Sylvain Tremblay

He had always hated seeing his mother with her eyes brimming with tears. Tears that never flowed. She must have been about fifty-five or fifty-six years old when he noticed it, suddenly, and it began to get on his nerves, and then to horrify him. Every time she told a little story about the past, no matter whether it was happy or unhappy, her eyes would mist over, covered in a layer of tears that she never shed. He wanted to tell her: have a good cry so we can get it over with. But even before he could blurt out the words, his mother’s tears would disappear. And then appear again when she got the least bit emotional. It would only take some innocuous anecdote, sad, happy or full of tenderness. You never knew when hidden feelings would well up and when her heart would spill over into her eyes.

The frequency of these episodes drove him crazy. Where had she been hiding her pain for all those years? She had seemed so happy.

Around the same age, Sylvain Tremblay began to experience the same terrible affliction as his mother. He had just turned fifty-five. To his great dismay, he could not keep his feelings from bubbling up to his eyes, making his eyelids and entire face puffy, and filling his eyes with fluid that couldn’t find the exit valve. He had picked up his mother’s revolting condition. His fits of emotion were unpredictable, he would become agitated more and more often, but tears never flowed from his eyes.

Many years ago, Sylvain Tremblay was a popular singer. He couldn’t walk down the street without being recognized by someone. People would sometimes come up to him and talk. Some would ask him for his autograph, while others pretended not to recognize him, although it showed anyway. He liked his profession, but he didn’t really like to be recognized. It even irritated him sometimes. Being well known goes hand in hand with being recognized, and he had no idea that one day he would miss both.

His career had begun with a bang, without any particular effort on his part, and he coasted on his success. Shows, television, going on the road – it worked well for some years, until he felt the urge to compose his own songs. One or two of them were played on the radio. He was thrilled to hear his fans singing his very own words, to a tune he had composed. But it was short-lived. You can’t change styles without impunity, people in the entertainment business would say. The pop singer had lost sight of his niche, and the composer-songwriter was not able to carve out one of his own. His audiences, those greedy, nameless people, as fickle as the wind, had not stuck by him. “My dear audience,” Marc Labrèche so affectionately repeated every week, to butter up his spectators and win their loyalty, because, to be honest, a performer is nobody without his audience. In Sylvain Tremblay’s case, the people who had fallen in love with him on a whim forgot him just as quickly, without so much as a goodbye.

The more time went by the less hope he held out.

Revival, resurrection. He had tried many times, of course. He had written a bunch of new songs. But these efforts never paid off. There was no reaction from audiences or from the entertainment world. Too many excellent young songwriters were popping up – young women and men who had something to say and a new way of making music. There were too many good songs on the air. He felt old, obsolete and decrepit. Frustrated and defeated, he buried his self-confidence ten feet underground.

And time passed. No one recognized him anymore, no one talked about him. There wasn’t the slightest reference to him on the radio, even in jest. Nothing. He was working as a car salesman and earning a good living at it, incognito. None of the people he worked with knew he had once had his moment of glory, that he had been on television so many times, or that he had performed in the biggest concert halls in Montreal and beyond. He didn’t ever talk about it. Why would he? There was no point in making himself feel more ashamed.

And still, when he was not dragged down by his urge to sing again, Sylvain Tremblay wasn’t what you would call a happy man – that would be a stretch – but he wasn’t unhappy either, even though sporadic surges of ambition were constantly ruining his life. He wanted to plan a comeback. “But what am I going to revive?” he asked himself one day. “What am I going to revive?” It triggered such strong emotion that tears began to flow. He thought of his mother, and sobbed until he was exhausted.

One day, as he was still grappling with the decision to give up his now-defunct past, another nail was hammered into its coffin. He received a mysterious phone call from a woman he didn’t know. She was a researcher for a television show on “has-beens,” looking for old stars who were willing to talk about what they were now up to.

It could not have been more humiliating for him. As he talked to the researcher, he remembered a saying he had read somewhere, about an old hero who does not want to talk about his glorious past. She bombarded him with references to his past as a pop singer. He blushed and his eyes brimmed with tears. He wanted to tell her about his recent songs, which were ready to be recorded, if only he could find a record company.

It was humiliating, but he couldn’t refuse. You never know, this was perhaps a way to kick start his career again. A producer might be watching, or a far-sighted manager, or a record company. You never know.

When he saw the television guys arrive at his place, he shuddered with fear but still felt vaguely happy. It was now or never. He had to go ahead with it. With all his heart.

