The Difficult Truth

(This post is in response to a friend who has contemplated the deletion of one of her own blog entries due to her "mortification" at its personal content.)

A dilemma I know well... While living in St. Kitts, I sent missives home that deliberately omitted anything to do with culture shock or judgement of Kittitian culture, for fear of being seen as too harsh and judgemental by my readers. I saved it all up for one e-mail which blasted the Basseterre library (visit http://groups.msn.com/andrewburtonslife/imaginedat.msnw). As I prepared to send an early version, I experienced that nervousness that precedes sending an e-mail that could potentially embarrass oneself and offend others, which resulted in several rounds of progressively toning it down.

Despite those precautions, I had an acquaintance from my Quebec immersion days write back a scathing e-mail telling me that in fact she had a Kittitian background and was deeply offended by my e-mail and requested that I no longer send her my updates. Needless to say, that was the last I heard from her. When I re-read my e-mail, some of my word choices leave me uncomfortable due to their harshness, but those were my feelings (incidentally, feelings that most Europeans/North Americans experience in the Caribbean); to have remained silent about so significant a thing, especially in the context of a series of e-mails purporting to convey the substance of my experience, would have been tantamount to committing a falsehood. She chose to be offended by who I truly am and what I truly felt; that being the case, her decision to cut me off, although deeply hurtful to me at the time and I think unfair, is one that I am glad she made. Better for her to judge me harshly based on a "warts and all" expression of who I am rather than judge me favourably based on a portrait made false by inaccuracies or omission.

Today, although I am critical of the perspective I expressed in my Kittitian library e-mail, I am glad for having expressed my feelings and glad for the relevance my narrative consequently possesses. Offending others and embarrassing yourself is painful, but writing about a topic (St. Kitts, yourself) while avoiding difficult truths that are central to the story is of little value to the reader and ultimately of no satisfaction to the writer.

Of Choir And Hog Slaughter

I wrote this in response to a Montreal choir friend's challenge to write a sonnet about the beauty of a pig's nose.

Those past days fondly I recall,
When baton led voices singing,
In poutine heaven, Montreal!
Whose churches harmony set ringing.

My voice no longer sings in song,
Dust falls upon my folder,
Not tux but hard hat now I don,
That hogs my hands may butcher.

Though art and fact’ry different be,
Ourselves art does assess,
So music heard at Carnagie
Does our mundane lives express.

Thus day to day, life’s music, I compose,
Finding beauty e’en a lowly pig’s nose.

Tween/Teen Train

So Wednesday night I rode the GO Train from Oakville to Toronto, which invariably immerses me amongst the GTA’s diverse and unwashed denizens.* Elderly grandmothers listening to MP3 players rubbing shoulders with youths gaily knitting stockings beside commuting office workers loudly debating the virtue(s) of the latest Sunshine girl alongside construction workers abstractedly poring over spreadsheets on their laptops. All ye who seek diversity, get ye to the GO.

However, standing in line to buy my ticket on Wednesday night, I was struck by a sense of demographic imbalance. Once on the platform, a rapidly commissioned census returned the following percentages: Andrew Burton 2.8%; female tweens and teens 68.6%; other 28.6%. With young women between 10 and 14 only constituting roughly 3.1% of the overall Canadian population**, these numbers begged some important questions. Was Canadian society facing a Village of the Damned doomsday scenario but without Christopher Reeve to save it? Was there a sale on midriff-baring halter tops at the Yonge Street Guess outlet? If stranded on a tropical island, would this group fracture into warring factions or content itself with nastily refusing to allow the least pretty girl to hold the conch? Finally, would a society made up of 2.8% Andrew Burton finally elect a bilingual, indifferently dressed slaughterhouse supervisor as prime minister?

