Stephen Harper: Failed Musician

"Picking up the pieces of my sweet, shattered dream..."

So goes the opening line of Gordon Lightfoot's classic, "Carefree Highway", one of a couple of familiar tunes Stephen Harper played on the piano for the television cameras, to prove that he loves music even as he slashes funding for the arts.

We dismissed his performance as mere media theatrics. But what if it was something else? What if it was actually a longed-for performance opportunity?

Maybe Stephen Harper hates professional artists because he's just jealous.

Let's remember former Ontario Premier Mike Harris for a minute. Harper's sneering at artists has been compared to Mike Harris's contempt for teachers, and his subsequent decimating of education budgets. Now, recall what Mike Harris did as a very young adult (before he became a golf professional and then a politician). Indeed, he went to teacher's college, and then became briefly (that is to say, unsuccessfully) an elementary school teacher.

Writing in her influential book "The Artist's Way" (1992), Julia Cameron calls adults with repressed artistic dreams "shadow artists". She writes "All too often the artistic urges of the artist child are ignored or suppressed. Often with the best intentions, parents try to foster a different, more sensible self for the child...Baby artists are urged to think and act like baby doctors or lawyers [or economists]. ...If encouraged at all, the children are urged into thinking of the arts as hobbies, creative fluff around the edges of real life. For many families, a career in the arts exists outside of their social and economic reality."

Sound familiar? When Stephen Harper talks about "the lives of artists not resonating with ordinary Canadians", what he means is, "that's not how my life worked out". When he imagines artists' lives as a stream of glamourous cocktail parties and television appearances, he's fantastizing about what his life might have been.

His fantasy would be inaccurate, of course. In reality, with a miniscule number of artists actually making a living (or earning any income at all) from their creative life (even if they do get the occasional grant), most of them spend their days as accountants, civil servants, cab drivers, computer programmers and advertising copywriters. In short, their lives are quite ordinary, just like Stephen Harper may secretly believe his to be.

Think of how Stephen Harper looked when he sat down at the airport lounge piano. He displayed that boyishly self-conscious pride we see at open mics, when shy adult songwriters take the stage after years of denying they play.

Wasn't it touching what he said, for the record, for the whole country to hear?

"I had a little bit of talent. I never had enough talent to be a professional, but..."

There it is! The regret! The might-have-beens! And there, too, is the feeling of personal loss and shame. "If only I had been more talented, my music might have amounted to something."

In the Globe and Mail interview, which you can listen to here, he says "I am a shadow of my former self". In fact, that shadow artist still haunts him--and now threatens the cultural sovereignty of our country.

Harper goes on to reflect (with a poignant lack of self-awareness), on how his artistic calling is alive today despite his attempts to banish it. (Note to Mr. Harper: some artists also support themselves as psychotherapists!)

"I've always been torn on music and piano in a way, because I actually get a great deal of satisfaction out of when I do it," he says. "But I get so wrapped up in it. I've always had that problem with the artistic things I've enjoyed doing. [Note the past tense.] You know, I played piano, I've sung a bit, I used to write poetry... [It's as if he's writing his artist c.v.!] ...but I've always found with these kinds of things that they really draw me in and I can't let them go. I find it difficult to do it just a little bit on the side, just a little bit here and now...that's always been my struggle."

Exactly. As a musician at heart, he will always be drawn back to that transporting and transformative creative experience, that place where he feels most alive. "Carefree Highway, got to see you my old flame...let me slip away, slip away on you." Both in his bewildered musing about his abandoned musical life, and in the songs he chooses to play, he expresses an artistic call that has not yet been answered.

(By contrast, another former Ontario Premier, Bob Rae, has always demonstrated a healthy self-awareness of his own artistic interests and abilities. He comfortably and competently plays piano in public from time to time, and speaks on arts issues with knowledge and depth. It should be noted that he does not display contempt for artists--neither does he express inner conflict over his own creative life and career.)

But, back to Stephen Harper, Failed Musician.

What was the other song he chose to sing? Just as revealing as the Lightfoot standard, it was George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

"I look at you all, see the love that lies sleeping...
While my guitar gently weeps."

Harper admits that it's his son's interest in the guitar that has re-kindled his own interest in music. Yep, that would stir up those old dreams, for sure--dreams that Stephen's father (not a musician, but an expert on jazz) and his grandmother and uncle (both accomplished musicians) must have shared. Jung wrote "Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life of the parent." Is it possible that nothing has a stronger influence on a country than the unlived life of the politician?

If Harper's cuts to the arts are best understood by reading between the lines--the ledger lines, if you will--it's appropriate, then, to end this essay with the little-known final verse that George Harrison wrote but seldom sang. (You can bet that Stephen Harper didn't sing this one in the airport lounge.)

"I look from the wings at the play you are staging
While my guitar gently weeps...
As I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging
Still my guitar gently weeps."

Okay, Stephen. Stop weeping and feeling sorry for yourself. Stop feeling jealous of your son (who you say plays by ear, as you never could), and contemptuous of the professional artists who had enough courage to follow their artistic passions. Start practicing for your Grade 10 Conservatory exam. Write a poem about your father. Then write a song about work, about purpose, about dreams and disappointments.

Take a deep breath and play. Whether your hands are shaking, or not.

Play like an ordinary person.

Like an artist.

There's still time.