Shortened URL

Just to let you know (if you’re out there!) that the shortened URL for The Mammalian Daily’s web site is:

http://is.gd/Zbmk

Cool.

歓迎、日本!

歓迎、日本!   Kangei, Nippon!
(Translation:  Welcome, Japan!)

You’ve made it into the Top 10 (countries that log onto The Mammalian Daily web site)!

Top 10 countries that log onto The Mammalian Daily

Here they are, folks:  the top ten this month, as of May 23, 2009 (21 Anthi, 27 AZ):

RUSSIAN FEDERATION (Moscow City)
GERMANY (Gunzenhausen)
UNITED STATES (Washington, D.C.)
CANADA (Toronto)
UNITED KINGDOM (Eskmeals, Cumbria)
THE NETHERLANDS (Rotterdam)
TURKEY (Ankara)
ITALY (Parma)
BRAZIL (Sao Paulo)
CZECH REPUBLIC (Prague)

Write locally, have fans globally

Global “success” is nothing new for writers — or artists of any kind.  In fact, I believe it’s one of the most sought-after of circumstances.  Of course, it’s a circumstance that’s becoming more of a possibility, as technology provides us the means to communicate with the world and the world, thus, gains the opportunity to appreciate what is on offer, without first being told to do so.

All of which brings me to the curious circumstance of running a web site (and a newspaper) that is global in scope (in fact, it’s beyond this world) but has, at its core, the values and ideals of Canada. 

I’m not saying that those values and ideals are particular to Canada (though, of course, some are, while others are expressed in a particularly Canadian way).  What I’m trying to figure out is…the reason that the web site and the story seem to be of particular interest to those outside of Canada.

Sure, I’d like to think it is the global nature of the story — the quest for freedom, the desire to live in peace among different groups of beings.  But I have a nagging suspicion that that’s not all there is to it  — that, instead, it could be the same old thing that’s plagued Canadian artists, writers, musicians, and other performers for decades — that we live in a country that does not appreciate its citizens’ work until someone from outside tells us to.

Although I’m not about to dive into that discussion, I do find it a curious thing that more of my returning guests hail from the Russian Federation, the Czech Republic, China, Bahrain, Germany, The Netherlands, and Turkey than from Canada and the United States. 

Why should I care?  The reason is simple and – I hate to say it — economic.  While it’s wildly flattering that people from all over the world want to log on and find out what’s happening in The Park, it’s not of much use in terms of my pursuit of advertising money. 

Now, I’m not underestimating the buying power of those in Turkey or China.  Hardly.  If I’m underestimating at all, it’s the foresight of companies here in North America.  I just can’t believe it would be convincing if I made an advertising proposal  to a company in Canada that included web site statistics that indicated that North Americans were not my largest audience.  That’s the dilemma.

Stay tuned for solutions.

No title necessary

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.  

(Stephen Jay Gould)

 

 

When All Good Things Begin with “B”

That is the name of a book by Mavis Malamute that was reviewed in the Spring 24 AZ issue of The Mammalian Daily.

The title could just as well apply to this year’s group of RCMP Police Dog recruits, whose names include Bella, Bailey, and Barack.

You are feeling overwhelmed…

Take a look at this video, forwarded to me by TMD’s #1 fan (Thanks, Marlaine!):

Where I’m Coming From

“What are all those animals doing together in one park?” asked the visitor to my table at an exhibit this year.

Of course, he wasn’t referring to the number of animals; he was referring to the number of different species that inhabit this fictional park.

The implication was that they didn’t belong together.  So, why would a writer put all those animals – animals that rightly “belong” in the arctic, desert, mountains, plains, oceans, etc., together – and suggest that they could live, harmoniously, in one place?

 The answer is simple:  because I live in the world’s most “diverse” city: Toronto. 

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is the most immigrant-intense city in the world, with 44 per cent of its 5 million people having been born elsewhere.  And a full 40 per cent of our population is made up of “visible minorities”:  South Asians, East Asians, Latin Americans, people of African descent, people of Arab descent, and many others. 

These are people who come from places with much different cultures and climates. 

Just as the animals in the park do.

Hmmm.

