Why age-gap friendships are a risk worth taking

0:00Canada makes good stuff and we carry a lot of it. At HealthyPlanetCanada.com, more than 10,000 products are Canadian and all 100% authentic. So whether you need soup season groceries, clean beauty for dry air, or sports nutrition and supplements, shop with confidence at HealthyPlanetCanada.com. Family-owned proudly Canadian since 1995. From here, life looks good. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, it's Mateja. Every week, we bring you interviews with authors from all around the world and books from all sections of the bookstore. We really want to keep doing that. So when you have a sec, please give us a follow or share the show with a friend. I hope you enjoyed today's show and thank you so much for listening. Hey there. Welcome to Bookends.

1:00I'm Mateja Roach. Have you ever had a simply fantastic teacher? One that you really connected with who saw your potential and encouraged you to chase it? For me, it's hard to pick just one, but I think of the debate coach whose house I still visit for dinner when I go back to Halifax, a chemistry teacher that I sometimes exchange DMs with. The English teacher who once sent me a passage from Paul Lynch's profit song in the mail. For Mark Ben David, this person, this special teacher, was his sixth grade art teacher. They had a powerful friendship filled with laughter and the sharing of knowledge and observations. It transcended their age difference and marked him for the rest of his life. And it's that friendship that inspired the sapling, a tender autobiographical novel that tells the story of characters Mark and Clara in the wake of Clara's death. Addressed to her, it's honest and confessional, and grapples with the way memory can stay and confade.

2:01Mark is also an actor. You may know him for roles in Murdoch mysteries and Reacher. And he joins me now in studio for this conversation. Mark, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very glad to be here. To start off, can you tell me a little bit about the woman who inspired this character, Clara, and what she meant to you? Oh God. Well, yeah, that's the whole book. It's kind of the discovery of that. For me, and hopefully for the reader. Yeah, she was. The first adult that made it seem like a good thing that I inevitably would become an adult myself. I think there was a real feeling. I grew up with a lot of cousins and I have two sisters and we're all kind of the same age. And there was a really clear sense that like the good thing to be on planet Earth was like on this side of that transition. And she was the first person I met who made it seem like, oh, there's something to look forward to. On the other side, like she was cool. I wanted to be like her. I kind of wanted to be her maybe.

3:06And she had the kind of vivaciousness that I guess now that I am not a child anymore. I have found and chosen friends who have that. But I guess when I was a kid, I didn't really know that it could be like a great time to be grown up and meeting her. I was just like, oh, wow. I guess what were the other adults around you like at that time that she was this massive contrast? I mean, you know, I think it has more to do with the unfair perspective that children put on adults, which kind of seeps out of their relationship to their parents, maybe in other people in positions of authority. I think my parents were great and so were my aunts and uncles and other, you know, but I had never really been around artists and like people who were expressive with dance or with drama or with art or whatever.

4:08And I think that had a lot to do with it before I used to think that art was this, you know, was something for serious people and educated people. And I had never seen art and creativity incorporated into a life and into a perspective and into a sense of like excitement and joy about being alive. So I think it was, I think it was that you describe in the novel Clara having this very special laugh. What was that like for folks that haven't read the book? What did it feel like to hear? Well, the best I can do, I guess, rather than do a really embarrassing impersonation of it, if you just imagine someone who's even though they know they're about to laugh, the fact of laughing is so unexpected by their body that they have to throw their head back. And like their hair like flies back because they've they've so enjoyed the feeling of laughing. It's kind of it's kind of one of those things. Yeah, like a laugh that you see someone across the street having and you just like, that's so great. Yeah, like the full the full body experience.

5:16Yeah, it comes on very quick, too. It's just like it's not a laugh that like rumbles. It's just a boom. Yeah, a lot of writers obviously write from personal experiences, but sometimes you get people in and they change all the characters names from what people's names would have been in real life. You've chosen not to take that route. I guess why did you write a very openly autobiographical novel like this? I guess the answer to that comes from the fact that I didn't really set out to write a novel. I was trying to understand things that felt just beyond my understanding. And it was through the act of, I think this is the case for a lot of people who write maybe the act of writing was an act of clarifying for me. It was like passing egg whites through the wine. Like I was trying to be able to see more clearly things that were having a really intense emotional resonance in me, but that didn't really make sense in quotations.

