Here’s a rather shifty-eyed Joe the Story Editor talking about the writing process on Canadia. Why I can’t look in one place is beyond me. My wife said I look nervous. I don’t recall being nervous, but I was rather taken by surprise by the whole thing. I hadn’t been told they were interviewing that day and I just happened to drop by the studio. Matt said, hey, why don’t you give an interview about story editing? So I did. I’ll know better next time.
There are a lot of infinitely more interesting interviews with infinitely better-spoken people on the subject of Canadia here.
Someday I’ll do a longer post about my experiences working on Canadia.
Gary Gygax, creater of Dungeons and Dragons, and named by Sync magazine as the single biggest nerd of all time, has passed away at the age of sixty-nine.
“I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.”
On my birthday my wife teased me about getting old. I said I didn’t mind… lots of people don’t get the chance to turn forty-three. Little did I know that on that very day Canadian Blues Great Jeff Healey would be one of them, passing away at the all-too-tender age of forty.
I was fortunate enough to meet the man twice, once way back in the spring of ninety-two, when I’d been working as a CBC Radio technician for all of four years. Here’s a piece I wrote in my journal at the time about meeting him:
Spring Nineteen ninety-two.
I was asked to work overtime and it turned out to be a two-hour booking packaging My Kinda Jazz, hosted by Jeff Healey.
Myself I’m not really into the kind of music he plays, although I do like the kind of music he apparently prefers, which is the sort he featured on his show. Antiquated jazz, dating back well into the Forties and beyond. Anyway, when he got to the studio booth he greeted me over the talkback, having been informed of my presence in the control room by the producer. I thought this was a friendly thing for him to do, as it’s not of unheard of for people to completely ignore us technical types until they just about trip over us.
I said hi back, and he commented that he couldn’t hear me very well over the talkback. This was unimportant, really, as in all likelihood I wouldn’t be talking to him during the show, but I decided to look into it anyway. I went to the booth and pointed out a certain knob that I suspected might have control over the volume of the talkback. He had his hand partially over the knob in question so I couldn’t turn it up myself, and as he is blind, I was pretty sure he didn’t know which knob I was talking about.
I did sort of a stupid thing, I said, “It’s the one just to the right of your hand”, and then reached out and touched the knob, also brushing his hand slightly. It let him know the position of the control I was talking about, but I think it annoyed him greatly. I guess I was acknowledging his handicap and underestimating him.
He said huffily, “No, that doesn’t have anything to do with it, that’s the monitor control.”
I suppose I had a thing or two to learn about dealing with blind people, not to mention studio booth controls. Finally I just adjusted Healey’s mic and with my tail between my legs returned to the control room. (Found out later you can’t adjust the level of the talkback, it’s pre-set.)
If Healey really was annoyed with me it didn’t last long; there was a bit of friendly banter before we started the show. The packaging went well, it was a straightforward sort of affair, chatter, song, chatter, song, with all the songs prerecorded by Healey one right after the other on a DAT. I guess he has a DAT machine home. Made my job easy.
Just so happened it was March 25th, 1992, his twenty-sixth birthday, I think, the producer (David, I don’t know his last name) told me.
Healey was quite knowledgeable about his subject matter. I couldn’t tell how much he was reeling off the top of his head or how much he derived from his notes (all in braille). All the tunes were from old 78’s, his own; apparently he has a collection of about 6000 or so (note: as of 2008 it numbered 30,000 plus).
We played a song from Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, one of four versions the Duke recorded of this particular song, called the Mooch. There was a muted trumpet solo in the song, and Jeff remarked in the intro that what the trumpet player used for a mute was a plunger. I asked David if Healey was joking and he assured me he wasn’t. Maybe they were having me on, I don’t know, but during the song David asked Jeff over the talkback if the plunger the guy used was a used plunger. Jeff laughed and remarked that if it was, it was probably a “shitty plunger”.
He sat with his eyes closed the entire booking, rocking a bit to the music, and when he left he didn’t say goodbye.
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to give a speech to the Advanced Audio class at Ryerson University in Toronto.
What follows are the notes I glanced at occasionally.
(Oh… and if certain people read this and start to get all offended? Read it to the end before jumping to any conclusions.)
The Story of Q
How many of you think the CBC is a bank?
I’m told you’re going to make a radio show as a project. You might go on to work in radio. I should tell you right now that when you work in radio you don’t do it for the money - I only make two, three hundred thousand dollars a year. So anyway I’m here to give you some idea how to make a radio show. So I’m going to tell you a few things that might help you make your radio show here, and that also might help you when you’re working in the real world. If I’m really lucky maybe some of it will help you in the rest of your life too.
I think the best way to tell you what I know is to tell you a story. As far as I’m concerned the best way to convey anything is to tell a story. I could stand up here and relate all kinds of facts and figures and all it would do is put you to sleep. It’s true for this speech I’m giving and it’s true for radio. So that’s your first lesson - don’t be boring. You need to grab everyone’s attention! And then you need to keep it.
