(Music) Lovers On The Beach

This past Sunday evening, the weather was perfect for enjoying music on a beach. Fortunately, Praveena and I had secured tickets for Noel Gallagher and his High-Flying Birds at Echo Beach. Praveena’s a big Oasis fan (i.e., she’s a huge Beatles fan); we also saw Gallagher’s post-Oasis project last May at one of Toronto’s premiere music venues, The Sony Centre. This was icing on the cake for her.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a huge Oasis or Gallagher brothers fan.  It’s always great to see live music, and attending a show with the love of your life is particularly special. But my favourite part of the concert was seeing Gallagher’s exquisite showmanship. (It doesn’t hurt that for an outdoor venue, Echo Beach has pretty awesome sound.)

In light of recent Canadian concert troubles—Meatloaf collapsing on stage in Edmonton, Justin Bieber falling through a Saskatoon stage (thankfully, both are okay)—I was slightly, superstitiously concerned in the leadup to the show that we might see something alarmingly similar. But the music and spectacle kept my mind limber and stress-free.

Gallagher is a professional showman, through and through. While he may play up his asshole persona to a (sometimes exaggerated) degree, it’s obvious he’s having fun, especially on stage. He certainly enjoys his expletive-laced banter with the crowd. In his between-song introductory greeting, he asked what was going on in Toronto on a Sunday (perhaps hoping someone would say he was THE EVENT of the day?). He added that the band were still touring their Chasing Yesterday album—which they’d showcased in their previous Toronto visit, last May—joking that the tour had yet to turn a profit. He later acknowledged that the setlist hadn’t changed.

The band’s music isn’t groundbreaking. But as a consummate showman, Gallagher knows how to give fans what they want—mainly, great guitar riffs, earworm melodies and soaring choruses. A three-piece brass section livened up songs like Riverman and The Death of You And Me.

He likes to change things up, as he did with a heavier live rendition of The Mexican and a jaunty, up-tempo treatment of the Oasis tune Wonderwall. He also offered a delightful acoustic version of Oasis hit (and standard crowd singalong) Champagne Supernova. Hearing its nostalgic line “Where were you when we were getting high?” transported me back two decades to an uncomfortable place that thankfully I’ve moved well beyond. Speaking of which, Gallagher playfully dedicated the High Flying Birds’ tune You Know We Can’t Go Back to all Oasis fans.

In short, Gallagher and his mates—Russell Pritchard on bass, Chris Sharrock on drums, Tim Smith on guitar and Mike Rowe on keyboard—regaled Echo Beach’s near-capacity crowd. The performance had Praveena bouncing around and shrieking like a girl at a Beatles concert…uh, wait a moment….Anyway, I loved watching her soak up the performance of one of her musical icons. Her personal fave number on the evening was The Masterplan, a majestic, emotional, minor masterpiece. She loved it not just in terms of performance, but also for the ecstatic crowd response it evoked.

Alas, the moment came when Gallagher drolly announced his favourite part of the show, “the end.” The three-song encore concluded with singalong finale Don’t Look Back In Anger, which gave the crowd the closure it’s designed to provide.

With his music and his endearing crustiness, Gallagher knows how to appease a crowd, whether casual fans like me or diehards like Praveena. And who knows? Had he fallen through the stage, he probably would have found a way to turn the moment into entertainment.

Setlist

Shoot a Hole In The Sun (pre-recorded intro)

Everybody’s On The Run

Lock All The Doors

In The Heat Of The Moment

Riverman

Fade Away (Oasis Cover)

The Death Of You And Me

You Know We Can’t Go Back

Champagne Supernova (Oasis Cover)

Ballad Of The Might I

Talk Tonight (Oasis Cover)

D’yer Wanna Be A Spaceman

The Mexican

Half The World Away (Oasis Cover)

Listen Up (Oasis Cover)

If I Had A Gun…

Digsy’s Dinner (Oasis Cover)

The Masterplan (Oasis Cover)

Encore

Wonderwall (Oasis Cover)

AKA…What A Life!

