Posted on by Ian Hanchet

Authenticity

I love discovering music and musicians that are new to me. This week I stumbled across a video of a song in a style that I really love. My first listen to ‘Another Day Old’ was thrilling. The voice and appearance of this artist snagged me, the topic (aging gracefully) perfect for my age group. The style of mid-sixties Memphis soul is a favourite of mine. all the instruments supporting the song were perfect. I immediately dug a bit deeper to find more about Eddie Dalton (the handsome, fit, singer in the video). I wanted to purchase any albums he may have made.

The web site offered not much besides variations on the video I had just watched. Glossy edgy black and white photography too good to be true MSG for the eyes. My spider sense awoke the seed of doubt in me that what I was watching was unreal. AI. My disappointment could not have been greater. It was like striking gold and finding out it was Iron pyrite (fool’s gold). Needing further info to prove me wrong I sought out more. A Facebook page offered many more songs all in the same style with the same or similar images I had already seen. There was no Wikipedia entry, no biographical detail. This Eddie Dalton appeared on the scene fully formed as an artist. Manufactured.

Part of me is impressed that AI was this advanced that I was initially fooled. I felt like Deckard in Blade Runner running tests to see if a subject is a replicant or not. The other (larger) part of me abhorred this as a betrayal of the quality I admire most in popular music which is authenticity.

I could imagine all the criteria fed into creating this: attractive middle aged soul singer; style of Memphis Soul; cross between Sam Moore; Al Green; Ben E. King; Bill Withers; Charles Bradley; etc. each new criterion sculpting closer to perfection until there was nothing left to refine. The difference is this is not a sculpture of a sculptor created by a sculptor. Nor is this a collage of different elements creating a whole. Maybe it’s like mixing a smoothie by adding ingredients until the desired balance is achieved. 

Why? 

I recently heard a term that resonated with me. The term is  the “attention economy” which covers bums in seats, eyes on screen, time spent, etc. I assume that there are royalties to be collected and money to be made from this song. Attention paid to this fictional singer means that less attention will be paid to other things. 

Nothing wrong with fiction per se. I read fiction for diversion and entertainment. The written fiction I have read I assume originated with an author. The author may have a pseudonym or an alias but I believe to my core is a human. Most of my teacher friends have read ‘work’ created artificially that is essentially plagiarism. I have a friend whose workaround for his severe dyslexia is to dictate narrative and edit it using artificial means. His stories do not suffer, in fact they might not have been shared but for this technology. I don’t think he asks the computer to write it for him, he puts in his words and the computer assists in his syntax and spelling, punctuation. If I had not been told, I doubt if I’d know. 

I have another friend who paints portraits. I have sat for a portrait and he created a near perfect image of me in several hours. My wife is a photographer who takes my portrait in seconds, sometimes manipulates the image using filters or erases some “noise” or smooths out a zit. Various art forms with different limitations but similar results. Not about the skill, or the effort, it is about being human. 

Artifice has always been an element of all the arts. Acting is completely phony. What is the difference? 

I am a songwriter. I love creating something that didn’t exist before, but is still recognizable as a song and hopefully is not derivative but complementary to all the music I have heard before. My music is a reflection of my humanity. Most music I love has this quality. Flawed human foibles are the root of songs I admire. 

I wanted so much to love Another Day Old as much as I love To Ramona by Bob Dylan or Into The Mystic by Van Morrison. I can’t. What the song has brought to me is an existential disturbance but also a determination to assert my humanity through my art. Be real!

Free advertising for someone who doesn’t actually exist.

Posted on by Ian Hanchet · 1 Comment

My ‘Kids’ on my 70th.

I am fortunate to have reached a milestone. 70 years is a long time to be around. One of the best things I ever did was to become a dad. Best gig ever. Even the toughest times weren’t all that bad. We love each other. I am blessed. My daughters are Ema Jean and Nicola. Tepper is my son-in-law and the violinist is my BFF Jeff. The ‘kids’ prepared three lovely songs appropriate for such an occasion. I transcribed Nic’s “Eulogy”


“I had a small speech that I had written down, but I don’t really feel like reading it. A lot of you know my dad as a big jokester, but he was also a really great dad, and particularly when we were especially little.

He shone not only in the big moments but a lot of the small moments just running errands, you know: in the car; going to the hardware store; listening to The Debaters and Vinyl Tap on CBC radio… and the thing that is special about my dad is: we’d go along and a lot of kids would be bored but we wouldn’t because we had such imagination because that is something he really instilled in us and in the students that he taught over decades.

Sometimes our imagination’d got the better of us and we would be playing in the grocery store, we’d have all these little games going on and we’d lose track of him and we were never scared because all we had to do was listen…. And we would hear …without fail … somebody laughing , three aisles down… in the milk department and we would just go over there and he would be just making a stranger’s day and they would throw their head back with abandon and laugh.

