TriumphAnt

Well, that was a short honeymoon.

On his first full day in Ottawa, Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper was amply photographed as he walked his two children to school, and then proceeded to shake hands with them both at the gate to the school property. It was a fun moment, and the kids seemed to be enjoying it every bit as much as their newly even-more-limelighted Dad.

The next day, the Letters page of Canada’s national newspaper carried fully half a dozen letters ripping Mr Harper up one side and down the other for not having hugged his kids, or kissed them on the top of the head or something other than a handshake. He was reamed for being a cold, distant unfeeling fish.

What’s the four-letter version of, “Oh give me a BREAK!”

As a parent (admittedly not a celebrity parent, but a parent nonetheless), I have no trouble at all imagining that the breakfast table in the Harper house that morning played out a scene something not too different from this:

Dad: “Sorry kids, there’s no getting around it. There are going to be a bazillion cameras at the school this morning. But we’ll just do what we always do, OK?”
Kids in chorus: “Awwww Dad, do we have to do the huggy bit?! The other kids in my class will kill me if they see that on TV!!”
Dad: (speaking like any parent who already knows that PDAs – Public Displays of Affection – usually vanish from the list of OK Things To Do With Your Children at about precisely the age his kids have reached): “Wellllll… we have to do something. What about an air kiss? Like they do in Quebec?”
Kids: “Eeeeeeewwww!”
Dad: “OK, help me out here. I can’t just ignore you. They’ll think I’m a cold, distant, unfeeling fish.”
Kids: “What does a Prime Minister do?”
Dad: “Usually shakes hands.”
Kids: “Well that’s OK!”

So when they arrive at the gate, there’s that kid-grin fake solemnity as they over-formally shake hands with Prime Minister-designate Dad, and off they go into their school.

And Dad, in whose house there is probably more genuine affection for his kids than any of these self-righteous letter-writers have ever experienced, unfolds a ream of castigation in the next morning’s paper without so much as a whisper of contrary thought from someone who knows a little bit about what being a parent means.

And the media wonder in wide-eyed puzzlement why they are so often confronted with accusations of bias.

As one of the US Presidents during the Vietnam war, Lyndon B Johnson, once famously put it, “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can't Swim.’”

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Adventures in music (1) (This could also be subtitled “Why I love the Internet – yet another in a continuing series”)

Sitting at home late, very late, one recent night, I was mindlessly clicking the channel-forward button on the remote, hoping for something other than the day’s basketball highlights or a studio audience gasping in awe and near-orgasmic pleasure as yet another apron-clad shill turned out a couple dozen perfectly symmetrical french-fry-cut potato pieces from his (synonym for “chop”)-o-matic.

Suddenly my screen filled with an outdoor concert stage on which a group of musicians were performing. What struck me right away was just how wildly out of synch the music was with their appearance. Because they were dressed like South Sahara Tuareg tribespeople, an image which for men marries a distinctive headdress with long, flowing robes, and for women appears to consist of the costumes Cecil B DeMille put on Yvonne (Sephora) deCarlo’s giddy young sisters in “The Ten Commandments” when they were all vying to be selected as wife-to-be to the strapping young Moses (Charlton Heston).

But it’s what they were playing that was absolutely mesmerizing. First of all, the only traditional instrument in sight was a drum; played by hand. The other musicians were playing electric guitars. But as I listened and watched, I caught several close-up glimpses of the way they were playing the guitars. Their hands worked the strings in what appeared to be a combination of rhythmic patting and a lightning-fast pluck-and-strum action. The result was a compelling, almost hypnotic sound, a vaguely jazz style repetition of a core pattern, over which each musician in turn would add his personal solo, while the vocalists sang a sort of call-and-answer lyric. (It’s tough to describe music when you have no formal education of the terms to describe what musicians do.)

After a few minutes, following a commercial break, the performance continued as the words, “Tinariwen” and “Oualahila ar Tesninam” appeared onscreen. I jotted them down and simply went on listening and watching. Then, despite the lateness, I lit up Google and keyed both sets of words into the search window. Unlike a human, Google doesn’t care if you don’t know which word, if either, is the name of the band and which is the name of the song they were performing at the time. Google simply flips through a bazillion online sites in a fraction of a second and suggests several places where you might possibly find your answer – several hundred thousand if it’s a common term.

