Julia Lockwood

            On Thursday morning I memorized the chorus of “Sparadrap" (Plasterwrap) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my Canadian Literature tutorial. It was depressing to do so because I'm still pissed at my TA for the low mark she gave me for my first essay. If I get A grades in fourth year papers it doesn't make sense that I would get a B minus on a second year essay. 

            She spent more than the first half of the tutorial giving people close reading pointers, with two examples of student essays. She said people lose marks for vague or missing thesis statements; limited or missing discussion of form. She said what makes literature is form rather than just word choices; limited or missing textual evidence; paraphrasing instead of analyzing. Textual evidence needs to be interpreted. Language must be specific and not broad or ambiguous. Say it simpler, more concisely and with brevity. Comma placement is often wrong. Read aloud to know where to place the comma. Quotation marks need to be outside the punctuation. If the passage says the same thing you are saying you are paraphrasing. Use formal structure to support analysis. Support form analysis with textual evidence. A good title is both descriptive and interpretive. An example had a thesis about the white gaze. Connect back to the thesis statement in the essay. 

            For the last fifteen minutes we discussed David Chariandy’s Brother. 

            I said that the emotional range of the story is book-ended by the two songs sung by Nina Simone. “I’m Feeling Good" expresses real hope while "Ne me quitte pas" expresses impossible hope for things to be as they were before with someone that’s already on their way out the door. But then at the end an unnamed song is played but it’s fairly obvious that it’s "I'm Feeling Good" to show that hope has returned. 

            Food also works in the story to convey memory. 

            I asked if there is some reason why Chariandy fictionalized some features of the neighbourhood, such as having Lawrence Avenue cross the Rouge Valley. She thinks that since he wrote it in Vancouver long after living there he might have just forgotten. 

            I had chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I went to Freshco where I bought four bags of grapes, a half pint of raspberries, a pack of chicken drumsticks, five year old cheddar, Greek yogourt, canned peaches, a brick of cheaper old cheddar, Old Dutch chips and a jug of orange juice. 

            On my way out I stopped to get some money at the bank machine. Since I started getting my pension I have more money in the bank than I had when I was two thirds of the way through the money I inherited when my father died. 

            As I was walking to my bike I realized I’d forgotten to buy paper towels and so I went back in. 

            I finished reading the required poems by George Herbert for my Introduction to British Literature course. It’s very boring religious poetry but he does thinks with the text that seem very modern, such as using all caps with certain words and shortening and lengthening lines for visual effect.

            I wrote some notes in stream of consciousness on David Chariandy’s Brother to begin my final essay. It looks like I’m writing about the music that is referenced in the book. I need to get a first draft of the essay with a thesis so I can write and submit my essay outline and then move on to my second British Literature assignment: 

            The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” bookend the emotional range of David Chariandy’s Brother. “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley expresses hope while “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel deals with the despair of loss. “Ne me quitte pas” is about someone begging their lover not to quit the relationship, while making impossible promises and unrealistic arguments to keep them from leaving. These absurd pleas such as “I’ll travel the globe / till after my life ends / just to cover your skin / with the light of gold" convey the futility of hope in the face of the fact that the lover will not be turning around. But in the case of this story the refrain of “ne me quitte pas," meaning “please don't quit me now" is used to address other losses with which one has not yet come to terms, such as the loss of a father by abandonment, the loss of opportunity and the loss of a brother's life. 

            Michael’s earliest memory and only memory of his father has what is probably "Feeling Good" as its soundtrack. The "brassy horns" of this "happy" song and the type of joyful dancing that its rhythm and beat demanded fits perfectly with Nina Simone’s version of “Feeling Good." It is a song that held a family together, that lifted boys into their father’s arms and sent them in orbit around him. The last time their mother danced. The same song returns when in their shared loss of Francis, Jelly places his headphones over the mother’s ears and they smile together. The lonely voice of Nina Simone “forever looping back” with the opening to “Feeling Good.” 

           Like “I’m Feeling Good”, “Ne me quitte pas” first appears described rather than named. During a meeting between the two people who will be lost, one of them, Samuel begins to sing badly and quietly in French while Francis stares awkward, shy and uncomfortable, into the street.” He later explains that just before Francis died they used to meet to listen to music. Francis had first heard Samuel humming the music and had named the song, “Ne me quitte pas” and pronounced it correctly. They played Nina Simone’s version at least twelve times. Her sweet and sad voice. Laughed when Samuel sang. Joke and secret that the music connected them. Understanding and feeling the heritage of love of the old music. 

