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...

 

Salomé Leclerc in Knowlton, Oct 29th 2022

When I was thinking about buying an Epiphone Casino guitar I listened to a lot of musicians who play one. The Beatles, obviously. Thom Yorke in the brilliant garden recording of The Numbers. And Salomé Leclerc who is relatively unknown even in her home province of Québec. She deserves more recognition. Her songs are simple but well-crafted and true, she has a delicate voice, and she plays her guitars with feeling and no little skill.

So when she gave a concert in Knowlton in late October, a short drive from our chalet, we had to be there. 

The crowd at the concert was small but enthusiastic. She was playing a bigger concert in Montreal a few days later so it felt like she was using this gig as a warm-up, but her performance was excellent. Accompanied by just a drummer, José Major, her songs were more alive and powerful than in her recordings, and she introduced them with engaging anecdotes. She's definitely worth seeing live again - and she should seriously consider a live recording.

She toured the exact same concert throughout Québec and France over the past year so this extract from Lyon is a nice reminder of the gig in Knowlton. She's playing her Casino, her one has a Bigsby tremolo which mine doesn't but otherwise they're identical. But I can't quite get the same sound out of mine!

Bernie Lumsden (née Hendrick), 1929 - 2022

 My mother Bernie died on March 11th. My sister gave me the long dreaded 'get on a flight home now' message the day before, and thankfully I made it to the hospital in Dublin to hold her hand for a few hours before she left us.

This is the eulogy I delivered at the end of her funeral mass on March 19th. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.

--

Good morning everyone. It's wonderful that we can all be here today to remember Bernie together, now that the worst of the pandemic restrictions are over. All of her family is here too with a couple of big exceptions: her sister Patty who is in a nursing home and too unwell to be here, and my daughter Emily who was unable to come over from Sweden but I know she's watching on the webcam. (Hi Emily! Hi to everyone who is watching online!).

 

At a Lumsden family moment like this we also remember my cousin, Father Dave Lumsden, who died in the first year of the pandemic when there were very tight restrictions on funeral attendance. He was our guide in these moments and we feel his absence today.

 

I'd like to tell you some things about my Mam and, given that she was energetic and sharp as a tack for her entire 92 and a half years, there are an awful lot of things to choose from.

 

I’ll start with the swimming lessons. Mam taught literally hundreds of people to swim, kids and adults. She believed that everyone should know how to swim, that it was an essential life skill. So, when the pool was built for the boys school on Parnell Road she was disappointed that there were no public lessons. She made an arrangement with the Christian Brothers and booked four hours a week to run lessons for everyone, charging just enough to cover the cost of the rental. She put a lot of work into it for no financial reward for more than 15 years, and long after she'd stopped she'd have people coming up to her in SuperValu to say 'you're Mrs Lumsden aren't you? You taught me to swim when I was a kid!'

 

Mam was a fluent Irish speaker. Not from school of course - she left school at 14 - but with the support of Dad she enrolled in adult education in her late 40's and worked painstakingly to learn vocabulary and master the complicated grammar. When Ita and I were in our rooms doing our homework, Mam would be at the dining room table working on an modh coinníollach or an tuiseal ginideach, words to bring back terrifying memories of Irish grammar lessons at school to many of us! She became completely fluent, she and Dad holidaying every year in the Gaeltacht in County Kerry. At 90 years old she was still toddling off down by the canal on Parnell Road every Monday morning to take the Luas to Dundrum to participate in an Irish conversation group. Mam, born and bred in Dublin with little education, was a proud gaeilgeoir.

 

She was also a published poet, in both English and in Irish. She took part in creative writing classes, and had poems published in the three volumes of the 'Women's Work' collections. Here's a poem about my Dad that was published in the third volume. It's entitled 'Scéal Grá' or 'A Love Story' - I'll read it and then summarise it afterwards for all of us whose Irish is not at Mam's level.

Scéal Grá

Is gnáthduine mé
Coitianta a bhí mo shaol.
Tháinig tú chugam-sa

Thóg tú mo chroi
Thug tú ghrá dom

Gan cheist gan chúis

Uaitse a fuair mé

Saibhreas saoil

Is gnáthduine mé

D'aithrigh tú mo shaol.

 

In the poem Mam says she is a 'gnáthdhuine' - an ordinary person - and that Dad loved her and changed her life. It's true, he did, but I think you'll agree that Bernie Lumsden was far from an ordinary woman.

 

She was an avid traveller. Not just to Tunisia on packaged holidays, though she did that several time with Dad, but ready to venture out and explore different cultures. As a young woman she travelled extensively across post-war Europe with her sister Patty. (In the light of the recent events of Ukraine I should probably call it inter-war Europe, unfortunately.) At almost 80 years old she travelled to Vietnam to visit Ita and her family. Aged 90, her last trip was with me just before the pandemic to see her grand-daughter and two great-granddaughters in Sweden.

