I was recently asked to perform at a spoken word event in Toronto, on February 9th, 2012. I offered the following, which includes some juvenalia and some from this year.

Miss Stein, Mentor

No, knowing Gertrude was not nothing;

To be chided by those warm hands, man’s hands,

And embraced by that kindly way of talking she had

Helped, when the going was rough.  Always her

Strong, confident American way of agreeing

(“Well, sure!”) when she wanted to

Startled, then pleased the Sorbonne,

Oxford and Johns Hopkins men.

(1975) 

Matinee (to Terrence Davies)

The room is dark, but not silent.

A roiling mass, impatient and vocal, waits for the light. Cheers greet the haloed head of a mouse, soon enough replaced by a horse-and-the-boy-who-loves-her, loses her, then rides her to glory while townfolk cheer and he is spared reform school.

That finite square at the end of a hall becomes a universe as faces, story, and music draw us deeper into manufactured oblivion. Sugared drinks and salted corn feed the stamina to take it in while sitting still, this land where dangers rise and fall, where wishes come true and the bad are punished.

Haley, Annette, Doris  and the others:

Where they shine, no harm can be.

The bully at school, the unhappy home,

the sliding door of the confessional

all forgotten in a bliss of waking dream.

This Saturday reprieve is fifty cents, check the couch where Dad sleeps, get half of it there and the rest from your sister’s porcelain pig, if you jiggle a dinner knife in the slot.

This world is colour: nearer, tastier, holier than anything on TV or life itself. Your life will never look as good, but you can buy this world for twice two bits, and there will always be another Saturday.

(2012) 

Matches

Making beds with Grandma in her house of wartime vintage. Her chin pinning a pillow, hands on the case below, Grandma’s eyes find a spot on the wall just left of my head.

O my she says, not kidding.  I look and see the black streak from a struck match. The pillow drops; she’s solemn: Did you? Ditto solemn, alert to the false charge: No, Grandma.

She sits. Your uncle Mickey played with matches. We burned his fingers to teach him a lesson. Encore denial: how could she think it of me?

A steady look, OK;

and she must mean it ‘cause the matter’s dropped,

but her tone says Not Convinced.

(2011) 

Home Remedy 

Suppertime, summer, ‘63. We gather as tea is brewed, to be ready at meal’s end, the smooth repeat of a nightly ritual: dinner for seven at five-thirty, maincourse, dessert, and no waiting.

Spaghetti tonight, and sister Steph, with hiccups, laughs between spasms. We tease, console, and theories fly. But silent Mom, with pan in hand to sauce our plates, grows still, eyes on a spot above my sister’s head. And now with pointing ladle come the dreadful, quiet, life-or-death words Oh Stephanie. Don’t. Move. Instantly Steph screams, jumps, jars the table, desperate to escape the horror hanging above, maybe upon her even now.

There is nothing. Weak with laughter, Mom’s skillet grip falters, while we trade alarm for hilarity amidst the splash of sauce. Hiccup-free now, Stephanie sobs and Father is not amused.

(2011) 

July Obit, 1975

When they brought word to me that Susan Hayward had died

I thought, I’ll cry tomorrow, and ordered another drink.
I thought of Anne, a Lesbian

who idolized her, loved the star, and taught me, too, to care.

What for? I thank a fool.

Young and willing, a girl on probation with a song in her heart,

that foolish heart led her to climb the highest mountain

where love has gone and reap the wild wind among the living.

Then, a woman obsessed. Untamed.

The valley, the “dolls”, the back street. 

Smash-up. The story of a woman not quite

the heart throb for my Anne.  Or me.

All that drama at the hands of jail wardens and male wardens,

conquerers, lusty men and hairy apes

Made Susan, maybe, worth responding to.

Masochism’s triumph over machismo?

I want to live.

