Wiretap - Life vs Art

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Breaking down the barrier between life and art, Howard decides to live his life as a musical.

It's finally summertime. I'm Nala Ayyed, host of ideas. These last several months, maybe longer, have tested our Canadian pride. So that's why this summer, we have some special programming lined up for you. We're revisiting conversations with Canadian artists and thought leaders who are moving this country forward. You'll also hear a special series I did where we traveled across the country asking people how to make Canada better. So join me for a special Canadian society. summer on ideas.

This is a CBC podcast. You're listening to Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, Life v. Art. So I'm on the metro to work, and I notice that the man seated right beside me is drawing. He's making sketches of the other passengers. His hands move quickly, and his eyes dark between his subjects and his sketchpad. At the moment, he's working on a handsome young man in a leather jacket. You're drying me, says the handsome young man.

I wish I could look as cool as you, the metro artist says, but all I can do is draw you. Wearing a child's winter tuk and ill-fitting glasses, the metro artist is decidedly uncool. Before the handsome young man gets off the metro, the artist extends his hand to him for a fist bump, but the handsome young man gets off without noticing. The artist is left hanging. Then his gaze turns to me.

As the artist sketches me, I'm flattered to be singled out, included in the elite company of the handsome young man. my head up, clench my jaw to appear more intense, and furrow my brow to appear more thoughtful. I'm used to being photographed, but whereas a camera lens is a kind of reality vacuum cleaner, sucking everything up, being rendered on paper with a pencil, makes one feel like a model, a muse, on the edge of becoming art. It is unsettling. Finally, I allow myself to shyly peek to see what the artist has made of me, and there I am, except my nose is long and pointy, my neck turkey-like, and if such a thing is possible, I am somehow even balder. My glasses, though, are pretty spot on.

I do not exactly feel as though my soul's been stolen, but I do feel like my dignity has. Though, who knows, perhaps this man has helped me to achieve immortality because that's what art does. Granted, it's the bad kind of immortality, the kind that does not involve breathing, but when it comes to living on in the hearts of others, we can never know what will be remembered for, a caricature or something more avant-garde.

I think that when a person sits down to make art, they have to do something interesting, something different, something surprising. People don't want to see the same old rubbish over and over again. I grew very tired with art, a very young age. Even in my teens, I was already fed up with the work of Matisse and Goya. It was all very tiresome to me. I wanted to do things edgy, pushing the boat out, always trying to do something bigger and better. And that's probably what led me to where I am now. So, Doug, what were some of the pieces you created as a young artist when you were in your teens? Well, one thing that I did do is I visited the series of exhibitions, primarily to get sleep.

Sleep? I would settle down with my sleeping bag. It was kind of a performance piece, and I would sleep in front of the piece of art as a way of demonstrating how boring art has become. And what really drew me from that point to now is that I really felt there was a lack of emotion in art. artists refusing to commit any sense of themselves to a piece. And so ultimately I was searching for a way to put myself into the piece. And so essentially, what I finally decided to do was use my own tears. So you mean you paint with your own tears?

Yeah, these are tears that I've wept, not tears I've wept lightly either. These are the real deal, if you will, genuine, heartfelt tears. And when I originally started with this, people told me it's been done before, but I explained to them, no, it hasn't been done before. The other artists were all fakes. They would use onions. They would get people to pinch them, which just isn't the same thing. My tears are real.

They are real emotions laid out there on the canvas for anybody to see. What are the mechanics exactly? You cry into... I collected tears, and then I add them to powder paint. So what is it that you paint? with your tears. Birds. Something about the freedom of a bird.

When I'm watching a bird take flight, I can see something that that bird is capable of that I know I'll never be able to do. Birds can go anywhere they want and do anything, poop on a windshield from 100 feet in the air. They don't have the same kind of restrictions that we do as humans. It really makes me well up.

What are you doing there? I'm just collecting a tear. I have a vial here with me at all times. It's vitally important never to let a tear a slip by when you have so few to work with. So you're kind of an easy crier. It's unavoidable if you are going to study the world around you with the depth and penetration that I do. People were telling me to do more and better, and I felt a lot of pressure. But they were right, and ultimately they were pushing me in the right direction.

