Monthly Archives: August 2012

Citizen of Ville Joie – The Silliness of Friendship

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl talks about friendship.

“Welcome to the next chapter of tonight’s story titled Citizen of Ville Joie. For those of you just joining us, Ville Joie means Happy Town and it was also the name of an orphanage where I spent time when I was as a child. When I was an orphan.

Orphan. Sounds like a word we could use instead of the word loneliness, doesn’t it? But get a few children together somewhere, anywhere and it won’t take long for alliances to take form and quickly grow into something stronger. Given the right circumstances, a bond can happen almost instantly. The fire that is friendship is sparked by something shared by people. An interest, a passion, a situation or even an object, as inconsequential as it may seem, is enough to get a flame going. The bigger the spark, the bigger the fire.

I am not the only orphan living in Happy Town and my best friend’s name is Allan. We met on the first day I woke up at the orphanage and we have been inseparable ever since, except of course for the time we spend apart when we are sent to live with families. Allan was already at the orphanage when I got there, so he knew his way around and taught everything I needed to know about the place. He also taught me how to play marbles, the best way to spend time with a friend or to settle differences with an enemy. Allan and I spent each of the four seasons together at Ville Joie. This may sound like an odd thing to say but it is a rare thing. Every day has the potential of being our last together. We see kids come and go on a regular basis without warning. Maybe it is this sense of urgency that drives our friendship to be what it is. Each day we spend together is another flame in the fire of our friendship. The kind of friendship that makes you do silly things.
On a cold day of late winter or very early spring, Allan and I decide we have had just about enough of this whole orphanage business and we decide to escape this evil place. I don’t know what it is exactly that triggered this firm decision of ours to leave, but damn it, we are determined to leave and no one is going to stand in our way. Ville Joie is an orphanage and not an institution where we are committed, we are therefore free to come and go as we please, so long as we are reasonable and careful. And so just before dinner, we put on our coats and our not so warm, kids astronaut winter boots and the rest of our winter clothes and off we are. That is pretty much the whole plan.

Allan and I walk, no parade, in front of the educators and speak to each other loud enough for them to hear us say that we have had it with this place and we are leaving, knowing for sure the educators will rush to stop us, and beg us to reconsider. No response. No reaction. I guess all there is left to do is actually leave. We exit through the side door and walk down the driveway leading to the street in front of the orphanage with the snow so cold, we can hear it crack under our feet. Once we reach the end of the driveway, we turn around to look at the orphanage one last time and begin our escape in the freezing dusk.

About fifteen long, interminable and gut wrenching…steps later, Allan and I realize we haven’t had dinner yet. We decide it would be best to eat first, this way we will have more strength and will travel a much greater distance with food in our stomachs. We run back to Ville Joie and, because it is so cold, enter the building through the front entrance which is much closer than the door we used to escape. We sit down in our seats in the mess hall, still fully dressed and still very much determined to leave immediately after our meal. A meal which turns out to be quite good and during which we remove our coats, followed by a sweet dessert we ate while taking off our boots, the whole thing washed down with a rich hot chocolate by the last sip of which, our whole winter attire is lying on the floor by the table. The subject of our escape was never to be mentioned again. Thank God for friendship, it has this way of washing away the embarrassment that should follow doing silly things because the silliness is shared….”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – The Twit in Twitter

26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl discovers the ABC’s of Twitter.

“Let’s take a break, and if I know my producer Susan as well as I think I do, the song Sitting by Cat Stevens should be next. We will return with more from tonight’s story. This is Feel it Again with Daryl Hart”

As the piano intro of the song begins, Susan and I look at each other and smile for an instant before she closes her eyes to better soak in the words.

“Sitting on my own not by myself, everybody’s here with me.
I don’t need to touch your face to know, and I don’t need to use my eyes to see…”

After this song and the commercials that will follow it, the weather report will mark the halfway point of my show. The lighter segment I just relayed helped me relax and from Susan’s reaction to it, I see it worked wonders for her as well. Hopefully this will be the same for Annie and the listeners. I catch myself wondering if this Twitter thing could help get me some answers.

