Intelligence

 

I adore Nick Rhodes. He’s not my favourite member of Duran Duran—that honour belongs to the father of my unborn children—but in truth I would adore Nick even if he wasn’t in the band. I find him alternately insightful and hilarious. It’s been clear from the beginning that he’s highly intelligent ... but on finding this quote, I was initially compelled to disagree with him.

At first glance, I’d have said that intelligence is often too easily insulted. Intelligence is the scorekeeper, the entity who judges status and determines the hierarchy. Intelligence, if given any authority, can become, depending on one’s nature, nurturing, condescending, patronizing, oppressive, suppressive or, at worst, despotic.

Unless he’s referring to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is less about being right or being in control than it is about being open-minded and accepting of other opinions. Emotional intelligence allows for debate between opposing views, and for proponents of either side to remain friends in the event of a draw. Emotional intelligence ensures that criticism, whether given or received, is less crushing than constructive.

I know intelligent people who wield their smarts like a weapon designed to show their superiority. I know people whose intelligence is applied to fostering their own poor self-esteem. I also know intelligent people who think of themselves less (rather than less of themselves) than they think of others. In any of those categories, only one seems to fit the notion of intelligence being insulted.

So now I think Nick might be right. Intelligence itself is actually a neutral force. Neither proud nor humble, intelligence does not tell us how or where to use it. I’ve been confusing intelligence with ego!

D-oh!

Desert Island Discs

 

Ter and I baked cookies yesterday. Before we started, she declared, “Baking music!” and popped a disc onto the kitchen stereo. Just as I asked what “baking music” was, the first notes of A Charlie Brown Christmas trickled from the speakers.

Well, duh.

Vince Guaraldi’s version of O Tannenbaum never fails to lift my spirits. In fact, every time I hear a track—any track—on the CBC album, I am transported to a tranquil world of joy and beauty that no other album can invoke. Ter often plays it while she’s cooking; I’ll hear it from my room and my whole being relaxes. We even play it in the car, cruising on the mellow notes of a recording we have both loved for-seeming-ever. I can’t explain why; it just is.

Which means it holds the top spot in my trio of “desert island discs”. You know, the perennial conversation-starter about what three albums you’d have if you were stranded on a pile of sand in the south Pacific. Yes, Virginia, a Christmas album is my top pick for indefinite isolation. I never get tired of it. My favourite track is the instrumental of Christmastime is Here, where the piano is played so casually, with such elegance, that it’s easy to picture my beloved Julian at the keyboard (sorry, Vince). And Hark! the Herald Angels almost always begins with Ter and I “loo loo loo-ing” along with the kids. As a twelve track album, it’s crammed with so many pleasant memories and good feelings that packing it past Tahiti is a no-brainer.

The trouble comes with choosing the second and third of my top three discs. Okay, Duran Duran for sure—but which album? Can I cheat and make my own lengthy “best of” playlist? Do home-made discs count, and if so, does a double-disc count as one or two? I might go with Notorious for its jazz-influenced riffs, but I actually prefer 21^st century DD to their earlier work. Even then, I can’t pick a single album because Astronaut, All You Need is Now and Paper Gods are all fabulous. (Red Carpet Massacre is only okay, though as an experiment it was brave attempt by the band to stay relevant.)

Assuming I can settle on a DD album in the second spot, my third choice is probably something by Ludovico Einaudi, whose instrumental work on piano ranges from delicate to epic depending on the track and whether or not an orchestra is involved. Every one of his albums inspires an award-winning story I have yet to write, so again, how do I choose one over the others?

I know, I know. It’s not likely to become an issue. I seriously doubt the island I get stranded on will be wired for sound, but whether it be cookies in the kitchen or sunning on the beach, A Charlie Brown Christmas is definitely music to bake by!

pbs.old

Remember when PBS was the TV station for kindergartners and grandparents? I preferred The Electric Company to Sesame Street (I still love the Muppets, but Big Bird annoyed me right out of the gate) and the documentaries taught me more about the world than my elementary school teachers. As a teenager, I watched Saturday afternoon cooking shows with Mum, and Masterpiece Theatre was a Sunday night staple where I learned about history and literature through British dramas like I Claudius, Elizabeth R and The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

I suppose I’ve always viewed public TV as an educational tool more than entertainment (though, as in the case of MT, combining the two makes superior competition to the offerings of commercial networks). But the musical programming is either highbrow or old hat, certainly not aimed at the original MTV generation of which I am a member.

