Make One Mistake ...

As the entire galaxy knows, I’ve been a Flyer fan for forty-plus years. I watched Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” live at their home games during the Stanley Cup playoffs. I thought it was hilarious that this woman, this unblemished model of manners and conservative ideals, was a good luck charm for the Broad Street Bullies. By then she was an icon, a legend lauded—even decorated—for her work raising funds to aid the US war effort during WWII. She was up there on the pedestal with motherhood and apple pie, representing America in all her fine, upstanding, life-liberty-and-justice-for-all glory. Up until the last time the team made the playoffs, she was posthumously present at home games, belting out a duet with current anthem singer, Lauren Hart, that always brought down the house.

And now, she’s gone. Her video archived, her reputation besmirched, her statue removed from outside the arena. All because some unknown someone wormed their way as far back as 1931 to discredit her. Yup, eighty-nine years ago, Miss Kate Smith recorded a song that has either offended or might offend someone in 2019. And now her legacy means nothing. Her good deeds, her sterling reputation, her place in Flyers history—poof! Null and void, nixed, erased, eradicated, negated, meaningless.

I’m not saying it would be okay for the same song to be recorded today. It probably wouldn’t. (I say ‘probably’ because many of the lyrics recorded these days are offensive to the point of obscene, and I’m fairly open-minded.)We’re supposedly more enlightened in 2019 than we were in 1931, though, honestly, I’m not so sure. If we can’t keep a little perspective when considering our history, then we haven’t progressed much at all. If the Flyers organization can’t stand by their icon for the good things she accomplished but will delete her on the mewl of a mistake that no one at the time would even have called a mistake, then we’re all screwed. We all deserve—or will deserve—banishment from the annals of mankind because every one of us at some time in our lives either did or will do something ignorant as judged by another’s set of rules.

Can we please focus on the offences being perpetrated today? Can we please acknowledge that yes, historic wrongs must be righted, yet all things must also be put into correct context? Can we please forgive and move on without destroying a legacy of good works? Can we please respect the families of those we decry as sinners of the worst sort simply because of something they did in a time when it was okay to do it? Even if it’s not okay now, forgiveness is the first step to reconciling the races. You don’t move forward by erasing the past. You accept it and pledge not to repeat it.

A lot of other Flyer fans are so outraged they say they’re not fans anymore. They’ll be cheering for Boston or Washington or Pittsburgh next season. Since these folks were obviously looking for a reason to switch team allegiance, it seems they found it.

As for me ... I shall retire to Bedlam.

Compliments to the Chef

Farewell, Tony (1956 - 2018)

Life strikes again. This time, it took out Anthony Bourdain, so it’s hit closer to my heart than more recent celebrity deaths.

Ter saw it first, via Google news. She called to me from the Ocean Room, and though I didn’t hear what she said, something in her tone alarmed me. I got up to go see her, saying, “What?’ as I went.

Her voice was closer, coming down the hall. “Anthony Bourdain is dead …”

My own mind immediately interrupted: A heart attack finally dropped him in his tracks.

Ter appeared in the doorway, her face stricken. “… by apparent suicide.”

That’s when the tree jumped in front of me. I took the blow right in the chest and for an instant couldn’t breathe or think or speak. Everything froze. Then, in the next frame, “What??”

It will always be a “Where were you when?” moment. As usual with such moments, the death itself isn’t the issue. It’s the manner of death. Without getting into morbid details—most of which I neither know nor care to know – I am gutted that a man who lived life so fiercely, who had faced and survived his demons, who braved the streets and back alleys to discover magic in the world’s most dangerous places, who seemed, in short, indefatigable, chose to end it.

There was nothing false about Tony Bourdain. He wrote honestly about his tumultuous, drug-addicted youth and spoke his truth at every opportunity. He was cynical, pessimistic, abrasive and hilarious, but he was also warm, generous, respectful and genuinely grateful for (if not somewhat perplexed by) the life he embraced with such incredible passion. He was so interesting, yet his gift was to make other people in other cultures in other countries interesting as well. He had no fear of the dark, that’s for sure. He did his best to shed light in the shadows, to bring attention, not to the differences that divide us, but to the similarities that bind us together, whether he was in Iran, Russia, Lebanon, or Pittsburgh.

Ter followed him as a foodie. I followed him as a writer. We both adored him for his unvarnished sincerity onscreen and in writing; we’ve collected his books and TV series, and even had our photos taken with him when he stopped in Victoria on two different book tours.

Of course I know nothing about his personal life beyond what he revealed as he went along—and that’s fine because the details are not my business. What he brought to the world, to my life, is all that’s important. My loss is the world’s loss; hardly the same as the black hole he’s left in the hearts of his family and close friends. And while some people are now calling him out for the selfishness of his leaving, I will not judge him. Only he knows what pushed him to end it now (before it got worse?). I must reconcile myself by myself. And I will … but I’ll miss him.

