VWF Blues, The Last Chapter: Sunday, October 27th

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, US general and 34th president (1890-1969) 

Event 81: Colin Mochrie, Fractured Fairy Tales, Colin Mochrie
 
8:00pm, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
Laugh your way out of this year’s Writers Fest with an appearance by improvisational comedian Colin Mochrie. He’s long been a writer of scripts and sketches and now he’s written his first book, Not Quite the Classics, a re-imagining of classic fairy tales. He’ll be on stage tonight reading, talking and performing some good old-fashioned improv.

Hi Paul!

Trust you are well. Had hoped we'd bump into each other over the course of the Festival. I know Cora Lee had chatted with Joan, a day or so ago. Sorry that it has taken me so long to inquire about your health. As you know we've only been back, after being away for a little more than 13 weeks, since last Saturday! Not much time to decompress as had my first volunteer shift Monday night, again, as you know, at the The Literati Gala Cabaret, pouring wine. Cora Lee, of course, was there, but as one of the Beautiful People, mingling with many of this year's Festival authors. Loads of fun and I had the chance to meet Meg Tilly of The Big Chill, among other films, and more recently in Global TV’s Bomb Girls, a series set in Toronto during WW II, which we quite enjoy. I didn't know that she was the author of three novels for young adults, hence her presence at VWF. Was lucky enough to have been given a complimentary ticket, (one of perks of being a volunteer), to see Jo Nesbø. I still remember you telling me about him in 2010 at the VWF line-up release.

At any rate, we will be visiting friends, Ruth/Rick at their lovely cabin on Little Shuswap, next Friday/Saturday. On Sunday we'll head for the Okanagan to do a bit of wine-tasting in The Naramata and elsewhere, en route. Will be only staying overnight with Lynne and Peter, as Cora Lee has an important meeting on Monday evening. On the literary front, VWF has been a delight. I was up at 6:37 am Friday morning to find Maggster waiting for me in the kitchen for her breakfast, poor little thing. Was very pleased to find her so vocal, demanding to be fed, as was her usual wont, before her deteriorating health affected her usual prodigious appetite. At any rate, I prepared her food, (We are now giving her small portions as often as she squeaks for more), and she ate everything and after rubbing up against my legs and "sanding" them with her chin, she settled on the throw rug in the hallway for a few minutes, sphinx-like, before returning to sleep beside Cora Lee, still snoring gently in our bedroom! 

After spending the morning answering email and trying to make a dent in blog backlog I went to listen to Andreas Schroeder interview Jowita Bydlowska about her memoir, Drunk Mom, according to her, "an imperfect account of the events that occurred from 2009 to 2010 when I relapsed after three and a half years of sobriety." I really like him, both as an author and as a moderator. I had a chance to talk to him, briefly, a few nights ago, and he mentioned, in passing, that he had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour a year or so ago so he has had some considerable medical procedures to endure/recover from of late.

Session was wonderful in spite of, or perhaps because of Jowita's harrowing tale. She is so articulate, (in spite of learning English as a teenager after her family emigrated to Canada), and was so relentlessly honest, without being an exhibitionist, that it was simply mesmerizing to listen to her tell her story, or as much as she could remember due to the endless blackouts which were part and parcel of her crippling addiction. Once again, Andreas was the perfect foil, his questions probed but did not violate.

Back home to do a few household chores, (The Islay Inn hurricane site still shows too, too many signs of  post-extended holiday wreckage, flotsam, jetsam and other chaos produced disorder!), and run a quick errand to nearbye No Frills for a few groceries and then it was back to Granville Island Stage to the session: In The Beginning, with Amber Dawn, Helen Humphries, Priscila Uppal and Jowita Bydlowska, once again moderated by Andreas. Cora Lee was already there when I arrived, sitting with a close friend Tony, (She and her husband live down the way in a co-op.) I thanked Tony for saving my seat and Cora Lee told me to buzz off! Last time I'm going to invite her to Languedoc!

Found my own seat a little higher up so I spit on The Sisterhood! (Funnily enough I had to ask a few other women to let me squeeze by to get to my seat. One of them had a cast on her right arm and we joked about it as I moved past her seat. After performance I met her outside, with Cora Lee. It was a former colleague at VPL, Jane Cobb. I knew her, but in passing only, so didn't recognize her. Had wondered why she wanted to belt me with her cast. The Sisterhood Polizei are everywhere!) This event was just as dramatic, perhaps even more so, than earlier session, because all the other women's stories were so incredible. I had heard Priscila at an earlier session but her memoir, Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, of the intensely emotional reunion with her mother, (not a positive experience for either of them), in Brazil, who had abandoned her twenty years before, is so gripping, and paradoxically, unbelievably funny, that it was wonderful to hear more and listen to her read, different passages about her quest.

