Talking with Tom at the kitchen table

There are no cheers.

It’s dark in the house, save for the ghost light that watches over all theatres when lights are extinguished and the audience has fled.

Tom Wilson and I are sitting on stage at the kitchen table, the one that is such a focal point in his musical “Beautiful Scars.”

That ghost light is like a beam in the dark. And somehow that’s appropriate. And yes, we are talking about ghosts, the ones who live at the heart of Tom’s story, or should I say journey?

Maybe I should call him Tehoháhake, that’s his Mohawk name, and he’s proud of it.

I didn’t really know him when he was a big deal rock star in the bands of Junkhouse, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings and Lee Harvey Osmond.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

But I’m getting to know him now.

I’ve just watched his musical “Beautiful Scars,” written with actor-playwright Shaun Smyth. And now sitting round that kitchen table we’re talking, life, music and art, just like two old guys who have connected through theatre.

“Theatre? That’s a new environment for me,” Tom laughs. “I’m used to telling what I want to say in three verses and a chorus. This is tougher. There’s a lot of remembering here.

“And sadness. Sometimes, I sit down with a dark heart. I realize how people die. One day they’ll be gone. I begin to feel beauty and pure love for them, these people in my life.”

Tom smiles a moment and strokes eloquent hands through a long mane of hair.

“Do I feel angry about the past, with what happened to me? Not so much. I’m not angry with anyone. Anger doesn’t get you anywhere. For me it’s about moving on. And it’s about being heard.”

I ask Tom about a speech in his play where the spirit character Bear rages about the evils done to Indigenous people, all true, all devastating, all deliberately disturbing.

“That speech is directed at me, the character in the play. The tone and physicality of that speech isn’t written in anger. It’s to help my stage character understand his life. It doesn’t rip the pages out of your history books. But it is to remind people of something.”

He rubs his guitar-stroking hands together and shakes his head.

“I would like Indigenous people to be in a safe place, not to be used or mocked. Remember, in this country an entire nation of Indigenous people, a whole civilization was being erased, being burned down.”

Stretching in his stage chair, too small for his big frame, he actually smiles.

“I remember watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon on TV a long time ago. And there was Mickey in a headdress with feathers. So, being a kid, I would go out on the street in feathers too. Was that all there was to being Indigenous?”

These are feelings that roil at the heart of “Beautiful Scars,” feelings that go beyond the iconic Tom Wilson music, beyond the search for his once lost Indigenous heritage.

His eyes connect with mine. We change the subject. There’s just so much more.

‘You know, I’m not a rock star. Maybe I acted like one. There were times I was drunk too much and shoved things up my nose too much and I needed a boot up the arse. Well, I haven’t been drunk in 24 years. I’m cured of all that. Was it the lifestyle or was it me? I don’t know.”

Attending all the rehearsals for “Beautiful Scars” at Theatre Aquarius theatre was an experience new to him in every way.

“I’d been going on stage for 30 years and I guess it was a kind of theatre, but not like this. This was overwhelming for me. It got me in my gut. There were things I was feeling right inside of me. That’s how powerful theatre is.

“When you paint something on a canvas it stays the same, more or less. Things on the stage change nightly. There has to be such discipline. It isn’t always what’s written that changes. It can be how the words are said. How the actor feels in that moment. A stage performance is something that is alive.”

As a creative person, Tom paints and writes because he must.

“For me it’s about the journey, about identity. It’s not Indigenous people flapping about someone, or something, though I understand that completely.”

He touches my sleeve and holds my eyes.

“Discovering my heritage wasn’t an obsession. It was something I knew had to happen. Yet, it was a complete accident that I found out. I bypassed all the adoption people. I was told they’d buried my story.”

Wilson loves his adoptive mother Bunny and his birth mother Janie.

“They did what they thought was best, all those years ago. After all, my mother had been raped at 16. She thought all she was good for was to give herself to men. The amazing thing to me is that we had been around each other all our lives, but the truth was a secret not to be told. My book, and now this musical, set that truth free.

“None of this was ego driven. I have a responsibility as a man attempting to be an artist in the world, to represent with dignity, and create art that puts the Mohawk culture into light.

“We need to put truth into the arts, into theatre, music and books. I want to become my three-year-old self. For me, painting is my meditation. I’ve turned away from business, because my job is trying to be an artist in all ways. Money isn’t everything. It comes, it goes. Does it matter? Maybe.”

We come back to the musical “Beautiful Scars,” and how it is a fusion of all that is Tom Wilson.

“I hope people will go out of the theatre with some understanding, some thinking and of course some real enjoyment.”

Someone shuts the ghost light off. Tom and his wife Margot set off for a Locke Street lunch.

Me, I still think there are ghosts left here, ghosts waiting to be set free, perhaps in Wilson’s next book “Blood Memory.”

“Beautiful Scars” is at Theatre Aquarius through May 11. Call 905-522-7529 for tickets.