(1975-2012)

 

Telephone Courtesy, Telephonic Deceit

 A May 1950 Bell Telephone System instruction booklet for school use

On the subject of phone courtesy, too often forgotten is the use of one’s own name in answering. Business has long known that it speeds things up when you know at once you have reached the party you want.  It may sound over-formal, but your callers will be glad to know they reached you and not another member of your household or the dread "wrong number". Was it Thurber who had a character slam down the phone after shouting, "Well if this is a wrong number, why did you answer?" This must have been funny at one time...

Emerald Cunard

cartoon by Thurber

Eccentric Emerald Cunard, who lived at the luxe hotel Dorchester in London in the ‘30’s, typically answered Yes yes, who is it, not that I care. This put callers at a disadvantage, which is where Emerald wanted them. Put callers at a disadvantage is a harsh way to describe a certain level of telephonic self-protection. The phone until 30 years ago used to be a swinging door that gave anyone entrance to your home. Now gates are in place---the answering machine or service, and more direct screening, like Caller I.D. and Call Block. Some see these as inherently rude, feeling we should eschew this advantage and show the same courage we always needed when saying into the void, Hello? before disengaging from the unwanted with a degree of politeness. But saving time and avoiding annoyance has long trumped these niceties.

from Pillow Talk (1959)

The second phone line which comes with Call Waiting presents new ways to be rude, and new challenges for the polite. It is often forgotten that the intrusive buzz alerting us to a second caller (which in the past only occurred in business, for which a priority and holding  protocol was early established), can still be ignored in order to show respect to Caller One, who, more often than not, resents being abandoned in favour of last-come-first-served fickleness, which Call Waiting inevitably encourages.  If you can’t ignore it, you can suspend it on a per-call basis, [first dial *70] or warn your first caller at the outset that you may be interrupted if Caller Two materializes.

Besides these precautions, you can give Caller Two the status he deserves with the novel salutation Hello to the Second Caller!  even before learning his identity and promising to call back. This greeting has the effect of surprise while imposing an instant second-class status.  Thus put in his place, Two knows you are there but busy at the moment, and is unlikely to launch into a lengthy opening salvo that will keep you from Caller One, to whom you owe first allegiance. The point here is brevity. If you must abandon One for Two (lest you miss an emergency), it’s best if the delay for One is minimal. Several interruptions in a single call, though, will make One feel justifiably insulted. Giving short shrift to Two (until you call back and he becomes One) will ultimately train him in your method and standards: One is king, and you must take your turn.

When the roles are reversed and you are Caller Two and fear you will not be called back (it is fatally easy to forget to do this), one sure way to get your man is to stay on the line after you are abandoned for One. Bid goodbye as if you are glad to await his callback, but instead stay on the line. You may have a long wait (this is what the Speaker Phone button is for) but you will be there as soon as he is done with One.  Right after he hangs up, his phone will ring, since his other line is still open---that’s you, waiting patiently, secure in the knowledge that he can’t escape. No need to own up to your lengthy, covert wait; he’ll simply believe you happened to ring the moment he ended Call One.  (Though with two calls, back to back, his bladder may object.)

Answering machine, 1980's

Caller I.D. has advantages that are obvious, and superior to the monitoring we used to do with answering machines. Then, we waited for the machine to pick up, and after the Out Going Message, we heard, over a speaker, the caller’s message in real time. This was our chance to pick up, and begin a proper call with the now-surprised caller. Surprised and also chagrined, since she has already begun or completed her message to a mechanical device, and now knows you were lurking, superior and remote, while she prattled in the dark. Worse yet, your late pick-up announces that you are able at any time to screen calls, perhaps have always done so. Thus come the querulous, futile  messages  on the order of Are you there? I know you’re screening, and Pick up, already!!

