They had me at Green. The second or third piece of the concert. I had the words in my head, unable to chase them away. It is ironical. The show is called Stories Without Words – Symphonic Harmonium. Above all, my eyes were full of water, seized with a sharp and sudden emotion.
Posted October 9
I made it a point not to make eye contact with my friend Josée, a few seats from mine, in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, so thatstory without words don’t become water story. Two weeping willows, Josée and me, when we surrender to our emotions. Don’t you dare tell us about our teenagers who are at risk of leaving the nest! The sap rises too quickly.
Nostalgia is a hard drug and music is a soft drug. Nothing makes me more nostalgic than music. I invariably reconnect with the melancholy of a preadolescent heartbreak when I hear Everybody Wants to Rule the World from Tears for Fears. I rediscover the jubilation of my adolescence when the radio plays Mala Vida of the Mano Negra or spring summer by Jean Leloup.
The new wave pop of Soft Cell or Human League will always be associated with my mother, getting ready to go out in the 1980s, who asks me to advise her on a dress to wear. I remember myself, on the floor of our suburban house, at 12 or 13 years old, advising him of the green one, which recalls the color of his eyes.
Harmonium’s songs inevitably send me back to the time when my father bought the entire discography of Serge Fiori’s band on CD. The heptade and The five seasons have become the official soundtracks of the house.
These songs remind me of privileged moments shared with my father, our discussions on politics, hockey or literature, while I discovered his record collection (from Led Zep to Brel via T. Rex and Félix).
I hear the music of Harmonium and I think of my father. The Orchester symphonique de Montréal performs the first notes of Green, under the direction of Dina Gilbert, and I am deeply moved. How Simon Leclerc’s arrangements moved me when the album came out symphonic harmonium, two years ago. The reaction is visceral. Any attempt at a rational explanation is useless.
“Every time I listen to it, I am overwhelmed. If my dad were still alive, I would so much like to listen to it with him”, the artistic director of the record and the show, Nicolas Lemieux, confided to me when the album was released.
My dad turned 74 last week. For his birthday, I invited him to this OSM concert. A rare father-son outing. He warned me, “If I fall asleep, you’ll kick me in the ribs.” We agreed that I would only wake him up in case of extreme necessity: that is to say, if he started to snore. No risk. He tapped his foot beside me, he hummed as soon as he recognized a melody, he conducted the orchestra with his hand, his index finger folded over his thumb.
During the intermission, I introduced him to Josée and her lover Jérôme, who knew Harmonium when he arrived in Quebec from Mexico in the mid-1980s. Before Josée, he explained, who discovered the music of the gang to Fiori at CEGEP, like many others. My father told them how, as a good Gaspesian, he cooked his lobster in seawater, which he went to fetch in rubber boots. He passed on to me his way of eating lobster, red and green included, especially not forgetting all the pieces of flesh from the carcass, which is the best.
I’m talking to you about transmission, heritage, legacies, music, seafood (in our country, we pronounce “crab”, as it should be) to avoid tackling another subject. I’m getting to the age where you start worrying more about your parents. I have friends who have lost their mother or father (sometimes both) in recent months and years.
The vague idea that my parents won’t always be there, in my neighborhood, is just beginning to cross my mind. I’d rather not think about it. I have a grandmother who lived to be 105. I cling to his genetics and his longevity. My father is fine, I assure you. But he is aging like everyone else. And I find myself suddenly dreading the moment when I will no longer be able to talk to him about the setbacks of the Canadian or the PQ, the most recent novel by Alain Farah or the music that unites us, that of Leonard Cohen and the Beatles, of Louis -Jean Cormier and Serge Fiori.
Leaving the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, we met Louis-Jean, precisely, accompanied by his daughter. “I love your dad,” my father told him. I love you too, dad.