Pandemic Odyssey
by
François Houle
François Houle at Terry Fox Statue, Thunder Bay, © 2021 François Houle
“C’est un moment existentiel, c’est un moment aussi intellectuel où on peut collectivement se demander d’où on vient et où on va. Et qu’est-ce qu’on fait, comment on s’organise et comment s’explique la crise dans laquelle on est?”
En d’autres termes, il faudrait faire du problème “un élément déclencheur pour penser plus largement notre rapport au monde”
“It’s an existential moment, it’s also an intellectual moment when we can collectively wonder where we come from and where we’re going. And what do we do, how we organize ourselves and how can we explain the crisis in which we are?”
In other words, we should make the problem “a trigger to think more in broader terms about our relationship to the world.”1
–Alain Deneault, professor of philosophy at the University of Moncton.
Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.
–Plato
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Back in early 2019, I set out my grand plan to move to Europe, after 29 years in Vancouver, British Columbia. My intentions were to meet and collaborate with like-minded musicians, and to eventually secure enough work touring and performing to be able to move permanently. My journey began simply, equipped with a few grants from the Canada Council for the Arts to last me a few months. I moved in with my girlfriend In Basel, Switzerland. I spent the following months composing, producing a few albums for my Bandcamp label (Afterday Audio) meeting with musicians and festival and club presenters, as well as planning a recording session in NYC with my new quartet. Things progressed nicely after attending the JazzAhead conference in Bremen. I had several tours planned, recording projects organized, all the way through the end of 2020. New recordings were piling up in the cans, and the writing of new tunes turned from painfully slow to a steady flow, bolstered by hope and a strong sense of renewal. Things were on the up and up.
Then it all came crashing down within a few weeks at the start on 2020 with the news of my older brother being diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a virulent form of brain cancer, and soon after by the devastating effects of COVID-19 on our lives. These two events basically forced me to stop and take stock of where I was at with my life, my family, and my work.
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From its distant origins in Wuhan Province in China, the coronavirus seemed to cause very little concerns to the western world. I pursued my touring activities as planned, with performances and recording session in Vancouver and the West Coast of the United States, with stops in LA, San Francisco, and Seattle, before heading back to Switzerland for more concerts and recordings there. It was not until a cruise ship in San Francisco was put into quarantine at the end of February that I realized the potentially devastating effects of this virus, and how it was about to completely derail my plans for the foreseeable future.
By mid-March the covid-19 pandemic hit the world hard and countries began closing their borders, and major airlines were aggressively grounding long-haul flights. Prime Minister Trudeau was urging Canadian citizens abroad to come back home as soon as possible. On March 18, a flurry of phone calls and emails to presenters confirmed my worst fears. All the work I’d put into creating gigs, tours, and a steady flow of income, came crashing down.
I was left with no options but to pack up and leave after a year in Switzerland. As I am diabetic, and identified as “high risk,” the decision to head back to Canada was a priority. I was further motivated by the fact that my travel health insurance was due to expire within a month, and the only way to renew it was to do so on home soil. My initial plans were to renew my insurance upon returning to Canada in mid-March for a tour with Chimera Trio (a new trio project with Halifax musicians cellist Norman Adams and pianist Tim Croft), but that option was simply swept away with the pandemic measures. After spending several days pouring over carrier websites and Expedia, I managed to get a flight to Montreal with Swiss Airlines, thanks to a friend in Zurich who worked as a flight attendant for that company. It was the second to last flight to Canada of any airlines, scheduled for March 21.
With no possibility of returning to Europe soon, given how the virus was spreading at an alarming rate, I opted to part ways with my girlfriend and fly to Montreal to be near my brothers. I was devastated, reeling from a broken heart and the loss of all the work I had so carefully created. Within a period of just a few days I had been robbed of my identity as a working freelance musician. I was lost, like so many people in the arts world. To make matters worse, my older brother was severely being weakened by his cancer treatments. Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitabar’s moving words about his art resonated in my mind: “Music is a tool for preserving my sense of personhood, it is so I don’t forget that I am a human being.” Much had to be done to reclaim that sense of order.
