Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Niña & Niño

 

Every day seems to be much like the day before these days.

Rosemary and I used to enjoy our breakfast in bed and we often told each other that it was the best moment of the day. When I go up the stairs with my breakfast tray I know that within minutes Niña will come in from the garden followed by Niño about 30 minutes later. They just want to be with me all the time. And it is the best moment of the day.

I look at them and I glory at how graceful they lie and sleep and how they stare at me without blinking. Then the three of us settle down, I remove my glasses and we fall asleep for a nap. Niño is on my right side and my hand is on him. Niña is between my legs.

That it is the routine every day. By the afternoon, weather permitting, Niño and I walk around the block using Rosemary’s route. I feel the presence of something, someone. I don’t believe in ghosts but then?

I have been thinking about all the above and particularly the Niño walk and bed with the two cats.

She is not there. But it seems that by not being there she is there. As I walk Niño that non-presence of Rosemary is ever-present. Is she there by not being there?

There is that old dictum that, “Absence makes the heart fonder”.

With that feeling in me, I look at my cats and it seems that the three of us are sharing that ever-present non-presence which is a presence in itself. What do they know that I don’t know? Is this why they are increasingly more affectionate?

When I open the closet I can see Rosemary’s shoes neatly arrayed. Her feet were in them. When I look at the cats I know she stroked them. Is this more of a connection than her lovely shoes?

Joan Didion & her husband's shoes

 

 

Monday, April 22, 2024

Les Wiseman - 1985

 

I often write here about the mentors of my life who were or have been responsible for whatever success accrues to my name.

There were my grandmother, mother and father, Brothers of Holy Cross in Austin, Texas, Ramón Xirau who taught me philosophy at Mexico City College, Captain USN, Onofrio Salvia, Argentine artist Juan Manuel Sánchez who compelled me to read Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Spanish, and said I was an artist, my wife Rosemary, two art directors at Vancouver Magazine, Rick Staehling and Chris Dahl who forced me to take photographs beyond what I was comfortable doing, Vancouver Magazine editor Malcolm Parry who told me I had to write (it became a cover article) besides taking photographs and quite a few more.

And writer John Lekich gave me a little trick I use all the time. He said, "Whatever you put in your first paragraph, do so in your last.”

There was one mentor that is becoming more and more obvious these days of reflection with two cats on top of me while I stare at the ceiling on my bed.

This is writer Les Wiseman who now lives near the Victoria, BC airport. I had a chat with him on the phone yesterday Sunday (almost two hours) and that cemented in me that I have to make known to whoever might read this how important he was in my life.

My journey to meet Wiseman (it was in 1978) really began in a Mexico City high school for rich American kids. One day they asked me, “Mr. Hayward what do you think of Alice Cooper?” My answer was, “I don’t know. Who is she?”

Once Wiseman convinced Malcolm Parry that his magazine should have a rock column I was dispatched to take photographs for what Wiseman wrote about.

From him I learned:

He gave me advice that began, “As your attorney…” How was I to know that he was using a phrase of one Hunter S. Thompson? How was I to know that by saying I was his Lenso the Argentinian lensman that he was equating me to Thompson’s Ralph Steadman?

Wiseman told me, “If you are going to listen to one heavy metal band it has to be Motorhead." With the band, during a very early morning interview at their hotel, the band and Wiseman drank screwdrivers without orange juice. I did not imbibe.

Such was the enormous credibility for his talent in writing about rock music that we were given instant access back stage to bands where even our city newspaper photographers had to content themselves in shooting on the concert floor. Because of Wiseman we had access to The Police three times.

One day Wiseman, having some sort of conflict (I never asked), called me up and said, “Alex let’s go tonight to Boston Bar and come back on the next day.” My Rosemary, who was much more understanding than I was, told me, “You go.” And we did. In our trip there and back we only listened to Lou Reed tapes. It was in that trip that I fell in love with Reed’s Caroline Says. We bonded in my Italian Fiat X-19 which cooperated by not breaking down.