6:22And as I started to do that, I realized after several months of doing this and also the person to whom the book is addressed was at the end of her life. And it was also a way of pro-roguing that that that loss delaying it. So I started writing and at first they almost felt like statements of fact this happened. This was said this is how it resonated then. But the more I did it, the more kind of fluid it became. And the more the fallibility of my own memory became interesting in and of itself. So it started as a more maybe an autopsy of a period of my life. And then as I wrote it, something more interesting and more beautiful to me emerged, which is like, how do those sounds change over time? And how do things that fade sometimes become even more beautiful because they're faded.

7:23And what kind of relationship can you enter in with your memories that has a sense of magic in it? And so that's why it didn't really feel fair to call this a memoir proper because on the third page of the book I'm calling my reliability as a narrator into question. So I just kind of let that become its own force. Yeah. One thing you mentioned in that answer, like the process of writing this book is so intertwined with the experience of losing this person that was so important to you. And then I imagined some element of kind of writing through grief. What was the process of writing through those feelings like for you? It was the pandemic. And I was already, you know, in in the kind of weird isolation that we all went through of wondering like, is this is this actually where we are? But because I was losing this person who is very important to me, but I was not I never saw her ill. I never attended a funeral. I never was given the opportunity to kind of do the maybe unconscious preparations.

8:38You do when you know someone is dying and I knew she was dying on a on a kind of technical level, let's say, and I even had a date for that. I felt like writing was a way of kind of forcing myself to accept the reality of what was going on at the same time as, you know, wanting it to not be the case. It was like dosing myself with something tangible because the days all seem the same. And yeah, I was in California at the time and the weather kind of doesn't change as much as it does here. So I was like, what season is it? What day is it? Has this happened yet? Did it happen two weeks ago? Is it happening in a month? And yeah, it was a way of kind of organizing process. Yeah, what that makes me think of is like a sort of piece of I actually don't know if this is conventional wisdom, but it makes sense to me and it's something I've been told is part of the grieving process. The can be very important is like seeing a physical body or seeing this physical evidence is kind of what you're saying reminds me a lot of that.

9:44That whether it's the rituals that you go through preparing for grief for the rituals you might go through after that is really important for getting to that place of acceptance. You kind of have to invent rituals, you know, like you have to invent rituals sometimes when they're not prescribed to you or to this situation. Like I'm thinking of the first the first really bad breakup that I had I had all these messages from my ex that I heard that I listened to the beginning of and I couldn't bear to listen to them through because they were so heartbreaking. And so I just saved them and I got maybe half a dozen of them over the course of the six months after this breakup and they began to feel like this weight in my in my phone and in the back of my mind and it was something that I knew I hadn't like a trial that I knew I hadn't passed through yet. But I couldn't figure out how to like expunge them and one night I was with one of my best friends and he was dropping me off at home and I said I need I need to ask you for a favor.

10:48I need to get rid of these and I haven't been able to listen to them and can we just you know is midnight we're in the driveway my place. And I said do you mind just sitting here while I listen to these on speaker with you and just build a space around them for a moment and what I was doing without even knowing it was like kind of creating a ritual that I. I guess I realized I needed and we sat there and I played these you know messages these heartbreak messages and I and I had a good cry and. And something about creating the space for it in that time after the sun had gone down with someone I was very trusting of. Like kind of built the structure for this change to happen and in the same way I think yeah we. We go through these processes in different and unexpected ways and sometimes when you can't see what you're supposed to do or how you're supposed to be how are you supposed to be when someone who is really meaningful to.

11:51Meaningful to you particularly a long time ago but still mean something is disappearing how do you frame it and for me it was some of the things I described in the book it was collecting those pedals it was boxing them it was it was you know it was trying to build some kind of scaffolding around a really unruly emotional process. Yeah I'm glad you bring up the fact that this is sort of a relationship the relationship between Clara and Mark in this novel that was very intense for a period of time and then there's this sporadic connection and communication afterwards but. It is a relationship that you know those kinds of relationships that were really important in the past and maybe have somewhat lost prominence in your life can be almost more difficult to grieve in a way like how do you do that. But I want to go back to that to your period that you refer to in this novel is your intimacy where you first meet Clara as an art teacher. It is you know a way that magic was kind of introduced back into your life at a time that as you say it was maybe feeding but also then you can kind of look at this and be like okay what actually is going on with the 43 year old and 11 year old like having this relationship outside of school.

