be merry and bright, and

God bless us, every one!

See you next year...

David.

By Grace Alone

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:57:00 +0000

It is the season of celebration of the birth of grace. Some sing Jingle Bells. I ponder the darkness in my depths.

For a long time, I've understood the Christian theological precept that we must accept that we are all sinners. Otherwise we're just not being honest. Even Jimmy Carter, practically a saint by my standards, admitted to having lusted in his heart. And that's tame compared to what I've done, in my heart and elsewhere.

It's been harder to grasp why in the Christian faith "by grace alone are we saved". True, believing that's the case is a good preventative for self-righteousness, one of the more insidious of sins in itself. And it's a pretty good way to keep relatively well-behaved people going to church, rather than allowing them to just count on their good behaviour to get them to heaven.

But I've come to realize that grace is the necessary faint-hope clause for those whose sins come to outnumber their good acts. Were there no hope of grace, it would be simple math for these people to conclude that they were bound for hell.

I sadly come to this conclusion having determined that my sins are too numerous.

Grace is a very beautiful word. If I should ever get a sense of what it feels like I am convinced it will be as beautiful as it sounds.

I wonder if it's available a la carte, or if you actually have to buy in to an entire religion to get some?

Songcatching

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:38:00 +0000

I've just finished reading a book called Songcatchers: In Search of the World's Music by Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. He details the immense efforts of the recordists and collectors who, from the very early moments of the gramophone right down to the present day "saved" and distributed so many thousands of what we now call folk songs.

I found it enlightening to note that this most organic traditional music was already "dying" over a hundred years ago. Its life support system was electronic recordings.

Naturally the choices made in promoting and distributing those recordings had a huge effect on perceptions of the various idioms that fall under the catchall title of "folk."

It's interesting to leaf through sheet music in antique stores. The songs of the early 20th century that went from piano to piano in parlour after parlour (to give but one example) have largely been supplanted in our awareness by "authentic folk songs" that in many cases haven't been handed down from person to person, but have been passed along on record and tape. Both sheet music and electronic recordings serve the same purpose, but recordings do it better and the songs on those sheets can't compete. Likewise piano rolls.

Even the massive popularity of the guitar since the fifties has influenced what we want to retroactively call folk now, because we implicitly advance songs that are suited to playing on that ubiquitous instrument. Did you know there used to be a more ukes than guitars in North America? (A situation I would like to see reinstated.)

We also filter our ideas of folk through some of its prime practitioners, many of whom (Lightfoot, Dylan et al) are arguably better classified, at least when singing their own material, as pop singers. In an odd twist, Dylan is now a pioneering DJ on satellite radio; his show is re-awakening awareness of a lot of lost tidbits primarily from recorded culture that in turn represent lost or isolated or forgotten bits of organic culture. And the re-emergence of those kinds of sounds is always intriguing, whether on hi-fidelity satellite broadcast, podcasts, old records, or wherever.

I love listening to old folk recordings from the Maritimes, for example, where people are singing in a churchy style, with none of the vocal influence of gravelly blues, country & western and other "authentic" forms. Today that "straight" style would get you laughed off stage, although it was as authentic as anything else in its time.

You know what's a great folk tradition? Military tattoos. Another one I really miss is barbershop choruses and quartets. My uncles were barbershoppers and they learned everything they knew from mouth to ear. Purely organic. I want to hear a barbershop quartet and a pipe & drum band at a folk festival, but I haven't yet.

When it comes to what gets preserved today, the process of collecting and saving and distributing is being done increasingly online. Thus the Internet is not killing our culture as some people fear; it is a part of our culture. Just like those old Alan Lomax records were. Thanks to YouTube and iTunes I can play a barbershop quartet, a recording made from a Scot Joplin piano roll, an early vaudeville recording of Steven Foster "folk" songs, the Black Watch and the new Bob Dylan record all in a single playlist.

It's folking awesome.

Introducing...

