Cigar Box Banjo (26 page)

All right, here’s something I want to discuss. When they first wheeled me into the joint, someone demanded, “What measures should we take to revive you?” I was “red-coded,” which means, well, that the boat could sink any minute. My immediate response was, “Do whatever it takes.”

“Hmmm,” nodded the doctors, and I think I had the following conversation, or variations of it, with seven or eight of them. “You know,” they would say, “sometimes death can be a very peaceful experience. And given your condition, if you were resuscitated, you might face some pretty intense pain.”

“Yeah, I guess. But you were thinking of doing
something,
weren’t you?”

“Your ribs could get broken, for example. The defibrillators can bring about intense pain.”

“Uh-huh. Well, maybe . . .”

“It’s something to think about.”

“I
have
been thinking about it.”

I really had been thinking about it, and I continue to do so. One thought I had was, if I were an old car that had been brought into the shop, I wouldn’t want the mechanics to scrap me just because the ignition system was faulty. After all, it’s the exhaust that’s gone, rusted out and rattling. I’ve got lots of time to be dead, so I don’t know why I shouldn’t make every trade-off and bargain I can.

It took Marty about a week to spring me from the hospital in Calgary. I was technically transferred back to Toronto East General Hospital, but there was no bed for me there, so I went on the lam, hiding out at the house on First Avenue. We had been forced, as part of my release conditions, to arrange for the use of supplementary oxygen not only for the return flight but for the immediate and foreseeable future (or the rest of my life, whichever comes first). Hence, the house on First came to contain a free-standing unit that draws O
₂
out of the air and sends it racing along great lengths of plastic tubing, where it connects via a nasal cannula, a flexible device with nostril-piercing prongs—you know, one of those things that looks like it might be really uncomfortable and a drag to wear all the time. (It is.) I also have a number of compressed-air canisters, and from time to time I emerge from the house carting one or two in my wake. (Or getting people to help me do so. This is a lesson that was hard for me to learn, although the advice began as soon as I was diagnosed:
“Get people to help you.”
) Porkbelly Futures continues to do gigs; I crank up my portable O
₂
and bellow. (I still insist that this frightens, or at least alarms, the tumour.) I long ago abandoned standing behind the mic, opting first for a high stool, then a low chair. Now I sit for the most part in the wheelchair that somebody, certainly not my sister-in-law Alison, stole from a parking lot.

IT MAY seem a little off topic at first, but I’ve been meaning to devote a few words to Hoagland Howard Carmichael in this narrative, as he is responsible in large part, I think, for the image we have of the songwriter. (I could be wrong, but you’re well into the book now, and you probably haven’t come this far without dumping salt on many things I say, correct?)

The coolest thing about Hoagy Carmichael is that he looked like James Bond. That was according to Ian Fleming himself, who mentioned it in a couple of novels. But Carmichael is more widely regarded as the composer—usually with the redoubtable Johnny Mercer as lyricist, almost always with someone else supplying the words—of some of the great standards. He wrote songs like “Stardust,” “Heart and Soul,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “Lazybones.” Carmichael emanated a wistful nostalgia. He seemed easygoing and could sing his own songs with a croaking approximation of tunefulness that one listener described as “delightfully awful.” Hoagy moved to Hollywood at some point—he hailed from Indiana— where he appeared in many movies. Here’s how he described his screen persona: “the hound-dog-faced old musical philosopher noodling on the honky-tonk piano, saying to a tart with a heart of gold, ‘He’ll be back, honey.’”

So Hoagy Carmichael established the image of the songwriter many of us have tacked onto the bulletin board that is our mind. But I’ll caution you—Carmichael’s breezy affability might have been a little ersatz. He was right-wing and cranky, and perhaps the most significant event of his life was the loss of his sister, who died in early childhood because of the family’s poverty.

Hoagy vowed he would never again be broke, and indeed, he wasn’t. The 1960s rendered him obsolete as a performer, but his catalogue still earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Nonetheless, shortly before his death, Carmichael was quoted as saying, “I’m a bit disappointed in myself. I know I could have accomplished a hell of a lot more. I’ve been floating around in the breeze.”