Amber wrote some of her memoir, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler's Memoir, about her experiences as a sex worker, almost a decade before she had it published. She is also a filmmaker and performance artist so she read one of her own poems, a very powerful, insightful piece about what it means to be human, within society at large, using the device of the john/prostitute encounter/relationship, as the starting point for her exploration/musings. I didn't know any of Helen's work, although Coriandre had read some of her novels. She read from Nocturne, which started as a private letter to her deceased brother. As she described it, it eventually turned into a work which examined the nature of grief itself, much like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, or Joyce Carol Oats' A Widow's Story. Seemingly a different story from the one's told by the others until one realized that they were all mourning, in some way, without trying to be simplistic, for the loss of something: a mother, innocence, or self, perhaps most apparent in Jowita's experience. Her reading, from Drunk Mom, this time, was absolutely astounding and painfully funny as she chose a passage describing a therapy session with a psychologist in which she parallels her answers to his questions with the unrevealed, undisclosed thoughts and observations racing around in her brain as her startlingly perceptive mind dissects him attempting to dissect her.

The Sisterhood can certainly be proud of the strength and power and sheer talent shown by all four of these gifted authors. We all can, of course. Again, I made sure to congratulate Andreas for his consummate skill as moderator. He certainly contributed to the mix but did not dominate or overshadow the ensuing discussions.

 Back to Studio 1398 to set up bar at 6:45 pm. Session there was An Intimate Evening with Michel Tremblay and Bill Richardson was the interviewer. Coriandre and I had both seen some of Tremblay's first plays in Winnipeg in the late '60's, early 70's, and knew Bill from Winnipeg and then, more latterly, through library connections here, so it was great to catchup a bit.

He, like Andreas, did a marvellous job and Tremblay was a delight, a most amiable man to listen to. I was fascinated to learn more about his creative process and his fairly detailed comments on the difference between how he works as a playwright or a novelist. Who should be there as well but good friends, Nancy and Guy! (He is in our NRBC and she is a costume designer. Did Hamlet for this year's Bard.) Had a chance to talk to both of them, if only fairly briefly, both before and after the session. Invited them for a malt, (Your Laphroaig! As I mentioned, I had fun at the bar and recognized someone in crowd. Couldn't figure out who he was and then it came to me, it was Ken Petersen, a chap I knew from my squash playing days. He still plays at VRC and I knew him from his singles refereeing clinics. His wife, Roberta Rich, wrote The Midwife of Venice. Her new novel is The Harem Midwife." I didn't know her work but Cora Lee has read The Midwife of Venice and quite liked it. On a more important matter, I beat him in the Silent Auction for a the Laphroaig PX Cask so I'm sure he'll be kranky when I next see him. He mentioned he'd be around festival over coming week as Roberta is to appear at a number of events.), but they had visitors waiting at home. Quite a day and I was ready for bed by the time I was home.

Finally out of bed at 7:00 am Saturday morning, after a persistent Maggie had been worrying us since before 6:00 am. In spite of the fact that I could have stayed under the covers for a bit longer, am pleased that her appetite is such that she is back to her old ways of demanding breakfast when she wants it, not at our pleasure!  


Went to hear/see Margaret Atwood at 10:30 am in conversation with Merilyn Simonds and it was a simply scintillating session. Much as I am embarrassed to admit, I have not heard her speak, in person, before, and I certainly hadn't realized how sharp, keen, tart, mordant, (all of the above), is her wit and how spontaneous and deft is her stage presence. She has one skewered, while one is laughing uproariously, before you know what has hit you! Could have listened to her all day as she talked about her latest, MaddAddam, the conclusion to the so-called "dystopian" trilogy, (She argued/disagreed, as one might expect, about this characterization/description of the works), which began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Wonderful, wonderful session and one of the highlights, among a number of others, (Jo Nesbø, per esempio), that I've been lucky enough to take in.

At 2:00 pm, attended Character Roles with David Macfarlane, (Ontario),  Charlotte Grimshaw, (New Zealand), Chad Pelley, (Newfoundland), and Mary Swan, (Ontario). Didn't know any of these authors but event was very interesting as each book was quite different, each approach to character development varied. Cora Lee was to attend Paul Muldoon, (Ireland/US), [Described by the Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War."], in Conversation with John Freeman but unfortunately couldn't leave her earlier volunteer shift as a number of other volunteers didn't show up. I'd have liked to have attended both so it really is too, too bad that I'm not Omnipresent since I have Omnipotence and Omniscience covered!!