Don’t Look Back In Anger (Oasis Cover)

Eighty: Reasons To Live

Recently my Dad marked his twentieth wedding anniversary. The celebratory party packed a festive punch, with lots of family and friends coming from as far away as California, NYC, Chicago and BC. Young and old, all celebrants enjoyed the day, appeasing palates, filling bellies, meeting new people and lauding the happy couple for their matrimonial achievement.

Amy is Dad’s third wife (and he her second husband). This marriage is his longest, doubling the previous high-water mark. For me, these highlights speak to a couple things: one, that the celebrating couple have put in the requisite hours and effort to stay together (you can’t not work hard at it; no relationship worth keeping comes easily); and two, I guess it’s true what They say about age. Namely, that it brings experience, and of course experience fosters wisdom. I’m not convinced Dad would necessarily have succeeded in this marriage had he entered it earlier in life. It took the cumulative lessons of not only his previous marriages but other life experiences as well for him to finally find peace and happiness with a better half.

Like most people, Dad has learned as he’s aged. Through his failures and reinventions, he’s shown anyone willing to pay attention how to embrace age and experience as learning tools. He used to be a hothead and a showoff. Eventually accepting that those attributes get you nowhere, he gleaned new approaches to conflict resolution and dealing with success. Historically late for things, he started setting his clock ten, then fifteen minutes early. Previously a wreck when it came to finances, he learned how to better manage his money. (In all fairness, Amy is the financial wizard; so, really, he learned to let her manage their finances.)

I myself have begun to understand that age is nothing to fear, but rather something to embrace. I caught a particularly revealing glimpse of this truth at the anniversary celebration.

There are five cousins: my Dad, his sister Mary, his brother Bill, and their cousins John and Jim. With the exception of Mary (who’s ten years younger than Dad), all the others are around eighty years of age. A few years ago they started getting together one weekend every spring for a social outing. My Dad’s anniversary party gathering certainly qualified as one of those weekends; indeed, over several days in town, the quintet got together to catch up and reminisce and generally enjoy the company of the extended family they grew up with.

When I was younger, far younger, I thought eighty seemed positively ancient. Far beyond anyone’s best before date, far too late to start anything new or achieve anything of significance. I was afraid of eighty in the same way I was afraid of death.

But I’ve worked in a hospital long enough to know that eighty is by no means a death sentence, or even the beginning of the end. At work, I see a lot of sick and infirm people. Many, but not all, are north of eighty. I also see many octogenarians who present as youthful, spry and ambitious. Eighty, then, might be on the cusp of getting old. But it can still offer plenty of potential for life.

There are many ways to stave off age’s inevitable cruelties. The key seems to be to stay active—physically, mentally and especially socially. My Dad is living proof that you can survive retirement by staying active. He’s proof that even approaching eighty, you can find success and happiness, whether in marriage or anything else, so long as you believe it’s possible and work hard at it.

He’s also discovered two other qualities that go hand in hand with age and wisdom: confidence and serenity. The more you know, the more confident you feel about doing your thing, and the less you need to prove yourself, or to showboat. And the older you get, the more you realize what’s important, and the less you stress out about unimportant stuff. Over the years, I have seen firsthand Dad’s hotheadedness disappear, to be replaced by a much-welcomed serenity. I think, also, the more confidence you have, the less anxiety; and less anxiety allows more room for serenity.

And the cousins? Age be damned, they will continue to live their lives, meeting up once a year (or more, when celebrations permit) to catch up and reminisce. They will seek reasons to remain active, physically and mentally and especially socially. Heck, my Uncle Bill comes all the way from BC for these gatherings. As my Uncle John told Praveena and me, “When you’re retired, you look for excuses to get out of the house.” I took that as proof of the itch to keep living, to keep finding things to do.

