I was listening to an interview recently with an older person – and no, I’m not being ageist, the significance of the person being older will be revealed shortly – and the question they were asked was: “How would you like to be remembered?”
Before I explain why I think “How would you like to be remembered” is a stupid question, let me explain why it is significant that the interviewee was an older person.
We don’t ask someone who’s 5 years old how they’d like to be remembered, not because they haven’t done anything memorable – they probably drew a picture someone excitedly put on their fridge or perfected making farting sounds to the constant delight of their friends – but rather because it would require us to get into a discussion about why we needed to remember the person, i.e. because they died, and we don’t need to have a discussion with a 5 year old about death if we don’t have to.
We also don’t want to ask someone in their teens how they’d like to be remembered, again not because they haven’t done anything of significance – you could be talking to Greta Thunberg or Summer McIntosh or someone who just got their driver’s licence – but because people in their teens feel that the planet is going to hell because older people have screwed the world up so badly that there’s no point even planning for the future.
As for older people (and feel free to pick the age that someone becomes an older person) we somehow feel it’s OK to ask them to contemplate their eventual demise because, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s going to be sooner than later.
So back to the question. If someone asked me how I’d like to be remembered (not that anyone has ever done that) I’d say I’d like to be remembered as a great mandolin player. And while that is very much how I would like to be remembered, the fact is I’m not that great a mandolin player. It’s possible I may be among the top five mandolin players on my street, but I can’t be sure because it’s a long street.
And this meandering road – and here I am referring metaphorically to this missive, as opposed to the aforementioned street, which is very straight and not meandering at all – leads, of course, to Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room, the band that I am proud to be part of and who will be playing on Sunday, September 21 at the legendary Free Times Café on Spadina, just west of College.
The Living Room has been playing for over 20 years and so it would certainly be fair game for someone to ask us about how we would like to be remembered or dare I say, about our legacy, not that it’s ever happened, but hey, a guy can dream.
The thing is, other than some delightful YouTube videos, we have no recordings, and we’ve got nothing to stream. We are a live band, and we hope that people who come to see us – and that could be you – will have a good time and remember the evening they spent with us. The recollection could be fleeting, it’s possible that people won’t even remember the name of the band, but what matters is that when people think about the show, they have a good feeling and some nice memories – and while I can’t promise that will happen, I’m pretty confident that it will. And even if people don’t remember the music, there’s always the food and the drink and the company.
The music gets underway at 8pm and there is no cover – and that in and of itself something to remember.
Hope to see you there.
Jonathan
PS. I think if people were asked “How would you like to remember the bagpipes?” the most common answer would be “Not at all.”
