Ceilidh

This was the cultural summit of my trip, a sit down with 10 fiddlers and one pianist and one bodhran player and another guitarist to bash some Scottish Strathsprays and Reels and Marches to death. By that I mean they play them until it becomes a kind of trance that you can't get out of. It has many similarities to drum circles but not as much to bluegrass or western swing where every instrumentalist gets a chance to solo/improvise. No, there's no improvisation in the Ceilidh because it's hard enough keeping pace with the group. It's like playing the first violin part of a 40 minute symphony in 90 seconds. This explains why I never did get any video of the foot stomping reels because I was trying to ignore the pain in my strumming arm as I struggled to keep up. This also explains why I put the camera on the ground trying to capture the essence of the rhythm as folks tapped their feet and succeeded in capturing nothing by shadows and audio.

The chords of the guitar parts are easy enough if I can see them on paper but this wasn't an option as memorization is key to the folk culture. So, a song begins. I establish the key and then try to harmonize the chord to the melody. It's almost always some variation of I,IV,V with a minor ii thrown in. Or else there is a mixolydian progression of V, VI, V, VI, I, V.

The guitarist praised my ear but I am almost tone deaf when it comes to harmonic and melodic dictation. These were my worst subjects in music school. I can analyze things to death but the natural recognition of notes that go up or down always mystifies me. I convince myself that it's e minor when it is simply G major.

This performance was at Rollies bar west of the ferry terminal along the shore in North Sydney. The musicians, by the looks of them (flip flops, tattered shirts), were amatuers...until they started to play. The music store owner who directed me to the bar was correct in saying this is the "Night Out" for the local pros. If I ever sit down with more talented fiddlers in my life it will be a miracle. When they all started trading CDs with some visiting fiddlers from Denmark I knew I was in the right place.

Fortunately, the guitarist and pianist graciously shouted out chords to keep me in the ballpark. "C...G...CGC...D....G....aminor.....CGC! Now the b section. G....G....GDG...."

Long Way From Home

That's what most Canadians say when they walk around my van while I am laying down reading about Geology or playing the guitar.
"Where's it from?"
"Plate says New Hampshire."
Whistle
"Long way from home."
"I'll say."
"What's that up top?"
"Some kind of exhaust?"
"Must be."
"Not a smoke stack."
"Maybe."
"Stove pipe?"
"Looks like it."
Whistle.

Sometimes, if my back muscles are not throbbing in pain, I get up and introduce myself, give them a tour with my rehearsed, "Excuse the mess, I had to fire the maid." line followed by the story of the wood stove. Maybe they are too polite to argue but everyone has been blown away by it. They see it with their own eyes.
"You don't burn wood in there, do you?"
"Naw, it runs on coal."
After the laughter dies I point to a box of cut driftwood.
Whistle.

"Yep, I sort of wanted to see if it could be done and also I really needed a primitive way to heat the van. So this solved both."

"Marge, come look at this. B'ye here installed a wood stove in he van."
"You don't say. Ooooh. Look at that. We'll lard, Jesus."

It happens at least twice a day.

"Where ya from, b'ye?"
"Well, the van is registered in New Hampshire, so that's where I say I'm from. Truth be told, I have no home."

"Looks cozy enough, eh?"

"It's adequate."

And they nod in amazement and walk away. I return to my book or guitar. Speaking of which, I've got some music to play tonight. I'm in Cape Breton Island music country!

Church Recital

Someone sent this to me from my Battle Harbour days. I can't hear what I'm saying because I have no headphones. Can someone explain to me what I'm doing preaching in an Anglican Church on an island in the Labrador sea?

Ah, now I remember...it's Kipling's epigraph to Dillon Wallace's "Lure of the Labrador Wild"

Here is a clip from the 10 minute saga "Bound Down For Newfoundland." The reason people don't sing these songs in their entirety is because they take forever. The iphone battery probably drained while I was singing.

Disco Fever

The boogie-down diva in St. Louis bought an old record playing/8 track tape console so I'm on the look out for some Nina Simone records but really, the essential music of the LP era is Disco. Nothing says "1976" like polyester and that funky hustle beat that makes you wanna jump on your girl's rainbow striped tank top and do the freaky deaky until the Colombia gold cocaine runs out. My friend likes to dance and Disco can make anyone a dance hero. And about half the $1 records in any thrift store will be Disco related.