Ter and I—perhaps snobbishly—have a running joke that we’ll know we’re past our prime when Def Leppard show up on one of those oldies revues we recall from our youth. You know what I mean: the 50s and 60s singers/bands playing to a full-yet-middle-aged crowd in a nostalgic nod to better days, usually broadcast during pledge drives so you know who provides the bulk of their funding.

Music became important to me in the 70s. In the 80s, it was vital. And while our 80s icons continue touring into the 21^st century, there’s a pervading sense that, at some point, they’ll show up on public TV with—let’s just say it—the other has-beens.

One evening Ter asked me if I’ve heard of Duran Duran’s A Diamond in the Mind.

“Yeah, it’s the concert film from the tour for All You Need Is Now,” I replied.

“Have we seen it?”

“We have it.”

Surprised, she looked up. “We do?”

“We do. Why?”

She brandished the program guide she was perusing. “It’s on channel 9 at ten o’clock.”

*THUD*

Ter continued as if I hadn’t blacked out while staying upright. “You say we have it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I went to the DVD library and produced our copy. “It’s on PBS?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yup,” she said. Then she laughed, feigning (?) horror. “Oh, my God, Duran Duran beat the Leps onto PBS! Who saw that coming?”

We fell about with hysterical laughter, but it’s seemingly official. We have become the PBS generation.

Mercury in Retrograde

Though I am a Queen fan, I don’t consider myself to be a Queen fan. Not truly; not like someone who has followed the band from the beginning and has every album they ever made. Nope, I’m what’s known as a casual fan. Queen is featured on my life’s soundtrack, but not the way Duran Duran or Def Leppard are. Queen were red hot when I was a pre-teen, so of course I knew of them. I just didn’t know about them.

My older sister introduced me to them simply by asking one night in 1973 if I’d heard the song with the opera chops on our Top 40 radio station. I hadn’t, but since I shared a room with both sisters and my elder tended to switch on the radio when she came to bed after the wee ʼun and me, it was inevitable that I would hear “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

It took me years to figure out that the band responsible for those opera chops was the same band who’d done “Killer Queen” (which I actually liked better), and whose name was—huh?—Queen. They were strange and wonderful and Elton John was my favourite artist at the time, so while I couldn’t help but be aware of Queen, I owned none of their albums and bought none of their singles. I just liked it when I heard them on the radio.

“Somebody to Love”

“You’re My Best Friend”

“Bicycle Race”

Freddie Mercury’s voice was captivating in that one-in-a-million manner; you knew it when you heard it, and the things he did with it were remarkable. I had no idea what he or his colleagues looked like because rock videos as we know them didn’t exist in the 1970s. I only knew their sound. Since I was a kid who collected Elton and America albums, over-overdubbed Queen was apparently not going to win space in my record collection.

Which was okay. I had to mature before I could fully appreciate the intricacies and nuances of both the music and the vocals. Maybe they had to strip their sound, too, because the first Queen album I bought was The Game, featuring lots of bass and Freddie’s off the cuff delivery of “Another One Bites the Dust”. Then, the 80s happened. I became a young adult as Queen’s star began its descent, due in part (so legend has it) to the video for “I Want to Break Free” but probably more because they were an older band and the new wave was happening.

That’s why I didn’t take particular notice of their iconic Live Aid performance on July 13, 1985: I was waiting to see Duran Duran. When I heard a few years later that Freddie was ill, I was saddened by the prospect of the world losing such a charismatic talent. Freddie was more than a rock singer. He was a rock star.

When he died in 1991, I fell in line with industry marketing and bought up the collections. Classic Queen I, Classic Queen II, Queen’s Greatest Hits – and the utterly fabulous, my hands-down favourite, Innuendo. I guess when he learned his time was limited, Fred threw himself into recording as many tracks as he could, and he didn’t hold back. His work on that album is wrenching. Powerful. Tender. Funny. Courageous. Wistful.

Magical.

It seems timely to say all this now, after the much-hyped movie’s success and the Academy Award going to the actor who portrayed him in it. I may not have been present in Queen’s heyday, but I’m grateful for the technological marvels that enable me to catch up on what I missed the first, and even the second, time around. Thanks to Bohemian Rhapsody and Rami Malek’s stunning performance, Queen and Freddie Mercury have come around again.

Long—live—Queen.

The Best of Times

Remember the good old days? Your first car, your first love, your first real job? The days when you were part of a posse? When every weekend was spent at the movies and you couldn’t wait for the new (insert artist here) album? When you got by on three hours of sleep because life was so fresh and vibrant that sleep was an inconvenience?

