—One critic said that “Mr. Britten will have proved his worth as a composer when he succeeds in writing music that relies less on superficial effect.”
—No friendliness – no encouragement – no perception. I was discouraged by such critics. Later, I was appreciated but not understood.
—What about the superficial effect?
—You know yourself that writing isn’t that way, it doesn’t happen that way. You get a sense of the whole work, and then you plan it, and you sit down and write it, and it takes charge, and it all goes to pieces, in my experience! You try and control it, and sometimes you succeed, but not always. As E.M. Forster writes, very wisely, in Aspects of the Novel, the work has to take over. One doesn’t like it taking over, because it does things quite often that you don’t like. But there is … an inner compulsion that one does one’s best to control.
—So superficial effects are the will of the material, rather than the ego of the artist?
—Artists are artists because they have an extra sensitivity – a skin less, perhaps, than other people; and the great ones have an uncomfortable habit of being right about many things, long before their time. So. When you hear of an artist saying or doing something strange and unpopular, think of that extra sensitivity – that skin less – before you condemn him. Ah, the self-doubting artist. What is the cure? It is not public acceptance, no. That is just another harness for the artist. What, oh dear god, what is that?
—Where are you looking?
—Your neighbour’s field, riding on the mowing machine. Oh dear lord. Turn my chair, would you. Greta: Off! Off! Off! Oh dear, dear lord. There is something so compelling in the amoral landscape, don’t you agree?
—He’s twelve years old, Benjamin. His parents are accountants.
—Indeed, and look at the delicacy of the shoulders, or more precisely, where shoulder meets bicep. Were he to wear a shirt, those bones would not be so lovely, so profound in the lowering sun of early evening. A boy should always be just that way: his long torso made golden in late sun, his legs long in blue jeans astride an animal of growling power. Oh dear heaven. Total acceptance of the sensual, my dear, that is the goal of the artist. It’s all spoiled somewhat by the ridiculous wires dangling from his ears, but nevertheless.
—He’s twelve. He’s listening to music. They all do that now. Music is constant companion and portable consolation. My daughter, in the months since her father betrayed her and moved to another family, to another daughter not his, to another farm nearby and its cliffs and wealth, my daughter healed her heart with Van Morrison’s cheering early stuff, with Queens of the Stone Age, with German death metal, with Frank Sinatra and Annie Lennox and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” I praise a culture that makes music so available, so portable, so private. My daughter has been saved, as I was, by the world’s notes.
—Eclectic, indeed. It causes me great pain in my old murmering heart to think of your daughter’s innocence before her father diminished it, and what must be her daily – no, hourly – struggle to both maintain what remains of it and to also reject the inadequacies of innocence. Innocence outraged. Will music be enough? I think not. I wish to write a ballet set in Australia – or maybe right here on southern Vancouver Island – I want to work out something to do with the Aboriginals. Western civilization is not bringing up its children properly, but the Aboriginals did. They reared their children to deal with life and be at one with it, and we haven’t done that. We’ve got more kind of complicated and more difficult. I want to show two things simultaneously: the life of a boy growing up in an Australian Aboriginal tribe and the life of a boy growing up English. The English boy gets the tragic ending, of course. But with your daughter’s suffering, perhaps, will come the capacity for art and therefore the promise of healing, if not peace.
—I find that comforting.
—Give me your hand to hold. Both hands. Rest your head against my knee. They replaced a valve in my heart, you know. An aortic homograft: human tissue grafted rather than a mechanical valve inserted. I was told that despite the best care in the world, some valves taken from humans let you down when transplanted into others. I was never the same. Bits of debris from the valve entered the circulation and one lodged in my brain. This caused a weakness in my right hand that prevented speed on the piano. I missed my walks, I missed swimming in the cold sea at night, badminton, skiing. I missed my body and its acts. I lost heart, I suppose. It isn’t fun to feel like the wrong end of a broken down bus for most of the time. But people die at the right moment, and I believe I did. The greatness of a person includes the time when he was born and the time endured, but this is difficult to understand. Mmmmmmmm. I so like to feel your lovely hand through my hair like that. I believe I was a horse in a past incarnation. And you kiss well for a woman. For a woman of your age. Total acceptance of the sensual, my dear, there along my neck. Yes. Thank-you. We are all so fragile, you see.
