Had a rather busy day at work today catching up since I took Monday off. I distinctly remember sitting in my desk wallowing in misery as I thought about what I would post about later that night.
Luckily for me, I had the good fortune of hopping into Mag's family's car and riding with them to the house of Dr. McPhee, founder of the
Cross Cancer Institute. Dr. McPhee is an interesting fellow. He's an extremely unassuming guy, like one of those older gentlemen that pops into good old Tim Hortons for a nice Conservative black coffee. He talks of the old days playing the piano in the dark in the nurse's dormitory and singing tenor at Westminster Abbey, all the while clasping his hands in a Montgomery Burns-esque contemplative manner. He maintains constant eye contact with you while he chats unless he's thinking of something, and loves his wife Beverley very much.
On first glance, you'd never think he was anything special. I've grown quite fond of this characteristic that insanely smart individuals have - they seem to fly under the radar, demonstrate their greatness in their actions, and only occasionally showcase their brilliance in ephemeral glimmers. Dr. McPhee is surprisingly common until we start getting him to talk about his art. He paints landscapes using one shade of acrylic paint to formalize his base, a planning stage he says takes about an hour and a half and results in him being able to tell exactly how the picture will turn out. This hour and a half is a frenzy of inspiration, and then the rest of the time he spends churning out the painting slowly, adding acrylic and oil to capture a place in the world and put it on his wall. He has talent with painting the right sort of light and has a strange fascination with
wave clouds.
Dr. McPhee constructs things. He built his glider, which he says he's reached 30,000 feet in and has a 55 ft. wingspan. He talks of building machines for the CCI like surgical lasers. I think what impresses me the most about what he builds is his assembly of musical notes.
He has this uncanny ability to only be able to play the piano by ear. He says this shamefully as if it's a downfall, but I think he's part of a dying breed of musicians. He's embarrassed by his pocketbook with common musical phrases translated to English and explanations of note length values. While this education is important to be able to understand the musical standard of today, I find that too often pianists become regimented into RCM exams and end up as blasé musical products with no imagination or style. Along with his trusty cocker spaniel sidekick Brad, Dr. McPhee seats himself at his Yamaha C6 and gingerly extracts notes that sprinkle delicately off the walls in his back studio with solid acoustics. He plays the Beatles'
Yesterday, careens into an excerpt of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto 3rd Mvt., and rounds it all off with a loopy rendition of Puccini's
Nessun Dorma aria from Turandot. The most fascinating thing is that Dr. McPhee is completely absorbed in his music. His eyes are closed, he's dreaming of eighths and quarters cascading onto a staff laden with emotion. He makes these abrupt and strange pauses and I think his style is a mixture between three Ds:
Debussy,
Disney, and
Dickinson.
I love fascinating people for obvious reasons. I cannot wait to see what Dr. McPhee will be up to the next time I meet him, but I hope to have my eyes opened to different perspectives of the worlds I travel in. I thought I knew music until I saw music from the ear and not from the eyes; from the heart and not from the head. I thought I was starting to understand what people saw in art until he showed me a new way to look at paintings through Renaissance-era techniques pioneered by Michelangelo. Today I experienced beauty in simplicity, and I think I enjoy it very much.
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