And I think it was the death of my mother that finally pushed things into perspective for me. And I started to see the way forward for this project, which was to bring another element into the painting. And what is that? I wanted to complete a series based around my mother. to really embody my mother, and I decided I could quite literally make that so by including the body of my mother in the painting. And now, what I mean by that, of course, is her ashes. Her cremated ashes? Her mortal remains, yes. Obviously, it's kind of a monochrome effect, mostly gray, but you can do an incredible amount of work in gray. People were angry when they first

heard about it because they thought that I was dishonoring her memory in somewhere. But that's a very short-sighted view because those ashes, they were really doing nothing for anybody. But now, in these paintings, those spirit lives on. And so now, now I understand that you've expanded to doing other paintings for people with the ashes of their relatives. Once word got out, other people wanted to be involved as well. essentially what usually happens is they will provide me with a photograph and some basic information and I will try and spin that out into some kind of picture take for instance the piece that I'm working on right now for a lady a very pleasant lady whose husband recently passed away she brought her husband's ashes to me

and said she wanted something to remember him by and I've used those ashes I've recombined them as I say with my tears I'm trying to build a construction of something that a person can look at this canvas understand, yes, this person was real, he existed, I exist, I'm real, I will die, something to stir them up to make them understand that life is a fleeting moment, but while we're here, it's crucial that we experience it and leave something behind of ourselves that people can remember us by. That's really kind of profound to create a portrait of someone like that, where you can look into their eyes on the canvas and be looking at their actual physical remains.

Oh, no, don't misunderstand me. I'm not creating an actual physical. likeness of the deceased, I'm using their ashes to create something that's more symbolically representative of the spirit. For instance, the painting I'm currently working on, commissioned by the deceased widow, is a painting of Stephen Seagall. Stephen Seagal, the martial arts action star with the ponytail. Yes, nude on a motorcycle. Huh. So the husband was a fan of Steven Seagall? No, but I am. I'm not sure I understand.

There's an expression by Picasso. All art is a lie that shows us the truth. But I think that this art isn't a lie. This is real. This is as real as it could possibly be. This is the ash of a person. This is their essence, all that is left of them in the physical world. But, Doug, what you're creating? is your truth, your essence. It doesn't have anything to do with the man that you're supposedly honoring. Well, that's my artistic license. I mean, of course my essence is immortalized in the

art. That's the joy of being the creator of art to live on through your creations. These people, they have no chance at immortality. They're just piggybacking on my immortality, as I'm allowing them to live on forever in my art. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love. Like, why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains? Or how Taylor Jenkins read feels about being a celebrity awesome? author. You can check out bookends with Mateo Roach wherever you get your podcasts.

When you create false worlds that mislead people into believing fabrications, you are commonly called a liar. That is, unless you are an artist, in which case you're called a genius. Here's Nisha Coleman on stage at Montreal's Confabulation Storytelling Night with the story of a man who blurred that line. So I was six when my dad pointed to a spider in the corner delivering him and said, if you get bit by one of those, you'll start foaming at the mouth and convulsing, and you could actually die unless you eat a banana, which is why you should always have bananas on hand. I did sound absurd but I wasn't about to test the claim because the last thing he'd said was if you stick your tongue to that metal pole it'll get stuck and someone will have to pour boiling water on it to get it off and that turned out to be true. The thing about my dad was you could never be sure about the shit he said it was always a little off. It was somewhere between bullshit and kind of true.

And the thing about him was that, as with most pathological liars, he believed the things he was saying when he was saying it. So he would lie with such conviction that neither me nor my younger brother and sister ever had the confidence to question the things that he was saying. My dad was a painter, so on the canvas he would change reality as he saw fit. And I guess artists kind of do that naturally. They change the hue of the sky, they'll throw in an extra building, put in some take out a couple trees it's natural and he would do that on the canvas but he

would do it also in real life so growing up with him was a little bit like growing up in a painting living in kind of a land of half-truths and I remember he said to me Nisha you might think you know something but you can't be sure about anything what's one plus one and I said two and I knew he would prove me wrong, but I was seven, and took out a sheet of paper and a pen and a calculator, and he went through this entirely long, complicated equation for one plus one. The answer wasn't two. It was in the hundreds. And he said, see, it's not two. Okay, one plus one isn't two, but by then I knew not to repeat that kind of shit at school. I mean, the things that

Dad said at home, I had to stay at home. But, I mean, I'm sure you've all done it. Ficking with kids' minds is kind of amazing. They have this extraordinary capacity to assimilate absurdities, right? I remember on her way to see my grandma one time, he said, kids, when you see your grandma this afternoon, I don't want you to stare at her face.