So the story I’m going to tell you is the story of Q.
The story of Q is how you make a radio show from the ground up. There might be a tiny bit of dirt in this story, so before I go on I need to know if I can trust you. I might tell you a few things that could get me in trouble. So I need to know who in this room I can NOT trust. Point to them please. Okay those of you who are being pointed at I need you to leave the room.
This time last year I was happy making radio plays. Stuff like this:
Making radio plays was what I did best. That and lasagna - I make a mean lasagna. Weekday afternoons on CBC Radio One around this time was a show called Freestyle. Traditionally in this time slot CBC Radio One had a listenership of about two hundred and twenty thousand people. It had been this way for years. It didn’t matter what you played in this time slot - you could play 1 K tone and the listenership would stay at two hundred and twenty thousand people. So they put this show on called Freestyle and the listener-ship promptly dropped to one hundred and eighty thousand people. Clearly, forty thousand people preferred tone.
Something needed to be done, and something was. There was a big study, they called it the Arts and Culture study, and based on this research the Powers That Be decided they needed to replace Freestyle with an Arts and Culture show. It would be a national show… a flagship show… they would pour tons of resources into it. It was a Big Deal.
Now as I mentioned I was toiling happily away in radio drama land at this time. But I had also worked on As It Happens, Morningside, Sunday Morning and all kinds of other live national shows. I had also helped create shows such as Nora Young’s Next, Here’s the Thing with Pat Senson, and I’d produced documentaries for the Current and the Arts Tonight. So my boss called me into her office and asked me if I would like to be the engineer for this new Arts and Culture show.
Those of us in the trenches knew that this show was coming down the pike. And no one I knew wanted to work on it. We all thought it would be a disaster. We had heard that Jian Ghomeshi was going to host it. Jian Ghomeshi was supposed to be the devil incarnate. He had been the host of 50 Tracks, a big success, he’d fronted the band Moxy Fruvous once upon a time, he’d hosted television and he’d done a stint on Sounds Like Canada. He had a reputation for being difficult to work with. And I thought, I don’t need that shit.
So I told my boss “No” in no uncertain terms. Well. She went up one side of me and down the other. She tore me a new one. And I wound up being the engineer on the new Arts and Culture show with Jian Ghomeshi.
I was really mad. I started the whole experience extremely upset. And this is lesson number two, folks: you have to be professional. I loved radio drama, that’s all I wanted to do. My boss in her wisdom took me out of something I loved and made me a part of something I wanted no part of. I wasn’t the only one. Of the staff that were selected for the new arts and culture show one promptly quit, one transferred to Winnipeg, at least two didn’t want to be there and they could not find an executive producer who wanted anything to do with the show.
But like I said, you have to be professional. You do not take your feelings out on your colleagues. You do not come to work sullen. There are two kinds of people in this world, those with good attitudes and those with bad attitudes. It’s easy to have a good attitude when things are going your way. The trick is to have a good attitude when things are not going your way. And I am here to tell you that there are people working on that show today who do not know how I felt about being there. I’m not saying you keep it all inside - you tell your wife, you tell your best friend. But at work you put on your game face, the one with the good attitude.
So eventually they found an Executive Producer willing to take a chance and they filled out the rest of the staff. We had nine people in total to make this new national Arts and Culture show. One recording engineer, one executive producer, one host, three producers, three associate producers. They threw us all into a room in the Skydome, Skybox Three, if I recall, and said: “Make us a radio show.”
We talked. We talked for days. All we knew was that it had to be an arts and culture radio show and that it would be personality driven - Jian Ghomeshi’s personality. But we didn’t know what any of that meant. Low culture? High culture? Both? What is low culture and high culture? What about sports, is that culture? Recreation? Interviews were a given, but how long should they be? Are interviews on the phone okay or should they all be high quality lines? Would we be the arts show of record? What does that even mean? Do we break stories? Do we talk about Paris Hilton? If so, how much? What about Margaret Atwood? Haven’t we all heard enough about Margaret Atwood? How do we open the show? How do we close the show? What do we even call the damn thing?
To help us figure things out we took a bunch of courses. We all had plenty of experience making radio but you never stop learning. We took courses on critical thinking. Things like, do we trust this source? Is this story really news? We took a course on ethics. Things like, when are we in conflict of interest? And we took courses on interviewing. In case we wound up with a guest that sounded like this guy:
Eventually we got it more or less figured out. High culture AND low culture. High impact guests when possible. Interviews about eight minutes long, longer when warranted. Live music every Friday, maybe more. Ixnay on the Paris Hiltonnay. Lots of energy. Plenty of short, flexible elements so we could mix things up on the fly. We had it all figured out. Everything except for a name.
We’d been racking our brains for weeks trying to come up with a name. It was really important to us that we choose the name and not management. ‘Cause it seemed like the front runner for management was the name Radar, and Radar just didn’t work for us. We needed something better. The problem was the show was so broad that we couldn’t come up with a name that encompassed everything the show was about. And then one day, out of the blue, someone had it:
“Awesometown.”
