Kid at the Candy Store

I was going to write a different post about the insidiousness of the "woke" outlook, particularly in the arts community, but it will definitely come across as far too hostile right now, so I'll save that for later.

I'm still coming to grips with the way that entertainment has become so dematerialized now.  Very few people buy CDs or DVDs, preferring to stream them.  A handful of people buy vinyl, but mostly for the wrong reason (as a fetish object that is looked at but not played).  This has had a profound impact on the retail sector, including the fact that you can barely resell CDs anywhere in the city any longer.  I had found one store that would occasionally touch classical and jazz, but that closed at least a year ago.  I just read that Sikora's Classical in Vancouver is closing, which is quite sad.  It was basically the only place in Vancouver that would take classical CDs, though they would only do exchange for store credit, no cash.  I spent a fair bit of time there, particularly as I was getting ready to leave and I was trying to slim down my collection prior to packing it all up.

But things change, and people move on (though there are definitely losers in the new economy including unfairly paid musicians as well as out-of-work clerks).  On the flip side, I am still amazed at just how much music is available on Apple Music.  Pretty much any mainstream recording I've ever heard of, and an unbelievable amount of world music (the whole run of Ethiopiques, for example) and a lot of jazz.  It is true that he Fantasy jazz catalog (Prestige, Riverside, Milestone, etc.) is not there (or if it is it is a public domain clone), but pretty much all of Blue Note and Atlantic and Soul Note and even Impulse is.  The Fantasy catalogue used to be up on eMusic (which sells mp3s, not just offering up streams) but they lost it several years back.  Interestingly enough, the Fantasy catalog popped up on Naxos jazz/classical.  This is a service that is basically European-based, but does operate in Canada, though not the US (or at least the offerings are drastically reduced).  This is one of the few things where Canadians have it better than Americans, probably because Canadian copyright is more in line with Europe than the US.  This is likely to change after all the NAFTA changes get pushed through, so I should enjoy it while I can.

It was only a few months back that I switched my allegiance to Apple Music from eMusic.  Somewhat stupidly I just haven't had the time to properly close out my eMusic account, so I have been paying for both for a while, but I will close the eMusic account before much longer.  I can understand the arguments that having practically all recorded music at your fingertips devalues music and certainly albums, though I don't think that is true in my case, probably because I have a lifetime of listening to music as albums and that is still how I prefer to do it, streaming the entire album (and not shuffling or jumping between a bunch of different tracks).  I have been indulging in some very deep catalogue dives lately, far too numerous to list it all, but highlights include Charles McPherson, Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangara, William Onyeabor, Los Lobos, Ry Cooder, J.J. Cale and Jackie Shane.  It's also a very good way to get acquainted with recent recordings of pop/rock artists where I wouldn't actually buy their newest recordings (Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney for example or even Alice in Chains).  So it really does feel like running around in a huge candy store with an unlimited account.

Secret Theatre

I thought I would mention a few very obscure theatre events.

First up is Hamlet by Skipping Stones Theatre.  This company is so under the radar that they did a Christopher Durang play last April, and I don't believe it got into any of the theatre websites, even Mooney's.  That's a shame, as I would almost certainly have gone.  I've already missed the first week of the Hamlet run, but I could go Friday or Sat. evening.  I'm somewhat tempted to take my son, though this is a gender-bent and slightly modernized version (only 99% written by Shakespeare).  This may not be the ideal version to introduce him to the play.  I guess all things considered I'm leaning against it, though more and more the more accessible versions (in the parks and such) are pretty radical re-interpretations of Shakespeare.  (Actually, this piece makes it clear this is a quite radical re-interpretation with two Hamlets and the soliloquys are handled as dialogues!  This is definitely not right for my son, but this does intrigue me a bit, though it sounds like a (perhaps unintentional) riff on Müller's Hamletmachine.)

Second is The Theory of Accelerated Hotness at Assembly Theatre this week and next.  Tickets here.  This piece is made up of three short one-acts.  Apparently tonight and Sunday (25th) are PYWC.  I am definitely tempted to go tonight, but I think the family would object if I skipped US Thanksgiving, so I may go Sunday evening instead.  Anyway, this is quite under the radar, but I think it will be interesting.

Apparently, Leroy Theatre is doing Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries in January at Assembly.  I just saw this a few months back, so I'll pass, but it is certainly an interesting play about two co-dependent people.

