Rumours of Glory

by Bruce Cockburn

  Aside: In contrast, there’s a pretty good bootleg in circulation of a show I did with my band in Humboldt County, California, in 1984. We were playing an eleven-minute jam version of the originally gentle “Joy Will Find a Way,” and I invited the crowd to sing along. How funny to hear myself not only leading a long rock jam but also hollering—indeed, joyfully—“I can’t hear you! You have to sing!”

  I was young and idealistic. I hadn’t really thought it out. I was not seeing the positive side, or at least the potential positive side, of the power afforded popular performers: the power of communication, the ability—the privilege, really—to transmit the energy that humans require to maintain balanced psyches and to direct their lives in ways that benefit each other. (In spite of it all, I remain idealistic.) The artist can and should project truth—truth about feelings, truth about the world, truth about love and sex and relationships, and, if it’s in them, truth about the Divine. When I’m onstage and I feel the sensation of being a conduit, when I feel the audience receiving whatever it is that might be flowing through me on any given night, it doesn’t seem like an exercise in ego. The energy comes from somewhere and feeds me, and therefore the audience, and back again. It’s a symbiotic loop, flowing amorphously and in perfect sync, when working right.

  The flip side is that you’ve got to keep your ego on a short leash. Once you become “known,” people start treating you with deference: hotel employees, shopkeepers, even your friends. It’s easy to get used to that. It can become a trap. I became very aware of this early on. After Night Vision came out, people started addressing me as “Mr. Cockburn,” which was embarrassing. I felt like, “Come on, we’re all even here, you don’t have to do that.” But I couldn’t stop it, because it’s just how people are. I became very conscious of trying to keep that in check, but it wasn’t really something a person could forestall. Meanwhile, the strokes are seductive, and I’d be lying if I said there were never times that I liked the attention, or that I don’t like it when people do me favours.

  Terry Lynn, president of CBS Records, me, Alex Colville—whose painting graced the cover of Night Vision—Bill Bannon, CBS marketing director, and Bernie Finkelstein

  Thick as thieves

  photo credits: © Arthur (Art) Usherson (left) and © Daniel Keebler (right)

  My reaction to Night Vision’s success was twofold: I took a protracted, virtually work-free trip with Kitty to Europe when I could have (Bernie would say should have) been playing summer festivals to support the album; and, once we got home, I recorded an album of new songs, several of them products of those travels. That album, Salt, Sun and Time, was the least commercial project I could come up with and still stay within my established style. I didn’t want a band, just me and Gene Martynec on guitars, and my voice. In one place Gene added a delicate touch of synthesizer, and we brought in Jack Zaza, a top session player in Toronto’s studio scene, for a clarinet duet with me on an instrumental piece. But that was it. I made a conscious about-face. Furthermore, I toured with those songs before releasing the album. Gene and I performed as a duo, throwing half an evening’s worth of unknown songs at audiences. People liked the guitar work, but few were inspired to dance in the aisles.

  I got what I was looking for; everything calmed down. For a long time, Salt, Sun and Time was my worst-selling album. Bernie tore out what was left of his hair. But it was my process, my art. I was growing up, but more so, I was growing into an industry that was looking for human cannonballs rather than shy pointillists. Only later on did I understand that it’s a good thing for people to have a good time but, more important, it’s a great thing if an artist can produce work without having to consider market forces.

  The journey with Kitty to Europe, in the summer of 1973, was a trial of almost constant tension punctuated by a welcome gain in personal insight. Getting there was comic enough. We caught an ocean liner headed for London out of the same Montreal port that had seen me off to Europe nine years before. It was a Russian vessel, sleek and modern for the time. It bore the name Alexander Pushkin, after the esteemed Russian poet of the early nineteenth century. Pushkin, son of nobility, was so tempestuous about his honour that he fought a total of twenty-nine duels, losing the last one, and his life, at the age of thirty-seven. It was an apt name for the vessel, given the tribulations to come. Pushkin wrote right at me:

  Have you not sighed, hearing his quiet voice,

  The bard of love, the bard of his own sorrow?