Yeah, that lasted about five minutes. So we did a pilot with the name Radar and found ourselves getting down to the wire. It was pretty clear that if we didn’t come up with a name ourselves by the end of the week one would be foisted upon us and it would probably be the dreaded Radar. So we hunkered down and for the umpteenth time wrote our top choices on the white board. Names like Studio Q, The Cue, Skybox Three. And, of course, Awesometown. Suddenly looking at the names on the whiteboard the letter Q kind of leapt out at me and I said, what if it were just the letter Q? Jian went for it and nobody really objected so we had a winner. Later I learned that journalist Jesse Wente had suggested the name Q for an Arts show two years earlier so there was a kind of weird synchronicity about it. Of course, some people absolutely hated it, but it was enigmatic, it stood for nothing and everything, and most important, Jian could make rhyming couplets out of it.
A week before we went to air we still didn’t really know whether the show was going to work. I remember tense meetings with the team and Jian. Jian felt like there was too much interference from management; he didn’t feel like he was able to make the show that he wanted to make. There were different sensibilities at work. Jian and the Executive Producer weren’t quite clicking. And there were still a whole bunch of issues that needed to be sorted out that hadn’t even been addressed.
As the engineer, I was responsible for the sound of the show. From the beginning I had been advocating for a theme package. I wanted to hire a composer and a band and get them to write all the music for the show. In drama we hired composers all the time, it was no big deal. This show was supposed to be a big deal so it was a no brainer for me. But for some reason the team balked at the idea. For the pilots we’d been using this music for the opening theme:
It wasn’t bad. It was basically a loop of the first four bars of the Clash’s Spanish Bombs. But it didn’t have the panache we were looking for. Much more classy to use something written especially for the show. At the last minute the Executive Producer agreed with me and hired Luc Doucet to write a theme. Now, the show debuted on a Monday… and Luc Doucet’s band recorded the theme on the Friday. They recorded it… they didn’t mix it. And they didn’t record it to the proper specifications. We needed an intro, beds, backtime music. On Sunday - Sunday, the day before we debuted — I got a CD with all the raw tracks, unmixed. I was working on something else that day, teaching U of T students about radio drama, and I didn’t even start mixing the theme until seven o’clock that night. By ten o’clock my ears were gone, I could barely tell what I was listening to. I printed out a few versions, emailed them as MP3s to Jian and the executive producer, and went home to bed.
The next morning, the day of the show, the first thing the executive producer said to me was, “We got some remixing to do.” It was two hours before show time. Fortunately my mix was in the ballpark, I just had to swap a couple of guitar parts and create a bed for Jian to speak over and then recut it to the proper length. And this is where some stellar leadership came into play. Rule number three: Go for the gusto. Because I really didn’t think we’d be able to get the theme done in time. I told the executive producer that we should go with the Spanish Bombs theme. But the exec had nerves of steel and he said, no no, we’ll pull this off. I really didn’t think it was possible but he stayed the course and lo and behold we pulled it off. The finished theme sounded like this:
On your program today, I wanna rock, Dee Snider, the frontman of outrageous 80s metal band Twisted Sister has a new gig. We’ll talk to him about his new TV series “Dead Art” about finding beauty… in cemeteries. And… get happy! (Or not…) North America is home to some of the most contented people on Earth. But is that a good thing? Not according to Eric Wilson. He’s here with his new book “Against Happiness”. Plus, a look at the threat facing Utah’s Spiral Jetty… and its Canadian connection. Six words of love for you… this is Q.”
And they’re still using that theme today.
Just so you know, that opening over the theme is usually pretaped so that we can make sure Jian hits the post, the guitar at the end. Sometimes it’s not possible to pretape it and Jian has to do it live. Nine times out of ten when Jian does it live, he hits the post.
So the show debuted and everything that could go wrong tried to wrong but didn’t. There were many heart stopping moments but it all worked. This is what I took away from that day. Rule number four: Know your studio like the back of your hand. Check it thoroughly before you go to air. Know your patch bay, your wall boxes. Test everything. If you’re going to have phoners test your phones through the board. If you have lines book your lines at least fifteen minutes early so that you can test them long before your guests are supposed to speak. If you’ve got a band, get them in early for a sound check. Make sure you know how to use your timers, your talkbacks. And finally, know what time you’re supposed to go to air. Because on that first day, believe it or not, we didn’t.
Someone - me, probably - should have double-checked all the times of the show. Lo and behold the third hour, part three, started one whole minute earlier than we thought it was supposed to. We were just sitting back enjoying our cigars during the newsbreak when all of a sudden the countdown clock started counting down and we had to scramble to get on the air. We made it, somehow.
When we finished the show that day, the first day, it was clear to everyone that Q was going to work. It wasn’t perfect but it was pretty much there. And this is why I think Q worked on that first day:
Jian Ghomeshi.