And now here I am, floating around in the breeze myself. I am currently tethered by oxygen tanks, but the connection is fairly tenuous. Often it doesn’t feel like it would take much to release me into the vapours.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2009, and tonight Martin and Jill and Dorothy and I will do some rounds. We’ve hired a town car, both to avoid drunk-driving charges and to cart around my equipment, my acoustic guitar and the canisters of compressed oxygen.

My friend Shaughnessy and I once hired a car to ferry us about. Ride Programs are set up thus, in case you don’t know: the police swoop down on your car, and sometimes they will order a Breathalyzer test. If your field-tested sobriety is found wanting, they will take your car away. So Shaughnessy and I were in a hired car. When the police stopped the driver to interrogate him about his drinking habits, he denied ever having heard of the stuff. The officer aimed his flashlight into the back. “How about you two?”

“Oh,” I began, and my friend completed my thought, “we’re pissed as newts.”

“Good!”

This evening the four of us are headed crosstown, to where Rebecca Campbell and her boyfriend, Robin, live. For the past few years, they have held a New Year’s Eve party featuring the music of the Angel Band. Robin, a musician and sound guy, plays the music of those we have lost during the calendar year. This year’s Angel Band will include Les Paul, John Martyn, Ellie Greenwich, Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and . . .), and Michael Jackson.

I’m sure you have an inkling by this point in the story that I haven’t always followed the healthiest of lifestyles. I need to talk about this because, well, you know . . . I’m dying. And maybe it’s my fault; there are no homicidal maniacs who have been lacing my food with arsenic. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of poisoning myself. I should mention in my defence that I have made some effort toward health over the years. I’ve completed three marathons, I believe, and a triathlon. I’ve avoided cigarettes for years at a time. I often substituted smelly little cigars, though, and I guess I miscalculated there.

But what I want to get beyond is the idea that anybody’s death is their fault. It could be as random as the cards dropping in a game of Omaha. You might be holding the nut cards to a low hand, but when the last community card turns up and it’s a ten (meaning there ain’t no low hand), all you got is squat. I was surprised when the Fates pointed their bony fingers in my direction, but I’ve gotten over that, since the Fates are constantly surprising us in this way. In December, I invited a friend, Cheyenne Lee, to our annual Christmas party. Her marriage had broken up, and she had a seven-year-old kid. I knew her from the pub trivia league and found her very funny and intelligent. I thought Cheyenne would enjoy the unbridled bellowing of Christmas songs. And indeed she enjoyed it very much. She sent an e-mail to that effect the following day. A little later she e-mailed to invite me to a New Year’s Eve party. But the next morning her son wandered into her bedroom and found her dead.

Or my erstwhile sister-in-law, Lorna MacPhee. In late November, Lorna’s nephew found her collapsed in the hallway of the house several of us had shared many years back—me, my brother Joel, Bobby Wilson. Lorna’s immediate family are the very musical Doanes, and while Lorna never regained consciousness, Melanie and Creighton and others played music in the hospital room. (Getting out the village!)

And Kim Kotzma, of course, taken away when I needed him most. It’s a wonderful feeling to know there is somewhere on the planet a human being who loves you without reserve or second thought; it is devastating when that particular existence is eradicated. So while I sat contemplating my own demise, three people connected to me met their own. This is not to mention those people in the public eye. The aforementioned Michael Jackson, for instance, and as soon as I saw some of
that
funeral on television, I started telling my friends and loved ones they had their work cut out for them. Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze, both of whom danced with cancer. (As I’ve said, “battling” and “grappling” don’t necessarily seem right. Sometimes the disease wants to enfold you, to subsume you; my advice is, hold its hands tight and keep its feet moving.) There are many people who danced with every bit as much mettle as Fawcett and Swayze, the knowledge of their spunk and spirit held by but a handful of others. Let me mention too all those who couldn’t overcome their fear and anger, because,
oh my,
it’s hard. There is no easy way of doing this, short of taking out the sidearm and blasting grey matter all over the bathroom wall. Which, of course, is the hardest way, and maybe the bravest.

And here’s to the hundreds of thousands of people who died just now. Right in this moment, now a moment past, when I lifted my hands from the keyboard and raised a glass of Lagavulin.