When I started writing Wiseman gave me this advice:

"Unless you are Charles Dickens you never begin in the beginning. You start in the middle and work both ways."

"If you are writing about something you do not know anything about, do research and ask an expert."

"If you want to write a profile on a person, look for quotes from family, friends, journalists, etc. Place the papers on your floor in many piles and start mixing them without too much order."  

One of my best friends is famous animator (classical style as even now he uses no computer) Marv Newland. When I first met him at Vancouver Magazine around 1979 he never gave me any attention. That changed when Wiseman had the idea of using a local rock band (the Subhumans) as a Christmas themed rock column with an elaborate photograph I had to take.These Christmas themed rock columns became well known and I shot some of my most complicated photographs. We did everything possible to make them spectacular. I immediately learned that a photograph without any written copy meant nothing. It was our collaboration that gave me a purpose.

I have no idea whose idea it was (Wiseman’s or Parry’s?) to drive around Howe Sound and write about it. This was not rock and in the light of day (not in dark backstage sessions at the Commodore Ballroom) but somehow Wiseman proved he could write about anything and do it well.

Besides all the advice he gave me it was working with him that gave me an insight on how he wrote. I was always present at his interviews. Then I would see the finished product inside a magazine a month later.

Besides Vancouver Magazine, Wiseman worked for others. One, that  we both collaborated, for was TV Guide. I would state here that he made even that magazine a literary one.

My journey into appreciation of rock and roll I can pinpoint to the assignment I received to take photographs of live bands when Vancouver was infamous for having clubs that played canned disco. One of the joints I had to go to was called the Smilin’Buddha. I had read several articles in the Vancouver Sun about policemen being called to stop riots and violence there.

I arrived and I passed past the huge doorman/bouncer Igor. I was in fear for my equipment. On the stage was a band called the K-Tels fronted by a guitarist called Art Bergmann. Within a few minutes I put my camera bag at a corner and I started jumping up and down (it was called the pogo) with the rest of the fans. Since that evening in 1979 Art Bergman and I have been friends and from him I understand that he is proof that Vancouver does have people who are passionate in what they do.

And yes Wiseman was and is passionate in what he does.

P.D. From Wiseman I heard the term ecdydiasts . And yes we were both fans. We even convince Parry at Vancouver Magazine that would do an article, a cover it was, on them based on the money that passed hands. Wiseman also wrote a variant of the article for a local business magazine called Equity. The title of the piece was, "Sex Sells". 

 

Sunday, April 21, 2024

Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis var. pteracantha 21 April 2024

When I entered my oficina it was cold. It seems that after about 7 years my electric heater is not working. I thought to myself, “It could have waited a couple of weeks before it met its electrical maker.”

I went to see a film today at the VanCity Theatre friend, A Matter of Life and Death with David Niven, Kim Hunter and Raymond Massey.

I went home with the melancholic idea of having to go to perhaps London Drugs to buy my heater. It was and is sunny so I inspected my leafing roses and I noticed (ugh!) some black spot. I took out my spray bottle that contains water and copper sulphate and sprayed them. I went to my lane garden and uncharacteristically as this rose blooms on May 1 it had two blooms!

It cheered my up. I have scanned them and written this blog. This means that I can go to London Drugs with a smile on my face and buy the heater.

But there is always a tad of melancholy in me when I notice something wonderful in the garden. In yesteryear, before December 9, 2020, I would have run up to Rosemary on her bed and said, “Rosemary, guess what?”                                            

 

Friday, April 19, 2024

Rosemary in Venice 2021

 

Anemone coronaria 'Carmel Pastel Mix' - 19 April 2024

In my years as a magazine (etc) photographer in Vancouver the most important consideration I ever had when I was about to take a photograph was the word justification.

This meant that I had to have a good reason for taking the photograph and the methodology behind it.

Today is Rosemary’s birthday. She was born April 19 1944. This date has always been one I cannot forget as my Arrgentine birth certificate states I was born April 18, 1943. That is nonsense as I was born on August 31, 1942.

