The Hazards of Love

Once upon a time a buddy of mine and me (well, mostly a buddy of mine) staged the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love. This was 2011-2012. We'd originally tried to stage it in 2010 but Players' Theatre was like, "You have no book, you have no actors, you have no plan, so uh no."

So over the winter of 2010-2011 my buddy and I squirrelled ourselves away in his office on the 5th floor of the Arts Building and wrote a book to connect up all of the songs, acting out the romance and the drama between us with the janitors walking up and down the halls and the student protests crashed like waves on the shields of the riot police. And we went back to Players' Theatre in August 2011 and brought them the book and brought them evidence of the performance rights and brought them the album and brought them a Plan and they said, "Oh cool, let's do it."

So we staged auditions and we wandered all over campus holding auditions in the student union building and the lobby of the music school and friends' basements and I think on the street, perhaps, at one point; and we drove up to the garment district to purchase burlap in bulk; and we spent two days painting leaves on the floor of the black box we were staging the thing in; and at one point I got kicked in the face and took an abortive trip to A&E; and then before we knew it, it was Showtime and the Gazette was there.

Anyway, 13 years have gone by and I don't listen to the album much anymore because it was such a Moment in my life and I feel a sort of reverence about it, and no one seems to mention it, or mention the Decemberists at all really, anymore. They're still putting out music and I still listen to it but not with the wide-eyed wonder of hearing Picaresque or Hazards for the first time.

But Jeremy Keith mentioned it recently in the context of Brad Frost's Cold Album Drumming project and it reminded me of a good old day when we dared, and when we won, and when we got our name on Wikipedia and citation-ed up so heavily that they can never take it off.

When I was but a wee lad in the back of my family's 1997 Chevrolet Suburban and we were living in Montreal, the worst part of my week would be our weekly swimming lessons in Pointe-Claire. These were family-mandated. I wasn't much of a sporty kid: I didn't go out for hockey in winter, was maybe less-than-mediocre at soccer, which my dad coached in the summertime. I developed a weirdly intense enthusiasm for rollerblading that lasted only a couple of years. But when I think of childhood sports, I think of swimming.

I think of Pointe-Claire's strange tent-shaped pool building; think of the high-up plexiglas windows lining the gable that you'd only notice when doing the backstroke. I think of those timing clocks with four hands in different colours. I think of graduating to the grown-up pool within after getting my bronze badge. I think of the badges! I wonder what happened to those.

The funny thing is: looking back on all of those Wednesday nights, driving home in the midwinter darkness, under the orange glow of those high-pressure sodium streetlights which have lately all been swapped out for high-efficiency LEDs, I'm proud of myself. I've never felt ungainly in the water, swimming out to the island on Lake Sir John or to Pooh-sticks bridge, in the waves on the beach. I know I'm privileged to have been able to attend swim lessons—I recognise that privilege and I'm grateful for it. My parents were right. I do appreciate those swim lessons that I dreaded back then.

I've got a swim membership at the Mill House Leisure Centre in Hartlepool now; I've gotta get back on track if I have any intention of finishing my sprint triathlon later this summer in good time. It feels good to be back in the water. Hartlepool keeps their pool a lot warmer than Pointe-Claire did. But the heating cranked up in the changing rooms, the smell of chlorine, the black stripe on the bottom cutting through the vivid blue of the bottom of the pool, soothes me—even while I gasp between strokes on the front crawl. Swimming feels like wearing an old piece of clothing that still fits. Like the smell of an old house. I missed it without knowing it.