We Will All Go Down Together Read online

  Comments:

  Have you tried looking through the Connaught Trust’s balladry collection? Their Reading Room is open to the public from noon to midnight on every day but Sunday.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  It’s a private endowment, co-administrated by the Connaught family’s law firm and a subdivision of the Toronto Catholic Archdiocese. Really good for research, especially when it involves obscure folklore. The “Ontario ballads” were added around 1976, after the guy who compiled them’s last surviving heir finally died, and she willed them to the Trust. You’ll find the address in the White Pages.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Thanks! I’ll check it out.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  August 22, 2004

  Mood: Undecided

  Music: “Priests,” Judy Collins

  Title: A Trip to the Connaught

  Okay, so that was . . .

  You know, at this point, I don’t even really know. Offputting? To say the least.

  The place turned out to be on one of those weird little streets off the U of T stretch on St. George, which I’m obviously not all that familiar with to begin with, since I went to Ryerson. There’s the library, a big glass-fronted 1960s monolith, apparently hanging out of the sky at a truly scary angle—sort of reminds me of those cubist spaceships you’d always see on the front of U.K. science-fiction paperbacks in the early 1980s, by guys like Brian Aldiss or John Wyndham. And next to that, on either side, you’ve got the basic student services sprawl: converted town houses occupied by frats and (sorts?), crap-ass residential apartment complexes, cheap pubs, cheaper Indian and Canadian-Chinese cafeteria-style “restaurants,” the inevitable Second Cups.

  Plus, everywhere else you look, you’re already turning down another of these street-sign-less cul-de-sacs lined with increasingly threatening trees: maples, oaks, lilacs, all overgrown, pavement underneath covered in a muck of dead leaves. Seriously, was there some sort of post-Dutch Elm disease mass-replanting program nobody ever told me about in school? Because it’s kind of like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom in there, these days; go too far down one of these suckers, I’m surprised anyone ever finds their way back out.

  The fabled Connaught Trust, meanwhile, turns out to be a relatively big, weather-worn house completely shrouded in a tangle of pines so thick I could see what looked like four years’ growth of spiderwebs turning the sun grey whenever I looked up (which I only did the once, for obvious reasons). Cones and half-cones were piled everywhere along the path, crunching queasily underfoot like they’d just been left to lie there and marinate. If I hadn’t finally spotted the plaque on the front door, I’d’ve been out of there in about 2.5 seconds; unfortunately for me, though, I did. And I sort of thought I could see somebody in there too, looking out at me through one of the second-floor windows. . . .

  So I knocked: nothing. Pushed on the door, which gave in, slowly. The place smelled like Pine-Sol and dust, though you wouldn’t necessarily think that was possible. A Magritte print on the wall, above a row of hooks for coats: that one with the wooden picture-frame full of red brick hung against dove-grey wallpaper, above olive-drab panelling. And maybe it was just a trick of the lack of light, but that paper looked almost exactly the same shade as the paper inside the Trust’s hall, with the panelling underneath it pretty much the same shade, too. . . .

  Stood there and stared at it for a minute or two, more than a bit freaked out, hearing the pines creak behind me, afraid my collar wasn’t quite up far enough to spiderproof me completely. Until, thank Christ, somebody finally came downstairs—this completely normal lady, albeit just a little bit butch, with her hair back in a French braid and a very subtle gold cross pinned on her collar; the Church contingent, I can only assume, since I didn’t have either the wherewithal or the guts to ask her outright if she was a nun, or what.

  “I’m looking for the Ontario Ballads?”

  “You mean Torrance Sidderstane’s collection,” she said.

  “Um, maybe.”

  She nodded slightly, like I’d proved her point for her, and glanced back up. Said: “Second Floor, third door in. Ask for Sister Apollonia.”

  Okay, anyway—I’ve already gone waaay too far in terms of setting the scene, which is why I’m going to skip right to the good part. Turns out, this Sidderstane guy was trying to put together Canada’s own version of the Childe Ballads; went back and forth throughout Ontario and parts of Quebec for most of his life, taking down oral history and transcribing songs, starting right after the Boer War and going straight through World War One, up until he finally died of flu during the 1918 pandemic. And a lot of it’s the same sort of stuff you’d find in most other places, with all the doubling and crossover you usually get with Folk: I mean, we all know how all you have to do is Americanize something slightly, slide from Steeleye Span to Leadbelly/Nirvana, and suddenly “The Gorse and the Heath” becomes “In the Pines,” like a Sherlock Holmes locked-room mystery morphing into the Green River Killer’s A&E TV biopic—

  My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me

  Tell me where did you sleep last night?

  In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines

  I shivered the whole night through.

  (Sort of creepy, I guess, in context. Or maybe just creepy anyways, no matter what.)

  So I sighed, louder than I’d intended to, and I swear Sister Apollonia—a nice girl from what I could gather, Bride of Christ or no—looked like she was really feelin’ me. “You know, that’s not everything,” she said. “We’ve actually got another complete folio of material from Spring 1908, things he didn’t use in the book for one reason or another. Would you like to see?”

  Oh yeah.

