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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Yes, Love This past week-end, while helping to run the Prince Edward County Authors Festival, I had the privilege of witnessing creative peers delighting in one another on such an earthy, playful way. The weather was pretty much perfect and I felt so strangely proud, knowing that as each author made his or her way into The County, eyes would pop with appreciation; noses would perk at the olfactory dessert of non-stop lilacs warmed by sunshine, and nervous systems tested by various sections of the 401 expressway would calm, mile by mile.
Naturally it helped that we had invited a group of talented, charming humans to read to our enthusiastic, book-hungry audiences. The readings were dynamic, powerful, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking. Observing the conversations between readers and writers after each session thrilled me: the reason writers do what they do, in action.
On the breakfast panel there was much talk of the impact of technology on creative process. Writing life before and after the Computer, the best and worst of the ubiquitous internet and all the pernicious forms of social networking. I really appreciated the candor and wit of the three gifted women on our panel [Zoe Whittall, Lisa Gabriele, Julie Wilson] and the passion with which they mulled over the mechanical realities of something as delicate as the imagination, expressed via sometimes-volatile electronic tools. The slate wiped clean: the emptied hard drive. Memory and editing and more, and more. When people find kismet, they can often be heard to say: “It was amazing, we could have talked for hours, maybe weeks!” We were like that.
It went on, so beautifully I’d bore you silly trying to describe the powerful silences as people listened to these writers, whom I’ll list at the end of this blog so you can at the very least consider exploring their printed imaginations. People cackled, wept and sat stone still and it was all the most exquisite kind of ongoing connection. All writers are readers. And, it struck me as I watched and listened, such brave, open and tenacious souls that when talk turns to e-books and twitter-fiction you do honestly just want to stick your fingers in your resistant ears and hum till the white noise of what sounds like “Faster, easier, lighter, more, and cheaper!” fades.
One of my favourite moments of the entire week-end was discussing the Leonard Cohen concert, held in Kingston the night of our first event, with a woman I have long admired. I don’t feel like naming her, she seldom needed an introduction in any literary room in Toronto and anyway, it was the moment that mattered. The description of the Leonard Cohen concert she had attended the night before. Her presence at our small but mighty festival and her plans to dine and then taste wine in a fast-developing terroir: all of it made me grin. Life is honestly so fantastic in this way it can make you feel genuinely sorry for the dead, unless of course there’s something they know that’s even better---and I hope they do. Undergraduate student of Can Lit in a survey course, I nearly got myself kicked out of class when I questioned the absence of Sir Cohen on the pseudo-comprehensive list of the evolution of our national literature. No Cohen, no Ondaatje: it sort of struck me as mad. It was. Later, much later, my good friend Helen and I would listen to Leonard Cohen songs in her nursing home ‘home’ and marvel at his supernatural sexiness, in the most spiritual of terms. Kismet again. And yes a little part of me felt torn when I found out Leonard Cohen would be singing miles down the 401 from our festival. “Whatever you do,” I had whispered to someone at Books and Company, original hosts of the event, “don’t bloody mention that Leonard is singing down the highway tonight!” And then I promised myself to honour my festival duties and not gun it down the expressway to hear even a distant sultry hello from the man who is partly to blame for my belief that I too might survive as a writer in what felt like a very grey and stodgy country to me at 19. I love being a beautiful loser, don't you? Without music, life would make no sense.
Lilacs warming on thick bushes everywhere you venture. Sunbeams like those you see on Christian sympathy cards: so dramatic you doubt your own faith in faith. Grass crazed with greenness and endless talk of when each of the writers would get to Slickers and Harvest and what was that winery again? Jokes and quips and the sweet cackling reminiscences of writers growing up together. I remembered watching Andrew Pyper reading “Kiss Me” at Harbourfront a lot of years ago as he strode to our wee podium to read from his new hardcover thriller and I remembered so many other intersections of achievement, personal triumph and courage from each writer we were blessed to have. It made sense they all wanted ice cream and beach drives and a deep sniff of lilac air: they have, like every other writer, missed a lot of fine summer days sitting indoors trying to make books so readers could have more to devour. It’s not a good time to ask me what I think of the $9.99 new release e-book on amazon.com. There’s globalization of art and then there’s the endless ways in which we continue to tell the very people who paint us, photograph us, write us down and sing us that they do not matter as much as those who cheapen us and bankrupt us on seven levels more than money…Breathe…
An extremely generous couple, long-time County folk, loaned us their home for the purposes of an after-party. Had this been the 1970s, when most [not all] of the festival participants grew up, no sane person would have offered their home to a band of hungry, thirsty and post-adrenalin writers. But this is 2009, and not only did we make sure to have safe and sober transport for all participants, we were a rather conversational, mellow batch of humans. A disappointment to our chain-smoking, acid-taking, Chianti-guzzling foundation-layers, to be sure. The food [catered by Currah’s, a local company] was delicious and gasp-worthy. Most of all it was just so good to hear someone playing piano, hear the factions of chattering writers, smell garlic and lilacs and wine and look around in that warm, homey evening light and know that what had made this happen was a passion for the word on the deepest level it has always known: Hello fellow, might we love one another with our just standing here talking on a glorious late-spring evening? The two words that I like best? YES, and LOVE. Or who knows, maybe just WORD is enough?
Listening to: I'm Goin Back Home, Nina Simone
Reading: Susan Olding [Pathologies] Anthony De Sa [Barnacle Love] Zoe Whittall [Pre-Chordial Thump] Ronna Bloom [Permiso] Andrew Binks [The Summer Between] Andrew Pyper [The Killing Circle] Elizabeth Abbott [Sugar: A Bittersweet History] Eric Siblin [The Cello Suites] Sherri Vanderveen [Absent] Lisa Gabriele [The Almost Archer Sisters] Shani Mootoo [Valmiki's Daughter] and Julie Wilson's wonderful website www.seenreading.com.
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