HUMAN WRECKAGE

Time Was…

A disc jockey on Alberta’s public radio station last week introduced a live track by Calgary’s Co-Dependents as a cover of “an old Rolling Stones song.” Granted, the CKUA morning host wasn’t the usual grizzled old veteran who I suspect sprinkles Purple Windowpane on his granola sometimes, but still, the description tripped my expectation to a Jagger-Richards composition from the mid-sixties. The golden oldie given a reverent run-through spun out as ‘Faraway Eyes,’ released in 1978. Because every notion in my head has been dumbed down to social media shorthand I thought, “WTF!?”

Gee, I guess four decades gone, baby, gone qualifies a tune as “old” even though I consider ‘Faraway Eyes’ a relatively recent addition to the Stones catalogue as their studio output has since dipped, dived. I was 18 then, so much wiser than I am now because I knew everything and if I didn’t know what I was talking about, I at least formulated a passionate, uninformed opinion.

Honest to God, it was just last week in Montreal, though I haven’t even lived there for 28 years, that I bought the Some Girls album at Deux Mille Plus on Mansfield the day it came out. A day or two later a dream came true, I scooped the extended, eight-minute version of ‘Miss You’ backed with ‘Faraway Eyes’ on pink vinyl, an expensive French import with a spectacular sleeve featuring a rose-hued duotone portrait of the Stones, at Rock en Stock on Crescent.

This recent CKUA collision of the passage of time and the elasticity of memory prompted me to buy a new telephone address book. Other people freeze in a crisis. My old book was indispensable. It has travelled the continent and across oceans. It began life with block printing done with a soft lead pencil, complete with left-handed smudges. Various colours of updating ink were added; bits of sticky correction tape. Antiquated business cards crammed inside gummy plastic slots. Directional detour arrows drawn, the alphabetic sequence gently nudged out of order at the M tab due to space limitations.

I spent Monday flipping through the back pages of my life in Alberta and my career in advertising. Why did I have dealings with the general manager of the Medicine Hat Blue Jays? Must’ve been program ads and outfield wall signage; regrettably I never did get down that way to watch a baseball game under the prairie sun. Does Palmer-Jarvis even exist anymore? How did I ever cross paths with Steve from McCann Erickson’s Seattle office? Numbers too for pre-press film houses and a photography developing lab; how quaint.

My friend Tim has been a bit of a gypsy. My contact information for him stretches from Montreal, to Calgary, to Toronto and back to Calgary. I even have his mother’s phone number because she was so kind to me when I was growing up and much later on when I would visit Montreal in the guise of an adult I would always make an effort to say hello to Tim’s mom. My friend Marty has been a stalwart in North Vancouver for years although I don’t believe I need Marty’s home fax number any longer. Kevin, Rene, Jim, Paul and Dean could be master criminals, changing area codes and ditching burner phones in dumpsters behind 7-11 stores.

My old address book is a melancholy treasure chest. X marks the spot: ex-bosses, ex-colleagues, ex-friends, ex-wives and ex-girlfriends. Exit. The truly painful part is the roll of the dead within its pages: disease, natural causes, suicide. They comprise the letters I can no longer write, the e-mails I can no longer send and the long distance calls I can no longer place. My little black book of the blues.

My new address book is like a resolution made on a cold, late night in December: slim, fit! I’ve culled my dead contacts, written the survivors down in harder graphite. Tim’s been pared from a full page to a name, a city and a cell phone. If he moves again I won’t have much erasing to do. If I ever require his street and house number, I can just call him or send an e-mail request.

Meanwhile, I’ve read that the Stones are working on a new album which just goes to show that nothing’s really changed: not my friends – old and new - no one, nobody and certainly not me and so I need an updated address book even though I really don’t.