Beyond the Six String Nation #2: A Perfect Imperfection

A post about my late dad, Donald Hamilton Taylor

Me and my dad at my UofT graduation.

My photographer Doug’s dad, Bob, died in March and, of course, it made me think of my own dad. My dad died in 1997 – surprisingly, for a generally long-lived family. It was all a terrible cascade of infections and bad luck that derailed his treatment for non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and left us without him far too soon. He died before he got to meet his grandchildren, my sister Annalisa’s kids, Callum and Anika. He died before the ubiquitous internet so he has no digital footprint whatsoever. I’m pretty sure this picture of him above is the only one on the web. I think he would have enjoyed the internet. He died long before Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton changed Broadway. He definitely would have got a kick out of pointing out his middle name to people.

He also died before Six String Nation came to life, though he did know about it. I remember telling him and his friend Ken Waldie about it when I first hatched the idea and he was very encouraging. I had learned to be wary when dad got interested in things I was interested in. As a kid, he bought me the Apollo 13 model and then took over building it when things got “tricky”. He built me a darkroom in the basement so I could use the photo-developing kit my parents got me for Christmas and then ended up doing most of the “tricky” stuff. My dad was a union executive, labour negotiator and educator. I was into music and film and TV. Later, when a bid for Director of District 6 of the United Steelworkers Union failed (there was a devastating “night of the long knives” kind of deal involved – something that resonated for me with my departure from CBC – more on that another time) he and his friends started a business doing educational videos on occupational health and safety. I joked that when my dad found out I wasn’t following in his footsteps, he changed his footsteps to make it look as if I was.

I say “I was into music and films” as if he wasn’t but he really was. I remember going as a family to everything from Charlie Chaplin series at the Hollywood (or was it the Hyland?) to 2001: A Space Odyssey to the hilarious films of Jacques Tati. At a screening of Tati’s Traffic, he laughed so hard that he literally fell out of his seat and was crawling in the aisle, doubled over with belly laughs. As for music, he was into New Orleans jazz, George Gershwin, contemporary folk but most especially Scott Joplin and other ragtime music and – above all – Fats Waller. He wasn’t so interested in much of the music I was listening to but once, when I was listening to Sparks’ Propaganda (or was it Kimono My House?) in my tween-cave (one end of the laundry room with a Viking record player in it) he poked his head in and asked “What’s this?”. A couple of years later when I told him that Sparks were working on a project with Tati, it all made sense for him (Tati died before that project was completed).

This is a piece I wrote for The Awesome Music Project Canada: Songs of Hope and Happiness – an anthology of writings about music with contributions from a bunch of amazing Canadians. Proceeds from the sale of the book go towards research and programs dedicated to the transformative impact of music on mental health and wellness. More at theawesomemusicproject.com

A Perfect Imperfection.

While it’s tempting to write about the countless times I cranked up Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” or New Order’s “Your Silent Face” or Pete Seeger’s banjo rendition of Beethoven’s 9th to change regular old tears into tears of joy and release, there’s another story that always makes me keenly aware of the extraordinary power of music.

While I was growing up, my dad did several extended contracts with the International Labour Organization in different parts of Africa. When I was fifteen he took a two year job in Kabwe, Zambia. By that time my music obsession was well established and I fancied myself a master of the cassette mixtape, making them for friends and girls I was interested in. It was also my main way of communicating with my parents; I found it easier to play them a song that captured where I was at than go through the uncomfortable business of expressing complicated feelings in words. In fact, my parents were concerned that my obsession with music and DJing was getting in the way of making sensible decisions about what I wanted to do with my life. So, perhaps not surprisingly, instead of writing my dad letters I made him mixtapes and sent them off by mail to Zambia, where he had a combination shortwave radio/cassette boom box that served as his home entertainment system.

My mother, sister and I visited Dad in Kabwe in the summer of 1978 so I got to know that player pretty well. One tape I had sent to Dad earlier included a mix of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Side B started with Gabriel’s “Indigo”.

Before our arrival, the player had chewed the tape part way into the song. Dad had rescued it from the rotors and re-spooled the cassette but the song was marred by a distinctive garbly squelch about two seconds long. I still can’t hear that song without hearing that squelch in my mind at the precise moment.

Two decades later, when I was 36 years old, my dad went into the hospital for cancer treatment but ultimately wouldn’t return home. One day I went to visit him and found him in bed with his Walkman on the little tray in front of him. He asked me to put the headphones on and pressed PLAY. I heard the sounds of Peter Gabriel’s “Indigo”, and soon, right on cue, that familiar squelch. He had saved the tape all these years.

When I took the headphones off he said, “You know, when I heard this tape I knew you were going to be OK. It was so smart and so well-chosen and sequenced, and it told such a story about who you were and what you cared about. I realized you were in better shape than we’d given you credit for.”

It was an answer to a message I’d sent my father twenty years earlier, preserved in a damaged cassette and a perfect imperfection.