Beyond the Six String Nation #3: Goodbye to the Wizard of Battery Road
Mentor, collaborator, friend – Chris Brookes
During what was probably my first trip to St. John’s Newfoundland, a fellow CBCer was giving me a thorough walking tour – taking in the landmarks and passageways between Water St. and Duckworth St. and heading out towards the famed Signal Hill. Down that hill on the north side of St. John’s Harbour is the community of the Battery, which looks over the mouth of the harbour and back at the city as it climbs the hill to the west. If you’re brave enough to navigate the tangle of streets, they eventually narrow to a public path that affords an alternate route up Signal Hill to the site of Marconi’s first transatlantic radio reception. I let my companion lead the way. As we passed by one of the more distinctive houses piled (or perhaps balanced) on the steep slope, she indicated a less well-known landmark:
“That’s where Chris Brookes lives. Have you met Chris yet?”.
I hadn’t.
”Oh, you’ve got to! He’s like this wizard who makes amazing things and is really important in the theatre community here!”
Little did I know I would return to make some of the best work of my life in that house in collaboration with Paolo Pietropaolo and Chris Brookes, who was so much more than a mere wizard.
Paolo and I had conceived a radio series that we wanted to challenge the CBC with. And I suppose we wouldn’t have been surprised if the broadcaster simply said no thanks. But, much to our surprise, they gave us the go ahead with the suggestion to partner with Chris Brookes. He was our senior in age and experience and if I wanted to be ungenerous to the CBC execs I might assume that the idea would be to use that age and experience as a check on our exuberance and iconoclasm. If that was indeed their strategy it backfired spectacularly but I suspect (as you’ll see in an excerpt below) that instead they saw something of a kindred spirit connection to be made and it truly changed our lives.
For all the ideas about “age and experience” or for all the honorifics like “wizard”, there was no one more lively, more genuine, more generous, more curious, more collaborative, more open, more enthused, more excited to be on the journey than Chris Brookes. The word that comes to mind the moment I think of him is “joy”. He took joy in so many things in his work and in his daily life. And every moment that we worked with Chris – whether in person or over the phone or by email – was joy for us. The thrill of working and discovering and playing and creating all at once is the feeling we’re all told we’re supposed to have in our work but that for most of us is so rare. Chris catalyzed that feeling for us and I still can’t get over how lucky I feel to have had that experience.
That experience and that friendship. Because working with Chris wasn’t an activity that you left at the office. It was a bond between us (and I know this extends to all of the creative collaborations he was involved in with people in that tight artistic community in St. John’s and with partners all over the world) that infused every part of life. Again, it was that joy. Joy is not a frivolous thing. It is a deep and potent appreciation for the myriad ways we connect to the world and to each other. And in all my interactions – in person or virtually – with Chris and his partner Christina Smith, that joy was palpable. Simple and palpable. Daily and palpable.
I described earlier the “tangle” of the streets of the Battery. It appears deceptively simple. There’s a very small community clustered along the steep side of the harbour and to access it you take Battery Road. But almost right away you are faced with the fork of Battery Rd. and Lower Battery Rd. And then Middle Battery Rd. And Top Battery Rd., which connects back to Battery Rd. Then there’s East Middle Battery Rd. and, finally, Outer Battery Rd. And several of those are dead ends. I remember one of the first times going to Chris and Christina’s place, loaded with all the separate devices one needed at the time: cell phone, iPod, PalmPilot. It was getting late in the afternoon on a very cold April day. April. So I wasn’t really dressed for winter but, having been to their place once before, I was sure I could make it there just fine by turning up my collar and rubbing my hands together. But one wrong fork became two became three became several retracings of steps. My fingers were fumbling from the cold as I reached one by one for my devices to check the address or call my hosts. And one by one the batteries drained before my eyes in the bitterly freezing wind (ironic in a place called the Battery). Eventually I discovered the trick of how to avoid the end of Battery Rd. and round the hulking corner onto Outer Battery Rd. There’s this aha moment of how the whole thing works and the revelation of the vista to the vast ocean below when you find that path to Chris and Christina’s.
Their home is kind of a palimpsest of the journey to it and of the craggy hill on which it perches. It is multiple levels and spaces and functions piled on top of each other. Every nook and cranny is cleverly used (I stole the idea of their kitchen rafter shelves for CD storage in my old loft). Traditional instruments and MacBooks jumble together with sound processing racks and the antique Pavoni hand-pull espresso-maker. In that warm and hospitable, cozy and creatively energizing place we had countless conversations, ate moose bourguignon (courtesy of Chris) and garlicky-lemony halibut (courtesy of Paolo) and wrote and recorded and assembled award-winning radio programs. It was the best I have ever felt – the most fulfilled. And none of it would have been possible had I only ever walked just the once past the house of the wizard of the Battery.
It completely crushes me to learn that Chris has died in that very house following a simple fall two evenings ago, after literally doubling back from the airport to pick up something forgotten for his and Christina’s trip to Avignon, France. The impact of his loss is profound for me and for Paolo and anyone who ever had the good fortune to work with him and for the entire community of St. John’s, of which he was such a foundational part. But of course nothing approaching the loss for dear Christina, such a true partner in life, art, culture and community.
In 2008, Chris received the title of Audio Luminary from the good people at the Third Coast Audio Festival. This is what I wrote in our nomination letter and it sums up everything I’ve said too lengthily here just because I can’t stop thinking and writing and trying to capture my feelings about this loss:
CBC Radio is a huge ship of a place. And although it's possible to find your bunk there and just settle in, the two of us [Paolo and I] were chafing at some of the constraints we found in our respective jobs – a little cabin fever, you might say. We knew we wanted to hear something different from the nation's public broadcaster and we had an idea of a direction we wanted to go in but we were, frankly, intimidated by the process of attempting to alter the course of such a ship when we were the equivalent of steerage passengers.
Fortunately for us, Chris Boyce of the Development office recognized some potential in what we wanted to do and made the life-changing suggestion of hooking us up with Chris Brookes in St. John's Newfoundland. Chris had been connected with CBC Radio for a long time – both as a staffer and as a long time freelance producer – so he was certainly familiar with our frustrations as well as our aspirations.
What was remarkable was that we found in Chris the compass for where we wanted to take our project. The territory we imagined to be uncharted had been thoroughly explored by him and yet he retained the most marvelous sense of adventure and discovery about the power of radio to tell stories in unconventional ways.
We very much worked in tandem as a crew on our series The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music. We all had our hands on the wheel and the two of us certainly felt our own confidence rise in the journey as we proceeded but I think we both felt that if anyone was watching the stars and guiding us in, it was our captain, Chris Brookes.
For lighting our way and the way of so many others attempting to make radio that heads for open waters, we would like to nominate Chris Brookes as an audio luminary.
Paolo and Chris and I were in the early stages of discussion for a project that would have “got the band back together” for the first time in 15 years. We had a Zoom meeting about it on Friday and it was almost like being in that house again together. We asked lots of questions and talked things through and laughed a lot and as we signed off we wished Chris safe travels. The news that came three days later was so devastating and I’m just… empty about it. But I’m also just so unbelievably grateful that we were able to have that time together and to say bon voyage, even if we meant it for something else entirely. And beyond that, I just feel so fortunate that I ever got to meet him and work with him and experience not the wizardry but the genuine magic that took place behind the doors of that house on the Outer Battery. Thank you Chris. Love you forever.
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