All Hallows Eve

Tags

death, joy, leonard cohen, love, music, songs, volcanos, Werner Hertzog

 

I have always liked this day, this night, which grows increasingly poignant as Time decays. So many lovely souls now lost to the dateless night closing in on us all. So many. My lifeline to the planet’s progress, or egress, CBC Radio’s The World At Six, is 50 years old today. Ho-hum. The police in Montreal are now tapping a journalist’s telephone. The Great American Disaster now slouches towards its inevitably foul finale, with the FBI illegally interfering in an election that, one hopes, will remain the all-time nadir of western democracy. This is a day for reflection and remembrance. The earth has grown still and silent, as life retreats below to wait for spring and more life. A winter chill envelops huddled trees and empty fields. Up here, in the mountains, even people seem to disappear until the tenderness of new green leaves is once more seen. Byron and Algis are off to Mexico. It is usually a melancholy time, yet I find myself thinking of not-so-small mercies, the recent blessings that have come.

By now, I have purchased Leonard Cohen’s latest album, You Want It Darker, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration. Previously, I thought the title song was cause enough for rejoicing – and, to be honest, I expected no more. Now I find this is one of his very best albums – which, for Cohen, is saying a lot – a compilation of ten exquisite songs almost heartbreaking in their truth and beauty. It was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, who has created a masterpiece of subtle restraint, with plaintive strings, reminiscent of Beethoven’s Last Quartets, always haunting his father’s balefully evocative and irreducibly concise words.

 

If you are the Dealer

                   I’m out of the game

                   If you are the Healer

                   Then I’m broken and lame –

                   You want it darker?

                   We kill the flame…

 

          Leonard Cohen was not well when he recorded this album, it seems. The sessions were held in his house, and the microphone fixed up over a medical chair. No doubt the extreme physical exertions of his recent tours – falling to his knees to sing Hallelujah – exacted a toll. The songs do indeed sound elegiac, yet I hear no sense of an end-time farewell, as some do. Indeed, the gently tinkling piano and the modest cooing of back-up singers lends a hopeful air to extravagantly ambiguous lyrics. Flames may be killed, he might be “out of the game” – but his heart has always been heavy with a love so bittersweet it is barely distinguishable from sorrow. Even the phrase, “I’m ready, my Lord,” which repeats in the title song, is not a quietus – Leonard has long been ready for his Lord, and, unsurprisingly, he still is. Although now he may be:

 

Somebody who

Has given up on me and you…

 

I might be that somebody too, so I can dig it – as we used to say.

 

I’d better drink this glass of blood

Try to say the Grace Try to keep the peace…

 

They are not words of weary resignation. So many of these fine songs express the equanimity that comes

 

Year by year

Month by month

Day by day

Thought by thought

 

I’m not sure why Leonard Cohen’s triumph at 82 should so transfix me with joy – yet it does. Possibly it encourages me, at 66, to anticipate many more years of abundance? Possibly. But, listening to all the shitty contemporary music which spurts from my radio if I don’t get there fast enough, I am inclined to think it is because great singer-songwriters may be waning, but they’re not dead yet – and, who knows, they may inspire another generation to match standards that seem anything but standard? Well, Lenny, what a feat!

 

Equally delightful is Werner Herzog’s latest film, Into the Inferno, now available on Netflicks. Of course, I could not actually see it, but I heard it, and heard about it. Ostensibly a look at volcanoes and volcanologists, it is naturally far, far more than that, delving into matters as deep and dark as those Leonard Cohen toys with. The footage of eruptions and lava-flows is evidently mind-boggling, yet much of this is stock-footage – and Herzog happily admits it. What interests him is the ancient interplay between humankind and this most dramatic display of nature’s destructive potency. Numerous far-flung regions have a mythology inextricably linked to the earth’s proclivity for devouring her inhabitants in a rage of molten rock, of pyro-caustic rivers rushing down at a thousand miles an hour to obliterate all that was once a landscape unchanged in millennia. One South Pacific island even has a relatively recent commemorative cult. Jon Frum, an American GI, parachuted – presumably by accident – into the island’s volcano crater. But, like Jesus, he will one day return, bringing gifts of bubble-gum, candy, and washing-machines for everyone. This is not a barroom yarn. It is a nascent religion – one that could, if circumstances permitted it, dominate half the world. Herzog does not ridicule it either. With his usual wry wisdom, he presents it in comparison with Christianity – and these comparisons are many. Herzog is the perfect polite observer, always eager to understand another’s point of view, and never judgmental. Somehow, he manages to enter North Korea, where a great volcano – Mount Pekatu – has been incorporated into the ruling party’s mythology. Noting the country’s restrictions on media, the director simply informs us that North Korea prefers to be seen from its own point of view. He allows the images to speak for themselves – the “human pixels” choreographed in displays of hundreds of weeping thousands celebrating the nation’s birth. It would be mawkish to comment on such images. Instead, Herzog pinpoints nuggets of information that reveal far more even than his images. The original Kim Il Jong, for example, the fighter against “Japanese imperialism” who fathered the nation, also declared himself the “leader for all eternity” – which is why his son and , now, his grandson have never declared themselves leaders. There can be no other leader. As Herzog shows us, the nominative leaders are always portrayed with the volcano behind them. It is a metaphor for strength, and a symbol of the regime’s connection to North Korea’s vast antiquity. We see students in military dress sing odes to the volcano, and Herzog merely remarks, in his droll way, that it is hard to picture American college freshmen and women performing such a ritual in deadly seriousness. Hard? It is impossible. In Ethiopia, he stumbles across anthropologists who have just uncovered fossilized human remains a hundred-thousand years old. It is only the third such find in all of Africa, and he captures beautifully the mood of scientists whose lives generally involve sweeping through dust and finding nothing. It is, perhaps, his interest in human reactions to the extraordinary that makes Herzog such an exceptionally great director. This, and his willingness to allow his films to jolt off on tangents offering huge digressions. Here, he muses on our distant ancestors, their short lives dictated entirely by a natural world we have now learned to subdue – and will possibly destroy in the process. His film is a powerful reminder of the planet’s proven ability to destroy itself unaided. Herzog’s histories of ancient volcanic events – one of them nearly exterminating the inchoate homo sapiens – are essential to our current dilemma of believing ourselves to be brutal masters of the planet. Nothing matches the earth herself in brutality. We merely float upon an inferno, that can shrug us off whenever it wishes. Thank you, Werner Herzog, for so many wonderful films, so much bizarre fun, and a great deal to think about. Now the Ghoulies are coming to my door…

