London Open Mic Poetry Archive
  • Home
  • Frank Davey Blog
  • Stan Burfield Blog
    • Fred Burfield's Homestead Memoirs
  • Our Events
  • News
  • PHOTOS & SUMMARIES
    • Season 5: 2016-2017 >
      • June 7th, 2017: Summary & Photos featuring Stan Burfield
      • May 3rd, 2017, Summary & Photos featuring Jason Dickson
      • April 5th, 2017 Summary & Photos, feeaturing James Deahl & Norma West Linder
      • Mar. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Andy Verboom
      • Feb. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Ron Stewart
      • Dec. 7th, 2016: Photos & Summary featuring David Stones
      • Nov. 2th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring Don Gutteridge
      • Oct. 5th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring David Huebert
    • Season 4: 2015-2016 >
      • June 1st, 2016: Photos and summaries: featuring Lynn Tait
      • May 4th, 2016 Photos and Summary: featuring indigenous poetry
      • April 6, 2016 Photos & Summary, featuring Steven McCabe
      • Mar. 2nd, 2016 photos, summary: featuring Andreas Gripp
      • Feb. 3rd, 2016 photos: 3 Western students.
      • Dec. 2, 2015 photos: featured reader Peggy Roffey
      • Nov. 7, 2015 photos: Our Words Fest open mic
      • Nov. 4, 2015 photos: featured reader Charles Mountford
      • Oct. 7th, 2015 photos: Madeline Bassnett featured
    • Season 3, 2014-15 >
      • Aug. 16, 2015 photos: The Ontario Poetry Society's "Sultry Summer Gathering"
      • June 3rd, 2015 photos: John B. Lee featured
      • May 6th, 2015 photos: Laurie D Graham featured
      • Apr. 1st, 2015 photos: John Nyman & Penn Kemp featured
      • Mar. 4th, 2015 photos: Patricia Black featured.
      • Feb. 4th, 2015 photos: feature Gary Barwin
      • Dec. 3rd, 2014 photos: Feature Debbie Okun Hill
      • Nov. 5th, 2014 photos: feature Julie Berry
      • Oct. 1st, 2014 photos: feature Roy MacDonald
    • Season 2, Sept. 2013 to June 2014. >
      • June 4th, 20114, featuring Monika Lee
      • May 7th 2014, featuring Susan McCaslin and Lee Johnson
      • Sept. 4th, 2013 featuring Frank Beltrano
      • April 16th, 2014, featuring Penn Kemp and Laurence Hutchman
      • March 5th, 2014, featuring Jacob Scheier
      • Feb. 5th, 2014: featuring four UWO students of poetry; music by Tim Woodcock
      • Jan. 2nd, 2014: featuring Carrie Lee Connel
      • Dec. 4th, 2013, featuring M. NourbeSe Philip
      • Nov. 6, 2013 , featuring Susan Downe
      • Oct. 2nd, 2013, featuring Jan Figurski
    • Season 1: Oct. 2012 to June 2013 >
      • June 4th, 2013 featuring David J. paul and the best-ever open mic
      • May 1st, 2013, featuring Sonia Halpern
      • Apr. 24, 2013 featuring Frank Davey & Tom Cull
      • Mar. 6th, 2013, featuring Christine Thorpe
      • Feb. 6th, 2013, featuring D'vorah Elias
      • Jan. 3rd. 2013: John Tyndall featured.
      • Dec. 5, 2012: RL Raymond featured
    • Dig These Hip Cats ... The Beats
  • Poet VIDEOS (open mic & featured readers)
    • 5th Season Videos (2016-2017)
    • 4th Season Videos (2015-16)
    • 3rd Season Videos (2014-2015)
    • 2nd Season (2013-2014) videos
  • BIOGRAPHIES - Featured poets & musicians
  • INTERVIEWS & POEMS (featured poets)
    • SEASON 6 - Interviews & Poems >
      • Kevin Shaw: Poem & Interview
      • David Janzen - Interview
    • SEASON 5 INTERVIEWS & POEMS
    • SEASON 4 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 3 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 2 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (only from Dec. 4th, 2013)
    • Season 1 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (& 1st half of Season 2) >
      • INTERVIEWS of Featured Poets
      • POEMS by Featured Poets (1st Season & to Nov. 2013)
  • Couplets: Poets in Dialogue
  • Future Events
  • Past Events
    • 5th Season: 2016-2017
    • Season 4: 2015-2016
    • Season 3: 2014-2015
    • Season Two: 2013-2014
    • Season One: 2012-2013
  • Who we Are
  • Testimonial
  • Our Mission
  • Links
  • Contact us