  When you looked at that youth in wooded hollow

  And met the gaze of his despondent eyes

  Have you not sighed?

  For four months Kitty and I sighed across northern Europe. The tone was set early enough, on the voyage across the Atlantic. I was shaving one morning a couple of days out. The heavy steel bathroom door in our cabin kept swinging open with the rolling of the ship and knocking my arm, so I peevishly elbowed it closed just as Kitty made to enter with her head lowered. She went down with a nauseating clang, splayed out on the deck, dazed but not damaged.

  The ship was sleek, but the Soviet attempt to provide Western-style “luxury” was a parody. After a few nights in the dining room it became clear that we were going to be fed the same cubes of meat at every dinner, though each evening the name would change on the menu: “boeuf bourguignon,” “filet mignon,” and so on. It could have been horse (which is perfectly edible, but they should have said so). There was no maintenance of the pool, so after a few days the water was a shimmering green gloss that gave a gelatinous slosh with each roll of the ship, as if someone were studying the tides using a giant petri dish. There was so little to do on board that a few hardy souls actually swam in it. I believe they were English. I was so bored I opted for Russian lessons. We booked the SS France for the return home.

  As the British comedic actor Terry-Thomas might have said, Kitty and I were having a rather rough go of it. By the time we arrived at our diminutive Kensington hotel room, we had been together six years. Back in 1967 I was almost wholly ignorant about relationships, about sex, about the means and importance of exploring our issues, fears, and desires. My parents imparted very little of this sort of information to their offspring. Stress, passion, sadness, elation, anger at each other: it didn’t matter, they didn’t show it in front of us. I’d really had no one else to practice on before Kitty, and Kitty couldn’t have had much of a sense of what she was taking on. So here we were six years later, and little had changed. We’d exchanged the sardine can of the truck cab for a Soviet stateroom, then a compact London hotel room.

  I knew, because everyone around me talked about this sort of thing, that relationships require communication. But it took a long time for that knowledge to result in anything tangible. I was never able to adequately express myself to Kitty, to open up enough to make progress on the inevitable issues of marriage. It was almost impossible for me to communicate from the heart, especially if the subject—say, sex—required deep openness. With dedication and patience, Kitty drew me out from an often agitated state of desire mixed with doubt of my own capacity and a deep fear of exposure. She coaxed me toward trust, passion, and relative relaxation, but I remained too trapped inside myself to be much of a lover—though I thought about it most of the time.

  Our difficulties found a focus in my inability to refrain from noticing other women. It’s a guy thing. We, men that is, are wired for a response to visual stimuli. I did not understand that then. Anytime an even minimally attractive female came into view, the imprinting would take hold and I would find myself momentarily fantasizing about her being mine. It wasn’t that I imagined having sex with them. There was just a kind of smug sense of proprietorship, but I was reluctant to verbalize it, as it seemed rude. I was at least clear about this. Also, I didn’t want to encourage Kitty’s insecurity about other women making a play for me. I was, quite honestly, usually oblivious to this. Really? Me? It wasn’t something I was used to. My wife, though, never failed to notice it.

  Kitty
is a highly intuitive person. Because we were together most of the time, she could read me quite well. She would ask if I was attracted to so-and-so. I would, of course, say no. This caused her to become insecure about her own intuition, which wasn’t healthy, because of course she’d been right. Later she would plead with me to be truthful, but my guilt would not let me. I was a Victorian, fear-based moralist with a bohemian overlay. I lived in my head. I knew nothing about my animal nature. She encouraged me to be open, emphasizing that even married people are often attracted to others. So, after a while of this, I confessed. Conflagration. Kitty’s insecurity and frustration now raged in a different way. I tried to solve the problem by censoring myself, by willing myself not to feel the attraction, which was even worse. The more I denied speculating about other women, the more I was attracted to them. There were a few issues that plagued us, but this one became a black hole that sucked all else toward its core.

