C                                     Am

I’ve heard there was a secret chord

C                                            Am

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

F                                  G                        C              G

But you don’t really care for music, do you?

                                                                             -Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

By a happy coincidence, I was re-reading Infinite Jest and The Birth of Tragedy at the same time.
Each are brilliant books. Nobody writes like Nietzsche, and nobody writes like David Foster Wallace. Each writer grabs hold of you and takes you on a ride. But aside from that superficial connection, I found a surprising thematic connection between the two books. They each deal with art and entertainment, and in particular, the effect of art on man.

Infinite Jest is a book about addiction in one sense, but in a wider view it is about the way we entertain ourselves, the way we recreate, and drugs and alcohol are one facet of this many-sided jewel. In the midst of a youth tennis academy, an addiction halfway house, and a cell of Quebecois terrorists in wheelchairs, is something referred to as the Entertainment, or the Samizdat – a Soviet term for banned books individually copied and passed in secret. The Entertainment, the ultimate weapon in a pleasure-indulging civilization, is a video so compelling that those who watch it are captured forever. Like, someplace far beyond couch potato. Their only interest is watching the video; the rest of life disappears to them, and if they are pulled from the Entertainment, they are hopelessly vegetative. The Entertainment (possibly also titled Infinite Jest) has stolen their soul through pleasure.

The Birth of Tragedy deals with the Golden Age of Greece, and their goldenest art form, Tragedy. Nietzsche’s basic thesis is that the Greeks of this short period were the most perfect of men: contemplative, understanding of the great and terrible nature of life, yet, unlike Hamlet, capable of action. These were the heroes of the 300 who stood against the Persian hordes, who built great monuments, yet participated in Dionysian revelries. They reinvented the very nature of being human, and made great foundational advances in arts, science and governance.  Nietzsche looks for a cause for this unparalleled healthiness of mind an soul, and finds it in the art form of Tragedy. To Nietzsche, the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus, performed properly as they were with appropriate music, had an almost magical effect on generations of Greeks. To Nietzsche, Greek Tragedy represents the unions of two threads of art and the human condition, the great unifying force we associate with Eastern spirituality, and the individuating aspect of the superficial world as we see it. Through this combination a kind of alchemy was performed on the human soul, and Man was, for once, perfect – attuned with nature, filled with spirit and strength.

Whether or not this was historically the case is less interesting to me (for today) than the idea of art touching us, moving us, changing us. This is an old debate: does art matter? I can’t say I know the answer, but I know what I want it to be. As a writer and reader, a music lover and musician, art matters to me. Does a piece of music or work of literature, a painting, or a poem effect a permanent change in me? Of course, it can please or sadden me in the moment of experience. But does it leave an imprint? And if so, how powerful can that implant be? Is there a Secret Chord, that if we could only find it, would soothe our psyches, and move us beyond existentialism?

The idea is an old one, much older than Nietzsche. The Greek myth of Orpheus deals with magic music, and other cultures have similar myths. Centuries of storytelling abound with magic instruments and songs. And when an idea is that old, that appears in myths around the world, it is because it springs from the basic nature of man.

I leave you with the final movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (not the duh-duh-duh-DUM part). Does it matter?

You come around a bend and see the white froth on the horizon line of the river. Maybe this was a bad idea. You stand in the back of the canoe for a better view, discuss with your partner a route through the long, rocky, droppy, turbulent mess – hidden boulders to avoid, eddies to shelter in, chutes to aim for.

Afterwards, in the first calm water downstream, you’re a bit shaken, a bit wet. One or two more dings on the heavy ABS plastic canoe. The fear drains out and you’re filled with adrenaline and euphoria. This is whitewater canoeing.

Camp at Red Pine Rapids, Dumoine River

The Unabomber wrote about surrogate activities, distractions we concoct for ourselves to take the place of our primal and once-dangerous hunt for food and shelter; to fill that psychological void. I wonder about this: is there a hierarchy of legitimacy to recreational activity? Are some more indicative of a balanced psyche? Is there something unhealthy about using dangerous situations for fun, just to find a way out (alone and remote, in the case of whitewater canoeing)?