“Tell me what people are saying on Twitter” I ask Susan in her booth. She looks at me as if to say “Oh, now you care”.

“You are still trending and the comments are very positive. As for the emails, I will print a few and bring them to you during the next break. You see, if you had a Twitter account you could…”
She stops right there and looks at me as if she has just had an epiphany. Susan jumps out of her chair and, runs out of her booth and storms in my studio.

“Where’s your phone?” she asks.

“Here” I say as I hand it out to her. “Why?”

A few taps on my phone’s screen and she says “Good Lord, Daryl. You have the Twitter app installed already.”

I am not sure I was supposed to know that. This is Annie’s department, not mine. She keeps giving me up to the minute updates on what her favorite stars are doing and saying. The same goes for her friends thanks to Facebook. So and so is doing this or going there or just bought that. My answer is invariably the same : “What about you, what do you want to do, where do you want to go or what do you want to buy?” That is usually when she reminds me how old I am.
In just an instant, Susan launches the app and sticks the phone in my face. There it is, Twitter.
“How does it work?” I ask embarrassed.

“We only have two minutes” she says.

Susan proceeds to teach me the ABC’s of Twitter, warning me to be very careful if I ever decided to send a Tweet out there. I shouldn’t engage other users on a one on one basis because some of them can make the guests of the Jerry Springer Show look like brain surgeons, I shouldn’t discuss politics because half of my audience will disappear faster than I can press the send button and I should always, always, always assume that, whatever I send out there, words or images, can come back to haunt me one day. At this point, sarcasm is my only answer.

“Wow, you sure make it sound like a lot of fun?”

“It’s fun for most people”, Susan replies, “but many people in the public eye have regretted these one hundred and forty characters for a longtime.”

I look at her as if she has just said that last sentence in French. The look on her face however, tells me her patience is running low.

“That’s the maximum number of characters you can use in each message.”

“Why?”

“Oh for crying out loud, Daryl!”

“Alright, I get it. Don’t tweet a naked picture of me with the caption Vote Obama, but if I do, it has to be under one hundred and forty characters. Happy?”

Susan leaves my studio laughing but still mumbling the words “What was I thinking?” When she gets back to her booth, she points at me to tell me I’m back on the air…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Discovery of attraction – concl.

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. This excerpt is the third part and conclusion of the excerpt “Discovery of attraction”.

“On their last day at Ville Joie, all the interns show up at the beginning of the afternoon and stay with us for the rest of the day. It is special to have so many people around all at once but not special enough to bring me relief from the weight crushing my heart. I have already become sensitive to moments of departures and scenes of things ending, something that still afflicts me to this day. In mid-afternoon, Allan and I spend some time playing outside with Pete who appears much more pensive than usual. On our way back inside just before dinner, Pete turns to us and in a shaky voice says “You guys are very special, don’t you ever forget it”. We both thank him and tell him we like him very much also. His words hit us pretty hard, especially Allan who has grown so fond of Pete.

The mood is getting heavier by the minute and close to the end of our last dinner together, not much is being said. The interns have by now figured out that we have become emotionally attached to them and that somehow we know we will probably never see them again. My guess is that, rookies that they are, they have become attached to us as well and somewhere along their training, they forgot who they were dealing with; a bunch of kids craving for love but unaware what to do with it once it was offered to them.

After our nightly snack and after supervising us one last time as we prepare for bed, the interns come to see us one by one to say goodbye, just before lights out. All goes well until they visit the fourth or fifth kid who begins crying, which triggers a chain reaction of tears in the dormitory. From my room, I can hear the other kids cry and the interns doing their best to comfort them. I am not looking forward to my turn at all and I keep fighting the emotions inside of me. I have to be strong because the last thing I want is to end up crying in front of Andrée. Easier said than done; my room is the last one on the way out, so by the time the interns get to me, the dormitory is pretty much flooded with tears. When the first couple of interns make it to my room, I am able to hold it together by keeping it simple and saying just a plain goodbye. In the room next to mine however, I can hear Pete as he speaks to Allan in the midst of a powerful crying fit. I begin to sing a song in my head so I won’t hear what is happening around me. A short moment later, Pete opens the curtain of my room and walks in, saying a few words to me and extending his big hand as an invitation to mine. I keep the song going in my head, thinking that if I can’t hear what he is saying, I won’t lose it. On his lips, I can still read the last few words he says to me: “It was a pleasure meeting you Daryl”. My heart goes straight to my throat as I shake his hand. He turns around, walks away and at the same moment he exits my room, Andrée enters, and shuts the curtain close behind her.

