So, as promised: How music can be like reading a book.

The fact that Dvorak’s New World Symphony is my favourite symphony can probably be traced back to my following along with the score while listening to it. We had a copy that was printed like a little novel, or a play with each instrument as a character. Following along while the instruments played made even the boring slow movements entertaining. It was quite like having someone read aloud to me.

Recently, from the Music Animation Machine, I came across this visualisation of Clair de Lune (which is, by the way, one of the best pieces of classical music ever). It, too, lets the eye follow along with the music and experience it in a new way. It also makes me want to have a piano again.

Occasionally I’m too lazy to go to bed. Really. I’ll be sitting at my computer or on my couch or something and know that it’s bedtime, but just can’t bring myself to go get into bed. I can be really tired and not even have anything interesting to keep me occupied on the internet, but I’ll still find something.

What I tend to do when this kind of mood hits me—since I know I can’t stay up forever—is get my pillow and blanket, curl up on the couch, and fall asleep there while watching a movie. My couch is actually just as comfortable as my bed, if a little more asymmetric, so it’s actually quite nice. I’m often asleep within 5 minutes.

This works better with some movies than others. It doesn’t have to be a particularly quiet movie, but it does help if it’s one where I can tell what’s happening from the audio alone. Otherwise I’m tempted to keep my eyes open and watch what’s going on. Typically this means mellow dramas with lots of dialogue more than, say, action films with big fight scenes.

I was going about this same routine a few weeks ago and ended up watching Garden State, which I had never seen. It’s usually risky to watch a movie for the first time while doing this—often I’ll either be too bored with it to be soothed to sleep, or too engrossed in it to remember to sleep. This one turned out pretty well though, for one reason in particular: Descriptive Video.

I’ve never seen a movie with descriptive video before. It was a lot like listening to an audio book. The movie is exactly the same as without, but in between lines of dialogue, a narrator will chime in with helpful descriptions of what’s going on:

“Andrew touches a wooden rail on a spiral staircase to his left,”

“Next morning, shafts of sunlight pierce rips in curtains above a couch where Andrew has been sleeping under a blanket. He sits up urgently. He’s got ‘balls’ written across his forehead.”

“Tim glowers through his pretty, almond-shaped eyes.”

Who writes these things I wonder? Are we really supposed to note the pretty almond-shaped eyes? Maybe not, but that kind of marration really does bring out features of the visuals I wouldn’t notice otherwise. It makes it great to listen to while falling asleep, but it also really enhances the film when watching it normally.

I really want to watch more movies with descriptive video now. It would probably be a bit disconcerting for movies I already know and love but it might also be kind of cool.

Next time: How music can be like reading a book.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the books chosen for this year’s Canada Reads on CBC Radio. Previous entries: Icefields by Thomas Wharton, King Leary by Paul Quarrington, and From the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant.

When I first looked up this year’s books, Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley is the one I was most interested in reading. While I was afraid that as the retelling of the story of Noah’s Ark, it might be preachy and religious, the summary I read hinted that it might be both a bit more humorous and a bit darker than that. It certainly didn’t let down. Though I did find myself at times wondering what elements were specifically motivated by biblical references, the story really took off on its own. It was much better once I stopped expecting things from what I know of the biblical story and let Timothy Findley lead the way.

There are a lot of dark and disturbing things in here. Yes, there’s cannibalism and the famous unicorn scene, but there’s much more going on than that. The consequence of the former and the motivation of the latter stay with me much more than the events themselves. The characters of Yahweh and Lucy are not at all what we might expect of them, twisting the whole picture around until it’s no longer recognizable. There is something sinister in the characters we might expect to be the good guys, and something holy where you’d never look for it.

I especially like the way the book wraps up. It is very interesting to consider what the flood changed, what ended up surviving on the ark, and if it could have gone any other way. Like other favourite books of mine (e.g., The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald, and 2006 Canada Reads selection Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden), Not Wanted on the Voyage has hooked into my head and won’t let go. Of the four Canada Reads books I’ve read so far, this is far and away my favourite.

Over seven weeks since the last one, and a month since the winner was decided, this is third in a series of posts on the books chosen for this year’s Canada Reads on CBC Radio. Tardiness aside, my original goal of reading all five and choosing my favourite remains alive! Previous entries have been on Icefields by Thomas Wharton and King Leary by Paul Quarrington.

