Sarah Eve Kelly

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

at the altar of san fernando

Dare I dream, with all ten toes crossed? My beautiful Oilers are making a comeback! God, I wish I'd been around for the third period of this game.

All of Wimbledon Park now knows the greatness of Fernando Pisani. I have a new and improved t-shirt and I am bringing the gospel to the Old World.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

on arrogance

Ron Fournier holds forth on Barack Obama's opinion of himself.

In the piece, Obama is quoted as saying "I'm reminded every day that I'm not a perfect man." All it suggests to me is that he needs daily reminding.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

you are in the right place

Last weekend I spent a happy afternoon in a Spanish pub off Oxford Street with a friend. After several vodka-and-Cokes, we emerged and walked aimlessly for a while, and at sundown, we parted ways. I turned around, deciding to bypass Tottenham Court Road station – my way home – and turn the corner into Oxford Street again for some window shopping.

It’s a lucky thing that I usually have headphones on when I’m alone in public. I can’t stand just walking down streets listening to urban din and thinking my thoughts, so some sort of equipment comes with me wherever I go. This helps me with the many entreaties the London pedestrian will get simply for the happenstance of being on a street, any street, at any time of day. I don’t mean people asking for money; I feel a pang for them as I always have, I give when I can, and I certainly don’t feel like my aura is being invaded. What I mean is the touts, the handbag salesmen, the surveyors from Barnardo’s who click into your deepest-held insecurities if you don’t stop for them to Save the Children (once I was carrying a Belgian waffle home for Mike’s birthday breakfast and shook my head at a Barnardo’s guy, who replied very loudly that the waffle was going to go straight to my thighs).

The headphones – big, silver, easily visible from ten paces or more – do for me what I am utterly unable to do for myself: say “I’m not interested” or “Get out of my way”. Because I will stand and listen to a handbag dealer tell me that his Gucci fake will get me the job I want, take two inches off my hips, and do my taxes for me. I have stood and listened to this, hearing a voice, which turns out to be mine, actually encouraging these people. Without headphones, I am unarmed. With headphones, however, I can walk down any London street I choose without fear of molestation.

Except this time.

As it turned out, my audiobook had ended on this particular occasion. I didn’t dare take off the headphones, of course, and was content enough to listen to dead air until the next convenient pausing point. But the dead air is the reason I heard the woman with the clipboard ask, “If you could change one thing about your personality, what would it be?”

I looked at her, shook my head, and made to keep walking. That’s when she grabbed my arm.

“This is so easy, and it’s going to tell you so much about yourself,” she said to me through a large, threatening smile. “If you could change one thing about your personality, what would it be?”

“I would be more assertive,” I said, miserably.

“Very good, very good,” she said. “I can understand that very problem.”

I didn’t think she could.

Then she started speaking very rapidly. The only words I could understand were “computer” and “so quick”, and before I knew it, I was inside a building. I’m not lying to you. Inside a building, and being whisked down a flight of stairs.

“It looks like a lot of questions,” she said, shoving me into a cubicle with a stack of paper a foot high and a golf pencil. “but you can really do ten a minute. Just let me know when you’re done and we’ll run it through the computer.” And she bustled back upstairs.

The room was a vast one, at least fifty other cubicles just like mine. I was the only person there. On the wall was an enormous plaque which read, “YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.” I looked down at the questionnaire.

Question 1. Have you ever said something to someone that you wished you could take back?

I flipped several pages.

Question 82. Have you ever experienced a failure that you continue to regret?

I looked back up at the wall. YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

I’ve heard about this feeling before, but never have experienced it quite this completely: I felt as though I’d stepped across a threshold and been suddenly lurched upside-down. You see all sorts of things over the course of a day reminding you that the world is not a perfect place: children without shoes, dogs with limps, the digital Skechers sign in Times Square reverting to DOS, reduced to a blinking colon. But one learns very quickly to apply a mental filter to unpleasant sights and sounds. You know it’s wrong, of course it is, but you’re watching it through a screen; you’re not part of it.

Well, I was part of this, and my heart was bounding. It was wrong, it felt instantly wrong. The pencil was shaking in my hand. I was alone in a basement room and there were a bunch of grinning thugs upstairs, waiting for my answers to these 200 questions. For an instant I tried to think of what I would say if I went upstairs not having completed the questionnaire, what excuse I would give. That’s the Sarah I know. (In my darker moments I can imagine myself babbling politesses to a rapist to avoid hurting his feelings.) But luckily that feeling didn’t last for more than a couple of seconds: an instant later a beast reared up and I felt honest-to-God fight or flight for the first time in my life. I dropped the pencil, grabbed my bag, and ran – did not walk – up the stairs.

