VISI, day 23

The final day of the fun ... 

I went for a short shopping excursion this morning, to find two more gifts as well as a baggage scale.  My time is very short tomorrow morning, and I do not want to spend unnecessary time repacking bags ...  My shopping was successful, and I returned home to pack.  The morning was very, very rainy, and so my hopes of going to the beach one last time were dashed ... 

... except that when I got home, the sun came out.  I rethought my schedule, and decided I had time to go to the beach.  Off I went - so quickly that I forgot my sunscreen.  Oops.  Upon arriving at the beach (the third one I chose, and the nicest), I went and walked in the water a bit.  I didn't really want to go swimming, and then try to get the seaweed out of my hair, so I just walked.  It was rather cold, and the sky had clouded over again.  I went back, leaned against a log, and read for half an hour; at that point, the sun came out, and I just lay in the sun for another half hour.  I then bussed back, did a little bit of packing, and hurried off to the music building to run through staging ... 

... only to find that they were an hour behind!  I decided to go have a shower, which I had meant to do earlier, but when I returned an hour later, I only just got there in time to rehearse my song.  Luckily it went quite well and no one seemed particularly annoyed that I hadn't shown up in time.  Oops again ... 

I stayed in my gown to make dinner, and then eat it, and then do my hair and makeup.  It's a bit of a hassle to get into, so I didn't want to have to do so again ...   The gala was wonderful.  Rather long - three and a half hours - but every minute was packed with interesting interpretation and excellent acting.  The first act was the first half of our art songs; the second act was a short staged production by several of the students in a parallel program to my own; and the third act was the second half of the art songs.  Almost all of the songs were staged (only three or four were performed in recital fashion), and they were all brilliantly conceived.  Some were hilarious, some were heartbreaking, some were somewhat disturbing ... and all were so very artistic.  :)  We had drunk men, cocktail lounge singers, marionette masters, blind women, amorous pining from both sexes, and then little moments like reminiscing about one's grandmother ... yes, that was me.

Now, after the gala, everyone else has gone off to party, and I, alas, am not old enough ... besides, I still need to finish packing.  So here I am.  Packing.  ... blogging.

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 19

Yesterday was a day full of movement.  Performance psychology first thing, then the final lecture (about Paul Verlaine's poetry - interesting, but got a bit dull and repetitive - I left a little bit early), then lunch, then a coaching ... 

and then the adventures started!  We all bussed downtown to attend a concert in an office building - June 21st is the Fête de la Musique in France, and Vancouver is trying to start its own tradition.  There was music everywhere, of all kinds.  It was very neat!  The concert was all French music, very traditional, very pretty.

A smaller group of us went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which was very yummy, and then we walked over to the Orpheum Annex theatre, where the VISI faculty was going to give another concert of French music.

It started with very traditional French mélodie and chanson, but then got very funny.  Real French humour!  It was roll-in-the-aisles hilarious, with spoken-word song, immense amounts of wordplay (I'm so glad I speak French), little pokes at composer styles by setting words from a Raisin Bran box to music ... and then an absolutely hilarious performance of Erik Satie's Je te veux - performed, eventually, by everyone who had sung!  The program was written as if one soprano was going to sing it, which is the traditional way of performing the song, but the two very French baritones took over and started singing to her (which is very funny because the song is from the perspective of a mistress talking to her lover) ... and then she replied ... and then it just got insane because everyone started singing.  

It was truly the best concert I'd been to in a long time.  Finally, a concert proclaiming that the French repertoire is not boring, is not old, is not passé - but that the French themselves are hilarious, love poking fun at themselves and their history, and aren't offended by it!  It was glorious - like a return to high school, in a very good way.  

Bussed home, talked to my boyfriend for a bit (which was nice), and then went to bed ... 

So far today, I have discovered which muscles I am overusing to create a posture that isn't even right, and I have been enlightened as to the interpretation of Duparc's L'invitation au voyage.  Now I am eating lunch, and then I will go to a concert, and then the beach, and then shopping, and then another concert!

VISI, day 14

I had breakfast in the dorms this morning.  It was a nice break from the warmth and people of the cafeteria.  I can only take so many people in the morning ... I much prefer breakfast on my own.

I went to performance psych, which wasn't as scary as I expected it to be - we did a lot of concert visualization, figuring out what makes us feel comfortable on stage and distilling that into phrases we can use as process cues, sentences that bring us back to a place in our mind and body that feels as we want it to.

The ten o'clock lecture was a two-hour forum on translation, which passed in a flash.  It was truly interesting to hear and talk about the art of translation from so many viewpoints: there were people on the panel concerned with poetry, creative writing, French, German, musicology, translation in itself, distribution, and audience/singer/reader understanding.  It was fascinating.  We talked about a Goethe poem (the basis for Schubert's Wanderers Nachtlied) and a Paul Verlaine poem (Clair de lune).  