Finally, I had noted (and kind of dismissed) this weird space opera thing (based on Middleton's The Changeling!) running at Red Sandcastle (and tickets here), but then it got a pretty decent review in the Star, so now I am leaning towards going.  I will say it is great that the papers do actually review some of this totally obscure theatre, since that is generally where my interests lie as well.  The Sunday matinee is already sold out, though I was probably taking the kids to the ROM then anyway.

On a slightly downbeat note, Video Cabaret promised to do a version of Beckett's Happy Days in November, but this seems to have totally disappeared off the radar (and certainly off their website).  I remain hopeful that they will get around to this in December or early 2019.  At any rate, I will keep monitoring this and will report back when there is any news.

And with that, I must be off...

Ups and Downs

Probably just as well I didn't post anything yesterday.  I was in an absolutely rotten mood, partly brought about by some political changes (absolutely everything coming from the provincial level is absurd these days) and partly because I was stressed due to a bunch of last-minute homework-related demands from the children.  I need a bit more time to prepare, so that the printer has enough ink, I can find old family photos, or whatever.  Also, transit has been particularly terrible for two days straight, but the weather has gotten so cold that, even were my hands in better shape, I wouldn't be biking.

Last night was a bit better.  We got the printer going, and my daughter was done with her homework not long after dinner.  My cold seems to have moved into a new phase, where I am still congested but my nose is much less runny.  I can live with that.  I decided I was no longer contagious, and I did make it over to the gym (before the freakish cold snap descended).  I'm still having trouble with the machines where you push the bars, but I'm getting pretty close to my pre-accident loads with the machines where you pull.  I still seem a long way away from being totally recovered though.  Maybe by the spring.  It will definitely be a challenge, but I'll try to get over to the gym twice a week through the winter.  It's good that it is so close, and also I usually am a bit more motivated to go if I can combine the trip with a shopping trip or a grocery run.

I am excited that I've finally hit DeLillo's White Noise in my reading list.  I liked this a lot when I read it (probably in my 20s).  I hope I feel the same about it this time around.  I'll know soon enough and will report back in a while.

Sickness Dragging On

I really had hoped and even expected to be over this lingering cold by now.  It goes in cycles from where I am not that bothered by it to days like today where I simply cannot get my runny nose under control and I feel like complete crap.  I don't think I've been completely healthy since the accident, and it is possible that my white blood cells are still dealing with that and not fighting the cold.

Anyway, I took the whole weekend off from going to the gym, so I feel a bit guilty about that.  As it happens, I still did not really take it easy the rest of the time (as I should have).  I went and saw two plays on Saturday (both closing, so I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter), and then today I spent some time cleaning up in preparation for a visit from my father-in-law.  I did squeeze in a nap though, and I did leave a few tasks undone (which will then kind of nag at me unless I can do them tomorrow).

But what I really need is to get enough sleep, so I'll be heading to bed soon (and not catching up on the blog).  I do hope that I feel better tomorrow, but I don't expect any miracle cures.

As it happens, I am skimming quickly through the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, and I see he has a poem that starts "I have a bad cold."  How appropriate.  In general, his poetry doesn't do that much for me, though this one definitely caught my attention.  The entire poem is here.

Pessoa aside, my main reading is T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville, which is about how J.H. Kellogg, purveyor of corn flakes, built an empire on restorative cures (and strict vegetarianism) that was basically one step removed from pure quackery.  His theories were not so far different from Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop and probably not much less harmful...  More than anything, it points to how hope triumphs over experience (and even rationality) when it comes to people trying to regain their health and, in some sense, trying to cheat death.  I don't think I'm at death's door, but I would certainly welcome a super pill to knock out this cold for the rest of the winter.

Turning Point

While this post will mostly be about finally hitting a turning point in my reading list where I am enjoying the books more often than not, I will use the opportunity to post a few pictures of the turning leaves.

One of the downsides of living in Toronto is that leaves turn colour later than in the surrounding countryside.  Also, we don't usually have that many stretches of trees, aside from going over the Don Valley.  But we do have street trees that change colour.

Also, I bought a burning bush.  It didn't turn the vibrant red I was hoping for.  As fall began, it started out as more of a dusty plum colour.

Though later the red came out slightly more.
 