Rosemary and my daughters always made the joke that I liked to celebrate both my birthdays.

Today is Rosemary’s birthday. I feel compelled to write this blog. My youngest daughter Hilary said I did not have to write anything.

Yesterday she and I went to see a wonderful one-woman play based on Joan Didion’s  book The Year of Magical Thinking.

 I have embedded in my head that she said in an interview to the New York Times:

 “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

 This makes it obvious that I have to figure out how I am handling a beautiful sunny day with my Rosemary.

And so I will bring that word, justification, here again.

My patio had this very nice pot of Anemone coronaria ‘Carmel Pastel Mix’. Rosemary adored Anemone blanda. In my scan records I have no Anemone coronaria. I know she would have loved these. I also know she would have been upset if I had snipped them for today’s scanning. She is not here. In her memory I look at these Anemones and while I miss her intensely I smile just a tad.

 

Rosemary with her Anemone blanda August 2020

 

Cameron Wilson

 

The Sea and the Bells is a work I wrote in the winter and spring of 2003-04. It was commissioned by the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra and premiered in February 2004 with the orchestra and soprano Rosalind Beale Dala. It is dedicated to the memory of my friend and colleague Wallace Leung who tragically passed away in early 2002. The piece is based on poems by Pablo Neruda and is scored for soprano soloist and orchestra.

Neruda was Wallace’s favourite poet and these poems are among the last Neruda ever wrote. They deal with his longing to retreat from life’s noisy busyness and include the final love song to his wife. They are deeply personal poems, expansive and universal.

To accompany these majestic words I wrote music in the style of the various genres that Wallace loved; everything from spaghetti westerns to musical theatre.

This is only the second ever performance of this work It is an honor for me to have the VPO perform it again many years later with Evelyn Thatcher, Wallace’s fiancé at the time of his passing, singing the soprano solo.

Cameron Wilson

There is something about Vancouver, which some people consider to be a cultural backwater, that features a group like the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra (started in the 60s) and the Turning Point Ensemble now celebrating its 20^th anniversary.

My introduction to the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra began a little before Wilson’s The Sea and the Bells. Somehow I met up with the orchestra’s Spanish conductor Juan Castelao who had taken the direction of the orchestra after Wallace Leung’s death.

Castelao had unusual ideas. One of them involved having the orchestra play the first symphonies of well-known composers. In my memory was Bruckner’s first. In a recent communication with Castelao, who now lives in Valencia and is a musicologist, he wrote that it was Bruckner’s Zero Symphony!

In that premiere (which I attended) of Wilson’s composition the soprano, Rosalind Beal Dala I now know is Leslie Dala’s wife.

Dala and Wilson have something in common. I believe that when they arrive home (not usual as they have busy schedules) their family forgets who they are and what they look like! They are peripatetic (look it up).

For me the idea that Leung would consider Pablo Neruda his favourite poet makes me smile as Neruda was an avowed communist just like Cuban Nicolás Guillén.

Nicolás Guillén   

 

Chilean's know this: Pablo Neruda's original name was Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (Parral 12 July 1904 - 23 September 1973) It is now believed that he was poisoned to death by the authorities. Here is the introduction to Pablo Neruda’s book The Sea and the Bells

 

Inicial

Hora por hora no es el día,

es dolor por dolor:

el tiempo no se arruga,

no se gasta:

mar, dice el mar,

sin tregua,

tierra, dice la tierra:

el hombre espera.

 

 

Y solo

su campana

allí está entre las otras

guardando en su vacío

un silencio implacable

que se repartirá cuando levante

 su lengua de metal ola tras ola.

 

De tantas cosas que tuve,

 andando de rodillas por el mundo,

 aquí, desnudo,

 no tengo más que el duro mediodía

 del mar, y una campana.

 

 

Me dan ellos su voz para sufrir

y su advertencia para detenerme.

 

Esto sucede para todo el mundo:

continúa el espacio.

Y vive el mar.

Existen las campanas.