Have The Philistines Won

I've been on a bit of an Irving Layton kick lately—reading his poetry, watching films and interviews. Whenever that happens, a mood and a hankering overtake me, and I find myself reflecting on it. Why Layton, and why now?

He died on January 4, 2006 at the age of 93. The last years of his life were spent at the Maimonides Geriatric Center in the Montreal suburb of Côte Saint-Luc, where the pugnacious, sharp-witted, rapier-tongued, self-described genius slowly succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.

Layton was undeniably a genius. He was also, in my opinion, the greatest poet Canada has ever produced. 

It took a while. He only published his first important poem, The Swimmer, in 1945 when he was 33 years old. After that he was off to the races.

During the postwar period, Layton dragged Canadian poetry kicking and screaming into the 20th century. His greatest poems belong in anthologies of the English language's most important poetry, alongside Yeats, Wordsworth, Eliot, Frost and e.e. cummings.

He said he had two missions with his life's work as a poet and educator: to fight Puritanism and to fight Philistinism.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s largely took care of Puritanism. It seems to be making something of a comeback in the United States these days, with the conservative push to reinstate patriarchy, restrict abortion and return women to traditional roles. My guess is that it won't last. That horse has left the barn and isn't coming back.

Philistinism, on the other hand, is positively flourishing, aided by new technologies that are designed to make us less knowledgeable and less curious about the world. We appear to be outsourcing wisdom and experience.

I suspect Layton knew he was already riding an anti-Puritan wave in the 1960s as his popularity grew nationally and internationally. He was also a savvy and charismatic self-promoter who understood how to use the media to amplify his persona.

I also suspect Layton knew he was fighting an uphill battle against Philistinism. In Donald Winkler's wonderful 2003 film, A Red Carpet For The Sun, poet and teacher Seymour Mayne—who is also my friend and co-editor—recalls having Layton as his high-school teacher in the mid-'50s. On the first day of class, Layton wrote a series of enormous numbers across the blackboard: 99.999999. He asked the class if they knew what it meant. He then explained that it was the percentage of people who were ignorant Philistines. He was determined that his students would not be part of that number.

By the mid-1980s, Layton already saw the writing on the wall, even though he could never have imagined the impact technology would eventually have on the debasement of culture. He understood that poetry was on its way out.

In a TVO interview to promote a volume of published letters, Layton said: "I believe that poetry no longer has a future. There will be poems written, but there will be no poets... Because the language has been debased, commercialized and so on. And the whole sensibility that once produced these outrageous and wonderful mad men has gone smash. It's dead."

By "there will be no poets," Layton meant in the sense of figures possessing stature and cultural authority. He was really talking about the audience for poetry—the culture that once made such figures possible.

Layton was always concerned with cultivating his public persona, in the mold of the Jewish biblical prophets. Audiences were hungry for his fresh, iconoclastic, irreverent opinions. That hunger reached its peak in the early 1960s. A decade later, it was waning.

When I first went to hear Layton give a reading at McGill University Hillel in the mid-'80s, he could still draw a crowd. Layton's presence was an event, and the affection and esteem of young, interested audiences were still there. His poems were on the syllabus of virtually every Canadian literature survey course at major universities across the country.

But the culture was moving on, and Layton was no longer the mainstream figure he had once been.

In 2026, what Layton said 40 years earlier about poems continuing to be written while language was being debased and commercialized sounds prophetic to my ears. There is no doubt that more poems are being written now than ever before. And 99.999999 percent of it is self-centered, whiny dreck.

When you read Layton's poetry, you are struck not only by the precision of his craft but by the universality of his concerns: the dignity and magnificence of the human being; the daily injustices and inhumanities of politics; the beauty and truth of art; the physical ecstasy of experience; the necessity of freedom to exalt the human spirit.

Philistines, who are concerned with life's banalities, appearances, wealth, social status and conformity, have no appreciation for any of it. 

Maybe that's why Layton is hardly mentioned anymore, except of course, in university classrooms. And even then with some trepidation. The 5-times married Layton was also known as a womanizer, which these days makes him a target for cancel culture. 