Here, I took a chance on a two volume set of original artists (autographed by Sonny) and a set of Disco covers by Canadian Bands of rock songs from 1977. Those will probably be a mistake. And I threw in a songbook of "Far-Out Flute Solos" because it had some Bacharach songs in easy arrangements. Hidden under there is a piano arrangement of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita because I'm super gay.




Amazingly, while sorting through the old $1 records, I stumbled upon the final piece of my Eighties nostalgia puzzle with a mint condition Xanadu album. (Unplayed, I wonder why?) As you may not know, Xanadu and the thematic concept of a paradise both imaginable yet unreachable, is the underlying force of my novel Memorabilia. Xanadu is featured in a poem by Sam Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

Is it just because I'm lonely or does everyone get turned on by the line "But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!"

There's only one thing I think of when I read "deep romantic chasm" or "Pleasure dome"

I would go to http://www.teensluts.com/ right now and satisfy myself but I'm in the library in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. Sigh.

Anyway, my apologies to Coleridge. His intentions were probably never so prurient. So, Xanadu is the brass ring that Oggy tries to reach for in his quest to go back in time to change the outcome of the 1986 World Series. The whole Kubla Khan and magical setting are recreated metaphorically in the Bone Harbour I create with the park by the river when gay men get handjobs and the old stone church where Oggy and Kurt steal money earmarked for an Indian charity and the white fields of winter that cover the green baseball park. Basically, it's an updated version of the poem. I can hear you say, "Oggy, why did you write such a thing? Why did you spend 15 years pondering this puzzle out and inventing a metaphor that no one will ever decipher?" Well, when you are young and full of life you do crazy things... such as write a 700,000 word novel to capture the 1980s decade in the crazed obsessions of one Oggy Bleacher. Needless to say, the book was ahead of its time but can be read here in its unabridged glory.

My point is that Xanadu, the 1980 movie with Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelly's unfortunate last appearance has some pretty catchy tunes and those songs become a kind of unreachable bygone Eden for young Oggy and serve as an inside joke to the whole story. All he wants to do is hear "Xanadu" because that represents his lost youth, the innocence he had before Game 6 of the 1986 World Series taught him the true meaning of heartbreak. And today I stumbled on what has to be one of the few remaining LP records of the soundtrack to that movie in Canada. It's like the wave of 1980 broke and the record washed to the very tip of Nova Scotia but the Cabot Strait was too wide for it to cross and so this is as far as it got. Maybe that's the subject of another novel.

Here is some proper disco songs to make you resent the trashy beats of today. Sometimes good music needs good drugs and early deaths and not skinny chicks like Ke$ha who are packaged like they are druggies but are actually macrobiotic yoga fanatics. Where else but here can you get exposed to Coleridge and Tavares?

P.S. I'm sure the line "When you came, my cup runneth over." refers to wine or something like that.

Boat Head revisited

No video or pictures of the boat crossing as the curse of Ahab returned with high seas and the 4 dimensional shuffle inside my stomach. I sweated it out in the bathroom watching my breakfast of eggs and oatmeal flushed into the Cabot Strait. I didn't think a huge ferry could roll and tumble thusly but the waves were unrelenting. Over and over I sang, "Does any man know where the love of god goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" I wasn't alone this time as passengers were stuffing their breakfasts into the vomit bags all over the boat. The heads were full of green faces and glasses were breaking in the kitchen. I was more sick on the trip from Quirpoon to St. Anthony but since that was the sickest I've ever been or even witnessed (the sailboat captain said he'd never seen anyone as sick in his life. I wondered if there was an award. He said no.) But I got my lesson in crocheting to set me on the path toward folk crafting joys.
Ugh, I still feel the water swaying left, right, forward and down. I need a nap. Enough about me. Raise your hand if you are bored?

Look at this job opportunity in Halifax...

Program Admin Officer I-II (Climate Change) Halifax He/she is also expected to be well informed about international developments on climate change, including climate change agreements Canada has negotiated (Copenhagan Accord) or is proposing to negotiate that will have a bearing on provincial interests. Experience related to the creation, analysis and implementation of business plans will also be considered an asset.
Classification Level: PR 6-10

Salary Range: $40,651 - $58,295

And this is my country...
Americans are like a cult of fat, Flat-Earth nutters to the rest of the world.