 

Paul William Roberts

Quebec

Tags

death, divorce, family, Laurentians, lawyers, marriage, moving, Quebec

            On New Year’s Eve, 2009, we packed a U-Haul with all our worldly possessions. When I say ‘we’, I mean Kara and her friend, Sandy. I was more fruitfully occupied, buying a firkin of homemade grappa from a friendly restaurateur, under the counter, then a bad but large pizza from the nearest dive on St. Clair Avenue. With 5% vision in one eye, you have to know your routes well and put up with the consequent dearth of choices. I believe a friend of mine came over at some point, and we drank grappa while watching the girls work on the loading. We did share the pizza with them, however. It was a long night, although there appeared to be a brief interlude with champagne to welcome in the year of 2010 (at my age these dates make me feel I’m living in the Roman era rather than the future I had expected from them).

            At the crack of dawn, we left Toronto, with Kara driving a huge truck that I was not at all convinced she would be able to drive. But I had my gallon of grappa on hand, so anxiety soon became low on my chart of worries. Now, if you think Montreal is a long five-hour drive from Metro, try it in a big overladen truck. It was night by the time we arrived at the chaos of ongoing construction projects the city likes to imagine as a highway system, and through which Kara had to find her way to a certain ‘Laurentian AutoRoute’—not that any signpost bothered to identify any such road. By now I had drunk myself sober, and was no longer sure whether I had a hangover or simply poisoning from over-proof bathtub grappa, or possibly both. So I drank some more, which seemed to solve whatever problem there may have been.

            The AutoRoute Des Laurentides, once we’d divined its existence, proved to be the only decent stretch of highway I’d ever seen in Quebec. Although we had stopped once along the unrelievably dismal 401 East to eat some of the shit that seems to be the only permissible food for long-distance drivers, we were both now very hungry, and we also still had a long way to go. The thing about this highway to the Laurentians, as we soon discovered, is that there is literally nothing on it, nowhere to stop, not even a gas station. It was very dark, too, and snowing. By the time we reached St. Agathe it was late, much later than we’d agreed to meet the owner of the house we were renting, in order to collect the keys. Yet I was under the impression we’d now be there at any minute. No. Val-des-Lacs, our destination, is not as near to St. Agathe as I had somehow thought it to be. It is also not easy to find once you have turned off the final strip of highway, especially during what had become a blizzard. The road is nothing but hairpin bends, some of them indicated, others not. It took us half an hour to reach the metropolis of Val-des-Lacs (one church, one store), yet still we were not at the house. This was when things got complicated and our directions proved useless. What ought to have been ten minutes took half an hour, with the snow falling in a torrent of fat feathers, and a total lack of signposts. Eventually finding the right Chemin, we experienced much trouble with the street numbers. Some were invisible, others did not exist. Finally locating the number preceding our own one, we found that there was no other house for about a mile. But this next house did indeed prove to be ours. Kara turned the truck onto a steep driveway, and as we sped up it the rear wheels suddenly slithered off into some kind of ditch. At least we had arrived, though; and the owner, who lived nearby, did not seem to mind that we were three hours late. She even dragged out her aged father, who brought his tractor to drag us from the ditch, and not without some difficulty. When they spoke together (their English to us was excellent) the language sounded to me like Croatian, Moldavian, or some such East European tongue. It takes quite a while to realize that the rural Quebecois actually speak French – but more of this later.

            We loved our new home, although we still had to return to Toronto and pick up our car, besides another truck-load of stuff, which a dear friend, Jamie, was kind enough to drive this time, since Kara had a carload of cats to ferry up herself. Within a week, however, we were finally at home up in the mountains for good.

