Falling Backwards: A Memoir

250 Pages·2011·3.36 MB·English

by  Jann Arden

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA Copyright © 2011 Jann Arden
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2011 by Alfred A.
Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to quote from “Snowbird.”
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Arden, Jann
Falling backwards : a memoir / Jann Arden.
eISBN: 978-0-30739986-1
1. Arden, Jann. 2. Singers—Canada—Biography. 3. Composers—Canada—Biography. 4. Lyricists
—Canada—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.A676A3 2011 782.42164092 C2011-901969-8
Cover design by Jennifer Lum
Cover photograph by Andrew MacNaughtan
v3.1
With much love do I dedicate this book to
my parents, Joan and Derrel Richards,
and to my dear brothers, Patrick and Duray.
And to Bb—three little numbers you know to be true.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
Chapter One: The Grand Opening
Chapter Two: Finger on A Spinning Globe
Chapter Three: A Little Bit Country
Chapter Four: Leonard and Dale
Chapter Five: Secret Heart
Chapter Six: My Father’s Daughter
Chapter Seven: Growing Pains and Fishing Rods
Chapter Eight: Parking Lots and Girl Power
Photo Insert
Chapter Nine: I Swear on the Orange Bible
Chapter Ten: Being Rebecca
Chapter Eleven: The Last Summer
Chapter Twelve: The Expanding Universe
Chapter Thirteen: Norman Earl and the Rehab Boat
Chapter Fourteen: The Sound of Surrender
Chapter Fifteen: Writing for My Life
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds. —
ALBERT EINSTEIN
INTRODUCTION
look across my yard every morning at my parents’ little house. They
I
live fifty feet from me now. I can see their lights go on in the morning
and shut off at night. I can see them moving about in the yard when
they’re watering plants or cutting wood or when my mother is digging
up her flower beds. I watch them and I smile. Sometimes I catch myself
wondering what in the world I will do when they are not there anymore.
I drink cold water and tell myself to stop being so selfish. I close my eyes
tightly and open them again, hoping that my thoughts will be cleared
away. They never are completely.
I have fourteen acres of land west of Calgary, not far from where I
grew up. Not far from where this story begins. My mother and father
met on a blind date in the late fifties, before there were colour TVs and
cellphones and CDs and computers and even Spanx, for that matter. My
mom’s old friend Freda, who’s now deceased, was determined to set my
mother up with her boyfriend’s pal, convincing her that this blind date
would be different. Freda told my mom that this guy was funny and
smart and had a job, for Pete’s sake! What else could a girl possibly
want? Freda didn’t seem to care that my mother kind of already had a
boyfriend (though my mother says she never really liked him all that
much anyway), and asked what would one little date on a Saturday
night hurt anybody? My mother reluctantly agreed to go out with my
dad. The rest, as they say …
It’s hard to believe that my parents are still together and going strong
some fifty-three years later. They have survived things that would have
crushed most couples. They persevered where others would have
cracked in half. I don’t think I could have done what my mother and
father did, and that was to go ever forward with their shoulders back
and their jaws set straight and their faith unwavering. Both my parents
lasted. They beat the odds. They survived each other, for starters, and
that was—and is—no small feat. I don’t know if something was in the
water, but not a single one of my friends’ parents divorced either. I
thought about that one day and just shook my head. It says a lot about
the company I kept and continue to keep all these years later.
My parents are my treasures. They are my secret weapon, my shield, my
strength and my faith. Whenever I went off the rails, and that was fairly
often as I was figuring out how to be a person, I turned to them for
comfort and solace and direction and forgiveness. They were always
there for me, always.
I sometimes see my dad standing in the yard. He’s perfectly still and
quiet, with his arms resting on his rake, and he’s looking off over the
fields. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I wonder if he’s thinking what
I am thinking.
I asked him once what it was like getting older, and he told me that he
couldn’t feel it and he couldn’t see it in the mirror either. He said he just
saw himself the same way he always was. I think about that
conversation a lot.
So many things have changed around me, but I still see the same face
when I look in the mirror. I know what my dad meant. Living is a
process. You plod along and hope you’re on the right road and if you’re
not, well, that’s okay too. I know that from experience now.
When I was in my early twenties, I moved out to Vancouver for a few
years and managed to get myself into a lot of trouble. Not legal trouble,
but emotional and spiritual trouble. I felt so lost and so down and out. I
made one mistake after another. I was on some kind of self-destruct
mode. Eventually I picked myself up and hosed myself down and ended
up, as my mother often says, making something of myself, despite
myself. She also says to me, “Thank God you could sing, or who knows
where you’d have ended up.” I don’t like to think about that.
Years later I returned to Vancouver for a series of sold-out concerts. It
was a giant contrast to the days when I was busking on the streets for a
buck or two to buy cigarettes and wine. I couldn’t believe I was there,
standing on a beautiful, brightly lit stage, singing my songs for people
who had paid to see me. I felt vindicated somehow. I’d survived the
stupidity of my youth.
After one of the shows I had the limo driver take me across the Lions
Gate Bridge to the North Shore, where I’d gotten myself into so much
trouble. I had him drive by my old apartment building on Third Street,
where I had lived twenty-five years earlier. It was boarded up, to no
one’s surprise—least of all mine. It stood there like a tombstone. The
pouring rain added nicely to the movie I was creating in my head. I saw
my young self, staggering in drunk through the beat-up front door. I
closed my eyes and clearly pictured the old mattress on the floor, the
ironing board I used as a kitchen table, my beloved cassette deck. I sat in
the car for ten or fifteen minutes with the window down, looking out at
the street. The cold rain was spitting at my face.
I won, I thought to myself. I won. I felt a weight lift off my heart. I
said a prayer in my head about gratitude and forgiveness, and then I had
the driver take me back across the big bridge to my hotel. I lay in my
bed that night and thought about how I’d gotten to where I was that
day. I fell asleep smiling.
chapter one
THE GRAND OPENING
was reluctant, to say the least, to get here. My mother tells the story
I
on pretty much every birthday I have ever had. She most often smiles
—a laugh lurking inside of her little bird-like chest—and says, “When
you were born, I said, ‘Let me die, let me die.’ ” She really isn’t kidding.
For some reason, that line always made me laugh too. Not that it was
a prelude to a happy tale, but it was a funny one nonetheless. She’d go
on to say that the doctor just let her suffer through two long days of
pushing and pushing and pushing to no avail. I guess I was backwards or
feet first or probably just refusing to come out of her at all. Why would I
want to fly out into the abyss without really knowing what in God’s
name I was getting myself into? I’d still be in there now if I’d had my
way.
One thing about being born: it’s hard for everybody involved. You
learn within a few seconds that it’s not going to be easy being a person.
That first breath must really be something. I am kind of glad I don’t
remember it. The human body is an extraordinary thing. What it is
capable of doing is, quite simply, miraculous.
I can’t even begin to figure out how an eight-or nine-or, God forbid,
twelve-pound body inches its way out of something that seems to be
smaller than the slot in a slot machine. And never mind that, after the
twelve-pound body has fought its way out of the womb, the whole
bloody layer-upon-layer works suddenly just folds itself back together
like a book with a few ripped-up pages. Like nothing ever happened.
Kind of like a Slinky.
My mother would disagree with me, I’m sure, as something did indeed
happen. I am in pain just thinking about childbirth. In fact, I suddenly
have to fold my legs together and hum “Happy Birthday.” My poor
mother; all that suffering, and for what?