Sometime on Tuesday night, while I was raising cider in honour of MLG, my conductor passed away “peacefully”, I am told, in the hospital.

Life can be very cruel, sometimes.

Glenn Gould! Glenn Gould! Glenn Gould!

Yes, it�s his seventieth anniversary. Most of you probably don�t know that I am a massive Gould fan. Those who do are probably scratching their heads and saying, �I thought she got over that. Isn�t this her third wedding anniversary? Shouldn�t she be blogging about marital bliss?�

My marital bliss today involves being thrilled that my significant other enjoys Gould as well, thanks to me. Our first official outing was to a Gouldian book launch at the NAC in Ottawa and a film festival on Gould�s work (duly reported to the F-Minor group!). And, of course, a couple of years later, completely by coincidence, we were married on September 25th: Glenn Gould�s birthday. (It meant that I had to miss the bi-annual international Gould conference that I had been planning on attending, but well, after weighing priorities, I think everything came out all right, don�t you?)

No, actually, my husband woke me up an hour before I had to be up and brought me breakfast in bed this morning, and a rose, and tea. Very sweet. I couldn�t eat it, mind you (I can�t eat until I�ve been awake for a good hour or so), but it was a lovely thought.

He left, I turned on the radio, and lo and behold, it�s all Glenn Gould, all day on CBC Radio Two!

The agonising and unfair reality of things, however, means that I am working at the store today and I can�t listen to it. Argh! They�re interviewing people he worked with, playing clips of interviews done with him, asking Canadian and international musicians and producers for their opinions of his work, and playing Gould, Gould, Gould� fourteen whole hours of broadcast. I�ll hear a couple of hours tonight, but I wish I could hear it all!

I discovered Glenn Gould by buying a copy of his 1955 Goldberg Variations in ye old Sam the Record Man downtown. The playing was rough, spilling over with emotion and drive, and I was hooked. I did research, bought academic analyses, acquired as many recordings by Gould as possible that wasn�t the work of twentieth century composers (Bach, Bach, Bach!), and ended up outlining and writing a third of a thesis on Gould�s dual use of performance/recording and the written word as communication about music, for he wrote many articles and many of his own liner notes as well. I was supervised by a professor of drama in the English department, who was excited about the project and foresaw an examination board made up of people from the music faculty and the English department. Everything was green-lighted� and then my advisor vanished from the face of the earth. He didn�t return e-mails, didn�t return phone messages, didn�t respond to the drafts I left for him in his mailbox. The project trickled to a stop as I lost confidence in myself and the thesis, and my life went to hell in a handbasket as my first wedding was called off and various other problems surfaced in my life. Ultimately the thesis was abandoned, replaced by my brilliant (yes, I reread it recently) thesis on Nostalgia in the British Academic Novel: Reconstructing the Past in Thatcher Britain (available on microfiche, by interlibrary loan, and somewhere federal in Ottawa where all theses written in Canada go to rest in glory). This means that I have the bare bones of a major Gould work somewhere on a floppy disk (I shudder� it could be anywhere).

In the meantime, I was an active member of F-Minor, a mailing list about Gould�s works. In fact, if I search my birth name on the Internet, the first thing that comes up is a post to F-Minor from the archive. I have in the past few years received e-mails from strangers asking me questions about Gould and Timothy Findley for school papers as a result of this archive still being up and available to the public, which is flattering and slightly time-warpish. I unsubscribed from the list not long after the thesis fell apart, being so very hurt by the callousness of the vanishing professor (who went on to retire and not inform several students he was supervising), but going back through it this morning has me convinced that I�ll re-subscribe, if it�s still active.

Since I can�t enjoy the festivities today, do it for me! Visit the official web site at http://glenngould.com/gg/; or listen to CBC Radio Two�s Variations on Glenn Gould via the airwaves or on the Internet (Radio Two, down on the lower left), even if it’s just for a few minutes to get a sense of who this man was; and read about it on the CBC web site. I�m going to be late for work now because I blogged so long about a topic that I love, but since I�m not the one with the keys� as Bill would say, �neener, neener�!

My stunning Hallowe�en costume has been hanging up for a few weeks now, and yes, just as I had hoped, I�ve been looking at it and loving it and anticipating Hallowe�en with glee.

There�s just one thing. The next step involves making metre-long slices in the existing costume. Two of them.

It�s so pretty, and it looks so damned drop-jaw good on me. I�m petrified to ruin it, quite frankly. These two metre-long slices would really make the costume though.

S�okay. I have five weeks to work up the courage to do it. Well, four, because next week is chock-a-block full of work and teaching and such things. Three, actually, because I�d need a week to recover from the heart-stopping knowledge that I�ve committed hara-kari on a costume that�s taken me hours to get to this almost-perfect point. Now that I think about it, it�s only two weeks, since I�ll need a week to do the finicky final touches after I�ve hacked it apart, and then a week to rest and like it again while recovering.

Oh please, gods, let this work.

I feel the sudden urge to go fetal.

Has it ever happened that you casually glance out the window and you don’t see any cars go by, or people on the street, or anyone moving in the dep across the way, or dogs in the park dog-run, and wonder if, just maybe, you missed the end of the world?

Oyez, oyez!

His Majesty’s web mistress is pleased to announce that The King of Canada now has his very own blog, serving as weekly updates in his quest to restore Canada to a monarchy.

Serve us well and you will be rewarded when he is victorious. (I think MLG has a lock on the Buckingham position, but there are several other places about this court in exile that are equally exciting career opportunities.)

I honestly didn’t mean to announce it for another couple of days, since I literally only founded it as he was making dinner last night, but the timing in the conversation at MLG’s housewarming last night was too perfect. Speaking of the housewarming, is’t possible that JD didn’t get a picture of the Mediaeval Baebes who were in attendance?

Got my new birth certificate in the mail! My husband handed me an envelope from the Prince Edward Island Department of Vital Statistics, and I bent it back and forth; hmm, no hard laminated certificate. Maybe they’ve rejected my application for a certificate; maybe I don’t exist?

I tore it open. They’ve changed the format. (After thirty-one years – keeping up with the times, you know.) Now it’s a slip of bank-note paper with all the pertinent info on it, in a plastic sleeve. On the back it says “Void if altered or laminated.”

I liked my laminated birth certificate. It was sturdy. Oh, well.

Now the missing one can show up any time.

Here, birth certificate; I’ve got a friend for you to play with. Here, certificate, certificate, certificate….

Certainly the oddest thing ever heard as I�m putting together an outfit for a party: �Does this say Early Slut to you? It does, doesn�t it. Maybe some other time.