She's had an accident. It's all puffed up like a pumpkin. And I remember the relief when my grandma opened the door and there is her smiling, welcoming face of normal size. But then a couple months later, we went to visit her again and she was taking a drug called prednisone. One of the side effects is actually severe facial swelling. But nobody knew about it, so my parents didn't warn me

and when she opened the door and her face was puffed up like a pumpkin, Well, I was confused. I mean, here was a thing that my dad had made up and that had later come true, so what did that even mean about the truth and time? I mean, I don't know. But the worst was when he said, guys, you can't still be mad at me.

And it was, I guess it was the day after maybe some harsh punishment and we were holding a grudge or sulking or something. And he said, kids, you can't be. mad at me because I have cancer. Lung cancer. The doctor's called this morning. And it could have been true. I mean, he smoked a pipe for years.

He had worked in mines up in Sudbury, Ontario, before we were born. It was plausible, but I mean, it turned out to be bullshit. And after that, for our own protection, We couldn't really take the things he said seriously anymore. It's just the shit that Dad said went into its own special category. It was the shit that Dad said. And we just kind of left it there.

So one afternoon we were home from school. We'd come off the bus and we're watching TV. And the Munsters was on. Do you remember that show? The Monsters. It's a good show. And we were watching The Munsters and my dad came into the living room the living room and he stopped and he stared at the screen and he said that's my mom's cousin who's talking about lily munster the star of the show that's the dad said right my brother and

sister and i'm mm-hmm okay and then my dad went on to say yeah her dad was something like a a con artist and he was being pursued by the police so he abandoned the family when she was three and her mother who had run away from home when she was 16 to be a dancer made her take dance lessons and then when she was in her teens they started going to LA and entering her in a beauty contest which she was starting to win but she was getting deported because she didn't have the right visa and she kept going back eventually got her green card and started landing all these awesome roles in Hollywood and at the height of her career was known as one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood even dated an Iranian prince except a couple of weeks ago I was compiling all the lies for this pace and I called my mom and I said well they're not together anymore thesely said I said mom do you remember when dad said that grandma's cousin was Lily Munster she kind of sighed and said yeah said do you think there's any truth to that she kind of laughed and sighed and said I don't know so I Facebook my cousin she lives in the States and she's a lot

closer to that side of the family she confirmed it she confirmed it and not only she confirmed it she sent me a documentary on her life and it was confirming all these other wild and crazy facts Iranian prints included And that was the f*** up thing, I mean, you can never be sure. And I think my dad liked that. He liked creating this kind of universe with us where anything was possible, the horror and the magic. And you would think that growing up with a pathological liar, I would be steered into something

like journalism or science or, I don't know, law, something where you're boiling down facts to come up with some ultimate truth but I read fiction my life is is basically lies it's lies that allow magic to happen it's lies that allow the imagination to flourish i'm fine with lies it's just that i'm still afraid of spiders and i feel much more secure in a household that has a large stock of bananas on hand. Thank you. Thank you. Hello.

Johnson, it's Nancy McMarphy. Oh, hey, Nancy. So I'm just checking in to see if this is the right number to call you for the conference call. Yeah, I'm usually in the studio. Okay, this is good. So I'm just heading up to the conference room now, and we'll give you a call in 10 minutes. Wait, wait, I'm sorry. Nancy, you mean you mean next week, right? We're supposed to have the phone call about next season. No, I mean in 10 minutes.

We schedule this for next Monday. Yes, last week we scheduled this for next Monday. Next Monday would be next Monday. This today is this Monday. Jonathan, are you doing like a schick here? Because I'm not in the mood for a stick. We've got the entire team waiting for this phone call. We just need you to prove how you can keep things fresh. wiretap's always fresh i mean johnson look there's a new teen reality show it's called radio selfies we need to find room for it on the schedule and there is a show that's going to be bumped so let's not go in and be embarrassing let's get on this call and knock their socks off okay i could do that okay so i'm just jetting up to the conference room jonathan we are calling you in 10 minutes.

Okay, all right, ten minutes. Okay, to come up with something to save the show. I could do this. Okay, I can do this. Okay, I'm here saying hello. Howard? Hello wall, hello door, hello button, what's this for? Don't touch that. Oh, hello, John, why so glum?

Are you out of cheap rum? Cheap rum. Howard, really, really, really bad time right now. I come in here singing, you don't even care. Don't you know what I'm singing? I don't have time for this right now. I'm looking. My life is a musical.