I came of age in the 1980s. That’s when I hooked up with Ter, we got our own place, and I got my first loan to buy Blue Thunder. I spent one summer in Europe. I discovered Sting and Duran Duran. I had a good government job and a kinda sorta boyfriend (and that’s the last you’ll hear of that, ever). I dabbled with vampires and wrote a fictional band biography because there was no reason not to. I not only ran with the cool crowd, I was one of the executive. So many good memories were born in those years. Some painful ones, too, but whatever. For me, the 80s were all about growing up and growing out, leaving kidhood behind and becoming an adult. I spent them figuring out who I was, and I had so much fun doing it that I still perceive the 80s through rosy lenses, as expertly polished as the slickest Bryan Ferry tune.

So imagine the surprise when I saw a recent documentary about the state of the world during my glory days. The Falkland War. The cold war. The drought in Ethiopia. Reaganomics. The threatened rainforest. AIDS. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The Challenger explosion. Ted Bundy.

I was living la vida loca and the world was in chaos.

“Surprise” isn’t the right word. I knew about these things on a peripheral level, but they didn’t affect me at the time. Despite the world going crazy around me, those years remain among the happiest of my entire life. Oblivious years? Self-absorbed years? Or just years spent in pursuit of myself, the shaping of the woman I was destined to become?

My point? Those times were not the best because of what was happening around me. They were the best because of what was happening within me. Consider the best years of your life. Think about what happened to make them so, then look outward to what the world was going through at the same time. I bet it was as nutty, as tumultuous and uncertain and just plain scary, as it is now. If so, then I suggest that the “good old days” we old folks long for had little to do with the state of the world and everything to do with where we were as individuals. The 1980s were not as golden as I’ve always believed. Neither were the 50s, 60s, or 70s, though I’m sure lots of people remember them as fondly.

My second favourite Styx song is called TheBest of Times. I heard it on the oldies (!!) station a few days ago, and I smiled because the sentiment is as relevant today as it was thirtysome years ago:

The headlines read these are the worst of times

I do believe it’s true

I feel so helpless, like a boat against the tide

I wish the summer winds could bring back paradise

But I know, when the world turns upside down

Baby I know, you’ll always be around

The best of times

Are when I’m alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We’ll make this a world for two

Those memories of yesterday will last a lifetime

We’ll take the best, forget the rest, and someday we’ll find

These are the best of times

With love,

John the Divine

The father of my unborn children is playing in Vancouver tonight. Ter asked me if I wanted to go—the timing was right to make it a fab birthday gift—but after the briefest hiccup when my heart rate spiked, I reluctantly declined.

Of course I’d love to see the band. They’re my all time good time band, and Nile Rodgers is opening for them, but I’ve reached the stage where the peripheral hassles of a concert in Vancouver exceed the joy of being there. Paying the ransom to get off the rock, finding a hotel at the height of gouging season, fighting big city traffic—ugh. The adventure is no longer fun.

Besides, last time the boys were in town, I almost got into a fistfight with the twit beside me. She and her string of stupid girlfriends kept tripping to the washroom during the show, resulting in an increased flailing that finally obscured so much of my sightline I had to elbow her out of the way. I won that one, but the residual remorse of being pushed that far has lingered. I didn’t regret the elbow. I regretted that it was necessary. And if any band is going to attract a gaggle of stupid girls, it’s Duran Duran.

So tonight, I’m running a concert DVD (not sure which one yet; I have most of them) while they play live across the strait. Tomorrow, I’ll pull the set list off the internet and burn a CD of it so I’ll have the recorded version—not live, but close enough—of the gig. In time, one hopes, some form of the tour will be released on DVD and I’ll add it to the collection. It’ll be worth having because one thing is certain: they will play songs from their most recent album, sprinkled among classics arranged in new ways. I’ve always said the cool thing about a Duran Duran concert is that you know what you’re going to get, just not how you’re going to get it.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, John told the story of remarking to Nick Rhodes that none of the current Top Ten features a conventional bass, to which Rhodes drolly replied, “Let me introduce you to the (something or other) synthesizer.” The same sort of thing occurred in 2007, when they hired Timbaland and Nate Hill to produce Red Carpet Massacre—these guys are known for running bass samples through a synthesizer, so JT came to work on the first day and had to ask the question: “Hey, what am I going to do on this record?” Genius that he is, he figured it out. His instinct has made him one of the best players in the biz (no bias here!), so the bass on RCM does more than set the rhythm. It’s actually part of the melody.

