UNPLUGGED

The figures are soft in the darkness, inchoate, shapes humped over, colors blurred, a suggestion of movement and motion. The sound is more distinct. Lyrical and transcendent, skirling up out of the darkness, flickering like the candle light that wavers as if swaying to the music ...


When I was in Kingston last week, for the sad event of my friend Paul's funeral, something rather wonderful happened, something unexpected, which in my opinion often goes hand in hand with unexpected.


I was only going to be Kingston for that one night, and it was a Tuesday night and I know people have lives but still, it was a lovely evening and I have it on very good authority (as in my own) that they have beer in Kingston. So we all know what that means.


So I ended up agreeing to go downtown and have a beer (or forty) with my nephew Ken. My plan was to do some patio surfing, really the only sport that I can claim Olympic caliber skill at doing. When I left Ed's house to go down to the waterfront, it was not quite dusk and I ambled along, not thinking much about a traffic light being out, then another, then another ... Yes, I am indeed an idiot savant but one of those words applies to me far better than the other. I realized that the power was out. Power was out all up and down Princess St., Kingston's main drag, and for blocks all around.


When I finally met Ken down at the water, our plans seemed to be pretty much fucked up. We hit a few bars but nobody was serving; cash registers weren't working, those little bar computers weren't running, there weren't any lights. Damn. As we wandered back up Princess, Ken thought of Ben's Pub, a little place just off the strip. "If any body's serving" he said, "Margaret will be."


Indeed, Margaret was. Ben's Pub is a little place and as the name suggests, sort of British in theme, not uncommon in Kingston, not uncommon in a lot of places in Canada I guess. They had candles set up on the tables and the draft kegs were working. When we came in, the bartender asked us if we were OK with only beer and Ken and I looked at each other and said "Duh"


As we settled down we noticed a few people sitting at the tables with fiddles. Apparently Ben's has a regular Tuesday night caleigh. As time went on, they acquired about half a dozen fiddlers, three people on guitars, a lute and an Irish pipe. The lack of electricity meant nothing to the players, in a way they were in their element, playing celtic and gaelic music in an environment very close to how it was originally heard.


I wish Collette had been there. My first "date" at her house involved a room full of musicians like this, playing and jamming and feeding off of one another. I am always in awe of this kind of event. That night at the pub, a fiddler would begin playing then the others would jump in, playing along with lively skill, everyone on time and at the end of the song someone would lean over and ask "What was that one?" They didn't know the song but were still able to join in as if they had. That frankly amazes me.


There were a few songs where everyone just really clicked, where the instruments played in perfect harmony, the music layered and complex and in no need of vocal accompaniment. Combine that with the darkness and the candle light and the lack of TV, electric lights etc ... it was kind of a special thing. Even Ken, who's musical tastes run more to rage and snarling, appreciated the moment.


I guess it's a black out cliche to not how we find alternate ways to connect with another, to engage with each other. What is interesting of course is that they tend to be very old ways, as in a night of acoustic music, lit by candles, flavoured by ale as it would have been a couple of hundred years ago .. OK, so the beer was cold but that is one comfort I will allow myself.

SLIPPING AWAY

Tuesday I went to Kingston to attend the funeral of my friend Paul Boyer. I have known Paul for something like thirty years. He was a kid when I met him, in high school, I was friends with his older sister Linda. Paul died at the age of 48, in rather tragic circumstances, I won't post the details here but leave it to say that he died alone, and seemed to have been alone for some time.


Very sad because Paul was not alone in his life. He had his family, and his friends, many of whom of course showed up to the funeral. I knew many of these friends, some of them go back to my high school days (yes, they did have high school back then, we had our own horse drawn bus to take us). A few of these people I had not seen in something like 25 years. Those that I have seen in that time have been sporadically, with many years in between.


My relationship with Paul was much like that. We both lived in the same city for a long, long time. Yet, we did not see each other often. That's life, Paul moved here to attend U of T, Collette and I came her so I could go to Seneca (yes, he went to uni, I went to community college, so he graduated with a sheep skin and a mortarboard, I got a paper hat and a lovely name tag) and Collette pursued her career in education. We got to know Paul better as time went by and I saw him less as the kid I once knew, and more as the brilliant engineer and fully evolved adult with a wicked sense of humour and a shared passion for baseball.


Paul got married to Linda here and it was my pleasure to do the video for the wedding and this led to a bit of a deeper friendship between the four of us. Paul and Linda attended a couple of my birthdays, where they got to know my family and we all went to a few Jays games. It was a nice easy relationship and it was funny how, even in a city this large, Paul and I would run into each other from time to time; usually me going into a joint as he was coming out and both of us saying "What are you doing here?"



For the last while, Paul live only a few blocks away from us and Collette would see him on the subway platform. I'd never been to his house and it was about a five minute walk away . So it was fair to say that I let Paul slip away. Where once we passed by each other, I had let him slip, going off in some direction that I did not follow.

By everything that I've gathered, Paul let a lot slip away as well. Even those closer to Paul had not seen him for a while. He had lost, or closed off, contact with them. He let them slip away, he slipped away from his old life. Where he was going I cannot say, but I know where he ended up.

Very sad.

We all have people that we know, that are in our lives, then their presence becomes diminished, and instead of being in our lives, we begin to pass them from time to time .. "Hey, what are you doing here" .. but it often happens that they just slip away. It happens. I don't see the people with whom I went to high school. That was decades and many hundreds of kilometers ago. They slipped, I slipped, we slipped away. I don't regret all of that, I don't have any expectation that I will remain in contact with every single person I meet .. quite frankly, I would find that exhausting.

But there are always those people you know, they may not be close to you, but you have affection for them, you like them, you may not miss them but when you are in their presence, you enjoy their company. We shouldn't allow those people to slip away. Even if we just pass them by from time to time, we must ensure that the time between doesn't become too wide. They slip, we slip, but it's in our power, if we really want to, to stop it from happening.

I don't believe in an afterlife. I won't see Paul again. And that's sad. So all I can do now is think about those who I love, think about those who I like, and make sure that we don't slip away.

Paul, I'll miss you.