I told you before that he was supposed to be the antichrist. He’s not the antichrist. Nor is he Christ. He’s just a guy who happens to be a talented host. He’s got a great voice. He’s got the gift of gab. He has strong opinions and he was determined from the get go to make the show work. I can see why some people on some of his earlier gigs had trouble with him. He’s super keen and he’s a strong personality. You have to be strong to be able to stand up to him. You also have to be right. If you’re clinging to old ways of doing things or you’re just phoning it in, you’re probably not going to get along with Jian Ghomeshi.
Myself, I only ever had one run-in with the man. For the first couple of months we sort of circled one another warily. I was suspicious of him because of what I’d heard. Then one day we had a band in, Stars. Q goes live to Sirius Radio at 12:06. The sound check with Stars was scheduled for 11:00. Stars showed up at 11:30. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to sort them out, and their lead singer was being difficult. Jian showed up at 11:45 full of piss and vinegar wanting to prerecord the opening, like I mentioned before. We didn’t have time. Jian got angry and he let it show. This really pissed me off. I was in it up to my elbows and the last thing I needed was someone making my life more difficult.
I got Stars sorted out.
(Incidentally, although they were late, they weren’t the worst. The worst was Ryan Adams — Ryan, not Bryan. He showed up with a drummer and two guitarists after the show started. I had to really scramble then. And it actually turned out to be one of my favourite recordings:
But I digress. After the Stars thing I was pissed at Jian and he knew it. The next day he sought me out and we had a little chat. I explained where I was coming from. To his credit he apologized without reservation and ever since then we’ve gotten along fine.
The thing about hosts is that they’re under a lot of pressure, more than anybody else on the show. It doesn’t give them the right to be assholes. It doesn’t give them the right to take their moods out on other people. But it does mean that they have to be looked after. They have to be given the right information at the right time. They have to know that you’re watching their back. One of the reasons that Jian and I got along is because he knew that I was watching his back. A host is all alone out there in front of several hundred thousand if not millions of listeners; the rest of us are anonymous. And when they screw up, it’s their clips that we play to embarrass them in front of Ryerson students:
So we have to make sure that the hosts don’t find themselves alone; we have to be right there with them, paying attention, watching their backs. As an engineer I never took my eyes and ears off the host if I could help it. If he or she got into trouble I tried to be there to feed them information or go to a tape if need be.
Same with the show’s director. On Q the director is Matt Tunnacliffe. As director Matt also keeps a close eye on Jian. Among other things it’s Matt’s job to make sure everything times out. If an interview goes too long it’s Matt who has to figure out how to fix it. Do we drop an item, do we go to a different item, do we get Jian to wing it? I remember Jian getting lost once or twice. Misplaced a bit of his script or had a brain fade or there was just some miscommunication. When this happens it’s crucial that the people in the control room are paying attention, so they can bail him out. Otherwise it can get pretty ugly pretty fast, and when you’re live you only get one shot at it.
I wanted to talk about the roles of the others on the show, the associate producers and whatnot, but when I started to write about them it started putting me to sleep. So I’ll spare you, except to say that they’re generally the ones who pitch the ideas, hunt down all the guests, do the research and write all the questions. So the work is crucial but boring to talk about, so I’m not gonna. You’ll have to get one of them in here to talk about it.
Instead let me talk a bit about this:
Sound design. That clip was one of the first IDs we ever did for the show. The day I was teaching U of T students, the day before we debuted, I got the students to do a bunch of IDs for the show. They gave me tons of raw material. I also hunted down all sorts of interesting clips off the internet. I gave it all to an associate producer on the show, Tori Allen, and she put together three or four great IDs like that one. And you’ll notice she did not use the students getting the IDs right, she used the students getting the IDs wrong. It was brilliant and I don’t mind saying that I learned a lot from Tori… every ID I made for the show after that was with her sensibility in mind.
I don’t think sound design is top of mind for many show producers. For them it’s all about the content. I guess there’s something to be said for content. But for me it’s all about sound design and production… you can have so much fun there. For instance, when we were figuring out the show we talked about how we should open each show. Everybody wanted to do something unique and different. I suggested something like this, which is something producer Alison Moss, Nora Young and I did up for an episode of Next:
That was a lot of fun to produce but it took an entire day to write, record and mix. So it’s not something you’re going to do every day on a daily show like Q. We settled on an opening monologue that would contain some production elements when we felt up to it.
The next opportunity for some fun production was, as I’ve already mentioned, in the show IDs. Show IDs serve four main purposes. One, they give the host a break during which he or she can figure out where they’re at. Two, they separate the various elements of a show. And three, obviously they identify the show you’re listening to, the network, and whatever other information you want to put in them. But a lot of producers don’t take advantage of the fourth purpose of show IDs, which is to help define the sound of the show you’re listening to:
That’s me completely taking a page from Tori’s book. It signals that Q is a show not afraid to have a little bit of fun, and that at it’s core it’s a show about creativity. And the sky’s the limit. Whenever we had a musical guest we got them to record a little ID for us. You have to be a little bit bold with your guests. Don’t be afraid to tell them what you need. 99% of the musicians I approached to make an ID all just wanted to talk until I pestered them to pick up their guitar or play the piano. Then when they saw what I was after they got into the spirit of things. And we got a lot of great show IDs that way.
