Lake Trousers, innit?

Our chalet is in the township of Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, close to the river Missisquoi, on the shores of Lake Trousers.

Lake Trousers!

I imagine how it was named by an intrepid English explorer and his lackey.

Explorer: I've discovered and named so many majestic mountains, rivers, and inland seas, I would like to grant you the privilege of naming this delightful little lake.

Lackey: Me, m'Lord?

Explorer: You, sirrah! Behold this vista. What does it bring to mind?

Lackey: Well, I dunno really. Looks a bit like a pair of trousers, innit.

Explorer: A pair of trousers?

Lackey: Yeh. I'll call it Lake Trousers then.

Explorer: Are you quite sure, my good man? It doesn't bring to mind the rich bounties of the green and golden summer of this new world? The sweeping wings of a Loon as it thrills through the clear water in pursuit of its prey? Or perhaps, with a little more imagination, the open jaws of a ravenous wolf racing across the windswept ice in the frozen depths of winter?

Lackey: No

Explorer: (sighing) Alright so, Lake Trousers it shall be. Let posterity forgive me.

Lackey: Yay!

Dehors Novembre

Last Friday Martine and I went to see the show Dehors Novembre about the creation of the celebrated album by Les Colocs (almost twenty-five years ago now) and the too brief life and times of Dédé Fortin (pronounced DayDay and not DeeDee - Martine is a bit frustrated at having to correct my prononciation all the time, and I'm a bit frustrated that she has to).

The show was moving and heart-warming. I had joked beforehand that I'd be the only anglophone in the audience and, sure enough, the couple in the seats beside us were stunned to hear my accented French. (Un anglo icitte? Je ne le crois pas!)

Pretty well everyone in Québec knows the song 'Tassez-vous de d'là' and indeed it was a centre-piece of the show, first just spoken to emphasise the lyrics, and then sung in a boisterous finale. But for me the highlight of the evening was the song 'Le Repondeur' - the lyrics are so poetic, and the actor Hubert Proulx playing the role of Dédé was close to tears as he softly sang them.

J'y ai jamais dit "je t'aime" tout court
J'rajoute toujours quelque chose après
C'comme ça qu'on voit si on est en amour
"Je t'aime beaucoup", ça fait moins vrai

Peut-être qu'y neige, peut-être qu'y pleut
L'hiver est même pas sûr de lui
Yé faite comme moé, yé aussi peureux
Dans l'fond, l'hiver, c'est mon ami

At the end we bought the T-shirts, featuring another line from 'Le Repondeur'.

La vie, c'est court, mais c'est long des p'tits boutes

According to an anecdote told on the night, Vander got that line from a homeless man on St. Laurent boulevard, and whenever Dédé passed the man afterwards he'd always give him twenty bucks for the 'droit d'auteur'.

The original album was written and recorded in a chalet in Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, the municipality where our own chalet is located. We'll probably try to find the place in the coming months.

Facebook link to Dehors November: au cours de la création de l'album mythique des Colocs

  

 

What a coincidence?

I'd never heard of the poet Jack Gilbert until he came up for study in a writing class a few weeks ago. He was never particularly well known, published only six or seven collections in his lifetime, and died in 2012. But I was struck by the works we discussed, their earthiness and in-your-face honesty, the courage of the writer.

Then, in a mysterious coincidence, one of his poems was released this month in a moving video on a channel I follow.

Well, of course there's no mystery here, I simply wouldn't have noticed the video before the class.

The Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation releases many wonderful videos on its channel (another example: the Doireann Ní Ghríofa poem I wrote about before) but there are very few subscribers. This venture must be making a big loss given the obvious high cost of the productions. I wonder what's behind it?

Talk to the hand

'Is that an Android or an iPhone?'

He was scruffy, short and gap-toothed, walking toward me across the pedestrian crossing, ignoring the forbidding red hand above me. I was waiting to cross, idly looking at my phone.

'Doesn't matter anyway,' he continued without waiting for a reply. 'They're all the same.' He stopped in front of me, standing on the road as the traffic roared past less than a meter behind him.

'Right,' I managed to say, displaying all the fluency I'd developed in two years of creative writing classes.

'What really matters is the number,' he said.

'Oh?'

'Do you know how to use your camera,' he asked.

'Eh…'

'Come on, are you telling me you don't know how to use your camera?'

'Oh, sure I do, yes.'

'Well take a photo of this.'

He held up his phone. There was a scrap of paper taped to its back with a phone number on it, written in black marker in a shaky hand. 'This is the number you want,' he said with a note of pride.

I felt many pairs of eyes on my back, the crowd of pedestrians behind me waiting for my response. I hesitated. The red hand became a white man and we all spilled on to the road in a rush to cross, flowing around the man as a stream does around a rock, overwhelming it. I heard him sigh loudly then saw him no more.

I should have taken his number. 

RIP Sinéad

I wasn't surprised to hear of Sinéad O'Connor's death - she'd seemed so fragile in recent years - but I was shocked. Almost a week later I still have a feeling of great loss.