  And here, constant readers, was the true pay-off to this lovely little adventure of ours. I don’t want to go too far into it, naturally, because I have a lot of work to do before I can trot it out in public . . . but suffice to say, I got my song, and it’s something I’ve genuinely never heard before. Which, given my encyclopedic memory for murder ballads of all kinds, does tend to imply it’s probably something you’ve never heard, either. Cool beans, right?

  So why don’t I feel more excited?

  UPDATE: I Googled the Magritte, BTW; turns out to be from 1934, not one of his more famous ones. It’s usually exhibited as “The Empty Picture Frame,” except for in the Marlborough catalogue of 1973, where Langui calls it “La Saignee”—“The Blood-Letting.”

  August 25, 2004

  Mood: Intrigued

  Music: “I’m Going Home,” Sacred Harp Singers

  Title: Curiouser and Curiouser

  After all that, I didn’t even try out the new song last night, during my first solo set at Gaucho Joe’s—Glamer for one, ha ha. But that guy did finally turn up again: Mr. Scottish My-Eyes-Look-Like-Cedar guy. He was standing in the back throughout most of it, right in the shadow of the bar; I actually didn’t even notice him until after I’d wrapped, when he touched my arm as I brushed past him, heading for my courtesy drink.

  “Well-played, hen. Y’are a proper—” but I couldn’t quite hear this last bit, something borderline weird . . . sounded sort of like “glee-maiden,” whatever that might be. “Thanks,” I told him. “You already fixed, or can I buy you another?”

  “Not tonight. You’ll sit with me though, yeah?”

  Well, apparently. It wasn’t just some sort of half-assed instant first date, though, all hunched over a candlelit booth back over by the bathroom door—turns out, this dude actually does know his stuff, when it comes to Folk. For one thing, he totally got what I’d been doing in terms of my roster, i.e. mixing and matching different versions of the same song: transpositions specifically paired to highlight the inherent resona
nces even when the tunes are explicitly different, like going from “House Carpenter” to “The Demon Lover,” “Bank of Claudy” to “Her Mantle So Green,” “Blackwaterside” to “Dark-Eyed Sailor,” “When I Was on Horseback” to “St. James Infirmary”—I am the king’s soldier and I’ve done no wrong vs. I am a young cowboy, I know I’ve done wrong. Impressive, and not something most people get even slightly, which I outright told him; got that same bad-teeth smile in return, with a startling side order of smoulder. “Most must not be listening, then,” he said, simply.

  Oh, rrrrrrowr.

  Which, granted, might’ve been either the lateness, the booze or the general lack of Josh and/or (even!) Lars talking, but even so. An hour or so after Last Call, we were still swapping song titles and making jokes about how much trouble you can save yourself in life by just listening to the lyrics, like so:

  1. If you are an unmarried lady, for God’s sake, don’t have sex, because then you’ll get pregnant.

  2. But if you do get pregnant, then for God’s sake, don’t tell the guy, because he’ll ask you down by the waterside—or the wild rippling water, the wan water, the salt sea shore, the strand, the lowlands low, the Burning Thames, or any area where the grass grows green on the banks of some pool—and kill you. Or he’ll run off, and you’ll have to kill yourself, then haunt him ’til he dies.

  3. On the other hand, if your unmarried girlfriend gets pregnant, for God’s sake, don’t kill her, or her ghost will make sure everyone finds out, and then they’ll kill you. Or you’ll get hanged, or kill yourself, or be carried off bodily by Satan. In any case, your last words will probably be: “Come all ye wild and roving lads, a lesson take by me. . . .” and the last three stanzas of your life will purely suck.

  See also: a former significant other turns up unexpectedly after a long absence, late at night, but refuses to eat anything, and also wants you to leave with them immediately; they say it’s no big deal that you’re now married to someone else and have a child with that person, while simultaneously making mention of a long journey, a far shore or a narrow bed, and being oddly skittish about the imminent arrival of cockcrow. Do you—

  A) Check their back for bat/fairy wings?

  B) Drop everything to book yourself the first available

  one-way ticket on a ship bound for those evil hills/which seem so dark and low?

  C) Kick ’em where it counts, and run like hell?

  D) None of the above?

  So the evening pissed away prettily, and I was pleasantly drunk by the time he loaded me into a cab, slipping me a card with his number on it. He’d already told me to call him “Ganconer,” and I’d already laughed in his face over the relative likelihood of that one—“fairy love-talker,” riiight, just like the Sheila Chandra drone remix version of “Reynardine:” And he led her over the mountain/Beyond her mortal life.

  Wasn’t until I woke up this morning that I noticed the family name written next to it, though—Sidderstane, like Torrance. Like the Ontario ballads collector.

  Have to remember to run my version of that song past him, when I’m done with it.

  August 27, 2004

  Mood: Content

  Music: “The Lake of the North,” by me

  Title: .mpg Link—Click Below

  Okay, everybody. Try this one on for size:

  To the Lake of the North I took my love

  And made of her a snow-white dove

  To the Lake of the North we made our way

  But ne’er returned by light of day.

  I took my penknife bright and sharp

  I pierced my darling to her heart

  I cut her hard, and sore I wept

  To find the place our baby slept.