Yet another opportunity for sound design came about when Jian would have long spiels about one thing or another, letters or just something he wanted to talk about. So I began to make loops for him.
Whenever I found a piece of music I thought might be appropriate I’d take as much instrumental as I could out of it and loop it all together, five or six minutes worth. Jian would finish extro-ing an interview (for example), I’d hit the music, let it establish, then Jian would come in and do his thing over it. He’d finish, I’d bring up the music, then fade out and we’d be onto the next thing. Simple but effective.
There’s about eight thousand other issues I could address but I’ll finish with this one. If you take nothing else away from the stuff I’m telling you today, take this away: Know your tools. You can get by without really knowing your tools but you’ll be making your life unnecessarily difficult, and you’ll be limited in what you can accomplish.
We use many digital audio editing platforms at CBC but the main one that most people use is called Dalet. It dates back to about 1998 and it’s soon to be replaced with something called Dalet Plus, which itself will be out of date by the time we start using it but that’s another story. Anyway, I used to hate Dalet. My weapon of choice is ProTools, but when I began working on Q I had no choice but to use Dalet. I thought, my God, this is like editing with your elbows.
I soon realized that I would live or die by Dalet, so I resolved to learn it as well as I know Protools. I got myself some training and within three months I knew it inside and out. Now you might think, well that’s all fine and good for you, you’re obviously a technical type. Well let’s just flash back twenty-two years. I’m sixteen years old working at my first radio station, a two hundred and fifty watt daytimer called CJRW in Prince Edward Island. Before I started my shift, I got the DJ working before me to cue up all my items on the reel to reels because I was afraid of it. I was frightened of the scary looking reel-to-reels. I am not by disposition a technical type, I am an artsy. To me gear is a means to an end not an end in itself. But I decided one day - one day here at Ryerson, in fact, working on a second year project - that I would no longer live in fear of the scary looking reel-to-reel machines. I would master the reel-to-reel and any other piece of gear or software that comes along.
But before I say goodbye, let me play you this:
That’s my favourite ID because the woman trying to say Jian’s name is so charming. Also it tells a story from beginning to end. And the fact that I could play it on the show, basically making fun of Jian Ghomeshi’s name, is proof that Jian doesn’t take himself as seriously as some probably might think.
And that’s all she wrote. As my former professor Jerry Good used to say…
I just got an email from my friend Kimberly in which she said she had enjoyed my post about the Tooth Fairy. Which is weird, because I remember attempting to post some correspondence from the Tooth Fairy (who, as you will read, is a close personal friend of my daughters) but there was something I didn’t like about the formatting so I took the post down. As far as I recall I never put it back up, so Kimberly must have seen it in the two minutes I had it up.
Anyway, if Kimberly liked it, perhaps others will as well, so here it is again. Permanently, this time:
Dear K,
Congratulations on your second tooth falling out, K! I heard it come out down in Fairyland (I have tiny but excellent ears) and I was awfully worried that you would lose the tooth down the drain but you didn’t. I’m so glad! I want you to know, though, that even if you had lost your precious tooth down the drain, I still would have found it and given you something for it.
I must say that your teeth (and those of your sister, E) look really clean. I think you must be brushing them well, and going to the dentist regularly. In fact, the tooth you lost today looks so clean that I would not be at all surprised to learn that you went to the dentist today, and had your teeth cleaned! I’m so happy when I see such nice teeth! It makes me very sad when children do not look after their teeth. How would they eat corn on the cob if they had no teeth?
You girls sure ask a lot of great questions. I think that’s wonderful! It tells me that you are both curious and smart. I hope I can answer them okay:
Q. Did you ever have any loose teeth?
A. Oh yes, I lost all my baby teeth over four hundred years ago.
Q. When you lost them, did you take them?
A. That’s funny! I wasn’t the Tooth Fairy when I was just a little baby fairy. My mommy was the Tooth Fairy then! So she took my teeth.
Q. Do you live in the forest behind our house?
A. No, I live in Fairy Land, which is far away. The fairies in the forest behind your house are my second cousins. They are the fairies of the forest, and we always have lots of fun whenever we visit one another.
Q. What do you do with your wand?
A. My wand helps me fly super fast from Fairy Land to childrens’ houses. I also use it to stir my coffee, and to protect me from bad dogs and cats.
Q. Do you use the toothbrush I gave you?
A. Oh yes! It’s too big for my mouth, of course, so I use it to brush my pet unicorn’s teeth. She absolutely adores it, especially coming from you! She knows you girls love unicorns.
Q. Did you like the candy canes?
A. Yes, but I’m taking my time eating them, because candy canes have a LOT of sugar in them, which isn’t really great for teeth. But you have to have a treat now and then.
