creative forces

Blog # 138…February 2023

As an addendum to #137 -  another great Canadian woman artist, Joni Mitchell, will receive the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in Washington, DC on March 1…hooray for Joni!   And this just in, Women Talking has been nominated for best picture and Sarah Polley for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, watch with crossed fingers on March 12^th!

When someone calls a book or play or movie escapism, it’s usually meant to trivialize and make it seem less than valuable.  But I’m finding reality more and more distressing and while keeping in touch with all that’s going on, I need an off ramp regularly to switch gears and pull off somewhere quiet to keep from losing hope entirely.

Crosswords or running or pinball may be your divertissment, but for me, it’s books, and I give myself permission to go to my happy place and abandon anything that doesn’t engage me within a few pages.  

Sheila Heti caught my attention recently with Pure Colour, a novel that explores the world and relationships, friendships and parenting through the eyes and thoughts of a young woman whose father has recently died. It’s lyrical and philosophical and left me wondering...I love that. Being set in my neighbourhood in Toronto made it even more compelling.

For fans of High Fidelity – a book in 1995, film in 2000 and TV series in 2020, British writer Nick Hornby offers up Just Like You. He takes the theme of older woman/younger man into unexplored territory, making each character believable and coming up with a surprise and satisfying ending.

Lesson, Ian McEwan’s latest novel unfolds along with history from WWII to the present, taking his character (him?) from adolescent sexual awakening through marriage, abandonment and single parenting to old age. It was a gripping read, even though or maybe because I was often mentally editing wordy bits.

I've also developed a taste for biography and was surprised at how completely I lost myself in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Mathew Perry's recounting of his life battling addictions to alcohol and opiates. And Michael J Fox's No Time Like the Future, dealing with the trials of Parkinson's Disease. They're both Canadian and I loved them both in TV shows many years ago. Their survival in the face of pain and sorrow encouraged me to feel more grateful for my life.

There's a newish genre, taking classics and reworking them in a contemporary context...Shakespeare and Jane Austen's work have been subject matter, now it's Nancy Mitford. We all loved The Pursuit of Love in the 60's, now India Knight has brought the Radlett family's eccentricities  - Uncle Mathew hunting children - into the modern era with cell phones and Instagram, I'm now re-visiting the original.

If you're reading this, you have some luxury in choosing to slow down and take time to savour silence, whether it's mindfulness or just time out. For me, losing myself in a book lets me feel safe for a while, I can share the fun and enjoyment and leave the pain, anxiety and adventure with the characters. 

And another thing that's undervalued is small talk, we've lost many naturally occurring opportunities (automatic checkouts!) to feel less isolated, and more connected. There's a movement in Europe, and I think somewhere in Canada, to have slow moving check-out lines to allow for some conversations between cashiers and customers benefitting both. I thought it was a Monty Python joke when I heard that the UK government had appointed a Minister of Loneliness, but seems it was recognizing a reality in society - another consequence enhanced by the pandemic.

So, as Bugs Bunny says "That's all folks". See you in March ready to celebrate International Women's Day. And in the meantime, Black History Month kicks off today.