  After a few days in England we arrived back to the hotel room at teatime, planning to shower before dinner. Heavy clouds darkened the room. While out exploring we’d gotten lunch in a pub, where I found myself smitten by a waitress. Of course Kitty caught it—it would be like watching the lights change at an intersection—so back in the room she confronted me. It was clear what had happened: I’d become momentarily attracted to a young British woman whom I would never see again. But that was once too often for Kitty. Naked, she let out a sobbing moan, clambered up on the desk to reach the high window, and fumbled at the latch. The cobblestone courtyard was three floors down. Fuck! She’s going to jump! I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down. We both wept. It was surreal. I can still feel the cold mixture of shock, dismay, and shame.

  We buried this drama and for a while maintained a pretense of normalcy, enjoying the British summer in a rented station wagon. We circumnavigated the United Kingdom in a rough figure eight, up the west coast of England, across the narrow bit, around the top of Scotland from east to west. We hung towels over the windows to sleep in the back of the car, and stole bottles of milk off someone’s front stoop and left money in their place. We walked the wild coast of Cornwall, ate strawberries and clotted cream in Devon, hiked up Cader Idris in North Wales, stood among forty-five-hundred-year-old standing stones on the Isle of Man, and drove the high tide–hidden causeway to call on the twilight ghosts of Lindisfarne. These were conjuring places, and we came to see them as Lewis and Tolkien must have, as their books seemed to embody the feel and shape of this landscape.

  In Edinburgh we walked Cockburn Street. I bought a Harris Tweed jacket on the Isle of Harris. It was all terribly adventuresome and romantic, but the tensions never abated. We were our own monster, fighting along the entire shore of Loch Ness. It wasn’t merely the attraction issue. There was a general failure to share deeper feelings on my part, which left Kitty feeling isolated. Combined with that was her own lack of a consuming calling around which to hang her exterior life, which put further pressure on our relationship.

  After a month and a half of this we caught a boat from Aberdeen to Gothenburg, Sweden, making our way to Stockholm. We found a suite in a flat owned by a genteel older woman of aristocratic stock. It was a large home flush with antiques and an ambiance of faded grandeur. We hooked up with the American folksingers John Prine and Steve Goodman, there to perform on a TV show called Op O’ Poppa, which John called Oopoopoopoo. I did a live show on Swedish national radio. My old friend Per Fagerholm had become a journalist and was living in Sri Lanka, so we missed seeing him. I didn’t try to find Miss Sand.

  Then came the fateful shopping trip. Nothing is simple. I was in search of crafts made by the legendary Sami of northern Scandinavia. The Sami, or Laplanders, are the aboriginal people of Scandinavia, nomadic herders of reindeer, and fine crafts workers. Kitty and I were directed to a downtown department store that we were told had a section full of exceptional Lappish artifacts. We each bought a knife made in the traditional style and boots with curled-up toes. I bought a book for my dad called People of Eight Seasons, which describes a year in the traditional Sami life.

  We were aided by a young, blond, stereotypically pretty Swedish saleswoman. As the transaction progressed, I began to feel an intense longing for this total stranger. I didn’t even like how she was dressed, but I wanted her so badly I could hardly speak. I started to sweat, and my face flushed crimson. The most disinterested passerby could have detected the lack of composure pushing through the cracks in my attempt to carry on in a correct manner. The salesgirl must have. Kitty certainly did. She felt humiliated and said so. There was nothing I could say but “Sorry.”

  I was confused and ashamed at how out of control my desire had been. It wasn’t about the woman at all. I’d never have acted on it. Even if I had been single, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to approach her. It was an ambush from deep in my psyche. I could not be the person I wanted to be on my own. I needed help.

  The next day we were quiet. We took a boat through the Stockholm archipelago, a glorious assemblage of thirty thousand islands dotting the edge of the Baltic. It was late summer, a bright and lovely day, cool. Ripples sparkled and danced along the deep blue waters. Brown tones of reedy shallows were dotted with the darting of tiny fish that flashed as they turned. In them I saw our lives, flaring and fading in the bigness of things. I couldn’t shake a feeling of desperate need, of my ultimate helplessness, of the previous day’s debacle, of the struggle that our marriage had become.