I'll just have to hope that by next fall, it has absorbed more nutrients or whatever it takes for the base colour to be red in the first place.

Somewhat ironically, I have another small bush that was more red than the burning bush.

And here are some other interesting fall colours in the front yard.

All in all, a decent fall, though it is already getting quite chilly (a bit too soon for my taste) and it will be snowing before we know it.*

Ok, on to the literature.  With a few exceptions (such as Mary McCarthy's Birds of America, which I am slowly working my way through and some of the stories in Julian Barnes's Pulse), I really have not enjoyed much of the fiction I've read since basically the summer.  This includes the frankly terrible Far from the Madding Crowd, and the quite disappointing The Death of My Brother Abel and Faulkner's A Fable.  I thought the writing in Didion's Play It As It Lays was fine, but got a bit bored by the characters' endless ennui.  While slight, Kawakami Ms. Ice Sandwich was not bad, though I was through with it in a day.

To some extent, that is just the luck of the draw.  Speaking of luck (or at least chance), I did enjoy Paul Auster's Moon Palace.  This is a book I owned forever (since just after undergrad) but must have lost in a book purging, so I replaced it a while back and finally read it.  Some readers didn't like just how many outrageous coincidences there were in the book.  I didn't mind that so much.  You know you'll probably get such things in an Auster novel.  Interestingly, this was a completely straight narrative (though some stories within stories).  There were no postmodern touches at all.

I've tried to arrange the reading list so the next few months will be a bit less grueling.  I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy rereading DeLillo's White Noise.  Then I'll be tackling Updike's Rabbit novels.  Then it's all the way back to the classics, reading Homer and Virgil's The Aeneid in a few different translations.  But then I am going to try to read Montaigne's Essays.  If I am not enjoying them, I'll set them aside for a while.  (Given that I wasn't all that taken by the randomness of Tokarczuk's Flights, I've decided to postpone Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet for a few months.)  At some point, either very late Dec. or early Jan., I want to tackle Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  However, I do have a sinking suspicion that this is going to be a tough nut to crack (and certainly to actually enjoy!), and it doesn't help that the tome appears to be too heavy to really read on the commute in (even when split into two volumes).  I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Fairly shortly after Musil, I will "reward" myself for getting through it by rereading Powers' Morte d'Urban.  This was a novel (about a priest who finds humility in a rural parish in Minnesota) that I found surprisingly moving, given my general indifference or occasional outright hostility to religion.  At any rate, I am curious to find if I feel the same way about the novel and its protagonist now. 

* Indeed, it snowed a fair bit this afternoon, making the evening commute a real mess, even for people on transit.  I guess I'll have to break out the boots.  I should have gone to the gym tonight, but just couldn't face going back out in that weather.  But obviously I'll have to toughen up and soon.  Otherwise, all this will have been in vain if I gain back all the weight I lost this year.

12th Canadian Challenge - 9th Review - Billy Bishop Goes to War

Appropriately enough for a play which has been revived many, many times, there are actually two published versions of this play.  The main one was published by Talonbooks in 1981.  This was a relatively short time after the play opened in Vancouver in 1978 (roughly around Remembrance Day).  The play was written by John Gray, though the original idea actually came from Eric Peterson, who played Billy (with John typically playing piano accompaniment).  It sounds like a very collaborative effort throughout.  Comparing the two plays, the introduction for the original edition is a bit droller, focusing on how they wrote this play, largely because they were unemployed theatre-types with nothing better to do.  The recent edition (2012) focuses more on the different interpretations (and other actors) after Eric and John more or less retired from performing the piece.  The introduction also explains how and why Albert Schultz (the disgraced AD of Soulpepper) convinced them to revive the play in 2009.  There is a bit of a twist, which they worked out with Ted Dykstra.  This time around, the play is much more explicitly a memory play and Billy is an old man, going through his old trunks, reminiscing about his wartime exploits.

This is obviously the version I saw.  Indeed, the remount travelled back to Vancouver (I think just before I made it out there) and then came back one more time to Toronto, and I caught it in 2017.  I was certainly glad to see Eric Peterson in the role, though I had seen him in a couple of other things by that point.  There is also a DVD shot in 2013, and that is probably worth checking out if you never saw Peterson (in his prime or as the aged Bishop).