            But was I happy? Nope. And I was drinking at least a bottle of rum every day. Every alcoholic has his or her reasons for resorting to the hooch, and none of them are valid. Not really. But mine were as follows:

            My ex-wife died in the middle of divorce proceedings, which are generally a waste of time, since the Law states that all assets must be divided equally – end of story. She did not want to do this, alas, forcing me to spend $70,000 on a lawyer. Her untimely death, one would have thought, ought to have terminated this futile squabble. But oh no. Her brother, named as executor of her will, decided to keep it going. Now, this brother, a real mama’s boy if ever there was one (and we know mama’s feelings about me), has done some fairly unforgivable things, yet none was worse than actually hiring a bouncer to prevent me from attending his sister’s memorial service, held in what was still technically my own house. Fortunately, my daughter begged me not to come, so I complied. Had I not, however, and found myself manhandled by some 300 pound thug, I could have simply called the police and said that a stranger had threatened me with violence for trying to enter my own house. Respect for the dead and my daughter’s wishes prevented an ugly scene. Yet the brother – possibly disappointed by missing the opportunity to humiliate me – chose to ask friends of mine to leave the gathering instead, embarrassing them horribly in front of many people they knew well, yet also revealing himself as the ignorant asshole he is. For these friends were not just mine, they were also his sister’s friends, and their son was one of my daughter’s particular friends. They had grown up together. All of us had spent the Millennial New Year’s Eve together. We had vacationed together on numerous occasions for twenty years. And this pompous imbecile asks them to leave! Me I can understand, although I still think it shameless and ill-cultured to prevent anyone, even an ex-husband, from mourning the loss of his children’s mother. This was and is the unforgivable deed. Prolonging the fight over money was merely irksome, unnecessary, and typical of his spectacularly greedy nature. Thus I drank to fend off the anxiety of waiting for the legal solution, since I needed the money that was rightfully mine in order to buy the house we were then renting.

            Mediation was eventually decided on, a process for which we had to return to Toronto. A horrible business it is, too. The brother was there, a Scrooge-like spider hunched over the boardroom table, and even having the temerity to say, “Hi, Paul”. I wanted to kick his balding head, but wisely just ignored him. He had even dragged my kids to this ordeal, for no apparent reason beyond malicious coercion. Both parties are asked to sign an agreement that whatever decision is finally reached by the mediation will be binding, a document that, of course, had to be read to me, my hand guided to the signing line. Then the parties retire to separate little rooms, and the Mediator shuttles back and forth with the offers on hand. I looked to my lawyer for advice on what was fair. My daughter was even sent in once to badger me, an act I consider heinous, and presumably the brother’s brainless scheme. At the end of what seemed to be an interminable day, we arrived at what I was advised to consider a just settlement. Whether it was wise to grant my son $200,000 I doubted as a sound idea – a doubt verified now by the fact that he blew the lot on drugs and whores within months of release from jail. My daughter obtained the same, spending it wisely, however – although I was perfectly prepared to finance her education etc. I was, nonetheless, quite content with my share, leaving that sterile legal hellhole joyously, for it was finally over, and I would never have to deal with that greasy toad of a brother again. I also could not wait to get out of Toronto, a place now only of heartache and bad memories.

            This was in February. I waited for my check to arrive patiently enough, but since we had already concluded an offer on the house my patience could not afford to be unlimited. I began to phone the lawyer daily, asking if the money had arrived. And the longer I waited the more I drank. It was only in April, I think, that I learned the brother had all the money, and it was he who had to issue my check. Knowing his astounding greed and pettiness, I imagined he would hang on to that cash and gather its interest for as long as possible, if not forever. He is one of those people who loves having money but hates spending it, which is really all you can do with it. He will spend it on property, since that is an investment; yet spending it on such frivolities as a restaurant meal is anathema. It would make him ill (like all assholes, his bowels are a major problem, especially under stress). I was quite surprised to learn that the pinched nose, admirably suiting his pinched nature, was actually a nose-job; and that his mother and sister had their noses done by the same plastic surgeon, possibly in a three-for-two deal. Early photos do indeed reveal quite a beak, but each to his own. My concern was that he still had my own. It took legal threats finally to squeeze that check out of him, which was couriered up me in May, nearly four months late, but just in time to buy our lovely little house. I pictured the agony on his face at having to write so large a check to me, of all people. His bowels must have been churning like the fabled ocean of milk, his hair falling out in hanks, the sweat on his brow like tears of Niobe. But I think that is enough of him forever, no? I suspect I’ve made my feelings about the so-called man clear.

            Now we settled into our new house and new life happily ever after. Didn’t we? Well, not quite. First I had to deal with what had clearly become a drinking problem – whereas before it had seemed more like a drinking solution. I had no reason to guzzle anymore, and imagined I could now just stop. I was, I began to notice on country walks, in diabolically bad shape, and the drinking was not so easy to stop. Then the demons emerged, as if annoyed by the fact that my life was no longer so sufficiently plagued. But this will have to wait until the next bloggishness.

I remain, always sincerely,

Paul William Roberts.