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:56:00 +0000

I recently heard the term "old fashioned email," pointing to the fact that IM and SMS are making this kind of communication as quaint as the long form letter. So I thought I'd seize the moment to tell you a little story, just like in the old days. It's a personal thing.

And then I figured I'd post it to the blog, because it's about time I said something.

I've been making a subtle but significant change in songwriting style since completing "When it Comes to Love" last spring. (As a reminder, that's the John Franklin ballad currently tops in my myspace player)

The music that's pouring out of me now has much less of a rural, rootsy sound, much more of a golden era of radio sound. My touchstones have gone from Gordon Lightfoot & Bruce Springsteen to Garrison Keillor & Guy Lombardo! (I blame the ukulele.)

Truly, though, there's a tenderness to these songs that's really different for me, and it's taken me time to brave the vulnerable places. But great shows in Ottawa and Montreal last month reinforced my feeling that I had to follow the new material wherever it might lead.

So when my friend Brent Mason asked if I'd do a double-bill back home at the Free Times Cafe, I said yes, please. Brent is a great songwriter, storyteller and the godfather of the Saint John scene. It's a pleasure to share a stage with him anytime, anywhere. Especially here.

This gives me the chance to play for a local crowd for the first time in a long time, while the dew is still wet on my wings. I've gathered a little group - Trevor Mills on bass, plus three of the McFlies: Alex Cheung on strings, Steve McNie on keys, and Chris Patheiger on skins - called 'em the Warehouse Workers, and put 'em to work on these new, old-timey songs.

I would really like to see you at this gig, if you're able, and here's what we're offering:

1) A chance to hear a veteran New Brunswick songwriter in a rare Toronto appearance
2) The intriguing musical metamorphosis of David Newland in voice, lyric, groove, and sound
3) A huge happiness quotient. This music makes people smile. It's sentimental stuff. Even the tears will be sweet.

Here endeth my confession, Brent's introduction, our proposition, and your invitation.

I don't know why I'm compelled to share this with you but I think it's because I trust you.

Hope to see you there,

David.

Brent Mason and David Newland
with the Warehouse Workers
Free Times Cafe
320 College Street, Toronto
Sunday Nov 25 - 8:00 PM

Highway of Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:43:00 +0000

As Remembrance Day approaches, I can't help thinking about the signs designating the stretch of highway 401 between Pearson Airport and Trenton Forces Base the "Highway of Heroes".

These are literally signs of the times. The fact that someone would consider it an honour to name the most congested, polluted highway in Canada for "our glorious dead," as they once were known, says a lot about where we are as a nation today. When soldiers die for our way of life - I have no doubt our troops believe they are doing that - I wish we could give them a better symbol of our appreciation, something that actually represents freedom, security, democracy, equality.

Another sign of the times is the lengths we go to today to honour our men and women as individuals. Now, let me make this clear: every death of every soldier matters immensely. And the deaths of dozens of soldiers to date in Afghanistan are not to be understated or ignored. In fact it's probably a great step toward peace that we are so extraordinarily sensitive to individual sacrifice today.

Still, we must remember that in the Second World War, for example, more than one million Canadians served in the forces in some capacity, and of those, sixty-five thousand plus are recorded to have died. More than nine hundred Canadians died at the raid on Dieppe alone.

All over the country, cenotaphs and plaques record the deaths of these soldiers, and we honour their sacrifices every November 11. By comparison, the conflict in Afghanistan is being played out under a microscope. We know the dead in this war, not by their vast numbers, but by their individual names and faces, as seen in the news every time the inevitable happens. And along that fateful Highway of Heroes we greet them, if not actually, then by proxy through the media.

As to the term "hero," it is fair to say that in a general sense, anyone who gives his or her life while serving his country is a hero. Far more heroic than you or I, to be sure. But in previous wars, the title of hero was mostly reserved for those who had gone above and beyond the call of duty. That is, not just more than those of us at home, but more than would ordinarily be expected of a soldier under their unique circumstances. And so storming an enemy position under heavy fire, or stepping into certain danger to rescue a buddy, was deemed heroic, while stepping on a land mine while walking on patrol was tragic.

