Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 61: a proposal, outdoor movies, coming unzipped

 

It’s probably the truth that there’s something wrong with you if there’s nothing wrong with you these days. Making note of three things that made me happy or grateful means only that, as Craig Finn has said, there’s some comfort in the ritual.

Here is this week's Three Things podcast.

1. A proposal

The wind blew and door chimes jingled madly. The wind blew and snow came unfastened in sheets from the street. The giant elm trees in the wind were just giant elm trees in the wind, but they were also, for a second or two, ancient pens, their top branches lashing back and forth like quills chasing turbulent thoughts. All around was wind. A siren rose in the dark. We were in the elements, Auntie Shelagh and I, as we walked down the aisles of snow on 148th Street.

It was cold, this wind with teeth from the north. From the sidewalk, I saw people inside their living rooms. A man with the back of his bald head to the front window sat bathed in the blue pulses of his television. At a dining room table of another house, two adults stood over two children working on a puzzle under a bright chandelier light, crayon artwork on the wall. Across the street, six people stood under pot lights at a kitchen island. We were walking along a museum corridor, glancing into domestic dioramas.

“Do you want to make some hot chocolate when we get home?” Shelagh asked.

An actual mug of hot chocolate at home, with a cold wind outside, is a lovely thing. But those words—just the words—spoken outside while the wind shot tiny darts into my face, those words, the promise of a cup of warmth ahead, brought a deep comfort quite different from the real thing. I do, I said.

2. Outdoor movies

To the list of recordings that changed my life, a list that includes Dylan’s Infidels, Discovery by ELO, the first Boston album and Billy Bragg’s Workers Playtime, I include two albums by Dire Straits: Love over Gold, because it has Telegraph Road and Making Movies, because it contains the song, Skateaway, which contains the line that gives the album its name.

She’s making movies on location/
She don’t know what it means

Skateaway, from 1980, is the story of a woman rollerskater who is fond of weaving in and out of London traffic while listening to the radio on her headphones. The video is what she sees as she moves. The audio is what the DJ plays. Together, sight and sound are remixed into a kind of indie short that she produces, directs, stars in and views—all in the auditorium of her skull. I still listen to the song on the vinyl LP.
I still watch for unexpected movies out there, too, even if they’re not Skateaway calibre.

Like last week walking toward City Hall. To my right, a construction crew behind a stand of black silt fencing worked their shovels. Above and around, music piped from speakers by the skating rink. Sight and sound, what I saw and what I heard, were cut together as I watched and listened. The workers working behind the screen were workers on screen, working to music, almost dancing. It’s delightful to watch shadows in motion wherever they happen. I then did what the Skateaway skater needed Mark Knopfler to do, which was to preserve the scene. On my phone, live on location outdoors, I hit record and made a piece of one-shot cinema. Then I hit the stop button, and came back outside to the other world.

3. Coming slightly unzipped

I have lost my wallet. I’m taking it hard. I am stomping around and pointing out that I always put the wallet next to the key dish in the kitchen and asking, “Why the <beep> does this happen to me?” Which, now that I say it out loud, suggests that none of my torment stems from a lost wallet. I mean, some of it does. It is a hassle to cancel cards. It’s slightly alarming that my identification is out there alone in the malevolent universe. But it’s gone.

What’s not gone are three months of neck pain, three months of not riding my bike. Not gone are about 20 extra pounds that I don’t need and that my jeans, even with the four-way flex denim, will not accept. This is about being out of computer storage again. And about two years of Covid. It’s about the photo of a mother, her two children and a family friend lying dead next to their luggage, slaughtered in a mortar attack in Ukraine. Tetiana, Mykyta and Alisa Perebyinis, and Anatoly Berezhnyi. It’s about Bourdain.

What it all adds up to is a sense that something out there has it in for me, which is to say that I am important enough to make something out there to take notice of and take aim at. So, I lose my wallet, and preserve my position at the centre of things. Wicked deal. But that centre can’t hold. A better idea is to admit that, this time, I didn’t put the wallet next to the key dish in the kitchen. I was sloppy. It’s that simple. Ditch the narrative. Think clearly. Face it. Don’t lie to myself. Be someone who can disagree with himself. Allow dissent. That’s a better dual role than playing someone who pretends to be the singular, angry truth.

Let’s name and find what we’re really looking for. Have a good week.