  Back at our suite I entered the bedroom by myself. I ached for the deep and nurturing embrace of the Divine to supplant these cravings for women, whatever they stood for. I wanted a healthy relationship with Kitty. It wasn’t long before I was begging on my knees, consciously asking Jesus to help me, to fortify my mind and salve my soul, to make me the person he wanted me to be. I prayed like a child, without reserve. Suddenly it was there, the same presence I had felt during our wedding ceremony, in the room with me, its energy filling the air. I felt my heart forced open. He was there! And it was definitely he. A male entity, more fraternal than paternal, radiant with calm power, a saviour showing up to save me because I’d asked. I made a commitment to Jesus. From that moment I saw myself as a follower of Christ.

  That night the words came, and flowed freely onto the page.

  All the diamonds in this world

  That mean anything to me

  Are conjured up by wind and sunlight

  Sparkling on the sea

  I ran aground in a harbour town

  Lost the taste for being free

  Thank God he sent some gull-chased ship

  To carry me to sea

  Two thousand years and half a world away

  Dying trees still will grow greener when you pray

  Silver scales flash bright and fade

  In reeds along the shore

  Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade

  His ship comes shining

  Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns

  His ship comes shining.

  “ALL THE DIAMONDS IN THE WORLD,” 1973

  To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/22.

  I found some diatonic chords to give it the flavour of a hymn, and in 1974 we placed “All the Diamonds in the World” as the first song on Salt, Sun and Time. From that night on, for almost three decades, I told anyone who asked that I was a Christian.

  At this point my memory of Bernie becomes two arms stretched heavenward surrounding one big pair of rolling eyes. Clearly, flooding all my new fans not only with toned-down music, but with toned-down Christian music, was not his idea of capitalizing on a good thing. And if anyone knows how to capitalize on a good thing, or even a bad thing, it’s Bernie Finkelstein. Not to mention whatever inner wrestling he had to do as a Jew saddled with the task of selling this stuff. But he rose to the challenge.

  Only two songs on Salt, Sun and Time have stood the test of time for me: “All the Diamonds,” which is as good as I get, and “Rouler Sa Bosse” (b.hc.com/s/2
3), a Djangoesque instrumental featuring Zaza’s rousing clarinet. People tell me they also like “Seeds on the Wind” and “Never So Free,” and I’m glad, but except for “Diamonds” and “Rouler,” the songwriting, though earnest, isn’t as interesting to me as it is on some of my other albums.

  When Kitty and I returned from Europe, my father saw that we needed a real home and gave us twenty-five acres of an eighty-acre farm he and Mom had bought at Burritt’s Rapids, forty miles southwest of Ottawa. We built a cedar kit house and attempted to normalize our lives. It sort of worked. Sometimes we attended services at St. George’s Anglican Church, where we were married, and Kitty began to talk about children.

  Don’t want to be on no rooftop

  Frying in the afternoon sun

  Don’t want to sit by no fountain

  Listening to the man-made stream run

  Just want to stand where the sea-spray

  Gleams like fire with you

  And I don’t have to tell you why

  Don’t want to go to no parties

  Full of fair-weather friends

  Don’t want to be in no “in” crowd

  Chasing after every trend

  Just want to stand on some hillside

  In Wales with you

  And fly—don’t have to tell you why

  Don’t want to live in no mansion

  Ornate as a crown prince’s church

  Don’t want to live on no sidewalk

  Underneath no pigeon’s perch

  Just want to stand at the rainbow’s

  Real end with you

  And I don’t have to tell you why

  “DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU WHY,” 1973

  To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/24.

  8

  Anything that touches me with a sense of meaning is likely to make its way into a song, so it followed that Joy Will Find a Way, the album that came after Salt, Sun and Time, became the first of a series of more or less explicitly Christian records. It is the only album of mine with songs that mention Satan by name (“Dialogue with the Devil,” from Sunwheel Dance, doesn’t count), and he’s in there twice. It is also the only album with a song on it, “Starwheel,” that Kitty and I co-wrote.