VISI, day 13

Today went pretty well, considering last night went quite horribly.  

I decided not to go to performance psychology class, so instead my day started at 10 with presentations from Emily Ezust, webmistress of the Lied, Art Song and Choral Texts website, and Robert Crawford, the owner of the site and a musical artist in his own right.  I had been very interested in hearing Ms. Ezust speak, as I've used her website for a long time; I would have enjoyed more details on the computer-science side of things, but then, I have the background in it ... most of the people in the room wouldn't have cared much.  Mr. Crawford's presentation was not, I thought, as interesting: he works on software that is basically enhanced supertitles, pushing the notion that the audience needs to see the text in order to fully appreciate the music.  I don't disagree, but he was a bit aggressive and repetitive.  Oh well.  I would have also liked to hear more about why Ms. Ezust does what she does - what her philosophy is.  Why does she care enough to put this database out there and work on it full-time?

After that lecture was an hour about Peace it Together, a summer program uniting teenagers from Israel, Palestine and Canada in a month of filmmaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I was all teary in about ... five minutes.  I don't know very much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beyond the very, very basic sides, but still.  The work this program causes is inspiring and impressive.  What I found most striking was that no one, either staff or participants, is under the impression that peace may be reached in the near future (much less be caused directly by this program): they are concerned with initiating dialogue and connecting with the other side of the conflict, finding common ground and hoping for peace in the further future.  I don't quite know if that makes sense, but I'm not sure how else to say it right now.  Maybe I'll come back to it.

I then made lunch, and since I didn't have a coaching until 4, I relaxed and then took a nap.  The coaching today was the polar opposite of yesterday's: we worked with Tyler Duncan, a Canadian singer.  He was very encouraging (sometimes I thought he was perhaps too much so, but that could be a combination of personal self-deprecation, a tendency to put my talent above other people's, and the aftereffects of both yesterday's really tough coaching and the horrid evening), and yet still, somehow, we managed to work through a couple things that I hadn't been able to fix for a long time.  In some ways, the no-holds-barred encouragement and steady praise worked wonders.  Hard to believe, sometimes, but little bits of it got lodged in there somewhere.

After coaching, I checked on the score of the hockey game, figured there was time for it to turn around in our favour, and decided to head to downtown Vancouver.  I took the SkyTrain.  :D  It kind of made me sad to see how many people were drunk even just on the bus - and this was about one period into the game.  Once I got to downtown, I managed to walk seven blocks in the wrong direction, threading my way along Granville among all the people smoking (I have never seen so many people smoking at once in my life) ... and then realized I was going the wrong way, turned around and walked back.  I ate dinner in a food court, watched a very little bit of the game, decided we were definitely not going to win and I didn't want to be there when it was official, and went to catch a bus.  The bus pulled away at 7.53, just after the game ended and just before the fairly small-scale riots started.

I got ice cream on the way home.  And now here I am!  It is time to turn off the computer and relax ...