For many Irish people of her generation, my generation, she wasn't just a brilliant songwriter and singer. She was one of the first to speak and sing the truth about our country: the abusive Catholic chuch and the patriarchy it enabled, the abandonment of children, the lamentable state of mental health services. She sang from anger and hurt, and out of illness, but she sang so that things might change, and she was one of the catalysts behind the wave of changes for the better that have swept across Ireland these past twenty years.

And how she sang. 

The hymn 'Make me a channel of your peace' is known by every Catholic raised in Ireland. But when Sinéad sang it, the prayer of St. Francis, it was like hearing it for the first time. You realised that you'd been saying these lines without thinking about them, whereas she meant every single word. And she wanted us to mean them too.

She sang it on the Late Late Show after having a makeover for charity (in support of refugees from the former Yugoslavia). It was like being visited by an angel.

 

I never had a conversation with her, though I met her a few times. Outside Dún Laoghaire music school, in the passport line at Dublin airport, and most memorably at a birthday party for one of my sons in the Lambert Puppet Theatre.

I've been playing her music in the kitchen these past days and my sons all light up when they hear 'No Man's Woman', a song we used to listen to on the school run. It's how I'd like to remember her: smart and sassy, the woman who was usually right and always right on, and who made a real difference.

Codladh sámh Sinéad.

P.S. This tribute to Sinéad in The Irish Times by Úna Mullally is perfect. And Fintan O'Toole nails it when he writes that her honesty was 'a curse for her but a blessing for us'.

P.P.S. I think Sinéad would have appreciated the candour of this article by Hannah Jane Parkinson in The Guardian: Sinéad O’Connor showed mental illness as it truly is.

The Red Maple at 1

A few weeks after we bought the chalet Martine won a red maple sapling in a 10K run in Magog. We planted it carefully in a sunlit clearing in the front of the chalet, watered it, put stones and a protective cage around it, and spent the rest of 2022 watching it do absolutely nothing. The snow covered it, and by the time winter finally departed, I thought it was dead. 

But now, suddenly, leaves!

We've had a wonderful first year in Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton and our red maple sapling has made it to its first birthday.

My French is pretty good, but...

Sometimes the order of words in French just wrecks my head. 

After chatting about it with Martine I now understand why it's 'ne me le' and not 'ne le me', but getting this right at conversation speed is still beyond me. Harder even than the subjunctive case!

 Learning a language is a project for life.

The man at Esposito

Grey-bearded and smiling, he was also awkward and gangly, as though his limbs had been transplanted from a taller donor. He was buying two cans of something, soup perhaps, and he asked the cashier for a paper bag. 

She passed it to him. He unfolded it carefully, turned it upside down, and lowered it over his head.

'Oh no, not again,' he cried, with hands as big as dinner plates waving around in mock alarm.

We all looked elsewhere, until he took the bag off his head, packed his two items, and left. Still smiling.

He was a mystery. Our non-reaction felt like a missed opportunity, a minor tragedy.

Montreal life and music

We were at the symphony orchestra last night. 

On our way in the metro, we sat in the seats reserved for non-able-bodied passengers. That always makes me feel uneasy, even when the carriage is half-empty and no-one needs them. Two teenagers in high spirits stood beside us. When we arrived at Place-des-Arts one of them shouted at Martine as we got off the train. 

'Madame!' 

We were startled. He pointed at the floor under the seat where we'd been sitting. 

'Vous avez oublié quelque chose.' 

There was a grubby sweater on the floor, like something a homeless person might wear. 

'Ce n'est pas à moi' said Martine. We turned away, relieved. 'Merci,' added Martine, just as the doors closed behind us. 

In the Place-des-Arts metro station a figure wearing a white animal mask (a white wolf? a husky?) played Beethoven on a violin. Was it someone well known? I once saw a video of Joshua Bell playing in the New York metro, maybe it was him?  People were hurrying to the concert, no-one had time to stop and listen to the free music, though the figure played really well.

The first piece at the concert inside the Maison Symphonique was atonal and strange. 'Il n'y a pas de mélodie' said the elderly woman beside me under her breath. The last part of it was moving, the violins making a sound like water trickling from melting ice, the violinists bowing rapidly while sliding their fretting fingers up and down the neck of their violins. The second piece was a symphony by Sibelius, which flipped the normal sequence by rushing to a huge crescendo at the end of the third movement, while the final movement slipped away as the violins made a sound like a final breath. The third piece was a Chopin concerto played beautifully by a Chinese-Canadian pianist from Montreal, Bruce Liu. 

Returning to the Place-des-Arts metro station we passed a homeless man sitting on the floor by the metro's ticket booth. He had a wide smile for everyone, and an elderly lady dropped a toony in his paper cup.

Exiting the metro At Villa Maria station we passed an elderly man sitting on the floor at the bottom of the escalator. A young guy passing handed him a small Tim Horton's bag and he took out a chocolate donut. 'Thanks man,' he shouted, beaming toothlessly. 'No problem,' replied the young guy. 