Q. What did you get for Christmas?
A. Mr. And Mrs. Santa Claus are good friends of mine, and they know that I don’t really need much for Christmas, but Santa is such a kind soul that he got me a special, tiny pair of mittens to keep my fingers warm whenever I have to fly to Canada in the winter. They’re my favourite colour, yellow, and they match the hat he gave me last year, which is also yellow.
It sure is nice visiting you and E. I look forward to seeing more of your baby teeth in the days to come.
When the boy caught sight of what he had come to see half way up the mountain, he gasped at the wonder of it all.
He saw among other things turrets and spires and slim, cylindrical towers, and when he got closer there was a drawbridge spanning a moat of an enchanting silvery liquid, and finally, a modest faerie mist clothing grey stone walls near where they met the earth. The wizard’s castle was everything his imagination had said it would be.
When he stepped upon the drawbridge, though, he saw that the moat beneath him contained only water. Considering it had appeared infinitely more magical only moments before — perhaps the reflection of the sun had fooled him — he was slightly disappointed. Even so, he could not help but wonder what peculiar manner of creature lay in wait beneath the water’s silvery sheen. Aside from sea serpents and sharks he could think of no names, but his mind drew terrible pictures, and he was careful to stay well to the centre of the drawbridge as he daringly traversed its length.
The boy paused at the far end of the drawbridge, dwarfed there by the enormous wooden door. He lifted his hand to knock but found that he could not. Instead, butterflies invaded his stomach and his mind whirled with fears. What if he had come all this way for nothing? Suppose the wizard did not receive visitors after all? Would he send the boy away? Or worse, in a fit of pique at having been disturbed, might the wizard wave his hands in the air and utter angry words that would transform his unwelcome visitor into a toad or a goblin?
Such a fate seemed entirely possible to the boy now that he had thought of it. Unnerved, he turned to flee, and he would have done so except that just then, accompanied by the sound of grinding gears and rattling chains, the huge wooden door slowly began to creak open, and the chance to flee was past.
A shock of unruly white hair surrounded a cherubic cheeked face. Eyes the reflection of a winter sky focused on the boy as the entire combination poked out from behind the door. A frown and a “breathe, boy, it doesn’t do to hold one’s breath,” acknowledged the petrified lad. “Come for a visit, have you?”
The boy could only nod.
“Well, come in, come in. Have you a name? Perhaps when you find your tongue you can tell me what it is. Myself, I am the caretaker of this keep, and as such I must ask you to wipe your feet, please, this isn’t a hovel, you know, it is a castle, and we must abide by certain rules. Rules are unfortunate, restricting things, but they do possess a certain merit, they keep the floors clean you’ll notice, and if that is not a sufficient reason to abide by rules then I am unaware of what is,” and accompanied by a great deal more rambling of a similar nature the boy was led inside.
Enormous tapestries lined walls of corridors guarded by uninhabited suits of shining armour. The footsteps of the caretaker and the boy could have been those of giants, rattling back and forth between the distant walls the way they did.
The boy began to relax as the words of the old man encircled and reassured him. It was good of him to come, very few did these days, wasn’t the weather mild and nice and was the climb up the mountain very difficult? Would he like a warm cup of mead?
He was taken on a whirlwind tour of the castle, which was splendid. Up to the top of the tallest spire, a view from the ramparts, a glimpse of every room, chamber and den, it seemed.
Could I see the dungeons? Most certainly. Are they occupied? He would have to wait and see. Sinister words, preceding an equally sinister descent into the deepest and darkest portion of the castle. Sparsely placed torches barely lit the way, and innumerable times the boy almost fled back up the spiralling staircase, especially at the thought that perhaps the old man’s plans were of a nefarious sort. He trod boldly on, however, one eye warily on his guide, and was relieved when no attempts were made to incarcerate him. Instead, his host proved most informative.
“To your right, at one time the cell of a sorcerer imprisoned for transforming chickens into gophers. A distressing habit, very unsettling economically.
“Look closely at the next, lad, and see the bloodstains of a great ruffian, murdered by his cell mate, a woman, incensed at his manner of ogling the siren in the cell beyond.” On and on the narrative went, a tale for every cold and empty dungeon.
Then, because he had come this far, the boy said, “The wizard,” and the old man turned an inquiring eye his way.
“The wizard,” the boy repeated, half expecting that with a flourish and a self-deprecating laugh his guide would reveal himself as the famed necromancer, and cast a modest spell or two.
“Eh? What?”
“I would like to meet the wizard who lives here, if I may,” the boy said hopefully.
“Oh,” the old man said. “Well.” He shook his white haired head. “No wizards here.”
“But he lives here,” the boy insisted.
“No, he doesn’t,” the old man said. “Used to, once upon a time.”
“Where did he go?”
“Away. Where wizards go. Left with a gaggle of geese one day.”
It was not beyond the realm of reason for the boy. He nodded politely and turned away.
