{"id":2107,"date":"2018-09-21T14:28:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T18:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/?p=2107"},"modified":"2019-10-13T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T11:33:17","slug":"breakfast-meeting-october-20-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/breakfast-meeting-october-20-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast Meeting October 19, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Max Layton: I was born in Montreal in 1946. My father, Irving Layton, who would later become the well-known poet, was barely making ends meet while my mother, Betty Sutherland, who would later change her name to Boschka, was a painter working as a cashier at a local restaurant.<\/p>\n

My parents were, to say the least, unconventional. Atheists and socialists; they were part of a writers\u2019 co-op. I remember the interior walls of my childhood home were lined with books and paintings and I remember there were frequent parties – artists of all kinds: dancers, potters, sculptors, actors and, of course, writers. One of these was a young poet who always brought his guitar. His name was Leonard Cohen. When I was twelve, my mother traded one of her paintings in return for Leonard giving guitar lessons to me. I’ve been in love with the guitar ever since.<\/p>\n

My parents split up when I was 13. I remember my mother staring out the window and playing the same Leadbelly record over and over. Eventually, my mother and sister moved to California while I went to live with my father: I moved out when I was 16\u2026<\/p>\n

Somehow, I finished high school, then worked odd jobs – picking tobacco in southern Ontario, laying track in northern Manitoba, logging in B.C., apprentice car mechanic in Montreal, etc. – while putting myself through university. It took me ten years but finally I graduated with a BA in Eng. Lit. and Philosophy\u2026<\/p>\n

The trouble with being seventy years old is that by now I have too many memories \u2013 family, friends, enemies, canoe trips in the wilderness, Aikido, Tai Chi, the delicious loneliness of reading a good book at four in the morning in an all-night greasy spoon, the first time I saw my wife Sharon, the first time I saw an impossible bend in a telephone pole…<\/p>\n

A few months later, I was legally blind.<\/p>\n

Unable to work, I retreated into the darkness of my room and wrote my first album, Heartbeat of Time<\/em>. Unable to read, I turned to my steel-string Martin guitar. And then a very strange thing happened – my fingers found new chords and I found myself singing new words and new melodies.<\/p>\n

The good news is that, my eyesight restored thanks to the miracle of modern science, I am now able to read again – and write. In fact, I have since published two books of poetry and released four CDs.<\/p>\n

No longer blind, filled with love and gratitude, my songs and poems celebrate the new world I see…<\/p>\n

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Max Layton: I was born in Montreal in 1946. My father, Irving Layton, who would later become the well-known poet, was barely making ends meet while my mother, Betty Sutherland, who would later change her name to Boschka, was a painter working as a cashier at a local restaurant. My parents were, to say the … Continue reading Breakfast Meeting October 19, 2019<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakfast-speakers-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t