She stands at the foot of my bed, herself looking shaken by the way the others kids have just reacted to saying goodbye. After a few seconds, she asks “Daryl, are you ok?” I know for sure that, if I try to say so much as one word, I will burst into tears. So just I simply nod yes and turned on my side to face away from her. Andrée must have taken it as a sign I didn’t want to talk to her and stays only a few more seconds to look at me. When I hear the curtain of my room being closed behind her after she leaves, it is more than I can handle and I start crying. Andrée who must have heard my sobs, rushes back in my room and sits on the edge of my bed to console me and tuck me in real tight, one last time. She speaks to me with her sweet, soft voice while resting her hand on my chest and assures me everything will be just fine. After a few, too short minutes, she leaves again, but this time for good. It takes quite a while, but I manage to cry myself to sleep with the music of Cat Stevens as the background.

This was the first time I ever cried for a woman. Andrée became a memory which faded over time, and surprisingly disappeared all together from my mind, until Cat Stevens brought her back to me. Thanks to him, her beauty remains intact and the sound of her voice, as faint as it has become because of the distance put between us by the passing years, is still sweet, soft and of great comfort to me.

It was both saddening and maddening to me that the memory of the interns had been buried so deep inside of me and for so long. This was such a dear and intense time for me, it should have been kept as close to my heart as possible and revisited as often as needed. My toughest moments were piled on top of these beautiful images which I am sure of it, were longing to be seen again because they climbed back to the surface with disarming ease once I made way for them. Well, once Cat Stevens and I made way for them. He is the reason I have so much respect for music and its power. Music is often part of the stage set of important acts in people’s lives and a song which may mean absolutely nothing to us may very well take someone else back to a defining time in their life. Be careful next time you say “I hate that song” to someone, what they may hear is “I hate that moment that means so much to you”…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Discovery of attraction part 2

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl discovers attraction part 2…

“Andrée broke the awkward silence by saying “Aren’t you Daryl? I like the way you said your name earlier, with gusto!”

“Who’s Gusto?” I asked, quite seriously.

That made her laugh so much she was barely able to finish her explanation of the word. Since I had just made a fool out of myself, I decided to top it off with making fun of her name by asking “Isn’t Andrée a name for a boy?” She rolled her eyes as if she had heard that one a thousand times before and said “Usually it would be, but my name is Andrée, with two E’s, get it?”

I have to admit that, no I didn’t get it at the time but quite frankly her name could have been just the letter “E” for all I cared, she still would have been the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. But since she insisted, from that moment on “Andrée with two E’s” was my name for her and where ever she was, I was as well.

The interns alternated the time of the day they spent with us so, in the beginning, Andrée was there in the mornings, then she moved to afternoons and ended her internship with us on the evening shift. I loved every second she was there. I spent the precious hours she was with us staring at her, drinking her every word, burning the image of her face in my mind and imagining crazy scenarios like I was a super hero and, regardless of the challenge my young mind came up with, saving her from grave danger was my destiny.

Over time, I also felt close to Pete who at first seemed severely out of his element. Our educators, male or female, were strong figures to us which was what we needed just like any other children. They were also showing a level of understanding of us they just couldn’t fake, especially when they spend their every day with kids in such need of it like we were. Pete didn’t seem to be of a caring nature to begin with and looked like he was in way over his head for the first few weeks. He wasn’t mean or abrupt or anything like that, it just wasn’t natural for him and we could sense it. At one point, surely as a test of will, our educators left him on his own for an entire afternoon in charge of all of us. I guess that’s when everything clicked for him and for us as well. Exchanging with us quickly became second nature to him. Pete tapped into a level and a quality of communication he didn’t know he had and reached a point where, when he looked at one of us in the eyes, we had no other choice but to pay attention and listen; not because we were afraid, but because we knew he meant what he said and in return, we felt what he meant. This is how words reach someone’s inside and stay there forever.