Have the Philistines won?

Notably Layton himself didn't think so. He thought the poets would be replaced, by filmmakers or another type of artist. 

But then Layton didn't know about social media and AI.

Compliments

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I trusted only my mother

to offer them:

Not the screen-shot

responses ordained

by my preferences

to make me feel good

about what I think

and feel.

I hate feeling suspicious

about feeling good,

hate wanting

to feel bad,

but these days

it’s the only answer.

Housefly

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Insignificance buzzes 

Like housefly wings;

Beating its body

Against the tempered pane

As if another world beckons.

Meeting Across the River

I started playing bass guitar when I was a teenager, like so many kids with dreams of rock stardom. I played in a few bar bands, doing covers. It didn't take long for me to realize that the rock 'n' roll lifestyle wasn't for me.

I continued to play on and off. The last band I played in was short-lived. I was thirty, married, and had a real job.

Then I had children, and I stopped playing music. I also stopped listening to it.

It wasn't a conscious decision. It's not as if I woke up one morning and decided I didn't like music anymore. It happened gradually, almost naturally, as my priorities shifted toward responsibility and putting my family ahead of personal concerns and distractions.

There was a part of me that seemed to believe I had to grow up, and music was something that belonged to being a teenager.

That stage lasted about twenty years. It ended around the time my eldest child was starting university. I had two others in university and my youngest was about to enter high school.

And then, one day, as if a switch had been flipped, I wanted to listen to music again. More than that, I wanted to play it.

Call it a midlife crisis if you want. There is a familiar phenomenon among men in their forties and fifties: the sudden need to get reacquainted with the irresponsible youthful part of themselves that had been abandoned somewhere along the way in the name of adult responsibilities.

That's probably part of what was happening to me.

But it felt like something more important, too. I was allowing myself an emotional reconnection with a part of myself I had left behind.

I dug out my old bass guitar and amplifier, which had been stored under the stairs, along with my old stereo and record collection. I also found the cheap Yamaha acoustic guitar I'd bought from my brother's girlfriend when I was in high school.

Music became my favourite hobby again. And what a great time for that to happen.

When I started playing bass around 1979 or 1980, the options for a self-taught amateur like me were pretty limited. You could buy instructional books or take lessons.

I did both.

My bass teacher was a guy named Paul Harwood, the bass player from Mahogany Rush, a fairly well-known Montreal band. The emphasis was mostly on technique and the basics. I only took a few lessons with Paul. Each time I went to see him I remember thinking that I should introduce myself again because he probably doesn't remember me. I learned enough with Paul to get by in a cover band. 

As for the songs, I learned them by ear from the recordings. Most of what I played was not exact, but it was a passable approximation.

These days, YouTube is an absolute bonanza for learning music. Music theory, instrument technique, songwriting, production, how to play virtually any song you can think of—you can find it all, usually for free.

For the past ten years or so I've been relearning guitar, not so much bass, although it's astounding how popular bass guitar has become on YouTube. One bass player, Davie504, has nearly fourteen million subscribers and billions of views.

Another music YouTuber I follow is Rick Beato. Beato has been a musician and professional music producer, and was previously a college-level music teacher. I started watching his channel when he had a series called What Makes This Song Great, in which he dissected and demystified some of the best and most beloved songs of our generation.

He's a few years older than me, so there is a strong element of nostalgia there.

But his channel is more than nostalgia. It's music education—music theory, practice, production—and above all, it's an expression of his love for music.

Since re-embracing music, I've concentrated mostly on acoustic guitar. I've learned songs I've dreamed of knowing since childhood and explored different techniques and styles, from fingerpicking and alternate picking to folk, country, bluegrass and old-time Delta blues.

These days I'm particularly interested in the pre- and post-war American blues masters.

I've even treated myself to two new guitars: a classic Gibson J-45 and a Gold Tone resonator, which I use for open tunings and slide.

I got a great deal on the resonator that I couldn't pass up, which is exactly the sort of rationalization a person makes when he has rediscovered a teenage hobby in middle age.

