Books and Reading - Part Five

I’m back with another installment of Books and Reading. From Part Four, music remained front and center in my teenage years playing in a band with a couple of high school buddies. The plan was to write music, and lyrics to that music, and see where music would take us.

But then came another piece to my life’s puzzle, not that I knew it at the time. I was perusing a rack of magazines at a local convenience store distracting myself from Grade 12 exams when the navy-blue cover of a paperback caught my attention. Menacing eyes stared back at me from the cover with the threat, ‘take me or else’.

The book was thick; an epic tale by most standards that I had to have. Like Rush and their album A Farewell To Kings, from my last installment, I knew nothing of the author or the book. The novel—The Stand—was penned by then little known writer Stephen King. Much more interesting than studying for physics or algebra; I couldn’t put the book down. As a side note, in Mr. King’s favor, not long thereafter, I found out that a girl I had eyes for had read and loved that same book. I married that girl.

Stephen King rocked my world and was my initiation into what reading would become. I followed The Stand with several of his other novels including The Shining, Salem’s Lot and The Dead Zone; I couldn’t get enough from the King of Horror.

In a way that was the beginning of my writing life. I wasn’t exactly writing but it was part of what I have come to understand as my 10,000-hour writing apprenticeship (thank you Malcolm Gladwell); I was reading with unintentional intent. (since then I’ve read much of Mr. King’s 74-book catalogue including The Dark Tower and his more recent 11/22/63.)

Discovering Stephen King, led to renewed interest in the literature introduced at high school including classics like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Combine these with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom The Bell Tolls and a foundation was forming I was unaware of.

Along with my renewed interest in reading, I did have encouragement from some special teachers. Mr. Lewis in grade school, “read Hemingway, my boy, for those short sentences”, or Miss Schmidt in high school, “find that café in Paris and write” and Miss Surerus later in high school, “let talent take you where your heart wants to go”.

I kept writing lyrics, even poetry, to the songs I wrote and the band performed. But like with most plans life has a way of turning out differently and the band broke up. I was devastated but continued to write music and lyrics branching into poetry and prose.

The time came to decide what I was to do next; life was moving me on. Still confounded by writing and its format of subject, predicate and sentence structure that were so much harder to understand than the easier formulas of math and science, I chose to pursue engineering.

I’m reminded here of a quote I read from Daniel Pinkwater (author of Lizard Music), “I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.”

This marks a good place to end Part Five of Reading and Writing and bid you farewell until our next meeting.

If you haven’t yet read my books The Actor or The Drive In, you can get them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo or pretty much wherever you find books.

The Actor: A Novel

The Drive In

Books and Music - Part Four

Hello again. You might think I’d forgotten to come back. But that’s not the case. Like an elephant, I usually don't forget, it just takes a little longer sometimes. You'll notice too that I've changed the title of this series from "Books and Reading" to "Books and Music". As you'll read in Part Four, I realized that Books and Reading are somewhat the same thing but Music, a very different art form, was and still is, no less influential or inspiring to me.

When we last spoke, I talked about Thor Heyerdahl’s great sea adventure and how his book, Kontiki, inspired one of my first short stories for school.

Another reading for pleasure hiatus followed as most of my reading was for school—reading was work, homework and questions; what fun was that? But that period didn’t last long and seemed to build into two avalanches that mowed down pretty much anything that was in their path. Not together in timeframe but in retrospect seemingly very close were the discoveries of Rush and the books of a certain author whose name I shall save for a future article.

I discovered the band Rush in tenth grade. I had started a band and after one of our jams, found their album A Farewell to Kings in the basement we were practicing in. I didn’t know much about them. For instance, I didn’t link the album title to Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The album art was fascinating; a marionette or puppet king lying across an apparent throne in the remains of a demolished castle, a gold crown on the ground beside him—the king had lost his kingdom—a symbol of the album title.

The liner notes—lost in today’s music streaming and downloads (I sound like an old person)—had the album lyrics and a picture of the trio, guys much older than me with long hair; one with a long, handle-bar mustache, one with his leg hanging over the arm of a chair wearing white-leather high-cuts and a third standing majestically to the right of the other two in a dark blazer.

From the time I heard the first song—the title track “A Farewell To Kings”—I would never hear music the same way again. I remember playing the album (yes, it was vinyl) on my friend’s turntable and, believe it or not, decided to trade my less-prized Bruce Springsteen album Darkness on the Edge of Town (I’d bought from the Columbia House Record Club) to get it.