He loves his bass guitars, but he has embraced the new technology and now plays a synth bass for a few tracks onstage. I know: I saw it myself in 2007, after I slammed the girl next door back into her seat.

I Got the Music in Me

They say that the printing press was the most important invention in history. If this is so, then the advent of recorded music must be a close second.

Ter and I met in 1982. Our mutual musical history began then, with Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Tears For Fears, Michael Jackson, and a host of others. When we tune into the 80s music channel, almost every song conjures a memory that starts with one of us saying, “Do you remember …?” We laugh and reminisce and wonder whatever became of So-and-So when it seemed at the time that we would always be in touch with our friends. Good times, bad times, hard times, doesn’t matter which. Pick a song and we are transported instantly into our shared past.

Tune into the 70s channel, however, and we have discovered buried treasure. Music was less homogenized back then. Folk rubbed with rock, disco dropped in, and pop was often schlock, but everything got airtime because radio had yet to become “formatted.” It was fun, even though I was battling my bones and Ter was in her turbulent teens during most of the decade. We didn’t know each other then. One had no idea that the other existed, in fact, or that the scene was being set for the destiny point when our paths would cross and the adventure would begin.

We hit the 70s channel one night, just because. Oh, we laughed. We laughed … and then the memories surfaced. Not mutual ones, of course, but the fossilized ones unearthed by songs we heard while growing up in our separate worlds. “These Eyes” is her favourite Guess Who tune. “No Time” is mine—but she and I both remember the pink and orange label on the old 45, even if neither of us could name the company that owned it. The 70s channel inspired a different question from the 80s. Instead of “Do you remember?”, one of us asked, “Where were you?” and wow, we had a blast bringing each other up to speed.

I generally stream my silly jazz station at work. With thirty channels to choose from, there’s always something to fit my mood. My membership, however, also covers jazzradio.com’s sister station, radiotunes.com, which features a gazillion channels spanning pretty much every genre in existence. Last Friday, for the heck of it, I picked the Oldies, and O-M-G, everything they played dated from my elementary school years or earlier! It was the perfect playlist to file by!

So, whether at work, at home, or somewhere in between, music has proven critical to my existence. It fires up my imagination and grounds me at the same time. Of course I appreciate the value of the printing press—what writer wouldn’t?—but if I had to choose between TV and my stereo …

Playday

Well, it’s been interesting. Back to work with fresh resolve, and did I write a word worth reading since my last post?

Nope.

Cleverly, I scheduled a four day workweek to ease myself back into the daily grind, and no matter how much I may enjoy my colleagues and parts of my job, it is most definitely a grind. I did, however, take a few minutes to draw a bunch of balloons on my 2016 bulletin board. Balloons appear to be a theme with me at present. They’re bright and cheerful – like ice cream and Duran Duran, they elicit an immediate smile. It’s hard to be crabby when I’m smiling.

Today is my day off, and I’m unsure precisely how to spend it. Reading? Writing? Colouring? All of the above? One thing is clear: after a few days in work mode, my creative self needs nurturing before it can create. It requires time, the way Blue Silver’s carburetor required time to warm up before I hit the road in winter.

Hey, good analogy, Ru!

So, the day will be spent quietly and probably in the Ocean Room, with tea, my books (colouring and otherwise) and the Downton Abbey soundtrack, until I have to leave for my chiro appointment this afternoon. If writing happens, I’ll go for it, but I’m not pushing the Muse. I’ll just let her know that I’m available and see if she wants to meet up sometime this weekend.

I was reminded of an important truth last week:

“The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.”

Thank the gods for Mr. Spock.

With love,

The Day After

My desk calendar is hardly a forward thinker. It features no Buddhist wisdom or Zen images. Every quote is taken from A Song of Ice and Fire—I might be sour on the TV show, but I remain a loyal fan of the novels. Sometimes the saying is relevant, sometimes not, and it doesn’t really matter beyond the date. Each morning, I tear away the previous day’s page and flip it over to see the bonus feature. Mazes, word searches, sudoku puzzles, household hints, terrible puns, and the dumbest feature of all: the unknown holiday.

This would be a genuine bonus if it appeared on the back of the page before the date. Among other gems, I have missed Ice Cream Day, Name Your Car Day, Do Nothing Day, and the worst omission of all—Book Lover’s Day. This bibliophilic nod falls on August 10, but I didn’t know about it until August 11.

