Here's something for the weekend

She said, "There's something in the woodshed".

"And I can hear it breathing." 

"It's such an eerie feeling, darling".

Daniel Lanois and Emmylou Harris

Daniel Lanois played the Montreal Jazz Festival this year, jangling his guitars in that "U2 circa 1988" soundscape of his. He and Eno produced those famous U2 records of the 80's and I've always wondered whether it was Lanois that created the Edge's sound or vice versa. Anyway, it's a beautiful noise and the concert was fine and all, but initially missing a spark - Lanois is quite understated and there was an absence of personality as he played. Which probably helps in his role as a collaborator, bringing out the best in other performers without getting in the way, but doesn't make for a great gig.

And then he was joined by Emmylou Harris. Her Lanois-produced album "Wrecking Ball" is one of my all time favourites and the reason I was at this show. When she strolled on stage after an hour it was like the sun came out - her voice soaring and swooping over the guitars and rhythm section. The highlight was the long version of Lanois' song "The Maker", the same arrangement as on Harris's Spyboy recording and tour. I've been playing it incessantly in my car every since the concert.

Here is the arrangement of the song with Emmylou and her band Spyboy: Brady Blade on drums (just as he was in Montreal with Lanois), Daryl Johnson on bass, and Buddy Miller playing the Lanois role. Pretty damn great.

Edward Hendrick, Irish Volunteer

Was the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 the key event in the achievement of independence for Ireland? It was not widely supported by the population at the time, but the rough wartime justice meted out by the British Government, especially the execution of the rebellion's leaders, created a surge of sympathy for those who fought and for their cause.

Edward Hendrick, a boot-maker like his father, was an unmarried 36-year-old when he participated in the rising, serving in C company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Under the command of Edward (Ned) Daly the battalion took over the Four Courts on Easter Monday April 24th where Hendrick was assigned to defend the barricades on Church Street. They held out against the British forces until Saturday April 29th when they surrendered.

Daly, the commandant of the battalion, was executed by firing squad on May 4th. Hendrick was interned and sent to prison in England on May 8th, first at Stafford Gaol and then at Frongoch prison camp. He was released at the end of July and returned to Dublin, where he rejoined the Irish Volunteers. He didn't see any further action and thankfully was not involved in the horrors of the Irish civil war of 1922 / 23. Instead in July 1922 he married Margaret Davenport and they had four children over the next decade.

Margaret Davenport and Edward Hendrick in 1921

His health was poor though and the family struggled to make ends meet. He worked as a porter, carrying coal and supplies around a Dublin hospital. The military service pension was meagre, and when in 1944 he was too ill to continue working his young children had to find menial jobs to sustain the family. When he died in 1948, aged 60, the family couldn't afford a proper funeral and he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Edward Hendrick in 1947

Edward Hendrick is my grandfather, my mother's father. I heard the outline of this story from her. Like most schoolboys in 1970's Dublin I believed that Grandad "did his bit for Ireland", but given the small numbers who actually took part in the rising there was a lot of wishful thinking going on. However last year the military pensions board in Ireland put its records on-line and there I found my Granddad - letters in his own hand describing the rising, confirmation of his participation from officers who served with him, his medical records and more.

Granddad died 16 years before I was born but nearly 100 years after the rising he is not forgotten. Here are some of the places where I found information about him:

• Irish Military Archives: Edward Hendrick - records of military service pension
• Irish Census records: Edward Hendrick in the 1901 census records
• Irish Military Archives: Statement of Sean Prendergast describing (in Chapter 10, page 117) his experiences at the Four Courts on Easter Monday and listing (on page 196) the other members of C Company who served with him that day, including Edward Hendrick
• Medals awarded 1916 - 1923 by the Irish Defence Forces. Edward Hendrick was awarded the 1916 Medal and the Service Medal (1917 -1921) with Bar. Here are photos of his medals:

Edward Hendrick's
1916 Medal

Edward Hendrick's
Service Medal

Edward Hendrick, born 1880 (approx.), died May 20th 1948, Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a anam uasal.

Les Trois Soeurs et les trois frères

Les Trois Soeurs par Claude St-Jacques

The centre of the painting is open and empty, a distant blue horizon. On the left, symmetrical trees dot a rich grain field. To the right, the three faceless women, formal as widows, gaze solemnly out of the picture. I love the mystery of these three figures, impassive but daring the viewer to project some meaning on to them.