One final note about the party: I saw the young cousins, my brothers’ and sister’s kids, getting to know each other and playing together throughout the day. It was a thrill to watch, like seeing the start of something new yet also the continuation of valuable tradition. I hope they continue nurturing their relationships throughout the years, hopefully well into their eighties. It will lead to a life of fun, joy and fulfillment, and a later-in-life urge to keep finding things to do, together and apart. Because that’s the not-so-secret secret to maintaining that insatiable itch to live, the closest thing we currently have to a fountain of youth, right?

Over The Hills And Far Away

My best friend texted me over the Victoria Day weekend to wish me a happy May 2-4 holiday, prefacing the text with a classic Zeppelin lyric: “Many times I’ve gazed along the open road.” I responded with “I am at a Tamil Catholic wedding. Talk about over the hills and far away!”

Yes, Praveena took me far from my comfort zone on Saturday, as she was a bridesmaid at her Tamil friend’s Catholic wedding in Brampton. I often found myself sitting there, staring in awe at things I didn’t understand. Yet while specific wedding traditions may change from culture to culture, the basics don’t. The key elements of any successful wedding are a pair of loving, willing participants and a good after-party. Fortunately, Saturday’s event offered both.

In true Canadian fashion, people of all colours were in attendance at the church: black, white, brown and yellow. I wondered if the church itself was of a Tamil Catholic denomination. The Tamil Catholic priest and Tamil-looking, red-and-white–gowned acolytes suggested as much, and the bird-decorated stained glass ceiling was something I’d never seen before. In the pews to the right of the aisle, the groom’s family sat, chanting in Tamil—Catholic words?—and fingering their rosaries. To the left sat the bridal contingent, including me. Several times I reflected on how hard the Christian proselytizers must’ve worked to brand convert the denizens of Tamil Nadu 2,000 years ago.

This wedding shared many similarities with most others I’d been to: the Jesus statues on the walls, the Bible readings, the classic vows exchanged by bride and groom, the priest’s declaration that the wedded couple raise their children according to the principles of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. But I’d never seen the groomsmen waiting for the bride in the aisle, with the groom standing closest to the altar. The Tamil Catholic priest speaking in lilting, heavily accented English (and occasionally Tamil) added another interesting flavour. And many women wore red wedding saris, lending an exotic visual flair to the proceedings.

Several Hindu traditions are incorporated into the Tamil Catholic wedding. Perhaps most notable is the marriage necklace. Similar in concept to the ring exchange (but not replacing it), the groom places around the bride’s neck a gold necklace (mangala sutra or “thali”), which the bride wears for life, identifying her as a married woman.

Held at a Brampton banquet hall later that evening, the reception embraced a collaboration of cultures. The menu foreshadowed as much, boasting a delectable buffet of Indian, Sri Lankan, Canadian and Chinese cuisines. When the wedding party entered the hall, with the bride running through a tunnel of people holding up sparklers, I dearly hoped a falling ember wouldn’t ignite the bridal dress. The couple’s mutual love and commitment were further symbolized when bride and groom each placed a flower garland around the other’s neck. And of course there was typical wedding stuff to augment the novelties: dance floor, open bar, silly games. Even a cotton candy maker was brought in to appease those with a midway-leaning sweet tooth. Everything was geared toward an outrageous but fitting celebration of life.

On more than one occasion I caught myself thinking about my own potential wedding. As the photo slide show depicted shots of the bride and groom, I instead imagined pictures of Praveena and me. I saw myself putting the thali around her neck, I envisioned both our parents sharing in the symbolic lighting of the holy lamp, I imagined each of us adorning the other with flower garlands.

Later in the evening, after Praveena had exchanged her pink bridesmaid dress for a purple-and green sari, I couldn’t stop gazing at her. I knew I wanted to share her culture and life. I knew I was lucky to be with someone so special. As if to confirm this, she soon revealed her hero side.

