By the third time through, I didn’t think of Sullivan. Aversion therapy was working. Plus I had gone head to head with the panic dragon and I had kicked ass. I knew I’d carved new ground that day in ToolMart.
I drove on, with Isobel at my side eating white cheddar popcorn meditatively. “You know, I could be deluding myself, but I think I’m kind of missing Finn. Il me manque.” Those wondrously green eyes of hers glistened. Was it fatigue or emotion? I wondered.
“That’s gotta be a new experience for you, I’ve never heard you express that kind of sentiment before.”
“I’m not sure what’s with me, I’m eating like a maniac, I’m thinking nostalgic thoughts about Finn. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Whatever you do, you can’t mess with that boy’s head anymore. He’s our friend now. Buddies are sacred. Plus they’re might be a professional element to our relationship now . . . I’ve had some thoughts . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to ponder more before I spilled.
We drove on in comfortable silence past towns and fields and endless highway and prairie. Old red and grey barns dotted the landscape. Grain silos and cows. The road went on and on. We drove and drove. The air cooled, the light changed. At our next pee stop by the side of the highway, something ran right past my foot as I squatted between the open door and the car. A lizard with black stripes. Was it my lucky prairie skink after all?!
Crossing back over into rat-free Alberta, we were ready to get home. The road was deforming my back. The vinyl upholstery was burning my skin. I was out of the funk, ready to get going on something, a project, a grail, something not romance-focused. Meanwhile, I romanticized my new take on life. Imagined myself as endlessly fulfilled, feisty like Ani DiFranco. An independent heroine, with no need ever for a boyfriend. Of course, in my scenario, countless men tried to woo me, but to no avail. Until the One. It was going to take some effort to recondition my fantasy life.
Restless energy in a car was no good. I needed to be out walking the streets, panic-free. Living, making the most of my life. I was going to be disciplined, only watch a maximum of three videos a week. And sit-ups, I would do five hundred a day. I was going to build up my core strength. And sun salutations too, ten every hour.
As Isobel drove past the small towns leading us back to our northern town, I had the urge to write something down, to put it all to rest. I brainstormed drivel for miles. How did they do it, songwriters?
You were a great lover
To not just me
But I love you
See you, so long
I left you in a field somewhere in the middle
Of Al-berrrrrrrrrr-ta
See you, so long
Time to keep on truckin’
I groaned. I had no sense of poetry, no musicality. For all my music-lyric education, I was goddamned hopeless. Maybe Finn could help. It could be a genre problem. I needed to choose between an angry punk song or something sweet and commemorative. I picked up Finn’s guitar and for the first time tried to play something. My fingers didn’t want to contort properly. I soon gave up. I needed serious training.
“Let’s go straight to Finn’s,” I said.
On the last leg to E-town, I lay back and made plans, plans for our reform. Discipline, hard work, less movie-watching, and lots of training. Surely enthusiasm could override lack of talent. Isobel had the obvious makings of a diva: she’d been sustaining her own fan club since she was a teenager.
The Cadillac Couches. It was the name I had secretly always thought would be perfect for a band. Everyone spends all this time with their butts happily planted on their sumptuous couches dreaming their dreams. Couches can be vehicles for transcendental visions. Mostly though, in reality, dreamers drive trusty bangers, not Cadillacs.
I thought Finn would like it too. We could go on tour and one day open for Ani. We could get a Boogie van. We would cross the country all the way to the Maritimes and back. I could break guitar strings, I could restring my guitar. I could cover my fingers in duct tape and look really tough. I could tune my guitar and tell jokes. I could rock out for real, instead of just air-guitaring. We’d have groupies, party with other musicians, write meaningful songs. We would get to Florence at last and busk! We could . . .
Maybe we’d never get out of the basement or the garage, but dreaming is free like we rock chicks like to say.
“Now, Isobel, I’ve got something serious to discuss with you. Picture this: you in a houndstooth mini-skirt, go-go boots, a leather bustier, and a plum-coloured boa, standing at the microphone . . .”
Isobel’s eyes twinkled as I filled her head with a vision of chick-rock-stardom and Edwardian corsetry with a post-modern twist.
Home
8,207 kms total!
