When you hit over 70 (I am 73) I seem to thrive on comfort music (Gerry Mulligan) and comfort crime writers like Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, Michael Dibdin and Arthur Upfield. The problem with those writers is that they will not be writing any more books. But I do enjoy some of the still alive ones like Ian Rankin, Jerome Charyn and that now almost forgotten Canadian treasure J. Robert Janes. Unfortunately that other fave of mine Paco Ignacio Taibo II (whom Alma Lee brought to Vancouver some years ago) no longer writes crime novels. So I depend on Donna Leon, Arturo Perez-Reverte and of course Andrea Camilleri.

But until now I never got to know or meet brand new (and very exciting) crime writers and particularly a large crop of Canadians. Many of these writers have been recommended by Marilyn Stasio but I have to confess that in the last few years I avoided the names of authors that I did not know in her column. Obviously I have been an idiot and I can now correct my ways.

And that is going to happen thanks to the Cuffed Vancouver International Crime Writers Festival.

In today’s program in Event 3 – Take Us Away I was pleasantly surprised by Caterina Edwards (she is married to a Sicilian) who writes about mafia doings on that island as they relate to (!) Edmonton, Ian Hamilton (the yet to be outed spy) whose protagonist is a Canadian/Chinese forensic accountant who happens to be a lesbian and third in that list is my author/actor/playwright/swordsman C. C. Humphreys whose latest novel is about a serial murderer during London’s plague. Globe & Mail Western Arts Correspondent, Marsha Lederman was a most efficient moderator who ran everything like clockwork in a busy newsroom.

The second event of my day was New Sisters in Crime which featured four female writers Kristi Charish, Claudine Dumont and Rachel Greenaway (a first novelist) and Ausma Zehanat Khan whose Middle Eastern heritage has now brought us one protagonist a Muslim policeman. This is a nice contrast to Greenway’s experience in telling us about BC’s North from her point of view of having been a court reporter in Nelson and beyond. Claudine Dumont, who writes her novels in French (she is from Quebec) but has English translations spoke in a beautifully evocative English. I also know she is a photographer and has just started a café in Montreal. I have a special affinity to Dumont because I too, get very dizzy in anything that moves and if I don’t drive the car I am in I would coat the interior. Kristi Charish writes something (new to me!) called urban fantasy that features zombies, ghosts and vampires in real cities. She has impressive diplomas in esoteric and difficult sciences but I was also impressed by her brilliant red hair (and alas I was not close enough to notice if I could have admired her freckles). But salient in the too short one hour session was their urbanity and intelligence. Moderator (also an author) Robin Spano was effusive in her enthusiasm to question and contribute to the session.

William Deverell was the moderator of two journalists (Terry Gould a freelancer) and Kim Bolan (a Vancouver Sun reporter) who specialize in investigative reporting. Both journalists have received death threats and Gould has traveled to places where his life could have been sold for next to nothing. Impressive for me (Bolan’s slide presentation was brutally effective) was Bolan’s feeling that investigative journalism is here to stay and Gould seemed to have an almost permanent smile of enthusiasm for what he does. In different ways both writers showed a passion for getting the story. In Gould’s case there was that extra question to find out, the why people who are bad may do good things and why good people will do bad things. Deverell (why has nobody seen the connection between this man who shares those manly qualities that Norman Mailer had but with much more understated elegance) made the session seem to go much too quickly. I wanted more. I proudly told Bolan that I have been subscribed to the Vancouver Sun since 1975 and no matter what others might think about the decline of Vancouver’s journalism standards, Bolan is ample proof that good things happen in our city papers.

The last session of today Saturday featured three men with style who (because of my above mentioned ignorance) were completely new to me. These are Linwood Barclay (who could easily have a career in stand-up comedy), John Farrow a man of perfect diction who could have lectured me about economics for hours and I would not have fallen asleep, and Zagreb-born Alen Mattich who just may complement that investigative book Balkan Ghosts by Robert D Kaplan. 

If anything this crop of Canadian and writers from other countries is proof that books are not moribund. It is much too easy to think that all the above were lucky in finding publishers and agents and to be given good contracts. The reason has to be that quality must rise to the top and every one of these writers is a testament to this. Alma Lee is correct in thinking that Vancouver is a sophisticated enough city to have room not only for a Writer's Festival but one dedicated exclusively to crime.

During the morning and afternoon I kept hearing, before and after the sessions one of my desert island jazz records, Money Jungle featuring Duke Ellington on piano, Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums. I had to enquire who was in charge of the sound. One of the sound men is Daniel Tessy. He chose the record and I was astounded to find out he is under 30! Yes, God exists!

Few would know that C.C. Humphreys wrote his swashbuckler Jack Absolute while crashing for the duration in Alma Lee’s house. And even fewer would know that Terry Gould’s teeth are perfect because he was a poster boy (and TV) for Colgate Palmolive toothpaste in his pre-teens.

I look forward to Cuffed Festival’s last day tomorrow Sunday and I hope the festival comes roaring back real soon.

Cuffed Festival and William Deverell

Good books and good writers can turn a terrible Vancouver rainy day into a sunny one in the heart. This is what happened to me today at Alma Lee’s new Cuffed Festival that features crime writers from Canada and abroad. They are here for three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) at Performance Works on Granville Island. For an hour these intimate lecture/readings involve you into intelligent conversation and illuminating stories on why writers and crime writers write and particularly why the latter tend to write series.

Tonight’s program labeled Series Stars featured Gail Bowen, William Deverell and Ian Hamilton. The night was moderated by author/actor Stephen E. Miller who reminded me of Will Rogers.

