Once a week here, I register three things from my little life that left behind signs of happiness and gratitude. Here you go, the U.S. Thanksgiving edition, with some CanCon to bring it home:
1. Taxes, El Paso
The great French essayist Michel de Montaigne established the voice of conscience as humankind’s absolute sovereign. He wrote to the powers that be: “You may impose as heavy and ruinous taxes upon us as you please, but to command us to do shameful and dishonest things, you will lose your time, for it is to no purpose.” Of the causes of sedition, the great English essayist Francis Bacon included, along with advancement of unworthy persons, taxes. Of taxes, the American DJ Bob Dylan, speaking of the Jamaican singer-songwriter Prince Buster, said:
“Like all great artists he was able to turn things that bothered him into three minutes of musical pleasure.”
I was wide awake after midnight listening to Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, the series that explores some of the same heavy things that Montaigne and Bacon wrote about—religion, love, death, time, happiness, war. And about some of the topics that were, frankly, beyond them, like baseball, and the blues, and jazz. And Tulsa, Oklahoma. And El Paso. Each episode is a tour of Dylan’s musical mind, which is a national park. There’s a wonky chronology at play. Dylan is mostly in character, playing a disc jockey from the golden age of radio who is unaware of the music of Bob Dylan, even though he riffs anachronistically on ZZ Top and LL Cool Jay. And, so, when, in Episode 20, titled Musical Map, Dylan sets up the epic western saga El Paso, calling it a song of rare elegance and beauty, praising the guitar figure of Grady Martin, I found myself hoping he’d talk about Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row, which is adorned by the Spanish-style guitar of Charlie McCoy ( I think). Dylan played Marty Robbins, instead, noting the song was, at 4 minutes and 19 seconds, too long for country music radio. I wondered what this Bob Dylan would think of that Bob Dylan’s 11 minute and three second Brownsville Girl.
As a kid, I had trouble sleeping. My companion was a clock radio, the kind where the numbers clicked the death of each minute. I would wait for my favourite songs. El Paso was one. Of his getaway horse, the outlaw couplets I caught a good one/It looked like it could run/Up on its back and away I did ride. How can you sleep when that stuff just comes a-rollin’ in? I was too young then to realize how the pathos of the song builds as the dead singer switches from past tense to present, making for a hopeless, eternal return to Rosa’s Cantina. As a kid, I had trouble sleeping. It helps to recall that fact on the early mornings now when Dylan unties El Paso and sends it tearing through the night.2. 10 minutes
When Sam Baker talks about how to achieve some lightness in life, I pay attention. Baker knows life’s heaviness. So do his characters, like the welder in the song Iron. He drinks when his mind sinks, he drives the snowy, icy road out of Lincoln, hits the ditch and smacks his head in the cab of his truck and sits there dazed, trying to make sense of the gauges on the dashboard. But nothing comes in clear. It’s just static on the radio, and wipers. It is the most vivid description of a vehicle crash in verse that I could never have imagined. Baker’s driver experiences some kind of post-crash conversion. He sees a light. He resolves to change his ways. The road out of Lincoln turns out to be his road to Damascus.
The November edition of Sam Baker’s monthly newsletter dropped into my email last week. Some poetry, some images of his paintings, some upcoming live concert dates. (How cool would it be to go to his show at the Jean Cocteau/Gene Coc-toe Cinema in Santa Fe?!) Also in the newsletter, his musings about creativity.
Here’s the quotation:
“For any of you thinking about your relationship with art, if you can create art, let me say you can. The process of creation is mostly (in my opinion) working every day. It doesn’t matter how much. Ten minutes a day sets a ritual of creativity. Somehow for me those few moments make everything else lighter, easier to carry.”
In the song, Baker’s iron worker carries a lot. There is last night at the bar, there is the drinking and smoking and the not going home. At work, there are the busted welds that make him want to cry. Pulling out of the ditch after his crash, he tosses overboard what he can—the last of the six of beer. When he gets home, there’s a “hell of a fight,” but his wife knows he isn’t lying about the light he says he saw.
In the newsletter, Baker tells his fans that he is, they are, we all are carrying a lot. We are burdened. Write a paragraph, Baker says. Glue words to a page. Draw a tree with a Crayola. Whatever gives you energy, he says. I’m a big fan of Sam Baker. A big fan of his short sentences. And a big fan of an artist who doesn’t paint over the heavy. That makes it easier to know he isn’t lying about the light.
3. Artist’s vision
“Building out of clay is my favourite. I like to build sculptures and sometimes bowls or plates.”
That was Carrie Wheeler in a tribute video to her played on the two giant screens at the Here’s Nina! event last week. Carrie received one of the annual awards handed out to Nina artists. It was her turn to stand on stage at the EXPO Centre and hear the applause.
Here’s Nina! is a brilliant night. Sheri Sommerville and Josh from CTV emcee. The other Josh plays jazz, Colleen Rae sings, Trudy Callahan from Odvod Media says something profound from the mic. Sponsors get their own songs performed live. People pledge $500 to be the patron of a Nina artist. People with more money play the live auction showdown. If you’re lucky, like we were this year, you sit at Jodi's table. From the back wall by the A/V crew, Rona watches it all unfold, according to plan.
It’s not the richest room in the city, but it feels very Edmonton, a place, on this night, to celebrate Carrie, Amynah, Rodney, Mark, Raymond, Brittany and Amber for their work in clay, oils, watercolours, fabric, ink, word, note, dance and pencil crayon.
We watched Stevon and Kayla sing the Louis Armstrong song I’ve heard approximately 10,000 times.This time I heard it as an example of what artists, maybe, do. They see. Then they remember what they saw. And then they make something to see. We, even if it’s just for the time it takes to glance at what they saw, remembered and made, get the makings of a wonderful world.
Thanks for being out there, friends.
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