Beyond that, another moment he really shone, was that, most kids grow up dreading their bedtime and I never thought I really had a bedtime, but looking back on it I realize that we did, but it was really more of a three act show. It would start on my parents’ bed, Ema and I flanking my mom, and she would read us library books while my dad was doing the dishes, and then he would come and give us each a shoulder ride to our beds and when we were there he would take requests for jazz standards and just play the most ridiculously beautiful complex music …”Daddy could you play ‘Just Fwiends’? It didn’t stop there, because after that he would tell the most creative stories that would put all of your streaming services to shame… and not only that, they would be stories that had recurring characters, it was like a series that we would tune into every single night and you know he spent the whole day entertaining a whole bunch of kids and he still took that time and did that for us.

Sometimes he’d fall asleep and we would say “daddy you’re drifting” because we knew that the story wasn’t over, and he would finish every single story the same way. He’d say “and THAT’s the end of the story!” So, I celebrate you dad, today and every day, and I’m proud to be your daughter. Happy Birthday!”

I am kind of proud that I have such wonderful children who appreciate what they have and who they are.

Posted on by Ian Hanchet · 1 Comment

Refuge

I was driving home the other night after dark, but not yet night. I was looking in the windows of the homes in Montreal West we were passing through. The houses were probably built between the two world wars or perhaps even earlier as Montreal’s suburbs were expanding. 

I was reminded of my own home growing up in Town of Mount Royal which was of the same vintage. Both neighbourhoods at the time were inhabited by middle class professionals in a society that was more nine to five and regimented. Churches were active and important back then. Children joined Boy Scouts or Girl Guides and on our street most moms were educated but could afford to stay home and raise their children. 

Bliminal spaces like this have always interested and attracted me. I was struck by the soft yellowish low watt lighting in empty dens, living rooms, front hallways. Lit for the inhabitants not yet home. I was comforted by this idea of refuge. Imagining walking in the door and being greeted by a warm living space with unmoving air from cast iron radiators.

As a youth, When I would return home from choir practice I would walk several blocks from the downtown commuter train (now part of the REM) and see similar homes waiting, dimly lit by perhaps a wall sconce or a table lamp. Perhaps the invisible kitchen was a hive of activity, someone preparing dinner in a brightly lit aromatic back room, but the rest of the house just waiting. Houses I would probably never enter, but I recognized the feeling, recognized the layout. Refuge. A quiet place to shake off the day and perhaps relax in an easy chair with the paper and a sherry or vermouth (like my dad did). 

I have been in many older homes in TMR, Montreal West, NDG and Westmount and I recognize the vibe. Clean, orderly, filled with loved objects and favourite books in neat bookshelves. Different homes with a sameness about them. These glimpses in passing are comforting to me. 

I am also reminded of a similar feeling I have driving on older highways and looking in windows of rural homes. My family used to travel between Montreal and Ottawa frequently. I had grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins in Ottawa. This is before the 417 was completed. The 417 bypasses everything and could be any highway anywhere with few landmarks or personality. The older highway took longer, but it passed real places where people lived.

Returning from Ottawa on a Sunday night the route offered glimpses into lives different from mine. I enjoyed the cold blue light from fluorescent lights in kitchens. I could imagine the hum from the fridge and the swish swish of a dishwasher in the after supper hour. The glow of a TV in another room, the scrubbed kids in their pjs staying up to watch Ed Sullivan. Some of the houses seemed plunked there randomly like a monopoly house dropped on a carpet.  There didn’t seem to be any reason for a house to to be there unlike the rambling farm houses which were large and had many out buildings.

Sometimes the route passed abandoned homes. Each former refuge transformed by life stories and hardships unknown to me, the casual observer, and lost in time.

As I write this in my comfy office I imagine someone walking their dog on the street glancing in here and seeing my computer screen and the back of my body as I sit here typing. Perhaps one day they will write about their impressions of this, my refuge.

Posted on by Ian Hanchet

I Wonder

I recently retired from my music teaching career. Amid the awfulness of the pandemic and other life drama that crops up I have been fortunate and able to continue writing songs.

One of my concerns with aging and limited outside contact and reduced activity is maintaining my health and my mental acuity. I tried to put these meditations and concerns in this song.

A few months ago a blood relative, someone very close to me who I have weekly contact with, was diagnosed with early onset dementia. The song was freshly written when I heard the news. I thought the song was about me, but I guess this song is about her, me, everybody. It is about the road everyone will eventually travel towards our eventual demise. 