 

The pandemic put an end to a lot of her activities of course, but throughout she remained independent, living alone in her house on Parnell Road, keeping up with the news and, of course, with the Formula One. She was a big fan, I took her to the Canadian GP a few times. No doubt this weekend she would have been insisting to me again that Vettel was a better driver than Hamilton. I realise now that she got the last word on that topic!

 

I've been living in Canada for almost fifteen years now, and so my sister Ita and her family did a huge amount for Mam these past few years to help her maintain her independence. So too did her friends, especially Tricia and Tommy, and Sister Ailish and Sister Imelda.

 

The last two months were tough for Mam, moving back and forwards between the hospital and the convalescent home, but given her strength and her willpower Ita and I were sure she would be home again. When I spoke to her last week she was still up-to-date on what all of her grandchildren were doing. The end of her life came too soon, which is a remarkable thing to be able to say about a woman who was almost 93 years old.

There’s a lot more to say about Mam. After the burial in Sutton it'd be great if as many of you as possible came with us to the White Sands Hotel in Portmarnock where we'll remember Mam in the way she'd have loved, with a chat over something to eat and a cup of tea. Thank you.

Mam in her element,
windblown on Inch beach in Kerry, August 2018

 

Wise words of a 13-year-old

‘Winter is the only season that we experience twice in the same year’

    - said Philou as we tramped through the slush this morning

The Brandenburg Concertos

 I'm spoiled. I admit it.

Last night, I was with my partner-in-life at a beautiful old church in downtown Montreal for a performance of Bach's sublime Brandenburg concertos. But, as the music began to resonate around us, my only thought was 'Dammit, the timing is off between the horns and the violins'.

I've been spoiled by regular visits to two of the best symphony orchestras in the world. So now it seems I want perfection every time. 

Thankfully I got over myself by the time we got to the second concerto, and enjoyed listening to some wonderful musicians playing these glorious (and difficult) pieces. 

The Brightening, by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

I 'discovered' Doireann Ní Ghríofa last year during the first months of lockdown when I was reading incessantly. Her book 'A Ghost in the Throat' still haunts me, one of the most compelling voices I've ever heard wandering through the lives of women whose souls are intertwined, centuries apart. So I was delighted to find her video performance of her poem 'The Brightening'. 

    I call it a performance rather than a reading, because like her book it's quite hard to tell where the line is between narrator and narrative. We move seamlessly back and forth from interior to exterior, from past to present. Given the title, 'The Brightening' and the way her west of Ireland accent draws out those long O sounds, I was reminded of these lines by Yeats:

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, 

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

(from Among School Children by W.B.Yeats) 

    In this performance by Ní Ghríofa the dancer and the dance are truly one. I can't say that I understand it all (could you ever say that about a poem?) but the conjunction with Yeats doesn't seem accidental: the image of the grand old house going up in flames feels connected to last days of the old Irish ascendancy of Yeats and Lady Gregory, and just this moment I noticed  that the video was filmed in Coole Park.

    The poem is a response to 'The Planter's Daughter' by Austin Clarke, but whereas the eponymous daughter in that poem is passive and an apologist for her family of planters in the big house, this narrator is strong and subversive and burns the house down. 

    There are so many extraordinary lines and images in the poem, but I'll highlight these:

Ghosts, those flames, racing up the stairs,

sending smoke through slates,

a vast constellation of sparks

to star the dark.

    But listen to her say them for the full effect. The complete text of the poem is available here on the Irish Times website, though the version she performs has evolved a little since that publication.

Wow.

  

Appreciating Paul Robeson

 A few weeks ago we went for dinner at Damas. the celebrated Syrian restaurant on Rue Van Horne. All five of us together, which took some advanced planning by my partner-in-life as the tables at Damas have to be reserved months in advance and the boys like to keep their weekends open. But it all worked out. The food was fabulous and the dishes kept coming until we were beyond stuffed. And the conversation around the table was lively of course.

In the minivan on the way home a discussion (in French) broke out amongst the boys about which of them had the deepest voice. The two older ones said that the music teacher at Stanislas had said they were both baritones, but they thought that P's voice would end up deeper than theirs, though we don't think his has fully broken yet. I asked had they ever heard a real bass singing voice and they said they hadn't. So I had my chance to introduce a little culture in to the proceedings.

My Dad's favourite singer was Paul Robeson. Not that he ever put on a record or anything, but if a song came on the radio he'd say 'ah that's glorious'. So through the wonders of the internet I played this song over the van's speakers, and the boys all loved it. It was the perfect end to a great Sunday evening.