I was heading to the washroom out in the lobby when I saw a man on the floor with a few people gathered around him. Taking a closer look, I saw he was an older gentleman. I wondered if he was maybe passed out drunk or perhaps just resting. When someone mentioned blood, I went to get Praveena, who’s a doctor. While she assessed the situation, someone called 911. The man—an uncle on the groom’s side—had a pulse, but blood was now oozing onto the marble floor under his head.

By the time the paramedics arrived, Praveena had made sure he wasn’t in acute distress and put some towels under his head to cushion it and staunch the blood. The paramedics put him on a backboard and took him to hospital. Praveena would later surmise that he’d tried to lean against the wall, missed and went down, striking his head on the marble floor. Following up the next day, she’d find he’d been released from hospital, CT scan negative. Thus our weird, eye-opening day had a bit of a crazy ending. What’s a quintessentially Canadian celebration of life without a hint of mortality, eh?

Will Monsanto Go To Ground?

On the surface, the news that Monsanto soon may be dead and buried seems too good to be true. Indeed, German pharmaceutical and industrial chemical beast Bayer wants to buy out the American corporation for the immodest sum of $62 billion.

When I first heard the news, my heart filled with joy. To me, the pesticide- and seed-producing giant is more than just a massive, Hydra-like, comic-book-evil organization that doesn’t even bother trying to improve its public perception—specifically that it favours profit over human and environmental health. The very name “Monsanto” represents—to me—a real-life manifestation of every morally corrupt, monopolistic, money-grubbing, power-hungry company populating sci-fi movies of the last thirty years: Soylent Corporation, Cyberdyne Systems and Umbrella Corporation all wrapped up in one malignant entity.

Whether this bad reputation is earned is another story. Among its “achievements,” Monsanto basically perfected the GMO process. But contrary to what conspiracy theorists and anti-GMO factions will have us believe, evidence that GMO foods are unhealthy is inconclusive, and opinions on the subject are likely more emotional than fact-based. Nonetheless, Monsanto has managed to nurture the bad taste in the mouth left by GMO’s and the unholy stigma associated with its seed patents, if only due to newsworthy stories like its proclivities for swallowing up business competitors and suing small-scale farmers who wittingly or otherwise infringe on patent rights. The fact that it wields incredible corporate influence over government food policy assuages no fears. Who likes to see so much power concentrated in so few hands?

More recently, the debate over Monsanto’s signature weed killer product, Roundup, and the possible carcinogenicity of its active ingredient, glyphosate, has gotten very contentious indeed. I can just imagine a bunch of white-coated scientists standing in a tight circle around an unseen slugfest, chanting “Fight, fight, fight, fight!” With regards to GMO and glyphosate safety, why can’t both sides of these fights see eye to eye? For the intertwined sakes of human and environmental health, some agreement must occur between industry and anti-industry scientists, or at least between non-partisan parties. Mustn’t it? I mean, what’s the point of profit if you have no children to pass it on to once you’re gone?

Back to the possibility of a Monsanto buyout. It seems more of a glass-half-empty kind of good news. Because whatever Monsanto does to incur such acrimony—from anti-GMO and organic food activists, from environmentalists, from anti-corporate activists, from me—it certainly doesn’t operate in a vacuum. If or when Monsanto disappears down Bayer’s massive gullet, the German conglomerate will own a monopoly over the seed and industrial pesticide markets, and will surely do its best to perpetuate Monsanto’s destructive legacy. And I haven’t even mentioned Syngenta, the world’s largest seller of agricultural chemicals. If ever Monsanto as an entity ceases to exist, the evils perpetrated on this planet and its food-producing and -consuming denizens by massive corporations will doubtless continue.

The situation reminds me of that old Newfie joke, where the waiter asks the Newfie if he wants his large pizza cut into six or eight pieces. “Oh, six, please,” the Newfie says. “I couldn’t eat eight.” Whether six or eight pieces, a large pizza is still a large pizza. Bayer may sound better than Monsanto, but an agro-chemical company is still an agro-chemical company, perpetuating more environmental harm than good. (Incidentally, Bayer is the largest vendor of neonicotinoid insecticides, so the bee genocide will certainly continue.) Monsanto’s possible relegation to the land of dead companies (or at least to footnote status) is indeed too good to be true.