I wonder where the wonder went
So many miles travelled, they came and went
 Our Wonder years already spent
 Wondering what anything meant
 -Oh-oh-I wonder
 
 I wonder Who I was meant to be
 If I’ve seen all that I was meant to see
 Or was this all just a fantasy
 I wonder if I’m really me
 -oh-oh-I wonder
 

 I wonder what this is all about
 If anybody anywhere could have bailed me out
 If I ever bought in, Or did I drop out
 Hey, Alfie, what’s it all about
 
 I wonder when I can feel it again
 If I’ll ever be relieved from residual pain 
 If I ever figure out what’s been driving me insane
 And where I’ll get off this runaway train
 
 I wonder where my my serenity went
 The worries in my head should be paying me rent
 All of my joy has already been spent
 I wonder where everybody went
 Oh, oh, I wonder
 
 I wonder how I’m going to cope with these things now
 If I’m going to wear a smile or a furrowed brow
 I wonder where I’m going to point my prow
 Am I going to take everything that life will allow
 
 I wonder why this all seems so strange
 Why all of my targets are out of range
 I wonder if I can face the change
 Pretty sure something can be arranged
 
 I wonder why things turned out like they did
 Some things in the open, some things hid
 I wonder was my offer the winning bid?
 I wonder if it’ll be the same for my kids

https://ianhanchet.bandcamp.com/track/i-wonder

Posted on by Ian Hanchet

Something You Get Through

Phillip had the nasty habit of absentmindedly retrieving earwax from his left ear with his little finger and wiping it on the side of his favourite armchair which was now smooth and no longer porous as he had been doing this for years. The side of the armchair was now shiny and mottled like some sort of caramel freak batik. 

He had never recovered from responding to a particular emergency call that had shaken him to the point of catatonia and necessitating his early retirement. As an EMT, Phillip had had his share of emotional and visceral experiences: births and deaths and everything in between. 

The call that tipped him over the edge was from someone in an apartment complex in a neighbourhood that had gone to seed. Buildings that used to be respectable and well maintained had suffered from decades of neglect. There was a stagnant pall in this forgotten neighbourhood.

The caller had not seen his neighbours in the apartment next door in a while and was suspicious because if they were travelling they would have asked him to keep an eye on the place and gather the mail and the inevitable flyers that crowd out the minuscule mailboxes in the lobby. 

When Phillip and his team arrived, they tried knocking on the door to no avail. They got the concierge to open the door with his master key but the door was also chained which didn’t stop the intense putrid smell from being released through the aperture. A bit of shoulder made short work of the chain and Phillip entered the apartment with his sleeve covering his nose. The blinds were closed and In the dusty murk he saw two decomposing bodies locked in an embrace like a distorted Romeo and Juliet in the middle of the floor. The only life left in the fetid air were the swarms of flies and maggots consuming the deceased. 

The coroner eventually ascertained that the man had had a heart attack and died a week previously and the woman had lain next to him for three days and had actually successfully willed her own death from natural causes, mostly dehydration and grief. 

Phillip, although a seasoned and somewhat hardened veteran of Emergency services became disoriented and dizzy upon experiencing this tragic scene. He stumbled to the outer hallway and collapsed in a heap. Another ambulance needed to be dispatched to the scene to deal with this new development.

Something like this can simply not be unseen, unsmelled, unfelt. The horror was etched permanently in Phillip’s brain. His ruminating and constantly reliving the scene consumed his waking hours and sent him entirely off the rails unable to function beyond the bare minimum. Obviously he was going to need therapy to return him to who he was before this incident.

Every time he seemed to be making a slight recovery he would be thrust back into his disturbing overriding thoughts of that final embrace. Was it love? Was it a sick codependency? Is it even possible to will one’s own death? Is the loss of will to live powerful enough to do that? All of the deaths he’d ever faced:  his parents, his sister, his beloved pets and the numerous victims of car crashes he’d ever seen raced in and out of focus through his restless mind dislodged from time and any sense of reality. 

He was tempted to undo his twelve years of sobriety just to anesthetize his brain. Tempted, but unable to act on it.  He asked Siri to play Willie Nelson on his HomePod which was a welcome distraction until the song came on that had Willie singing “it’s not something you get over, it’s something you get through” 

This awoke something in Phillip that he hadn’t felt in ages. He got up and poured himself a glass of water and drank it all in one long and cleansing swoop. He asked Siri to stop the music and went back to the living room and decided then and there to throw out his favourite chair which had come to represent a sort of prison to him and may have stalled his ability to get through this nightmare.

The chair sat on the curb for over a week as he had just missed the bi-weekly heavy items pickup. He didn’t care if anybody else took it, but even the most ragged of the trash pickers were not interested. Just as well, he thought as the robot arm swung the chair into the back of the garbage truck and the hydraulic scoop descended and crushed the chair never to be sat on again.

He received his new chair the same day he picked up a kitten at the SPCA. It was a motorized easy chair that moved like a dentist’s chair. The kitten eventually grew weary of the box the chair came in and crawled up Phillip’s leg and settled purring in his lap. He decided to name the kitty “Willie” and Phillip closed his eyes and slept peacefully for the first time in years.