VISI, day 21

Yesterday was mostly fun.  After breakfast, I hopped on a bus and went to Granville Island, where I spent the morning shopping ... or, well, looking.  It's a beautiful place - a bit like the Forks in Winnipeg, but several times larger.  It's that lovely little oasis of foliage in a metropolis.  :)  

I wandered around several craft stores, contemplating the best gifts to buy for my family - and having a heck of a time, actually.  It would be much easier if I were 19 - I'd just buy some BC-specific brews and bring them home to Mom and Dad.  Alas, I am two months short ... 

I ended up deciding that I needed to go back home and think about things, and besides there was a student marketplace on-campus that day and I knew there were some things there that I could get for my siblings.  I had gotten something for my brother, and wandered around an umbrella shop (I found the perfect umbrella.  unfortunately, it costs $65), and had eaten a marvelous crêpe with pears and brown sugar for lunch ... so I declared the morning a relative success, and headed home.  

Warning: rant ahead.

I knew there were some shops along the street where I would need to get a bus, so when I saw that the next one wasn't due for another fifteen minutes, I decided to walk a bit and see what I could see.  That turned out to be somewhat of a mistake.  About two or three blocks in, I was stopped by a perfectly friendly young man, probably in his early or mid-twenties, who asked what I was listening to, and then started a conversation with me about the charity he was working for.  I listened politely, as I was indeed interested, and he was friendly - but when it became clear that they were looking for monthly donations, I had to find a way to demur and politely refuse ... not because I wouldn't want to, but because I don't have the means.  

Unfortunately, he was rather insistent.  He wanted my banking details, and when I said I didn't have them (which was true), he said he could call them on his smartphone, he'd pass the phone to me and I could negotiate the transfer.  At this point I was rather turned off.  I asked if I could take a form home with me, and he said they didn't want them to get spread around for fear of being copied (which I don't quite understand); I asked if there were a website on which I could sign up, and he said no, it had to be now.  At this point I apologized, said I really had to catch a bus, and asked if there were a number I could call.  He said no, but he could take my number and call me back.  

Really, dude?  Sigh.  I gave him my name and number.  I caught the bus.  I went home.

Once home, I Googled the charity, and it turns out that it is indeed quite easy to sign up online for monthly donations, or, if you'd rather, to give a one-time gift.  I had already planned not to answer his call, but now I want to answer even less.  If he'd given me the option of signing up to a mailing list or even just given me the website, I would have considered it - but his attitude was frustrating and rather rude, so, no thank you.  

Rant over.  

Upon returning to UBC, I went to the student marketplace and bought souvenirs for my sisters, and then came home to have a nap.  I had been out from 9.30 and it was now 2.30.  I was quite tired, so I slept a bit, and then went off to my coaching with Erika Switzer at 4.00.  This was quite good - she helped me figure out this whole "find meaning in the words" thing, and she worked with us on diction and direction and things like that.  We were all very, very tired ... 

I went back to the dorms and made dinner, then got a little bit dressed up and went back to the music building, for something called "The Concert of Your Wildest Dreams".  This is one of the director's ideas - after three weeks of being nitpicked, nagged, directed, corrected ... you get to perform in a concert where everything you do is absolutely amazing.  The audience is allowed and encouraged to comment on bits of the performance that they find amazing - while you are performing.  Now this might sound distracting, and on occasion it was, but most of the time it was extraordinarily encouraging.  There's nothing quite like hearing, "Schubert would be proud," as you perform one of his Lieder.  It's this incredible reassurance of self and of purpose, and it's so very freeing.  

We had some hilarious performances, too - once people kinda got into the feel of "anything goes as long as you're having fun", we really opened up.  Some of the performances had us just about falling off our chairs laughing - some of the performances had us nearly in tears.  And no one was allowed to stop clapping until the performers actually told us to stop - jump to your feet and applaud and applaud and applaud!  It's so empowering, both for audience and for performer.  You really get to discover the creativity within yourself, and to see everyone else's creativity, as well.  It makes you very, very happy.