I had a glass of Landon Cabernet last night

9/21/2013

Comments

 
The sky looked ominous, like a big storm brewing. From our balcony I saw a flash off in the distance. I would have to walk because Linda had the car and was working late. But what the heck. I may as well make an adventure of it. I pulled out the only umbrella I could find, one with kittens painted on it. I walked fast, for half an hour, mostly in a cracking downpour. When I got to Landon Library my shoes were twice as heavy and my trouser bottoms were slapping my legs. But that’s okay. It felt very much like most of my life had felt, the long trail of it that had led to the big slapping sea change in my life that was this one year, to this overwhelming present, as I shook the water off the kittens and walked down into society. 

This was something called the Landon Cabaret, a yearly thing I had never been to before. The chairs that normally fill the room were separated by tables with tea lights on them. All the chairs were filled when I got there. Every chair had a person in it. But no one was standing at the back. It looked oddly perfect. It was like an exclusive club with a known membership. Until I entered. Then the woman at the door had to clump down the long ramp with an extra chair for me, interrupting librarian Carolyn Doyle who was reading a poem as part of her introduction. I looked around and could only recognize a couple faces. I guess it was a different crowd than the people who come to the open mic. Not sure why. 

Carolyn introduced three musicians as “the house band”. Jake Levesque. I recalled the name from email conversations in our first season. A slim, very elongated guy with shoulder-length white hair and round glasses. Catherine McKinnon. Yes, that’s the name I heard. Which of the two was she? A memory from an album cover surfaced. She had been a lovely, very feminine woman. I remembered long brown hair. The woman I was looking at gave me the same feeling but she could be in her 30s or 40s. So it couldn’t be the Catherine McKinnon I remembered. Maybe her daughter. Sure looked like her though. Must be someone who happened to have the same name. I let it go. The other singer didn’t have that familiar feeling, so she must be the Laurraine Siguoin. 

They did a silly little song, which was called ‘a silly little song’. Yes but it was sung so well, the tender little phrases, the hanging words, the pauses, the zips up and down -- stand-up comedy sung so lightly I found I was holding my breath because the sentence of notes just went on and on carrying me along, ready to laugh but no not yet. And the other voices fit in there lifting it further. 

But this was still a room full of strangers. I was there with the music but also I wasn’t. 

It took little things. Like Jake’s voice. It was the deepest rumble I could remember hearing coming out of a human being. It felt like my chair was about to vibrate. And it didn’t sound at all like he was pushing it down there. It was emanating like a purr from the throat under that long head. But a moment later he was singing higher, a harmony in sync with the women. It seemed just as effortless.

Then there was Catherine McKinnon. As I watched her the memories began to surface. Her long brown hair seemed the same. The shape of her face from certain angles. She wasn’t as slim, but still remarkably young. The voice. That pure voice I had grown so attached to. Yes, this had to be her. And slowly my emotions began to surface from under decades of weight. I must have been a teenager then. She was to me the ideal image of femininity, natural, calm, just there. Then glimpses of later ones, later loves -- Julie Andrews, then Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago, still my favourite movie.

But I had come to see the legendary poet Stan Dragland. He was reading from something which should be easy for any guy to get into and follow, a humourous little book about penis situations. And yes it was funny. I laughed along with everybody. The way he deadpanned it the whole way, without a single smile, didn’t hurt. An oddly masculine way of reading. Like an urban Clint Eastwood, who had been my model of masculinity most of my life. (I even smoked cigarillos at one point.) In the end, though, not too long ago, I realized those crow’s feet behind his eyes weren’t etched by the desert wind and the hot sun and the smoke from his cigarillo but by smiling off stage, year after year, at all those other actors and directors and accolytes who also passed their hours with smiles painted on their faces. But nevertheless the legendary Dragland had that Man-With-No-Name confidence. As we were all ripped apart in our chairs, Dragland read with the smallest of gestures, the most minute expressions.