12:59And then upon reflection you ask this question in the novel was I a risk like was it a risky thing for her to have that relationship with you what does it mean to you now as an adult to reflect back and ask that question. We live in a completely different world now than we did when I was 11 years old and I think in a lot of ways it's safer world for children and it's one that's more conscious of. The imbalances of power that that can exist so easily in schools and between teachers and students. At the same time I think there's something there's a lot gained by establishing those boundaries but I wouldn't say that nothing's lost in terms of allowing there to be places where close friendships can exist between people. Between people of different ages and it's like it's something that a lot of people who have read the book have told me you know like I had a really special connection with this teacher or with this family member or something and.

14:11You know I really I really think that kids if given the opportunity to have like open conversations with adults who are not their parents really stand to learn a lot because there's a lot of to religion and mentorship that can happen between generations but there's something there's like an essential impediment between you know. Parents and their children and of course it's the closest relationship in in our lives but there's there's also things that don't fit through that passageway and I think it's why a lot of people have really close relationships to their grandparents who don't have close relationship to their parents and. Yeah it's hard to it's hard to prescribe a way of being or talk to people about how this should how these friendships can or should evolve but I think I think it's a good thing for young people to be in all sorts of different conversations with different people.

15:16Canada makes good stuff and we carry a lot of it at healthyplanetCanada.com more than 10,000 products are Canadian and all 100% authentic so whether you need soup season groceries clean beauty for dry air or sports nutrition and supplements shop with confidence at healthyplanetCanada.com Family owned proudly Canadian since 1995 from here life looks good. Canada is complicated and help Berda well it has opinions I'm Kathleen Betty the host of West of Center if you're wondering about separation or the many ways Alberta marches to its own drum our show will help you understand what's going on out west. To and for no nonsense conversation about the politics that drive this place find and follow west of center wherever you get your podcasts.

16:23I want to actually ask about the title of the sapling there's a lot of description of nature in this novel and I also understand that you yourself are a pretty avid gardener. Yep. How did that idea of the sapling make its way into this novel. The book was called something else for the first you know three years of its life and then I won't tell you what the title was but a book and it was a very unusual title and the summer before it came out a book was published by the same name in France and became like a runaway hit and then started appearing everywhere in Montreal where I was spending a lot of time and I was seeing like ads for it in the subway and I was like oh god. I wanted a chance it's like it was a really unusual title and so I went into this you know spiral of brainstorm but I knew it had to do it had to be somehow related to the nature of it all and the kind of uncertainty and universal kind of changes and flux and the cosmos and intimacy and how it's something in that arena.

17:28Yeah, I kind of found it I was at which end and coming up with like turns out like I'm really good at coming up with really bad book titles like things that I can confidently say will be great and then I read them to like five people and all five of the more. It's like that I'm joking. It's like the unanimous jury decision. Yeah, they chuckle like I'm saying I should call it like blueberry foot. It's not or something but then but then a friend friend was talking about this and and sapling came up but it's also it also turns out that it and I hadn't thought of this at first but you know it's also a was happening is also way of describing a young man I guess more in British English than North American English but it seemed it seemed suddenly like like perfect because the first time we see the word in the book it's such an important moment in the story and it's like a transmission of course. It's a transmission of creativity and it's yeah so it was kind of a messy if there are pages of of my journal letter just like bad title ideas before this one came.

18:33There's one recurring tree that feels to me like a symbol of Mark's friendship with Clara and that's the Jacaranda. What does that tree look like and when does that first come into the story? Oh, it's this well Jacaranda's are a miraculous they're like they shouldn't exist so they're they're these trees that you see in tropical places like quite commonly but I realized that like if you don't live in somewhere like Southern California or South America or the Mediterranean like a lot of people have never even heard this beautiful word. They are a tree that has this wispy for like foliage that moves in the wind like almost like kelp like it's just like you can see wind moving through them and then once a year after they lose their leaves they become completely covered with these kind of bluish purple blossoms in such profusion that they become like a traffic hazard for the street underneath them because it becomes like slippery with Jacaranda kind of squished up pedals. Yeah, and they grow a lot in in LA and South Africa those are two places that are kind of important in the book but if you're in LA in April, May, June it's impossible not to see them and there are a few spots there are few avenues where they are the only tree that has been planted and so for like two miles you'll just be under this canopy of just like sky colored blossoms just like making a mess everywhere it's amazing.