(At this writing, the combination of “Tinariwen” and “Oualahila ar Tesninam” yields precisely 707 hits. By Google standards, that’s positively barren. But in this case, among its very first hits Google provided a site that linked to the band’s homepage (and if you’ve been wondering about the pace with which Internet technology is insinuating itself into the world, just pause and consider that a refugee rebel group of nomadic Tuareg musicians has its own website.)

Right off the bat, let me say I disagree with the leading reviewer’s characterization of their music as “relentlessly funky boogie”, a phrase that to me suggests to me something more like being sentenced to an eternity in an elevator with KC and the Sunshine Band playing, “That’s the Way – Uh huh, Uh huh – I like it” on its tinny Muzak speaker. Rather, on the same site, I found this brief paragraph that describes to a “t” what drew me to listen to the rest of their show:

“The instrumentation that the group uses is simple despite its modernity. Their link with traditional Touareg music is still clear. The instruments are of three types. First, strings, essentially guitars, acoustic or electric, but occasionally also other more traditional instruments like the tehardant or the n’goni which play the melodies. Secondly, the lead voices, which perform lyrics supplied by a composer. All the musicians join in with the choruses. Thirdly, the group use the percussion instruments commonly found in the desert. The most important is simply handclaps. Touareg music carries you away on a gently rhythmic journey, in step with the languorous pace of the camel.”

(I love the idea of a clapping hand as a “percussion instrument”. The Tuareg hand is indeed that – they clap in a flat-palmed manner with one hand exactly mirroring its opposite, with the result that their handclap is a very crisp and sharply defined beat, not at all like the mushier sound we tend to produce when applauding with one hand partially cupped.)

The very next morning, I dropped into a local CD shop in my neighbourhood that has a sizable international World Music section and slid a handwritten note across the counter to the clerk. After keying in the names (besides the band name, I had given him “Amassakoul”, the title of their most recent album) and in minutes, he produced the CD from his “Africa” shelf. (That too was an interesting process. His computer inventory showed it in stock, but he was at first unable to find it. He went a page deeper into his computer and produced a colour image of the album cover. He then quickly whirled through dozens of CDs and found it in a matter of seconds.)

So now my home office is occasionally echoing “the languorous pace of the camel” as Tuareg voices sing (in Tuareg – this is an English translation thoughtfully provided in the accompanying notes):

"I’m in a desert with a wood fire
I’m keeping the night company
With its shooting stars
Life
In the ruins
These traces that cry memories
I remember and I settle down
Deep in nostalgia
My head resting on a pillow of woes
Tonight I sleep in the ruins
I follow the traces of my past
It sometimes befalls me to live like this
My heart oppressed and tight
And I feel the thirst of my soul
Then I hear some music
Sounds, the wind
Some music which takes me far, far away
To the clear light of morning
Where, before my heart
The brilliance of the stars goes out."

It does wonderful things for the mind.

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Adventures in music (2)

OK, sometimes – despite the considerable amount of music I listen to – it takes me a while before I will actually “hear” a song.

On a not-too-long-ago weekend, I was listening to what I modestly describe as one of the best gospel music albums ever compiled – the soundtrack album for the Robert Duvall tour de force movie, The Apostle.

And for some reason, when the track, “Far Side of the Jordan” came on, I listened closely to the lyrics for the first time in my life and quite honestly almost started crying by the time it was over.

The music itself is quite lovely, and the song – in this version by the Carter family – is immensely “sing-a-long-able”, which is probably what drew me into listening more closely.

I guess I’d always thought it was one of those “C’mon down to the river Jordan and getcherself baptized” messages but it’s not. “Crossing the river Jordan” is a Christian metaphor for dying, mirroring the passage of the lost tribes of Israel when they finally crossed into the Promised Land.

As one website explains, “As the Christian pilgrim is about to leave the wilderness of this world forever, he has to cross a dark stream. The Jordan of death rolls between this world and the Celestial Canaan. Before they obtained full possession of the promised land, the Israelites had to pass over Jordan; so every traveler to the Canaan above must cross over the river of death, before he is admitted into the courts of paradise, and obtains possession of the heavenly inheritance.”

The song, “Far Side of the Jordan” is about someone saying to someone she has obviously loved deeply and for a very long lifetime, “I’m dying, but we’ll meet again. In fact, I’ll wait for you.” The sadly elegant little song is not even the stuff of great poetry, but in its simple message is a powerful sermon of hope for the faithful.

Far Side of the Jordan
Terry Smith

“I believe my steps are growing wearier each day
Still I have a journey on my mind.
Hurts of this old world have ceased to make me want to stay
But my one regret is leaving you behind.