Unfortunately, in the month since I’ve read by Mavis Gallant, I’ve lost the notes I made on it. I recall hurriedly copying some of my favourite quotes from it on a piece of scrap paper before turning it back into the library, but there’s no sign of it now, nor any evidence that the pencil scratchings ever got copied to my computer.

As I’ve said before, I suspect it is much more difficult to write a good short story than other types of fiction. Developing any of of a setting, plot, and characters that a reader can loose themselves in, fall in love with, or learn something from is ridiculously difficult to do in a short story. Mavis Gallant, unfortunately, struggled with this as much as any other author I’ve read. Though the stories may resonate with some, for the most part this relies on chance. My mom’s favourite story in the collection was the one (or one of the ones) that focused on the mother. Mine was the Moslem Wife, not because I thought it was a particularly good story, but because many of the things the main character said are things I think. (The majority of the quotes I wrote down and lost came from her.)

Now of course, getting that connection with a reader is hard to go and Gallant should be commended for being able to write stories that do that. But this collection as a whole doesn’t really stand up to some of the other books in this year’s Canada Reads selections. Yes, for a few paragraphs I really enjoyed one story. The rest of the time, I was struggling to get a sense of the new setting, the new characters, the new story that was being told. It was beautiful writing, to be sure. It would be nice to have it read to me as I’m falling asleep, as flowing and soothing as the language tended to be, but like Zaib Shaik said, the prose is a lot like Nicole Kidman—”beautiful, but you wouldn’t want to date her.”

Even if this was a single unified novel, I still think it would be more about the writing—the actual style and sound of the words and phrases—than a story I actually want to hear. In the end, that’s where I was left. Very little about these fragmented stories stuck with me or spoke to me in any way that made me fall in love with them. I felt overwhelmed by a beautiful delivery but still wanting in content.

The game is called “Tequila Pigs”.

In big letters on the front it calls itself “The Classic Bar Game”.

On the back is says “The object of the game is to win drinks”, and below that “The best score wins a shot”.

But yet, and this is the fun part, in small print towards the bottom it says “Not intended for use with alcoholic beverages.”

Presumably they’re not allowed to (or for liability reasons can’t) actually market the game for use with alcohol, but clearly they’re doing it anyway and hoping this sad little loophole will save them. It was good for a laugh at least!

This is the second in a series of posts on the books chosen for this year’s Canada Reads on CBC Radio. The first post, on Icefields, can be found here.

All it is, is, you are at point one. You want to be at point two. The shortest distance, as every schoolboy knows, is a straight line, but there are no less than four big johnnies blocking the way. The secret is, don’t give a tinker’s cuss, just go, man. Just go.

— from “King Leary”, by Paul Quarrington

Right from the start, you have to wonder what kind of connection this book is going to have to the Shakespearian play of similar title. I had read King Lear in my grade twelve English class and was thoroughly bored with it, but luckily it turns out King Leary has little, if anything, to do with it. The story is about a mildly crazy old man, sure, but I doubt there’s anything deeper than that.

I got the impression while reading it that this is one of those stories that starts off slow and builds momentum as it goes, but looking back I find it hard to think of any critical point where it made that transition. Right from the start the narrator, King Leary himself, begins his story that slides seamlessly from present to past, from when he was a boy in the early 1900s through his stellar hockey career—King of the Ice, he was—to his present position in a nursing home bed.

At first it took a bit of effort to keep characters straight, but once I caught on they really began to build cohesive personas in a way that the characters of “Icefields” never managed to do. With no fewer than three or four characters with names beginning with a C (one of them with two names beginning with C used interchangeably), it took a while before I got who was who straight in my head. One thing I ended up enjoying was Leary’s simple vocabulary—not once did he say his son’s name without calling him gormley, and always gormely. I don’t even know what it means but I can get a pretty good picture of what Leary meant by it.

As the book progressed, the switches between time periods in the narrative became more and more blurred, which made for a very smooth if slightly hard to follow narrative. I think this was a great way of showing the progression of Leary’s character, as other characters around him feel apart in other ways. The narrative is clear and calculated in its confusion. Though I was never quite sure where the book was going, it was an interesting ride.

