Half-Irish Blues

I grew up believing I was Scottish (which is a bit daft because I was born and raised in Canada, as were both sides of my family for three generations) but when I was 30-something (probably years of age) my maternal grandmother was ranting about my Irish heritage. What does this have to do with me? “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, Evan? The ancestors of both of your grandmothers were from Ireland.”

Suddenly a deep dark family secret came to light: I was not simply, as I’d always been told, a descendent of pale redheaded people who tended sheep and subsisted on oats and whisky in the northern part of the island of Britain, I was every bit as much a descendent of pale redheaded people who tended sheep and subsisted on potatoes and whiskey in the northern part of the island of Ireland! In an instant, my self-image was tossed in a raging wind of uncertainty!

In my bewilderment and rage, I went ’round the pub and drowned my sorrows in beer after beer. At closing time, as the bartender was rolling me out the door he said, “What are you, Irish?” And suddenly I understood. I’m a double Celt half-breed.

Now, instead of being woefully ignorant of Scottish Gaelic, my burden is doubled by my ignorance of Irish Gaelic. I’ll have to fill my sporran with potatoes. And it won’t be easy playing the bagpipes with one arm and the bodhrán with the other. Half the time I would otherwise have devoted to trying to comprehend Robbie Burns’ Address to a Haggis must henceforth be devoted to trying to fathom James Joyce’s Ulysses. And now my options seem to be limited in religious matters, much as in Canadian politics, to only two possibilities: the orange or the green. But what is presented as black and white is all grey to me.

Only sometimes can I distinguish whether an accent is Irish or Scottish, or whether a foxy redhead is a bonnie lassie or a pretty Colleen. And I’m less expert in matters of Mc and Mac than people have come to expect of me.

Fortunately, there is an easy way out of my dilemma. Based on my appearance, people often ask if I’m German. Since I speak more German than Gaelic anyway, henceforth, I should just reply, “Ja”.

Scottish or Irish? Nein!

Whatever you consider yourself to be, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you!

Please also read my brief and rather silly St Patrick’s Day article http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/March-2013/Seven-things-all-Torontonians-should-know-about-Ireland-for-St-Patricks-Day/

Unanswerable: “Did You Write That Play?”

Typical review of Eat Poo Love

GOOD EVANING

Did you write the play Eat, Poo, Love, which received nothing but four-star reviews at the Toronto Fringe Festival last week?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Asking me, [of Eat, Poo, Love] “Did you write that play?” is like asking a woman who has miscarried, “Did you have your baby?”

It was based on Paul’s blog, and conceptualized as theatre by my brother Dan. I wrote an incomplete first draft which I suggested we work on together to make a fully functioning first draft. But that fragmentary first draft was taken out of my hands and I didn’t see a script again until a few weeks before opening night. My input was no longer wanted. The moment I became aware that I was out of the writing loop, I knew I did not want to be involved in the show.

GOOD EVANING

Why didn’t you quit then?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

I knew it would be hard on me to remain in the show, but I thought it would be harder on Dan for me to make the hurtful move of “abandoning” him. He needed support from everywhere he could get it. Especially one of his brothers. The three of us are close. Just about anything any one of us does could be seen as a collective achievement.

But it was risky for me to stay in it. From the time I was excommunicated until about the fourth show, I was doing the Smeagol/Gollum routine: “Support the show”—“Sabotage it!” The acting challenge for me was showing up at rehearsals without speaking my mind. One performance, I screwed up my lines twice because as I waited for my cue I had been imaging addressing the audience with “This isn’t the way the script was supposed to go.”

GOOD EVANING

How was it hard for you to be in the show?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Just about every rehearsal, I was reminded to know my place—an actor. Physical and social pains that Paul and I suffered were clowned and directed, and I was made to watch without comment. Lines I had written remained senselessly in scenes that someone else had reshaped, and I was given no opportunity to amend things.

GOOD EVANING

Why were you “dumped” from the writing team?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

My enthusiasm can be unsettling. I’m a loose canon. Imagine writing a play with Robin Williams back in his cocaine days.

GOOD EVANING

Did you like the final script?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

In my view, it was not ready for the stage. It was not ready to be shown to a director, for that matter. It has significant flaws structurally and thematically. (There is one line near the end that, as a patient, makes me shudder.) But it was put on stage for seven enthusiastic audiences. Can’t complain about that. Daniel accomplished what he wanted to do; that is a success. And I want my brother to have success in whatever way he seeks it.

GOOD EVANING

Has this done permanent harm to your relationship with your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

No.

GOOD EVANING

Would you work with him again artistically?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Probably.

GOOD EVANING

Aren’t you causing trouble by saying these things in this somewhat public way?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

If I can’t talk about my writing, I can’t be a writer. I have to be free to answer questions like, “What have you written lately?” Could I have left my brother out of this discussion? Not if he was my writing partner. (This blog post is probably a good example of why he hesitates to work with me.)

