Twenty-Five Miles

Some friendships feel so natural right from the start and with some, I have found myself surprised to discover that I'm just suddenly in the midst of one, after years of getting to know and showing up for one another. One of my most surprising and rewarding friendships is with Jackie, and today, on the eve of my week-end trip to Cleveland, I'm thinking about the first rust belt city road trip I took, with Jackie, a couple of years ago, to Detroit.

Jackie and I met as Cultural Studies students at Mount Saint Vincent University. I returned to university as a mature student, and being ten years older than most of my classmates, Jackie included, I didn't really expect to make friends there. And I definitely didn't expect to make friends with Jackie, even despite the age difference, because she seemed so serious and, well, not a drunk. I was still drinking very much then, and although I didn't show up to class drunk, I was certainly typically hungover, and certainly always aware, by that point, that it was a problem. I was guarded, secretive, ashamed of, and committed to my drinking, and there really wasn't room in my life for people who didn't drink similarly. Until that one time we got wasted together at our professor's barbeque I actually thought that Jackie actively disliked me.

There is something to be said for the power of alcohol as a social lubricant, and I have fond memories of drinking with Jackie. That first night of confessional "I thought you disliked me!" could have been shelved as a fond memory of a person I really quite like, a friendship-that-almost-was. I have so many of those. But instead, it marked the beginning of an actual friendship that has now lasted for nearly a decade.

I think that Jackie, though she likes people, is primarily an introvert, and she can be hard to read.  People like that have a tendency to freak me out. Happy and sad are so easy for me, but the stuff in between often gets transformed into "[she] hates me." We started hanging out. She'd come to rock shows with me, and hang out at the Granite brewery with me, and then, when I gave up the booze, our friendship transitioned, more easily than many, into one that didn't revolve around alcohol. Because, really, it never had. We were school friends.

A few years ago, Jackie and I both found ourselves in southern Ontario. In different cities for most of the time, but in ones that were close enough for week-end visits. I don't know that I thought, consciously, that our friendship would just fade away, but I don't think I thought it would sustain itself the way it has, that she would turn out to be one of the closest friends I have.

Jackie lives her life in such a respectable, true-to-herself, and interesting way. When I think about how, when I first met her, I'd determined that my chaotic, alcohol-and-rock-and-roll fueled life was so separate from her peaceful, suburban, (and, yes, boring) life I have to also reflect that neither of us were, then, living the lives that we wanted for ourselves, in such opposite but equal ways.

Those of you who know me - and I'm quite sure that includes all of my readership - know that I had been trying to get to Detroit for years. When I moved from Halifax back to Toronto, proximity to Detroit was one of the things I was most excited about, and I thought I'd be taking a trip there during the first month I was back in town. But it didn't happen for another two and a half years. It was difficult to convince people to drive there with me, and I don't drive, and the Motor City could not really be done without a car.

Canadians are just crazy about the United States. Watching our much larger, aggressive, flashy, broken neighbour to the south can make us feel superior and it can also make us feel lacking. There's some very interesting stuff going on in Canada, but the United States always seems more interesting. There's some terrible stuff going on in Canada, but the United States always seems worse. I would never give up the security of living in a relatively safe country; having access to universal healthcare and knowing that my neighbours aren't all armed are two things I value very much. But I also believe there's something so romantic about living in a very fucked up situation and trying to make it better on your own or with your community, on a smaller scale. There are so many American cities that are in rough shape because of systemic racism, economic disparity, lack of access to social programs and health care, easy access to firearms, etc., etc., and Detroit is, of course, the most fucked up - and also the most heart-warmingly hopeful - American city of all.

It turns out that Jackie and I share a lot of the same values, and foremost among those is an interest in community-building. So, of course, Jackie would be the best person with whom to travel to Detroit. Inspired by my enthusiasm and her own equal sense of adventure, we finally found a week-end that worked for both of us, at the end of February 2014, in the midst of the coldest winter any of us Ontarioians can remember.

Via roads that appeared not to have been serviced for decades, we found ourselves in small businesses run by and packed with Detroit-enthusiasts, past homes that were caving in on themselves, and to a market filled with produce that was grown locally on repurposed, abandoned land. We listened to The White Stripes, and Motown compilations, and, especially, over and over, Edwin Starr singing about how far he had gone and the increasingly short distance that remained. 

A couple of week-ends ago, I spent time with Jackie at her beautiful home in Hamilton, where I met her friends and ate the delicious breakfast she prepared from food grown on the farm she works on and from neighbouring farms. We talked about the sad and happy things in our lives but I was reminded, again, of how our friendship is not just about the things that we tell one another, but about the things that we do. We keep on showing up, glad to see one other, year after year.

