Wild Violet online literary magazine » John F. Joyce

Perceptions of New York

John F. Joyce — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:52:35 +0000

Like it or not, New York is in our ether. Many songs, plays, books, and films perpetuate the allure of New York. I recently visited Manhattan to explore its mystique and not spend too much on accommodation.

Before travelling I decided it would be wise to know which of the three airports I was going to arrive at: John F. Kennedy, La Guardia, or Newark Liberty International. I landed at Newark and took a bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It also helps to know the street grid system; I stayed at 59 West 46 Street, which is off Times Square.

“An Englishman in New York,” by Sting, is one of my favourite songs, since it entices the British part of me to compare New York with London. Times Square reminded me of Piccadilly Circus with people shooting photographs and sitting on steps. Piccadilly Circus has a memorial fountain and statue of an archer, popularly known as Eros, and Times Square has a statue of George M. Cohan, the composer. Both places are renowned for digital advertisements and the theatre world.

From the Visitor Centre at Times Square you can buy discount theatre tickets and start a walking tour. I suppose one could arrange a rendezvous there, but not at the Virgin Megastore, since it no longer exists. The Port Authority Bus Terminal or Grand Central Terminal would be better places to meet, though, since there are fewer people.

I couldn’t imagine driving in New York, even though many people do. I couldn’t imagine cycling in New York either, even though some people do, like David Byrne of Talking Heads. I walked a lot and used buses and trains but not the A-Train.

While going about, I spied many interesting things. In particular, I was curious about the distinctive water towers I saw perched on the tops of buildings. I later learnt they were built up there, because it was once difficult to generate the necessary water pressure for the uppermost floors.

There were people everywhere, often quite fashionably dressed, going about their business with confidence and poise. Some smoked while huddled around the entrances of the buildings, the windows of which don’t open. Others merely stood in the centre of the street, hailing yellow taxis.

New York seemed to have no distinctive smell, unlike other cities. In London, for example, one can smell the River Thames from almost any location.

The city is, of course, noisy, but not excessively so. It takes trams to really increase the soundscape. Maybe I should have listened to John Cage’s silence 4’33” while I was there?

It wasn’t long before I was in a quandary about New York. Why would anyone want to live in such a crowded city? A city where no one can open windows! It doesn’t have the history that most European cities do, nor the character of London. The ostentation of the rich and famous ascends with the acquiring of an apartment on 5th Avenue or somewhere overlooking Central Park. Why? I found my answer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At the Met I spoke with a woman whose sketching group was doing justice to Bernini’s Statuette of Saint Agnes. The latter was looted from some Italian villa by Napoleon’s boys and somehow escaped J. Paul Getty’s Associate Director for Collections. Any day now I’m expecting to read an Italian court seizure notice on this artifact. She said, “New York is all about people. So many beautiful places in the world are boring, but New York has interesting people. It’s the people that create its energy.” Well, I figured, since I was in New York, I would deem myself to be one of these “interesting people,” and from then on I began to truly enjoy its many allurements.

One of them was the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on 5th Ave, where I soaked in a Kandinsky exhibition and ignored the notion that this building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was actually more interesting than any of its exhibitions. I also visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where there is a sculpture of a New York Water Tower by the British artist Rachel Whitehead. Coincidence?

A Small, Green Piece of Paper

John F. Joyce — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:42:49 +0000

Six Degrees of Separation is a play and film written by John Guare about the conjecture that all people are linked by five intermediaries. Six Degrees of Separation is standard theatre fare. Most people have seen it once but probably don’ t go out of their way to see it twice. I recall the play introduced me to Kandinsky’s paintings.

One afternoon, not far from the Sea Bus terminal in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, per chance my eye doctor mentioned he was visiting London for a short holiday. Since I had attended the English equivalent of high school in Chiswick, I mentioned some not-so-well-known visiting destinations, one being Hampton Court, where I was born.

The doctor became interested and made notes on a yellow notepad, adding that he often visited London, as his daughter lived there. Since he was clearly not writing a prescription, I relaxed and mused as to what would entice a Canadian girl to live in London. An actress, a gothic cathedral researcher or a druid fan? The doctor quickly solved my puzzle. His daughter was an actress appearing at the Old Vic in a play called Six Degrees of Separation.

I knew of the theatre and had once or twice visited it with an older cousin. I must have been about twelve and recall it was here I was first addressed as “Sir” by the usher, a memorial event for any twelve-year-old, signifying the then-welcome march of time. In recent years, there have been other age milestones not welcomed, including these eye appointments. The doctor wrote something more on a small piece of green paper and handed it to me, saying he wanted me back in four months. I exited through the large waiting room; I saw no one I knew. There used to be paintings of mountains and war canoes hanging on the light green walls, plus one Tony Onley work. In recent months, these have been replaced by enlarged psychedelic photographs of the eye, somewhat Kandinsky-like.