Living On The Edge (Of Town)

Every word I write takes me further from the city bustle. I’m on a York Region Transit VIVA Blue bus heading north on Yonge Street, formerly the longest street in the world (until it officially broke into two, Yonge and Highway 11). I’m not going to the end of the line—nowhere close—although it sometimes seems like it. I’ve always lived on the city’s outskirts. But I never imagined I’d live as far away as I do now.

Richmond Hill, officially. Unofficially, the ’burbs. The boonies. The sticks. The other day my fiancée and I were driving south on Leslie Street, north of Elgin Mills. In the distance rose a silhouetted metropolis. That’s probably the highrises at Steeles and Yonge, I said. No, Praveena said. Don’t you see the CN Tower? It’s downtown Toronto! Indeed it was, thirty kilometres to the south. I could visualize that iconic, somewhat stereotypical sci-fi image of the mushroom cloud rising over a doomed downtown core. (Seriously, though, my feelings on the burbs are nowhere near apocalyptic.)

In many ways, Richmond Hill isn’t so different from the big city. It’s certainly home to some odd ducks. On a VIVA Blue bus the other day, I saw a guy drinking a beer. This in itself isn’t so strange—I’ve seen people drinking beer on VIVA buses, as I’ve seen people drinking beer on Toronto Transit Commission vehicles. The weird thing was that this was at 6:30 in the morning on a Tuesday. Rather than coming home from an all-night bender, the drinker looked to be on his way to work. He wore green scrubs; I figure he worked in some capacity in the health-care industry. Just one seedy story from among the satellite city’s 185,000 citizens.

No, my adopted city is not sparsely populated. In particular, it boasts large Asian and Persian contingents. I get my hair cut by Persians and do much of my grocery shopping at Asian supermarkets. Seeing all the Korean and Chinese signage in these stores, I certainly feel far from the town where I grew up. Then again, coming home to Praveena every evening makes me feel right at home—more so, perhaps, than ever before.

Aesthetically and functionally, much of Richmond Hill resembles any bustling, North American metropolis: concrete and steel, asphalt and pavement, light poles and power lines, traffic and public transit. The place offers many of the same benefits of city living—maybe an American city more than a Canadian one, with its myriad strip malls and shopping centres rising on every other block. But the businesses dotting the Richmond Hill landscape are totally Canadian: Tim Horton’s, No Frills, Kelsey’s, Petro-Canada, Sporting Life. While items like clothing and groceries seem a tad pricier in the ’burbs, at least rent is cheaper.

Richmond Hill doesn’t offer all the same perks, however. In the absence of bike lanes, bicycles are best ridden (illegally, I might add) on the sidewalk, as roads such as Yonge Street function more like highways. They’re busier, with faster traffic; bicycle riding on them can be a life-threatening experience. Though compared to city traffic, suburb traffic isn’t nearly as bumper-to-bumper (although try saying that with a straight face while travelling north on Yonge Street around 6 pm).

Another annoyingly American quality of the ’burbs is how everything seems so far apart. “Next door” is a minimum five-minute trek. Even the roads are wider than what I’m used to. (Fortunately, my library’s but a seven-minute saunter from home.) Since no two points are very close together, an outing becomes “an outing,” and a trip to the city is most definitely a “trip to the city.” Consequently I spend lots of time travelling down to the city to work, to visit family and friends. But in taking public transit, I use my travel time wisely, reading and writing—like now, writing this. Alternatively, everything being so far apart is more reason to stay in with Praveena.

Maybe the biggest pleasure of living in Richmond Hill is its proximity to unabridged nature. Go a little north, to Stouffville Road, say, and you’re surrounded by fields, lakes, trails, wildlife, tree-lined horizons. My roots may have sprouted in the city, and no one will ever confuse me with Cartier or Brûlé, but I love exploring, stirring up rural dust.