The woman who had absconded with me was back out on the street with her clipboard. I ran past her, didn’t stop running until I was at the end of the block.

I hadn’t been caught. That should have been the end of it. But it took me two hours to get that sick feeling out of my stomach. I think it’s because I knew that if I hadn’t run, if I’d stopped to talk to anyone, I would have humbly returned downstairs, completed the questionnaire, and proceeded to give the Church of Scientology all my money. I felt sure I would have done that, simply to avoid unpleasantness.

Did that woman teach me anything? She did. Assertiveness is what I want, more than anything, to change about my personality. How to do it, God only knows. I began by turning up my fresh audiobook and making absolutely no eye contact with anyone. (Now I know why pedestrians in London crash into each other so often: what with one thing and another, they’re never looking up. In fact, the City is now testing padded lampposts for precisely this purpose.) I also gave £10 in pocket change to various people on the walk from that intersection to Oxford Circus station, just to show that I only ignore the people I don’t like. It’s not much of a stand, I know, but I felt the blessings they offered me.

I know everything I need to know about Scientology from South Park. I also know a thing or two about simulacra, having sort of paid attention during a full-year critical theory course: to wit, a sign saying YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE is only put up in a room for which the truth of the contrary needs to be hidden.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

Monday, March 10, 2008

i'll stand before the lord of song

My LiveJournal friends list coughed forth a survey post this morning, asking what our favourite versions of Len’s “Hallelujah” are. The author has fourteen versions of the song by eleven different artists (that’s a level of dedication that even I can’t match, although I don’t like Len covers generally, so maybe that accounts for it – but “Hallelujah” has become so omnipresent in the public consciousness (since – since when? since Shrek?) that one can almost not avoid having a couple of versions on playlists or battered CDs somewhere). I think that possibly there are so many covers (more than eleven) because this is a song that everyone wants to sing in the shower, for all its dizzying highs, terrifying lows, and creamy middles. It appeals to one’s sense of drama. Whenever I hear a new version I’m not remotely curious. I think it self-indulgent; people should find something else to cover, or God forbid, write their own poetry.

(Although that really didn’t work for Jennifer Warnes. But there’s a lot of other Len out there – it would be decades before the market was properly saturated if people would only move on.)

The original fifteen-verse poem reportedly took five years to write (perhaps interspersed with other things, such as showering – maybe – and the invention of Red Needles). The sheer length could be why so many artists have justified covering it: there are so many possible permutations of the song that twenty singers or soulful pianists could do it and tell twenty different stories. (Why haven’t more people covered The Lady of Shalott, then, I wonder?) Of course it hasn’t shaken out that way. Most versions are more or less the same, with tiny variations that are, according to Wikipedia, deliberate, but just sound like vocal missteps to me.

The original version of the song, found on 1984’s Various Positions, occupies the same place in my heart that The Trials of Life (1990) by David Attenborough does. There is no arguing its quality; it’s a beautiful poem, and one of the first showcases of Len’s signature vocal gravel. He is also – as far as I know – the only artist so far to have used an Angelic Choir in the background, making it sound like a spiritual rather than an expression of inward torment.

But there’s also no arguing that it is an Eighties Song, and as such can’t be taken completely seriously. The poetry is almost lost in the overwhelming cheesiness of it. And so when you hear Rufus Wainwright or Jeff Buckley take it on, it sounds like an entirely novel piece: they couldn’t have performed it more differently but for their stalwart faith to the melody.

For the record: my favourite version isn’t some obscure one you’ve never heard of. It’s Rufus’s. I hear Jeff Buckley’s and John Cale’s and I know, somewhere, that they’re good, very good, but I can’t bring myself to enjoy them. As to the others, they all bleed together, and I feel vaguely dirty listening to them. It’s like me howling along to my Zen walking back from the tube at night (yes, that’s what that noise is). I want to imagine that I’m singing beautifully and that people can hear and acknowledge, but I mostly do it to pretend that the poetry is mine. That’s all these vast multitudes of cover artists are doing. Perhaps it’s hypocritical for me to pick a favourite among them; I don’t know.

Two years ago at the Edmonton Folkfest I woke up early to see Martha Wainwright perform. She did not wake up early; she skipped the show, pleading a hangover. But that afternoon she was back in fine fettle forsooth, and played all of my favourite songs of hers. But she threatened to bow out by singing “Tower of Song”, and I cringed, and thought about leaving, because nobody nobody nobody should do that song except for Len – or maybe Johnny Cash. But I was persuaded to stay and she did the sweetest, dirtiest, most beautiful version of the song that I’d ever heard. Len, Johnny Cash, Martha Wainwright, and Marianne Faithfull. They’re the only ones allowed.

