The only two things I knew about Gordon Lightfoot, one of those performers who forms a lattice around my young to old life, was that he is Canadian and that I have liked his music from 1970 or so well, to date, though he has apparently not composed anything new for the last 16 years. That latter piece of information I could have intuited as I have heard nothing new, but I only came to know certainly of it, when I watched the documentary, "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind" on my tablet the other night.
I had been wondering for some time whatever happened to him. And then one day, before I saw the movie, which made me more eager to see it, I caught a recent photograph of him. I stared at it for a long time, because this drawn, skinny, receding foreheaded long haired old man, couldn't be Gordon Lightfoot. My last image of him is curly haired handsome, with a scruff of the era, youngish if not young, a balladier of stories of romance, adventure, loss, and the odd pinch of optimism.
No, this can't be him. Can't be. He is a contemporary (somewhat older but close enough). His physicality scared me, a not so welcome advertisement for the ravages of time that I can't escape any more than he could. And if anyone should, certainly a Gordon Lightfoot should, no?
Lots of things it turns out, happened to him: a couple of marriages, a couple of relationships, several children from the various personal interactions, and clearly a level of adulation from his fellow Canadians as one of its most famous performers, a musician, a lyricist, a poet. And, though he has striven to overcome the effects, addiction to alcohol and drugs and several health scares, including an aortic aneurysm in 2002 that left him in a coma for a while and mini-strokes that occurred on stage in 2006.
As I am writing this entry, I am listening to a mix of his stuff on Sirius radio. And tears are coming to my eyes. The face attached to the voice I am hearing is the young healthy seeming man. The reality is now life having moved on fifty years. I share the time that has passed with him. Makes me look in the mirror because though I see the enormity of the time passing in him, I do not see it quite that way in myself. Of course, I didn't do drugs and such, my relationships in the area of romance have been sparse so thus wrinkle producing sturm und drang there and my health issues have so far been relatively limited and under reasonable conrol. But something is nonetheless personally jarring about the visual of Gordon Lightfoot then, and the one now. It's probably the "no one is spared" feeling. It's just a matter of . . . .time, till time gets to you, if you are lucky to have had it in the first place.
I am happy to say he still sings. There were ill effects to his hand after the 2002 incident, but he's gotten his picking fingers back for the most part. And the voice is mostly still there, a little less sonorous, the vibrato less controlled, but definitely it is Gordon Lightfoot. And his being here still is comforting.
He released a new studio album this year called Solo. I will be asking Alexa to locate it for me.
Keep singing Gordo. We need you.
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