Tomorrow I'm going to Cleveland just to see what it's all about, with a couple of people I'm just getting to know, to see what they're all about. I've made an Ohio mixed cd. I'm hopeful and excited. People and cities and music are pretty much my favourite things, in that order.

Thunder Road

Following Bruce Springsteen's phenomenal 3 and a half hour performance last week-end, I sat in a backyard in southern Etobicoke, with somebody who has surprisingly become--remained?--one of my closest friends. Richard nursed a beer and I, a cola. We smoked cigarettes in the dark and enjoyed the refreshingly cool summer night while his wife and son slept soundly inside.

I enjoy these evenings, immeasurably. We talk closely about things and people we miss, have known, about the ways we've grown and how we have or haven't managed to achieve what we thought we would when we imagined our lives from a 20-years-ago vantage point, when we sat in another (more central) Etobicoke backyard as another summer neared its end.

We used to be louder. And much, much drunker. Richard refers to the guys occupying the house on the other side of the fence as "the bros.," because they are up until 2 am and speaking in inapropriately loud voices, like he doesn't remember the shed he and Kevin created in Kevin's backyard to be a neighbourhood hang-out, to always be filled with Jack Daniels and Marlboro's and merriment.

One of the things we talked about last week-end was our longing for intensity, how we missed the drama and the abandon we used to get from and share with our friends. About how we are all so much more careful now, about how we share ourselves reservedly, smartly, more occasionally. We both attribute this to maturity; to having experienced the pitfalls of too much openness, the betrayals and bad decisions and the knowledge that people change. But I also mourn drinking a little bit, here. For most of the close conversations in the dark and shoulders I have cried on, there was a lot of alcohol involved.

Seeing Bruce Springsteen was a dream come true, but as I purchased the tickets for his date at the Skydome (the Rogers Centre) it was with no small amount of resignation. I didn't want to see him in Toronto. I wanted to see him in Moncton. And I absolutely would have, if only it had been one year earlier, if only I still lived in Halifax.

The best concert I have ever seen was Paul McCartney, when he played the Halifax Common. Unlike Springsteen, whom I had to come to in my own way, McCartney has forever been a part of my life. I saw him with the person who likely knows me better than anybody in the world, and also with a community of people of all different ages and all different experiences, in a city that I am head-over-heals in love with. A city, too, that rarely gets to experience such an event. McCartney probably swings through Toronto on every tour, but he'd never been to Halifax. All those people, raised on The Beatles, raising their voices to sing along to songs they had known forever, by one of the remaining, living members, of the best band in history. A chance that so many of us never thought we'd get. It was unbelievable, thrilling, unforgettable, and, I suspect, unsurpassable.

But Springsteen, perhaps, would be the next best thing to a Beatle, and every year rumours abounded. With every summer that passed without a formal announcement of an Atlantic Canadian date, Springsteen fans seemed more and more disheartened.

I almost went to see him in Boston, during his tour for We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. And when I say "almost," I mean that I put a lot of thought into the acknowledged fantasy of seeing him in Boston. I was broke, but my friend Jen and I spent so many evenings at the Granite Brewery, trying to come up with a scheme to get us there. A driver, a vehicle, and perhaps a sponsorship. We did not go to Boston. We sat in the bar and enjoyed his music on vinyl night.

In 2001 I had a roommate, Luke, who had a copy of Nebraska, and that was my in. I never thought much about Springsteen before then. Or when I did, it was with a bit of derision for the anthemic "Born in the U.S.A." that muscled its way into memories of my childhood. I hated the saxophones. I have always hated that instrument; still do.

Nebraska, of course, is a different creature, and surely the best point of entry for someone like myself. The sparse instrumentation and fascinating naratives sucked me in, and I figured out what I'd been missing. I started from the beginning. On those early albums his songs about youth and redemption and love still make me feel possibility. I can appreciate Born in the U.S.A. now, though I don't love the album in its entirety. I do, however, love every last second of Born to Run, including the sax. How could that album be what it is without it? It's probably my favourite Springsteen album, and I still hate the sax.


It's been my experience that music, honest and gritty words, crazy passionate inexplicable love, and being on the road to some place new are four of the five best things this world has to offer, and these things are what the Boss is all about. 
The other best thing is community, and this is what he fosters.

Richard and I sat three rows from the very back of the Skydome, and we got to see the entire crowd. It was only thanks to a giant screen that we could see Springsteen step out into the audience, accepting requests from fans; he was otherwise a tiny dot moving rapidly back and forth. He sweated and smiled and engaged with his audience throughout it all. No way that man's faking it, and after so many years, and so much fortune, we all know he doesn't have to do it.

