Dennis Lakusta: The Man & the Music

 DENNIS LAKUSTA

(Synchronicity Magazine, February-March 2002)

Dennis Lakusta Website 

  A TRIBUTE TO MY FATHER

Frank Woodhead
A Renaissance Man
[29 August 1916 - 7 March 2000]

My father was born on 29 August 1916. He had (at least) four step-brothers and seven step-sisters, as well as his own sister and brother. Unfortunately, neither he nor we ever knew who his real father was.

MY FATHER WAS A PAINTER

At the age of 14, when his mother couldn't afford to pay for piano lessons for him, my father became an apprentice to a professional house painter; during the next seven years, he learned the painting trade. This included painting interiors and exteriors, laying down the gold paneling on church walls, mural painting, borders, doorways, and general decorative designing. And since his boss was lame, my father was obliged to be the one to climb the ladders and do all the high work. This in spite of the fact that he was scared of heights

MY FATHER WAS A FIREMAN

In 1938, at the age of 22, my father volunteered as a firefighter in the Rochdale Auxiliary Fire Service. Shortly after that, a police car came along and asked him to get in. He wondered what he'd done wrong, why they arrested him, but they told him he'd been called up for full-time firefighting service in the National Fire Service. This he did until after he married.

MY FATHER WAS A SOLDIER

In 1940, shortly after his marriage to Ivy and the start of World War II, he was called into the military. He joined the Yorkshire Beach Defense Regiment. Here he enjoyed a sumptuous meal of one herring, one potato, and several sliced peaches. Because of his firefighting experience, he was put in charge of the 'troops', had his own little classroom, and taught them rifle drill.

While stationed at Tewkesbury, the troops were mustered on the parade ground in the rain in order to meet the king and Winston Churchill. As it happened, the car containing the two important dignitaries passed by so fast, no one saw them. Someone yelled "Three Cheers!" and the troops responded with "Booo!!"

In 1942, my father sailed to India on the Empress of Canada. The trip took eight to ten weeks. The troops were crammed onto the decks of the ship, had to sleep and go to the bathroom wherever they could find space, weathered heavy storms and high waves, ate rations, and suffered sickness.

My father, however, managed to spend the whole trip in the comfort of his own cabin. Once again, as was to happen so many times throughout his life, synchronicity stepped in.

As he was boarding the ship, the medical officer noted that my father had done some first aid with the firefighting service. As a result, he was conscripted into the ship's badly understaffed medical crew.

From there, my father spent nearly three years in the humid Burmese jungles tending the wounded, and seeing so many of his friends slaughtered. Yet other than a few bouts with sickness, he suffered only a shrapnel wound to the knee.

He considered himself a very fortunate man indeed to have returned.

Following the war, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a nursing orderly, and later worked as a Commissionaire at Calgary's Currie Barracks.

His memories of his military career were still sharp and clear even up till the present time. Those were times, he said, that one could never forget.

MY FATHER WAS A LADIES MAN

By that, I do not mean to imply that he was promiscuous. Rather, his wit, charm and singing ability garnered him the attention of a multitude of young ladies, not all of whom were necessarily 'proper'.

One time, upon bringing home his first serious girlfriend who wore a wide-brimmed hat with a rose, his mother took one look at the woman and instantly declared, "She's a tart—get rid of her!"

Shortly thereafter, hoping to appease his mother, my father came home with a Salvation Army girl.

"What faith are you?" asked his mother.

"Anabaptist," replied the girl.

"Get out!" said his mother.

Eventually he met Ivy, his wife-to-be who was five years older than he. Even at the tender young age of 27, they were both still chaperoned by her overprotective father.

MY FATHER WAS A SINGER

My father began his singing career at age 10 as a tenor in the choir of what was then known as the Christian Endeavour Party. Later, for the Bethel Evangelistic Society, he conducted open-air meetings by preaching the gospel and leading the singing. He was also instrumental in starting up Bethel Evangelistic Church.

