Farewell, Artie (text)

Artie Gold, around 2004

Sunday, September 30, 2007 (diary notes): I walked up from La Cathédrale underground parking on Ste Catherine Street and along Aylmer to Artie’s old place on Lorne Crescent and joined Endre Farkas, Carolyn-Marie Souaid, Carol Harwood, Chris Knudsen, and Luci King-Edwards. Jill Torres arrived a few minutes later with Artie’s ashes in a large blue plastic container, the ashes in the container in a clear plastic bag and the blue container and bag of ashes both in a cloth bag. We read some of Artie’s poems and Chris spread a handful of ashes; then behind the flat where I once stood on the second floor porch with Guy Birchard while Artie was having a fit about something, and threw a coffee mug at Mary Brown who was below us in the back yard (see note below). Artie’s place on Lorne Crescent is a mess now, the back yard area under construction, run-down, dilapidated. It reminded me of my Grandmother’s run down place on Girouard; once it was nice, now it’s not. Then we walked to The Word Bookstore on Milton, where Artie visited and pontificated on poetry on an almost daily basis for several years before he moved from Lorne Crescent. Luci, who owns the bookstore with her husband Adrian, read a poem of Artie’s outside the store. Then we walked across the McGill campus to where the old Mansfield Book Mart was located, it’s now a camera store. More poems were read, more ashes left there. Then, to where Artie lived on McKay, below Ste. Catherine Street (perhaps this was the beginning of his “descent”, the days after Mary Brown told him she wanted to move from Lorne Crescent). Various comments were repeated that Artie had made in which he disparaged his close friends. I wonder what he said about me? Carolyn-Marie said she had archived five boxes of his papers. Endre said there were many unpublished poems on how much Artie hated his mother. Chris said he fell out with Artie when he couldn’t help Artie move to a new place. Carol mentioned how Artie had phoned her to comfort her when she broke up with Endre and then launched into a talk on himself. And Jill mentioned how Artie moved into a place with a newly laid floor but complained about dog fur causing him to itch and aggravate his allergies. Then we walked to Charlie’s American Bar on Bishop (almost next door to Jerry O’Regan and Stephanie Hoolahan’s O’Regan’s Irish Pub), near where Artie used to live, and more of Artie’s ashes spread and one of his poems read aloud. Then we walked along Rene Levesque Boulevard to Chinatown and I read a poem that CZ had chosen, outside the Guy Favreau Building. And then to the Welcome Café which Endre wrote about in one of his books and used in a book title. More ashes spread in an empty lot just south of the Welcome Café. Finally, we ate supper at the Beijing Restaurant (corner of St. Urbain and La Gauchietiere) and CZ joined us there at 5:45 p.m. Note: In “Fort Poetry”, a beautifully written memoir on Artie, Guy Birchard writes: “But Artie’s dissatisfactions were multiple and manifold. Nor was he remotely stoic. He would rail, harangue, and abuse. He took the world’s gravel as deliberate personal insult. To understand all is to forgive all, it has been said, and Mary Brown might be the author of the insight. Artie’s willful psycho-emotional nihilism was no mystery to her. Her savvy, as I’ve suggested, seemed total, utterly unmitigated by what he hurled at her. He quite literally hurled at her in my presence the contents of a mug. If he hadn’t already taken to his bed with some neurasthenic complaint she was trying to assuage with the proffered mug, I’d have flattened him, that time. I couldn’t understand it.” I remember the event very well. I was there, on the back porch, standing beside Guy. What made the coffee mug incident so much worse than it would otherwise have been, was that Mary Brown did so much for Artie, genuinely loved him as a mother might love a son. Living with Artie (letting Artie live with her) could only have been an act of compassion and love by Mary Brown. The only way it could have been difficult for Artie is that at times he may have been reminded of how a mother is supposed to treat her son, rather than the experience that he had of his own mother. But this is doubtful. A summing up: This was a day giving closure to Artie’s death the previous February 2007. We did not mourn Artie’s passing, for his death was the termination of years of suffering that he endured. We celebrated Artie’s great gift of creativity and his exuberance for life; his poems; his talking; his intelligence; his generosity; his insatiable appetite for food and dope. He was always bigger than life, the first real poet some of us knew. Perhaps we also thought of our own youth, gone forever, that we had shared with Artie. It is a cliché but we loved Artie despite Artie, despite the stories of his bad behaviour that seemed, that day, to exceed the positive stories about him. In fact, I heard no positive stories about Artie that day. However, all of our shared memories of Artie were told out of love for him, told with humour and kindness for him. He may have been difficult to take, but we didn’t care, it was “good old Artie” we were remembering. This is testimony to a quality he had that attracted people—Artie’s charisma—that drew people to him. He had true and loyal friends which is a part of Artie’s legacy.

Note: this is my original diary entry for this day.