These questions only became more urgent as Clarkson, Port Credit and Long Branch brought additional waves of pretty, preppy, bubbly, made-up, cliquish, squealing, cell-phone using, bosom blaring, MP3 player listening, gossiping girls scampering into my GO train. Eye contact resulted in coyly averted eyes and giggles. Inane chatter abounded. Fragments of cell phone ring tones sounded out incessantly. Dante may have walked through Hell, but Virgil would have had to do some mighty fast talking to get him on this GO train. I retreated from the assault behind the dignity of Those Who Are Nearly Thirty and Reading Important Literature.

“Hey,” I asked the one other male in my vicinity, “is there a concert in Toronto?”

“Yeah, Coldplay.”

Cold. Play. Sounds like words pronounced by a Mexican encountering curling for the first time.

Mystified and confused by the tweeny/teenness of my train ride, I visit the Coldplay website*** afterwards. I logically assume that the girls I encountered are drawn to Coldplay’s ideology, worldview and politics, and thus to gain insight into one is understand the other. Four designer-scruffy young men stare back at me from the title page. The biography section declares of the new “X&Y” album:

“The lyrics are about big subjects like life and death, love and loss, about being fascinated by the world around us but also about accepting that some things can never be fully understood.”

What the -- what does that mean? So are Coldplay fans worried about the afterlife and the nature of knowledge? I turn to the critics**** for elucidation:

“Precise, bland, and banal… …they're the definition of a pleasant bore--easy to tune out, impossible to care for.”

“For every moment of adventurousness, however, there's a dose of the Same Old Stuff.”

“Your level of interest… …probably correlates with your willingness to be bored.”

“They have chosen to opt for the standard formula: it's elegiac, mid-tempo, stadium-friendly…”

“…awash with cliches, non-sequiturs, and cheap existentialism; at times it all becomes nigh on unbearable.”

“Monochromatic and underwhelming.”

“…uninspired… …drops jaws only in its capacity to elicit yawns.”

Bland… Bored… Monochromatic… Underwhelming… Uninspired… Unbearable… Are these really accurate descriptors of an entire segment of society? Of all young women of a certain age?

But then I remember that there were roughly 120,000 other 10-14 year old women in the GTA who were not on that train.

I am comforted by the thought that all 120,000 must be poorly dressed classical music fans.

* Community service announcement: Oakville’s Monarchist League will gather at the Masonic Hall April 4th to drink the Queen’s health and debate to what extent Oakville could one day become either diverse or unwashed. Black tie mandatory.
** http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/demo10a.htm?sdi=age
*** http://www.coldplay.com/
**** http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/coldplay/xandy

Living Harmony

“Kyrie!” (Lord)

The silence is broken by this cry from organ, orchestra and choir; the rising notes mount straight to heaven. Singing the bass line, my body resonates with Bach’s harmony, both absorbing and creating the music.

* * * * *

Singing in choir is not always regarded as being the coolest of pursuits, a truth I learned firsthand during my boy soprano years. As my voice has deepened, however, so too has my appreciation for the richness that choral singing has added to my life through the joy of performing passionate music while discovering a place and its people.

A case in point was my four month stint with the Chicoutimi Symphonic Choir while studying French in Quebec. As my homework was to “go have fun in French”, a choir experience fit the bill perfectly, despite preparing Haydn’s Seasons in German. I got to know Quebec and Quebeckers a little bit better through the conversation before and after rehearsals with my fellow choeuristes. I felt very welcome as the only anglo, although I had to laugh at being introduced before a dress rehearsal as a foreign visitor (“…et Andrew d’Ontario!”) along with the Belgian guest conductor.

* * * * *

“Kyrie!” (Lord)

The urgency of the plea increases; the tension in our conductor’s body and baton is reflected back by the ensemble as he wills the music from us. The choir, more than one hundred strong in formal black and white, is arrayed upon the sanctuary, filling the clear acoustic of St. Jean Baptiste’s immense space.