After the concert, I talked with the director briefly about her travels to Rwanda, and about mine a little bit, and she gave me some leads as to who I could contact to return as a musician, and really use my talents and gifts to help the people I care about so much.  That was a nice little conversation.

I walked back with a bunch of VISIers, and even though they were all heading off to party and enjoy themselves (where I, alas, would not be allowed to enter), we had fun walking together.  It spiralled, as these things do, into Monty Python quotes and random singing of art song and just being goofy in general, and I felt the closest I have to these people in three weeks.  (I'm strange, right?)  I broke off from the group and went home, warmed up some food, and relaxed a bit before bed.  

Today, I was planning on heading to a Sears outlet and buying a baggage scale (you know, the little thing you clip onto your bag and then lift to find out how heavy the bag is), but it turns out the nearest one is downtown - so I'm going to do that tomorrow, when I have more free time, and when I will go back to Granville Island.  I don't have to be anywhere until four tomorrow, and while of course I have to be home earlier than that in order to get ready and warm up and things like that, I have more thought-time to travel downtown, get the baggage scale, bus back a bit to go to Granville Island, pick up the things I want, and head back home.  It's just a more relaxed schedule.  

If the sky clears, I might walk to the beach - but to a beach with sand this time, so it's a longer walk than Wednesday, so I might do that tomorrow, too.  I'd actually like to go in the water (I haven't yet), so I'd have to have a shower when I get back, which is another variable to consider in timing ... I don't know.  We'll see! Right now I'm going to do some preliminary planning of packing.

VISI, day 16

Another late night means another morning post.

Yesterday was mainly uneventful, though I sent an email or two that needed sending.  After posting about Friday (in which I forgot a story, which I shall have to tell in a minute or two), I hung out for a bit on the Internet, then did laundry.  I also made lunch.  After lunch, I scurried off to participate in the art and conflict resolution workshop, which was interesting if perhaps a bit esoteric.  We examined art and conflict resolution through the lens of the four ancient alchemic elements (fire, air, water, earth).  This actually wasn't that weird as it might sound - it was really just categorical names for passion, mind, emotion and the world, all of which come into play in conflicts (and therefore their resolution).  There was not a lot talked about that I didn't already know, instinctively or not, but there were interesting bits and bobs tossed around.

I have been thinking about typing out all my notes and posting them here, as attachments.  I don't know if that would interest people.  I would scan them when I got home, but I worry a bit that they would be illegible to other eyes.  I write well, but ... not that well.  Anyway.  If you read my blog, and you'd be interested in reading notes from lectures, or coachings, or performance psychology/Alexander Technique sessions ... give me a shout in the comments (here or Facebook or Twitter or whatever).

After the workshop, I went back to dorm to get ready for the Schubertiade - an evening of music and song and fun, in fancy dresses, with alcohol.  Except I couldn't have any alcohol.  sigh.  I wore my bright-red grad dress, which was a serious hit - I was told by a complete stranger that I looked exquisite, and several students of the VISI program thought I looked really good, too.  As I mentioned on my Twitter, though, strangers telling you that you look exquisite are only ever time travellers ... I wonder why someone came to the Schubertiade simply to tell me I looked wonderful?  Hm ...  :P

The VISI singers sang at the beginning and the end of the three-hour concert (Im Abendroth and An die Musik), which was a good way to open and close the evening.  The first hour was a sort of Schubert 'séance', where the artistic director was purportedly from another planet (not the only time traveller, it would seem), and they had technology enough to bring people who had passed from this dimension back for brief periods of time ... except there wasn't good enough reception in the hall, so we had to settle for someone in the audience channeling Schubert.  This resulted in hilarity as no fewer than ten people claimed to be Schubert, but they were winnowed out (all plants, of course, from the Songfire Theatre program) by means of a Schuberti-off (yeah they went there) with Schubert-testing questions.  The remaining Schubert gave some small tidbits of information in between performances of Schubert Lieder, and it was an amusing time, if a bit boring by the end of it.  It could have been much more interesting, somehow ... 