While the set-up and staging is fairly different between the two plays, interestingly enough the actual dialogue is identical in the two versions, except for the last couple of pages.  If it is a young actor in the role then Bishop becomes a recruiting officer giving a speech to the young cadets enlisting for WWII (as he did in real life) whereas if it is an older actor, then there is another letter from Bishop to his wife, Margaret, about missing war.

Regardless of the age of the actor, it is quite a bravura piece of theatre.  The actor must play Bishop, as well as a dozen or so other characters he interacts with (a drill sergeant, generals, an upper-class lady, a torch singer and even King George V).  He also must be able to sing reasonably well, since Bishop (sometimes supported by the piano player) has a number of songs.

The play follows Bishop from his early days in Canada where he barely squeaked through Royal Military College (and he might well have been expelled if he hadn't enlisted as soon as WWI broke out), then he ships out to the front.  He tries to figure a way to get out of the mud and is convinced to try out for the Royal Flying Corps.  His progression isn't that smooth, but he eventually becomes a much decorated hero, at which point he is sidelined, as it would be too demoralizing were he to be shot down.  It's a clever and fairly humourous piece, carried along by Peterson in all his roles.  I think there is no question it works better on stage than on the page, but that isn't always an option (always an issue when studying a play).  If you can check out the 2nd edition, that is probably the way to go, but as I indicated the differences are pretty slight overall.

WWI novels

This post will be full of completely idiosyncratic thoughts on my recent readings, and not a properly researched post (here is a slightly more useful thread with some decent recommendations, though personally I didn't enjoy Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End and don't imagine I'll try it out a second time to see if I like it more).  In any case, scattershot or not, I thought I might as well pull them together, since this Sunday will be the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, marking the end of WWI.  There is no question that WWII has much better representation in novels and film, not least because it seemed to serve a larger moral purpose (at least in retrospective almost anything could be justified in stopping Hitler) and wasn't just a stupid war that the various countries stumbled into (and thus not really worthy of being celebrated).

That said, one can always celebrate war coming to an end.  There was an interesting story in the Toronto Star about how there was "fake news" back in 1918 where some reporter thought the war would end on Nov. 7 (not 11) and this led to widespread celebrations, including in Toronto, which then had to be put on hold as it became clear the reporter had jumped the gun.  There is an interesting parallel to this in Faulkner's A Fable, where a mutinying regiment almost brings about a premature end to the war until the generals jump in and restore order.  I've already gone into some detail about how much I disliked A Fable, and I would absolutely not recommend it.  That said, the concepts in the novel are interesting (if Faulkner does strain far too much in referencing every last element of the Christ story) but the execution leaves a lot to be desired!

A much better bet is Timothy Findley's The Wars, which focuses on a young Canadian soldier and the horse from home he more or less follows and tries to protect.*  I have to admit that I didn't latch onto The Wars as much as some have done, but I'll probably reread it one of these days.  As an aside, while I had seen Findley at a reading many years ago, I never did get an autograph from him.  While buying a second-hand autograph is a little bit crass, I will do this under certain circumstances, and I found a reasonably priced autographed copy of The Wars, which I just ordered.  (In addition, a bookstore on the west side has The Telling of Lies, and I'll probably pick that up later in the week.)

I have been meaning to review Billy Bishop Goes to War, both the play (I saw a revival last year at Soulpepper) and the script.  This focuses on the young Canadian pilot who became the most successful fighter pilot against the German air force, even surpassing a few UK pilots.  I'll see if I can carve out some time to review this tomorrow.

Perhaps the most significant literary figure (aside from Faulkner) to really tackle WWI was John Dos Passos.  There are many references to soldiers or former soldiers in The USA Trilogy.  But he dives in even more with One Man's Initiation: 1917 (largely based on his own wartime experience) and Three Soldiers.  These two novels are bundled with Manhattan Transfer in a single Library of America volume. I had really only planned on reading Manhattan Transfer, but I stumbled across an incredible deal and couldn't resist.  I think it will be quite a while before I actually read those two WWI novels, however, but I thought I would at least mention them here.

I think that's really all I had to say on the matter for now, but, as I said, I'll probably review Billy Bishop tomorrow.


* The play (and movie) War Horse is supposedly based on the work (of the same name) by Michael Morpurgo and not The Wars, though if I had been in charge of Findley's estate, I would definitely have asked if there might have been some unauthorized reuse of themes and materials.  Just sayin'...