We pulled into town at 4:00 AM, too late and too tired to go to Finn’s. I dropped off Isobel at her place and drove the few blocks to mine. I walked in to a quiet house; my roommates were asleep or out. I dragged myself into my bedroom and fell on the bed. There was something crinkly beneath my head. A pile of official-looking letters from the credit card companies and a mysterious purple envelope. Of course, Hawksley’s letter!
I turned on the light. I allowed myself a little surge of excitement, one last throwback to my former mission.
It was a form letter on Hawksley Workman official stationary.
Thank you for your missive,
dear fellow Love Adventurer.
May you travel well on your magic carpet.
May the music be your soundtrack with the angels.
XOXO H
I read it a few times. In the past I might have smelled it, or tried to eat it even, but my turtle shell had finally hardened. I was an evolved young woman, no longer an hysterical tragedian. Panic had lost its hold on me. I was going to face life again, in a new incarnation: intergalactic rock star.
demo cd track 1
“ooo wah ooo”
The Cadillac Couches
Afterword
One Year Later
Tilt Magazine Vol. 25, Autumn
Shell Shocked by Ama-Rock on Stage 9
Edmonton Folk Festival
Review by Ursula V
Rating: ???*!
This year’s annual Edmonton Folk Festival showcased some sounds never heard before. Stage 9’s two o’clock Sunday slot was filled by interloping balladeers who call themselves The Cadillac Couches, their gospel—a celebration of cacophony.
The sweaty sweet smell of ganja emanated from a small, unsuspecting crowd sprawled out on tarps, talking, cloud-sculpting, and waiting for the next band to hit Stage 9. Traditionally a stage for the lesser known artists, people gravitate to Stage 9 for that reason, to hear the next big thing.
Ten minutes late The Cadillac Couches stumbled on to the stage. Guitarist Annie Jones wore a forest green T-shirt with the slogan Anyone Can Make Art in block letters printed across her chest. Her skin colour almost matched her T-shirt; she had the look of someone who was deeply seasick. Wearing a zebra-strapped Gibson, she headed for stage left, as near the edge as possible—like she was plotting her escape route through the river valley. The lead singer and front woman, Isobella Sparks, strutted up to centrestage wearing a fuchsia-coloured boa over a leather bustier and pink hot pants. She sported ’50s cat-eye sunglasses and black Puss-in-Boots stilettos. With a permanent pout and her jet-black Cleopatra hairdo, she was a study in rock sirendom. A drummer completed this oddball trio. Wearing a black vinyl suit with a tomato in his lapel, Finn Hingley obscured himself behind an over-the-top drum kit that looked like a futuristic Lego space station with a galaxy of noise-making percussive components.
Jones started off their first song by tapping her foot on a wa-wa pedal, making a ’70s-style funky intro. Away they blasted with “Tumbleweeds,” one of their two original numbers. The rest of their set list was made up of barely recognizable cover versions of love angst songs. They massacred their wa
y through Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” blasphemingly tortured the crowd with Nina Simone’s “To Love Somebody,” and peaked in badness, butchering The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” by fusing it with Roberta Flack’s “The First Time.” They managed to shred Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You” both times they played it. It was almost as appallingly bad as their version of “Wild Is the Wind.”
The Cadillac Couches jumbled lyrics, fused melodies, harmonized inappropriately, had no chordal riffs, did too many acrobatic leaps, high-fived way too much, and seemed wholly unapologetic. Initially, the crowd couldn’t believe what they were being subjected to. Some of the more rabid people spoke out:
“HEY—LEARN some chords!” heckled a guy wearing a Calgary Flames hockey shirt.
“Why don’t you take some MUSIC LESSONS! You guys suuuuck!” yelled a disgruntled muso.
“Gee whiz. C’mon, guys they’re just learning,” cried a middle-aged, good-citizen family man wearing a Tilley hat.
The heckling petered out as half the audience left. The tide turned and the remaining audience got on the Couches’ wavelength, feeling the strange noises in their hips and groins. They threw themselves into the anarchy, participating by screaming in nonsensical call and response. A lone pair of stripy boxer shorts hit the stage and triggered an infectious general underwear evacuation, during which Hingley managed to do a rain-stick solo for over three minutes. It was a moment topped by Sparks, who in a misguided flash tried to wrap her lips around a didgeridoo, mock fellating it. She emoted pure dominatrix—whenever she shimmied near the drummer, he percussed himself in the head.