           Finally we hear one of these songs and the low voice of a woman cutting the silence. Mother frowns as if in pain, gestures upward. “Volume.” 

           These two songs as sung by Nina Simone came out of the civil rights era, the time of Martin Luther King and reflects the food, dreams, hopes and volume. 

           The absent father of Michael and Francis is a composer. Once a composer has written a piece of music it is often performed without his presence. He is the absent father of his works of art. The interpreter of the composer’s work is the conductor. Jelly is a conduit both for music and for food because he is both a chef and a mix master. He pulls the two together, orchestrates the harmonies between tasting and listening to establish and renew connections. He unites genres, brings cultures together. Everything gels because of him. Jelly can be food, balm, lubricant, and a conductor of current between electrode and skin. 

            The music becomes the very reason that Francis dies as he defends Jelly’s opportunity to orchestrate it and demands his recognition as a maestro. It is this defence of Jelly that culminates in Francis’s death by police gun. The police live outside of the culture and the music stops when they enter. Music is the vehicle for rising out of despair and for submarining through it and the music’s suppression creates a deeper trap into which Francis falls. It is only through connecting to the music through Jelly that Michael and his mother are able to reconnect with Francis and return to hope. 

            The taste of music and the musical tastes and where it comes from and who sings it. The made up names of the modern hip hop artists versus the real names of the old Soul singers like Otis Clay performing "A Lasting Love" after the slow, dirty beat of the drums lays down a rugged path for the voice to kick in. The tortured voice of Nina Simone singing “Ne me quitte pas” as if life itself depended upon her not being left behind. 

            I rubbed a pork cottage roll with cloves, mustard, salt and honey and started roasting it. I chopped and sautéed a red onion, boiled three tiny potatoes and had those with gravy and a slice of the cottage roll while watching Interpol Calling. 

            This story begins with a millionaire named Howard calling Interpol because his daughter Louisa has been kidnapped, but she hasn’t. She is living happily with her fiancé Ronald Millais. Howard knew this but called the police anyway. At first Duval is pissed off about this but he knows that Millais has a reputation for marrying rich women and then dumping them after he has their money. That Duval would become involved with something like this in his capacity as an Interpol inspector is even less likely than an Interpol officer carrying a gun. He tries to talk with Louisa about Millais but she won’t listen. Duval learns that Millais never divorced his first wife and thinks he can catch him as a bigamist but he reveals that his first wife died. He gives Duval the death certificate. Duval goes to see Dr Martin who signed it. He reveals that the first wife died when her car went over a cliff. Duval goes to Rome to meet Carlotta, Millais’ second wife. She lost all of her money to Millais and now has to work as a hostess in a nightclub. She says she thinks he tried to kill her in causing her car to go over a cliff. She jumped free just in time. Duval brings Carlotta to Switzerland to meet Dr Martin. She says she recognizes him from a photograph that Millais had. Martin is Ronald’s father. Martin admits that the first wife died before going over the cliff. He says his son is a psychopath and could snap if pushed. Duval learns that Millais has had a will drawn up leaving everything to Louisa. That must mean that Louisa has done the same for him and that they don’t have much time. Millais and Louisa have gone on a picnic in the mountains. Duval goes after them and when he arrives with the Swiss police Millais grabs Louisa, trying to push her over the cliff before Duval gives him two “karate” chops to set her free. Millais escapes down the mountain and steals a truck. Duval pursues him by car but ultimately Millais goes over a cliff and the vehicle explodes. Duval’s karate chops were very much part of a trope that was popular in the fifties and sixties but then dwindled out when real martial artists started making movies.

            Louisa was played by Julia Lockwood, the daughter of British film star Margaret Lockwood. Mother and daughter acted together on stage, on television and in film several times. Julia played Heidi in a TV series about the character. She was obsessed with Peter Pan and played Wendy opposite her mother. At the age of 18 she finally realized her dream of playing Peter. Her first adult role was in the sexy comedy “Please Turn Over”. She was a regular in the soap opera “Compact”. After the sitcom “Birds on a Wing” in 1971 she retired to her 14th Century farmhouse to raise her family.