Auditioning Anxiety

Yes, it's finally over. It was okay--kinda wabi sabi. I rushed things because I was nervous and I just wanted to get out of there. One person on the jury seemed happy. The other two, seemed underwhelmed. Anyway, I survived without loss of body organ or limb and I am SO relieved it's over. It's been twenty years since my last audition--I'm a lot older and wider now. (No, that is not a typo.)


The trick is not to go all low status, which I think I accomplished. But can you believe that I was waiting outside in the cold, locked building for my audition and a dude from another theatre company comes along and wouldn't let me in? Dude, I hope karma bites you in the ASS.

She's a Hipster

This Blossom is incredibly fresh and timely. She's really got great comedic skills.

Sensuous Singer: Julie London

This woman knows how to speak Body Language.

Sensuous Singing

I think that one of the best things about singing it the pure sensuous pleasure. I love the sounds the voice can make, but also the sounds of the languages we sing. Today we immersed ourselves in Italian, and mio bella, I could just dive into those words. The harmonies are gonna really resonate too. It also gives us the privilege of singing and memorizing poetry, which is a lovely pastime. It feels like a decadent guilty pleasure to me.

I sometimes regret I didn't study languages and singing at University. I loved singing in some contexts, but truth be told, I wasn't a big fan of other musicians I met. They were even more introverted and geeky than I was and I found some of them immature and irritating. I KNOW I'm making horrible generalizations, but it just wasn't my tribe at the time. I just haven't found my tribe of musicians and I do long for one, pray for one and dream of forming a band and touring off into the sunset. It just hasn't happened. Yet.

Singing as a hobby is great. Less pressure, different expectations. Singing for pleasure. Singing for the soul. Music does tend to take over my mind and haunt me, so that also might be a reason I never became a pro. It might have literally driven me mad. I'm serious. And I'm not naturally musically intelligent. I really have to work at it, even though it is a labor of love. Becoming a classical singer requires great feats of stamina (emotional and physical) reading and memory skills that I really never have had the capacity for. Sometimes it's good to be realistic about your limitations.

The great thing about being part of a choir is team work, fun, harmony, and the satisfaction of performing the more difficult works. It's humbling too, to be a small part of a giant human musical organ. Keepin' it real, yo.

Untouchable Wimmin

I LOVE these women! I want them to adopt me! We watched the documentary on them called "Untouchable Woman." The "Catering Corps" from the clip above makes me roar with laughter. And they are such good singers too!

I am in AWE.

Holy Weather System, Batman!

Wow. That is a cold wind out there today. If it had been back home, it would have been a February blizzard for sure. Not as many folks at Seedy Saturday. I feel bad for the vendors who come all this way to sell their wares. It did snow at last year's Seedy Saturday IIRC, but it wasn't this windy.

We had a good sectional rehearsal today. We are singing in Italian, so we're practicing getting our voices around the words. It is the best language to sing in. Lovely open vowels.

For my Saturday lunch treat I headed down to the buffet at Saravana Bhavan and it was really good today. There was this coconut vegetable dish that had those long green beans cut up into tiny bite-sized pieces--It was so awesome with their tomato chutney. One of their soups was so spicy it just about blew my head off--I was suitably impressed. I had gulab jaman for dessert with their frothy, milky chai. I think they use evaporated milk. I've had some disappointing, watery dishes at SB, but today the quality was very good. There were a lot of families enjoying a Saturday meal out on the town.

Wednesday Rituals

One thing that's good about hobbies is the weekly and daily rituals they add to your lives. Having choir on Wednesdays means I have to 1) do laundry and 2) take a bath. We get a lecture at the beginning of the term to practice good body hygiene because we sing so close to one another. It's a good point and now I am totally paranoid, so I try to make sure I am not offending anyone I'm singing next to with my BO. Today I worked up a sweat working in the garden so I had a nice hot bath to get clean and relax my spasming back muscles.

It's also a day to work at the new music, pronouncing the unfamiliar Latin and going over tunes and rhythms. Some songs are already firmly planted in my head so I am already avoiding rehearsing them so I don't get sick of those ones. We don't have a real Ipod, but we have an Ipod Shuffle, which I've finally figured out how to use with the choir tracks our conductor uploads on our choir's website. This is already changing my life and putting a new spring in my step.

First honey bee sighting for 21012 at noon today, and the crocus blooms are open.

The Storm is Passing Over

Okay, so we'll be singing this song this term. We ain't never gonna sing it like these folks, but we can dream! This must be one of the most beautiful vids on the net.