It’s hard to imagine feeling as alive as riding a wild river by canoe, or as healthy and whole as sleeping by it. Maybe it’s just a mistake to use the Unabomber as my standard for mental health. 

My wife and I spent 5 days on the Dumoine. It was our first time on the Dumoine. The river flows more or less north-south from the Canadian Shield highlands to the Ottawa River, dropping 500 feet along the way. The altitude drops make it a whitewater river. The Dumoine has two sister rivers, the Noire and Coulonge, which run over roughly the same terrain. We’d run those two before, but the Dumoine is supposed to be the classic, one of the superstar rivers of Quebec.

We drove to our take out point, where a shuttle took us up river. That way, our car would be waiting at the bottom. Getting to the Dumoine, we got up at 5, drove to Da Swisha, then shuttled up the  old logging roads to put in around 60 km of river above the Ottawa by early afternoon. This is how trips start: the driver drops you and your canoe and your gear deep into the bush, somewhere near the river, and disappears down the dirt road. You look up, look around, and go, by fuck, we’re on our own now.

This is one of the special things about wilderness camping. Other vacations, you go to the beach, it takes a few days to wash “home” off you, the office, the home projects, the headaches and nerve-rattles. A weekend is a break, not a vacation, because you can’t forget that quickly. Except wilderness camping. The moment that shuttle is gone, shit is real and you are there, in that moment. It’s another world, and you’re another man in it. Remember that old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon where the kids take a roller coaster, and then it transports them to a fantasy world with unicorns and dragons? Like that.

Our bags and barrel and canoe are lying on this scruffy beach next to the Dumoine, and it’s always a strange feeling seeing that everything you depend on, food, shelter, clothes, camp gear, is going in that canoe. 

The Dumoine

We quickly packed the canoe, and slid off the beach and out into the current. The Dumoine welcomed us in with an immediate long series of rapids (“Bridge Rapids”), and we were gone as quick as the shuttle.

The river was relentless (how Megan put it). After that long day of road travel, we spent the afternoon running eleven high-class rapids. Eleven times hearing that noise, approaching for a first look, nerves and adrenaline firing, making the decision: do we run it straightaway? Scout more from shore? Skip it and portage?  Then, the active intensity of the run. Eleven times. Nine went well. Two were hairy, with significant boulder contact, having to get out a couple times to push off rocks to get unpinned. Always a nervy experience. Lulu Lemon says you should feel fear at least once a day. So we’re good with Lulu.

Each rapid is different; you learn to read the water to understand what’s happening underneath. With low water levels, the Dumoine rapids were predominantly long boulder gardens, with not much margin for error; and challenging river bends through the rapids making them difficult to scout.

The house specialty: a Dumoine boulder garden

We made camp at Little Steel rapids the first night. It was a beautiful, shaded site right in the midst of the rapids, swarming with mosquitoes.  There was no spot calm enough to swim or fish around the site, but the views were spectacular.

Here was the juxtaposition that makes whitewater canoeing a rare experience. The wet, splashing excitement, the fury of the river, the intensity of concentration as boulders whizz by. You’re thinking about a plan to work the rapid, at the same time as the paddle and balance technique needed to follow the plan. Your body is fully engaged, all while watching, hyper-alert, for surprises. Then, the serenity of camp, the infinity of the wild. No sign of human contact save a portage trail and fire pit.

These rivers have been run for thousands of years by native peoples before the plastic boats. They would have used the same portage trails, the same campsites, maybe even the same spot for a firepit. When you walk here, you are completely separate from humanity in the moment, yet connected with a thousand years of it.

There is a ying-yang here of human experience. I’d go so far as to bring out the ol’ Apollonian/ Dionysian. I use these terms following Nietzche’s use in Birth of Tragedy, who set them up as distinctive, opposing forces in experience and art.

[I’ve used this schtick before, within the context of the great tennis rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. But it’s one of my favourite concepts. So useful in describing so much of human experience.]