"Hello, this is Mrs. Ricardo..." (Lucille Ball, 1950's)

Now with Caller I.D., a simple solution is at hand to avoid this latter whining. Even though the identity of your caller is known before answering, do not betray your knowledge of who is on the line. It’s very simple: answer as you always did before you had this service, that is, with an air of blank, polite unknowing (Hello, Elizabeth speaking...). It takes very little acting ability to say, convincingly, Oh, hi!  once your caller self-identifies. You would think that success in this ruse hinges on never, ever revealing that you have the I.D. service, that once aware, callers would forever be on the qui vive for deception and accuse us of monitoring always, with snide remarks such as Guess you decided to pick up this time, hunh? Far from it: people take your plain ordinary Hello? as normal and forget that, as usual, you looked first. Or they assume you were brave and picked up without looking. Then they say their name or assume you know their voice, and things go on as they did before these technologies made for so many etiquette landmines.

Frustrated caller

Why is this deception desirable? Because it avoids a caller’s smug and knowing (if accurate) accusation of screening. And to change roles again, there is a peculiar and unwelcome discomfort in being recognized before we utter a word. It’s akin to being studied through a spy-hole after ringing the doorbell. A century or more of telephony has accustomed us to a level of predictability and consideration, and the new ways represent a convulsion most unpleasant. To be greeted Hello, David right off the bat is to have expectations reversed in a gross way, and it comes with the awareness that I got  through this time, but what about those times when I couldn’t? Shall I assume a hidden grudge, boredom, another lover much preferred?

Crumbling Green Phone

Pretending you don’t have Caller I.D. means conversations can again conform to a standard we knew, without the modern, disagreeable alarm that comes when callers launch without preamble into the part of the call they prefer: their opinions, remarks and reactions.  It’s understandable that we should wish to begin a call thus; there is the forgivable wish to be dramatic, skip the banal opening and go for the kill. But the abrupt sound of Your’re up, finally! lacks gentleness tact, and the chance to adjust to a visitor suddenly, at your home, in your ear.

Now With Images

(Sept 11, 2011) I found images on the net to illustrate my post on colour televison.

Colour Comes to Canada

[edit of Thursday, June 23, 2011)]

Colour TV comes to Canada
 

So much happened in the fall of 1966 to keep us excited while waiting for promises of 1967---The Montreal World’s Fair and our country’s Centennial--- to come true. O glorious year with so much in it!  A thrill to be alive, and to be fifteen was very heaven. 1966 was Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel, held to celebrate his hit book In Cold Blood.  He ruled that guests must dress in black and/or white, an edict so counter to the prevailing trend of polychrome psychedelia, it was beyond chic.

Although by 1965 fully forty percent of new films were still in black and white, those of us not among Capote’s four hundred were content to glory in colour. Colour movies, of course, at the local and at downtown movie houses, but also colour toilet paper, pastel men’s dress shirts,  colour vinyl go-go- boots. And colour TV. Candy your eyes could taste. Empty carbs for hungry orbs. In 1966 it came to Canada.

Then, and not without fanfare, two national networks announced the coming of colour in the late summer.  We only had our old black and white set, and no plans to trade up, but anticipation was strong for an advance we wouldn’t be able to see in our own home for years to come. It was the very idea of colour, as an expansion of a known medium, as eye-pleasing, visceral gratification, that held us and inspired faith. Faith in a reward deferred, faith in technology we couldn’t afford, faith in the future.

We who lived in Montreal knew of it, of course---American colour. On our set colour broadcasts from south of the border had long flickered with grey snow,  still in monotone, no different from anything else beamed from Station WPTZ Burlington, Vermont. Only, each show in colour began with a hushed murmur, as if to bestow a privilege humbling to ponder: “The following program. Is brought to you. By Enn-Bee-See,  in… Living Color.”  Living, rather than just existing, the fate of those resigned to no-colour. (And that would be the American version of “programme” and “colour”; even their spelling was compact, modern, New World-efficient.) Under this breathy intro was heard a harp glissando while a cartoon peacock fanned his tail. In his stylized feathers, a gamut of greys, we saw no rainbow; we inferred it instead. Our hearts were lightly lifted, but also made covetous.