Albums were scarce at that time, as was money to buy them, so trades were commonplace and often the only means of getting what you wanted. I played that album like no other on my father's turntable. I couldn’t get enough and have awaited each subsequent album with great anticipation. I've only felt that way about a few albums, Korn most recently. Interestingly, the same person who co-produced the last two Rush albums Snakes and Arrows and Clockwork Angels, Nick Raskulinecz, produced Korn’s last album The Serenity of Suffering.

Rush has continued to be a favourite through their extensive catalogue of nineteen studio albums, experimenting and growing their craft with each new release—for over forty years.

But as important as the music was on A Farewell To Kings, I was captivated by the lyrics and the stories they told in songs like the title track, “Closer To The Heart” and “Cinderella Man”.

I was further intrigued by the art of writing itself. I loved to read but writing puzzled me with its sentence structure and rules of subject and predicate without a discernable formula or pattern so common to mathematics and science that I already had a propensity for. It was through the lyrics of Rush’s songs that I found a new voice and route to writing; a form that I could follow and work to without the regimented sentence structure I so struggled with. In writing a lyric, I didn’t have to worry about forming the subject and predicate, words became like strokes of a paintbrush. I picked up rhyming conventions like Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter and Dr. Seuss’s anapestic tetrameter, putting words to the music I wrote, that at the time, fascinated me more than writing. I had written off writing (no pun intended) and my ability to write, in elementary school, but I loved putting music to words that others had written.

As music remained at the forefront of my teenage world, and thinking I could never write anything outside of lyrics and poetry, I will leave you to wait and wonder until next time on how my transition to short story and novel writing transpired. So until my next installment of Books and Music …

If you haven’t yet read my books The Actor or The Drive In, you can get them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo or pretty much wherever you find books.

The Actor: A Novel

The Drive In

It's Never Too Late

I was asked the other day whether I was thinking of going back to the engineering world I’d left prior to publishing The Actor and The Drive In. I said ‘no’ quickly; maybe even a little tersely. It was a question I couldn’t remember having been asked. I never think of doing such a thing. The past finds it’s way into my work but I never think of returning to it.

But it made me think about how I’d come to be at this place.

My engineering world began many years ago following what turned out to be something of a monumental decision in my life. I’d been writing; mainly lyrics and some poetry, never thinking it would one day become as large as it has. Music was my thing and what I wanted to do but my band had broken up, and likewise my dream. I was left disappointed and scared. What was I going to do? I could put my decision down to trading dreams for a paycheck but that wouldn’t really be fair as that dream was more fantasy than something I was really willing to make real. With the good fortune of math and science on my side I went off to university to become an engineer. Today I know I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t confident or bold enough for what it takes to chase a dream or even to know what it was.

Though writing had found me already and knew it, I didn’t. It never let me go throughout my corporate work life. I was fortunate that it was writing. I could write and read anywhere—early morning, late at night or any spare minute or two—and at the same time experience the wonderful joy of marrying my best friend, becoming a father and watching my son and daughter grow up while I did too. I am beyond grateful every day for these wonders as it is doubtful they would have happened were I to have chosen to take the path of the artist back then.

What is incredible today is I am getting to live that dream. I do my best not to forget my good fortune. The Henry David Thoreau quote at the beginning of The Drive In has resonated with me for years, “Most men live their lives in quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” It’s a theme of The Drive In. I’m thankful daily that I’m not six feet under having never realized that song.

I’m now at the point where I don’t want to do anything as much as I want to write. The feeling is ever present like now as I write this piece. It’s not something on my bucket list to experience. It’s not a wonderful accomplishment to be proud of (though I am) but instead, more simply, it’s what I get to do. It’s what I’ve always done in a way since I was a young teenager (and if you include reading, even longer). There is a plan for my life. There is for everyone’s, but being mere mortals, it’s not ours to understand or even control despite many years of thinking to the contrary (remember math and science are my strong suits as an engineer). It is ours to live, however.