The old man was an empathic soul and he felt keenly the boy’s disappointment. “A moment,” he said, “wait a moment. There is magic about yet, I think, for the wizard could not take it all with him,” and he led the boy back up through the convoluted castle corridors to a place they had yet to be.
They entered first a room of odd creatures. Cats and dogs as one, a creature with an extraordinarily long nose, horses with wings, multicoloured rabbits, and other magical animal fare. The boy murmured all the right things in all the right places, but he could not help but think that animals were animals, magical or not.
Next came a room of whistles and bells, of baffling machines that could perform every conceivable task, some that could potentially release mankind from its bondage of labour forever, others that could give it something to do then.
“Thank you,” the boy said. “They are very nice. I believe my mother would have liked that one,” and he pointed to a whirring contraption that diced carrots into a neat little orange pile. But the old man could tell that he was still disappointed.
In the spacious corridor he confronted the youngster. “Does the magic I have shown you fail to bedazzle? Does it not boggle your eyes, mystify your brain, make your nose runny? Do your knees not shake, your lips tremble, and your ears go all a quiver as you contemplate the magical prowess required to even imagine, let alone create, all that you have seen?”
The boy replied, “I have seen many wondrous things, I agree,” and in truth he was impressed, at times it was all he could do to keep his ears from quivering and his nose from running. “It is just that I would have liked to have seen the wizard, is all,” he said.
“Yes, the wizard,” the elderly caretaker repeated. “A very great and popular wizard, he was, it is understandable that you should so wish to see him. He has, however, flown with the geese, he shall not be back for a while, a century or so, I should imagine, so put it out of your mind. You shall not be able to see the wizard today. May I suggest some grapefruit juice in lieu?”
The kitchen had seven ovens and the pleasant scent of baking bread and basting turkeys was as permanent as the squared stone floor. Grapefruit juice was one of an abundant store of refreshments to choose from, so with his host’s hearty recommendation, the boy bravely chose a green elixir instead, and they retired to the dining room.
It was there beneath an elaborately jewelled chandelier of enormous breadth, a gift from the gods, the old man claimed, that the boy humbly asked, “How did you come to be caretaker of this castle? Was your father a caretaker too? Or did the wizard make you, like he made the magical machines and animals, maybe out of a fly or a garden gnome?”
The caretaker replied, “I was neither born for the position nor created for it. Nay, either did I covet it. I was chosen by the great wizard himself one day as I toiled in my father’s field, and the wizard passed by and took note of my diligence and discipline and extraordinarily intelligent demeanour. Forthwith I was snatched away and a doppleganger placed in my stead. I have been here since, happily so, I might add.”
“I had thought you might be the wizard, hiding your true nature,” the boy confessed.
“A common misconception,” the caretaker reassured him. “It happens all the time. Perhaps it is my eyes, which are veritable pools of wisdom, and my kindly disposition, and my overall bearing of benevolence and tranquillity. Why, I would have made a fine wizard looking the way I do. I look more like a wizard than the wizard himself, if the truth be known. However, I have never had an inclination to be one. Too much time with your nose in a book, studying spells. Hard on your eyes, hard on your nose.” The old man shook his head. “Not for me.”
Another round of green elixir and grapefruit juice. A chill invaded the room and prompted a fire in the hearth. Comfortable surroundings and pleasant company gave rise to prolonged conversation, though the caretaker spoke mostly, responding to the many inquiries of the boy.
“He calls it an elephant,” he responded to one such question, concerning one of the magical animals they had seen. “Named for a distant relation, I’m told. The elongated nose concept arose from the wizard’s fondness for noses, or perhaps more precisely, his fondness for the sense of smell. Smells are very important to the wizard. They alert your mind to many memories, you know, and the wizard is old and has many memories, many of which he cannot remember. He would like to recall more, and he believes that if he could smell better, he could remember better. It seems to have worked in the case of the elephant. However, it would be unseemly for a man to have a nose as long.”
“Why did the wizard leave?” the boy wanted to know.
“I do not know for certain.” The caretaker reflected on the question. “To see the world through the eyes of a goose, perhaps. It is a pastime he cherishes, seeing the world through different eyes, one day a goose, the next a dog. The world is a wondrous place, he says, but more than that, it is a trillion worlds, each unique and worth seeing. And each separate world may only be seen by looking through a fresh pair of eyes. So this time, I think, the wizard has chosen to live for awhile in the world of a goose.”
The boy smiled at this charming but unlikely hypothesis, considering that the wizard in question had to be a worldly, busy individual, with far better things to do than spend a hundred years as a goose.
A window revealed the sky outside to be of a beckoning hue, so with great reluctance but commendable discipline the boy stood and thanked his host for allowing him to stay for as long as he had. The tour had been magnificent, the magic unforgettable, and the refreshments most refreshing. The elderly caretaker in turn remarked that his guest was too gracious, and wouldn’t he come again sometime?