For some people, YouTube is a way of monetizing their skills and expertise. For others, it's a way of seeking attention. For others still, it's a way of sharing their enthusiasms with like-minded people.

More than twenty million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. More than five hundred hours every minute.

I've been thinking about what this says about the state of our culture, and particularly about our sense of community.

Rick Beato made an interesting observation recently. He was in a park on a warm, sunny day in Salzburg, Austria, and noticed that he didn't see a single person with a musical instrument.

When he was growing up in upstate New York, he said, on a day like that you were likely to see several groups of friends sitting around with one or two acoustic guitars.

Think Saturday in the Park by Chicago.

It can't be that people aren't playing acoustic guitars anymore. Guitar sales have been growing for years and boomed during the pandemic.

So where did the guitar players go?

Beato thinks it has something to do with the individualization of musical taste brought about by digital music services.

Put simply, we're all listening to different music now.

We each have our own algorithmically generated playlists, tailored precisely to our individual tastes. Music used to be something we shared because, to a large extent, we were all listening to the same music.

Now there may be a hundred people sitting in the same park, each listening to a different soundtrack through a pair of earbuds.

No one is sitting around playing the songs we all know anymore because we don't all know the same songs.

This might be a phenomenon that even predates digital playlists.

Last weekend I went fishing with my wife's first cousin. He's fifty years old, only a decade younger than me. We were chit-chatting, as men in a boat waiting interminably for a bite will do, when the subject of music arose. He's a big music fan like me. He claims to love music from the '60s and early '70s.

I mentioned Glen Campbell. He said he thought he knew who I was talking about but couldn't name one of his songs. So I said, "What about Wichita Lineman?"

Never heard of it.

I said, "It's only the greatest contemporary song ever written, according to both Bob Dylan and Billy Joel."

Still hadn't heard it.

[Aside: Wichita Lineman was the first song I learned to play from a YouTube video after I picked up the guitar again. I was so proud of myself I even posted a video of my rendition to YouTube, my very first YouTube post. I should probably take it down.] 

Back to Beato's point. There may be another reason no one is playing guitar in the park anymore: The general decline of songcraft.

Think of the great era of the singer-songwriter—the Beatles, Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens.

People sat around singing their songs because the songs themselves mattered. The lyrics were savoured, memorized and passed around. They spoke to something inside us. I'm not sure contemporary popular music does that to the same degree.

That's one of the less encouraging things about music on the internet.

Another is that the medium rewards spectacle. YouTube favours the astonishing guitar solo, the impossibly fast fingerwork, the trick, the gimmick, the person doing something you can't imagine being able to do yourself. Technique is impressive, but it isn't the same thing as great music.

And yet there is another side to all of this. YouTube is also a community of enthusiasts.

There is something undeniably intoxicating about having access to a potentially enormous community of people who are interested in the same things you are. Especially when, like me, you spend a lot of your time sitting alone in your basement engaged in what is essentially a group activity.

Music cries out to be shared. Not necessarily in a look-at-me sort of way. More in a sing-along sort of way.

That's why, about a year ago, I uploaded my first guitar tutorial to YouTube. It isn't really a lesson. I'm not a guitar teacher. It's a tutorial on how to play a particular song.

Initially, I wondered whether there was any point in adding yet another video to the hundreds of hours being uploaded to YouTube every minute. One more contribution to the endless stream of content being processed by the world's energy-hungry data centres.

But I convinced myself there was a point, because I'd wanted to learn a particular song and, amazingly, I couldn't find a decent lesson for it on YouTube. The song was Meeting Across the River by Bruce Springsteen, from his classic Born to Run album.

It's not one of Springsteen's best-known songs, which is presumably part of the reason there wasn't a good guitar lesson for it. Also, the song is played on the piano. So I figured it out myself, at least a reasonable facsimile of the album version, and arranged it for guitar, which offers something a little different.

And then I decided that if I had spent the time figuring it out, there might be other guitarists out there who loved the song as much as I do and would like to know how to play it on guitar. So I uploaded it. 

