VISI, day 17

Very little happened today of note.

I went to church.  I missed the bus to church and so I walked.  It was not far.  I walked in just as the service had started.

I bussed back and made lunch.  I played games most of the afternoon.  It was gray and rainy, and I did not really want to go out.

I considered not going to the concert tonight, but reasoned that since I had been inside almost all day, it would be good for me to get out a bit.

Except that I thought I had to leave at 7.15, when the bus left at 7.06.  I booked it out the door at 7.00 after bolting down food and pulling on a dress and hose ...  and missed the bus anyway.  I decided knew that the next one would get there only slightly late, so I elected to stay.  Something was nagging at me that I shouldn't bother, but I put that up to just wanting to not do anything ... so I stayed aboard.

I got where I needed to go, only to find that the theatre I was aiming for was, in fact, locked.  I don't know why.  It was ten after eight; the concert started at eight.  I decided that the area looked a bit sketchy and the last thing I wanted was to look lost and helpless while wearing a dress in a sketchy area, so I decided to head off and find a bus stop.  When I left, I'd been in a hurry, so I didn't know the nearest bus stop back.  I ended up walking in the wrong direction, getting help from an outside source, and walking back.  All in all it took forty minutes to find a bus stop.  I may as well have been at the concert.

I want caffeine.  I'm stressed.  I'm tired.

But at least there's no bird in my room.  I keep forgetting to tell that story.

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 ... 

VISI, day 11

Today was not terribly eventful, but good nonetheless.

No performance psych class this morning, so lectures started at ten.  I did a brief warmup at nine and felt like crap, so I decided to leave it.  Tired plus vocal fatigue plus just ate breakfast.  Felt much better in the afternoon, as I expected.

The lecture this morning was about Schubertiades; very interesting, rather enlightening.  Schubert was not well-known enough, nor were Lieder a popular enough art form to be played at big public concerts (plus there was the fact that if a concert was organized to showcase one specific composer, the composer had to pay for it ALL himself, and while Schubert wasn't destitute, he certainly couldn't handle that), so his music was mainly played, during his lifetime anyway, in middle-class salons and, surprise surprise, at Schubertiades.  (that was a long sentence.)  The aristocratic salons were not, for the most part, interested in Schubert's music, though a few songs would have been played through his meager connections with the aristocracy; the middle class was far more interested in his style of music, since they were very serious about the Biedermeier concept of Bildung, or the self-culturing through art.  And, of course, there were the Schubertiades; parties organized (or not) solely for listening to Schubert's music ... and having a heck of a good time.  (Apparently they even engaged in tossing people in blankets.  Y'know, like that movie.  I can't remember it now.  But really.  Also they drank a lot.)

So yeah, interesting lecture ...  The masterclass was not as interesting.  The girl performing didn't emote very well and so much of the masterclass was devoted to that.  

I headed back to the dorms and made both lunch and supper, then went to coachings.  The first coaching was work on staging one of our art songs; I picked a particularly difficult one to understand, and so didn't get to work on it as much this time - but I will later in the week, so that's okay.  The second coaching was led by VISI's director, and so we spent some time staging and some time really digging into the songs.  I worked on a song I've done several times in coachings now, but it was only really today that I managed to connect with it and sing it like I never had before (it has some wickedly long lines for someone of my early stage of training). It was pretty cool.

I then headed off to catch a bus, and proceeded to go to downtown Vancouver.  I ate supper looking out over the harbour, and then watched the last 15 minutes of game six (Stanley Cup finals, in case you're A) living under a rock or B) don't follow hockey) at Canada Place.  That was pretty cool.  The series is now tied 3-3, so I'll head back on Wednesday to see the last period or so of game seven, which is at home in Vancouver, and so should be entirely mad.  that'll be fun.  :D

And then I found a way home, and here I am.  Kinda sleepy.  Tomorrow is a new day - or something like that.