Jones, clearly exhilarated, did a series of Pete Townsend leaps in the air. The Cadillac Couches couldn’t have looked any happier. Their frenzy was infectious—the crowd pogoed deliriously.
One fan jumped on stage right and did a series of perfect cartwheels before exiting stage left, uninjured. The crowed roared. A thin guy with a pencil moustache and lime green pants hoisted himself on stage and stood there ready to do something, but tragically lost his nerve, ran to the other side of the stage and jumped off, running into the distance.
After a modest fifteen-song atonal set with six repeats, The Cadillac Couches clasped hands and together yelled: “THANK YOU, EDMONTON!” Unbelievably, the crowd wanted more and insisted on encores! So they did it all over again: Patsy, Elvis . . .
The festival program blurb explained who these musical anarchists were. All this brouhaha was a deliberate effort by the Edmonton Folk Festival organizers to be non-elitist. As part of a new initiative, the organizers introduced a new music workshop: the Amateur Stage, to find new talent and to host a live karaoke band. The organizers chose The Cadillac Couches to host the jam because of their obvious musical hopelessness as well as an eloquent letter written by Finn Hingley telling of their universal plight: infinite enthusiasm, no talent. Hingley argued that people were tired of being spectators to the spectacle, they wanted to join in, to get off their asses and in front of a mike.
When asked what she thought about the necessity in art for quality control, Sparks said, “It’s completely naive to think like that. Our oeuvre is more performance art. Think DADA.”
Eventually, The Cadillac Couches took their bow—beaming at the grass on the way down and the big Alberta sky all the way back up.
After Afterword
Many Years Later
DJ Annie’s shambolic soundtrack mix for Cadillac Couches: a starter selection of past and future tunes in random order for music freaks . . .
“Just the Other Day” | Jr. Gone Wild
“Where’s Me Jumper” | Sultans of Ping
“Ooh Wah Baby,” “Roll with the Punches” | Ben Sures
“Alberta” | Eric Clapton
“Diamond Smiles” | Boomtown Rats
“Crash Into Me” | Dave Matthews Band
“Thorn in My Side” | Eurythmics
“Trumpets” | The Waterboys
“Nobody’s Baby,” “Into My Arms” | Nick Cave
“Lights of Montreal” | Luann Kowalek
“Andy,” “C’est Comme Ça” | Les Rita Mitsouko
“Bye Bye Mon Cowboy” | Mitsou
“Tiger Woods,” “Jerusalem,” “I’m Not the Guy,” “Talkin’ Woody, Bob, Bruce & Dan Blues” | Dan Bern
“Now and Forever,” “Cynthia,” “Diamond Mind” | Blue Rodeo
“Tight Knit Seams” | Old Reliable
“Don’t Be Crushed,” “Paper Shoes,” “No Sissies,” “Safe and Sound” | Hawksley Workman
“Both Hands,” “Buildings and Bridges,” “Out of Range,” “Not a Pretty Girl” | Ani DiFranco
The Ghost of Tom Joad (whole album) | Bruce Springsteen
“Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “I Fought the Law” | The Clash
“Queer” | Rheostatics
“Handle with Care” | Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
“Jesus,” “Beauty,” “Fromage” | Hookahman
“Cold Cold Ground,” “Jersey Girl,” “Downtown Train” | Tom Waits
“Hey Good Lookin’” | Hank Williams
“Left and Leaving,” “Watermark” | The Weakerthans
“You Look Like Rain” | Morphine
“Lilac Wine” | Jeff Buckley
“Churchill” | Greg Macpherson
“Lay Lady Lay,” “Tangled Up in Blue” | Bob Dylan
“Shopping Trolley” | Beth Orton
“Mailbox” | Paul Bellows
“That Time” | Regina Spektor
“Bloody Motherfucking Asshole” | Martha Wainwright
“A Boy Named Sue” | Johnny Cash
“Jackson” | Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
“To Love Somebody,” “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life” | Nina Simone
“Mandinka” | Sinead O’Connor
“Ne Me Quittes Pas” | Jacques Brel
“Into the Mystic” | Van Morrison