* * * * *

On the Caribbean island of St. Kitts (pop. 35,000) for an internship, my choral experience was my greatest success in connecting with the local community. The St. Christopher Choral Society had a definite Caribbean flavour to it; although the rest of the music world elevates the virtue of punctuality above even proper pitch, rehearsals generally began with half the choir present; a steady trickle of choristers gradually brought us up to three quarters strength by mid-point. Both Mr. Hodges’ ex-military and musical sensibilities must have been offended, but never a word of reproach. I made many friends of all ages and enjoyed the music very much, although I confess that there seemed to be something deeply amiss about singing “when the snow lay all about” while wearing shorts and sunscreen.

The major island Christmas concert, attended by the Prime Minister, the Governor General and the upper echelons of Kittitian society, was televised repeatedly over the holidays. I took it as a great sign of my successful integration when a local friend, identifying me to another Kittitian, referred to me as “the white guy in the Christmas concert”.

* * * * *

“Kyrie eleison” (Lord have mercy)

The music peaks in volume, then the line falls, fading on “eleison”; Bach humbly begs for mercy rather than demanding it. Outside the warmth and light of the church that shelters us, cold rain pours down from the storm whose flashes of lightening will later illuminate the stained glass and whose rumbles of thunder will be indistinguishable from the timpani.

* * * * *

When I moved to Montreal two years ago, I discovered the St. Lawrence Choir, a remarkably diverse group including men and women, francophones and anglophones, students and professionals, founding members and new arrivals, the straight and the gay, the young and the somewhat-less-young. Whether through the St. Lawrence Choir’s own concerts or through our role as the backbone of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chorus, I marvel at how casually I was able to become a significant contributor to the cultural life of my new home.

Burdened with a blistering concert schedule, difficult music and pathetic sight-reading skills, I was a baritone in grave danger of drowning in sixteenth notes. Luckily for me, my neighbour Jan was equally inept and so, like two wobbling drunkards who lean on each other to forestall total collapse, we buddied up to master high notes, awkward intervals and runs during marathon practice sessions with Jan’s decrepit, badly-out-of-tune piano. Exhausting but fun, those extra rehearsals helped us to push our musicianship to new levels. Our battle cry of “Give ‘er!” greeted works by Bach, Beethoven, Butterfield, Hatzis, Handel, Mozart and Tchaikovsky among many others.

I have mocked Christ upon the cross from amidst the Roman mob; celebrated his resurrection with a host of angels; born witness to the first sunrise; pondered death and the afterlife; mourned WWII supply convoys lost at sea in Russian minor keys; meditated from within the seclusion of a monastery; laughed manically as a decapitated head; and joyfully sung of the Christmas season.

Within the choir, I found kindred spirits with whom I shared hiking, skiing, cycling, fireworks, jazz, lesbian cabaret, the exploration of many fine drinking establishments and throughout, sparkling conversation about everything. Perhaps people freely pursuing a passion are more engaged with life than otherwise; my choir friends have made my two years in Montreal unforgettable.

* * * * *

Silence.

In the second and a half before the Mass in B Minor resumes its course, I contemplate the cathedral whose musical outline we have just sketched, a cathedral designed to encompass humanity. At that moment, it seems that there could be no task more meaningful than constructing that edifice with my fellow musicians and friends.

FOAD For Thought

So today I was admitted to the waiting room of the Ivory Tower and told that if I returned at an unspecified future date, I might be allowed to take a number for a later appointment, at which point my admittance might be considered.

I completed a business degree at a Southern Ontario university and am now looking at possibly tackling an MA in literature. Having been working in the private sector among other endeavours for the last five years, I suppose I've internalized certain concepts such as efficiency, professionalism and responsiveness to the customer.

Thus I approached my investigations into a return to academia in much the same way as I would approach a need for information and guidance in the business world. Having identified the graduate officer at my old alma mater, I wrote her an e-mail explaining my background, current situation and interest in literary studies. I attached my resume and undergraduate transcript. I asked certain specific and simple questions, hoping to receive information and qualified opinions by way of answer. Here is the sum total of what I got by way of reply:

Might it be possible for me to directly apply to the MA program?