The Zurich airport was deserted, except for a handful of Quebec tourists heading back home. The airplane was barely at a 10th of capacity, with empty rows allowing for passengers to lie down and catch up on sleep during the eight-hour flight. I couldn’t sleep, my mind replaying the nightmare of the days leading to this hurried departure.
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“And so much of the most powerful art has been made from people who started with nothing. Let’s actually treasure the sense that we’re right up against what we don’t have, and therefore something new has to be created and imagined and invented and brought forth like a flower, something that is just a seed. That is the miracle. That is why we’re on Earth.
“It’s always scary. But if it’s not scary then you’re not making art and you’re not living life. That’s the job description.”
–Peter Sellars
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Back in Canada, the fourteen days of quarantine began with snow, and solitude. And a sense of loss, a deep feeling of despair and fear of the unknown. What was I going to do? I was offered refuge at a friend of my brother’s sons, who owned a house in St-Hyppolyte, in the Laurentians, just north of Montreal. On the way there, in a car brought to me by one of my younger brothers at the airport, I drove alone on deserted highways. We arrived in separate cars at the little country house near Lac Conelly where I was to spend my time between a small bedroom and an unfinished basement. My brothers were dropping off food and a good supply of red wine for the duration of my confinement. I spent the first week feeling lost, drinking heavily, and sleeping throughout the jet-lagged days. After a while I began walking and riding a bike for hours every day, trying to shake out the depressive torpor I was in. I was rewarded with a pinched nerve in my lower back, probably from dehydration, stress, and an unfamiliar bed. I tried to put my mind to work, writing project grants and communicating with a few colleagues in Vancouver who were as desperate as I was to figure out the “next step.” Netflix and the obsessive reading of news online stalled my efforts at every turn.
It was not until I moved into my younger brother Daniel’s place that I started to formulate a plan to get out of my deep funk. It was thanks to several late-night conversations with him, along with a long chain of texting with a friend in Wrocław, Poland, that I slowly came back to my senses. I set out to reclaim my own happiness, something that had been squashed out of me over several years of a deteriorating marriage and the frustration of time slipping between my fingers. I began reading about mindfulness, of talking with my brothers about what makes us stronger, more empathetic, and ultimately happy in life. I quickly realized that my own happiness hinged on my ability to take care of myself and my loved ones, and to find worthy causes to work towards. My brother Daniel’s message to me was simple and clear: “You are too talented and successful to remain idle. You can tap into your impressive amount of connections with likeminded people throughout the world. You should dig deep within yourself to find what makes you who you are.” The most obvious thing that has always given me pleasure is the joy I took in sharing music with people, so why not start there and see where it takes me.
My first goal was to move back to Vancouver, where I’d get reunited with my kids, whom I missed so much over the previous year, and to reconnect with a music community I was a part of for three decades. To do that I would have to either fly to Vancouver, which was not the best option given the state of the pandemic, still in the midst of its first lockdown at the time, or driving. The latter seemed the best and safest option. So, I began to formulate a plan to cross Canada by car. After receiving a sizeable tax return from the Canada Revenue Agency (the Canadian equivalent to IRS), and applying for CERB money (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit), I purchased an old, beat up chili red Mini Cooper convertible. The next step was to figure out my itinerary, and logistics such as where I’d sleep, eat, etc.
Wanting to give myself ample time to plan the trip, I decided to leave around mid-June. From April until June, I contacted many friends and acquaintances to ask if I could pitch my tent in their backyard, as most hotels and campgrounds were closed, or fully booked. Wanting to play it safe, I purchased a tent, sleeping bag, and a few travel items such as a cooler and camping supplies. The response from close musician friends and colleagues was overwhelming, with everyone offering not only support, but to help organize small gatherings and do a little bit of playing to enhance my visits.
