If you haven’t read parts 1 & 2 of this diatribe, please go back and read them – not just for the context of this story but also to be reminded of how it relates back to my dad, whose betrayal by so-called “friends” in his mid-40’s initiated a deep depression from which he only ever partially recovered. I mean, he did recover in the sense that he did other things and enjoyed life and was a terrific uncle (he never met his grandkids, sadly) and laughed and cooked and tried to play Gershwin and Waller and Joplin on the piano with limited success, but there was something at the core of him that was damaged by his experience – just like everyone is damaged by life in one way or another. Please don’t imagine that I think my experience or my dad’s experience were in any way unique or the worst thing that could happen to a person. But really it’s about being seen, being heard, being acknowledged in some small way for the wrong that was done. And that’s what this week’s post is really about.
I have long said that all anyone wants in life is to be recognized as one’s self. Some people are content to be recognized for something they’re not if it affords wealth and popularity but hopefully not most. Whether you make your mark by conquering nations or building towers or writing novels or setting records or tagging overpasses or discovering stars or cooking meals for people or making medicines or carving your initials on a tree or having a single other person say “thank you” or “I love you”, everyone has their threshold for feeling seen. And let’s be honest, there are millions of people who perhaps never do have that feeling and that is an absolute human tragedy. Simple and true acknowledgment is something every person on earth should want for every other.
And let’s acknowledge also that I am writing this from a place of immense privilege. I have had that feeling of being seen so many times in so many ways: from the personal and intimate love of others to public recognition in abundance. I have had the tools and opportunities to reach out into the world and connect with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other people – not the least of whom being you, dear reader, who are following these words that I write now. But at the risk of seeming ungrateful for those privileges, I think it’s important to call out what happened to me – that made me feel completely invisible – partly to exorcise my own demons, partly to explore this resonance with my father’s interrupted path and partly to expose to sunlight some of the poison that courses through the veins of a sometimes beloved and always important national institution.
I mentioned in my previous post how I’d been exiled to a kind of internal gulag to host and produce Nightstream for RadioTwo and how my previous experience (and, to be fair, ongoing experience with my producing partners on special projects) of being a valued contributor and collaborator was sometimes faintly visible through the glass of the little isolation booths where I recorded my vocal parts for the computer-generated overnight show. I was so cut off from colleagues in my windowless office in a little-used corner of the second floor of the Broadcast Centre that I would kind of lose track of time and of myself. I would battle the drudgery and fatigue of producing this pile of radio excrement by nipping down to the atrium café for a coffee or – when something more bracing was required – a Coke or chocolate. The pace was relentless, producing seven five-hour shows a week and trying to get ahead so I could take some time off and get the hell out of there AND spend extra time trying to import tracks I loved into the computer library so I wouldn’t feel like such a wazzock (thank you, Craig Charles, for that term) – all while simultaneously working on writing and producing The Nerve with my fellow Earbones, Paolo and Chris.
I was exhausted all the time and I’d grab the worst lunches from the shitty food court under the building. I was so miserable and I just kept getting fatter and redder in the face. I was getting up in the middle of the night probably three times a week to be sick and it was just like that was the way that it was rather than taking it as a sign of something very, very wrong. It felt like nobody in my day to day at CBC looked straight at me, as if they saw my humiliation but couldn’t acknowledge it. I’d occasionally bump into my former producer, AM, in the hall and she’d cheerfully introduce me to the latest celebrity they’d brought in to pilot a new show on the revamped network as if I wasn’t miserable doing my daily grind, as if I didn’t look like a complete wreck. And yet I was the one who felt ashamed.