Every word I write takes me further from the city bustle. Praveena and I may be somewhat isolated up here, separated from friends and family, but that just means we get to experience the joys of relying on each other for support. And we can spend lots of time together.

Bottom line? You forge your own life. It’s not where you’re living, but with whom you live, with whom you create your own experiences, discover your own pleasures, find your own solutions to problems, build your own memories. Make no mistake: living in the ’burbs is still living.

Remembering How To Live

What’s it like to live, I sometimes wonder. It’s easy to forget, especially when one takes living for granted, which many of us do in today’s world—The sound of suction drainage of a gaping wound resembles the guttural noises of a zombie protesting its infinite hunger—One gets caught up in the drudgery of existence: working a menial job, spending time on public transit, cooking meals, washing dishes and clothes and body parts, flossing and brushing teeth, etc. These things add up, and before you know it, you think you have no time for the simple pleasures.

Taking living for granted is like taking drugs. You do it more and more until you're doing it cuz it’s easy and convenient, at which point you’re not even choosing it. Rather, it’s choosing you. Drugs were my path for decades. In all that time I didn’t have to plan my day. It was already planned for me—Shambling zombie-like along a dimly lit hall in the geriatric ward, decaying bit by bit every day…Get that body to the morgue before it rots!—but of course that arrangement can’t last forever without serious atrophy of the brain, and a gradual deterioration of self-respect. Which leads to a gradual forgetting, or annihilation, of one’s self.

I’ve been clean for over a year now, and while my story isn't by any means unique, it's still my story. I’m gradually re-learning, remembering, who I am and how to live—Cancel Code Blue, cancel Code Blue—and how to treat myself with dignity and respect. I was lucky, though. I awoke from addiction staring into the beautiful face of a smart, sexy woman. And yes, I know, one must quit bad habits for one’s own sake, not for the sake of anyone else. But a smart, beautiful woman with a sense of humour and a sexy reading habit—how’s that for incentive to stay sober?

I’m a 43-year-old man who for eighteen years has worked a menial hospital support-staff job, roughly paralleling the time of my drug addiction. I don’t work with corpses, but it sometimes feels like I’m watching myself slowly become a zombie. It’s long past time to get out of this lame-duck job and get into one that’s been my passion since I was a sober teenager. I want to write and edit and work with words in an environment crackling with creativity. I am looking for a new job, but it’s taking much longer than I expected. (Nurse, how much longer will I have to wait?) I am prepared to persevere and endure the wait—and search—however long it takes.

In the meantime, I still occasionally wonder what it’s like to live—but not often. In the early days of sobriety, I would finish work and feel I had nothing to look forward to. No bottle tokes, no white Russians, no cigarettes. The longer I’ve remained sober, the more I’ve (re)discovered how to enjoy life, the more I’ve found things to look forward to—first and foremost time spent with my beautiful, smart fiancée.

Here are some of the things sobriety has taught me (Shift change! Time to give report): living is about filling in life’s cracks. It’s about doing all the things in a day, big and small, that make one feel one has used up the day such that it can be crumpled up and tossed in the garbage. Exercising, working, reading a book, writing, completing that long-neglected project, cooking and eating a meal, cleaning up afterwards, brushing one’s teeth, cutting one’s toenails, doing the banking, cutting the lawn, seeing a concert, going on a date, taking a vacation. Relearning to live is about remembering how to do these (and many other) things, and forgetting all the things that are unimportant or destructive in their extremity. The more enticements towards sober, moderate living one has—a beautiful girlfriend, a full daily itinerary—the easier it is to effectively grasp the practice of living. And the sooner one understands these things, the sooner one can start living again without taking life for granted.

serenity

here I am

bursting with violence I must release

lest it release me

in fury and blindness

a stylish tragedy

a dashing finale

I try to silence

my violence

but anger trumps

any fragile attempt

a strong hand

played poorly

is a travesty

but keep playing

by all means

keep playing

and hopefully the face you

smash is not your own

again