I started looking over vocabulary lists for the GRE general test (a graduate school version of the SATs). My prep book breaks down words into certain types with tips on how to study each. Here are the types I’ve found:

1. Words I’ve never head before
2. Words I will use in sentence but can’t actually define
3. Words whose meaning is actually the exact opposite of what I thought it was

While they tell you to watch out for secondary meanings—I knew the verb “flag” means to mark or signal, but it also means to sag or decline—there are a surprising number of words that fall in category 3. These aren’t just cases of a word being used in a different or new way, but actually complete misunderstandings on my part. Apparently “equivocate” doesn’t mean to get the point across by being very precise (cf. “explicit”), but to use ambiguous language to deceive. And “urbane” doesn’t mean run-of-the-mill or low class (cf. “pedestrian”), but sophisticated and refined. I’m going to have to replay entire conversations in my head to make sure I haven’t completely made an idiot of myself.

What really brought this up again, though, was listening to the song “First Day of my Life” by Bright Eyes. It comes across as a really nice and cute love song with a nice and cute video. (I especially love the clips where one person looks at the other without the other seeing. Psychoanalyse that.) So, as I do with all such songs, I played it through a few times and wrote out the lyrics so that I might sing along. As it turns out, it seems not to be a simple profession of love, but an apology.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They were spreading blankets on the beach
Your’s is the first face that I saw
Think I was blind before I met you

The singer describes a times when he and the other were together, happy, and utterly in love. At the sight of the other’s face, “everything changed”, as if they had never seen another person before and had not lived until that moment. But, something has been lost.

I don’t know where I am I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realise that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

The two are not together anymore. What happened, we don’t know. All we have to go on is that the singer still loves the other, and wants to be together again. He continues, reminding the other that they felt the same way once.

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up
And you said this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

How sincere can this be? Is this really a love that was meant to be?

But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy
So if you wanna be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see

Something more was lost than just being together. Maybe something happened that can’t be forgiven, maybe they’ve just grown apart. The singer clearly wants to believe that that love is still there, but on some level it sounds like he knows something will always be missing.

But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time it’s different
I mean I really think you liked me

This love is like a steady job, but it’s no lottery. He’s hopeful that they can work on whatever they have, that it might grow into something it’s not. It makes me sad, in a similar sort of way, that what I thought was a great love song is actually flawed and hurt and hopeful and yearning for something more. In a sense this is a secondary meaning that most people will probably miss.

For once I finally remembered to look up the selections for this year’s Canada Reads before the debates started. There’s just over five weeks left until the process of elimination begins and another book is picked as one that all Canadians should read. Books from previous years have landed everywhere from disappointing to a new favourite. This time around I intend to read them all myself before they get ranked.

First up: Icefields, by Thomas Wharton. Straight off the mark this book gets points for being about a critical time and place in Canada’s youth—the exploration and development of the west, specifically the Rocky mountains and their glaciers. My dad joked that if the book was about glaciers, somebody is going to fall into a crevice. True enough, but it happens in the first chapter, so we can’t exactly accuse Wharton of using a cliche element for his climax, now, can we.

Icefields succeeds very well in painting a picture of this time and place in the Rockies. Unfortunately, the picture is a bit too abstract. On the stylistic side, the use of em-dashes to denote punctuation at the beginning of paragraphs instead of quotation marks was unnecessarily confusing. It was never clear whether the second sentence, the one after the “he said” or “she said”, was more dialogue or back to narrative. The narration itself was confusing, as the narrator seemed to change throughout the book. Nobody I’ve talked to who has read this book has been able to keep the characters straight. Someone I thought was two people my mom thought was one. “I” in one chapter might be “he” in the next. The picture was there, at least, and it was a nice one, but we couldn’t make out the details.

I’m also undecided on how the plot is motivated. The initiating event, of falling into the glacier crevice, does strike up some mystery and solicits curiosity from the reader, but only to end up disappointed. After that first chapter the story doesn’t end up being about that vision at all, but moves to describing an impressionist painting of ice and stone. What more are we to expect, I guess, since something frozen in ice isn’t going to provide much action and conflict.

The book is very Canadian, and certainly does a good job of portraying that aspect, but is lacking in any specifics to make the setting resonate with the reader. In the end I don’t think it measures up to some previous entires in the Canada Reads series.

I remember thinking that one of the things I don’t like about old movies is all the silence. But, that’s okay, I thought, it’s just a different style. Not every scene needs to be bookmarked with some contemporary easy listening as cues to what emotion the audience should be experiencing, though it might be nice to enhance the mood a bit more. I don’t know the history at all about when background music started to become commonplace, but I didn’t even realise how ubiquitous it was until I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy—famous for its soundtrack—without music.