I can’t remember what it was but I once did something that really upset him so he sat in a chair and made me stand in front of him. He gently put his giant paws on both my arms and said “Daryl, I thought you and I were friends.” His words exploded against my heart and I immediately began to cry. I instinctively hugged him and he spent all the time needed to comfort me.

As I mentioned earlier, at the end of her internship, Andrée was on the evening shift which was by far the most quiet period of the day at Ville Joie. After dinner, she would accompany us in the backyard and play with us until it was time to go back inside where she would supervise us getting ready for bed after a light snack in the cafeteria where I sat next to her every night. Before lights out, she would go to each of the rooms, making sure everyone was comfortable for the night and, thanks to the layout of our dormitory, I was always the last one she would come visit. We had our own short but how important ritual where she would sit on the edge of my bed to confirm I was tucked in very tight and then start laughing the moment she would see the look on my face, which had to be nothing but the reflection of pure and utter contentment.

She knew. She knew and she played along with just the right amount of distance but also, the perfect amount of kindness. “Sweet dreams Daryl”, Andrée would whisper to me. “Good night Andrée with two E’s”, I would whisper back, making sure only she could hear me.

We had our little secret and it made me feel so light inside. How peaceful and deep the sleep can be when your heart is filled with the whispers of a special someone. None of the other kids got that treatment and I never mentioned it to anyone, except to Allan of course…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – The discovery of attraction

18 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl discovers attraction…

“I was so afraid to lose that magic, I never sought to hear his music and instead, let fate surprise me with precious and randomly chosen images of my past, reassured by the knowledge that his music only brings back the happiest of memories.

A few years ago, I was running errands and I was in line at the pharmacy when his song “Sitting” began playing on their radio, triggering a very specific memory to come back to me. Something I hadn’t thought about for many years. Something only a song by Cat Stevens could push up to the surface. The images were so vivid, I had to get out of the line and sit down in the waiting area to soak them in.

When I first arrived at Ville Joie, the government had just taken over the administration of the orphanage which had been, until that point, ran by nuns. By the time I got there, only a few of them had stayed and were still working there, like our nurse, Sister Lisa. Since the state was involved, the educators had to be specially trained or have some sort of university diploma in a program related to dealing with children such Special Education or Child Care Worker. This approach was fairly new and soon, a fresh group of students reached the part of their course where they had to spend some time in the field for their training. Sure enough, a bunch of them showed up at Ville Joie for their internship which was scheduled to last a few months.

We loved our educators madly and we would never have traded any of them, for all the marbles in the world but, these interns were new faces, new voices, new everything and to a child, “new” is irresistible. So on their first day, a group of young interns stood in front of us in a little group and introduced themselves one after the other. Of course, I can’t remember all of their names, only two of them.

First there was Pete who was very tall, had incredibly large shoulders and a deep voice. He seemed so strong, he looked like he could carry all of us on his large back, a theory we once proved.

“Hi, my name is Pete” resonated throughout the entire room turned silent at the sound of his voice.
Then, from behind Pete, I heard ” Hi, my name Andrée” spoken with the sweetest, the softest voice of them all. I stretched my neck to try and get a look at the girl who had just introduced herself. I could see her feet, her legs and her hands but whenever I moved to see her face, Pete would be blocking my view. That voice moved something in me and I was overpowered by the need to see the girls’s face. I looked around the room and all of the other kids were acting normally, it was as if they had simply heard her name while I had heard something completely different, a presageful whisper intended just for me as a warning that something was about to change inside of me. Still, no matter how hard I tried or how I positioned myself, big Pete was in the way.

After the other interns introduced themselves, it was our turn to say our names and when it came to me, I shouted “DARYL” in Pete’s direction in the hope Andrée would stick her head out to see who would yell his name in such a way but it didn’t work; all it did was draw a huge laugh from the entire room which made me feel pretty stupid. Finally we were invited to go meet the new guys and shake their hands so I stood up and tried to reposition myself to see the face of the girl with the beautiful voice. Still no luck; the others had already overwhelmed the interns and since I was so small, all I could see were the back of the heads of my friends as well as the adults’ belt buckles.