That August 10 also happened to be Duran Duran Appreciation Day is of little comfort. I am a ferocious book lover, perhaps even more than I am a Durannie, and while one might argue that every day can be Book Lover’s Day, it struck me as absurd that the notification was placed so as to be missed until after the occasion.

Doof.

The main purpose of a calendar, I believe, is to mark special dates ahead of time … though I recall a friend’s amusement at the notion of a Zen calendar. “A timeless watch,” he said quietly, poking fun with love at an attempt to incorporate some serenity into a crazy environment.

I’m a Virgo and it’s cheating to turn a page before the one you’re on is finished. I suppose it would be worse if the surprise holidays were statutory days off, but I’d have enjoyed the excuse to hit the ice cream shop on that day back in July … if I’d known about it at the time.

As the Crow Sings

My music collection has been pared back a few times over the years, but staples remain firmly in place. Duran and Def Leppard, Alan Parsons and David Usher, Sarah McLachlan and Sting figure prominently in that I’ll buy anything and everything they put on the market—sometimes more than once. While de-cluttering for our first residential move in seventeen years, Ter and I discovered no fewer than four cassette tapes of Seven and the Ragged Tiger; a true puzzlement considering that we owned no more than two cassette players in 1987. I’ve grown up a little since then. When the re-mastered special edition was released a few years ago, I sent my original CD of the same album to the used disc shop because, pfft, who needs two?

I recall an interview wherein the father of my unborn children discussed his album collection. Of course he doesn’t listen to everything every day; with any extensive collection, who has the time? But once in a while, he pulls out vintage Bowie or Roxy, gives the LP a spin, then puts it back in the cellar to be enjoyed, like a fine wine, a few more years down the road.

I went on an Alan Parsons bender last year. I just lay on the couch and remembered why I love the Project’s work so much. More recently, the Leppards were trotted out to prep for their tour and, boy, was it fun rocking out to X and Yeah! With Paper Gods due for release in September, Duran is resurfacing on my playlist to reacquaint me with their more recent work (Astronaut is truly brilliant, and not just because it features the Original Five). And, for some reason, last week I began looping my favourite track of Sheryl Crow’s extensive catalogue, so I pulled her CDs on Sunday to remind myself why I liked her so much back in the day.

Actually, it’s a bit of a mystery because she borders on country with her syrupy drawl and penchant for steel guitar, but I bought her first album in 1993 and didn’t stop until Detours in 2008. She played Victoria on that tour; by then she had enough ammo to play a greatest hits set, so of course I went to see her. Great show, lame crowd. I couldn’t tell if I was in an audience or an oil painting. Oddly, I can’t remember if she played The Difficult Kind; I think she did, but nothing beats the album version off The Globe Sessions … currently in heavy rotation on my turntable. This live version got good reviews, though, so please ...

Enjoy.

LeBon Homie

With John Taylor’s birthday as an excuse, I pulled out a couple of Duran Duran albums to play over the weekend. I could have gone, like, totally retro and played Rio, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, or even the jazz/funk Notorious and been happy, but I chose Astronaut—otherwise known as “The Original Five Reunion Album”. For one thing, any of JT’s killer basslines sound fa-boo-lus on the Tiguan’s kickass stereo, and for another, well, the twisted wordsmith in me has always loved Simon LeBon’s way with a lyric and he wrote a couple of dandies when O5 got back together in 2005.

I’ve always considered him to be a poet rather than a lyricist, and while I admit that his distinctive vocal style (some call it “whiny”) can be annoying, he’s a master at using his voice to convey the mood of the song. He once said that his job as a poet is to knock holes in the wall between the conscious and the subconscious without breaching said wall. That way, the darker aspects of human nature are allowed to leak into the light and be dispelled in relative safety. He can write hit radio candy, but from the beginning of the band’s career, his lyrics often took the typical “boy wants girl” theme to a deeper, more contemplative place. As he progressed, his scope naturally widened to reflect social issues and a more mature attitude to romance, but he never lost his ability to have fun.

I can’t pick a favourite track from Astronaut—there are too many goodies in the bag—but I truly love “Bedroom Toys”. It’s a weird, warped lyric in keeping with DD’s renowned love of “artistic smut”, and SLB sings it with a genuinely playful humour. I laughed out loud when I first heard it and even now, ten years later, it’s worth cranking up and singing along.

