How many ways can you rewrite Peter Pan? Well, you could begin the story in Montreal, add a piano and a lot of other instruments, send Peter out to fly over stages all around the world with charming songs and amusing banter, and give him a serious drug dependency. Then you could clear up the drug thing, find him a long-term boyfriend, take his mother away for good, and propel him into opera. You could call him Rufus Wainwright, and when you ask him, now, whether it’s the best or worst of times, he will say: mostly, the best.
“I’m such an eternal optimist, it’s sickening,” he said, during a recent interview in Toronto, during which he said much and laughed often, usually while gazing out a nearby window over the city. At age 36, he looked a little tired, worn-down even, in his black jeans, faded T-shirt, striped woollen jacket and battered boots.
Grief can wear you out, and there has been a lot of grieving in the extended Wainwright-McGarrigle clan, following the death in January of Kate McGarrigle, mother of Rufus and his sister Martha. Rufus was at her bedside at the end.
“I’m very sad, I’m devastated, I miss her all the time,” he said. “The fact that she was only 63 was a drag, and that her grandson (Martha’s son
“When a really strong person goes, there’s a real sadness, but there’s also kind of a celebration, because now you can do your thing,” he said, with a laugh. “My mother was such a big character and such a powerful force, and that really made an impression on me and on everyone around her. We got it, and it was ingrained, and now that she’s gone, we have the gift that she gave us, and we can measure it however we wish. She was the first person to say, life is for the living. I’m just following her orders.”
Kate’s liver cancer affected everything in Wainwright’s life since the illness was detected in 2006. You can hear it in the album of songs he’s releasing today (All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu), in the tone of much of the music and in the lyrics also. Martha, for instance, is about taking stock of being part of a sometimes fractured show-biz family, and about the need to pull together “and see mother, things are harder for her now.” The punch line is that though Wainwright seems to be speaking directly to his sister, he’s really imagining the more likely scenario of talking to her answering machine – “call me back,” he sings, rather plaintively, at the end.
The album is mostly just Wainwright and his piano. For several reasons, the big flamboyant production style of his last several discs did not appeal this time.
