Monthly Archives: July 2002

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This is one of those mornings where I looked around at my life and started to panic again.

Marriage can be a wonderful thing, but it also means you have double the problems to deal with since it’s sharing the not-so-good as well as the good. It’s all very well to say “Chin up!” and “Think positive and things will unfold that way,” but every once in a while when you’ve gradually convinced yourself that yeah, things aren’t so bad, and we can handle life, and we’re pretty on top of things, something creeps up and hamstrings you.

On top of that I woke up with a stiff neck again, and no osteo appointment for another two weeks. I didn’t do anything, I swear!

To cheer myself up, I keep trying to remember that two very dear friends have asked us formally to become their new daughter’s guardians should anything happen. I get a rush of warmth and dewy eyes every time I think about it. The trust implied in the request touched us deeply, and I believe that it’s among the highest compliments anyone be paid. The term “guardian” suits us just fine as well – an older term might have been “godparents”, but in our lifestyles the concept of a guardian is much more appropriate. She’s not our daughter, but both of us would do pretty much anything to keep her happy and safe, whether her parents are around or not – and that was before we were asked to officially be named guardians. The idea that her parents have invited us to play that important a role in her life is awe-inspiring – almost as awe-inspiring a miracle that is a baby itself.

Of course the request led to my husband and I discussing our own plans for a family, which actually got pretty bleak. Since we got married we’ve been saying, “We’ll see where we are in another two years,” and there we are, circling right back to the problems we’re having staying afloat, never mind on an even keel. My yardstick for starting a family is simple: Can we take care of ourselves properly? If no, then thanks for playing, please ask again in another few months. If yes, then go on to question #2, which is, Could we take care of a third party? It doesn’t help that the knowledge that I’m not working this summer keeps worming its way into my Protestant-work-ethic-staurated moral makeup: something somewhere in my brain is screaming because I’m taking a sabbatical. I know it’s necessary for both my back and my brain, since burnout was sapping what productivity I was managing to display, but in the end, deep inside, I keep saying, Yes, but you’re not working. It seems a waste of time, but I think it’s going to take me all summer to come to terms with the fact that not holding an official job is not going to make or break our financial life, so peanut-like was the pay in my retail position.

Listening to the final movement of Bach’s sixth Brandenburg Concerto makes things seem brighter, somehow. And it’s all the more soothing because it’s on the radio, and came as a surprise. It’s difficult to be negative when you’re listening to Bach. It’s even more difficult to be negative when you’ve just brewed a fresh pot of tea and you’ve taken two muscle relaxants, which means I should be delightfully drowsy in about fifteen minutes…

Musical Voyeurism

And here I thought my migraines and backaches would be history once I stopped working. Apparently I live a rich fantasy life.

I’m lying in my bedroom working on my laptop. Usually I have music on, but right now there’s a saxophonist wandering through some pieces nearby. This is the sax player who completely enthralled me by playing “My Favourite Things” for twenty minutes last summer, arresting my motion as I swung into the bedroom with the intent to quickly grab a book.

There’s something particularly special about overhearing someone playing an instrument. Making music is such an intimate practice that listening in is a bit voyeuristic, in a way. Music has a different life if you’re aware that you have an audience; it becomes performance rather than an act of love, and while performance can be done lovingly it inevitably acquires a different dimension. Some might argue that it’s a necessary dimension – the old tree falling in a forest paradox. While performance adds spice to music, much the way an audience adds an essential element to a piece of theatre, I think that an audience of one – namely, the musician – can serve a more immediate purpose. The act of making music entails pulling emotion out of one’s soul and interpreting it through an instrument. That act of interpretation fulfils a desire within the musician whether anyone else is there or not – possibly in a purer fashion if they are alone, since there is no need to groom that emotion to present it to someone else. It’s music for the love of it, proven so by the fact that no audience is required.

Writing can be like that too. I know plenty of people who write to satisfy something inside them who, once a body of work is accomplished, quietly tuck it away somewhere. They feel no need to share the product; it was the act of putting thought to paper that satisfied some urge. I know others, of course, who seek to communicate to/with others via written word, and who have published, or who at the very least pass the writing on to someone else. The point is, the act can be done for the sake of the act itself.