His caustic New York attitude and sometimes harsh opinions inspired me to view his light as more of a dark, but he was definitely a light being, and like most light beings, he was a powerful spirit locked in ongoing battle with equally powerful contrast. In the end, contrast won. My invincible tough guy road warrior swashbuckling hero has surrendered. Another light gone out.

The sun rose this morning. It always does, after all. So the world is as bright the day after as it was the day before—but one thing is notably different without him.

It feels colder.

Not Your Average Joe

the coveted Christmas prezzie

He’s on my radar once more—Aerosmith’s inimitable lead guitarist, known predominantly throughout the rock world as “Mister Joe Perry.” After 15 years of radio silence, I saw his autobiography on a shelf at the bookstore and stopped so abruptly that, had I been on the highway, I’d have caused a multi-vehicle pileup.

My heart did that crazy swoopy thing that hearts do when something too deep to reach is touched.

I dropped a five-ton hint on Ter, and if the book wasn’t beneath the tree on Christmas morning, I’d have gone out on Boxing Day to get it myself. (Sneaky Ter—she fooled my nosy fingers with a copy of Prince Lestat and disguised Rocks as a big square something wrapped in Nutcracker-themed paper. She knows.)

There was a time when I owned an extensive collection of Aerosmith albums. I even persuaded Ter to accompany me to a live show during the Get a Grip tour—the scariest crowd I’ve ever been a part of, but seeing the man himself made the risk worthwhile. He was in his prime at the time, when I believed that a man is at his best in his mid-to-late-30s. Mr. Perry was actually in his early 40s, challenging my parameters with flowing black hair and those long, smooth muscles. And he has aged in typically uncompromising style: he turned 64 on September 10 and still commands a third look.

So, what gives? I no longer have my Aerosmith albums, nor did I hang onto the band bio I devoured in the 1990s. I thought that he and I were done, that the affair was over. Gods are irreplaceable, of course, but even the vampire he sired has lain silent for almost two decades.

At one time, I considered him a strictly hormonal crush. Now I am unsure. Now I suspect a connection on some other level, a memory from another life in another world. It’s possible. It’s actually probable, given what I’m learning about how souls are but satellites of the mothership. I suppose it could be as simple as biological hardwiring, but if the appeal was purely physical, I doubt I’d care to do anything more than mate with him. This is not so. Not purely, anyway.

Rocks has jumped the queue to next in line after I finish my annual holiday wallow in The Night Circus. I am certain that it will be a fascinating read and reveal no common ground between him and me (except that we’re both Virgos). I am unlikely to buy any more Aerosmith albums, and when he played Victoria with his spinoff band a couple of years ago, I wasn’t the least bit tempted to get tickets … though I did get some cool pics of the tour bus.

What mystifies me is the crazy swoopy heart thing caused by someone I have not and will not meet. I may not know him, but I recognize him. Was he a lord in a previous life? Definitely. Was he my lord? I doubt it. All I can say is that he was on my radar before radar existed and he’s come around again.

It’s a deliciously, creatively compelling mystery, one that has borne fruit in the past and may signal something that I, as a writer, have been avoiding for more than a year. If Joe Perry is back, then Marcel de Chauvigny is sure to follow … and his is a story I don’t want to write.

Who's Your Deity?

vs

My dear friend Nicole attended a Leonard Cohen concert in Halifax last weekend and promptly—perhaps appropriately—waxed poetic about her experience in the presence of this legendary poet/singer/songwriter/icon. Not only did her review cause me to reconsider my blithe disregard for the man’s stop in Victoria last month, it reminded me of a conversation I’d had about it.

I was talking with a colleague at the office and my eye fell on the print of Leonard Cohen that hangs on the wall of her workspace. A musician herself, she’s a huge Leonard Cohen fan, yet I stupidly posed the obvious question:

“Are you going to the concert on the 6th?”

“Of course,” she said in her quiet way.

Comprehending her meaning, I nodded. “He’s one of those people you go to see every time they come to town. I feel the same way about Sting.”

“Are you going to see him when he comes in May?” she asked.

I snorted. “You bet. Sting is God.”

She glanced up at me from her computer screen, smiled softly, and shook her head. “No, he’s not. Leonard Cohen is God.”

Well, really. I’m not a fan of religious wars, so I will concede that there is room in the arts for more than one god. Or perhaps art is the one true god, and Sting and Cohen and all the other artists in the world are prophets or disciples or heavenly messengers called upon to spread the word.

That said, I just got back from picking up my Sting tickets, so ... um ... “Leonard who?”