Blog # 85…September, 2018
“A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness”  Opening words of  Bonjour Tristesse, which I read first when Francoise Sagan and I were both 18.  They’ve lingered with me all these years and capture what I usually feel at the change of seasons - particularly summer to fall - a strange melancholy.  It often takes the form of missing people and looking for ways to keep them in my thoughts. 

Priscila Uppal, Canadian poet, novelist, teacher and brilliant spirit died a couple of weeks ago, on my birthday. Her first novel The Divine Economy of Salvation and Winter Sport, the collection of poems written during her time as poet –in-residence at the Vancouver Olympics are two of my most precious  volumes.  Priscila and I met a number of times, at book launches, hers and others, at several readings she did in my Canada Council series, and most delicious of all we used to meet in the locker room of the Athletic Centre where I swim and she took diving lessons. We had many of those spontaneous conversations that undressing seems to provoke…about art and exercise and sport and other things that struck us at the moment. I value that connection enormously and am grateful for the memories that her work evoke.

On August 25th this year Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 and although he died almost 20 years ago, his presence is still, well present.  An inspired composer and conductor, he could knock off a Broadway tune as well as a funeral mass for JFK;  conduct Brahms as well as Berlin.  I was lucky enough this summer to see a film featuring The Royal Ballet performing to three of his  very different compositions. The middle one The Age of Anxiety, based on WH Auden’s long poem, not only was a fore runner to West Side Story, but captured the angst of the day as well as of the composer.

The most difficult part of aging for me is the death of people I care about, whether they are public or private figures. In those internal conversations I have in the middle of the night, I remind myself of two things…to pay attention to present friends and relish their company, and to appreciate the creations of artists who have given us their work to enjoy.
See you next month