Three Things from Edmonton podcast - episode 67: jazz, first person plural, twitter verse
In the event I want to or have to one day or 20 minutes from now retrace my steps back to happiness and gratitude, I make a record of the three things each week that helped produce those goods. Here is episode 67 of the Three Things podcast.
1. Jazz
Like olives, tomatoes, scotch whisky and basketball, jazz is one of the good things of life that take getting used to. Jazz strikes me as the kind of music most aware of its being built and rebuilt. When I listen to jazz I feel like I have wandered into a workshop where notes are being split and sounds are being hammered out in new ways on the spot by craftspeople. The trumpet, sax, drums and bass are instruments (as in tools) used to make pieces of music. To the brass, ivory, mahogany, maple, birch, polyester, ebony and steel of those implements, musicians add their breath and their touch to make sounds that leave an impression.
I got lucky last week and was invited to sit in on a workshop with a couple of players as they finessed things into shape while Take 5 by the Dave Brubeck Quartet played from the speakers overhead. To my right, Jay was working solo on a complex brake. Kevin was improvising with what he later explained was a cold reset of my chain stays. My beloved Miyata One Thousand touring bicycle was in the shop at Redbike on 88th Avenue, getting new rims and hubs, and I was watching it all come together in real time. Bicycle mechanics work in what’s called “service” or “the repair shop” or just “the back.” Those terms are unsatisfying. It’s a studio. Think about the term “mechanic.” In music, it describes how sound is made to come out of specific instruments. Same thing with bicycle mechanics. Their jam is in configuring steel and aluminum and rubber so that what is exhaled by the likes of me, when, say, I am conducting myself down the MacKinnon Ravine hill, is some version of “wow, so smooth, so cool, let’s get a band of us together and make some tracks.”
2. First person plural
“Where are we, Lionel?”
That is the question that hooked me onto The Cycling Podcast. Where are we, Lionel? was how the cyclist, journalist and author Richard Moore would start an episode of the show, particularly when he, Lionel and Daniel were on the road in France, Italy or Spain, covering the world’s biggest professional bicycle races. That question, Where are we, Lionel?, was Lionel’s cue to describe the location of the podcast recording, where they were in the world at that moment, which, invariably, was a charming bistro hotel terrace or a roadside pub. Lionel would go on to comment on the ornaments of where they were—the lodgings, wine, coffee, weather, cheese. Eventually, they would get back to the race highlights and the strategy of the teams, most of which remained as opaque as curling to me. But I listened for years, still do. I listened because of the trio’s love of the sport and of bicycle culture, but mostly because of the joy the chaps took in each other’s company. I just wanted to hang out with them and have a pint. I was keen to the “we” of the where are we, Lionel?
Where are we? is the question of questions. There are many routine answers. We’re at home or away. In the Pyrenees or the Rockies or at Coffee Outside in Faraone Park. We are on bike or on foot or in a car or on a bus. We’re indoors or outside or online. We’re in France recording a podcast or in Edmonton listening. We’re at dinner or at lunch, at work or on holidays. If we don’t quite know where we are, GPS has the coordinates. There are so many answers to that question, Where are we? that we miss what is obvious. We don’t know where we are.
The most recent episode of The Cycling Podcast was titled “Our friend, Richard Moore.” Moore had died at age 48. What sad, strange, shocking news. I had never come close to meeting or even talking to Richard Moore, but I got to know his voice. It was a reporter’s voice—it put questions like Where are we? out into the world. It was a friend’s voice—it put that question to companions. As if the answer—that we are where we are together along the way—was known before the question was asked. As if we find where we are by the questions we ask each other. Rest in peace, Mr. Moore.
3. Twitter verse
While Elon Musk was plotting to acquire Twitter to save civilization, the poet Mary Pinkoski was writing a verse about the very Edmonton day that Dr. Markland did not, like so many previous years, crash his bike on the obvious-to-everyone-but-the-Doctor spring ice in the MacKinnon Ravine. The poem capped off, so far, a remarkable Twitter thread. The Doc started it with a post after he “rode the icy gauntlet on the gravel bike. Did not die.” He shared a beautiful pic of the trail. His “did not die” coda made Twitter smile. The Doc is a man of science. Life must be tested and confirmed, after all. Next thing we knew, Nadine, who is a graphic designer, joined the conversation after someone had suggested that some merch with the “did not die” fragment would be a good idea.
The Doc remembers: “And within half an hour she’s got a concept and then in another half an hour she sent us a link to her store where the T-shirt is being printed. By the end of the night, I’ve got a T-shirt!”
Mary then wrote and posted her tribute to the Doc and the version of the Whitman life force that animates him. It begins like this:
This is the Twitterverse I enjoy. People putting stuff out there, riffing off each other, going local, saying yes to ideas, finding rhymes, getting the in-concert T-shirt.
Three Things podcast, episode 67: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../three.../id1550538856... [6:27], featuring original music by Brendan McGrath, end bells courtesy one of the most talented metal artists to graduate from O’Leary High School in 1982, Slavo Cech, plus the voices of the Doc and the Poet.
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