1
My friend Roberto Occhipinti, however, sometimes appears at the Dora Keogh with his R&B band, Soul Stew. Roberto and I have known each other since childhood, and we played together in many bands, including the Wombats and the Holy Goats. That’s a pretty good name, that last one. Roberto thought it up, but I’m certain you’re welcome to it if you want it.

2
One reason for this, certainly, was what I had to do to get the gig. The previous January, hand in hand with my friend Shelagh Rogers of the CBC, I had chased a haggis tossed with Gaelic panache into the frigid waters of Lake Ontario by Matthew Swan, the president of Adventure Canada. The occasion was Adventure Canada’s annual charity fundraiser, the Robbie Burns Polar Dip.

3
The literary arts were represented more than ably by publisher Doug Gibson and writer Alistair MacLeod, perhaps our country’s finest.

CHAPTER
12

T
HERE ARE very few situations that are unremittingly negative, and even being afflicted with a terminal disease has the occasional positive aspect. For one, it affords the afflicted the opportunity to reconnect with various people from the past. Early on in the process, I reconnected with Dan Hill. Actually, Dan and I did a few things together before my diagnosis, back in those pleasant days when I felt really cruddy but had no idea why. We played together in Kingston, Ontario, for example, sharing the drive. On one of these occasions, Dan informed me that Matt McCauley was coming through town and wanted to see me.

The last you may recall, Dan and I had a duo called Quar-rington Hill.
¹
I can’t remember us ever discussing our career aspirations. But Dan was, I guess, more ambitious than I, certainly more willing to get out into the world and give the people what they want when they want it. I tended to be happiest in my little room, writing songs and stories and waiting for everyone to discover how clever I was. So we kind of drifted apart. Then, when I wasn’t paying attention, he became a major international recording star.

These days, Dan Hill makes his living as a songwriter. His performing days are mostly behind him (although not completely, as we’ll see), but he is still in demand as a collaborator. He works at this trade largely in Nashville, where Music Row is the modern-day equivalent of Tin Pan Alley or the Brill Building. There was a mass migration of songwriters, mostly from Los Angeles, to Nashville in the 1980s, and the very successful ones maintain a residence in both locations.

Over the years, Dan-Dan has worked with some heavy hitters. He wrote a song with Michael (“Touch Me in the Morning”) Masser called “In Your Eyes,” which was a hit for George Benson. His most frequent collaborator in Nashville is a fellow named Keith Stegall, who has produced and written for Alan Jackson and Randy Travis. Stegall’s biggest hit was “I Hate Everything,” recorded by George Strait. That song is from a sub-genre I quite like, basically, “I met a guy in a bar . . .” In this case, the singer meets a profoundly bitter man who downs doubles and waxes vitriolic. At the end of the song, the narrator phones his wife and announces that he’s coming home, they’re going to work through their problems. I sometimes think I should write an “I met a guy in a bar” song. Mine would be more along the lines of, “I was sitting in a bar and a guy came in and met me.”

“Mostly what happens is, Keith will drop an idea on me,” Dan-Dan told me. “I’ll tape it; it may only last five seconds. Sometimes he’ll just sing it to me over the phone. And then I’ll go away and work on it for a week or two. We’ll get together again and go over it. Finally we’ll record it, because you learn things about the song that way. Lyrics that read well don’t necessarily sing well, that type of thing.”

Danny’s forte is lyrics—Danny’s forte are lyrics?—but he writes music as well. (He recently co-wrote a song for Dutch singer Anouk, a hit in her homeland, for which his contribution was entirely musical.) How it works—I’ve grilled him about this mercilessly, trying to see if there isn’t a way I could get in on the action—is it becomes generally known within the songwriting community that someone, let’s say Josh Groban, is looking for material. “So Josh or someone associated with him will call me and tell me that they’re looking,” Dan relates, “and then I’ll call Keith and maybe a couple of other really talented songwriters I know, and I’ll set up appointments for us to get together and write. I concentrate on writing just a few good songs. When I first started, I used to race around and write with fifteen different guys, but it was actually Michael Masser who told me, ‘You’re crazy. One hit is worth more than any number of near misses. Concentrate on quality.’”