—I like what Leonard Bernstein said after your death: “Benjamin Britten was a man at odds with the world,” he said. “It’s strange, because on the surface Britten’s music would seem to be decorative, positive, charming, but it’s so much more than that. When you hear Britten’s music, if you really hear it, not just listen to it superficially, you become aware of something very dark. There are gears that are grinding and not quite meshing, and they make a great pain.” I think a singer knows this, and also that pain is made and pain is unmade in the singing.
—Night has fallen on us gently and it’s time I left.
—Not yet.
—Yes, I’m afraid.
—Will I see you again?
—Oh dear. Please. Look at this garden of yours when those tears come. Think of your daughter and her music, your dog and her delight to have a woman like you at her side. Think of your work and, above all, continue. In “Curlew River,” as the Traveller climbs into the boat, the cry of the Madwoman is heard as she approaches on the western side, accompanied by a bird-like flutter-tongued flute. Yes, she is tortured by sorrow, and still the leaping chromatic motif suggests not bereavement but excitement, and her words indicate she is trying to find the answer to a riddle:Where the nest of the curlew
Is not filled with snow,
Where the eyes of the lamb
Are untorn by the crow, There let me, there let me, there let me go!
—She doesn’t sound like a Madwoman to me. She just needs a break from the landscape, a few days in the city, maybe see a hockey game or get a fancy haircut, new shoes.
—Indeed. She is not mad, but visionary. She will carry on and she will come back.
—This garden without you now? It matters to me that you come back, Benjamin.
—No, my dear girl, you must understand this, and so must your daughter and the boy next door, too, and your husband who should have known but chose to forget: sounding right, sounding right is all that matters.
Acknowledgments
These pieces are fictional in intent and execution, but I have made frequent use of secondary sources in order to convey with respect and authenticity the spirit – and sometimes the real-world words – of those “interviewed.” Biographies, magazine articles, bits from newspapers, television interviews, online interviews in odd places like harryrosen.com, liner notes: these are only some of what I consulted for each interview before imagining it. A few call for special mention: when Alice Munro speaks of writing as “a fight against death,” she is quoting herself in an interview conducted by Graeme Gibson, and the interviewer is quoting John Gould; Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Benjamin Britten was essential, as was Jim Hughson’s interview with Markus Näslund on Snapshots; the work of Brian Pronger is alluded to in the Bobby Orr interview. Richard Ford’s responses are taken verbatim from an interview I conducted with him by phone for The Georgia Straight, except his ideas about suicide, which are imagined; the questions he’s asked in the story were not the same as those I asked. I borrow, too, from my own book, Cold-cocked: On Hockey.
Kind and helpful editors have published some of these stories in Brick, The New Quarterly, Short Story, CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries. Ally Hack was a most meticulous researcher who now has a special place in her heart for Janet Jones-Gretzky. Thanks to John Metcalf and John Burns.
The British Columbia Arts Council provided funding at just the right time. Their support – and that of friends, colleagues and students – matters.
As always, Max Jackson.
Vancouver-raised Lorna Jackson began her working life as a musician and travelled throughout British Columbia for nine years as a bass player and singer. She has published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope, and a novel, A Game To Play on the Tracks. Cold-cocked: On Hockey, the first book to explore a woman’s way of watching the game poet Al Purdy called a “combination of ballet and murder,” was published by Biblioasis in 2007. As well, her non-fiction and literary journalism have appeared in Brick, Quill & Quire, The Georgia Straight, and Malahat Review. She teaches Writing at the University of Victoria.
Copyright © Lorna Jackson, 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jackson, Lorna Mary, 1956—
Flirt : the interviews / Lorna Jackson.
eISBN : 978-1-897-23170-8
I. Title.
PS8569.A2645F55 2008 C813’.54 C2008-900198-2
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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Flirt: The Interviews Page 9