I stayed at the back, looking down, and I was about to give up on my quest to see Andrée’s face when Giles came up to me to say it was ok to join in, so I walked right inside the group and was stopped by Pete whose hand made mine disappear when he shook it. I met the other interns, shook their hands as well and then, when I was no longer expecting it, the mysterious girl who’s sweet voice had cause such turmoil inside of me was right there, smiling and looking at me. She had short brown hair split in the middle as it was brought into fashion by Dorothy Hamill at the time, big blue eyes, porcelain skin she obviously knew didn’t need any makeup and a smile to die for. Andrée was a stunning beauty. “Weak in the knees” is not just an expression because when I saw her face for the first time, I dropped about two inches before I instinctively pushed myself back up bearing a look on my face that surely revealed I had no clue what was happening to me. I regrouped the best I could and looked at her face again for a few more seconds with my eyes, and probably my mouth, wide opened.

Andrée broke the awkward silence by saying “Aren’t you Daryl? I like the way you said your name earlier, with gusto!”

“Who’s Gusto?” I asked, quite seriously…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Why Cat Stevens?

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl discovers Cat Stevens…

“Where were we? Ah yes, I have returned to Happy Town again and to this routine that makes me feel so safe. Despite the guilt I feel because of the way I responded to the P family’s kindness, as the weeks and the months pass, I gain some seniority and there is a certain confidence growing inside of me. Not a very intense one, at least not the kind of confidence that can be seen on the outside. Still, it is more than enough to help me improve my situation and my progression within our unit is in fact confirmed when I am promoted out of the main dormitory and given my own room in a newly built dormitory on the ground floor. We call these spaces “rooms” but it really is just a cubicle with a blue curtain instead of a door and barely enough space in it for a little table and a kid’s bed. I don’t care, that space is mine and I love it. No doubt my first night in my new room is my best night so fat at Ville Joie. I lay in bed on my back, my arms folded with my hands behind my head and look at the ceiling with a smile from ear to ear while the educator on duty visits each of us to make sure we are set for the night.

A few minutes after lights out, something unexpected happens. Something that never happened in the old dormitory but, something very beautiful. I hear the sound of soft music. Sure, I know what music is and I have heard songs on the radio before, but it never grabbed my attention and I never really noticed the music itself. In this setting however, in a dark and quiet sleeping space of my own, it is impossible not to hear it and curiosity gets the best of me; I have to find out where this melody is coming from. I get out of bed, slowly pull open the curtains of my room and walk toward the entrance of the dormitory, where this sound is coming from. And there it is; a portable reel to reel player resting on a chair and the soothing voice of Cat Stevens pouring right out of it. I kneel next to the player, watch the reels endlessly turn in circles and listen to the music until I get dizzy from both.

I can’t say for sure this is the moment music enters my heart, but it surely is the moment it captures my mind. From now on, every single night I spend in Happy Town I fall asleep to the voice and the words of Cat Stevens. With the the player set on “auto”, when the reel reaches the end, it rewinds itself and starts all over again in a clicking sound so loud, it wakes me up at first but after a few nights, all I can hear is the music. All Cat Stevens, all night long. Just like tonight. I said at the beginning of the show earlier it would make sense, well there it is.

I have always refused to buy his albums and I chose not to listen to his music over the years but not for the reason you might think. Whenever I hear, by chance, one of his songs either on the radio or anywhere else it happens to be playing, my mind immediately wonders back to my days as an orphan in Happy Town. I can feel again the simplicity of my moments with Allan and my other friends and the peace of mind the educators gave me while I waited for a family to take me. The first note of a song by Cat Stevens can bring back the very smell of my first morning at Ville Joie just as easily as it can bring back the memory of my last night there.