End of Aside.

Rufus is a bit like Jennifer Warnes: he occupies the Exception Corner in my Rule Room. It was a wonderful thing in 1987 when Jennifer Warnes released an entire album of Len covers, because her voice is so astounding, such a remarkable counterpoint to Len’s own, and you can hear him harmonizing with her instead of the other way round (she is a card-carrying member of the Angelic Choir). Rufus is the same: a vessel.

The post on LiveJournal, though, went further than just “Hallelujah” and branched out into how different generations react to Len: after all, he’s been recording since 1966 (my mom was 15 then) and has, in his adult-contemporary way, ridden with the times, so there is a vast body of work often very much at odds with itself. The author, aged 36, says this:

I think Cohen was just too ironical and fucked up for my parent's generation, who seem as a group (again, there are exceptions) to tend to prefer music that is more sincere. Cohen is not sincere. Cohen is yanking your chain, and that's a trick more commonly employed by people my age.

I don’t know how much I agree with that, but then I don’t know that many parents of 36-year-olds. I know about parents of 29-year-olds – viz. mine – who have been deeply moved by him while knowing that he was often as not tied in knots over his own cleverness.

She also has this to say, after making full allowance for the fact that she’s speaking in generalities and doesn’t object to exceptions as hokum:

So I would gess that that is a contributing factor in why metric tons of musicians (and music fans) in Gen X and Gen Y are obsessed with "Hallelujah," while our older compatriots prefer "Suzanne." Which is a perfectly nice song, don't get me wrong, but by contrast, you should hear my twenty-something friends talk about "Famous Blue Raincoat" and how they are trying to write stories around it. (Also a heavily covered song, these days. It used to be "Bird on a Wire" that got all the love.)

The fact that “Suzanne” is straightforward enough isn’t really up for debate. I would, however, argue from my Gen-Y plinth that it is a superior poem to “Hallelujah” for all that, and I don’t know why it would be considered a tame example of his work. It’s been my favourite song in all the world since I was eight years old and saw Our Lady of the Harbour for the first time and wanted to be Suzanne. Doesn’t every little girl? Or woman, for that matter? Does that make me weird? (Uh-oh. I think it might.)

Personally, I don’t mind straightforward: it has the capacity to be just as beautiful and just as jarring. My favourite couplet of his is this:

Why are you so quiet now, standing there in the doorway?
You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway

It never occurred to me that people of different ages might react to different stages of Len’s work in different ways, so the post as a whole was an eye-opener. Most of the fans I know abandoned his work – if not his cause – sometime between I’m Your Man (1988) and The Future (1992). In fact, if we’re inspecting your CD collection and the only album you have is The Future, we mentally tick you off as a bit of an arriviste and decide that you’re only in it for the cachet.

But if anything I think I’ve become more attached to him, not less, since I moved to England. He stands alone as an example of a Canadian artist who doesn’t do Canadiana: he and Margaret Atwood belong to the same generation, but once you’ve said that you’ve said it all. I think the power of the Boomers is their ability to love both Atwood and Len in equal measure, whereas people in my generation can’t love Len without decrying Margaret Atwood as someone who simply doesn’t speak to us. Is it because he’s mystical and she’s earthy, or is it the other way round? I’ve never met anyone – with the exception of one cynical aunt – to whom Len, in some capacity, could not speak. But Atwood is a polarizer, but one who’s reached the level of Yaweh in the public imagination. That’s the Boomers at work: the most powerful generation who ever lived.

I think this might be the longest post in the history of the universe.

Till next time, &c.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

good grief

If you don't vote for Obama, you must be a racist.

Friday, February 29, 2008

a mess, all right, but no messiah

Barack Obama is not the Messiah. He’s not a very naughty boy, either, but the cultism surrounding him is getting a little creepy.

He did a good job on The Daily Show (though personally, I thought Ron Paul did better). One might say he’s good under pressure, too, but I would argue that he’s not actually under an enormous amount of pressure. It seems to have escaped the blog pundits that they haven’t been supporting an underdog for a while now; this walking soundbyte is in the lead, and while it’s not fair to say that he’ll win a comfortable victory, the odds are good on his nomination. And that’s a pity, because I don’t think he’s that interesting, and I don’t think he would be a very effective President.