But I had laughed before. And again Catherine was right there in front of me singing so perfectly with the other two. Most of the songs were old favourites. There was a Beatles medley. Eleanor Rigby. I knew the words of course so I didn’t have to listen to them. I became lost in how they were formed. How the voices flowed with each other. I couldn’t quite understand what was happening. It didn’t seem to be just a matter of harmonizing. Instead it was harmonizing in the very particular ways that created beauty. It became obvious to me that these minds were unlike mine. They were hugely musical. They must have lived in this musical moment with each other so often that they really were some kind of a unit. I would love to be part of something like that myself, but couldn’t imagine it. 

I hadn’t been in this space for a long time, into moments of sheer musical joy, where I let myself go like on a drug. The last time I had been so overwhelmed was several years ago hearing an old tape of Janis Joplin sing Ball and Chain. But this was even better. It wasn’t one big voice in high gear, but three weaving together. Their easy, continuous perfection was at once shocking and exhilarating. 

On the way out I asked Carolyn Doyle if that was really THE Catherine McKinnon. She smiled and knew what I meant. “No, Catherine McKinnus.”

Wow. How could I be so wrong? And I even had the wrong woman. The one I thought was Catherine McKinnon was actually Lorraine Siguoin. 

The long line of the past changes shape, contracts and expands so easily. Memories reform and confuse. Feelings will simply have their way.

Carolyn said the next Landon Cabaret will be in February. I’ll be there. Early.
Comments

    Stan Burfield's Blog

    Organizer of London Open Mic Poetry. former support worker for people with autism and developmental disabilities.  former farm boy, former adventurer, former florist.
    The 2014 Ted Plantos Memorial Award

    Interview in Your Old South Magazine
    Interview: The "My Writing Process" Blog Tour

    RSS Feed

    Going Out
    1. House Fly Dancing to Mozart

    Videos
    *Linda at the Christmas Craft Show
    *Our apartment
    *The  indigenous poetry event
    *Lake of Fear
    *The art of the slow talk
    *Our new Guerrilla Poetry series at the library
    *Stan discovers some treasure.

    Photo Albums
    *2 hours in one of Linda's days
    *How'd she get in there? 
    *Before the leaves
    *Pensive in winter mist.
    *New Year's Day, 2017.
    *Linda's Christmas decorations 
    *Linda and her Christmas display
    *Linda made whole wheat scones.
    *Seeing Linda off
    ​
    *Linda in first day of snow. ​
    *Balcony finished?
    *Linda relaxing
    *We'll see...
    ​*Linda and I in the Rose Garden. 
    *Listening to the leaves popping open. It sounds like rain, or crickets.
    *Fred, my father
    *​A perfect day to stroll in the woods. 
    ​
    Short Blurbs
    *Voting Booth
    *Screaming and shouting
    *New diary plan
    *That's just weird
    *It happens like this...
    *Kevin Heslop as an actor!
    *repair of damaged DNA (aging)!
    *Paterson: great movie about a poet 
    *I learned from Thomas Moore...
    *Linda' skills are blooming
    *Here's how my day began...
    *...or we don't.
    *An actual woman to a man...
    *On this Valentines Day... ​
    *How little I've changed!
    *A sunny dream, with no fear.
    *Little mistakes....
    *A label for the essence of something
    *​Dream of a typed poem
    *Here's what I want:
    *I like her quirks.
    *A little success
    *The course of history...
    *From "The Cat's Table" by Ondaatje
    *Happy to be a citizen again
    *I THINK IT’S LIKE THIS.
    *I'm so lucky.
    *After rollercoastering, I'm excited!!!
    *Old photos
    *Fire!
    *A memory that keeps returning.
    *What is TRUMP''S AUTHORITARIANISM all about?
    *Practising morality on Halloween
    *Hanging on to an ethic
    *LOOK OUT!!
    *Out of a harsh thing...
    *Mr. Moon comes rolling in.
    *What if...
    *Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *I'm now a published poet! Finally.
    *Well, the MRI is done. 
    *Yeah!!! I'm finally a published poet!
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Yesterday I had a mini-stroke.
    *We being ourselves.
    *Enormous relief
    *Orange-oatmeal cookies!
    *To put London Open Mic behind me
    ​
    *She sings!
    *Worried
    *While walking home from the store with cherries...
    *Science
    *Standing Still
    *Hey, get a job!
    ​
    *Linda and I are learning to trust.
    *Linda is away visiting relatives. 
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *Diet and health/longevity
    *Edward Hopper: Woman in Train Compartment
    *A pea and a bean in a pod
    ​*Colt!
    ​*Don't get it off your chest.
    ​*In a world that is neither Heaven nor Hell, hope drives everything.
    *Roy is 80
    *What is going on with these incredible coincidences I keep having?
    *My world of coincidences
    *Is that rumble a distant train or the city?
    *Revelations are everywhere.
    *Knowing you
    *Despite...
    ​
    *The sound of love
    ​
    *Our smile for the day
    *Hurricanes Carla and Esther
    ​*Time Warp!

