Three Things from Edmonton podcast -- Episode 136: remains, laughter, Blue Rodeo

Once a week I put out a podcast episode chronicling three things that left behind marks of happiness and gratitude. In part to keep the noticing equipment from rusting over completely. If you listen, you are guaranteed to smile. I mean, if you’re not smiling after thing 2, you qualify for a full refund, operators are standing by.

                             

1. Remains 

I have a passing acquaintance with debris and litter. As I pedal through the city I make and then instantly erase a visual catalogue of things blown away or tossed away or lost: pine cones, branches, cigarette butts, lotsa them, busted coffee lids, plastic wrappers, cash register receipts, soiled tissue, dirty string, candy bar wrappers, ketchup packets, feathers, straws, bus transfers, tape, cardboard, napkins, shoes, hats, pants, fragments of shingles, shattered ballpoint pen barrels, balloons, old election candidate signs. I see and then forget pebbles and broken glass and yellowed leaves. There is and there go as I go by bindings, chunks of styrofoam shaped like continents, berries, dented energy drink cans, flattened beer cans, pieces of broken taillights, juice boxes, wire in all positions of torture, yellow and green utility flags, dog poo bags and hockey stick blades. Also: foil, grains of sand, collapsed milk cartons, condom packages, squirrel carcasses, chip bags, Q-Tips, paper towels,  tampons, towels, medical prescription labels, twigs, oil stains, IKEA instructions, Doritos bags, hubcaps, bungee cord hooks, blood, coffee cups, wooden stakes, cigarette packages, recycling bags, Jiffy Pop fry pans, cannabis capsules, lottery tickets, plastic flowers, Amazon packages, coffee cup sleeves, chunks of concrete, hazard tape, price tags, apples, fishing tackle, newspaper, fried chicken bones, shoelaces, greasy fast food cartons, sections of PVC pipe, covid masks and car mats. Bobbing up from this stream of randomness are, every now and then, objects with more meaning. I once found a page of Pygmalion lying on a section of bicycle lane downtown. A crumpled Psalm 33 found me on a service road on 132 Avenue in the north end. I have found vegetables. I have found five-dollar bills, including one, fittingly, in the Laurier neighbourhood. 

Last week my bicycle beachcombing uncovered a real treasure. I was pedalling by a filling station in St. Albert. On the lawn, I saw a page of loose sheet music next to a songbook cover. I wheeled closer and bent down and picked up the errant  sheet. It was a page from Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. The songbook was Bob Dylan Anthology 2. Inside the book, all the pages were gone except one—the final verse of Visions of Johanna, the rapid fire rhymes of which I read out loud right there:

The fiddler he now steps to the road 
He writes everything’s been returned which was owed 
On the back of the fish truck that loads 
While my conscience explodes

Across the score was the print of a dumb grey tire tread. Somewhere in its journey, the page had been stamped by a rolling bicycle tire. Suddenly, I was confronted with the ancient question of how to properly dispose of a body of text. I could hardly leave it exposed on the ground. It would be improper to toss it unceremoniously into a trash bin. I folded it and put it in my pannier. Until I figure out what to do with it, it will stay tucked into the niche of sheet music in a bookshelf in the basement where I’m mixin’ up the medicine. 

2. Laughter 

There is a scene in the movie Run Fatboy Run where the sloppy, messy Gordon character played by Dylan Moran is trying, in his way, to encourage Simon Pegg’s Dennis to eat right, prepare right, and, at least, get a good night’s sleep before a marathon the next morning. Gordon is coaching Dennis. He’s got money on him. Gordon suggests it’s time for carbo loading and then sleep. He prepares a bed for his friend by removing a pile of dirty clothes from the couch. Dennis asks for a pillow. There is no pillow. He uses a pair of jockey briefs as a quilt. This is what the exchange sounds like: 
“And I’m not going to eat this,” Dennis says. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
“Alright, at least let me make your bed for you,” Gordon offers, removing a pile of his dirty clothes from his couch. “Anything else?”
“Have you got a pillow?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I guess I’m fine.”

Moderately funny. Unless you’re Shelagh.

                            

Shelagh, S-H-E-L-A-G-H Shelagh, is pronounced many ways by the many who confront its slightly exotic Irish spelling. She-lag. She-lagga. Shel-gar. Is that right? some ask. A receptionist at the Medicentre was confirming my emergency contact information once and, just, well, rolled the dice with, so your wife’s name is She-lunch? 

The true mispronunciation, and my favourite, is She-laugh.

3. Blue Rodeo 

There is a special part of Cynthia where Keelor sings ‘...we’d put up your tent, watch the stars dance all night and watch that sun comin’ up” while Cuddy adds an ascending “watch that sun comin’ up,” like the sun itself rising. Up there in the nosebleeds, we listened for the notes and words we knew were on their way.  There is a special part in Til I Am Myself Again where Cuddy sings about feeling alone and half-finished and scared and uninspired and angry and then Keelor adds harmony to the line about being myself again, as if somehow another voice completes Cuddy’s I. Up there in the second balcony, section R2, row D, seats 290 and 291, we waited for the “I-I am myself” that we knew was coming.

Blue Rodeo played the Jube last week. The show marked the 30th anniversary of the band’s 5 Days in July record. An Edmonton auditory  jubilee, of sorts. They played the songs in order, like the way we used to listen to music on LPs, knowing which songs came next.

Thanks for being out there, friends. See ya down the road.