I envy my saxophonist neighbour. Not just his (her?) talent and his technique, but his/her comfort in practicing with open windows. I cringe at the thought of anyone hearing me practice, to such an extent that my husband created a miniature practice room for me in our huge front hall closet in our last apartment. It was just big enough for me to sit in and have full bow arm extension in both directions, soundproofed with styrofoam and carpeting and yet I still was convinced that people could hear me. This terror of being overheard originates partially from my innate shyness, and partially from my first two years as a cellist in an apartment over a crusty elderly woman who complained if my cats ran up and down the hall.You can imagine her reaction when I practiced scales, or when a friend came over with her violin to play duets. Loud banging on my floor shattered whatever shreds of self-confidence I was struggling to establish, at a time when I was trying to figure out who I was, how to express myself as an individual, how to deal with being an adult learner with all the inhibitions that implies, and how to survive with my parents newly removed from the province. Reactions formed so early on have persisted throughout my eight years of cello-playing, which is one of the reasons why I love listening to this saxophone. Someone somewhere not only is comfortable enough to play without caring who hears, or who might complain, even if the same music is played for twenty minutes. The knowledge that someone that close to me (geographically, if not personally) is inspiring.

So, too, is my astonishing ability to play as much Bach as I have discovered I am capable of playing. A year ago, I was crushed at how poorly I played pieces I performed with capable technique when I was still studying with a teacher. Ten months of struggling in orchestra has restored much of the technique I’d thought lost. Which, of course, is one of the reasons I joined. That… and the ability to practice with less self-consciousness, as does that saxophone player nearby who will likely never know how happy s/he makes me, or what a wonderful example s/he sets me.

On Theatre

I picked up a terrific book yesterday called Standing Naked in the Wings, a collection of anecdotes and personal narratives of Canadian performers, mainly stage performers but also some TV and film actors. I’m enjoying it immensely. I’ve laughed out loud a few times, giggled until tears came to my eyes, and felt my throat swell shut in empathy once or twice, too. My favourite line so far:

The sword fights at Stratford are a basic part of mounting plays written in an era when homocide was a domestic art.

I adore the theatre. I love working in it (good thing, seeing as how I’ve been doing it for over seventeen years now), I love participating in an audience setting, I love reading about it. One of my best Christmas presents last year was a gift from my parents called Romancing the Bard: Stratford at Fifty, and there’s a book out called Stratford Gold which I’m dying to get (don’t worry, I abide by my own no-buying-gift-like-things-for-yourself-within-thirty-days-of-your-birthdate! rule). If I can’t be rehearsing or performing, then dash it all, I’ll read about other people rehearsing and performing!

Something that has really surfaced while I’ve been reading this anecdotal collection is the realisation that my past couple of turns with Lakeshore Light Opera haven’t satisfied me at all. I think perhaps it’s the extended rehearsal time (rehearsing for six months instead of two, you really lose the sense of focus and tension I feel is necessary to maintaining a good theatre product, I find, even though there’s music and choreography and stage direction to cobble together). It’s more than time to move on. However, I’ll do one last show, simply because I cannot pass up the potential opportunity to work with my adopted big/younger/twin brother Rob in a musical comedy one last time. (Besides, then I’ll have had a stab at pretty much the entire accepted Savoyard canon before I start repeating shows I’ve already done.) We’ll see what the gods grant us.

My parents, thank goodness, have supported me in this foolish and addictive pastime since I began, having been members on the tech crew of a community theatre group in the Maritimes before I was born. In fact, they go so far as to tell me that if I could only make money from it, they’d consider it a complete and total success. Anyone feel like ponying up to support me in my indulgent pursuit of a life on stage?

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Callooh! Callay! My comments are back!

Turns out an interesting bit of code that didn’t belong there crept in when I reinstalled them. Very interesting code, which looked pretty well-thought-out, and which had nothing to do with me. Cut and paste describes my advanced HTML abilities. Anywhats, problem solved.

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We invaded the in-laws’ place yesterday, did a few lazy laps in the pool until the body temperature dropped, then went inside into air conditioned coolness. Which quickly became frigidity, actually, since it’s on very high. So high that when I crashed on the couch, I needed a blanket over me. My mother in law loves it that cold; I think my father in law is sneaking around and dropping it degree by degree so that the transition between indoors and outdoors won’t be as harsh.

My darned commenting function is still down. Reinstalling didn’t work. Time to e-mail the host…

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A walk? Am I insane? We’re at 33 degrees – above our forecast high. With the humidity, it’s approximately 43 degrees. Maybe I’ll walk to the grocery store where it’s nice and cool.