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Flying to London, I met an artist. Not on the plane, at the airport. A “young man from a farm” who is a singer-songwriter, who posted his songs on various social media, media whose names I can’t even remember—I’m too old to go there. His international audience likes his pieces about the humour in being Canadian.
I suppose a lady feels prettier around men; I feel older around youth. And that’s OK.
We met while reading our books, him with a haircut so youthful I didn’t even know the name. Not a mullet. Maybe a muffin: sides short, hair spilling over on top. And me with my conventional short hair, cut using my barber’s #2 razor.
Shane William Kimber noticed my anime ball cap, from Japan’s Studio Ghibli run by Miyazaki, Japan’s version of Walt Disney. We both liked the soundtrack of the Oscar winning movie Spirited Away (The show that put Disney’s nose out of joint, since they had distributed it to play for only one week… and then it won the Oscar)
I said I owned a two-volume set of Miyazaki interviews, in solid print. “What’s he like?” Shane asked. “He respects children” I replied, “and keeps his own childhood going.”
Shane noted, ‘You seem to keep your child self,’ and I replied, “Well, here at the airport, when every one else walks on the corridor side, past the big rectangular steel “pillar,” I walked between it and the wall.” Ha! On Shane’s part, when he passes a thin steel pole he will grab it and swing around. Ha!
Earlier that day, “I had been down by Gate D80, and checked out the children’s play area (Keep your mind out of the pervert gutter, it was only me and my imaginary friends) I observed that the floor was a little spongy, the big plastic animals and cowboy sculptures to climb on all had a slight spongy give to them. Knowing that children would grab the little wings of the totem pole, I gave them a pull. The whole pole moved.”
Given that it moved more one way than the other, I deduced that the movement was not intentional, not from a fun spring inside, so I reported it to one of the senior citizen volunteers: As I told Shane, the old folks with the red vests and official white Calgary cowboy hats were volunteers, keeping their zest for life by advising travellers.
Shane noted I was fit, adding, “The cliche is to ask, “‘What’s your secret?’” Yes, I’m fit: my fellow seniors are amazed I can get up off the ground so fast. I said, “Mother thought it was because we grew our own vegetables all our years on the farm.”
Back on Shane’s farm, his mother had been an English teacher, and drama teacher, and so Shane had been in the school play. It had, he concluded, done him a lot of good. He and his mum had watched Drew Carey’s crew do the “theatre improv” show, “Who’s line is it?”
Shane was surprised, and a little impressed, that I had driven all the way to the city of Lethbridge to read the only public library copy in Alberta of a classic about the theory and practise of theatre improvisation… Being a senior citizen in conversation with a young man , I just had to do my “pass on knowledge mode,” and so during our conversation—nonreaders raised on video hate “talking heads”—I steadily passed on advice for what a singer-performer would do well to try: Improv, 10 week standup comedy class for fun, (not to go be a comedian) and continuing education drama class.
At university Shane had taken singing class for credit; at college I had taken a movement class with theatre majors for credit after getting the teacher’s permission. (Scary, but I kept up) Looking back, if only I had known, I would have taken “speech” too, but it was officially only for students in theatre and broadcasting. I didn’t think to ask. Too bad, for as a senior citizen I would love to know how to “get my articulators” going.
I told of three farm boys who went to U of Lethbridge, dared each other to take the artsy movement class, and now one of them, my age, has told me he thought everyone should take such a course.
Shane composes music every day, good for him, but… someone told him he “has lots of starts but not as many finishes.” I said when young Sting was in a house band he would finish a new song every week, so the faithful tavern regulars would always hear one new song. (I loved Sting’s bio; as a British-Canadian child of the 1950’s I related to his postwar poverty)
Somehow we started stretching, in public, as we talked “because it will be a long plane ride” and then sitting on the floor, talking and stretching. Behind me, as it turned out, a friendly, photogenic young couple started stretching too! They were flying to do a semester at a university near Barcelona.
Let me freeze-frame to end on that picture of us four stretching in public… It was Barak Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky, who said that youth expect to like, and be liked, by everyone they meet.
I am retired, but if I can stay youthful then, well, I can keep having adventures at airports.
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Sean Crawford
London,
February
2023
Footnote: You might find Shane’s other social media from this: “OGR-Scintilla”
Actor note: I am not surprised that the (Doctor) Who Shop in London hires actors as their clerks. Actors have a special energy.
Sting note: In later life, Sting said he had lied about his wife and him making love for eight hours: It was more like four hours of begging, followed by dinner and a movie.
Blog note: Maybe, like a career singer, I could “reinvent my blog” by writing at the top of each rough draft, as a reminder, “Fun.” You think?
