https://www.glenngould.ca/2023/05/02...RMvDTdZ6v3kUmA
May 2, 2023
A Personal Appreciation
Peter O’Brien
Canada doesn’t have too many icons, and the few it does have tend to be begotten, not made. It seems now that Gordon Lightfoot, who died yesterday, May 1, 2023, had always been with us and would always be with us.
From a youthful choirboy singing at St. Paul’s United Church in Orillia, to the hard-living troubadour singing about vanishing love and about nature that is both beautiful and terrifying, Gord was always an intimate part of our lives. He sang about us, but he also sang to us and with us.
I met Gord about 15 years ago and was fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with him. We talked about various things: the deep creases that the guitar strings etched permanently into his fingertips; about Taylor Mitchell, a young singer-songwriter I knew, who had great potential but who died tragically while still in her teens – “She would have had a real future in music,” said Gord; about the importance of physical exercise to keep the body and soul moving forward; and about romance and related quotidian joys.
In our last conversation – which was over dinner at Scaramouche Restaurant in Toronto, with owner Mordy Yolles, Gord’s wife Kim, and Mordy’s son Dylan – Gord mentioned that he had recently donated his piano to a local school.
We talked about Glenn Gould, and I referenced some stories about Gould and his singular habits and passions. I mentioned how Gould, who often wore hats, gloves, and winter coats in the heat of the summer, was arrested in Sarasota, Florida, under the suspicion of being a homeless drifter (he was later released after it was revealed he was a famous concert pianist). He would sometimes play random TV shows in the background, or asked his cleaning woman to run the vacuum cleaner when he was learning a new piece of music. Gould sometimes needed those extraneous and disruptive sounds in order to concentrate on the ethereal matter at hand.
I asked Gord if he wanted wine with his meal. He responded, with definition, “I’m an alcoholic,” and then proceeded to talk about his years drinking a bottle of whiskey a day, and then quitting. I was worried that if he had a glass of wine that might start him drinking again. “No, it’s okay now,” he said. So we drank wine with the meal.
Mordy circled back to talk about Bach and Gould. Mordy likes to say that Gould talked like he played Bach, and we nodded.
I asked Gord about the sorry state of his hands. He had two bandages – on the index finger and the ring-finger of his left hand. Kim noted that his wedding ring had fallen off three times during his recent tour in the US. He started to wear a band-aid around his left-hand ring-finger so the ring didn’t fall off.
Gord led an adventurous life, and we talked about the various kinds of mistakes that people make. I quoted Joyce: “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” It seemed to me that there were opportunities for various portals of discovery around the table.
In a photo taken that evening, Gord is holding a book I made about Mordy. It’s called I Know the Answers But I Don’t Know the Questions. I had brought a copy of the book for Mordy to sign for Gord. It is full of funny and witty “Mordyisms,” and we had lots of laughs over the course of the evening reciting some of them. Mordy signed his name in the book, and then wrote “not funny” under his name, which we all laughed at.
Gord’s voice was weak, and even though I was sitting beside him, I had to lean in to capture all his words. But he definitely wanted to talk, and laugh.
I know that producing music and words that can live on takes significant effort, inspiration, and hard work, but sometimes the results seem as though they just tumbled out, fully and spontaneously and elegantly formed.
Listening to Gould play Bach, and to Gord singing about the early morning rain encourages me to appreciate talents that seem as thought they were effortlessly gathered from the air – as though they were begotten, not made. And that leads me to eternal thanks.
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Peter O’Brien works for The Glenn Gould Foundation