Dude, Where's My Culture?

Aug 1-31

"Green Words, Growing the Language: eco-art installations throughout the Garden by Nicole Dextras. Runs until mid-September. The artist will be in attendance and creating art on some days throughout the exhibition period. Information on the artist and her work: www.nicoledextras.com"

"July 19

Saturday Acis and Galatea a concert-staged performance of Handel's opera of pastoral romance presented by Vancouver Voices to benefit VanDusen's Capital Campaign. On the Great Lawn, rain or shine. Curtain at 7 p.m. performance is 90 minutes with one 15 minute intermission."

--from the Van Dusen Gardens website

Culture! We love it! We have been given tickets to an outdoor opera. Well, more like a recital of certain bits of an opera. It's a warm summer evening on the Great Lawn and we're here for a picnic supper and a bit of cultcher, or should I say cultcha? Cultoor? Anyway you say it, it's a date with my sweetheart. He manages to scrape together two sandwiches with what's left in the fridge: lettuce, humous, and aged gouda. Wierd, but it works. As the orchestra warms up a spritely woman with a German accent invites us to write a letter in support of reversing the decision to cut the CBC orchestra. She is shy and pleasant and has the most beautiful light blue eyes I have ever seen. Peter writes a letter on a clib board on his lap and I joke with him about writing that we need to keep the CBC orchestra, but it must be the Flying Monkey Orchestra* and it must consist entirely of oboes.

We gaze at the sculpture in progress by Nicole Dextras, a gothic 3-D rendering of the word "culture", a scraggly bit of lawn (Kentucky bluegrass perhaps?) trying to thrive in spite of cuts to the national broadcasting corporation.

The music is pleasant and pretty. It is Handel, so orgasmic nymphs and shepherds are happy and gay tra la la, gay and happy, and happy and happier, but not quite gay enough, if you know what I mean. Perhaps this opera reads better with a bit of parody and a wack of spectable thrown in. Well, I mean we have spectacle, but not on stage. The light is setting over the lath house, and I long to see nymphs and shepherds cavorting there in the distance, creating an arcadian illusion with a touch of the surreal. The sun streams though lavender and the seed heads of allium and toddlers run with hair backlit like dandelion fluff. The sopranos are lovely, but I yearn for the eerie schadenfreude of the castrato. It would have been nice to have one night that was free to the public. Sigh. Such an ungrateful wench I am.

To round out our date, Peter and I head over to the lounge at Figment for a quiet drink. I ordered a champagne cocktail called Brut, made with cassis, brut, and ginger liqueur. It was overly sweet, but fun. We also munched on some delicious shortribs with smoked onion and apple. They had a pleasant smoky pipe tobacco flavor. I hadn't had lunch so I was famished.

I love these lights made of black string. They remind me of a summer Bible camp project where you cover a baloon with string dipped in glue. Have you ever done that?

I guess I'm really more of a cocktails and shortribs kind of gal rather than a humous and Handel chick. A real brute.

*A reference to the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra from Vancouver.