The Apollonian is man as a self-conscious individual. He is the man in a fragile craft, holding onto his sanity, ego and identity on a deep ocean of mystery. Paintings and sculpture are Apollonian, individuating arts. They celebrate differentiation and uniqueness of objects.

Dionysian is humanity as One. It is the connection of man to each other, and the universe, the often-ecstatic loss of self as experienced in Dionysian festivals (or drum circles, raves, shamanic ceremonies, religious experience, drug and alcohol use, etc). It is the man outside the craft, in the ocean. Music and dance are Dionysian arts.

Canoeing the rapids is a pretty literal interpretation of the man-in-the-fragile-craft metaphor.

Man alone, in a fairly sturdy craft

You are as individuated, as focused on your physical being in that moment, as can be. You are fighting to protect that individual. Then all at once, you find yourself in nature, and melt into it. Your individuality is gone, you are swallowed by the wild.

One night, on a quiet stretch of river, I watched the wakes of invisible bugs on the glasslike surface, disturbing for a moment the reflection of the trees, hundreds of yards away. Damn right, it was serene. Nietzsche claimed that it was the bringing together of Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in Greek tragedy that made it a sublime, ultimate art. There’s no ultimate sport, or pastime, despite the Unabombers’ hierarchy. We all experience and profit from our recreation in different ways. But whitewater canoe camping has unique combination of feelings. The mosquitoes fit in somewhere, metaphorically. I’ll get back to you on that.

We travelled like this four more days. One of those was spent in camp, at Red Pine Rapids, as a play day. I love play day. No campsite tear-down and set-up. No need to go anywhere. Nothing but to enjoy the place, rerunning the same rapid different ways, practicing techniques, fishing, reading, writing. Reclining in the hot sun in a shallow rapid – a glass of white wine, still cold, in hand, the cool river flushing over your bottom half.

Play day on the Dumoine

Unlike the Coulonge and Noire rivers where paddlers generally take out somewhere along the river itself, the Dumoine has no road access near its mouth, and spills right out into the wide Ottawa. You finish the trip by paddling through the wind and waves of the big river. Your car is waiting on the other side.

You open the car, change into some clean clothes, pack your stuff up and take off. That’s it. No ceremony, no medal, no one waiting to shake your hand or cheer. No one knows or cares. Something magical happened. You’re bursting to talk about it, the experience is too big to keep inside. But you can never capture magic with words. You start the car, get in gear, and that world is shut behind a portal. You will have to find it again next year, that portal. For now, you are back to the mundane world, with a pile of dirty gear.

***

From Schopenhauer: Just as a sailor sits in a boat trusting to his frail barque in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising and falling with the howling mountainous waves; so in the midst of a world of sorrows the individual man sits quietly, supported by and trusting to the principium individuationis, or the way in which the individual knows things as phenomena. The boundless world, everywhere full of suffering in the infinite past, in the infinite future, is strange to him, indeed is to him but a fable; his ephemeral person, his extensionless present, his momentary satisfaction, this alone has reality for him; and he does all to maintain this, so long as his eyes are not opened by a better knowledge.

My father, the comic book reading storyteller

Handling Sin: The family book

This year, a miracle has been unfolding before my eyes.

My son is becoming a reader. Yes, Grade One: Where miracles happen! Just a few months ago, we would sit at night and I’d read to him and his little sister. Now each night he takes out his school readers and reads to us. It is a miracle, because the parts of his “training” don’t seem to add up to the whole. Like the flying bumblebee, I don’t understand how the boy can read just from the handful of rules, sounds and memorized idiosyncrasies of our language. Yet there it is. Not just “the”, “and” ,”he”, but suddenly whole sentences. I couldn’t feel more mesmerized than if he came home with a super power. After all, I’ve known the kid for six years and he’s never been able to do anything like this before.

Reading is akin to learning a language in that once opaque communications all around you suddenly become understandable. The world becomes so much of a richer place, and one’s ability to travel in it leaps: Ah, a MEN’s room! OK!