DD is and has been my all time feel good band; I cannot be depressed when listening to them, for which I am eternally grateful. Paper Gods, their 14^th studio album, is due for release in September—too late to be a birthday present, alas—and as devoted as I am to the bass player, I am eagerly anticipating what SLB brings to this party.

Guns and the F-Bomb

That was Rob Thurman’s answer when she was asked why she chose the urban fantasy genre for her novels. “Guns and the f-bomb,” she said. She loves guns, and UF allows for flagrant cursing which, if your hero is consistently targeted by the same monsters he’s been hired to kill, is a justifiable offense.

I don’t know much about guns—my nephew is my go-to guy when I need weapons advice—but I learned how to cuss in earnest while working the night shift at a local radio station twentysome years ago. That said, my desire to write within the genre has more to do with bending the rules than unleashing my inner foul-mouthed schnook. It’s a place where I can explore alternate realities and meet wondrous characters who aren’t human, yet who face similarly human dilemmas.

My plan today was to walk straight home from the village after Ter dropped me off, getting my flânerie in early and snapping a few pictures on the way. No Asian Mist, no journaling; just a walk in the sun while I sorted the next scene in Calista’s story.

Problem is and as usual, another story is surfacing. It’s one that I’ve glimpsed in hints like shadows in a dark corner but haven’t been able to see full-on. Some details have begun to present themselves, so I grabbed my scribbly journal and a fiver, then sat at Moka House to purge my head of the voices. (The drink in the pic is an apple pie carmello and, no, I won’t be doing one again. Too sweet.)

I got a bunch of stuff on paper, including the lyrics to a Durannie B-side called Secret Oktober because the song has long intrigued me and I think may have inspired some structure for this tale. I’ve got two characters, a premise, and a beginning—what comes afterward is still in the dark. As with most of my stories, it will develop as it’s written and that’s okay. I watched an interview with the creators of Orphan Black—you’d think a story about clones would have started as a story about clones, but it didn’t. One guy said to the other, “What if you saw your identical twin just before he stepped in front of a train?” Now they’re two seasons in and a third has been ordered … but I digress.

The opening scene of this latest is so vivid in my mind that it has to be written before I can do anything more with anyone else, so that’s my plan for the morning. Two more episodes of OB and some domestic stuff is on tap for the afternoon, and it’s already 9:30 so I’d better get it in gear.

Who has time for a day job???

Man of the Hour

Who loves ya, baby?

Not sure which hour, precisely, though my faulty memory seems to recall a teen magazine reporting that he was born around 6:30 in the morning of June 20, 1960. By the time he reads this (as if), he’ll officially be 54 years old ... and still ticking. Still hot, still inspiring, still gorgeous, still my muse, still the god of my idolatry.

He was not, however, my first. That dubious honour falls on David Cassidy when I was ten, who was succeeded four years later by Michael York, who reigned supreme until that fateful day in 1985 when Ter spied JT’s face on the cover of Star Hits magazine.

Yeah, the bass god has pretty well wrecked me. Though I dabble with other lookers, I always come back to him.

I owe him an ode, but after a crazy workweek, words have finally failed me.

Happy birthday, handsome.

Auto Biography V

“Blue Silver”

       “Only you would spend more money to buy a car that’s older than the one youʼre giving up.”

“But, Dad, it’s a ’66 Mustang!”

 

I mean, really. I was 26 years old, I was working fulltime. Thunder was packing it in ... and it was a ’66 Mustang!

My brother-in-law co-signed for me and the deed was done. I got behind the wheel to take her off the lot and the salesman said to me, “Don’t let your boyfriend drive.”

Who needs a boyfriend? I thought, gleefully. I have a ’66 Mustang! A creampuff V6 automatic with 66,000 miles on the odometer (this was in 1987), that came to me by way of a divorce where the wife tried to kill her ex-husband by selling his baby.

She was absolutely ripe for the name “Blue Silver”, taken from Duran Duran’s song The Chauffer, which features the phrase “sing blue silver”.

When I was laid off from my fulltime government job, Silver took me up and down Vancouver Island in search of radio work, then over the Malahat and back during the summer when I landed a weekend shift at the Duncan station. Finally, I nailed the graveyard shift at an AM station in Victoria. For a year, Blue Silver stood out all night on Douglas Street and was only towed once—I am convinced because she was a classic Mustang and the tow asshole couldn’t stand that she wasn’t his.

My wee sister cheekily called her a “character vehicle” – with good reason.