There was an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer without any voice or music. I gather that was a stylistic choice where the lack of soundtrack enhanced some of the stuff that was going on. In the case of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy, however, it was clear that there was supposed to be music, just something about the recording had left it out. At first it had an unfinished quality to it, but I got used to it, and enjoyed the episode just the same.

The real shock came on the episode after that, where all the musical cues came back. What surprised me was not how the actual songs, played under the narrative dialogue for example, contributed to the show, but how at all times there was some kind of elevator music going on punctuating every look or gesture. After being sobered by the previous episode of simple dialogue, it felt like watching a children’s cartoon with over the top sound effects pulling me by the hand through each step of the way. I actually had to stop watching, it seemed so juvenile.

Is this a bad thing, I wonder? Does this subtle but more constant kind of laugh-track enhance the experience or just dumb it down? I don’t even know if Grey’s Anatomy is exceptionally bad in this respect or representative of television in general. I just know it will be distracting me next time I watch a primetime television drama.

About a month ago the big news was that Albus Dumbledore, the loveable headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, was gay.

The cynics among us immediately figured that it was just a publicity stunt to grab more attention for an otherwise finished series. Frankly, when I was the first headline, I would have been inclined to agree, though I quickly realised it didn’t really feel like that was the case. Rowling didn’t issue a press release out of the blue. She didn’t bring it up herself. Somebody asked her about Dumbledore’s love life and she responded by saying that she always thought of him gay. And it seemed consistent with what was in the books—I had picked up on a little homoeroticism in that whole Grindelwald affair—even if it wasn’t explicit.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is that, following the outing of Dumbledore (or the outing of such a possibility, since you might argue that just because Rowling “thought of him as gay” doesn’t mean we have to, but I digress) there was an article published in Time that asked that Dumbledore be put back in the closet as he made a poor role model. An excerpt:

So along comes Rowling with Dumbledore—a human being, a wizard even, an indisputable hero and one of the most beloved figures in children’s literature. Shouldn’t I be happy to learn he’s gay?

Yes, except: Why couldn’t he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and yet Rowling couldn’t spare two of those words—”I’m gay”—to help define a central character’s emotional identity? We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful and inappropriate to mention among his colleagues and students. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character.

— John Cloud, “Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet“. Time. Monday, Oct. 22, 2007.

There are many reasons that this is completely ridiculous.

First, Dumbledore was never meant to be a gay role model for anybody. He was never meant to be a gay character at all, or else it would have been mentioned in the text. Having that as some kind of motivation for writing his character doesn’t mean it has to be explicitly explained, which goes for any trait an author sees in their characters.

What does it say about how we see homosexuality if we think it should always be explicitly stated? I would tend to lean the other way—the implication that any gay character should announce his sexual orientation to the world, as if it were a really important and defining aspect of his character, makes it sound like everybody has a right to know it, as if they should be warned before getting too friendly.

Should the two words “I’m gay” really “define a central character’s emotional identity” any differently from “I’m straight”? For someone as intelligent, wise, and experienced as Dumbledore, I would hope not.

Realistically, we might expect Dumbledore to remain in the closet simply because he grew up in the early 1900s or so, when (at least among Muggles) such things were kept secret. But, like Cloud says, this would be out of character for him. I agree with that much, but his not having disclosed that secret to, say, Harry Potter, doesn’t mean that he was ashamed by it. It’s just not something a headmaster needs to tell all his students! It’s perfectly plausible that other professors and colleagues knew, but again, the kind of conversation where that would come up simply didn’t have a place in the story both because of the situation they were in and also the kind of life Dumbledore had at the time. “Dumbledore! Lord Voldemort is on the move! And by the way; bang any boys lately?”

We should note, as well, that one of the major themes in the final book was how little Harry Potter actually knew about Dumbledore’s life. It was a source of conflict that tested Harry’s faith in his mentor and nearly ended the quest Dumbledore had sent him on. That Dumbledore had told Harry nothing of his history, including his family and his relationship with Grindelwald, was a significant point. Telling Harry that he was gay, which would have been out of place anyway, would have completely undermined the story.

Dumbledore is an amazing character. That he didn’t disclose anything about his sex life and romantic interests in past or present, straight or gay, doesn’t say anything about his integrity or whether he was ashamed by it. There was simply no need for it in the story. He makes a fine role model, whether you think of him as gay or not, and for all the same reasons.