This picture, Les Trois Soeurs by Claude St-Jacques, hangs in the living room of my Montreal home. On this Autumn evening my three young sons are sleeping softly, loose-limbed and tousled. These women remind me that there's another side to my boys, a sensitive mysterious feminine side (shh - don't tell them!); it's often hidden but it's always there behind their wide eyes. And that far blue horizon is their future, stretched out under a big sky, hopeful, leading to, well, who knows where?

The figures are forever mysterious: just when I think I understand them their expression changes, facelessly. Sometimes I think I know my young sons too; other times less so. And occasionally on their faces I believe I see an expression that says they might know me better than I know them.

On boredom

"Boredom in its pure form is a resource to be cherished, the last great wilderness. It is basically what we've got left now, our shield, our bunker, our lead-lined helmet against the digital tinnitus, the unceasing transactional white noise of modern life. Against all this boredom stands as something cold and still and grey. Nobody has ever tried to sell you boredom. Nobody has ever successfully rebranded, celebrified or generally ruined boredom with money. In spite of which boredom remains an essential component of anything of any value: it is the thing that tells us what isn't boredom, a state out of which all elements of genuine fascination must emerge."

Well that's intelligent and wonderful writing...in a review of a football match!

Listening to my kids this morning I realise from their screams and complaints that they aren't good at dealing with boredom. That's not surprising I suppose - they've spent their summer being kept active and busy in summer camps with little time left to their own devices. I think I'll lock each of them in their room with some books for an hour or two...

In his book "Diary of a Bad Year", J.M. Coetzee recalls Nietsche "Only the higher animals are capable of being bored" and builds on the idea.

"While it may be so that only the higher animals are capable of boredom, man proves himself highest of all by domesticating boredom, giving it a home."

Just so.

On the passing of Seamus Heaney

Sad news today that Seamus Heaney has died at the young age of 74.

He was a wonderful reader of his own works, but although this video isn't one of his better readings I've chosen it here because it was one of his last, recorded in Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais this past June, and it begins with a poem about a musician that could also be about Heaney himself:

For he had gone alone into the island

And brought back the whole thing.

The house throbbed like his full violin. 

So whether he calls it spirit music 

Or not, I don't care. He took it

Out of wind off mid-Atlantic. 

- from The Given Note

The newspapers in Ireland are full of tributes and obituaries today but most seem hastily written and unworthy of their subject - the Irish Times is particularly disappointing. By contrast, The Guardian has a beautiful piece by Colm Tóibín who seemed well prepared with his thoughts and reflections on Heaney.

Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a anam uasal.

More wise words of a 5-year-old

"Dad, you always take the longcut on the lowway!"

- Philou, August 2013

Mad as the mist and snow

Setting the poetry of Yeats to music could be awkward and pretentious, but in Mike Scott's hands the result is spectacular. This is his powerful, earthy performance of "Mad as the mist and snow".

Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands,
Plato stands below,
And here is Tully's open page.
How many years ago
Were you and I unlettered lads
Mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
What makes me shudder so?
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow. 

 --- William Butler Yeats

Dr. John at the Montreal Jazz Festival

Dr. John played at the jazz festival last night and my partner-in-life and I were at the Theatre Maisonneuve to see him.

The good doctor played an entertaining show, ably supported by a tight band featuring an eccentric singing trombone-player who wowed the crowd with her musical and physical shape-throwing. It took a while for the concert to get going and for the band to find its groove; the first few songs felt a bit stilted and tight but after 20 minutes the music was loose, the crowd was swinging and it was hot and steamy. Just like New Orleans I guess.

Leon Russell played support but he shouldn't have bothered. The sound was terrible for his part of the show and he insisted on using a cheesy synthesizer to beat all the subtlety out of his music - it was pathetic. Thankfully Dr. John's show made us forget all about it.

The show finished just after midnight. Outside it was 25 degrees, there was a large crowd enjoying a free jazz show in the quartier des spectacles, the cafes and bars were buzzing. Montreal in the summer - it's hot and it's cool.

It's camping, but not as we knew it

What if you could go camping in the wilds of Canada without the troubles of packing and unpacking, mosquito bites or highway traffic?

