My first night in Korea, a co-worker took me to a bar called Old Rock. Old Rock is an LP bar, meaning it has a huge record collection that’s played by request. These places are fairly popular over here, and, because they happen to marry two of my favourite hobbies, they’re all cool. Old Rock, though, is special. The vibe is right. It’s dark and soothing and there are no neon lights. People chat quietly and smoke cigarettes and salarymen get drunk and play “Rivers of Babylon.” It’s owned by a fellow with excellent taste in jazz and classic rock – that’s his likeness in the above photo. (Yes, he really pretty much does look like that.)
Old Rock is the only spot in Ilsan where you could call me a regular. The second or third time I hung out there, I requested “Cantaloupe Island,” by Herbie Hancock. The owner (I still don’t know his name) shot me a thumbs up, and played everything I asked for the rest of night, from Morrissey, to Sly & the Family Stone, to Jerry Jeff Walker. How could I resist?
I stopped in for a drink with a fellow Canuck just after Christmas. We were both feeling a little homesick, so we ran through a set of very Canadian songs, just to twist the knife, I guess. Homesickness is a strange feeling. Not loneliness, really, but something like it. Kind of a dull, faint ache. As we stand up to leave, the owner shines a flashlight at me and says, “Sit! Your song!” And he plays “Acadian Driftwood,” by The Band, which is, for my money, one of the best songs ever written about Canada. We have to stay for another round.
Tonight, I walk into Old Rock to find it empty but for one of the bartenders. I’m disappointed the owner’s not around, because I brought him a Canadian five-dollar bill. He’s got a corkboard up behind the bar with money from all over the world, but nothing from Canada. As I sit down at the bar, the owner walks through the door. I wave hello, and greet him in Korean. He answers me in English, and makes for the record shelves behind the bar. He plays “Acadian Driftwood.” I give him the five-dollar bill, and say, “I’m from Canada.” He holds up the record sleeve, pointing to the Band: “I know.” Over the next hour, he plays Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Guess Who. He’s plays “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” start to finish!
Canadians are often criticized (usually by other Canadians) for identifying themselves in the negative. The perception is that, as a young nation, we’ve no identity, and so this is how we’ve come to know ourselves – by emphasizing what we are not rather than what we are. Listening to those records, I wonder if this is always case. When this middle-aged Korean man listens to The Band, he thinks about Canada. What does he think of, I wonder? “Wild, majestic mountains” or “green dark forest, too silent to be real”?
The Canada of these songs no longer exists, if it ever did. It’s about as real for me as it is for him. Those landscapes are going or gone, the stories growing more remote. But if that’s what comes to mind to a person half a world of way when they think of Canada, then maybe we haven't had all that tough a time self-identifying. (And romanticized half-fiction or not, I like that version a lot more than the current one that's governed by a craven autocrat and getting deservedly bitch-slapped in The Guardian by George Monbiot.)
Or, he might speak very limited English, and have no idea what the lyrics to any of those songs mean. Entirely possible. In that case, here’s something you can be sure of: when he sees that five on his corkboard, he’ll remember me. He’ll remember that Canadians listen to good jazz, drink good (cheap) whiskey, are friendly, and they love their home. Good enough for me.