That’s when I realized that this trip offered me much more than the opportunity to perform concerts across the country, as we often do at that time of the year, being jazz festival season in Canada. It was a journey of self-discovery and affirmation, in addition to a really cool way to reconnect with friends and make new ones. Not only was it reassuring to think that I could count on my music community to make this trip possible, it made me realize more than ever the value of having invested so much energy over the years striving to be a good colleague, to be a positive force, and to celebrate others’ accomplishments as much as my own. The music scene is built from the energy of musicians working for years towards touring, networking, meeting, planning and playing with people from all over. We constantly have to find ways to be heard, to remain visible and relevant on the scene. It’s just not possible to survive otherwise, unless one’s willing to wear a lot of different hats, as educator, sideman, producer, consultant, grant writer, etc. Most musicians struggle to find a balance between work and living a healthy lifestyle, hoping to find happiness on both sides. The elusive nature of that balance is further complicated by the usual sacrifices expected to gain the attention and respect from peers, critics, and listeners. With the pandemic stripping away our opportunities to perform and engage with the public, we are painfully reminded that, as Shannon Peet mention to me in a June interview in Ottawa, “We are all haunted by how to make use of this time we have.” This ecosystem exists and grows out of a shared common goal to simply play music. This goal is often buried under the crushing daily necessities of surviving as a working musician. But when it matters most, in difficult times, it reveals itself as an invaluable ally one can navigate and learn from.
While discussing the idea with friends, the possibility of setting up backyard solo performances seemed like the way to go, and if space was sufficient, to open things up to duos and possibly trios. My itinerary began to take shape, with planned stops in Ottawa, Toronto, Guelph, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Jasper, Banff, Slocan Park, Kelowna, and finally Vancouver (eventually adding Bowen Island to the itinerary). What emerged from the conversations with the music community was a desire to communicate, to exchange ideas and simply play, with no agenda or expectations other than engaging in the act of playing. Sarah Fine articulates this perfectly by saying that “Art sustains us when survival is uncertain ... Laughter, stories, play, dance, music: we learn that these, too, are basic needs and fundamental components of decent human lives.”
My journey was also inspired by the story of the Canadian athlete Terry Fox, who ran from Halifax to Thunder Bay in 1980 after the amputation of his right leg, due to the cancer that eventually took his life. His Marathon of Hope inspired me to organize a fundraising campaign to raise money for cancer research, in the name of my older brother. With the help of my friends Carol Yaple and Richard Klasa (a cancer specialist), I was able to speak with people at the BC Cancer Foundation, who walked me through the steps of registering an online fundraising campaign.
My older brother had never been on a plane in his entire life. And here I was wondering when the next flight and tour would take place. That sort of put things in perspective, doesn’t it? The decision to drive across the country was fueled by the idea to do things a bit differently, perhaps with a tinge of nostalgia, reimagining what touring jazz musicians lived when traveling by bus for months at a time in the 1940s and ‘50s. To do this trip solo reminded me of the great “coming of age” books I had read a long time ago, like The Motorcycle Diaries and Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. Terry Fox’s inspiring marathon echoed loudly in my head as I made my way through Ontario, arriving in Thunder Bay, at the very spot on the road where he couldn’t go any further.
My brother was only 20 months older than me. The news of his condition hit home pretty hard and opened my eyes yet again to the realization that our life and time on this planet is so brief (my father passed away from lung cancer at age 51). Just when my brother was beginning to think that the hard days were behind him, finally reaching a point in life where he could truly begin to enjoy the fruit of years of hard work, raising a family of four boys, and saving enough to ensure a leisurely retirement, his life came crashing down.
He was examined on Boxing Day, after a relentless case of hiccups that started on his birthday, December 24. The CAT scan and MRI revealed a tumor the size of a golf ball near is left frontal lobe, an area of the brain responsible for speech, emotions, and some motor skills.
He had surgery a few week later in January, followed by an aggressive, month-long daily dose of chemotherapy and radiation. The effects were devastating on his body, and tested his will to survive. Following these treatments, the tumor grew back to its initial size within a month, prompting a second operation which would cause him to lose some of his cognitive abilities, the most evident one being a partial inability to express emotions. The operations and subsequent treatments were in effect simply buying him some time to live a few extra months, maybe a year or two, according to the doctors’ most optimistic projections at the time.