Well Parcs Québec has the solution to one of these and we tried it on the long weekend of the Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste. (Warning: don't tell people in the RoC - Rest of Canada - that this holiday is known here as La Fête Nationale du Québec. They won't understand, on many many levels, and could get a tad upset...).

The solution is called Huttopia: you arrive at your camp site and the big family tent is already pitched, with electricity, stove, fridge, dishes and cutlery, a camp fire, indoor and outdoor tables and chairs, mattresses and everything else you could have forgotten. Even a corkscrew. All you have to bring is food and sleeping bags. 

We went to the Parc National de la Jacques-Cartier just outside Quebec City and we had a blast. We hiked for miles, silently crept up to observe a wild moose, bicycled, ate, drank, snored in the fresh forest air, kept on the lookout for black bears, stuffed ourselves with burnt marshmallows and more. 

We discovered too that "OFF" with 25% DEET is a good way of keeping the mosquitoes at bay. And the best way to avoid traffic is to travel on Saturday morning, not Friday night. 

Wise words of a 5-year-old

Two is not a lot, but it's plenty...

                         - Philou, June 2013 

Les Messes Luthériennes de Bach

The chamber choir "La Chapelle de Québec" begged Our Lord for mercy while Les Violons du Roy played the imploring melodies and counter-melodies of Bach.

Kyrie eleison,
Christe eleison,
Kyrie elieson

We in the audience bathed in the glorious sound, though there was a notable lack of begging and imploring amongst us, we comfortably-off classical music aficionados. On a Sunday afternoon in Montreal in the second decade of the 21st century we appreciate the religious culture of 18th century Europe; for most of us  it is our culture, even if we no longer have the faith it was meant to support. I wonder if we will be one of the last generations to have this appreciation - will the words of the Kyrie be literally meaningless to our children?

Interpreting the art of Western Europe depends on recognising the references to that religious culture, though the greatest art also transcends it.

When I look at Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ I am influenced by my Catholic childhood and all cultural baggage (and guilt of course!) that goes with it. What does it change to see this picture as the arrest of a mere revolutionary, a Nazarene Che Guevara?

Anyway the concert was pretty damn good and Les Violons du Roy played to their usual high standard. The four masses are quite different from each other and for me the Mass in G Major (BWV 236) was the highpoint: a beautiful Kyrie to begin with that allowed the choir to show great subtlety and precision, and then the Agnus Dei was a quite breathtaking duet of a combination I'd never heard before: a soprano (Shannon Mercer) and a counter-tenor (Robin Blaze). I'm normally not that keen on counter-tenors but Blaze has a ridiculously pure voice; it inter-wove with Mercer's to heart-aching effect.

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce sous la neige

We're going outside and may be some time...

Any light in the gloom over Ireland?

Late afternoon on Kippure, Wicklow, November 26th 2012.

I took this photo with the crappy camera on my BlackBerry Bold and for some reason it turned out quite well.

Michel Rivard à Dix30

We, my partner-in-life and I, made a trek to the southern suburbs last weekend to see Michel Rivard at Dix30. He's a major figure in Quebec contemporary music, nowadays as a singer-songwriter, but back in the day as a founding member of Beau Dommage. He gave an excellent show, covering a lot of his back catalogue with humorous introductions, and a really tight band that has obviously worked with him for years.

I thought the audience looked quite middle-aged to be at such a show, but my parter-in-life pointed out that I fitted in very well. Quite true I suppose, except that I was the only person in the audience who didn't know the words to his most famous song, "La complainte du phoque en Alaska". I think every Francophone Quebecker knows it off by heart so I'm going to have to get the chorus down at least.

Ça vaut pas la peine
De laisser ceux qu'on aime
Pour aller faire tourner
Des ballons sur son nez
Ça fait rire les enfants
Ça dure jamais longtemps
Ça fait plus rire personne
Quand les enfants sont grands

The good (middle-aged!) people of Brossard appeared to enjoy the concert very much, though they seemed disturbingly sober: the bars in Dix30 were doing little or no business. In fact we were able to get our drinks without having to elbow our way through a crowd or reach in over the bar and roar at a barman for a nanosecond of his attention. You'd be very thirsty at a concert in Dublin if you were that polite!