I've since uploaded a couple of other songs, for similar reasons. Either an arrangement I haven't seen online, or a different way of playing a song. I'm not trying to add to the noise, just trying to fill a gap.

I spent twenty years thinking that music was an indulgence I couldn't afford.

Then, when I finally allowed myself to have it back, I discovered that the thing I had missed wasn't simply listening to music or playing an instrument. It was sharing it.

When I was a teenager, that meant figuring out a song by ear, getting the band together in my basement to jam and practice, and then performing it in a club.

Now it means figuring out a song in my basement, and then uploading it to the internet for other players. Kind of like meeting across a digital river.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Except that it leaves me with a residue of sadness.

The Cantaloupe

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I always imagined that someday

My life would be perfect.

And by perfect I mean exactly 

As I want it, outside matching inside.

I was going to the barber at the mall

When my wife asks me

To pick up a few items

From the grocery store next door. 

She’s meticulous, my wife,

Pulls out the colourful flyer,

Expertly scrutinizes the weekly specials

Making a detailed list.

Twenty items in total. Added at the end 

‘Also get whatever else you want’.

She knows how lost I am in the aisle,

Like a robot I need precise instructions.

 

We review the list together,

Prices, sizes, brands, and don’t forget

To check the expiry dates she insists.

From my infrequent experience I know 

How tricky grocery shopping can be.

You think you’re saving fifty cents 

But get hoodwinked into purchasing

A $10 loaf of bread (with raisins).

I wander like a nomad between stocked shelves,

Reading the list, over and over, nervously 

Checking and double checking, planning my escape

Through the check-out line, like it’s a prison break.

At home, my wife unloads the bags.

Palpates the cantaloupe. It’s soft.

Extracts two zucchinis and waves them at me.

They had mysteriously morphed into cucumbers.

Why’d you buy the Diet Dr Pepper

Ten for $11.99, Diet Coke is on sale 

Twenty cans for the same price?

She repeats it three times like I’m hard of hearing.

Lifts the cantaloupe again. Looks perfect to me.

Puts it to her ear like it’s talking,

Pronouncing judgment. I have violated some law, 

My shopping cart license is being revoked. 

I plead my innocence in the most esoteric

Way I can think of: This is just to say

The plums in the icebox were delicious,

Sweet and cold. Forgive me.  

She and the cantaloupe are speechless.

Shadows On A Cave Wall

Another Friday, another visit from the Lubavitch kids.

This week it was a dynamic duo: the slightly embarrassed, retiring Moishe, who’s been flying solo for the last few weeks, testing out his missionary wings with me like a bird fresh out of the nest. 

On this day he’s accompanied by Shalom, acting as his handler or invigilator. Shalom is tall, skinny, pale, and sure of himself. He’s forceful in a passive way, not shy about closing the deal on getting me to put on tefillin, while insisting that I’m doing the mitzvah for myself, even when I tell him that I’m doing it only to make him happy. Shalom has the chutzpah to slip in, at the end, an insistence that I say a prayer beseeching the quick arrival of the Moshiach, which he knows I think is total BS.

The three of us warm up by chit-chatting about their fedoras. It’s a frequent opener since I’m such a fan of Lubavitch hat wear. And they engage enthusiastically.

Finally, I say to Moishe, “So, did you prepare something about the parsha?”

He smiles broadly, like he thought I’d never ask. Launches into his shpiel.

Parashat Ekev. Another chapter of Moses recapitulating the journey of previous Israelite generations who have been travelling through the desert toward the Promised Land.

It’s been forty years, so the generation that will finally enter the Promised Land are the grandchildren of the people who stood at Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law.

Moishe says, “The Rebbe teaches that when Moses speaks of the journey through the desert, he is telling us Jews something important as well. Jews who will be exiled and live in lands that are not theirs. He is warning them of the vastness of the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead.”

I nod skeptically, as I usually do, but don’t interrupt. I know how hard Moishe works at preparing his weekly shpiel. He is naturally an introvert, speaks softly, swallows hard, and stumbles with his delivery.