Outside it was chilly, normal for mid-April, but it had been unseasonably warm over the weekend and we'd thought that summer had arrived. It hadn't.

P.S. (May 24th) I've seen the masked violinist several times since and gave him five dollars after taking this photo. I don't think it's Johsua Bell...

Muldoonisms

Paul Muldoon speaks the truth in his inimitable style, in a poem published in the Irish Times to marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement:

We think the playwright works in words
when her medium’s largely silence.  

and 

We think the plumber works in lead
when his medium’s mainly water.

Hidden amongst trees

He flew across the road in front of me on huge silent wings. I peered into the forest and, for a moment, I couldn't see him. I gave a low whistle and then he looked right at me.

Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, March 22nd 2023

Irish songs we learned at school

Well I learned them at school in Dublin, but my sons learned them in the car on the way to their French school in Montreal, thanks to the album by John Spillane. I re-discovered the CD last month as I cleared out the car before selling it, and the boys were filled with nostalgia. They still know lots of the words, pronouncing them almost perfectly in imitation of Spillane's Kerry Gaelic, though they've no idea what they mean. They were stunned to learn that 'An Poc ar Buile' was about an angry goat!

Turn up the volume!

They're young men now, no longer boys. And the VW has left us after sixteen Montreal winters of ice salt and potholes.

My new VW GTi in September 2007

When I sold it in January 2023

I feel those sixteen years too.

Reading list

I haven't updated the list of books I've read since a post in August 2021. Here's my reading list for the period September 2021 to December 2022.

Fiction

Barnes, Julian: Levels of Life

Barrett, Colin: Homesickness

Borges, Jorge Luis: Labyrinths

Cusk, Rachel: Second Place

Erskine, Wendy: Dance Move

Galgut, Damon: The Promise

Ishiguro, Kazuo: Klara and the Sun

Jean, Michel: Kukum

Keegan, Clare: Small Things Like These

Magee, Audrey: The Colony

Mansfield, Katherine: Selected Stories

Mitchell, David: The thousand autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Murnane, Gerald: The Plains

Rooney, Sally: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Saramago, José: Blindness

Shafak, Elif: Three daughters of Eve

Tóibín, Colm: The Testament of Mary

Woolf, Virgina / Emre, Merve: The annotated Mrs Dalloway

My top three would be the books by Magee, Mitchell, and Saramago, with honorable mentions for Ishiguro and Tóibín. I didn't get on at all with the book by Murnane, simply finding it dull. The book by Sally Rooney was good, she writes well, but I really don't understand what all the hype is about. The narrator's voice in Rachel Cusk's 'Second Place' got on my nerves a bit, but thinking about it afterwards I sense that was deliberate on Cusk's part and I've resolved to read the book again.

I also read a lot of non-fiction and particularly enjoyed the personal history 'We Don't Know Ourselves' by Fintan O'Toole. His Ireland is also my Ireland, and unfortunately it includes the perverted and sexually abusive Christian Brother we both encountered in Colaiste Chaoimhin, me six years after him.

Poetry Collections

Caldwell, Anne: Alice and the North

Ducker, Christy: Skipper

Mahon, Derek: New Selected Poems

Ní Ghríofa, Doireann: Lies

Ní Ghríofa, Doireann: To Star the Dark

These are all great but the collection by Caldwell was particularly illuminating, showing me possibilities that I hadn't imagined before in a themed sequence of prose poems.

The Magnolia Electric Co.

I've only just discovered Jason Molina. I'm too late. He died ten years ago, in March 2013, from the effects of his long-term alcoholism, while his greatest recording, The Magnolia Electric Co., was released twenty years ago in March 2003. But since I first heard it a few months ago I've been playing it over and over. Musically and lyrically it's almost perfect - Molina had a writer's gift for an arresting image and a voice that made sure you saw it and felt it too.

Long dark blues

Through the static and distance

Long dark blues

A farewell transmission

Long dark blues

Listen.

 

Ainadamar, Opéra de Montréal

I went to this opera without any real idea of what to expect, and I was blown away. 

It was all the more surprising because the last two operas I saw were disappointing. I had found the storytelling to be poor, the pace lurching between way too slow and far too fast, and even though the singing was often very good and the sets extraordinary, the overall effect was dissatisfying.

But in Ainadamar the pace is really well judged. It opens quickly and you have to pay attention as it switches from scenes of the Spanish civil war featuring the poet Lorca, to a performance of one of his plays in Uruguay in the 1960's. The connection between these two is the character Marianna / Margarita, a role superbly acted and sung by Emily Dorn. As we get to know the characters the pace slows so we can feel their feelings, and the ending is just exquisite, long lines of melody and heartbreaking singing.  

The music is a highlight. Each scene has a signature rhythm, sometimes flamenco, in one stunning part the sound of gunshots and rifles reloading brings us through a massacre in the war.

The review in La Presse was very enthusiastic too.

I had been thinking of not going to the opera for a while, but maybe I should change my mind.

The leaf's last dance...