Life is a musical. That's the solution to happiness. Howard, listen to me. My bosses are about to call to tell me if I'm getting bum from the schedule, and I don't... Oh, God. When mean, old life is getting you down. Why are you doing this? And types like you can only frown.

Or maybe blubber like a fool. I need you to get out. But for those of us, quite cool. You know I don't like it when you dance on my desk. Life can be... A musical, you see. But by the way, you are looking at me, it's like you wish that I were dead. Howard!

I don't want to see your face right now. Get out of my studio now! Cast out. Did you get a violin? Get out into the hallway. Oh, for God's sake. Goldstein is me. Just leave.

Miser, fascist, selfish. I'm selfish. More crabby than a shell. Okay, look, Howard, I'm not trying to be mean, but this is serious. If I don't come up with something to save the show within the next seven minutes now, I'm going to be out of a job. What do you mean you're going to be out of a job? Wait, does that mean no more money?

That means no more money. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to get by? What do you mean we? You got to stand up for yourself. Get that tambourine out of my face. Back to our financial help. You really need to leave. Do you want me out?

Yes, yes! You don't have to shout! Just go already! But first let me tell you what this is all about. What's all about? I crashed your car. My car? That's right, I didn't mean to go that far.

What are you talking about? Well, I was driving around an old lady pulled up next to me, and she wrapped her engine for all the car. for all to see. Oh, she did. As a matter of fact, I think it might have even been your old Aunt Sadie. My Aunt Sadie is dead. But John, what could I do?

I had to save face. The next thing, you know, I was caught up in a race. A race. With an old lady. But I left her in my dust and confessed to you I must. Oh, this detail makes me shiver. I crashed right through a barrier. And now your car is in the river.

River. Say, I trashed your car, and I think it's in the river. So I'm sorry about that. And I don't know. I figured maybe it's ding less if I did it in song. Howard, how could you do this? My car is in a river? Or maybe a tributary or a lake, but I need something that rhymed with shiver.

So I went for a river. But it could have been a lake, I think. Oh, I could have said someone with cake. Oh, God. What's up? Okay, Howard, you're going to have to leave right now. This is a very, very important phone call. Okay, do you understand?

Yeah. I'm just going to put them on speaker on cake. I want to hear this, too. Jonathan? Hello. Jonathan, it's Nancy. Hey, Nancy. We've got you on speaker.

Can you hear us? Yes. Okay, amazing. Well, we're all here. Jonathan, I'm just going to go around the room. We've got Damien, Michael, Sophie, who, of course, you know. Hey, hey, Patty Sykes from accounting. Hi, Bill Schumann, Chair of English Services.

Danny Mills, Head of Communications and Branding, and, of course, Jill St. Pierre, in Community Out. outreach. Okay, so let's get to it. Jonathan, I turn the mic over to you. The beginning of any season is always... Life can be a music where you see. You're going to be impressed with John's fancy guests. All smart and smear me with puffed out chests. Funny jokes by funny blokes and hilarity of Goldstein's folks. Ineffectual, intellectual, still undeniably quite delectable. And now I'm here to tell you more. Is Jonathan Goldstein with What's in store?

Sing it, John. I will take you to heaven in season 11. Ew. If John's monologues have you soured, don't you fret, there'll be plenty of Howard. Rapping, slapping, big things happening, Jackie Hammond, chicken wings, don't be crying while I'm thinking that's not even close to everything. Wiretap!

Ha, ha, ha, ha. That was awesome. I think I speak for everyone in the room here when I say that is exactly what I want to hear when I turn on the radio. It is? Exactly. I mean, nail on the head. You kill him. So, you know, maybe I can. do a whole series of episodes that are an academic history of the musical.

And I think we're also going to do one where I drive Jonathan's car right into the river. Okay, well, Jonathan, great to speak to you today. Bye. Thanks, Nancy. I think you're taking me to dinner tonight. I am not going to take you, Howard,

because you're going to spend quite maxi. We're going to take a taxi. No, no longer have a car. You destroyed my car. I destroyed your car and saved your job. Still, that's not... It's a win-win. How was that a win-win?

I destroyed your car, I saved your job. That's a lose win, Howard. You know what? Your passport was in the glove compartment. To check out Nisha's writing, visit Nisha Coleman.com. Her story was recorded at Confabulation Montreal by Paul Aflallow and Matt Goldberg. Check out the Confabulation podcast at No More Radio.com. Wiretap is produced by Mirabirdwin Tonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. slash podcasts.