“We are the ones we have been waiting for” is a good statement, even if it is a little confusing at first. It’s a bit along the lines of “Ask not what your country can do for you,” but with a crucial difference: Obama’s foundation of support is coming from people who are used to fighting the Man and have no idea what’s involved in being the Man. That’s not a bad thing, but when you’re used to being the peanut gallery, odds are it’ll take a massive adjustment to perform well onstage.

Besides which there is little enough indication that Obama isn’t the Man. He says he’ll use his “bully pulpit” as President to shove through equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendereds at the state level; well, that’s not going to work. And what else has he said? Even his biggest fan, Andrew Sullivan, admits that he’s not exactly crisp and clear on the issues. He is important, Sullivan posits, less because of who he is and more because of what he is: a non-Boomer.

Hillary Clinton is, of course, the Boomer personified, complete with the gauntlet of DSM-IV disorders associated with that generation. And she’s not good under pressure – the last month has shown us that. Well, not good under competitive pressure. She wasn’t banking on such a hard fight; Obama wasn’t banking to win, place or show. And now, while Obamaniacs are Obamacycling their way to the White House, Clinton is left with a “kick me” sign on her back, being given fifteen seconds to answer a question where Obama is given a full minute, and having photos taken of her that make her look worse than Britney Spears at Rite-Aid. She is also “shrill” and “defensive”, and is first accused of plastic surgery, only to suffer a chaser of Anna Wintour shrieking that she’s not feminine enough. The American media would not touch Obama’s ethnicity with a ten-foot feather duster except in the most reverent tones, but Clinton is being beaten with the femistick every hour of every day.

Hillary Clinton has led an extraordinary life, not a perfect one. I’d vote for her if I could, for my own reasons. I’ve heard that she lacks humility and authenticity, that she’s an achieving automaton for whom no one can feel any empathy. But they’re all like that; you have to be like that. Personally, I’m more wary of people who can fake sincerity than those who can’t, and that’s why I think the proponents of Obamessiah for President are going to be disappointed.

PS. John McCain? Who’s John McCain?

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

no service

For about six months now, I've been terrified of reading novels, even ones that I've read before. My own voice is slippery, my confidence on papier mache foundations: if I read a novel I liked, I would either transmute my own work into a laughably poor imitation of that author's prose or shrivel into the deepest recesses of my bed and watch Comedy Central video clips for a week.

Many authors have admitted that they'll not read any novels on their subject while they're writing; I turn the corner on this admission and state that I will only read books that could not by any stretch of creativity, ingenuity or credulity have anything to do with either my subject or my style. (Style? I have a style?)

No matter how old I get, until this novel is complete I will still be a young writer, viz. impressionable, insecure. Here is a list of what I am allowed to read between now and when this novel is finished:

PG Wodehouse
Annie Dillard
Florence King
Arthur Conan Doyle
David Starkey
Michel Faber (tight squeeze, that)
Eric Ives

Also: almanacs, calendars, articles from the JSTOR database, and punditry on the Democratic primaries.

I list those particular authors because they don't write anything I will ever be capable of (with the exceptions of Drs Starkey and Ives, but I read them for the facts). Wodehouse - well, anyone can read him and get by; he can't be replaced and no one who has enough taste to read him would suffer a lapse in judgement substantial enough to attempt to write him. Annie Dillard comes closer than anyone on this list to having a style dangerously close to mine (or what I attempt, in any case), but I'm avoiding her novels and sticking to her short-take non-fiction. Florence King puts such a smile on my face, but I'm neither clever nor mean enough to ever get near her. Doyle's great weakness - for which I am grateful - is his two-dimensional women (and don't come back with a lot of Irene Adler claptrap about them being "strong" or, as Watson consistently puts it, "remarkable" - they're horribly underdeveloped, the half-drawn portraits of his stories), and so in writing about several women in what I hope to be six dimensions, Sherlock Holmes is a welcome refuge.

Michel Faber is a close call. When I first read him I had one of those terrible epiphanies, followed by a paralytic stupor of jealousy, followed by diligent imitation, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never make a banister as fascinating as he does, and you have to stick to what you're good at. Also, I don't have twenty years to spare.

This strict diet of reading denial is making me come off as a bit of a pleb in conversation, especially amongst those friends who start off asking me what I'm reading instead of asking me how I am. And now school threatens again, and I'll be reading books like The Making of Man-Midwifery and other wonderful books of absolutely no interest to anyone except me and a score of other weirdos, none of whom I've met.

I'm racing a friend with this manuscript. She's writing a Master's thesis and I'm finishing my story, and we're both going to be done by the end of March, or bust. After that we can read again.

You know, this calls to mind how much I want to be exactly like John Irving. I'm going to go restrain myself now.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.