We talked about the inconsistencies of language, how poetry uses language, the purpose of metaphors, how to be faithful to a poem (rhyme scheme? ideas? metre? words? meaning? intent?), word choice, purpose, audience ...  like I said, truly fascinating.  It could have gone on for hours, and the thing is there really aren't solid answers to many of the questions that translation poses - just stances, and sometimes your stance can change depending on why you need a translation, or why you translate a piece.

My first coaching this afternoon was with Mme Rosemarie Landry, a true top banana (that expression cracks me up) in the world of French song.  I was nervous about working with her, but she was absolutely adorable and so much fun.  She was very kind, if very insistent.  She pointed out errors in my French that were caused by my speaking Canadian French (I have very sibilant fricatives, for instance), and helped me find a way to interpret the Poulenc piece I am working on so that it is not old-fashioned, nor is it unduly sad.  She was very encouraging, and said only time will fix some of the issues - time and practice, of course.  

The second coaching was with Dr Cameron Stowe, a pianist and interpreter.  We worked on a Brahms piece, one that I'd coached several times before in the past week and a half, with varying degrees of success (but always something learned).  There were several long phrases on which I was holding back for fear of a lack of breath, and as such were suffering in tone quality and vowel depth; he said to make it spin, I did, it used more air but ... I didn't run out.  We also fixed some problems of register changes by adding depth to the vowel, which was caused by relaxing the muscles on the bottom of my head (I think it's the geniohyoid muscle, but I'm not sure).  I think those were being kept closed (and still are - I keep catching myself at it) while I had my braces in.  I may have to spend some time with my mouth open at all times to break the habit.

After coachings, I went grocery shopping, and found out how to manage getting to Surrey tomorrow.  Tomorrow is adventure day!  I get to go meet a good friend of mine for the first time.  It'll be sweet, even if it does mean a bus ride of an hour and a half either way.  Oh well.  Worth it.  Also time to relax and read.

Now it is time to have a shower, and then go to bed.

VISI, day 8

Today flipped over about midway through.

I did not get up at six, as I had wanted to, but at seven-thirty.  Sleeping better with a blanket on top and more towels added to the pile underneath ...  

I went to the performance psychology class, and after that intimate and gentle cajoling of intentions, past experiences, goals, motivations, etc ... I was kaput.  I was depressed.  I was so down.  I could not possibly face two hours of lecture and masterclass.  It just wasn't going to work - not unless I shut down entirely, sat at the back and spent the rest of the day closed to everything ... which was the whole point of the psychology class to get away from, now that I think about, so in the end this was a good thing that ... I didn't go.  I escaped back to my room, spent a while just breathing and reminding myself that it was okay to be hurting, and then wrote a bit.  Not a lot, just a bit.  I'm easing back into the whole writing thing - it bothers me that I don't write as much fiction as I'd like, and instead I do a lot of journaling and written-daydreaming (though mostly journaling nowadays).  Maybe the fiction will come.  Right now my life is tough enough in my head (which on its own makes me sound incredibly egotistical ... one of the things I journal about).

I forced myself out to the concert at one, which wasn't worth it, in my opinion.  I didn't particularly like the voice of the mezzo who was performing - couldn't understand all her words, some of her emotions felt a bit contrived - but I think my lack of connection was mostly due to my mental state, which was still right down in the dumps.  The first lecture afterwards was nice - an hour and a half on why diction is important and how it's actually interesting (which had never really been articulated to me - diction was just a tool before this afternoon, and now, having been contextualized into language, which I adore, it is much more interesting), but the second session ... the coaching ... 

The man coaching, a pianist named Dr Harley who teaches out of Washington DC, was absolutely fantastic.  I ended up going first, and we worked through Die Mainacht (a song I must have coached four times now).  He made it come alive like no other coach had managed to do, and he did more talking than I did singing but it was so fascinating that I really didn't mind.  Each other singer's session was just as fascinating, and I felt my spirits lifting even as he was saying hello and introducing himself at the beginning.  He's very British, and very funny, and managed to hit the right combination of suggestion, encouragement, and a very little bit of correction.  It didn't feel like correction at all, though - just, "well, why don't we try it this way, because xyz?"  reaction: holy crap that is precisely what this means.  It was glorious.  I would definitely want to work with him again.

Right after lectures, I popped away to do a bit of grocery shopping, and then came home.  Eating some dinner now - just veggies and dip (bought an amazing masala salad dressing, love it), will have rice tomorrow sometime.  Yay for buying interesting things, not just staples!

I am feeling better about life right now, but I feel as it the balance is very fragile.  I still feel very tired, and my body is not the way it was before - I am stiff and sore still, and it is very painful to stretch in the morning.  Stupid bed.  Ow.  On the other hand, fresh fruit and vegetables, and the hope for more coachings like this afternoon's ...  and maybe, just maybe, more writing.