I know that many of the combat personnel in Afghanistan have done truly heroic things; I also know that everyone who's gone over there is doing something noble. Nevertheless I worry that we're losing some important distinctions; I wonder what our decorated veterans of this, and other wars think about that loss.

A final thought: the number of personnel killed in Afghanistan to date is roughly equivalent to the number of people killed by violent crime in the city of Toronto this year. Is little Ephraim Brown a hero? We would probably agree that he's a victim. Yet all our soldiers have fought and died so that citizens of the world might live in peace and security, without the constant threat of becoming vicitims.

So if we wish to truly honour the sacrifices of our armed forces today, my suggestion is that we do everything in our power - and everything in proportion - to ensure that our Highway of Heroes doesn't run through a City of Victims.

Lest we forget...

Up Down Up

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:27:00 +0000

.one after another the fragments, falling sweetly softly down, edges rounding in the wild descent, sparkle and pulse with the brilliance then the grey dullness, every moment fluid flowing riverine, green-edged, purple-hued down, droplets drip, waves emit, shshstaptaptapshsshhsstaptaptap leaf litter sound, down on the ground the rivulets run, forest floor streamlight skyglow upward, breeze shift gentleflutter butterbug by tree by brook by frog by pond by floatsilver, reflection tune of crricckk crrrickkk, creek, creak sunspeak, birds beak crows croak soaring skward, onward, upward, on, one after another the moments, sailing sweetly swiftly up then falling sweetly softly down down softly sweetly falling down up down.

The Old Vacant Lot

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:28:00 +0000

My dad grew up along the streets of Toronto, in the house I live in now. I grew up in the woods north of Parry Sound, and I had a pretty glossy idea of what my dad's boyhood must have been like. He's not much for telling stories, so I always had to imagine the scenes of his childhood based on a few local clues, and lot of old-timey ideas from comic strips and slapstick movies and battered hardcover books for boys.

The old vacant lot is a perfect example. In my childhood's imagination, a vacant lot was a magical place. You could search for pop bottles to turn in for shiny nickels, build a fort out of worn boards and broken bricks, hang around with a gang of tow-headed young scamps, hide out from a mean, potbellied flatfoot, draw a line in the sand and go toe-to-toe with a freckle-faced bully, distract a growling bulldog with a bit of salami out of your pocket, and so on. And of course, you could play stickball. It seemed to me that kids in vacant lots were practically always playing stickball.

I used to pepper my father with questions about this, fueled by notions born in a bygone era. To my grave disappointment, he denied ever having played stickball in a vacant lot, or been in a dust-up with a bully, or any of those things. He did allow that he once took some pop bottles from behind a store, snuck around the front, and cashed them in with the kindly old man who ran the place. It was true, he once broke his leg tripping into a coal chute and had to miss months of school. But that wasn't mentioned in the books of my boyhood so I never knew what to make of it.

My uncle said my dad didn't even play street hockey with the other guys as a kid; he was too busy studying, trying to make something of himself so he could move out of the neighbourhood. Imagine my disappointment. I myself never played street hockey, but that's because I grew up along a gravel road. Still less did I play stickball. I don't even know what sort of a stick you use to play it.

Just the same, for all these years I've been at least able to count on the vacant lot where my father should have been wasting his boyhood. It's a little ways north of Broadview and Queen, in what used to be the East End of Toronto, and it's a classic.

When I was a boy it was a sandy, gravelly place, a delightfully dangerous place full of broken bricks, and boards with nails through them; gradually it got fenced off, and then weeds grew up. The weeds along the fences eventually became trees, but it always stayed vacant. Except in my mind, of course, where it was always a hotbed of excitement and activity. Not that I ever once even walked across it. But I always imagined what I might have done there, had the times been right.