I’ll close with an interview I heard recently where Tom Petty was promoting The Heartbreakers’ 40^th Anniversary Tour. He was answering a question about his career and shared with the audience a question he’d been asked recently by a young musician. The young man had explained that he loved music and wanted to make it his career but something else had come up; an opportunity that looked pretty good, what should he do? Mr. Petty in his usual down-to-earth drawl told the young man that he should take the opportunity. The person interviewing Mr. Petty sounded surprised by his answer wondering why he would not encourage the young man to follow his dream. Petty explained that he’d been extremely fortunate as a young teenager, after seeing The Beatles and Elvis on television, of never wanting to do anything but make and perform music. He said that a life in the arts tests a person in ways that if there is anything else even remotely attractive or more interesting, experience had showed him that a person would eventually go there. It was a great piece of advice. If it’s supposed to happen, your time will come, and with it a chance to pursue it. You’ll know it when it does; it’ll be in your heart and you won’t want to do anything else.

It’s never too late.

If you haven't yet read The Actor or The Drive In you can get them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo or pretty much wherever you find books.

The Actor: A Novel

The Drive In

Beneath The Surface - 3

This is the third and last instalment of the story that began a few weeks ago as something a little different from what I've commonly included in this space. If you want to read the first two parts, click on the links here Beneath The Surface - 1 or Beneath The Surface - 2 before you continue into the last part James and Gwen's world, for now ... 

The movie ended shortly after nine. Gwen was anxious to return to the house and Gregory, restless without him at her side.

“Is your Mom always like that?” she asked as they made their way out of the cinema.

“Like what?”

“Over nice, bubbly … controlling?”

“Yeah, I guess so. She’s my mom.”

James put his arm around Gwen’s shoulders as they walked back to the Cavalier. She loved the physical strength in his arms and fingers, gentle yet powerful.

The house was quiet when they returned. James’s mother was flipping through Better Homes and Gardens at the kitchen table. They could hear his father watching the Phillies game in the living room. Their baby monitor was on the counter, the red light dark.

“Where’s Gregory?” Gwen demanded glancing around the kitchen.

“Sleeping in his crib,” Mrs. Simpson replied appearing quite pleased.

Gwen hurried upstairs without saying a word. Panic had struck her heart.

“Why’s the monitor off?” she heard James ask his mother downstairs.

“I turned it off,” Mrs. Simpson answered, “I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”

Gregory was sleeping peacefully when she reached his crib. He looked perfect, angelic.

“I’m not comfortable here James,” Gwen whispered once they were alone in bed. His arms were wrapped around her, his chest to her back. His warm fingers stroked her stomach.

“I know. It’ll be better tomorrow.”

“I hope so.”

An hour later, Gregory was crying beside them. She had closed her eyes but sleep had not arrived, her late afternoon nap no doubt the culprit. She hoped Gregory would fall back to sleep on his own but knew that wasn’t the usual course of events. To avoid the commotion that would disturb the Simpson’s sleep, she propped up her pillow and brought Gregory into their bed. In the darkness, she pulled him to her breast. He of course fussed and would not latch to her nipple.

“What’s up with our little man?” James mumbled. “I don’t think he likes it here either,” Gwen replied with a curtness that seemed to crank Gregory’s crying up a notch. Gwen slid her feet to the floor and rocked him in her arms.

“Can I help?” James asked turning over.

“No.”

Gregory opened his mouth wide and started to scream.

Gwen got up and held him tight to her shoulder. She prayed he would stop, whispering in his ear and kissing the back of his soft head. What seemed an eternity ended in minutes when his eyes closed and the calm of silence returned. Afraid to let him go, fearing he would start all over again, she held him until her own eyes started to close. With care she laid him back in the crib, tucked a blanket around his tiny tummy and cringed as he turned his head. Thankfully, he stayed asleep.

When her head hit the pillow, she did not hear another thing.

The next morning she woke to Gregory’s cooing beside their bed. James was holding her hand.

“How do you feel?”

“Okay,” she answered.

The smell of fried bacon and eggs wafted into their room. Gwen doubted James had bothered to mention their vegetarian diets. The aroma of coffee enticed them out of bed and into the kitchen.

“Morning kids,” announced Mrs. Simpson in a big, shiny voice. She was dressed and in full make-up with her hair done-up. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

Gwen slid Gregory into his high chair and sat down. There were only three place settings at the table.

“Oh darling, I didn’t think you ate breakfast,” Mrs. Simpson oozed trying to make light of what Gwen was sure was an oversight, “being vegetarian and all.”

“It’s okay,” Gwen replied and stood up, beyond uncomfortable, “Gregory needs to eat anyway.”