During the early years of the war, when he was posted to different bases, he attended whatever church happened to be in the nearby village or town. While singing along in the congregation—usually singing the tenor part—his voice was noted by the young ladies in the congregation. And, as frequently happened, he ended up singing solos, or duets, or joining in with the choir, after which he went home for dinner with the vicar's daughter.

The war also brought him opportunities to sing with Vera Lynn, Gracie Fields [who also wheeled him in a pram around the neighbourhood when he was a young child], and George Formby when they were traveling around entertaining the troops.

After the war, he spent the next 40-odd years singing in church choirs and performing solos at every available opportunity.

MY FATHER WAS AN ARTIST

Following his discharge from the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1966, my father took up oil painting as a hobby. When the fumes proved unhealthy for Ivy and him, he switched to pastels and eventually watercolor. He turned out to be a prolific artist, selling literally hundreds of paintings at very cheap prices. Many of these paintings could, and probably still can be seen in various offices, the Library, the Kerby Centre, the hospital and, no doubt, the homes of friends and relatives, acquaintances, and admirers of his work.

MY FATHER WAS A WRITER

In his later years, my father also began writing various articles, short stories and novels based on his experiences as a young boy in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and as a soldier during the war in both Britain and Burma. Several of these were published in various specialized publications. [Four books with his writings are now available on Amazon—The Road to Mandalay, Rendezvous and Other Writings, Arakan Adventure, and  Green Earth and Gilded Temples]

MY FATHER WAS A TEACHER

Beginning in his late thirties, my father trained to become first a Cub leader, then a Scout leader. During this time he taught hundreds of young boys and teenagers various handicraft, artistic, and practical skills utilizing his pre-war and wartime experiences to add his own particular flavour to the lessons. Once he retired from scouting, he continued to teach in a similar fashion in the Christian Service Brigade for several years.

MY FATHER WAS A CAREGIVER

Interestingly enough, my father has always seemed to be a caregiver. As a young boy of 9 years, he would often have to take care of his mother when she came home drunk after singing in the pubs. He learned first aid with the firefighters, became a medical assistant during the war, was a nursing orderly at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, at the hospitals on several R.C.A.F. bases both in Canada and France, and finally spent ten years at the Calgary General Hospital. When my mother became ill, he looked after her for many years.

MY FATHER WAS MY DAD

For the past 53 years, my father has been my dad. Not long ago, he said to me that he wished he'd been home more often to be with my sister and me when we were children. But in the last three years since my mum died, I have learned more about him, loved him more, and shared with him more than I had ever done before. And those three years have more than made up for the times we missed.

I am proud of my father—proud of the man he was, and proud of the things he did, proud of his accomplishments.

I could not ask for a better father than my father. 

(10 March 2000)

SPIRITUALITY AND SEXUALITY

Struggle Or Synthesis

For forty-six years, I have been involved in a conflict between spirituality and sexuality—are they able to be integrated into a balanced life, or are they diametrically opposed. Or is there some other answer?

Interestingly enough, it began at a United Church summer camp. I was seven, and my counselor molested me. I didn't see it as molestation back then, and I still have a hard time accepting it as such today. For, instead of the experience leaving me with a fear of sex and—not unlike many other molested children, a revulsion for sex or even the touch of another person—it instilled in me a fascination for it and a need for acceptance.

My childhood thereafter consisted of various "experiments" with other neighborhood kids the "you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine" kind.

In my early teens, I discovered masturbation and this became a daily morning ritual for over eleven years and, too, it has been a method of escape in times of depression and despair.

But my teen years were also a time of sexual confusion, a time when an interest in the arts meant you were probably gay. I didn't think I was gay, but I certainly had a keen interest in art, music, drama, writing and fashion. Perhaps, I reasoned, I should have been born a woman.

This ushered in my transsexual period my late teens and early twenties as I tried to find a way to explain my apparent feminine side. I hoped that I might somehow obtain the necessary operation and medications with which I could become the woman I believed I should have been.

When I was twenty-four, this period came to an end when I lost my virginity to a girl friend when she found out I had never had sex with a woman. Following this late initiation, I realized I preferred to be a man.

This did not, however, stop my fascination with sex.