The carburetor iced up in winter. At 6:00 every morning after my on-air shift, I had to run the engine curbside until the temperature needle reached halfway up the dial or she would stall at a traffic light; if the traffic lights were with us, we could cruise 12 blocks without stopping and charge up Hwy 17 to home just as Ter was getting up to go to work.

The driver’s door clunked each time it was opened. I lubed the hinges with vegetable oil, to no avail.

Our happiest speed was 70 miles per hour, when I could lift my foot from the gas and the far rear wheel would squeal like a delirious hamster galloping for its life.

I got my first and only speeding ticket in that car, peeling off the highway and racing through a residential area on a mission to collect Duran Duran concert tickets from the mall outlet. The cop gave me points and I think there was a fine, but I was in a hurry to get where I was going so didn’t pay that much attention.

The AM radio was usually tuned to a classic rock station in Vancouver that featured “Beatle breaks” every weekday at 11:00 a.m. Classic tunes seemed more fitting with Silver’s style, but there were other, more current, musical moments to be had. Ter chauffeured me home from the dentist after I had survived some horrifying procedure and couldnʼt sit up let alone handle the wheel – Bruce Springsteenʼs new song was released on that day and I swear to this one that it’s called “Burger in the Skyˮ. I was on the road at Thanksgiving when DD’s new single, I Don’t Want Your Love, premiered and I damn near drove off the road at how good the song was. And once my Christmas present stereo was installed, I sang Make Love Like a Man with Def Leppard when their “Adrenalize” album was released in 1992.

Good times.

Alas, the car of my dreams fell into my lap at the wrong time in my life. A year after I got the graveyard gig, the station went automated from midnight to 6:00 a.m., so there went my radio career. I wound up on social assistance and Silver wound up on the street when Ter bought her first car in 1990. Newer and therefore more reliable, the Camaro got the driveway and Silver was housed elsewhere, changing locations whenever the vandals found her. A front tire was stabbed. A Halloween pumpkin pitched overnight struck and dented her rear quarter. Keys were dug along her near side. And one day, when the continually-clunking driver’s door opened, a god-awful POING! preceded the spring shooting skyward from between the hinges. That door swung free forever after, so turning your back on it guaranteed a shove in the butt.

And then the steering began to go.

I couldn’t afford to keep Silver safe from vandals or safe to drive. My dad – he who had advised me to “get off the moon” when I surprised him with my proud purchase – generously put up the cash to get the work done, but the end was nigh.

Ter and I moved to a costlier flat downtown. Keeping Silver was now completely impractical. I was only working half-time. I had nowhere to park her, no money to maintain her, and once in town, nowhere to drive her. Five years after I bought her, she was sold to a unit supervisor with the BC Ambulance Service for half of what I paid. I handed over the keys, got into Ter’s Camaro, and dared not look back.

In hindsight, I adored my Pony, but I didnʼt fully appreciate the jewel in my possession. If I had, I would have made one decision differently with an eye to keeping her … but even then, success was no given. Character vehicles are expensive when you have a full time paycheque to spend on them. It happened as it was meant to, but the single nameable regret in my life is letting Blue Silver go.

For my birthday that year, Ter gifted me with an 8X10 photo of my parents and me taken in happier times with the Mustang as a prop. I opened the package, burst into tears and cried, “I love this picture! Silver is in it!”

 

 

Mum, Dad, Ru and Blue Silver 1990

Happy

“At school I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. I was told I didn’t understand the assignment, so I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon

George was my favourite Beatle, but I admired John for his honesty, his humanity, and his perspicacity.

Recently, my father asked me if I am happy. Without missing a beat, I said, “Yes.”

He looked a bit dubious that I had understood so gently added, “Because you’re not living the traditional feminine life.”

To which I replied, “I think that’s why I’m happy.”

We both laughed, but maybe I wasn’t kidding. I don’t know if I would be as happy in the traditional feminine role of wife and mother as I am right now – but it’s certainly possible. Happy as I am with this unforeseen gig, my plan is to stay that way. That’s not to say my life must remain the same. It means that I intend to be happy no matter where my journey takes me.

Of course, it’s not all blissfully sublime. Truth is, everyone’s life sucks at some point. That’s the way life rolls.

Stormy Weather singer Lena Horne once said, “It’s not the load; it’s the way you carry it.”

I’m lucky. Really lucky. I live in a country where I am free to live, think, write, say and believe what I choose. I can afford rent, food and car payments. I have a good job and lots of time to pursue my passion. I’m healthy and still have all my teeth. I should be happy with such good fortune. But I know of many people in the same situation (or better) who are unhappy.