Maybe, just maybe, this park — and this newspaper — is a metaphor for Canada…

An Historic Week for Balls

Once More, With Feeling

A few articles from last Sunday’s New York Times caught my eye, including this one about classically-trained composers writing music for video games, etc., and this one, about the new “pop music revolution” — instead of selling music to consumers as an art form, the article says, “the emerging practical solution is to let music sell something else: a concert, a T-shirt, Web-site pop-up ads or a brand.”

These were interesting articles for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that they, somehow, reminded me of a story that I wrote almost 15 years ago (yikes!).  I wrote the story during the time that I was being mentored by the late Canadian writer, Carole Corbeil, through the the Humber School for Writers Correspondence Course in Creative Writing.

I’ve decided to post the story here (well, what the heck else am I going to do with it?).   It’s about a classical pianist who…well, you’ll see: 

Once More, With Feeling

“I should have gotten married and had kids and lived happily ever after,” I say.

Antonia is in the kitchen, preparing tea.  I am sitting at the piano.  The big toe of my right foot is poised precariously above middle C.

“Will you have milk or lemon?” she asks.

Slowly, I begin to tap out a tune with my toe.  It’s Scott Joplin’s:  Da da da-da da-da, da-daa…

Tomorrow is my thirty-eighth birthday.  I am preparing to make a comeback on the recital circuit.  We are avoiding the word, “triumphant.”

“You know,” I say, breezily.  “I think I can still do the lotus position.  What do you think?  Would they like that?”

“You should have kept it up,” she answers, pointedly.  “You shouldn’t have let it lapse.”

She is referring to my insurance, not to the piano.  I have never let the piano lapse.  Lapse…such a wonderful word — from the Latin, labor, labi, lapsus sum:  to slip away.  Like a fine mist in the morning and the clouds outside an airplane window.  Or a dream.

For a moment, I am gliding along memory’s highway.  There is a stretcher beneath me in the back of a van, and a bumpy road below.  The ambulance attendant sees me open my eyes.

“Do you know where you are?” he asks.

“Shut up,” I tell him.  “I’m having a dream.”

 ——————————————————– 

“Let me see your hands,”  the doctor says.  He is employed by the insurance company.  His job is to tell them what my hands are worth.  One look at his face tells me I won’t be able to afford their rates.

“Ouch!”  I scream, and grimace with pain.  “I thought you said, ’see’!”

He is squeezing a bump on the knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand.  It’s osteoarthritis, he says.  I know that, I say.  Nothing to be done, he says.  I know that, too.

“Guess I won’t be doing hand cream commercials,” I snicker.  He looks at me, stone-faced and silent.

In the old days, it was a joke.  Insuring one’s hands.  It was only for the very famous.  And, then, it was Lloyds of London.  Remember?  Jimmy Durante’s nose, Rubinstein’s hands.  It was funny.  Body parts.  Dangling.  X-rays, photographs.

Now, it’s for everybody.  The guy down the street has insured his eyes.  He’s a landscape architect.  I know potters who insure their hands, dancers who insure their feet, strippers who insure their…

“Lift and separate,” says the doctor.  You would swear I had webbed feet.

 ——————————————————– 

Antonia is carrying the teapot on a tray laden with cups and saucers, two small plates, paper doilies and a dish of lemon slices.  She sets it on the table in front of the sofa, then returns to the kitchen to fetch the sandwiches: tiny ones of creamed cheese and smoked salmon, tuna, egg, cucumber, and watercress.

“Nobody said it would be easy,” she says.

Antonia is my piano mistress cum housekeeper.  She is from a cultured family, the daughter of a violinist and a sculptor.  After the fall of Communism, her country could find no use for her.  She came here from London a year ago.

I watch as she sets down the tray of sandwiches.  Her knuckles are almost invisible.

“Nobody said it would be easy,” she repeats.  “Don’t forget, Beethoven went deaf.”

“I wonder if he’d insured his ears,” I retort.  Then, I wonder…who was Beethoven’s Beethoven?  You know what I mean.  When Beethoven was going deaf, whose name did they use to forestall his self-pity?  Who was the original deaf man, blind man, one-legged dancer, four-fingered guitarist?

We settle into our tea-break.  My opening concert is tomorrow.  After that, we’ll see, says the insurance company.  We’ll read the reviews.  Weigh the pros and cons.  We’ll get back to you.  They say.