19:55Just in this conversation but also in the novel you know you have these really detailed descriptions of things that don't feel overdone either and I just like I don't know makes it very easy to visualize and sense. I imagine and maybe I'm making this up but the balance feels like something that perhaps is not unrelated to your work as an actor as well like do you see a relationship between your writing and your work acting. Oh man. Yeah, I guess now that you ask it like I think well at least as an audience like obviously I love big performances and like they're you know like I love the marital strip of it all but like the times that I found myself like leaning into a TV screen or theater is when there's something intense going on but so much of the external elements of the performance have been stripped away. That I'm like is that what I'm seeing you know and I don't want to say that I I have mastered that in the least as an actor but at least as an audience member that's what I lean toward and I think with writing as well.

21:03Being able to cut away everything that doesn't really feel necessary like as as horrifying as that as the process of editing is. If it can yield something that is more potent the absence of things can end up being like way more resonant often than their presence and like I think I first learned that reading and Carson I was like oh man there's so much that's not here it's almost in raging like how does she dare to allude to so much and yet give us so little yeah and Joan did Ian does that also it's just like taught. TOT TOT TOT TOT writing and you know I resolved like I wanted to write a book that could be read quickly I wanted to write a book that if someone decided they were going to read it in one day or over two days that they could and so it meant for me like slashing away anything that felt even a little bit fatty and yeah I guess that's that's something that I appreciate maybe in those two art forms the most you know and poetry.

22:12But on the other hand like when it comes to music like give me the horns and this thing and the strings. Like the Phil Specter wall of sound. Yeah yeah wall of sound. I mean you certainly accomplished I think the one comment around the office of everybody who's read this book we were like this is so awesome it is really good and we can read it really fast which because we all have to read quite a lot is actually helpful. This book of course it's such a tribute to friendship and to the real woman that Clara is based on I'm curious about what the response has been if any from people who knew her to see this immortalization of the relationship on the page. You know there are few people that I still know that I knew when I was 10 11 years old just a handful of people who I went to school with or my siblings and it's been really incredible to hear people kind of join in what is going on. And join in what is ultimately you know this book isn't owed to it's like a love letter to a person and it's been really moving to see people who so you know three decades ago remember those same excitements and sense of magic and who have read the book and have said like oh man I I remember not only the feeling in that classroom or that thing about her that was so incredible but like I remember.

23:31I remember how we were as kids you know like a few days ago a friend who is a classmate of mine at the time of the book and she was like I'm not surprised that you like I already knew when we were 12 years old that this book existed in you and I never would have been able to put words to it but like it feels like you could have written it when you were 12. And there's there's just something so you know like the great thing about getting older like getting older is gets a really bad rap understandably for some reason but the great thing is like you know people for so long like you begin to see people's wrinkles like faces you knew when they were perfectly college and filled young skin. And it's like you think like wrinkles but it's so beautiful also and in the same way like having conversations with people that I've known for 30 years. It's so rich because there's just like a kind of layering of of beauty and yeah a lot of a lot of it has to do with this very special time in this very particular place.

24:40It's like a bank of memory in a way like it's something I think the older you get if you're lucky enough to have people in your life especially that you've known maybe since childhood or adolescence and then still know those people they remember all the selves that you've been and see the continuity but also hopefully the growth and change over that time. I'm interested you know there's this kind of apology almost in the book where mark apologizes to Clara for sharing this thing that's so personal but then also this is a teacher who was the one to maybe recognize that writer in him. How do you think she would feel about this? I hope she would be not surprised that I did this and I'm guessing she would be really somewhat abashed that this that she had inspired so much. I like to think that she would be proud because it was not a it was not definitely not an obvious thing to do like you know it's kind of like a radical act to write a book like I think it's like not it's not recommended.

