When I Was Young was hosted Dec. 4, 2019 at Seance Centre Records in Toronto.
Artist Statement
Friday was always a special day in our house. For one it was payday, but it also meant Dad would be bringing home a new record or two to listen to. It was my favourite day of the week.
My father began the tradition, as he tells me, of buying music on payday when he was a teenager, heading to the record store in whatever city the family was living in. Growing up an Air Force brat and moving every few years, I imagine the ritual brought some semblance of normalcy to what would surely have been a challenging time for a young person without a regular sense of home or belonging.
He continued the tradition well into adulthood, and I, like many children of children who found solace in music, was drawn to the object of Dad’s obsession. Though we might not have always found value in the same things, music was a constant in our house and it became a way for us to communicate, especially during my teenage years when words between fathers and sons are rare, and important ones are often left unspoken.
While Dad and I shared a lot of music—I have him to thank for introducing me to Leonard Cohen and Willie Nelson, while he learned to love The Smiths and The Cure from me—the music you will hear tonight remains by and large a mystery to me. Few of these records were ever played in our house, and for decades they sat untouched under Dad’s workbench. Together, we’ll hear many of these songs for the first time.
We’ll also hear these records in the condition in which they were found. Each skip, hiss and scratch represents a moment when the circumstances of Dad’s life impressed themselves physically on a material object. As such, I’ve made no attempt to repair or clean these records.
By presenting this archive in non-chronological order, I hope to evoke the fragmented nature of memory and identity, particularly when that identity is bound intrinsically with the consumption of material artifacts. More broadly speaking, the collection offers not only an intimate portrait of a young man growing up in Canada in the mid-20th century, but functions as archival material documenting a time of great social upheaval and the flourishing of post-World War II youth culture. Of paramount importance though, this work and performance are a personal journey of discovery, a celebration of life, and a love letter from son to father.
When I Was Young takes inspiration from other object-based portraiture works, including Rutherford Chang’s We Buy White Albums (2014), Theaster Gates’ How to Build a House Museum (2018), and Felix Gonzales-Torres’ Untitled: A Portrait of Ross in LA (1991). The performance itself is named for the 1967 coming-of-age song-cum-counter-culture-anthem by Eric Burdon and the Animals, which is included in the performed collection.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF THE SONGS PERFORMED IN WHEN I WAS YOUNG