I was so afraid to lose that magic, I never sought to hear his music and instead, let fate surprise me with precious and randomly chosen images of my past, reassured by the knowledge that his music only brings the happiest of memories…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Passion for words

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl discusses meeting his old boss Lenny…

“When Corporate took over the station, our Website was taken down and replaced with a global one instead with all their stations listed with links allowing to listen to each of them online. Every host was given a page where the could post their picture, update their profile and talk about themselves a little. Thank God for Susan on that one; I trust her to take care of that stuff on my behalf because if it was up to me, I would have uploaded the picture of a monkey wearing a very ugly tie and put my name under it just to mess up with the suits from Corporate.

“What do you think Jackson is going to make of all of that?” I ask Susan.

“Well…,” she answers hesitantly, “We have to get ready for some backlash, he is not going to like this. You know how Corporate feels about surprises, how everything has to be scripted to them and every time we deviate, they kind of freak out. This is a major step away from what they want. Plus, you treat them so nice whenever you sit down to meet with them, the ice is getting thinner under our feet each time.”

She’s right. I can’t stand them and I can’t stand hiding it. Although I am far from being a rebel, I have never been a yes man either and never will be. If they like my show that’s fine, but I won’t stay silent and I will be at my most honest when I am asked me to do things I don’t believe in. When Corporate first showed up, some of the employees already here did so many back flips to keep their jobs, they could have joined the Cirque du Soleil after they were let go. I listened to those sent by Corporate at first with what I truly believe was an open mind but I quickly realized they more or less wanted a monkey to flip the switch. More music, more advertisers and less talk. I went to great lengths to preserve the show the way it had always been. What I did do, and this pleased them quite a bit, was to offer to pick stories that were as closely related to our advertisers as possible. One of them, for example, is a home building company, so I would pick a story where there was a warm description of a house or a family home and insert their ad right after reading that part of the story. When done with taste and good timing, it actually sounds good.

When you compromise one principle though, it is expected that you will capitulate on all of them. Soon they were asking me to do this or change that or “Have you ever thought of…” which eventually escalated to “You’re not being very cooperative.” That was after they suggested I bring on guests in the studio for face to face conversations and I pointed out to them it would be quite difficult to get people to come on a radio show in the middle of the night. I guess if it isn’t written in the memo, these guys can’t figure anything out on their own. It is that robotic, bureaucratic part of them I despise; I pride myself on making my listeners think as they go about their lives, something my new bosses would be incapable of doing to save their own. The more they tried to mess with my show, the more I became distant from it all. I still do it the best I can just like I always did, but it no longer means to me what it used to. I did something I loved for a living, now I just do something so I can earn a living.

I really wanted to work at this station first because of its format and later because of Lenny who was exactly the kind of boss I had always hoped to have; he was calm, cool and honest but mostly, he was someone I could look up to. We hit it off from the moment we met or more precisely during my job interview which took place at a nice and cozy pub near the station. Soon after he ordered the first many rounds, he went on a rant that revealed his passion for radio and I responded with one about my passion for the well written and well spoken words. In a semi-drunken exposé, I told my future boss about my views for a night show, the stories I wanted to tell the listeners and what I hoped to achieve through them; to trigger a reflexion in those listening without cutting and chewing their meat for them. I wanted the night shift because I was convinced the longer hours it offered gave me a better chance to reach out to the crowds and get them hooked. By the time the bartender had announced last call, Lenny already had his arm around my shoulders and we had a deal. One of the nicest things Annie has ever done was to tell me, in front of him, that I was a younger version of Lenny. This moved him on the verge tears.

Ok I admit it, I have had a hard time accepting the fact that these days are over. I have yet to accept that I no longer work at a radio station, I now work instead for a corporation with a board of directors and share holders to please. And Susan is right; what I am doing right now is not only going to upset Corporate, it is also a deep breach to a promise I made myself the very first time I sat in front of a microphone…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – “Keep going…”

07 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl gets a message from Annie and discusses technology…

“Finally, this ten minute break will give me some time to get some fresh air and step out of the studio for a moment. I usually take this time for a well deserved bathroom break followed by a trip outside, behind the building, for a quick smoke while Susan goes over the few messages and emails we normally get. On my way down the stairs, I am startled by the music coming from my phone which turns out to be an email notification from Annie. I didn’t know my phone could do that.