Around the same time as my molestation, I also had my first experience with spirituality at a Billy Graham Crusade. I don't recall whether I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior at this time, but the music and preaching certainly caught my attention.

When I was ten, a boy and I were caught "examining" each other. Furious beyond words, my father dealt me a severe thrashing and thereafter promptly enrolled me in the Kingston Bible College Academy. Perhaps he felt such schooling would straighten me out.

It did not.

Once more I became interested in gospel music, hymns and Bible studies; from this time on until I was fifteen, I attended Sunday School and sang in church choirs.

As I grew older, I began to study the teachings of other religions as well as Christianity and I began to notice something peculiar—they all seemed to advise that in order to become more spiritual, one must become less sexual. This led to further confusion and frustration because as much as I enjoyed the spiritual aspect of my life, I also enjoyed sex. I was sure the two could be somehow integrated into a balanced life.

It didn't help matters either when, upon accepting Christ into my heart at age twenty-seven, two Christian girls allowed me to be quite intimate with them. Then, much later, men like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker succumbed to the very sin with which I, too, was dealing. If these so-called "men of God" couldn't gain victory over sexual sin, then how much harder would it be for me?

My continuing struggles led me to other avenues of help—Sexaholics Anonymous, personal counseling, the deliverance ministry, prayer, pleading, and making deals with God.

It is an inescapable fact that God has made us sexual beings and capable of extremely pleasurable sex at that. In my years in the church, I found that few Christians seemed to be willing to discuss sexuality and how it pertains to Christianity, other than to fall back on the admonition that to become more spiritual, we must sublimate the sexual.

How many of us are really able to do that? How many others struggle as I do and cannot find those willing to listen, to comfort, to not judge but rather to try and give helpful counsel?

It is also unfortunate that Christ never really broached the subject of sex and we never really see him in any sort of close personal relationship with a woman.

There is a great deal of sexual activity in the Bible, most of it illicit, and much of this is never really dealt with from the pulpit, or is kind of quickly skimmed over in order to get to the more "spiritual" aspects of a study. Few Christians are even willing to discuss sexuality. Why is that?

Are there skeletons in their closet that they don't want to reveal?

Lot and his daughters commit incest; David has a voyeuristic experience when he spies upon Bathsheba; the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah apparently commit sodomy although it is not explicitly stated. And there are other descriptions of perverse activities.

But there is also the Song of Solomon, a beautiful erotic work that has all too often been used to express the relationship of Christ and the church; but it is also a description of the beauty of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman. It is both spiritually symbolic and physically celebratory.

Christians decry the preponderance of pornography and explicit sexuality on the Internet, motion pictures and television. But churches don't seem to offer satisfactory ways to resist such influences, nor suggestions on how to respond in healthy ways; rather, they seem to condemn and offer little help or understanding for dealing with such temptations.

Perhaps one of these days, I and others who share the same personal conflicts, may just find the answers we seek. Perhaps, as in many other areas of life, it all comes down to a matter of choice.

 I have begun to see this more and more. We choose to do something right or wrong, or we choose not to do something. 

And only we can be held accountable for our own actions.

(2000)

The Dramatic Architect

 (Alexandra Writers Centre Newsletter, September-October 1994)

Sick Note to My Daughter's Teacher

 

(6 December 1994)

Choose-Your-Own-Life

 What if our lives were like a choose-your-own-adventure story? 

We could be reborn two or more times to live the same life, but at certain points we make alternate choices to see how things turn out, either differently or the same.

Steps to Writing a Novel

 

(Alexandra Writers Centre Newsletter, March-April 1993)

The Writer's View Point

 (Alexandra Writers Centre Newsletter, May-June 1992)

Story and Screenplay by....