    *The Pow Wow
    *The Polar Sea
    *Other people
    *Moccasin Bells
    * Stories from my life
    *Je  suis Charlie Hebdo, mais....
    *Life at a fire lookout tower
    *Dominoes
    *Grinch
    *This was my dad in 1965
    *Blue

    Personal Essays
    *Here’s my inch, for what it’s worth
    *Freedom to talk
    *I wonder
    ​*Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Fred, my father
    *THIS  IS  GETTING  TOO  WEIRD:  the nearly-impossible coincidences are rolling in en masse now.
    *After four seasons, I'm flying!
    ​
    *True North
    ​
    *Back to work on poetry, finally!!
    ​
    *Maybe it's time to see a psychiatrist.
    *66: My best birthday ever.
    *Out of darkness..
    *Hacker attack. Oh man...
    *Jean Vanier, what is this thing he's discovered?
    *Jean Vanier and L'Arche
    *But then again...
    *A Most Useful Invention
    *Building my next beater.
    *My dreams are full of people now.
    *Dear Diary: Relax. Take your boots off. 
    *Those big pictures
    *An UnSilent Night
    *Urban Legends
    *Familiar
    *I  had a glass of Landon Cabernet last night
    *The Less-educated Imagination
    *Listen, I'll tell you something that's really got me worried
    *Can't get enough


    Poems
    *The universe as a poem
    *If you don't know
    *A meander through Euston Park 
    *The Picard Card
    *To Open the Morning
    * We'll see...
    *1st published poem: On a Crate 
    *We decide
    *Standing Still
    *DRINK
    *Oblivious
    *Some Other Place
    *Tinnitus
    *It seems you just have to be still
    *In the Night
    *When I was young
    *Not for inspiration
    *Oh
    *Concerning our Glorious Future: (2nd prize winner at 2014 Poetry London Contest)
    *Yes I heard Ginsberg read once he said prepare for death
    *Amazement
    *Getting used to it
    *And now the news
    *Heart Shaped


    Archives

    July 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Aboriginal
    ADHD
    Aging
    Albert Katz
    Anxiety
    Barbara Green
    Basic Poetics Study Group
    Blog
    Blog Tour
    Carl Lapp
    Charmaine E. Elijah
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Coincidences
    Community
    Creativity
    Death
    Donald Trump
    Dream
    Dreams
    Ethics
    Father
    Fear
    Frank Davey
    Fred Burfield
    Guerrilla Poetry
    Health
    Henry David Thoreau
    History
    Humour
    Indigenous
    John Nyman
    Kevin Heslop
    Landon Library
    Lawrence Of Arabia
    Linda Burfield
    London Open Mic Poetry
    Love
    Martin Hayter
    Medicine
    Meredith Moeckel
    Movies
    Music
    Nature
    Outlook
    Penn Kemp
    Personal Essay
    Philosophy
    Photos
    Poem
    Poems
    Poetry
    Psychology
    Reading
    Relationships
    Religion
    Revelations
    Roy MacDonald
    Science
    Shelly Harder
    Shyness
    Sidewalk Poetry
    Soul
    Space
    Stan Burfield
    Strength
    Trust
    Understanding
    Video
    Volunteer
    Walt Whitman
    Writing Poetry
    Youth

Proudly powered by Weebly