She yanked him out of the chair and moved to the couch in the family room. Gwen was ready to feed but Gregory was too interested in what was happening in the kitchen to take notice. He seemed to sense her apprehension with no intention of cooperating. James joined them.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she snapped barely above a whisper, but Gregory was not about to settle. His head bobbed hard against her arm.

“So how’s work?” Ed asked as James returned to the kitchen. Gwen could not connect Ed Simpson and James as father and son at all. “Still wearing your hair long I see.”

“Short hair wasn’t a prerequisite,” James retorted.

Gwen got up and brought Gregory back into the kitchen.

“Gregory needs changing.”

“I’ll take him,” James said.

“How was the movie?” Ed asked as Gwen sat down at the added fourth place setting. Mrs. Simpson set a cup of hot coffee down in front of her.

“A little violent for my liking,” Gwen replied and took a sip of coffee, “too much blood.”

“I know what you mean,” Ed agreed getting up, “movies these days are all blood and violence.”

“Oh yes, Ed and what was the last movie you saw?” Mrs. Simpson quipped.

“Apocalypse Now,” he replied replacing the pot in the coffee maker he’d just filled his mug with. He moved away from the counter. “With you.”

“Disney movies are my favourites,” Gwen stated trying her best to keep up the conversation and avoid an awkward silence, “The Little Mermaid is a classic.”

“Oh now come girl, you’re not all that sweet and innocent,” Mrs. Simpson flared up.

“What do you mean?” Gwen asked, surprised. The atmosphere in the kitchen frosted over. They were unexpectedly alone. Mr. Simpson had vanished again. Gwen’s tolerance for politeness was wafer thin.

“Just that … you and James aren’t exactly …”

“Exactly what?” Gwen questioned, anger ripping her apart inside.

“Well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Gwen stated sternly.

“James didn’t have much of a choice, is what I mean.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice in what?” Gwen’s voice rose.

“You were pregnant. It was the … the noble thing to do.”

“Pardon me,” Gwen said her eyes widening, overwhelmed in disbelief. “The Noble thing?”

“How do you know the baby’s even his?”

“What! Because …”

Gwen stopped. She had been down this road before with her own mother. It never went anywhere. James was the only man she had ever loved; the only man she had ever been with. But that was no one’s business but hers.

“Look at you. You’re a wreck. You’re still a child yourself watching Bambi movies for Christ sake. You should’ve given him up. What kind of mother can you possibly be?”

Gwen stood up. James’s mother or not, Mrs. Simpson was way out of line. Gwen could not believe what she was hearing, such flagrantly cruel and unfair accusations. It seemed impossible that this woman could possibly have brought her James into the world. She stared at the wicked woman with incredulity who had not only become a stranger but would remain one.

“The best kind,” Gwen fired back wanting to stop but unable to. “I love my son, Mrs. Simpson.” Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. “And I know enough to turn a baby monitor on at night.”

She knew it was a foolish thing to say but she could think of nothing else. She did not want to be there anymore. It was a mistake to have come.

“Mrs. Simpson, I think it’s best that we leave.”

“But Gwin, why?”

Gwen did not hear another word. She was furious and tired of wasting her time with people who treated her with such blatant condescension. She knew she was a good person. She did not need another mother who, after eighteen months, still couldn’t pronounce her first name correctly. She didn’t need another person who compared her with the likes of a street girl on Jarvis, who had as much genuine love for her first grandson as she had for her new Maytag washing machine. It just wasn’t worth it.

She stomped out of the room to find James. She took Gregory for a ride in the car while James packed their things and dealt with whatever undertones had followed at the house.

As they drove home, Gwen was thankful for the air-conditioning. The heat was as intense as it had been on their way there. Open fields stretched out beside them on both sides of the interstate. She looked over at James. His face was calm. He liked to drive. He had one hand on the wheel. She reached for his other hand resting on his thigh and held it. He glanced sideways at her and smiled without saying a word. Gregory slept peacefully in the backseat.

She liked where she was though the hurt remained; truth often brought pain. Like a sliver beneath the surface of the skin, truth festered and in time always seemed to find its way to the surface.

End Story

Thus ends Beneath The Surface. Maybe it took you somewhere you've been or somewhere new, either way I hope it took you somewhere for a little while. Look for a new story in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet read my novel The Actor or my first collection of short stories, The Drive In, you can get them at Barnes & Noble or Chapters-Indigo or from Amazon below.

The Actor

The Drive In