If We Only Have Nana

This is so nostalgic for me. I grew up listening to Nana Mouskouri and I think I have to start listening to her again. She's timeless. We are singing this in our next choir concert. There's some good songs comin' up!

Happy Heart Day to Yooz!

Stocked up on Valentines treats from Beta 5. I am beginning to like the strange journey into the semi-industrial land that they occupy. It would be a great place for a destination eatery. There's one building down there I so want to restore. Such good bones. I love the way they used to orient buildings with the entrance on the corner. Someone will snap it up and trendify it.

Some of the food truck commissaries are down in that area.

I haz two new songs!!! Now I needz me a band. I spent a lovely bit of time at Shaktea with the dueling harpists. I loved hearing and watching them tune their strings. I could listen to that all day. There must be a modern harpist that deconstructs the whole saccharine harp thing.

Experiments with Chocolate

Since it's close to V-Day I decided to try to create a new brownie recipe using buckwheat flour. Well, it wasn't a complete disaster, and P said "Well, it's not the worst thing you've made . . . ." But let's face it, they kinda sucked. The icing I created was delicious--more like a caramel sauce, which is better than icing any day. I mean, I liked the brownies because of the earthy flavor, but they were on the dry side. However, the feedback from my household was clearly rejection. So, back to the drawing board.

Spent a good day channeling the writing geist inspired by viewing episodes of The Closer and Wire in The Blood. I am a huge fan of both series.

What is my destiny?

Another day, another search for what I am supposed to be doing on this earth at this point in time. Spent the afternoon with a really lovely woman. Faith in humanity restored once again. The fog lifts momentarily and I choose yet another rabbit hole to plunge into.

Saw two very tired musicians lugging large instrument cases on the bus. So very world weary. I thought musicians led a charmed life, but perhaps I am mistaken. Yet another vocation that you need another vocation that pays for the first vocation. All I know is I have a lot of vocations but need at least one paycation.

Eat Kale and Prosper

Spent a fun afternoon convincing grade four/five students why they should eat kale. I've worked with this class for years and it is so fun to watch them grow up and express themselves, even if they choose names like Chef Farty Pants. It's so rewarding to see the shyest kid in the class get up and improvise, with the challenge of working the word "kale" into the conversation as many times as possible.

While I was hanging out in the gym at noon one of the autistic kids I love was draping me in colored gym shirts with the instructions that I was to perform "a daisy in the sunshine" as the floor hockey team mascot. Her imagination is incredible.

Dr. Agus on CBC's The Current

Dr. Agus is an oncologist with refreshing ideas about how we need to treat cancer with preventive medicine. He's the only person to ever present a convincing argument for getting the flu shot.

Characters We Fall in Love With

Just watched Prayer of the Bone, part of the Wire in the Blood series based on characters created by Val McDermid. Tony Hill is one of my favorite fictional characters, especially as acted by Robson Green. He's a character that gets under you skin at first in an irritating way and then you don't want to let go. What happens to these characters we cling to? Do they call out to be re- imagined in dreams and other forms of fiction? Do we seek them subconsciously as we travel through life?

Yesterday I read Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. Inspector Gamache is another of those characters one wishes they could "adopt" somehow. As I get older I find myself more and more attached to fictional characters. What does this mean, Dr. Hill? Daily interactions with humans leave me cynical and unfulfilled so I turn to fictional characters who have the capacity to empathize, to care and care for humans.

Are Cheerleaders Hysterical Mimics?

Fascinating story on The Current on CBC Radio about a group of cheerleaders in upstate New York. A group of girls are exhibiting turrets like symptoms and it is being called a case of mass hysteria. Celebrity lawyer Erin Brockowich is getting involved, to try to determine if the girls have been subjected to environmental poisons. A doctor from London says that this is the worst thing that could happen, as this kind of attention breeds the hysteria.

Those Who Love Themselves a bit too Much

I'm thinking a lot about how narcissism manifests itself in the new social media/technology. I think that technology can incubate narcissism so that it has the potential to become pathological.
Please discuss.

I am also thinking about the erosion of dignity in terms of every day interaction and how that has something to do with technology as well. Being kind to the person you interact with is no longer a part of people's job description, especially in the field of medicine.
Please discuss.

I get the sense that people are developing a kind of insensitivity or blindness to as sense of the "other," not as in someone alien to you, but literally in the sense that there is another person in the room besides you, the subject.

I am thinking on these things and maybe I should conceive a performance around these thoughts.