Les Wiseman - Mentor - Friend
Friday, July 05, 2019
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| Les Wiseman - 1989 |
In my 77
years of existence on this planet I have been lucky (I am not going to use this
now hackneyed word “blessed”) to have had many mentors who pointed me in the
right direction. Most were much older than I was. Besides my father (who made
me a good cook) the Brothers of Holy Cross in Austin taught me history, music,
theology, civics and many a lesson on how to survive this world with at least a
grain of sanity. Not all my mentors were men.
My mother
was one who sacrificed everything to give me an education. My wife Rosemary was
a pioneer in knowing when to leave a country or when to buy a house. My grandmother
Lolita gave me my first indications that I might someday be an artist.
Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez made me an artist and convinced me from
his example that my obsession with the female form was not unsound and
perfectly normal.
Here in
Vancouver, Vancouver Magazine's Mac (Malcolm Parry) gave me my chance to work for
a magazine and commanded me to write my first article (a cover one!). His two
art directors, Rick Staehling and Chris Dahl pushed me to be versatile and
never gave me jobs in fashion which was the kiss of death for most locals, who were
soon replaced by the new one on the scene.
Writer John
Lekich with a simple sentence brought me into some sort of efficiency in my
writing. He told me, “Whatever it is you write about in your first paragraph
you should bring into the last one.”
Lekich and
writer Les Wiseman, (whom I met around 1977) were and are both much younger than I am. This confirms my
opinion that mentors can be of any age in relation to my own.
When I
arrived with my wife and daughters in Vancouver, my knowledge of most things
involving Vancouver and Canada was minor. As soon as Wiseman becameVancouver Magazine's rock
columnist, In One Ear (and associate editor, etc), he had me firmly under his wing
with statements (I was totally ignorant of the man who had written Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson), “As your attorney I would…” or “When
in doubt, drink heavily.” I never had a clue that Wiseman by calling me "Lenso the Argentinian Lensman" he was associating me with Thompson's relationship with Ralph Steadman.
The expert
on popular music that he was (and is) would give me such advice as, “Lou Reed
is God, and if you are going to like heavy metal it must be Motorhead.”
In short
order he made me a snob to good popular music and with his writing and my
photographs we became darlings of the local record reps (they were powerful
then). We were always granted exclusive access interviews like Sting (and
later the Police), the Police or Iggy Pop in their hotels.
Wiseman
invented the idea of making his Christmas In One Ear to be about a local band and
we worked to make sure the photograph would reflect good Christmas spirit.
But of the
many things he taught me there was this, which may be self-evident to most (but
it certainly was not to me), “If you are going to write, write about that which
you know.” I soon learned that this meant also that when you didn’t know you
consulted someone who knew and then you did heavy research (at the library).
And there
was one more thing, “Never start your writing in the beginning (implying that
Dickens’s David Copperfield was the exception). Start in the middle and then
work both ways."
The final
coup de grâce (in a positive way) advice from Wiseman was in teaching me how to
write profiles. He would make piles of a information of the person to be profiled on the floor. These piles included quotes
from friends, enemies or family. He would add quotes from books about the person,
and so on. He would then start shuffling them around which gave his profiles
(he won many kudos and magazine awards) a lightly intended randomness.
So, Mr.
Wiseman, thank you.
