It’s my dad’s birthday today. He died over twenty years ago. Today marks one hundred years ago his birth. He was the only one in the family who didn’t play an instrument though he had a unique music connection. Supposedly we were related to a big-shot musician, or so there was rumour of it from his mother, Rochel Colish. She died a few weeks before I was born. If I had known her I bet I would have pestered for details. Fact or fiction Rochel? Supposedly he was her cousin, the violinist Jascha Heifetz, from Vilnius as was she. I played there twenty years ago. It was fascinating. I owe those Lithuanian dates [and Latvia] to Elizabeth Fischer. A very mystical gift.

I liked imagining on some level Rochel’s genes were uniquely resonating inside me just because I was the present day carrier returned. Elizabeth was authoritarian and blunt in a way I enjoyed. When I played Vancouver’s Western Front she announced to me I must put her on the door, like as if I had no choice. Afterward she told me I have to simply play piano and stop singing songs. Like Neil Young’s lyric, ain’t nothin’ like a friend who can tell you you’re just pissin’ in the wind. My dad also was good at the truth. He couldn’t figure out what I was doing on the piano, why I played the way I did but he wasn’t mean about it, he didn’t understand it but could appreciate it was real and interesting to not only me. He liked Saint Saëns and tried to turn me onto his music. I tried but I didn’t get it.