“Easy Skanking” | Bob Marley
“Don’t Go,” “Movies” | Hothouse Flowers
“Indoor Fireworks,” “I Want You,” “Blue Chair,” “Everyday I Write the Book” | Elvis Costello
“Your Revolution” | DJ Vadim
“Satellite” | Danny Michele
“The Eye in Magpie” | Electricity for Everybody
“Teenage Kicks” | The Undertones
“Distillation” | Erin McKeown
“The Man Who Sold the World” | Nirvana
“Right on Time,” “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” | Lucinda Williams
“Mundian to Bach Ke” | Panjabi MC
“My Drug Buddy” | The Lemonheads
“Unknown Legend” | Neil Young
“Better Man” | Pearl Jam
“Tomber la Chemise” | Zebda
“Wear Clean Draws” | The Coup
“Reuben” | Cathy Davey
“Trouble” | Ray LaMontagne
“Wild Is the Wind” | David Bowie
“The First Time” | Roberta Flack
“Isabelle,” “Think About You” | Jean LeLoup
“Fight for Your Right” | Beastie Boys
“As Tears Roll By” | Daniel Lanois
“One” | U2
“A Good Heart” | Feargal Sharkey
“Killing Floor,” “Built for Comfort” | Howlin’ Wolf
“Damn Sam,” “Come Pick Me Up” | Ryan Adams
“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” | Leonard Cohen
(Some of these songs are cover versions.)
DJ Annie doesn’t know when to stop so will leave it here, with this song:
“Thank You For Your Love” | Antony and the Johnsons
Song Credits
The author wishes to thank these artists for permission to quote excerpts from their songs: “Jerusalem” from Dan Bern, © Dan Bern, 1997; “Don’t be Crushed” from For Him and the Girls, © Hawksley Workman, 2000; “True Revolutionaries” from Smartie Mine, © Dan Bern, 1998; “Talkin’ Alien Abduction Blues” from
Dog Boy Van, © Dan Bern, 1997; “Ooh Wah Baby” from Ooh Wah Baby, © Ben Sures, 1998; “Both Hands” from Ani DiFranco, © Ani DiFranco, 1990; “Providence” from Providence, © Luann Kowalek, 1994; “You Had Time” from Out of Range, © Ani DiFranco, 1994; “Paper Shoes” from For Him and the Girls, © Hawksley Workman, 2000; “If He Tries Anything” from Out of Range, © Ani DiFranco, 1994; “Not a Pretty Girl” from Not a Pretty Girl © Ani DiFranco, 1995; “Blood in the Boardroom” from Puddle Dive © Ani DiFranco, 1993; “Untouchable Face” from Dilate, © Ani DiFranco, 1996; “Aside” from Left and Leaving, © The Weakerthans, 2000.
“She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” derives from an old African-American spiritual and nineteenth-century American folk song.
The author wishes to thank and recognize the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge, and the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of E.M. Forster for the permission to quote A Room with a View, 1908, and Howards End, 1910.
The author also wishes to acknowledge that her characters misquote/paraphrase dialogue from Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen and Douglas McGrath © 1994, and from Withnail and I, Bruce Robinson © 1987.
The references from Emily Dickinson and John Keats fall in the public domain.
Acknowledgments
I am bursting with gratitude to the universe. And to loads of people.
Thank you, Ruth Linka, for being a dream-maker and holding down the Canada fort for me and for being such an amazing beacon of hard, noble work. Thank you, Pete Kohut, for the gorgeous cover and Emily Shorthouse, Cailey Cavallin, and all of the Brindle & Glass publishing team for your hard work.
Huge thanks to Lynne Van Luven for her expert editing and sculpting guidance! Big thanks to Heather Sangster for the wonderfully attentive copyediting and proofing.
Thank you to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council, Edmonton Artist Trust Fund, and Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Program for their support and encouragement. Jane Bisbee, Vern Thiessen, and Paul Pearson, wonderful helpers for the arts.
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