I had worked my ass off and banked about three weeks worth of Nightstream shows to go out in the future so that I could take time off and go on a long-planned trip to Italy with Sarah and her parents. A producer friend with whom I’d been very close, BS, who’d worked on Global Village with us a bunch of times – including on some special projects in Germany and Sweden – had been seconded onto the management team to transition RadioTwo to RadioMusic and called or emailed one day to tell me that our boss, MS, had decided he wanted Nightstream to have a different sounding final hour to the program starting on a particular day and I’d have to remake 25 hours of radio from scratch in order to meet that demand. I felt the bile rising as it had been three nights a week and ran out of my office to the nearest washroom to barf. It was a small washroom near the atrium-overlook on the second floor and it was empty. At first I was grateful for that. But then I started to choke. I managed to stand up and back out of the stall and when I turned around and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, my face was purple and my throat was swollen and my eyes reminded me of a horse in a burning barn. I was gasping to draw breath. I was terrified I was going to die there in this washroom and I thought I’d stand a better chance of survival if I could collapse out in the hallway by the atrium rather than there on the floor. So I kind of hurled myself out of the washroom and hit the wall opposite. The violence of that impact cleared the obstruction and I stood there heaving and gasping and crying. No one came by. From there, I went straight to BS’ office and sat opposite him, my face and eyes still red. I told him I was upset about MS’ demand to throw out work I’d already done. BS – this person who’d been a real friend at one point – looked at me with eyes as cold as a killer and said, “It’s radio. Things change.” I was stunned by the callousness of the remark and must have looked as much. For a moment his steely facade dropped and his eyes softened. He tried to resurrect a one-word joke we’d had between us about a mystery-flavoured Swedish chip snack that had become a kind of shorthand for us. Now it seemed like he was grasping at straws just tossing it out to say something remotely human to me. At that point I think he realized that what was happening was real and would not be papered over with Löksmak. At that point he called in our Canadian Media Guild union rep, TN, and we sat there a while talking about what might be done. I was given a medical leave, during which I went off to Italy with Sarah and the in-laws, away from the intense stress I’d been under.
Upon my return, I visited my doctor who recommended a medical leave of three months. During that time, Invisible Cities, that I created and produced with Paolo and Chris that CBC had turned down, won an award and I received a personal call from Hubert T. Lacroix, then President and CEO of the CBC, to congratulate me. He asked how things were going with me and I told him outright that things were terrible and that I was on a leave of absence to recover from an intolerable condition of work. Clearly he followed up with MS because I soon received a call from the union asking whether I had called Lacroix to say the things I’d said. I told them that, in fact, he had called me but I didn’t deny calling out my boss. That apparently was a bridge too far. Soon, I was told that the CBC was disputing my need for a medical leave and the HR department requested that I have a consultation with their approved psychiatrist. For whatever reason, I believed that transparency and a willingness to go through the proper channels would prove my case so I agreed, which was stupid of me. I went to the appointment with Dr. Bruun-Meyer on October 22, 2008 – less than three weeks after returning from Italy and the debut of The Nerve on Radio Two. Bruun-Meyer talked to me very calmly and – in that way some therapists have of making you feel like you’re exploring something on your own – basically told me that I was having difficulty accepting that my career was over, clearly not realizing that I was still creatively engaged in other non-full-time projects at CBC that were both fulfilling and extremely successful. Somehow he convinced me that maybe my time was up. His verdict – delivered not to me directly but to HR – was that I could return to work immediately. MS called me to a meeting. I called the union and said, “What’s this meeting about?” They said, “It just a meeting to welcome you back to work and to get you resumed making Nightstream”. I told them I couldn’t do that. They told me that if I refused to resume making the show I’d be guilty of insubordination and would lose my job. I just could not return to that environment – especially with no one acknowledging the clear toll it had taken on my physical and mental health. And that was that. My former producer AM got in touch to say that she’d write a glowing thing about all the great things I did with CBC Radio and send it out to the company to announce my departure and wish me well in my future endeavours, as if it was all a decision that I had made willingly. It was all happening in a blur and it felt like I was surrounded by phoney smiles and that AM was just holding the door for me on the way out of the building. MS, of course, didn’t say a word.
I feel like I’ve laid out way too much detail for anyone who is happy in their work and perhaps triggered others who know the feeling all too well, but there’s one more aspect to share of this saga, which I’ll do next week.