(Freefall Magazine, Winter 1992)

 

President's Page

( Alexandra Writers Centre Newsletter, November-December 1992)

From the President

 (Alexandra Writers Centre Newsletter, May-June 1992)

From the President's (Bull)Pen

(Alexandra Writers' Centre Newsletter, November-December 1991)

 

Faith Made 'Real' for King's Kid

 

(City Light News, September 1990)

Parents Elated Over New Heritage Class

( City Light News, April 1990)

Missions Fest Leads Calgary Couple to 'Romantic Adventure' in Guam

 

(City Light News, January 1990)

Sick Note to My Son's Techer

 

 

(1986)

 EASTER CANTATA STRONG WITNESS

(Alberta Sonshine News, May 1984)

  A CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE

 by Michael Woodhead

"Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever." - Job 19:23,24

Surely, at some time in every person's life, there is the deep yearning to write down in words the experiences of the Self; surely, every person desires to see some words of his own pressed neatly onto the whitened page of an anthology of great works.

For some, this wish indeed happens; for others, the desire fades like the passing of a dream.

How many of those romanticists actually begin to set down on paper the first words of that Great-Novel-of-the-Ages, that masterpiece of poetic prose, that paean of praise?

I must confess that I, too, have trod that well-worn, honored highway. I have seen many thousands of words flow from the point of my pen and drop into the eternal darkness of the garbage can. I have experienced the unmatched thrill of writing over one thousand songs and lyrics, but seeing none of them in published form. I have begun the first paragraphs of dozens of novels, only to toss them aside as I felt the weight of indolence on my shoulders.

Was it all worth it? For what reason, I thought to myself, should I commit all the words, the picturesque and colorful passages to paper? No one will read them; no one will heap accolades of praise upon my beleaguered shoulders.

It was not until ten years later that the truth would flood upon my soul and confer upon me a newfound freedom.

As my heart was being torn apart within me, I confided to an acquaintance my innermost thoughts. Do you think it's even worthwhile, I asked, to do so much work on songs and novels and other written works that no one will probably ever read?

The answer he gave startled me at the time, but it opened my mind to a new viewpoint, a new perspective, and a new dimension from which to approach my works.

"My friend," he remarked with a smile, "you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. It doesn't matter whether the world reads your books, hears your songs, or sees your art. What does matter is that God knows your heart. God is the one who sees the creation of prose and poetry; God hears the songs you compose and sing. God is the one who cares about all that you do."

The truth of this statement burst upon me in a way it had never done before.

Now I realized that I had been writing and singing and drawing with the wrong motive, for the wrong audience.

It is not for others that I produce my creations, nor for myself, but for the very Creator of the universe — for it is God who has given me my gifts, and it is to the Creator that the products of the gifts should be returned.

And this is the purpose of every person — to return to the Giver the fruit of the gift. 

(1977)

Cast a Shadow On the Wall : The Autobiography of a Lost Soul

 

CAST A SHADOW ON THE WALL

The Autobiography of a Lost Soul

Michael Woodhead’s life contains what he invariably weaves into his novels—spirituality, sexuality, and creativity.

However, that didn’t become apparent to him until he began organizing his archival boxes of memorabilia and journal entries, as well as trying to formulate a timeline for this autobiography. 

At first, he endeavored to place things in order of the places in which he’d lived for any length of time—Lancashire, England; Toronto, Ontario; Greenwood, Nova Scotia; Grostenquin, France; Bagotville, Quebec; and Calgary, Alberta. 

 Then he tried developing it from his interests—music, art, writing, photography. theatre, etc.—but even that became muddled after a while because of the variety of things that clamored for his attention. 

His next approaches included a written narrative, topical lists, chronological lists, illustrated lists, etc. 

Eventually, he settled on this chronological narrative that includes past events and experiences, as well as present-day commentaries in gray boxes. 

But it wasn’t until he started to assemble this autobiography that he discovered how much the ‘double-mindedness’ that he experienced through most of his life permeated the spiritual, sexual, and creative areas as well as his personal, emotional, and psychological life. 

Even seventy-five years later, and even after baring his life in this autobiography, he’s still trying to make sense of it all.

GRAFFITI POP 3

A Lyric & Lead Sheet Songbook

GENRE: Music, Lyrics

SYNOPSIS: This is the third book of my songs that contains lyrics from T to Z.

BUY: Graffiti Pop 3