Loch Morrison

The Family Dynamic

Let me make a brash general statement. Everything interesting in life involves the attempt to resolve conflict, to find harmony in dissonance, to bring order to chaos…….. generally to find balance or stasis.

All the temporal arts, music, poetry, literature etc. use this push and pull, this tease of fulfillment, as a way to provide narrative and flow and to more effectively reflect the human experience. 

I just consulted with my niece  and nephew about how we can apply this concept to the “static” arts,  painting and sculpture for example. This required getting up off my lazy arse and going out to the cottage deck where both were lounging and likely not in the mood for heady questions. I was pleasantly surprised that they were so generous with their time.

“Hi guys”  I said “I’m writing a post for my blog and I was wondering if you could help me”

“Go away”

“Huh?”

“We’re chilling”

“Five minutes with your rich Uncle Mike who has no children of his own to leave his money to, would kill you?”

“How’re you feeling these days?”

“Near dead”

“Okay, five minutes”

So I lied about my health and fortunes……..sue me. Here we have a good example of conflict and its resolution. The music analogy would be to hang onto a dominant 5 chord and finally, after milking every uncomfortable rubato quarter note triplet out of it,  returning the listener to the tonic and life is good again. What’s interesting is that although there’s real satisfaction in balance, the fun is getting there. My niece put forward the theory that, in the case of painting, there could be real competition between colours for example that is resolved by the total picture. Or that the forms in sculpture make no sense until the completed project is viewed.But this was merely tangental to the point I’m trying to make.

The potential or the promise of resolution makes the writhing anxiety exquisite…….sublime even……..in art.  In real life this transcendent discomfort which makes things interesting can sometimes be more like abject terror………..

Day One 

I didn’t get out of Mississauga until late in the afternoon. If you don’t keep me moving I atrophy within hours, every cell calcifying like a log in the petrified forest, resisting any change, a daily demonstration of Isaac Newton’s first law of motion. In other words, I was snoozing on the couch instead of getting ready. By the time I got into Muskoka and my exit off hwy.11 it was past dusk. It was the first time I had driven to the lake in the dark. It all looked, smelled and sounded different. When I finally arrived at the cottage and shut off the engine, instead of the usual buzzing of giant mosquitos looking for fresh blood or wolves howling to their mates in the distance there was an unnerving silence punctuated every minute or so by a muffled groaning sound……no….. more like a low register trombone riff with a sticky slide or Carter’s last chord in Baby Step Back. The death throes of an ancient Stomposaurus as it sinks into the primordial ooze………….

Before making my grand entrance into the cottage where I assumed my extended family awaited in breathless anticipation, I strolled down the rocky incline to the water, curious as to this audio phantasmagoria. It was strangely alluring  like the songs of the Sirens and I realized I was being drawn towards it against my will. There was a pungent moldy smell and it was very misty, which makes sound directionless as anyone who’s been in a small boat listening to a shore horn through a foggy haze will attest. And then out of the miasma it appeared. A serpent-like creature looking like every obscure, faded photograph of the legendary Scottish lake monster that I’d ever seen. I could hardly believe it………how could this be?

I got my iPhone out and took a picture.

The creature turned, looked straight at me and let out an ungodly screech. It sounded like Kenny G playing My Heart Will Go On.  Talk about dissonance! There’s an odd expression that some people use in a situation like this. It has to do with the release of a certain bodily function ……… which segues into this short music theory lesson: 

 When improvising a solo over music that is blues based there are three odd notes available in what would ordinarily be a standard major scale. Flat 3, flat 5 and flat7. They’re not exactly a semitone flat but I’ll leave that for the academics. We call them Blue notes. Sax players use them a lot. A lesser known group of tones that sax players also use a lot are the Brown notes. These tones exist in the squeaky upper range of the alto and soprano saxophones mostly, but are available to singers as well. A few of these notes at sufficient volume will cause an involuntary relaxing of the performer’s sphincter and all that that implies. Hence the name “Brown Notes”.

I stumbled up to the cottage in near panic. “I better compose myself” I thought. “Incoherent blathering won’t help my credibility and besides, they’ll be so happy to see me………I don’t want to ruin the fun”.

“I’m here!” I yelled as I flung open the main door…………you could have heard a pin drop or a mouse pissing on a cotton ball as our late guitarist Terry would have said. 

A second was a minute and a minute was an hour as an Alberta Clipper ice storm moved up my spine. The unthinkable………Nessie 2, had slithered into the cottage and devoured a brother, two sisters, two nephews, two nieces, a niece boyfriend and a brother in law. That had to be it. What other reason could there be for such a conspicuous lack of riotous welcome with tears of joy, spontaneous dancing and a squeezebox-Mario playing Auld Lang Syne?

Then I heard something. A snore. A SNORE?!?!  

You might say that I was humbled….. any sense of importance dashed. My self-esteem lay puddled on the floor having leaked out through the many holes in my thin skin. 

“They went to bed!!!” 

In the next exciting instalment of Loch Morrison 

We find our protagonist at odds with the “benevolent universe” he so tediously proselytizes about.  His credibility in doubt, sanity questioned and blood sugar through the roof after a gallon of Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, his mood oscillates wildly from that of a raging bull to a snivelling wuss in a Fauntleroy suit.  

Look for “Day Two” in Two Days