So if I'd seen that in Moncton, a short drive from Halifax, with all of those people he'd never played for before, in a wide open field, McCartney would have some serious competition.

My good friend Russell got Candice to play "Thunder Road" as the very last song on the very last vinyl night on the very last night the Granite Brewery was open. I'd been sober for only a few months then, and that night was not so far removed from many others that involved a copious amount of alcohol, camaraderie, sometimes tears, and plenty of talk that sure, might have been bullshit, but was also true, too. "Thunder Road" felt like a theme song there, something that united so many of us.

The best thing about the Granite Brewery was that community just happened, because people liked the look and the feel of the place, and they liked the beer, and they could stop there after work and be welcomed and known. A lot of us had very little in common with one another. The range of ages and experience was remarkable, and when that song came on, we all raised our glasses, and we belted out the words.

So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore,
Show a little faith! there's magic in the night.

I can't think of that song without thinking of this place, that now only exists as something imaginary, from before. I know how lucky I am to have been there.

I didn't think I'd see Bruce Springsteen at the Skydome with Richard. For a very long time I never imagined myself becoming a Springsteen fan. And I don't know that I imagined Richard and I would stay in touch after high school, as we have, that he'd stay one of my closest friends. On the surface, we really don't have that much in common. But in fact, we have decades in common. And listening to Springsteen over pints, after last call, in a bar on Barrington street is not all that different from listening to him in a suburban backyard, four years sober, looking up at stars and distracted by the bros. In mourning, in recalling, that lost intensity and closeness, it manages to find its way back to us.

Left and Leaving

I have such a heavy heart these days. If I think about it too much my eyes tear up and I have to find a corner to hide in. And I can't avoid it; I stand on that street to smoke, I walk down it to get to and from. I think about places I could go to eat my lunch, places I could sit and read when my work day is done. I wonder where or if I will meet my friends. A lyric from another Weakerthans song hits me over and over: "A spectre's haunting Albert street." If anyone loves a city like I love Halifax, it is John K. Samson (Winnipeg). And Barrington street, like Albert street, is haunted by the things that it has been. Worst of all, there is nothing I can do.

The block of Barrington street between Prince and Sackville streets is my turf. It is my neighbourhood more than any neighbourhood I have ever paid rent to live in. And of course it is not the buildings but the people within them who create community, and when the buildings are left vacant, there is nothing to foster that community, is there? Brick and wood are assigned the characteristics of the people who inhabit them, and it is such a tragedy to look through tears in paper covering glass, to reveal empty spaces that used to be filled.

I first got to know Barrington street in the fall of 1997, when I worked at United Bookstore. The manager of United Bookstore, Dave, is still one of my favourite people in the city, and we still see one another nearly every day, for brief moments that never cease to brighten my day for our easy familarity; his relentless and fond teasing. We talk about music and books and people we both know. When I first moved here and only knew a handful of people, he invited me to spend holidays with his family. He told me stories about his own history in Halifax, a transplanted Torontonian himself. He still tells people about how he taught me how to change a light bulb. United Bookstore does not only sell books. They also sell junk food and cigarettes and bus tickets, so there were customers we would see every day; friendly faces from the offices upstairs in the Roy Building, who became part of the scenery; part of the community that I was also a part of, of people who spend their days in down-town Halifax.

When I moved back to Halifax in 2001, after my brief return to Toronto, I spent a couple of months waiting for Sean, my then-boyfriend, to join me here. He sent me a series of mix tapes during this period, that each included at least one song from The Weakerthans' recent album, Left and Leaving and at least one song from Sarah Harmer's recent You Were Here. It's remarkably coincidental that both album titles so explicitly refer to space and time. And if it isn't intentional, both records nevertheless feel like concept albums, exploring the respective speakers' personal spaces. I always placed You Were Here alongside of my relationship with Sean, from the basement apartment he inhabited on Woodbine Avenue in Toronto (the apartment that always smelled of bleach, as described in "Basement Apartment") to the eventual knowledge of his infidelity ("Coffee Stain") , and all of the good stuff that came between and after; like it was written for us. And while You Were Here seemed to have a lot to say about my interior life, Left and Leaving spoke to my surroundings and my ideas of "home." These songs were wonderful gifts, through the mail, from the town where I was born, to the town where I chose to live.

It is funny, because I have always had the strangest relationship with Left and Leaving. Sometimes, I swear it is the best album ever written. And on other occasions I am so irritated by its intentional cleverness. All last week, I kept singing those songs to myself.