25:51It's much easier to not write one. It's much easier to not write a book a friend of mine after I after the book came out I saw him at a party and he was like that it what you that is a radical act what are you doing no one writes books. But I think I like to think that she would be proud that I kind of decided you know at the cost of keeping all these things to myself that I decided to like challenge myself and like see something that I knew is going to be difficult and go for it rather than just like choose something else. Well the sampling recently won the co-emerging writers award for fiction congratulations but I want to actually ask about something that you mentioned in your acceptance speech which. Oh no how did you get access to it. Because Talia was there you know we have intrepid reporters that go to all the words you mean you did your research before this interview. I know it's crazy journalism still exists folks but anyhow in the acceptance speech one thing you said that really struck well struck Talia and struck me when she shared it with me was that the response to this book has renewed your faith into.

26:52And I think we've kind of covered a lot of that in this conversation so far but I guess if you can tell me a bit more what you mean by that coming back to like this sense when I was growing up that I was like somehow you know I was I was a happy kid but I knew that I was not like I was not right for the times you know like I was not there was something there was something off about that one. I've always had friendships with people who are much older than me I was just at a cottage last weekend with three old friends like friends who are old friends of mine but who also happened to be in their 70s and like you know doing cottagey stuff like and I don't know I've been so I've been so lucky to encounter people my whole adult life. Adult life who are like totally unexpectedly open to being friends again the transmission of learning and and experience between generations for me is like where so much of the cool stuff is and like having someone who had an experience that you're having but had it like 40 years ago or is at a loss as to what to do and asks you when you're in your 20s.

28:19Like what you think about what they should do in their 60s or you know stuff like that I think is so for some reason like I've always been so interested in that and like what's going on yeah like across time that can be that can be shared and that can be rich and I don't know what also kind of prepares you for the different stages of life in like a more tactile way you know like I had a friend in her family. 60s once say to me after a breakup like what if I what if I never have sex again and I was like wow I never thought that that that's a question a person like I was like of course you will but then she was like maybe I won't and like I never thought but like putting that question in my like 27 year old mind was like an explosion of just like I was so interested I was so interested in like what it could mean to go back to the world.

29:19I was like I'm not going to grapple with something like whether you'll have sex again when you're six like so yeah I think this is my commercial for being friends with people that much older than you. I'm constantly ringing this bell also and I think everything that you've said really resonates with me if like there is something to me there's like extremely like one person that I'm thinking of but like a person who is older than you who has dealt with the problems that you're dealing with right now and is fine. Yeah that's that's another one like I recently worked with an actor who went through like a pretty crazy experience that I had also gone through and he's like it feels like he's older than me and he's like it feels like this is the only thing your life will ever be trust me it's not like it feels like it won't pass and I know it will and it'll pass soon you know and like that's yeah that's that's part of the thing but also seeing the vulnerability not just like learning lessons from people who are not really good at it. Learning lessons from people who like I know this but like seeing someone say like I don't have a clue when they're that old is kind of amazing too.

30:26It's amazing and scary and that's the human experience. Yeah being called upon as a young person like what do you what do you think because maybe you have a better sense of the way the world is moving. Yeah what do you think I should do like I had someone say that to me someone in their 70s recently an old friend was in a situation and she said to me like what am I going to do? What am I going to do Mark and I was like wow I would be yeah and I did have something to offer that was different than than she could offer herself in that moment so yeah well again our beautiful advertisement for intergenerational friendships. Mark thank you so much for coming in I've had such such fun and such like I don't know fun is sometimes the wrong word to use when fundamentally this is also book about grief but really enjoy chat. Did we put the fun back in fundamental. Oh yeah fun back in funeral you know back to the writers room with that. Yeah fun back in funeral that's better. Alice and Vectel did that already with fun home though so that's not original that's true we got it we're not good with titles I think is also what we learned. Yes you were not good with titles.

31:33That was Mark Ben David talking about his debut novel the sapling. If that conversation made you want to pick up the pen and write I have some great news the 2027 CBC short story prize is open from now until November first. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the arts and a two week residency at the Layton Artists Studios at Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. Just had to CBC Books dot C.A. for all the details on how to enter. Today's episode was produced by Talia Cleot. Ily M. M. Motto is our associate producer. Our senior producer is Jacqueline Kirk and our executive producer is Aaron Balser. Thanks as always to our audio tech Emily Kiar Vesio and to the rest of the CBC Books team.

32:35I'm Matea Roach and this is Book Ends. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time because when the book ends the conversation begins. For more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.