They parted on the drawbridge. A shake of hands and a wave or two and then the heavy wooden portal clanked shut. Soon it was concealed behind a raised drawbridge. The boy stood gazing at the fairy tale castle for some time, prolonging the visit, which had been perfect in every way except for the absence of the wizard. He would visit again, if he could, and maybe by then the wizard would have returned. Surely he wouldn’t really be gone for a hundred years.
Only when he had climbed all the way back down the mountain and caught the scent of the foliage there did the wizard remember. He smiled and sat and spent many hours recalling the visit to his home, through the eyes of a boy. How the familiar and mundane had been transformed! How it had appeared so fresh and wonderful! Then he arose, touched his earlobe the requisite way, and borrowed new eyes for a walk in yet another world.
The End
September 26th, 1987
Slightly revised July 21st, 1998
This story has been published in Horizons SF, Kidzair (Air Canada), and SDO Fantasy.
I post this every year on this day for obvious reasons… Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
My wife Lynda is at work, seven months pregnant and enjoying if not every minute of it, at least every second or third minute of it. I’m at home, painting the nursery. I’m painting the nursery because our twins are due in just two months, and we’re afraid they might be early - you know, like two weeks early - because they’re twins.
So there I am, painting away, and the phone rings. Too late, I missed it. Then it’s ringing again, but my hands are full of brushes and rollers and it’s just too much trouble to go into the next room and answer the phone, except that…
…the darn thing rings again.
This time I know it’s important, if not an emergency, so I high-tail it to the phone and pick it up just in the nick of time. It’s Lynda. She sounds… well, panicked, her voice all quavery, on the verge of tears. “I think my water broke,” she says, and provides details that are watery, messy, and a little scary.
I’m thinking, nah, not possible, we’re two months early here. Clearly she’s misread the signs.
“What are you doing?” she asks me.
“Painting the nursery.”
“Paint faster,” she says.
I’m off like a blue streak to the pharmacy where Lynda works, ready to bundle her into the car, prepared to make the hospital at something resembling four times the speed of light. When I get there Lynda says, “Hang on. Gotta finish up a couple of prescriptions first.”
Excuse me?
It’s obvious to everyone in the store that something is not quite right. “Nothing serious,” I explain to one woman. “She’s about to give birth, is all.”
Twenty minutes later she’s ready to go. We’re in the car. I start the car and we are outta there…
…or so I think.
“Wait!” says Lynda.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I forgot my boots.”
I stop the car, run back into the pharmacy and get Lynda’s boots.
She’s weeping a little on the way to Markham-Stouffville Hospital. “I’m scared, Joe. I’m two months early.”
I’m scared too, but I need to reassure her. I don’t know what to say. Lamely, I say, “Everything’ll be okay,” and take hold of her hand. She accepts the hand — for a bit, then gently places it back on the steering wheel. “Two hands,” she says. “Wouldn’t want to get in an accident now.”
I agree, and make it to the hospital accident free. There, we take the wrong hallway, then figure it out and pass a woman facing the wall, a man gently rubbing her back. A glimpse of the future?
Soon we’re in the birthing room, a cheery nurse catering to Lynda’s every need. We’re in good hands, I think, but soon it becomes clear that Markham-Stowville can’t handle little babies that want to arrive two months early. The closest hospital that can is McMaster, in Hamilton. Two young, hip paramedics arrive and transfer a stoic Lynda onto a rolling stretcher, and take her away. I drive to Hamilton, alone in the dark, in the rain. Knowing that I’ve got the easy part.
Lynda’s just over thirty-one weeks - not a big deal, we’re told. Lynda is given medicine to speed the babys’ lung development up. She’s given other medicine to delay the birth as long as possible. Our spirits are good. We’re lucky Lynda’s thirty-one weeks and not less, like many others that come through this ward. Some babies, we’re told, come as early as twenty weeks. It’s heartbreaking — their chances for survival are not good. At thirty-one weeks, the success rate is close to one hundred percent.
Two days later. It’s Valentine’s Day, and our babies have decided they want out now. Decisions are made. Lynda is moved from a cosy little room with pleasant music to a sterile place of white walls and shiny metal beds. I count eighteen people in the room. The anesthetist has a funny little dog on his stethoscope. Lynda is pumped so full of drugs she can’t talk properly. I worry about her.
Our doctor’s name is Lightheart. Did I mention it was Valentine’s Day? Doctor Lightheart explains the use of forceps to her intern, then promptly demonstrates, deftly delivering Keira. Keira lets out a healthy wail and is whisked away to the level 3 neo-natal intensive care unit where I hope they don’t mix her up with another baby.
Suddenly Erin’s heartbeat drops to half the normal rate. The atmosphere in the room changes instantly. Doctor Lightheart reaches inside Lynda farther than I would have imagined possible. Her hand is poking at Lynda’s belly from inside, like a scene right out of Alien. I didn’t know you could DO that!
Finally, the forceps bring Erin out. She doesn’t cry like Keira did - just a brief, muffled chirp. This is because she’s been fitted with a respirator, but she’s fine. She, too, is whisked away to the intensive care unit.