But as a writer, and a reader, I can’t help thinking about books and stories. These are powerful and durable goods; they not only shape one’s mind in a way, I think, no other art can, they are shareable like ideas and values, handed from friend to friend and from generation to generation.

My father was a storyteller. A surgeon, he was no reader (if you know a surgeon you may know what I mean, they prefer to think of themselves as macho plumbers than intellectuals). He revelled in the fact that his favourite books were Archie comics or Calvin & Hobbes collections. But he was a magnificent storyteller; an embellisher of the real, and an improviser of the fictitious. I’m sure he read to us, but I don’t remember that. I remember his own storytelling very well. To the three boys, he used to make up adventure stories of three OTHER boys, named Oogle, Poogle and Wook. When a fourth brother came along, the protagonist group also grew, becoming Oogle, Poogle, Koogle and Wook.

My father was no reader, but he encouraged it, pushed it, on his kids. He never refused to buy us a book (a pledge I reminded him of when I wanted some encyclopedia of pro tennis). By the time I was in middle school, I was reading up to three hundred pages a day, often holding a Tolkien paperback open under my desk as the teacher went on about – well, how would I know?

I don’t think its an exaggeration to say that reading and books helped make me the man I am. That miracle of reading birthed another miracle: the creation of whole worlds in my imagination from deciphering ink spots on bleached tree pulp. Now I’ve become lazy in the comfort of reading. I love my favourite authors so much I often fail to experiment with the new and unknown. I can always find something from Jack London, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Mordecai Richler or Herman Hesse that I haven’t read yet. Although now I’m lucky to read three hundred pages in a month.

Sometime as a teenager my friend Claude passed me on a magnificent book called Handling Sin; a comic epic about an aged, larger-than-life father and adult son. I loved the book, and my father, the Archie aficionado, read it, and read it and read it again. He passed it to his brother, and my brothers, and it became our family book. I read it first when I was 14, and I’ve probably read it over a dozen times since. When Mordecai Richler’s last great work, Barney’s Version came out, it became another shared treasure for my father and I (another comic epic about an aged and imposing  father and his adult children).

Those books, and the Archies and Calvin & Hobbes, were something beautiful that we shared, even as we found little else to talk about some years, as I tried to distance myself from my father’s enormous shadow.

I was always expected, by my father, by myself, to become a doctor or scientist (my brothers became a surgeon, an engineer and a computer scientist – I wish that rhymed!). At last, after some wandering, I became a writer: of non-fiction, of fiction, of business and political communications.

When I saw the movie Big Fish, about a young journalist who resents his father’s lifelong proclivity for spinning tales, but finally rediscovers the beauty of his father’s gift, I felt like the movie itself had been one of my father’s narratives of our lives – except for the resentment. (Yes, another comic epic about a big-persona old dad and his mundane kid).

Now, my son. When he was a baby, I read to him whatever I was reading. What was the difference? He didn’t understand it. He’d sit in his baby seat and I’d read from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, and Homer’s Iliad. I always loved reading aloud, and he and his sister gave me an excuse to.

Now my son is a reader, and my heart is bursting with excitement for him to discover Roald Dahl and my other childhood favourites. I imagine Tolkien or Robert Louis Stephenson or later, Douglas Adams, opening his imagination the way they opened mine.

Though the kids love my improvised storytelling – grand epics of a young boy and his little sister, Oogle and Poogle – I have an even greater urge to share the treasures of other writer’s books with them.

Someday we’ll share Handling Sin, of course. There was a rare new book that I tried a couple years ago that I’m sure we’ll love together, A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz. A comic epic about a larger-than life, aged father and his adult son.

**My father was a widower, raising four sons by himself, but I don’t want to give the impression my mom had no hand in that-part-of-me-that-writes. I have strong recollections of her encouraging my earliest creative efforts, taking the time to painstakingly illustrate my early school-work stories. My mother was, for some years before she passed, a Jewish folk singer. Her duo’s album: L’dor va dor, Hebrew for “From Generation to Generation”.