In the blink of an eye, a crew armed with cameras, cables, spotlights, lapel-mics, make-up – the whole kit and caboodle – set up their gear in the nicest room in his apartment, his living room which overlooked Hutchison. He had cleaned house, tidied up, rearranged the living room to make it look spiffy, but on orders from the producer, they turned everything topsy-turvy in the space of a few minutes. Witnessing this commotion made Sylvain relive the excitement of his early years. Tears welled up in his eyes. Too many emotions at once, a mix of old and new ones. He had more stage fright than he’d ever had. He had to get through it at all costs. He took refuge in his bathroom, where he tried to relax and perk himself up by splashing cold water on his face.

It was like a dream, or rather a nightmare. He could hear the hubbub. They were calling him, they were saying his name. It had been a long time since he had heard the sound of his own name. His confidence came back. He quickly dried his face off, pasted a smile on it and made his way into the living room. It was now or never.

A few weeks later, Sylvain Tremblay was sitting in front of the television in his chaotic living room, which the camera crew had left in disarray. “Sorry, Monsieur Tremblay, we’re in a bit of a rush, you don’t mind, do you?” No, he had just wanted them to bugger off as soon as possible!

When he saw himself, he was ashamed. A total loser. Pitiful. What’s more, what they were talking about was out of date, songs that didn’t mean anything anymore, even to him. They were playing excerpts they had dredged up from god knows where. So ridiculous. Enough to make you cry your eyes out. Not only was he ashamed to see how absolutely useless he was, but he also noticed that he’d become the spitting image of his mother. He had the same way of holding back the tears. It was scary. He had always been told that he looked like his father. What had happened to him in such a short time? And his nose, what had happened to his nose? He was overcome with emotion and his face was ablaze and contorted. It was pathetic. How he had aged! Wrinkles everywhere. And his smile, which everyone had complimented him on when he was young, was stiff and austere now. Luckily, he hadn’t shed any tears. Christ, that would have been the last straw, ludicrous beyond belief, the height of the absurd: an old singer crying over his past. There is nothing more lame than that. A tear on his swollen and blotchy nose … minus the wit and panache of a Cyrano.

He turns the television off before the end of the credits. He has a bit of a stomach ache and feels like he’s going to puke. He takes a deep breath, as he used to do before going out on stage. He breathes in and out a few times while looking out the window. He calms down. He will never sing in public anymore. It’s over. He will plunk away on his guitar by himself, in his living room, to hear his own voice, his own words. He’ll sing for friends if they ask him to, but nothing more.

Outside, two Hasidim are walking by. Each one has a cell phone glued to his ear. At least they have not seen the show. An older couple walks by, arm in arm. You can’t tell which one is propping the other up, but it’s all right, they’re getting around without too much trouble. Two young people are standing in the middle of the sidewalk with their arms around each other. They can’t stop kissing. He is moved as he watches them. He thinks of a song that he could write, exactly from this perspective.

While his faded image was being displayed on one channel, a million other images were flooding the one hundred and eighty other channels. At that very moment, children were being born and others were dying of hunger and thirst, while he, Sylvain Tremblay, was fretting over a lousy thirty-minute show that had been plugged into the schedule of TVA.

No.

All of a sudden, he turns around and looks straight ahead into the room. He decides to tidy up his apartment. Neither sad nor joyful, he puts the pieces of furniture back in place. He feels almost light, as if an enormous weight has just slipped off his shoulders. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say that you have to reach rock bottom before you can find your way back up. His past has been put to rest once and for all thanks to this grotesque half-hour of television which has placed a tombstone over his years of waiting and hoping for nothing. It’s over. There’s no looking back. His future will be whatever he makes of it.

The telephone rings. His first reflex is not to answer. What if a workmate has recognized him? He doesn’t feel up to talking about it. Then he changes his mind.

“Yes, this is Sylvain Tremblay, yes … Thank you, that’s nice … Yes, yes, I know who you are, I often listen to your songs on the radio … I’m still writing, yes … You want to hear them? Why? … No, I’ve never thought about it, but why not? … I’ve done a hundred or so … You want to come around? … Yes, a home recording, of course. I’ll sing you the other ones and play my guitar … I’m here, you can come right over. I live in Mile End.”

He gives the person his address, hangs up and continues to rearrange things in his living room. “How stupid can I be! All these years, I’ve been an idiot, fighting this useless battle. I’ve had a one-track mind, that’s what. I’ve had blinders on. I’ve never looked left or right, I’ve just spent my time banging my head against a brick wall. I’ve been obsessive, to say the least. It never even occurred to me. It’s incredible. Dear God, let other people sing my friggin’ tunes. “A lyricist is a writer who sings,” as the French songwriter Pierre Delanoë used to say. He was right. And I know how to compose music as well. Terrific! I will finally hear my songs. If they’re sung by other people, so be it. I will finally hear them. Yes, yes, yes!

He was still laughing when the doorbell rang.