“Daryl,

I don’t know where your story will take me and all of those who are listening to you. I knew all along it wouldn’t be easy to hear these words if you ever opened up to me because I care about you so much. I hoped for them but I never imagined they would be this hard on me and I never thought how listening to someone, but truly listening, required this amount of energy. So much more energy than being mad at you for the last few days has taken from me. I got even madder when you began story on the air earlier but I understand better now; it is fine by me if you needed the safety of your studio to get it all out.

I’m still there, Daryl. I’m listening to you. Keep going because I think I have already cried all the tears I possibly can anyway. Keep going because I can hear in your voice that you need to tell your story just as much as I need to hear it.

Keep going because if that story ends with who you are now, then I know it ends well.

Enjoy your smoke break.

Annie.”

God, she is good with words. I finish reading her message just as I get to the door leading to my smoking spot and I realize Susan is only a few steps behind me. We stand outside near the door and Susan who has stopped smoking more than a year ago looks at me with obvious envy take the first drag of my cigarette.

“You’re trending right now, Daryl”

“Wow that’s great! Trending is fantastic! You know, I haven’t trended in such a longtime, I forgot what it feels like.” I answer using a sarcastic tone.

“Alright, alright.” Susan says, somewhere between being amused and annoyed.

“You don’t know what trending means. It means you are a very popular subject on Twitter. People are talking about you, promoting the link to our Website where others can log on and listen to your story online from all over the world. Better?”

“Oh, I get it! I’m trending!”

I’m part of that last bunch of radio hosts who still imagine their listeners sitting by their radios, or at least listening on some sort of traditional radio device. Not on their computers or their iSmart Phones or whatever they’re called. It is all iThis and iThat, iSwear! Quite a while back at the beginning of the online craze, Lenny had an epiphany and asked a friend of his to put a website together for our station “so everyone will know we exist.” It worked too; the entire world knew about us and how crappy our website looked. More people were sending us emails to tell us our site was horrendous than any other kinds of comments. Not that I really cared but, at one point we all offered Lenny to kickback some of our salary so he could hire a company to us setup with a real site. He didn’t take our money but he did have the site done by professionals eventually.

Regardless, when Corporate took over, our site was taken down and replaced with a global one instead with all of their stations listed with links allowing to listen to each of them online. Every host was given a page…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Stain on a soul

05 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl takes responsibility for his failure to stay with the P family…

“About a week after the “family” conference, I find myself sitting in the car with Mr P who doesn’t need to tell me where we are going and when we reach our destination, he walks with me through the side entrance of Ville Joie and once inside, with much difficulties, he goes down on one knee to give me a kiss on the cheek and and hugs me with genuine affection before leaving. There is no long conversation, there are no tears, there is no blame or guilt assigned. Of that moment, I keep only the memory of a kind, heartfelt kiss goodbye and Mr P leaving me alone by the door with my suitcase at my feet.

It is a weekday and the other kids have either gone to school or are busy in the arts and crafts room, so it is pretty quiet in the building. I walk in the cafeteria carrying my suitcase and I find the educators sitting together at a table. I smile at them but they barely stop what they were doing and Giles tells me to go put my belongings under my bed, stressing that there is no point reminding me where it is since it is “still the same, as usual”. I go to my bed, unpack my suitcase and resume life in Happy Town doing my best to make it as if I have never left.

On the outside everything seems normal; I double down on making people laugh at school and I am a model citizen of Ville Joie. Inside of me however, I feel rotten. I know it isn’t normal to lock myself out like I did with the P family. I know I have disappointed them immensely and I keep seeing the moment I answered Mr P’s question like a movie playing over and over in my mind. I can still see his face change and his head go down in defeat. Nothing will ruin your day like reliving the moment you let somebody down.