Well, I took the streetcar past the old vacant lot today. And wouldn't you know it - all of a sudden, there are big yellow machines crawling all over it, and plywood going up around the perimeter. Vacant no more!

They've got some nerve, developing that lot. Don't they know my father and a gang of gap-toothed street urchins used to play stickball there? Why, I swear I remember playing hooky from grammar school myself, and having a peanut scramble with a bunch of ragamuffin pals on the old brick pile instead of studying arithmetic...

Boy, those were the days, eh? All that history. All those memories. The old vacant lot.

What a cryin' shame!

Make Us Truly Thankful?

noreply@blogger.com (David Newland) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:00:00 +0000

I grew up in a family that said grace. It seemed unusual even back then, and I suppose it would be more unusual these days. I was always embarrassed about it when friends came over, and it was the height of mortification to be asked to actually say grace myself if a buddy of mine was sitting at our supper table.

The discomfort has stayed with me - I'll confess in this space that while I silently bless my food to this day, it's only on a rare occasion that I'll say grace for the table. When I do, it's an e. e. cummings poem, and not the Christian blessing I grew up with. I have issues, as they say.

The graces my family said throughout my childhood were simple ones. We kids said "God is great, God is good; Let us thank Him for our food. The grownups said, "Dear Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. Amen." My sister and I would rush through our turns at grace, but I have to hand it to both my parents for uttering theirs with complete sincerity. They do it even now.

For my part, I didn't think much about what either grace meant. Even as a kid I had issues - with the church, and the kind of churchiness that I thought saying grace represented. I just rolled my eyes, or stuck out my tongue at my sister, or fidgeted for a few moments waiting to dig in to the bounty that was laid before me daily.

A few years ago, my elderly aunt was with us for a big family gathering. She's sharp as a tack, with a shrill tongue at times, and not much love for church or churchiness. My mother said her usual humble grace, and we were all about to tuck in when my not-so-sainted aunt shrieked, "Make us truly thankful? MAKE us truly thankful? I've never heard such a thing in my life!"

One of the privileges traditionally accorded the elderly is forbearance. Dear old auntie's rather shocking pronouncement was greeted with a rueful shrug by my mother, mumbles and chuckles of cheerful placation around the table, and that was about it. No one mentioned it again.

I think of it to this day, though. I know what my aunt was getting at: in HER day, she was thinking, when you thanked the Lord, you jolly well WERE thankful, and rightly so. Food was harder to come by. There was hardship and need all around. People strove and struggled and whatever bounty there was, was received with thankfulness that you didn't have to ask the Lord to make you feel.

But I get the meaning of that grace. In fact I'm in complete agreement, after all those years of barely sitting through it. I need to be made thankful. I'm so deeply in need of gratitude that I'd be willing to ask for divine help over it.

I can't tell you how many times I've opened the fridge with a full belly. How frequently I buy things I don't need and will barely have time to use. How I turn on the TV instead of meditating; wander off to the bar instead of engaging in an evening of conversation and contemplation with my spouse; read until all hours at night instead of enjoying the gift of sleep. I'm thankful, alright - for coffee in the morning and for dropping the workload at the front door in the evening.

I can't say I'm truly thankful. I try to be. I try to notice the quality of light in the rising sun, the beauty of the breeze on a bike ride, the joy that beams in my friends and family's faces. I think about the child's grace we used to say, and think about the hesitation: "Let us thank Him" - it's as if we were always just preparing to give thanks. I need some help getting the feeling even now.

At Christmas last year I got asked to say the grace for the gathered clan. I took it seriously. I introduced my trusty, ecumenical e. e. cummings grace and heard my aunt's stage whisper from the other end of the table: "I don't like his poetry!" I grinned. "We hear you, you know," I said. And then I said this:

we thank you god for this most amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky
and for everything
which is natural
which is infinite
which is yes

"That one wasn't so bad," sniffed my aunt.

The bounty is laid before us, while there is hardship and need all around.
Make us truly thankful,
Amen.