Later that day I Googled the production. In the cast were Anthony Head and the doctor’s daughter, Sarah Goldberg. Anthony Head was the name on which I froze, since I had gone to school in Chiswick with his elder brother, Murray Head. Murray was a year older than me. In those days everyone was at least one year older. Now, of course, everyone tends to be younger than me. On leaving school, Murray went on to short-term fame as a singer and actor. I went on to university to study electrical engineering. I see that he is singing in France these days; and we both are not famous but linked by a green piece of paper.

Heat Wave Contents

Two Islands: England and Eel Pie Island

John F. Joyce — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:18:05 +0000

London in the early sixties; a backdrop of rhythm and blues music on a small island in the River Thames; some forgotten insights into those days.

Anglers have fished along the banks of the River Thames since time immemorial.

“Did yer catch anything?” is a common greeting to these surly folk.

“Naw, not today. Had a few bites.”

Nothing has changed with them ― neither their keep nets, fishing rods, Thermos flask of tea, gruff speech patterns nor the fish they seek: dace, perch, roach and eel. They dislike the latter because it tangles fishing line. For most anglers the coming and passing of the Beatles was of no consequence; fathers fished with their sons in harmony, undisturbed by the new generation of music. I was an exception.

Located about 16 kilometres from central London, Eel Pie Island in the River Thames, Twickenham, was a nascent centre for British rhythm and blues in the 1960s. In the summer of 1963, I frequented Eel Pie Island Hotel to listen to the Rolling Stones. They had made a 45 single called “Come On,” a Chuck Berry song that was played on the crackling 208, Radio Luxembourg. For a young person living in South London, it was a rite of passage to walk across the footbridge and visit the dimly lit Eel Pie Island Hotel’s dance hall with its beaming floorboards.

I now reside in Vancouver, Canada, but often return to towpaths of the Thames, encompassing Richmond, Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston, Hampton Court and East Molesey; the swans, deer in the neighbouring parks, trains and train stations have not changed since my youth. No, 1963 and ’64 were not idyllic years. I was just a teenager growing up in postwar Britain with little in common with my parents. I had ceased fishing ― but what is amazing is how regularly I am reminded of those days by way of the era’s music and its now aging mega-star personalities.

You could buy fish and chips and eat them out of newspapers, paying with only a half crown. Many young men of the time wore Italian suits and pointed shoes but not on Eel Pie Island. Cords, jumpers and college/university scarves were the norm. Girls were gypsy-like; it was an era before the mini skirt. Only a few people owned transistor radios and only certain young people had a telephone at home, or as it was said in those days, were “on the phone.”

I recall one summer Sunday evening sitting on the grass outside the Eel Pie Hotel, drinking cider and staring at the River Thames. We thought we were hip, drinking amongst a pseudo-student crowd. Just youth. Licensing laws were strict, but the drinking age was vague. There were no drunk driving laws, but back then we didn’t drive. You had to be twenty-one to vote, but you could be drafted and killed at eighteen in a foreign war. Of course, if you lived in Northern Ireland, you might be twenty-one but still not have a vote. The word Empire was not dated, and England was proud of the Commonwealth ― although restricted immigration was in place due to some 1962 act of Parliament. But we were not sure if that meant anything. Then, people lived in England, not the U.K., and England was not part of the Common Market and unconvinced it should be. The first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was issued in 1964 and made the front pages of newspapers, but people still smoked everywhere. What didn’t make the headlines then were the 1963 findings of a few scientists of carbon dioxide emissions. We didn’t know anything about skin cancer; and we thought “the more sun the better.”

Our counterparts in Berlin and on the Left Bank in Paris were discussing serious topics. But the Eel Pie patrons were like soccer fans, except we spoke of groups and venues and not players or teams. We all knew of someone who was in a musical group band or who was going to start a band. Was the music we were listening to any good? Well, yes, but so was the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, of which we were unaware.

Tennis Above the Net

John F. Joyce — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:09:06 +0000

A look at the sport of tennis, with its mannerism and perceptions.

Writing about tennis is easy, but playing it well is difficult, and I know if I am too critical of the sport and its players, then I risk not playing very often, as nobody will want to play with me. But since this article does not offer advice on how to improve one’s tennis game, most tennis players are unlikely to read it. Tennis players are interested in only two things: how to improve their game, and their next game.

We have all seen one of those 1930’s Agatha Christie plays or films that have 40-year-old couples wearing long white sport clothing and lobbing a few “darlings” at each other while drinking gin and orange at their Dorset Cottage. Maybe tennis epitomizes the long gone British Colonial days? You still see some players wearing long whites in July, and there is always one South African player walking around with a pure white jumper. No one plays with wooden rackets, white balls, or wears white plimsolls anymore, but there does seem to be a frozen-in-time feeling to the sport.

I asked some young snowboarders on a quad chair at Sun Peaks what they thought about tennis. Of course, there was the usual lack of enthusiasm to talk with anyone over eighteen. They said they knew some kids who once tried tennis, and one of them had an uncle who played. There was no interest in tennis, as it had no resemblance to anything extreme. It is a pity, since I have often witnessed young men playing singles whose athleticism and valour would outdistance most hockey players.

