Dynamite walls
One evening, in my first year at university, many years ago now, a pair of friends of mine burst into my residence room and demanded I grab my toothbrush and some toothpaste.
'Put your math text down (this was in the second semester of my first year, when I very briefly entertained delusions that I was to be a physicist [psychotic. I know]). We don't care that you've got a test tomorrow - we have to go. Now!'
'What? Where?'
'Just grab your toothbrush and let's go!'
And so we drove up to the north of Vancouver Island, to some random national park, having bought jelly doughnuts on the way, and sat on a log, watched the stars and listened to the lapping of the Pacific for about fifteen minutes.
The point had been to just drive. To just go.
Then, because it was very cold, we got in the car and drove back, listening to REM's Document on cassette over and over - paying special attention to 'It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)'. We arrived back in Victoria at about five the next morning and I failed my test.
I would say that the best album of 2004 was Hayden's Elk-Lake Serenade, but the Hayden track that makes my heart bother me quite a bit, just brimming with homesickness, is 'Dynamite Walls', from his previous album, Skyscraper National Park. The lyrics go:
'High beams showing falling rock warnings and construction work slowings. The engine blazes as the elevation raises but the dynamite walls contain us. Everyone's watching for animals crossing through the part of the glass that's defrosting.' - My God. That is the alpha and omega of Canada for me. I am no flag-waver in any sense. I do not wear a Maple Leaf flag on my backpack (although the backpack is from Mountain Equipment Co-op - whose logo is the secret sign between Canadians abroad who do not want people to think they are like those Canadians who wear Maple Leaf flags on their backpacks, but still want to nod to each other knowingly on some Shibuya platform station). All patriotisms reduce us to monkeys. And yet…
And yet nothing. The nostalgia I have for this vision of Canada is just silly. It is a nostalgia for rural Canada, which, while breath-catchingly beautiful, is, truthfully, full of bookless idiots. They do not listen to Hayden in rural Canada. They listen to Toby Keith and Shania Twain. It is fey urban hipsters, who ironically decorate their Toronto apartments with Expo 67 kitsch and wear Edmonton Oilers touques from the seventies even though they have never been to a hockey game in their skinny hipper-than-thou lives, who listen to Hayden. I have spent time in rural Canada, and I know some people can hack it, but I cannot. Birch trees in winter are as trancendent as a good beer buzz, but I cannot abide the social conservatism and acceptance of limited horizons. So I don't know what I'm nostalgic for exactly. The Vancouver/Toronto/Montreal urban experience is not markedly different to that of other cities. And even then, the cities are full of bookless idiots too. The majority of them listen to Shania Twain there as well. It is only a minority of city dwellers who listen to Hayden.
In the end, diminishingly, the conclusion must be that the world is full of people who do not listen to Hayden.
Still...'High beams showing falling rock warnings and construction work slowings. The engine blazes as the elevation raises but the dynamite walls contain us. Everyone's watching for animals crossing through the part of the glass that's defrosting.'
No one in Europe can understand this, except through having watched an inexact imitation of it in American road movies. And it's not that I especially enjoy meeting other Canadians overseas. That's almost as bad as meeting them in Canada.
Nonetheless, there is no wilderness here. There are no falling rock warnings and construction work slowings.
There are no dynamite walls here.
'Put your math text down (this was in the second semester of my first year, when I very briefly entertained delusions that I was to be a physicist [psychotic. I know]). We don't care that you've got a test tomorrow - we have to go. Now!'
'What? Where?'
'Just grab your toothbrush and let's go!'
And so we drove up to the north of Vancouver Island, to some random national park, having bought jelly doughnuts on the way, and sat on a log, watched the stars and listened to the lapping of the Pacific for about fifteen minutes.
The point had been to just drive. To just go.
Then, because it was very cold, we got in the car and drove back, listening to REM's Document on cassette over and over - paying special attention to 'It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)'. We arrived back in Victoria at about five the next morning and I failed my test.
I would say that the best album of 2004 was Hayden's Elk-Lake Serenade, but the Hayden track that makes my heart bother me quite a bit, just brimming with homesickness, is 'Dynamite Walls', from his previous album, Skyscraper National Park. The lyrics go:
Open your eyes, put it in drive, get on the road and just go. City lights turn to tree lines and national park signs. The mountains approach with more winds in the road and the air turns to falling snow miles away. Just up ahead it doesn't matter what any of us is looking for. We'll never find it because it's not even there. High beams showing falling rock warnings and construction work slowings. The engine blazes as the elevation raises but the dynamite walls contain us. Everyone's watching for animals crossing through the part of the glass that's defrosting. Miles away just up ahead it doesn't matter what any of us is looking for. We'll never find it because it's not even there.
'High beams showing falling rock warnings and construction work slowings. The engine blazes as the elevation raises but the dynamite walls contain us. Everyone's watching for animals crossing through the part of the glass that's defrosting.' - My God. That is the alpha and omega of Canada for me. I am no flag-waver in any sense. I do not wear a Maple Leaf flag on my backpack (although the backpack is from Mountain Equipment Co-op - whose logo is the secret sign between Canadians abroad who do not want people to think they are like those Canadians who wear Maple Leaf flags on their backpacks, but still want to nod to each other knowingly on some Shibuya platform station). All patriotisms reduce us to monkeys. And yet…
And yet nothing. The nostalgia I have for this vision of Canada is just silly. It is a nostalgia for rural Canada, which, while breath-catchingly beautiful, is, truthfully, full of bookless idiots. They do not listen to Hayden in rural Canada. They listen to Toby Keith and Shania Twain. It is fey urban hipsters, who ironically decorate their Toronto apartments with Expo 67 kitsch and wear Edmonton Oilers touques from the seventies even though they have never been to a hockey game in their skinny hipper-than-thou lives, who listen to Hayden. I have spent time in rural Canada, and I know some people can hack it, but I cannot. Birch trees in winter are as trancendent as a good beer buzz, but I cannot abide the social conservatism and acceptance of limited horizons. So I don't know what I'm nostalgic for exactly. The Vancouver/Toronto/Montreal urban experience is not markedly different to that of other cities. And even then, the cities are full of bookless idiots too. The majority of them listen to Shania Twain there as well. It is only a minority of city dwellers who listen to Hayden.
In the end, diminishingly, the conclusion must be that the world is full of people who do not listen to Hayden.
Still...'High beams showing falling rock warnings and construction work slowings. The engine blazes as the elevation raises but the dynamite walls contain us. Everyone's watching for animals crossing through the part of the glass that's defrosting.'
No one in Europe can understand this, except through having watched an inexact imitation of it in American road movies. And it's not that I especially enjoy meeting other Canadians overseas. That's almost as bad as meeting them in Canada.
Nonetheless, there is no wilderness here. There are no falling rock warnings and construction work slowings.
There are no dynamite walls here.
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