The second hour was the Canadian-content portion, and I was not certain whether or not it would prove interesting ... but I needn't have worried.  Many of the composers and poets of the repertoire were actually there that night, which was an experience I had never really had before - not just applauding the performer, but actually applauding the composer and the poet, sitting right there in the audience.  Very neat.  Plus there was some hilarious repertoire, including a pair of love songs written by a composer-poet couple who had gotten married the day before, and the songs had been performed by the same duo performing them that night as a wedding gift.  The first song was called Something Like That, and was this wonderful little musing on "you're beautiful ... or something like that, anyway".  It was just so sweet.  The second song was called Hanky Panky, and was an ... well, I'm not sure how to describe it, but you can only get away with that sort of a song if you're over 60, which Stephen Chatman is.  It had the house rolling on the floor laughing, it was so funny and risqué.  Not even trying to hide it, either.  There was also a performance by Chincilia Bartoli and Sumi Jaw ... yes, yes, I know, it's Cecilia and Jo, but not in this case - this was a pair of singers who laid on a table with their heads to the audience and had dresses on the top half of their heads and sunglasses on their chins.  Take a minute to imagine that.  Yeah.

The third hour was a performance of Brahms' Liebeslieder, a set of 18 songs about love and all sorts of little tangents, all performed by the same quartet.  It was a lovely way to end the evening.  I walked home after (the theatre was on-campus), and basically went to bed.  

Today is gray and rainy, so I will not be going to the beach after church - instead, I will play games and read, and perhaps write, and maybe even have a nap.  There is a premiere performance this evening of art songs written this week, so I will find my way over to that for eight o'clock, but from 11.30 till then, I shall relax.  What a concept!

VISI, day 4

Today has, again, been interesting.

Decided to have breakfast in res this morning, so I only got up at nine ish.  Sent some emails.  Didn't feel very happy still - a point against a night's sleep making things better (I suppose I didn't sleep very well).

I then booted it to the chapel for the first lecture of the day - Schubert's songs in Biedermaier culture.  Fascinating and informative.  I shall look at Schubert's Lieder in an entirely different light now.  The prof talked a lot about the Austrian and European politics of the time and how they influenced the split between public and private life in such a way that art and culture were seen as the ultimate reprieve (apart from death) from the deathly boring public life that people had to endure because of government censorship and repression (well-intentioned repression, perhaps, but repression nonetheless).  It was a shift from Romanticism in that Romanticism sought the unattainable optimistically, believing that it could potentially be attained (contradiction, I know) in the mortal life.  Biedermaier culture, thanks in large part to the repression of the state, considered it to be truly unattainable "this side the tomb".

Then we had a masterclass on a couple of Schubert pieces, where the information we just received was put into practice.  Fascinating to watch in play.  :)

I made a quick lunch then hurried over to the concert hall for a concert consisting mainly of Lee Hoiby's work, an American composer only recently departed with a true talent for lyricism in his works.  The concert started a bit slowly, but really picked up with some playful pieces - including one about a horror film.  Quite entertaining.

After the concert was coaching - I had a half an hour with a diction and opera coach on my Schubert piece (Auf dem Wasser zu singen) where we worked on dramatic enunciation and making the text really come alive.  This is something that I've known I needed work on for months now, and never really knew how to go about it.  Now I have a better idea!  

I then worked with a professional soprano (one who was part of the noon hour's concert, actually) on one of my Brahms pieces, Die Mainacht.  We focused in on a particularly troubling fourth, as well as bringing colour and character from my lower voice (I speak a lot lower and, possibly, more gently, than I am most comfortable singing) into my mid- and upper ranges.  Frustrating at times, but ultimately satisfying.

I then made supper, and have spent the last hour or two talking with old friends online, as well as fangirling over the Halo 4 trailer.  I am excited!