"I cannot determine this until I see your complete application."

If I will have to do undergraduate qualifying courses, what might that look like?

"That would depend upon your undergraduate background and GradePoint Average. I have no way of knowing until I see the complete application."

If qualifying work were necessary, could I still be accepted to the MA program even if only conditionally?

"This would depend upon the graduate Studies Committee's assessment of your application."

Any other thoughts or guidance?

"I'm afraid that I can't offer much guidance or any suggestions based only on the information you've provided. You would need to set up an appointment to discuss with me your possible application to our program, or else submit an application for admission to the program asking to be considered for a qualifying year if necessary."

What I gathered from the honourable professor's reply could be roughly be summed up as F.O.A.D.: Fuck Off And Die.

I do not Fuck Off And Die easily, however. Since I was not about to put together an application (complete with references and statement of purpose) without first knowing where that might possibly lead, I scheduled a meeting with the good professor for a month and half later during my week of vacation.

I drove the hour and a half to the location of the university for my 1:00 appointment. I arrived on time, combed, shaved and deodorized. I brought two copies each of my transcripts and my resume. The noble professor cast one eye up and down my transcript and declared that my marks were excellent but that my English courses were too few to allow me direct admittance to the MA program. I then asked what kind of qualifying work I would have to do, to which she graciously replied that was really the jurisdiction of the undergraduate officer and that she would therefore prefer him to answer. She kindly gave me his phone extension and room number, indicating that it would really be best for me to set up an appointment to see him rather than trying to drop in.

Some conversation followed. I thanked my munificent professor for her time. I shook her hand. I walked out of her office. Having waited more than a month; having invested half a tank of gas and 3.5 hours of my time; having provided this most excellent professor with the same information in person that I had in my original e-mail, I had found out that I needed to make an appointment with someone else for a future date.

On the face of it, I learned almost nothing from my doughty professor. The truth is quite to the contrary, however: I've been given reason to question my ability to tolerate the stale, cloistered academic environment that ensconces such people in positions of power and reason to wonder about my experince in that school's MA program. FOAD for thought indeed.

The Frightened Turtle

So I’m a nice white upper middle class Oakville kid with a university education. At functions where I find myself meeting office types, a big perk of my current occupation is the opportunity to derail the traditional “so what do you do for a living?” pissing-contest. Here’s how it usually goes:

“Hi, Andrew, my name’s Frank.”

“Hey, Frank, nice to meet you.”

Frank’s blue shirt/white collar/yellow tie combo is dazzling. We shake hands. Frank reaches over and tries to unzip my pants.

“So, Andrew, what do you do for a living?”

“Well, I’m working at a pork slaughterhouse.”

Nothing has prepared Frank for this paradigm shift. Frank knows how to rank himself relative to an auditor at a Big Five accouting firm, an investment banking analyst or a bond trader, but processing this answer is like trying to divide by zero.

“Really? Working in the office, I presume?”

“Not at all, I’m right on the shop floor. The Kill department.”

The word “Kill” is always followed by pained silence. Poker-faced, I savour it as one would savour a tablet of dark chocolate. Melt-in-your-mouth good.

“I see. An engineer, then?”

“Oh no, I actually never liked math. Wouldn’t have helped me much in the barn anyway.”

“Oh. You don’t actually kill them, do you?”

“Well, I’ve had to deadbolt a few hundred in my time, but Angelo and Nestor do the actual sticking.”

Now Frank not only realizes he has just shaken the hand of a hog-murderer with blood under his fingernails, he also considers that this manual labourer may be unimpressed by “office job”.

Judging by Frank’s expression, frightened turtle isn’t the half of it.

Eventually, I stop playing and reveal that I’m in a management trainee program with a major food processor that has also seen me working in sales and marketing. The words “sales” and “marketing” are soothing balms that reassure Frank that all is right in the world. He thinks he has finally taken my measure, but I regret his new confidence because I know he has not.