Shalom is doing the same, silently encouraging Moishe along.

“And the Rebbe says there are snakes and scorpions in the desert. Which is a warning to the Jews. The desert conditions, like the conditions of life in the diaspora, will have hidden dangers. One danger is like the poison of the snake. The other is like the poison of the scorpion.”

I think I see where this is going. He’s going to somehow compare the serpent’s poison to the toxic influences of assimilation. It’s usually pretty predictable. 

Moishe says, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

What? I interrupt.

He repeats, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

I say, “Who told you that? A snake’s poison isn’t warm. It can’t be. A snake is a cold-blooded animal.”

He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me. 

“I understand you want to make a point about the meaning of the poison, to compare it to a toxin that infects Jews who live in the desert of the diaspora. But you have to get the facts straight. A snake’s venom isn’t warm.”

Shalom comes to Moishe’s rescue.

“I think what he means by the snake’s poison being ‘warm’ is that it excites the body, while the scorpion’s poison is ‘cold’ because it shuts the body down. He’s talking about the excitement we feel with all the pleasures of living in the golus, and the spiritual numbing that takes place once assimilation sets in.”

“I doubt it,” I say. “I mean, I doubt that you’ve got your facts straight. I’ll tell you what. Let’s ask AI.”

And we do.

AI says exactly what I suspect: that a snake is cold-blooded and that its venom is similarly cold.

AI also tells us about how the toxins of snakes versus scorpions work in the bloodstream. Exactly the opposite of Moishe’s shpiel.

Snake venom acts on the nervous system to shut it down, not excite it. And scorpion venom actually stimulates the nervous system, overwhelming it to produce lethality.

I tell the boys, “Look, if you want to maintain credibility with your messaging, you have to at least get your facts straight.”

The boys don’t even crack a smile of acknowledgement.

Then Shalom says, “But the way we are explaining it is what the Rebbe says in one of his books.”

I say, “Well, either you don’t understand what the Rebbe meant by what he said, or he is literally incorrect.”

Shalom says, “But the Rebbe can’t be incorrect.”

“So the Rebbe knows more about snakes than herpetologists who study reptiles their whole lives?”

I can tell they have no idea what a herpetologist is. I don’t hold that against them, because I doubt most seculars know.

Shalom is steadfast. He repeats that the Rebbe can’t be wrong.

I say, “Look, you guys are very smart and studious. I respect that. Learning means asking questions. Just because the Rebbe says something doesn’t mean you can’t question it.”

Then I add, “No one is more certain that he understands something than a person who doesn’t actually fully understand.”

“The Rebbe understands,” says Shalom, looking at me with pity. He uses the present tense, as if the Rebbe were sitting in the chair next to him.

“Only Hashem fully understands,” I say, reaching for some common ground. “The rest of us are in a dark cave trying to discern shadows on a wall. Ever hear of Plato?”

Shalom smiles to humour me. Asks if I’m ready now to wrap tefillin. “For you, not for us,” he adds.

I do it, to lighten the mood.

The Hitchhiker

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after Ida Lupino

“I know what you’re thinkin,

so forget about it,

you’re gonna die is all.

It’s just a question of when.”

Two buddies gone fishing.

Picked up the hitchhiker 

by the side of the road,

come out of hiding.

Said he’d run out of gas,

thanked us 

for showing up,

slid into the back seat 

and pulled out a pistol.

“Keep your hands on the steering wheel.

Ten to midnight

where I can see 'em.”

The hitchhiker had one good eye

and one bum eye,

could never tell 

where he was looking

or if he slept.

Turn here.

Turn there.

Pull over and get out.

We followed his instructions,

never sure when 

the gun would go off.

Camped in the sagebrush.

Headed south to Baja

to get the ferry at Santa Rosalia.

One night the hitchhiker

took the watch my wife gave me.

Said he never got 

a timepiece from anyone.

Owes no one.

We’ll be there soon.

Where is there? I asked.

You’ll know when we get there.

I thought about my little one 

back home,

“Ve con Dios, pequeña.”