Pop89: Built to Bend

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

“The bankruptcy of a city is of no interest to the citizens of a city who are themselves bankrupt.” Fran Lebowitz said that. She’s in her seventies now, but at eighteen, she moved to New York to be a writer. So, she was broke. But she worked at various jobs as a house cleaner, a cab driver, a proofreader just long enough to pay bills and rent and then quit her jobs to just write for a while. I understand this approach to living, as I am a writer myself. And, at the age of 63, I don’t imagine I’ll be changing my lifestyle any time soon.

My vocation as a writer has taken various forms - essayist, columnist, monologuist, songwriter, blues singer, copywriter, poet, reviewer of books, art exhibits and albums, radio writer-broadcaster, translator, blogger, scriptwriter, producer, teacher, ghostwriter, biographer and the like. But I have also worked as a collagist, parade-float decorator, house-painter, window-dresser, language teacher, art teacher, car washer, fruit picker, cook, dishwasher, waitress, bar-maid, house-cleaner, chambermaid, ad infinitum.

For a few years I had a lucrative job recording English voice-overs for French ads. If you ever lived in Quebec City, I was that voice you heard in certain super-market aisles announcing a sale on concord grapes. I directed your calls on the answering machines of a variety of elegant hotels. Often I’d be out late the night before, singing in a bar with my band, Aunty Maddy, and not making it home til 2 or 3 in the morning. The next morning, sitting behind the microphone in the studio of the ad agency, my boss would request that I “start over and try to sound happier this time. Maybe smile while you talk?” she suggested. But it’s hard to sell wieners and prescription glasses when you’ve been up all night singing about renegade lovers and empty larders.

Here’s my point: Throughout my life, I’ve never had to fear for my investments or contemplated ending it all over a stock market plummet because I’ve never made that kind of money. I’ve never been rich, but I’ve always felt lucky - even prosperous. Definitely surrounded by a wealth of treasures- good books, great friends and enough money to pay rent and bills. I am sometimes broke but never do I see myself as poor.

Here’s my theory: I was raised by good providers who gave all their children four years of post-secondary education. I was instilled with a “you can do anything you put your mind to” posture toward living. When you have a stable foundation, you aren’t afraid of reaching beyond, exploring different horizons.

Some years I worked at jobs that paid so well my per diems were more than a week’s wages in a previous job. Some years I won awards and was invited to dinners with celebrities. Others I was fortunate to have siblings in the same town to offer me a couch for a week or so. Such is the life of an artist; you never know when your talent is no longer the flavour of the month. One day you have a corner office; the next day you, and your mentor, who has no more job security than you, are both packing your desks while mentally planning a pilot for a new project.

In case I haven’t hammered the point home, there are advantages to living close to the ground, grazing on garden greens and gathering nuts and berries; you don’t have far to fall, and it never occurs to you to jump. But above all, you learn to be versatile. And nobody knows that better than rural people. Just this evening Glen Baxter came by with my old fake cast-iron fireplace, the one I bought a few years ago, with a plastic pile o’ logs and a small heater. I loved that heater, and they don’t make them that small anymore. “I can’t bear to throw it out. Besides, I happen to know that farm people can fix anything,” I told my city friends. “Oh, those things are built to break,” they’d reply. It’s the way the economy works.

If your things are built to break; then your country is built to break, as well.

If I can’t fix something myself, I make a trade with someone who knows how. Last week I brought Adam a tortiere and a sleeve of homemade shortbread for fixing my computer. This week I made another pie for Page, who lent me ending me this computer on which I am now writing.

The notion that we can just throw something away and buy a new one is actually the definition of prosperity and wealth for a whole generation of boomers.The opportunity to cavalierly jettison not only household objects but the Depression-era habit of thrift has infiltrated my generation.

Being someone of meagre means, I continue to buy my clothes in thrift stores and my books at used bookshops. I’m a bad consumer, but I am a good recycler, long before it had that name. I darn my socks; I patch my pants; I re-stuff my oven mitts. Unseduced by niche marketing and fancy packaging, I know that vinegar will just about clean anything.

I’ve been down many a time, but rather than break, I’ve learned to bend like prairie grass in the wind.

We’ve all been recipients of a free lunch somewhere along the way, starting with Mother’s milk and ending with neighbours bringing casseroles to funerals. From the gate, I have been surrounded by generous people- friends who have taken me on exotic vacations, siblings who have put me up, given me lifts, treated me to meals, bought my art when they have no walls left to hang it on, an editor who puts in free time encouraging a particular vision, a local accountant friend who files my tax forms for cake and a landlady who delivers homemade relish and a new rake. Out here on the prairie, the bounty never ends.