Will Self, (UK), was appearing at Studio 1398 that evening so hoped we would be able to obtain seats after our bar gig was over. Do you know any of his work? I don't. Cora Lee had read some of his earlier work. Have managed to see all the other events here, so far, but  knew this one was completely sold out so not sure if venue manager would be able to squeeze us in.

Great good luck as there was a seat! What a remarkable individual/auhor. His reading was more than superb. He put on different voices as text required, (He did some training as an actor at some point.), so that made his delivery even more effective/dramatic as you can well imagine. His wit is rather acerbic, to say the least, and taken with his supercharged intellect it was quite a stellar performance. I haven't read Umbrella, his latest, but can hardly wait to do so, given the pages he brought to more than vivid period life.

He doesn't suffer fools either and a number of question askers found themselves writhing on the end of his razor-edged tongue. An innocent enough listener commented that he had not heard so much "filth" mentioned in the short passages read aloud. The listener referred to soil and grime, etc., as opposed to filthy language and once that was clarified Will went into a hilarious monologue, using the questioner as fictional character, entering his mind. Went something like this: "He was so glad that he had cleaned his flat so that not a micron of dirt was to be found anywhere. He had, on hands and knees, picked every fibre of lint from the hall carpet and the bathrooms were spotless, the toilette bowl scoured, the mirrors shiny. He had not expected that the author and the entire audience would come back to the apartment for celebratory drinks after the reading but now that they were, he was relieved that he had been so scrupulous in his obsessive cleaning!" All this to howls of laughter from the rest of us, as yet unskewered. 

Another bold soul, a friend, actually, a chap I knew from UBC, had the temerity to ask about a boiled sweet that the main character had been sucking when we first meet her. His point was that it seemed the candy lasted far too long, relative to the sequence of events described. Will disagreed, spelling out the route the young girl had taken, with her father, through the streets of London of 1903. Approximately 10-15 minutes and time enough for the sweet to have lasted as described. He finished off by telling his questioner that he felt that his mouth, the questioner's mouth, must possess an over-supply of saliva and even though this was meant to be "an intimate evening" he had no wish to verify this fact! I think there might well have been far more questions from the audience but for the fear that his caustic wit might be focused on them.
 
I actually found his approach rather refreshing. The questions or comments were really rather silly to begin with so I found Will's responses to be biting but not really unkind. I certainly wish some of the other authors I had heard, over the course of this past week, would have been a bit more critical of the some of the mindless questions posed. Delicate balance I suppose. However, Will Self certainly wasn't about to refrain from making piercing comments when faced with such time-wasting inanities.

Give us a shout and let's see if we can arrange a meal when things have settled down for you. Fondestos to you both from Coriandre. Cheers, Patrizzio!

P,

Hope you enjoyed your full shift. I look forward to hearing about it and your session with that other Maggie. Did you tell Maggie you were....?

Cobby is revved up to ride on the morning so I will try to tie him down until you can go.

Lemme know when you think you will be ready to hit the road. W

Patrick, thanks for news.  Writers' fest sounds engaging.  Margaret Atwood is droll isn't she, with the flat accent to match.

Our 6 weeks away very successful, time in Mercatello central Italy was just so peaceful the village folk have got life worked out, provisions at the little groceries, coffee in the piazza, friendship everywhere.  They were so welcoming - lady in the Tabacchi asked did we want to buy her  2-bedroom apartment upstairs, tempting.  I'm seriously considering a return next year, a bit more travelling, a couple of seeks at language school - possibly in Ortigia which was sooo beautiful, as well as close to our friend Joe's place.

Drank some lovely vernacchi from Tuscany as well as the lovely reds and whites of Marche and Umbria.  Sicily has old varieties as well as Australian-style cabernets that are really tasty, if a bit big.

We're suffered long colds since returning - K actually stayed away from work 3 days in a row, never happened before! Your 13-week absence must have left you a stranger in your own land.  Were you elsewhere than France? I'm back to jazz and landscaping.  Love to C and Chloe.  S.

Hi Patricio,

Got your e-mail today.  Lynne and I are delighted that you and Corinne will be gracing us with your presence on Sunday Nov. 3. We'll be looking forward to your visit.  Re winery openings, especially those with good whites, we'll do a bit more research and get back to you.  For sure Poplar Grove will be open.  It would also be good for you to visit La Frenz, as they probably have the best suite of whites on the bench.

I'm quite envious of your VWF experience, one of the things that we miss out on living here in the sticks. Attached see a close encounter with a lemur. Cheers, Peter

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel laureate (b. 1918)