I could hide behind my young age and say that with all that was happening to me and around me, I didn’t think about the repercussions my selfish behavior might have on others and on my own life. Nobody would hold it against me if I said I was only responding with my instincts following traumatic events. I could even get away with saying that it is unfair to rest the burden of his own future on a child’s shoulders by asking him a question and expect one very specific answer. How I tried to take refuge behind my youth, behind its innocence and behind the rough moments experienced along the way. But as the years hurried by me and I collected some dust of wisdom they kindly left in their trail, I came to see how heartbreaking it must have been for the P family to open their door and their hearts to a small boy in need and to be, in essence, rejected by him.

All the excuses or even the perfectly valid explanations in the world can’t ease the grief I still feel to this day whenever I think about how I turned down their invitation to join them on the path they wanted to set for my future. I assure you, it has nothing to do with regrets about how my life turned out, nor am I convinced my journey would have been easier by their side; no one can possibly know that for sure. I just think of all the efforts they made to give me everything I needed and should have wanted. I think of their kindness and then I think of my unwillingness to return their affection or to at the very least give a tiny bit of it back to them as they so deserved.

And so there is a stain on my soul. A stain which fades a little with every hair turning grey, but a stain nonetheless, and one that will never completely go away.

More when we return after the news….”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!

Citizen of Ville Joie – Refusing happiness

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Second pass

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl makes the choice of letting happiness pass him by…

“Despite all of this, I can’t find it in me to take the one small step that could change my life. I am frozen at the goal line and I just can’t find the strength to cross it. I can’t even bring myself to call Mr and Mrs P “Mom” and “Dad”, which is not limited to them; it is something I will never ever call anybody else in my life. But it is with them that I first feel the awkwardness that takes hold of my mind whenever I find myself on the verge of saying it. It doesn’t feel appropriate or real to me and I retreat behind the comfort of silence on the rare occasions this strange urge hits me. The more time passes and they try to include me in their lives, the more I become witness to their family’s happiness, passively looking on as the perfect chance at a brighter future passes me by. I see it, I recognize it, I am just unwilling to grab it. I am not rude, tough or violent; never have been and never will be any of those things. What I am is withdrawn, unavailable and there is nothing inside of me driving me to fight it.

This is the inevitable response to my difficult time with the D family. In the months spent in the orphanage following my hard time with them, I have, without realizing it, retreated in a tightly guarded fortress where nobody will hurt me. A place within perfect distance of sentiments so they will fade before they reach my heart. No more pain, no more fear, no more shame. But also no more love, no more affection, no more closeness. The D’s hurt me so badly and so deeply, they made it a trade off I was willing to accept.

The only place I want to call home, is Happy Town. I have become a Citizen of Ville Joie.

One afternoon, Mr P takes me and the girls on a walk in the woods near the house to play for a few hours and when we come back to the house he sits all of us down at the kitchen table, turns to us and asks what we have retained from the last few hours and wants to hear my answer first. I know this is a test. I know the there is one word he wants to hear from me. I know exactly which one that is and I know all I have to do is to say that one word. I wait a few seconds and I answer we had a great time because we spent some time in nature and fresh air is good for kids.

I can actually see the disappointment in his face as he receives the confirmation of something he has known for some time already. Had my answer included this one word anywhere in it, my life could have been set on very different path because there is a very distinct possibility I may have stayed with this family forever. He wanted to know if I could, at the very least, say the word. From the moment I arrived with them, I have stayed one or two steps outside of their family. I have never really walked in or not as far in as another kid could have anyway. But if I could at least have said the word “family”, maybe there could have been some hope that at some point I might lower my guard and let myself in. I couldn’t do it. I would love to be able to say that there was a debate inside of me, that I almost said the word or that I hesitated. There was no debate and I didn’t even consider giving Mr P the answer he so desired. This is the first time I purposefully turn my back on happiness. It won’t be the last.

About a week after the “family” conference, I find myself sitting in the car with Mr P knowing exactly where we are going and once we reach our destination, he walks with me through the side entrance of Ville Joie, with much difficulties goes down on one knee to give me a kiss on the cheek and and hug me with genuine affection before leaving. There is no long conversation, no tears, no blame and no guilt. Of that moment, I keep the memory of a kind, heartfelt kiss goodbye and Mr P leaving me alone by the door with my suitcase at my feet…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad…and no I do not have representation!