The Barrington street location of Sam the Record Man closed its doors on February 20, 2007. I worked there for a couple of years. Sean hired me, several months after we broke up, and I maintain that it was the best possible thing for our relationship. It helped me slide into a friendship, our relationship changed necessarily by our new boss-employee relationship, and by seeing each other, all the time, in this brand new context. The store's closure was sudden and shocking, but I could hardly say entirely unexpected. Everyone who worked there knew it was pretty amazing that we all still had jobs. Record stores were on the brink of disappearing. It was a hard blow for everyone who cared about music. The building was a landmark, and everyone who grew up in Halifax seemed to have recollections of purchasing favourite albums there or seeing local bands performing in-stores. For a week my co-workers and I put merchandise in boxes and boxes on trucks and congregated, afterwards, next-door at the Granite Brewery to grieve over pints of Peculiar. If we were not all friends, exactly, we were all familiar, and of course nothing was ever going to be the same again. We would see one another infrequently. We would miss and be missed, and it was so sad, saying good-bye.

There are things about working on Barrington street that seem inconsequential but that are actually enormous. Buying cigarettes from Dave; buying my coffee from one of several people whose first names I know, at Just Us! coffee roasters; the deaf man rumoured to have been a former boxer, who asks for change at the corner of Prince and Barrington, who tells all the women he loves them, and jokingly threatens to fight all of the men. And until its closure one week ago, there was the Granite Brewery/Ginger's, where I not only worked the door in exchange for beer on many nights when there were performances upstairs, but which I also relied on to be a meeting place or at least a place where I could spend my lunch breaks in warm company, with coffee and a book.

There is another entry for the Granite, and surely one for Sam's, because they are too big on their own. But they are also inseparable from my experience of Barrington street. I was introduced to a lot of friends in that bar, and I got to know a lot of other friends more intimately there. It was wonderful to walk into the bar and see staff from United Bookstore, Sam the Record Man, Just Us!, Neptune Theatre, and JWD (where I now work), all enjoying the personal relationships they had with that space, and watching relationships develop with one another. Of course the alcohol helped foster much of the camaraderie, but I haven't had a drink in over seven months, and I still feel like a piece of my heart is being ripped out and trampled on.

I love my job. I work in the coolest used bookstore in the history of ever. But I worry about my security there, about the security of that street and the small businesses that make my neighbourhood what it is. I worry about the paper-covered windows; the buildings that stand vacant for months and years.

And I don't know what to do with myself. I feel aimless. I know I can call people on the phone, but it isn't the same. I miss the organic nature of the community that the Granite Brewery allowed. The best things about this city are vanishing. I miss my friends already, and I feel like my home is slipping away.

Left and Leaving - The Weakerthans

My city's still breathing (but barely it's true)
Through buildings gone missing like teeth.
The sidewalks are watching me think about you,
Sparkled with broken glass.
I'm back with scars to show.
Back with the streets I know
Will never take me anywhere but here.
The stain in the carpet, this drink in my hand,
The strangers whose faces I know.
We meet here for our dress-rehearsal to say " I wanted it this way"
Wait for the year to drown.
Spring forward, fall back down.
I'm trying not to wonder where you are.
All this time lingers, undefined.
Someone choose who's left and who's leaving.
Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me:
a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest,
the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires,
new words for old desires,
and every birthday card I threw away.
I wait in 4/4 time.
Count yellow highway lines
That you're relying on to lead you home.

Clown & Bard

You couldn't avoid looking at the train tracks from This Ain't the Only Cafe, the establishment beside the Townehouse Tavern, where, with their fancy imported beers and homemade salsa, it was much easier than it was at the Townehouse for me to pretend like I didn't have a problem. I never took the train home for holidays, I never even considered the option, despite watching the trains come and go. When I went home to Toronto I would take the bus that departed from a terminal outside of down-town, an area of town I only ever went to because I was getting on or off of a bus.

I don't remember the first time I thought it, but I remember the first time I wondered aloud about having a drinking problem. I was twenty years old. I said it to Sandra as we left the Townehouse Tavern in the direction of her home, beneath the railway tracks. I can't remember her exact words, but they carried the weight of both an acknowledgment and a dismissal at once. In the spirit of Well, what can you do.