All three writers were superb but for me it especially applied to William Deverell. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I have a long photographic relationship with him that started in 1979. Or perhaps it has to do that on assignment for Saturday Night years later I went in my maroon coloured Maserati Bi-Turbo to Pender Island where he lived.. I promptly got it into a ditch on my way to his house. Deverell was helped by fellow neighbour Mike Harcourt and they managed to un-ditch my car.

But the real reason I am writing about Deverell in relation to the Cuffed Festival is that Alma Lee and her new baby have managed to inject excitement into my winter blahs. It is an excitement generated by being with people who converse and who write well.

Deverell read from his new novel Sing a Worried Song with that baritone voice of his that could have made him a lot of money (less perhaps that as a criminal lawyer) in the CBC.

He read about his protagonist Arthur Beauchamp (pronounced with a French accent if you read the novel in Quebec) an alcoholic criminal lawyer who has perennial horns on his forehead because of a wayward wife.

This fragment that Deverell read sucked me into the realization that good writing matters to the point that a drink, as Deverell’s fellow author on the stage, Ian Hamilton (a former spy not ready to admit it yet) told me that a martini will have, henceforth, a special remembrance for me that will be invariably linked to that of William Deverell.

“I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath. I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.”

I am inseparable from my bathtub. I wrote about my first memory of one here. But reflecting on it I also remember my mother washing me while I was in the tub. There is also a persistent memory that not only did I sing My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean  with my father in bed but at least once with him in the tub.

The tub became irrelevant in the late 60s in my mother’s house in Veracruz. Perhaps she did not have one. I do know that my Rosemary took frequent showers to escape the tropical port’s heat.

Tubs have been so important that I even had a show in 1989 where I had portraits of 13 women (one at a time) in a tub. That show was preceded by many failed attempts in which I wanted to rationalize why I wanted to photograph beautiful women in them.

It was with Alexandria (a lovely black-haired angel) that I finally found my way. The two pictures here are where I began to use that spotlight. In the end I mounted my tripod on either side of the tub and shot down. I used a technique of having a slow shutter which in tandem with my subjects moving the water with their feet I obtained swirls of light.

In our old Athlone house we had three tubs. The one in the cold basement was a lovely old one where I photographed Gillian – she-of-the-Calvin Klein-perfume. The other two tubs came with leaky baggage. The main bathroom leaked onto the living room ceiling. After realizing this we stopped using it and its shower, too. The second tub (an Ikea bathroom courtesy of the house flippers who sold us the home) had (it took me years to figure this out) a severe over-flow connection that to repair meant the wall in our  bedroom had to be torn down. We lived with the technique of never filling the tub over the over-flow. This meant I could never enjoy and almost full inversion (Baptist style).

Gillian

In our new home the tub has a Jacuzzi and I can now immerse myself to my neck. I read the NY Times in it and I am constantly wetting the bottom part of it. I must confess I enjoy the paper with a large mug of strong tea. What I need now is a tray (like the ones they have in-your-car hamburger joints that I can strap on one side where I can place my mug and novel.

The high point of every morning and evening for us is that hot tub bath.  

Such is the world we live in that now men (those who need inspiration) cannot have a muse and much less call a woman one.

Those who might object to the term and pronounce it sexist might not understand that the Greek muses were all women. Some say there were three others that there were nine. I am sure that women artists be they dancers, musicians or visual artist can and could seek the inspiration of a man. But these men could certainly not be called muses. That would be a drag.

One of the most important muses of my life has been my Rosemary. She has found flaws in my photographs and questioned my intent. Thanks to her I have (in most cases) been very careful in my framing, lighting and concept.

My granddaughter Rebecca now 18 was my inspiration for most of her life. She is now separated herself from this old man (I hope this is provisional) and I am now depending on her sister Lauren who is 13 for photographic inspiration.

Sometimes inspiration comes with a change of climate and locale. While in Mexico in 1968 blondes with beautiful legs shown off with a miniskirt were a rarity. When I spotted one (Rosemary) I married her.

Now in this incessant rainy and cold Vancouver I long not for the blondes (I will keep my options open for red hair) but for the Latin woman. I long for a throaty voice and a persistent gaze. I long for spoken Spanish so direct as it is impossible to speak it with mouth half closed (as is the case with English).

I have not seen Ivette Hernández now for quite a few years. I long for having a café con leche with her and perhaps discuss Mexican literature or a future shoot in my little Kitsilano studio.

I could convince the gullible that my Basque grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena who practiced law in Manila in the beginning of the 20^th century was an amateur photographer. I could further convince the gullible that Don Tirso had a fondness for musicians and in particular violinists. I could state here that he photographed this young violinist in his home studio on M.H. Del Pilar Street in Manila. 

Or I could tell you that these pictures bring to mind Emily Dickinson’s famous poem on the violin.

I decided on the latter ploy and so Googled “violin, Emily Dickinson”. To my surprise this was the first hit.

A couple of days ago I made a concerted effort to embarrass my granddaughter in front of her ballet friends between classes at an open house at Granville Island’s Arts Umbrella. But it was to no avail. My granddaughter Lauren will have a splendid future in milking people of their money should she decide to play poker. She is unflappable. I showed a picture of her mother crying as a baby and tried to pass it a picture of her. With that card-sharp face of hers she simply said, “That’s not me. That’s my mother.”

In our recent move to our new home in Kitsilano I found lots of stuff and threw a lot of it. But I kept a cache of colour negatives which I may not have taken. I believe my oldest daughter Ale took them. We had moved to our new house on Athlone Street from Burnaby. Two of these photographs were in preparation for Hilary’s (Lauren’s mother) high school prom. I hired make-up extraordinaire Inga Vollmer to do her hair and makeup.