  At the Lake of the North I laid them low

  With no road left by which to go

  So here may you find me, where they stay,

  And bury us all in the self-same grave.

  Comments:

  Dude, amazing! Are you gonna be at TellCon? Gonna sing?

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  You know it. See you there?

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  This really is something else . . . the tune’s a bit like “The Cruel Mother,” while the content recalls “Red Roses” quite a bit. Did Sidderstane’s book say where the lake is?

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Not directly. According to MapQuest, it’s up past Gananoque, somewhere between a place called Overdeere and a place called Dourvale, but they’re not exactly specific.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  You should record this.

  Posted by: [email protected]

  Thanks. I plan to.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  You do know there’s another version of this, don’t you? And that’s not the way you sing it, either.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Really? You interest me, let’s switch to ICQ. I’m GalToTheIt. How many versions are we talking about?

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  I’m FalseFace. Far as I know, there’s just the two . . .

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  [Subsequent ICQ chat logs were found to be missing for this time period.]

  August 29, 2004

  Mood: whatever

  Music: n/a

  Title: n/a

  Yeah, so suddenly my life has no soundtrack; sue me, bitches. It’s been a bad, bad day.

  Strike One: Daphinis got to fire me before I could quit.

  Strike Two: she got to do it after closing, so I couldn’t even make a scene.

  Strike Three: Renaissance—both of them, East and West—got bought out (by Starbucks), so no big Glamer-returns-in-style show. No public “Lake of the North” debut. No auditions for back-up. No nothin’.

  Strike Four: rent is due this week, plus I broke a crown grinding my teeth in my sleep, plus somebody popped the knob off the back door while I was having this particular dentally destructive nightmare and stole my freaking guitar. Who steals a guitar, for Christ’s sake? You sure as shit can’t pawn the things for much, even when you need to.

  And now Mister How is going to charge me for damages and a locksmith, like it’s all my fault. And I am, at this point, so broke I might well be unfixable.

  I mean—you just think things are going to change, you know? Someday. Soon. Ish. Think: Sure, I never got my degree; sure, nobody pays you to do what I was studying anyway; sure, I’m pushing thirty-five and alone, still living in somebody’s basement, and the only good part of that equation is at least it’s not my parents’. But things change, right, whether you want them to or not. Even if you did nothing but sit by yourself in a room for fifty years, you’d still get old and die. And that’s got to count for something, doesn’t it?

  Does it, fuck.

  Whenever I get like this, what I always end up remembering is . . . that time after Mom and Dad’s divorce, when Oren and I were really at each other’s throats, and they took us to play-therapy. And Oren, sneering, told the therapist: “Oh yeah, Galit always wants to sing those stupid songs because she thinks if she just does it long enough, the fairies will come and take her away.”

  So I bounced a china pony off his head, obviously, and the whole thing ended in tears and stitches. But you know? Yeah. Sorta. Even now. Because—Josh’s vaguely stalker-y stylings aside—these days, I seem to spend a fuck of a lot of time feeling like I could basically break my neck getting out of the shower, and it’d probably be a week before anybody ever thought to check on what that smell was. So no, I don’t expect Queen Titania to show up at my next busker job and whisk me away to Tír-na-nÓg, or anything . . . but it’d still be cool to think anybody might care enough about me to try.

  Oh God, shit. I don’t k
now what to do.

  Comments:

  You could always come stay with us, Galit.

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Who is that? FalseFace, right?

  —Posted by: [email protected]

  Pay no mind, hen. Do you still have my card?

  —Posted by: Anonymous

  September 2, 2004

  Mood: Cautiously optimistic

  Music: “King Henry,” Steeleye Span

  Title: And in There Came a Griesly Ghost, Stamping on the Floor

  Funny—and maybe just a little bit scary—how deceptively easy walking away from almost everything I own turned out to be, in the end. Funny, also, how fast the basic illusion of having money again seems to turn you back into a human being, in some people’s eyes . . . oh no, wait. That last part’s really not very funny at all.

  Ganconer wrote Mister How a cheque for damages plus next month’s rent, which got me to where I could at least hit Gaucho Joe’s up for an a cappella set on their Open Mike, and pass the hat to get me up back to Mississauga. Mom and Kevin have been hinting around wanting me to visit, and since they apparently keep my room open and stocked like the local Motel Six anyway, I can’t feel too guilty, except that I (inevitably) do. But that’ll pass. ;)

  Did the second version of “The Lake of the North” at the top of my roster, and that went surprisingly well; yes, the mike was a bit too loud, and I could hear all my consonants popping like bombs, but the breathy counterpoint had its own weird charm, as everybody in the audience seemed to agree, judging by the sound. Not to mention how the lights in there are so mercifully hot, it’s always virtually impossible to see exactly what’s going on beyond the first row, if that—though there was that odd flicker near the end of “Donologue,” my second song, during which I got a sudden glimpse of Ganconer talking animatedly with some chick near the couch-pit: her face backlit, a blur of motion hidden by hanging hair (red?), but I think she turned to smile at me, and I think he didn’t like that much. I think I could see the candlelight of a nearby table reflected on her teeth.