A popular television image of tennis is one of tanned and toned girls dressed in tight clothing, adjusting their underwear every four minutes. This is not IMAX material. Regardless of how the sport is painted, it persists in having an indolent and retiree image. How often have you picked up a brochure promoting an adult community resort with smiling fifty-five-year-olds standing in new tennis shoes and holding tennis rackets? Now for next year’s photograph can we have a picture of them on the court serving and doing overhead smashes, please? It would sell the sport, and the resort, much better. Then there are, of course, the tennis girls. They claim that they “don’t work.” Some of them even boast that they have “never worked.” If they had not married, well, I am not sure what they would have done. When not walking off the court they are either shopping for tennis clothes or taking a Pilates 2 class.

The thirty-seven tennis matches from the Professional Tour fuel tennis players of all ilks. The so called “Grand Slams” of tennis eclipse all other matches, prompting tennis enthusiasts to have a stack of blank videotapes or a new CD burner hooked up adequately. The tennis year commences on a hard court at Melbourne Park, Australia: in late May it moves to clay at Roland Garros, Paris. Six weeks before the first Monday in August, tennis talk is grass at Wimbledon. The rowdy US Open takes place at Flushing Meadows, New York, on another kind of hard court. Tennis players like to attend live tennis matches, especially if there is a famous player to be seen.

Tennis players watch a lot of tennis on television and excitingly relive the details of games between Roger Federer and Tim Henman, including all the break points and tie breakers: 7-6(3), 7-6(6) — can you tell who won? Tennis players know the difference between Venus Williams and Serena Williams, and know that Roger Federer comes from Switzerland while Ivan Ljubicic comes from Croatia but lives in Monte Carlo. Greg Rusedski? Bit of confusion of here; he comes from Quebec but plays for England and is even part of the Sir Cliff Richard’s Tennis Foundation!

Women’s single tennis is more interesting than men’s singles because the women tend to have longer rallies than the men, who serve and volley, or just serve very hard, and move onto the next point. But the mystique of men’s singles remains. Of course, no one is interested in watching doubles, especially mixed doubles. Really, though, can you name any top doubles players besides Grant Connell and…? I agree doubles is tactical, fun, and social, but still, no one cares, or wants to watch it. Tennis players have a guilt complex about watching so much tennis, but remain in the fantasy that it will help their tennis game. That’s like thinking that, just because you watch Lance Armstrong during the Tour de France, you will be a better cyclist.

Looking Down from a Ski Chair

John F. Joyce — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:44:18 +0000

The world looks different from a ski chair, and everyone feels different moving through the air. This ride up Todd Mountain at the Sun Peaks Ski Resort in British Columbia, Canada, will take approximately eight minutes. I will rise 780 meters, according to the trail guide in my zipped pocket. Loading and unloading from a chairlift are always harrowing moments. If you get things wrong, it’s awfully embarrassing. I slide onto this quad chair with no problem, but it requires faith to board a ski chairlift when it’s a cloudy day at the bottom and one can’t see the summit of the mountain or where the lift ends.

I see snow-drenched spruce trees, Englemann Spruce interwoven with vast stretches of ski runs and with the occasional diminutive skier carving out the hill. The roofs of toy-land chalets, each one a little bigger, pass beneath the chair. Do owners often use these beautiful dwellings? How do they occupy themselves in the evenings after a soak in the hot tubs? Read Pride and Prejudice, solve jigsaw or Sudoku puzzles?

There is a dull sound as the chair scoots along with a snare drum-like triplet as it crosses a tower. The latter has a sign reading Doppelaut, reminding one that there is always a Germanic-Swiss influence on a ski resort. In the chair ahead, a couple sits close together. They have made it clear they do not want me with them. Will they kiss before the end of the ride? Behind me, three Japanese snow boarders have hung back so they, too, could be on their own chair together.

This morning being midweek, there was no need to yell “single” in order to advance. Before taking the chair I read we’d had five centimetres of snow overnight, it was minus 11 degrees Celsius, and the last chair would be at 3:30 p.m.

The Christmas season at a ski resort is long and never seems to end until Easter Sunday, when three or four Easter Bunnies hand out tiny Easter eggs. At the bottom of the chair, I heard snippets of conversation among the clatter of other voices and languages and laughter.

“Happy Birthday Claire.”

“Let’s meet for lunch at 12:15, in the Café Casa.”

“We will start with an easy blue run.”

“Wo ist Heinz?”

“Anne Marie, my boots are hurting.”

Some high roller was barking into his cell phone in what sounded like Hungarian. I wonder how they get cell phone reception around here. There were European train-station aromas of coffee and cigarette smoke, and someone was whistling a tune I couldn’t place. The resort takes on a desolate quality during the day, with only the ill and newly arrived sauntering through the shops and bistros. The homeward plodding of the weary skiers commences at about 2:30 p.m., according to the pseudo village clock.