During my second year at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, I spent a lot of time at the Townehouse. It was my first experience of a bar that felt like home; a place as comfortable as a living room, with faces that I knew and could rely on to be there; a place I could go by myself. In the midst of a city I felt no connection to - a city I even kind of hated - and attending university for no reason other than that being my idea of the thing to do once high school was completed, I was initially drawn to the Townehouse because of its atmosphere, the bands that played there, and the interesting people who congregated there. I kept going back because I liked the people and I liked the beer. Or, rather, I liked that the beer was very cheap. It is hard to give Northern a sincere recommendation. I always drank to excess whenever I had occasion to drink during high school, and first year while living in residence was both excessive and frequent, but in an everyone's-doing-it / it's-my-first-year-away-from-home kind of way. It was at the Townehouse that beer really became a part of my life, and it was not only the drink itself. It would take me years and years and years to recognize this experience as being very much a part of the way I look at the world; the things I romanticize; the aesthetics I'm drawn to; the people I like "intuitively."

My favourite people look awesome sitting on a bar stool. They usually smoke cigarettes, wear sloppy clothes, don't draw attention to themselves, are quietly cynical, quietly judgmental, good talkers, good listeners, not very concerned with status in a conventional way, creatures of habit, empathetic, sincere, and drunk.

My favourite barrooms are dark places that are rarely too crowded, equipped with tables in hiding places for secret sharing. Both amiable and grouchy bartenders are acceptable, but personality is a must.

The Granite Brewery in Halifax has these things in spades. Amazing people, atmosphere, and way better draft than Northern. The Granite Brewery is my really favourite bar ever, and it became so much a part of my life in Halifax that it almost was my experience of Halifax. It was the first thing I wanted to show any visitors from out of town.

Geoff Berner's "Clown & Bard" is the best song I have ever heard about having a really fun, really horrible substance abuse problem and an awesome place in which to indulge. I wanted so badly to visit the actual Clown & Bard in Prague. Prague's awfully beautiful, I hear and see in photographs. I bet it's the kind of city that feels the way to many people that Halifax feels to me. I am stunned sometimes, just stopped in my tracks by these beautiful buildings that surround me. I am hopelessly in love with my city, but I have taken it for granted, spending my nights - my time, energy, money - in this building on Barrington street that somehow became the centre of my universe.

It's hard to separate the good stuff like friendships and honest conversations and listening to good music from the alcohol that's been its constant companion. They've been so entwined for as long as I've been a serious drinker.

This isn't about how I quit drinking three months ago and how weird that is and how my life and perspectives are changing and being challenged while I still feel in this state of limbo, like I'm between a place of comfortable reassurance and some unknown future because I think hope would be a good thing to let into my life. This isn't about how I feel even more lonely than I did a few months ago even though I'm supposedly making all these positive changes. This isn't about how I know, know, know with everything in my being that I cannot drink in moderation and that that's something that makes me kind of bitter. But I guess, of course, it is.

I miss my friends, tonight. Not that I don't believe in the lot of them, because in many, I do. But I miss being up until last call, playing trivial pursuit, sharing gossip, giving and receiving kind words and support, laughing, telling stupid jokes.

I don't miss hangovers, saying too much, spilling secrets, being mean, getting hurt, fooling around with someone too soon or too wrong, feeling really shitty about my choices. Some of these nights get me down, but these mornings never do.

That nice clean train with comfortable seats is right there, across the street. I don't always have to take the bus, even though it is really fun to talk to other travelers, and it stops for frequent smoke breaks.

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.

**I hope I don't need to state this so explicitly, but just in case: This entry, and this comparison to "Clown & Bard" is in no way about either The Townehouse Tavern or The Granite Brewery. They're wonderful establishments. This is just about me.

Clown & Bard - Geoff Berner

Her grandfather opened the trust fund in her Baltimore account,
But she was six months in the Paris of the Eastern Bloc by the time it ran out.
Oh, well I met her in that filthy basement where a fat man ran the bar.
She said, "If you're gonna drink that green stuff you've got to light it on fire."

I guess she knew me pretty well, despite the questions that I ducked.
She said, "You'll like it here, Prague's like a Disneyland for the terminally fucked."
But it don't fool me 'cause I can see all this beauty's just a trap set to kill.
And she grabbed my hand tight, said "Let me show you the lights from the top of the castle hill."

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
'Cause I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.

Well the water in that river's as dirty as the cops, but it shines so pretty at night.
But when I held her head as she puked absinthe off the Charles bridge it was a tender and a glamorous sight.
We kept up the charade just as long as we could until I had to get back in the van.
She said "I'd like to come with you but I'm saving up for Baltimore as soon as I can."

I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
'Cause I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.

When I got back into town she wasn't hard to track down though they'd moved her down a couple of floors.
Cold and half dead on the unmade bed trying to squeeze the speed out through her pores.
I offered to buy her a one-way back stateside but I cried, they pleaded in vain.
She said "I don't think that I have got an urge to die, I really just can't explain."
I don't know why I find the leaving so hard.
Well I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.
I'm so down, hangin' around at the Clown & Bard.