In the early Fifties, before Canadian colour was dreamt of, and  even American colour was reserved for specials like Hallmark Hall of Fame, Montreal convenience stores sold sheets of rainbowed cellophane to slip over your picture tube to offer a heightened-but-cheap experience. Patches of colour imbued the tube, with fidelity to naught but a vague notion of pretty.  As children were treated to this phenomenon for the annual telecast of Eaton’s department store Christmas Parade. Floats and marching bands suited this poor-man’s colour, suitable for the unsophisticated, or anyone under six.

Now, more than a decade after such risible efforts, Canadians were getting their own colour.  The CTV network in August, 1966 showed a preview of a new sci-fi series, Star Trek, weeks ahead of its September 8th premiere.  Older American shows that had already been in colour for years would now be seen that way in Canada, if you had colour TV. We were have-nots, but watched breathless anyway, as our 1954 Firestone rendered the highly sophisticated blue, red and green signals as a scale of grays.

Never mind. That didn’t stop the faint tingle up my back and arms as I watched Ed Sullivan and Get Smart, certain they were somehow new. TV Guide said so, and wasn’t it true that colourcasts were less distinct on a pre-colour set? Of course: that’s how you could tell colour was colour, even without the equipment to catch it. Contrast was suddenly poorer. Foreground and background slid together; you laboured to discern depth. (Meaning itself was muted: Dorothy’s wonder at Oz went unshared.)

No matter. Colour media, even in theory, was magic. Colour was Life, even if it had to be presumed. Dreaming made it precious. Trained in credulity, we accepted its glory as something mystic, unrevealed, holy. The Catholic Church was good for that; it taught you to take things on faith alone.

But the promised tingle of tinted TV--- dreamt of, believed in---was as nothing to actually being in a room where a  colour receiver was in operation. Colour TV wasn’t just inebriation. It was new happiness in a familiar vessel. Mood-altering, mind-expanding, a promise fulfilled every minute you were in its presence. To partake in the sacrament of colour TV meant first of all being somewhere not your home. Being in Betsy Hurley’s house, for instance. Or at Eatons.  Or in a motel.

At a motel in Skowhegan, Maine, the cabins didn’t have Colour TV but the “lobby” did---our hearts leapt up at the jolly shingle boasting this perk. Inside, guests were oddly indifferent to The NBC Saturday Night Movie, Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc, on view for free: The blue Paramount sky, the glint of aluminum armour, the cream cheese foundation on peasant cheeks…  Joan, alongside ads for Florient and Pillsbury, more than made up for our cabin’s shabby shower stall and musty carpet. 

In February 1965, Danny Kaye, hosting a broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, was at pains to prepare kids not just for the heart-stopping horror of Margaret Hamilton in greenface but to placate parents, too, over one conceit that had CBS execs worried: The story’s framing bookends are set in dull, monotone Kansas. Only the greater, central part was made in Technicolor. Fret not, your set ain’t busted, was the message Kaye delivered to ward off calls to the station.

Receivers were fussy, temperamental things in the days before tuning was automated. Colour sense is subjective, and idiosyncratic. People tolerated, knowingly or not, the vagaries of reception and display. For years it was not unusual to visit someone and find she was watching a poorly tuned set. A new form of tact emerged in pretending not to see that famous faces had turned George Hamilton-orange or crapulous green. Forbearing to notice was kinder to your host and easier  than listening to denials.

Memories of colour telecasts include the April, 1970 Oscars, preceded by a hockey game, which was memorable for being the first time I, a non-fan of the sport, understood that now you could actually distinguish one team from another. 

And while Grandma’s set in Sudbury was in for repair, we were kindly taken to her neighbour’s Magnavox to see an elephant shit on Ed Sullivan’s stage, followed by Julie Harris guest-starring as—what else?---a schoolmarm on Bonanza, in a cobalt blue skirt and whiter-than-white shirtwaist. Again, being in company for colour meant having to hide an embarrassing, if genuine, awe at being in the presence of that ordinary thing, television, now heightened by a saturated rendition of light on faces, costumes and sets that offered a sort of reality-plus,  one that approached truth but was so novel and dense with additional meaning as to suggest a parallel universe. Or heaven. [END]