Now if it proves to be His will that I am first to go
Somehow I have a feeling it may be.
When it comes your time to travel likewise, don't prolong,
'Cause I will be the first one that you see.

(Chorus) And I'll be waiting on the far side bank of Jordan;
I'll be waiting, drawing pictures in the sand.
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout
And come running through the shallow waters reaching for your hand.

Now through this life we've laboured hard to earn our meagre share;
It's brought us trembling hands and tear-dimmed eyes.
But I'll just wait here on the shore and turn my face away
Until you come and we'll see Paradise.

And I'll be waiting on the far side bank of Jordan;
I'll be waiting, drawing pictures in the sand.
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout
And come running through the shallow waters reaching for your hand.”

The song is also part of the formidable gospel folio of Johnny Cash and the Carter family and at least one website notes that it is one of, if not the last song Johnny Cash and June Carter sang together in public, making its lyrics all the more poignant.

It works best, of course, with its accompanying music, and I commend to you any site that allows you to sample the Carter family’s version. Failing that, I commend to you wholeheartedly the entire soundtrack album (To be precise, “Music from and Inspired by the Movie”) . Just try to sit still while Lyle Lovett belts out, “I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord”. (My much more energetic Ms has already rolled that one into a collection of exercise-speed selections.)

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On January 26, CBC-TV Newsworld carried a story about a Health Canada "recall". Apparently a Canadian hospital had just announced that a shipment of human tissue received from the US has been recalled because it was not properly tested for, and so might very well contain, a host of infectious diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis (B and C), syphilis and a couple of other can-I-please-buy-a-vowel viruses that are believed to cause cancer, and oh apparently it was possible that transplant recipients might have received some of the infected tissues but oh, by the way, there’s probably nothing to worry about.

Things that crossed my mind 1. How do you "recall" transplanted human tissue? (The opening sentence in the Health Canada notice is: “Health Canada is advising Canadians of a voluntary recall in the United States of tissue products used in implants and grafts that were imported into Canada.”)

We take you now to the stage of the Tayside Players, a Perth, Ontario amateur theatrical group who are still puzzled as to why the town’s surgeons were so strenuously advocating “The Merchant of Venice” as this year’s winter selection.

“No, no, no, Mr Wilberforce, we really do believe you’re the perfect choice for Antonio. And yes, Dr. Kutcherbitsov here has dreamed all his life about playing Shylock… OK, ready… aaaaa-and ACTION!”:

“D: Have mercy on Antonio, Shylock. Do not be so bitter.
S: I’ve promised to take my pound of flesh. If you do not let me have it, that will be a sign of weakness and no one will trust your laws any more. The greatness of Venice will soon be lost. Antonio is my enemy and I hate him.
B: Do all men kill the things they do not love?
A: It is useless trying to argue with Shylock. Don’t wait any longer. Pass judgement on me and give Shylock what he wants.
B: I’ll pay you six thousand ducats for the three thousand ducats that Antonio borrowed.
S: If you offered me six times what you have just offered, I would still take my pound of flesh. Give me my pound of flesh!”

A: OW!!!! I THOUGHT THE $@#%$-ING KNIFE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MADE OF RUBBER!!!”

(Disclaimer: One of these lines does not actually appear in the Shakespearean dialogue.)

Things that crossed my mind 2. This was actually announced as probably nothing to worry about, (again from the Health Canada news release, “Although the risk is believed to be low…”) so let me just get myself on the record right now and say to everyone I know that if I ever hear or read any news story that begins "Health Canada has said they are worried about…" you can start looking for me somewhere near Goose Green in the Falklands!

(I suspect the next part of the story will be to try to get a satisfactory explanation from a wide range of Canadian Government and hospital authorities about why this only got into a public forum in Canada on January 26, 2006 when the US “voluntary recall” was issued over three months ago and the Health Canada advisory was first announced with a departmental news release on October 26, 2005! Cry havoc and let slip the lawyers! But I digress.)

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And finally, if you’re accumulating arrows with which to stock your “Electoral reform?” quiver, consider this result from the federal election: Green Party supporters across Canada cast over 650,000 votes. The Party won no seats. In Atlantic Canada, Liberal Party supporters cast some 475,000 votes, a return that yielded 20 Liberal MPs from that part of the country. (Hat tip to Andrew Coyne's blog, where you'll find a much larger discussion of the whole election just past.)

Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right.