When I arrived at UBC in September of ’63 I was pretty green. It took me a day and a half to register for all my courses. I kept running into conflicts between one course and another, until someone kindly informed me that there was a master schedule all in one booklet. Finally, I got it done.
A year or two later someone set up an information table to help people who were as green as I was. I suppose nowadays this could be done in minutes on line.
As I stood in line at the Buchanan Building I heard someone practicing on their tuba, or so I thought. Up where we were it was sunny, but down below there must have been fog. It was a fog horn, at Point Atkinson. In Chilliwack I had seen fog lights, but never heard a fog horn.
In Vancouver I could experience things knew only through reading. Eg., I knew that people who ordered a pizza often asked for anchovies. Perhaps I thought that anchovies were some kind of vegetable delicacy. More likely, I had never asked myself what they were. So, when I did order anchovies I was somewhat taken aback to be served salty, pungent, black pieces of fish.
In The Ubyssey I often read about shows at The Ark, a folk club, and The Flat Five, a jazz venue. It never occurred to me to actually go to The Ark, but I did make it to a show at The Flat Five. Maybe I was just walking by. I must have been familiar with Dixieland jazz or some variant of that. What I heard that night was a series of incomprehensible honks and squeaks. Today, after years of exposure, I probably would enjoy the same music. But not then.
There wasn’t much of an art gallery at UBC. Some shows were in the basement of the main library. I wanted to take in the new and the avant garde and I took in at least one show. I remember only one item there. It was perhaps 20″ by 24″, maybe bigger. There was a series of regular shapes, spaced in an orderly way, in rows and columns. The shapes were straight on the bottom and partly curved on the top. Unlike everything else there, this one did not have a small label to tell me what I was looking at and who the artist was. There was a good reason for this. I was not looking at a work of art. I was looking at an air vent. I don’t think anyone caught me doing this.
An air vent! I just about choked laughing. ~ Radiance
Yeah – the avantguarde art show – too funny! Coming from a Fraser Valley town to UBC in 1966, I can relate. I remember being thrilled at opportunities to see foreign/avant guarde films that never made it to the Haney Theatre, but I seriously couldn’t figure them out sometimes.
One time in the summer between first and second year, I was at the White Spot on West Broadway with some UBC friends who’d grown up well-off on the West Side, who seemed, and no doubt were, more sophisticated. Some altercation started between some leather-jacketed duck-tailed guys and some more collegiate looking ones. One of my friends explained the situation as the, “the working class resents the bourgeoisie because. of class …..” I turned to him in astonishment and asked, “What do you know about the working class?” I was from Haney after all. My best friend’s Dad was a prison guard and one of my other best’s Dad was an unemployed house painter. I remember wanting to, but not saying, “Did you have a maid?”
I’d forgotten about the movies, at the Varsity. Our physics professor in 1st year advised us to see Rashomon for its insights into differing realities. And I saw some other Japanese films.
But I remember most a Bergman film, not one of his more well-known films. I wasn’t surprised when there was an intermission, as it had gone on for a while. I waited in my seat, not wanting anything from the concession.
Gradually people came back in and the movie started up again, except, it started at the beginning. Apparently I had failed to notice that the movie was over. A swelling of orchestral music, or the simple words The End, or maybe fin, would have been helpful.