I sit down next to Antonia and show her the pictures of my classmates at the Conservatory.  There’s Anna, dark-haired and lithe, who now works with a ballet company.  And Paul, in his three-piece suit, who composes “modern music.”  That is our code, I say, and I answer her questioning look by explaining his position with a major automobile manufacturer.  You see, Paul writes the tunes that warn people that they’re running out of gas or that their seatbelts aren’t fastened.

“It’s all image now, anyway,” I whine to Antonia, as I point to Vincent — pock-marked and buck-toothed.  And responsible for some of the most moving performances I will ever remember.  I met up with him in Paris five years ago, I tell her.  He’s world-famous, now.

“See?”  Antonia smiles.

He told me he had to have the skin on his face scraped and twenty-thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontic work done before they would insure his hands.

“My God,” I said.  “Why can’t the work stand on its own?”  He didn’t  have an answer.

 ——————————————————– 

I am coasting along memory’s highway again, this time at a pace leisurely enough to pluck fruit from the trees that line its descent.

“When was the last time you had a decent meal?” the doctor is asking, as she winds a measuring tape around my wrist.

“I eat enough,” I reply.

 ——————————————————– 

“It’s all image,” I say to Antonia.  And we sip our tea in silence.

My last concert was held three years ago in Chicago, on a New Year’s Eve so cold that I had to wear two pairs of gloves for an hour inside the hall before my hands were warm enough for me to play.  The concert ran until just before midnight and when it was finished, the audience showered me with rose petals and champagne corks.  As if I had, personally, brought in the new year.  That was the first time I understood that it had nothing to do with the work.

My closet is filled with gowns — of velvet, satin, peau de soie, lace.  My drawers, once filled with musical scores, overflow, now, with lingerie and hose. In every conceivable style and colour, to match every conceivable mood.  Of the audience.

Everywhere I go, there are mirrors.  Once, there hung posters of the artists who came before me; now there are mirrors, full-length and lighted.

Once, they asked “What will you be playing?”  Now, they ask about what I will be wearing.

“Tonight, I will be wearing the Prokofiev,” I say.  “And I am planning to play the black velvet.  Full length.”

 ——————————————————– 

“Shut up,” I said to the ambulance attendant. 

“Shut up.  I’m having a dream.”

 ——————————————————– 

“Tell me about the dream,” the doctor chants.  It is her attempt to pry open my mind.

“Mustn’t pry,” I want to say.  “Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”

Instead, I say nothing.  There is nothing to say.

In the dream, there is nothing, too.  Nothing and everything.  In the dream, I have no face.  I have no body.  I have no legs.  I have only a mind and hands.  Two hands.  And an alphabet that runs from A to G.

 ——————————————————– 

There was a time when I might have said that I did it for love, for the opportunity to interpret the masters, to be their medium and bear their message to an audience.  There were times, disheartening times, when I said I did it because it is all that I can do, all that I have been trained to do.  That I am, otherwise, unfit for the world.

Antonia is gathering up dishes, piling them back on the tray.  She asks me if I would like her to light a fire.  I look up at the mantlepiece, where a metronome sits, along with a small bust of Ludwig van Beethoven.  He cannot hear what I say.

“A fire would be nice,” I tell her and I shuffle toward the fireplace.  Antonia rolls back the screen and lights a match.  She asks me to hold the box, then notices that my hands are not free.  They are wrapped around Beethoven’s neck.

“Do you think his hands were really that huge?” I ask, referring to a previous discussion in which we concluded that they were probably a size three times my own.  My own — so much better suited to Mozart than they are to Beethoven.

Antonia simply smiles.

“Look at these hands,” I say, as I thrust them toward her.  “I could have been one hell of a typist!”

Antonia pulls the stool away from the piano and motions me to sit down.  This is my last chance for a comeback, I say, and even at that, it will be short-lived.  Long enough to re-establish my name.  After that, who knows if there will be any other opportunities.

“Play the Beethoven — Sonata Appassionata,” she says. “Then the Chopin.”

“Again?” I ask, impatiently.

“Once more,” she whispers.  “Once more, with feeling.”

 The End