I have to say these words in this place at this moment so that I can stop repeating them in my head and to strangers at bus stops. After two months of not writing anything, this is what I need to do to I feel I have my writing back.

I’d say, “The last thing I want to do is hurt my brother.” But that shit ain’t the truth. The last thing I want to do is have a false peace with my brother.

A line from the beginning of the play—a line Dan wrote—says you can’t have perfection; the best you can hope for is harmony.

GOOD EVANING

So, do you love your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Oh, fuck off.

Evan as Dino Carcinoma; Dan as Patient Q

Dreaming on Your Feet

I had a dream that my girlfriend and I went to the chocolatier and bought some Fair Trade chocolates for Easter. We got in the car and, as I was steering us onto the highway, she had both her feet pressed on top of mine. I couldn’t step on the breaks or the gas and could hardly see around her, cars rushing all around us.

My girlfriend had a dream that she was driving a getaway car, but my feet were in her way as she was trying to stomp on the gas.

We woke up, holding each other. Her feet were pressing down on mine. My feet were pushing up against hers.

Have we been stepping on each other’s dreams?

If we wake up, can I get safely home with my Fair Trade chocolate? And what is she going to get away with?

Please tell me your weird “when I woke up from my dream” moments.

Father’s Day Thoughts

“There are no born heroes,” the trainer of soldiers said in a psychology documentary. “The guy who put himself in harm’s way to protect his fellow men one week is hiding around the corner shaking in his boots another week.”

The hero is the one who does what needs to be done. Anyone who takes care of a child is a hero; in raising a child, there is much that needs to be done.

To be a father is to cease being one man and to become another man, almost like a king abdicating in order to become the tutor and protector of the heir to the throne.

When presented with a helpless infant, who wouldn’t do all that needs to be done? But why a man would choose that role, to decide to forsake his pristine autonomy and go and make his own helpless infant, beats the hell out of me.

One of my earliest memories is being pulled away from my father in the midst of a fun play fighting session. I asked in toddler talk, “What’s wrong?” I thought the way he was clutching his eye was all part of the game. Apparently my fist at that age was sized precisely to fit deep within an adult male’s eye-socket.

A middle memory of mine is of saying to Dad, “Wow, you spent a quarter of a million dollars to raise me, and then you paid for a degree that I don’t even appreciate. Pretty crappy investment, if you ask me.”

A more recent memory is of answering Dad’s question about a book he had turned his house upside down looking for. “That one I gave you for your birthday? I took it last time I was home.”

That all falls within the easy, harmless, inevitable part of fatherhood. The kind of thing that leads to balding and chest pains is like when I was seventeen, went out with the car in the afternoon and didn’t come back, or call, because I was out having fun. Dad got called, for professional reasons, at 3:30am and had to go out. I was nowhere to be found. This was before the age of cell phones. The police wanted him to come investigate a scene on the far side of town, very near our summer home, where they had found the body of an unidentified 17-year-old boy. That he wanted to kill me when I drove home at sunrise made sense to me even then.

It takes guts to be a father. Nerves of steel, patience of a saint, resourcefulness of a Scout leader, wisdom of a sage, indomitable determination, every penny you’ve got. Basically, a father has to have all the best qualities of James Bond, Gandhi, Gandalf, Buddha, King Solomon and King Midas.

What takes more guts than being a father? Go ask your mother.

Moving Experience

We were roommates in this west Montreal neighbourhood when the 90s had just begun. Now at an age when we measure our friendship in decades, she is moving home (does that phrase make anyone but us hear a Beatles tune…in reverse?). Home to our little east coast hometown.

Is this good? Is it bad? It’s home. Home is where you go.

What is she leaving behind? Fantastic restaurants and cafés, a plethora of festivals, magnificent architecture, and a mountain of joie de vivre! And a life partner who, like her, is beginning a new life.

Why? Because that’s what happens. When people say “you only live once”, they are speaking metaphorically. Right now she is taking a break from packing and watching TV, from which I hear strings playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. She is not the same person who walked down the aisle a decade ago, nor am I the same person who walked down a different aisle in Mexico a few months after that. When you get married, it’s not just to the person with the matching ring, it’s to the person they will become, and the person they will be after that. Sometimes you are lucky enough to love all of the people you marry. “Forever” is not always for everyone.

What is she taking with her? Cats, books, dishes, music, and a friend whose love for her has been deepening for 25 years. If we could pin down the exact date we became friends, this would be the Silver Anniversary of our friendship.

I won’t stay with her in our hometown. I’ll move her and her cats into their new place, visit my family and other old friends for a couple of days, and then I’ll hurry back to the person I’ll marry next (I love the people she’s been so far).

My oldest friend is back to fussing about what to pack and what to leave behind, but one thing that won’t get left behind, and won’t get lost or broken in the move, is me.

Happy Anniversary M.