What’s with that?

Banal platitudes drive me crazy, but there is one that really does work for me: count your blessings. Be grateful for what you have because, sure as shootin’, everyone has something for which to be grateful. Life itself is a gift, if you look at it that way.

“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”

So said the Buddah. Happiness is often misinterpreted and I may be doing the very thing myself. When I tell my father that I’m happy, I mean that I am content and at peace with the moment. It isn’t the case every moment – life ain’t designed that way and neither am I – but overall, my life is good and I’m happy living it. There are occasions of both delirious joy and deepest despair, all part of the spectrum, but I think I’ve grasped the point that Lennon, Horne and Buddah were trying to make.

“Happy” isn’t a target or a destination. It’s not wealth or marriage or being mortgage-free (though it is driving a cool car while listening to Duran Duran). “Happy” is a state of mind … and it’s possible for everyone.

I’m lucky. I’m grateful. I’m happy.

In that order.

Auto Biography IV

“Blue Thunder”

 



I bought my first car two days before moving out of my parents’ house. It was a 1974 Dodge Dart Swinger, 2 door, slant 6, blue with a white vinyl top, and a hole in the muffler. When I started it up, it sounded like a Sea King helicopter, and since I had just seen the movie “Blue Thunder” (about a stealth police chopper by the same name), the car was aptly christened. It cost $1500 and took me two years to pay off.

I loved that old junker. I must have done: twenty-five years and three vehicles later, I discovered the license plate in a box of mementoes I’d forgotten I had.

For three years (though it seemed longer), Thunder got me to and from work. It taxied my friends and me to/from church, town, and all over the darned place when gas was 42 cents a litre and my bi-weekly take home was $428. It was a big blue boat of a vehicle that was hit twice in the rear (took it well both times) and almost—almost—displayed a Duran Duran sticker on its back bumper.

I still have the bumper sticker.

The radiator blew up and the muffler finally fell off, the paint was oxidized and bubbling with rust, but Thunder was mine. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the car of my dreams. It was my first important purchase. It was my independence, a step toward starting my life as myself; not as my parents’ daughter or my siblings’ sister, but as me, as Ruth, as – gods help us all – an adult. It wasn’t the shiniest symbol of my emergence from the family cocoon, but with that hoarse rumbling cough, it was certainly the loudest.

I wonder why that seemed appropriate?

the rear view, sans DD bumper sticker!

The Father of My Unborn Children



The face that started it all ...



It was the spring of 1985. Ter came home from the bookstore with a copy of Star Hits that she swore had leaped off the shelf at her. It wasn’t the magazine that had knocked her breathless. It was the photo on the cover.

I remember gaping, dumbfounded, while she stood quivering with artistic ecstasy at the prospect of painting that face, that face, that beautiful face. Finally, I found my voice.

“Isn’t that the guy from Duran Duran?”

Never mind that there were five guys in Duran Duran. Forevermore, John Taylor was “the guy” in our house and in our hearts. We scooped as much media we could: albums, posters, buttons, magazines, books of photos imported from Japan – you name it, we got it. We became fans of the band proper (especially Andy Taylor), but JT was the driving force. Ter painted four portraits of him over five years. And I wrote a thousand, two thousand, pages about characters who looked just like him. I’ve always modeled my heroes (and no few villains) after my idols, but JT spawned a litter, the most notable being my beloved Julian.

I’m fairly well convinced that without John, there would be no Jules.

My cast of available characters is no longer dominated by sultry six-footers with flowing dark hair and cheekbones to skate on, but the blueprint remains close to my heart for many reasons. Not only did he bring me joy with his music and inspiration with his very being, he brought me a poet. I “met” Nicole in the chat room at his now-defunct website in, I think, 1997. “Trust The Process” was a place to keep current with JT, but was also the forum where fans gathered to share, discuss and occasionally piss off others of our ilk. I ran with a pretty cool cyber-crowd for a while as a result. Though our lives eventually took varied paths in opposite directions, Nic has stayed with me and remains the best thing to have come from my time at TTP. I would not have her except for “the guy from Duran Duran”.

Ter and I threw birthday parties for him in the 80s. Thirty years later, the celebration is less extravagant. We’ll run a few videos and do some reminiscing. I’ll eat chocolate and blow a kiss at the portrait in my room. He’ll never know what he’s done for me, but that’s okay. I know, and that’s all that matters.

Happy birthday, JT.