Early in my career at Sheridan College, which began with a room full of 200 nurses for two years, I was asked if I was next willing to take on another satellite campus, this one dubbed The School of Crafts and Design, and again deliver a compulsory English Media Studies course. I was warned at the outset that the inhabitants were creative and crazy, but nothing was crazier than my eventually doing a large book on the place titled Sheridan: The Cutting Edge in Crafts.
Much else happened during my residence there. One day, for example, the instructor from the textiles studio asked if would like to have a musician acquaintance of hers visiting from Britain do a mini concert for my students. This musician turned out to be one Martin Carthy, at the time unknown to me but now for many years a significant creative presence in my life- and in the lives of many. We did the gig and a few days later, as I drove to New York City for a workshop with depth psychologist Ira Progoff, I played Martin’s tape all the way there and all the way back.
Indeed, I kept playing the song The Famous Flower of Serving Men, eleven minutes long, over and over. Years later I did an interview with Martin over Indian food in London’s Islington and he told me how he’d been blown away by the original first five of six verses of Famous Flower (like much of Martin repertoire, a British traditional song) but deeply disappointed by the mediocre nature of what followed. So, Martin hung the original “good” verses on a clothesline in his flat and as he created further verses they too were hung like laundry on the same line.
I now have a dozen of Martin’s solo CDs, two of him with daughter Eliza, six of Waterson Carthy consisting of Martin, Eliza, and wife of 50 years Norma Waterson who died two years ago, two of Martin with fiddler Davis Swarbrick (once of Fairport Convention), one of Brass Monkey with Martin and John Kitkpatrick whom I was lucky to see together in London in 2018 (at which time Martin told me about a scary fall he’d recently had), one of Martin as part of The Watersons, and Martin as guitar accompaniment on Anchor with wife Norma and daughter Eliza, and on Norma Waterson: The Definitive Collection.
Martin has been called the most important traditional singer in modern times and has an OBE to verify his stature and significance. His admirers include Bob Dylan who borrowed from him, Paul Simon who stole from him, and the great singer-songwriter-guitarist Richard Thompson who has sung Martin’s praises on all three accounts. Martin is a truly innovative guitarist and master of effective guitar tunings. I’ve seen him perform many times, once for a dance in London with Brass Monkey
Here’s another story, and an explanation. I once interviewed Ewan MacColl, the traditional singer and creator of classic songs like The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (“I wrote that because I was deeply in love,” said Ewan) and The Shoals of Herring. This was south of London where Ewan – partner Peggy Seeger was out – had even made us lunch. He told me that he once had sung a song he had just written to a fisherman in Cornwall, I think it was. “Oh, yes,” said the fisherman, “I’ve known that song all my life”, said Ewan, laughing. Ewan added, “But I had just written that song!”
Ewan was a master of capturing the idioms of traditional song and this was proof. Later on, when I had just walked into Ewan’s gig, he turned to me and said, “I’ll have to write a song about your hat” and started singing, “Where did you get that hat?” Alas, the song never developed beyond that line, but Ewan also told me that once he and Alan Lomax were going to a Christmas party and he needed a new Christmas song to offer the group. So, he wrote it in twenty minutes and I’ve loved if for years!
Now here’s the explanation I just promised, again by way of anecdote. Once in my life as a writer, editor and publisher, I found myself the Writer-in-Residence at Mohawk College in Hamilton and inevitably, during my readings and talks afterwards, I would discuss creativity in writing. As a bonus, I had also my verification as an Intensive Journal Consultant trained by depth psychologist Ira Progoff in New York and as a Focusing Practitioner trained by psychologist-philosopher Eugene Gendlin in Chicago.
So, one fateful day several students declared, “You should write a book on creativity!” and pretty soon I decided, “Okay, I will.” The book became a way of life for me and very soon I found myself having breakfast with mime Marcel Marceau, watching tennis on afternoon TV with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespies, driving Mash TV star Lorette Swit to Toronto to buy a new dress for an evening event, and having a post gig Coke several times with B. B. King, all in the of course interviewing them for my book. I began in 1988 and have just finished writing, after numerous false starts, in 2025. The book for now is subtitled “Creativity: My Conversations with 310 Masters in the Arts.” And now to find a publisher……
I always stress how experience of one work of art can initiate a chain reaction as one’s further experience of the arts, and this past summer such was the case with the production of Gnit at the Shaw Festival which I saw three times and would have come back for more. Gnit after all is Gynt with a “typo” and a letter change and so I recently bought myself a copy of the original Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg featuring Derek Jacobi as the Narrator and Alex Jennings as Peer. Yes, I have played it several times and read the very informative notes in the enclosed booklet.
I do love the work in its original telling of the tale and I did love the brilliant theatricality of playwright Will Eno’s and director Tim Carroll’s modern retelling. So now – chain reaction again – I’m relistening to the classic recording of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces by pianist Emil Gilels and Grieg: Piano Works by a fave newer pianist Ivana Gavric – yes, I have all five of her very compelling CDs of varied repertoire and it’s a pleasure to play these over and over again.
Finally, I was once invited to write a cycle of poems for the Glenn Gould festival in Groningen, The Netherlands. After my reading, I was approached by a native of the city, pianist-composer Barend Schipper, who asked me, “Would you now like to go hear our orchestra play Brahms or go and have a good Asian meal?” I interviewed Barend during our meal – of course I did – and discovered how much he treasured the sense of play inherent in Mozart’s music.
But this was more the kind of play discussed by Johann Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens as a crucial aspect of culture and creativity. Barend gets most annoyed with musicians and composers who are only serious, because play and creativity are intimate kin. Composition for Barend, I have discovered, is both serious and fun.
Anyway, the Shaw Festival is next year offering Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus and because, if I remember accurately, I didn’t really like the film as much as others did, I’m now reading Mozart’s Letters Mozart’s Life, Selected and Edited by Robert Spaethling to discover perhaps more of the Mozart that Shaffer chose not to explore. Mozart did once write to his father in 1777, “I do like to have fun, but be assured that in spite of it all, I can also be Serious.” I have high hopes for the Shaw Festival production. In fact, I’m looking forward to the whole of the Shaw season of 2026, but we’ll do that next time.
To close, more chain-connection memories. After my interview with British soprano Emma Kirkby, who was performing with Tafelmusik in Toronto, Emma said, “You should interview my friend who is now shooting a film in Toronto.” Her friend turned out to be the Oscar-winning cinematographer David Watkin and I learned a great deal from our interview, both about shooting films and about David’s unique creative attitude.
As well, David then said to me, “Have you ever heard Furtwangler’s 1945 live recording of the last movement of Brahms first Symphony?” I hadn’t, and David sat me down for a twenty-minute listen during which I was so profoundly moved, so consumed by an expanding world created by this greatest of conductors, that I sat in a trance.
Then I rose and, hardly speaking, gave David a hug and walked off into Toronto, again forever changed by the arts. That’s’ one reason, I guess, that I spent so many years interviewing for my book on creativity.
and at the Shaw Festival in 2026! I absolutely love these images………
May 22, 2026 – September 27, 2026
