Intimations of mortality

Earlier this week, I felt the warmth of the sun for the first time this year. By Friday, though, the sun was washed out by a nest of grey, shining though with a silvery-white spotlight.

It's cold. The coffee-shops and restaurants have fewer customers. I don't see as many cars on the street, although there seem to be more cyclists, who may be avoiding public transit. Next-to-no dog-walkers. Poor dogs.

With the announcement that the Prime Minister's wife is infected with COVID-19, and is in "self-isolation" with the PM and their three children, things began shutting down. One of the first institutions in Victoria to go was the Symphony, understandably, given the median age of its subscribers.

Fortunately for us, our tickets for this season were used up in early February, back when the news was all about impeachment and Brexit. (Good times.)

It was the eve of Demeter's big birthday, which had put us all in mind of our own respective mortalities. Then the Resident Fan Boy and I went to hear a "Naked Classics" version of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony (No. 6). This is an event where the first half is a dissection of the work, while the second half is the piece itself.

The Pathétique Symphony was one of the pieces I studied when I indulged myself in a Music Appreciation course, when I was studying for a diploma in Applied Linguistics, and sneaking in electives for which I'd had no time when doing my undergraduate degree.

I haven't listened to the Sixth Symphony in years, but mainly remembered the four highly recognizable themes of each movement: the "footsteps of fate" closing of the first movement, the 5/4 faux waltz of the second movement, the frantic 6/8 scherzo overlaying the third movement, and the "sobbing" strings of the fourth.

When I was taking the course years ago, the received wisdom was that Tchaikovsky committed suicide shortly after this symphony premiered in October 1893, by deliberately drinking contaminated water and dying, horribly, of cholera. Apparently, they're not so certain of that anymore.

Our host, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, and live demonstrations of his points from the Victoria Symphony, went through Tchaikovsky's "plan" for the symphony: Life-force - Love - Disappointment - Death. The strings demonstrated that the descending main theme in the fourth movement is, in fact, a sort of trompe d'oreille, created by the first and second violins playing completely different melodies. Our attention was also drawn to the beating-heart effect in the same movement -- which eventually slows and stops. In performance after intermission, the lights dimmed, and the orchestra disappeared into darkness.


It's so odd re-visiting this symphony after first experiencing it as a twenty-something, when I found it just a bit over-the-top. Hearing it again all these years later, I appreciated it, recognized it, yet found it profoundly sad and disturbing. The pushing insistence of Life, followed by the falling short of one's dreams, and the descent into death. Cuts a bit close, these days.

I'm not sorry I went, but am somehow grateful that I didn't get it in my twenties. That would be profoundly sad and disturbing indeed.

Classical pass

Does YouTube know what I listen to on Spotify?

This showed up on my "suggested" list this afternoon. Not much Mozart, but Spotify did send me a little bit of Carmen yesterday...

Am I impressed? Well, yes, but not quite that way...

Algorithm arrhythmia

It's been almost three months since I decided to resurrect Spotify at the behest of elder daughter.

It's been interesting. I get two weekly playlists: one called "Discover", which are tracks that are not necessarily new, but Spotify thinks might be new to me; and "Radar Release", which includes newly released tracks by artists in whom I've shown an interest, either by "liking" songs, or "following" the artist, in social-media-speak.

I try to listen to both playlists, because the whole point of the exercise is my desire to expand my listening, but it's a helluva lot of music, and I don't always get through it all, especially since I am also sent six (6!) playlists each day, comprised of stuff I've "liked", or even just listened to. Each playlist is based on four to six artists, so that it is sort of themed, roughly, in my case to alternative rock, folk, with some innings into glam rock, and singer/songwriter stuff. It is, of course, my favourite music, on the whole, but some of it is quite repetitive, and the "new" stuff I'm sent is slightly skewed towards country music. Not surprising, I suppose, given that I like folk, and folk and country often tend to lean into each other.

That's algorithm for ya.

Today, however, I got something different. One of my playlists was entirely given over to an Early Music/choral/Mozart/ mix. Fifty tracks of lutes, madrigals, requiems, and the occasional pop song reworked in acapella. Tallis Scholars, King Singers, Oxford Camerata, Bryn Terfel, and, of course, Baltimore Consort.

Like a greedy kid in an ice cream parlour, I downed it all at one sitting.

Heaven knows what this will do to the algorithm. I'd better listen to the Stone Roses-based playlist tomorrow.

Gone with the woodwinds

These Vivaldi Guys have a page on Facebook, which features two videos and says next to nothing about them. If you google them, you won't find much, except the CBC Music article that brought them to my attention.

Are they Italian? French? Something else? I dunno.

For the first few seconds of this video, I actually thought they were clarinetists. Whoever they are, they are clever musicians. Not bad dancers, either....

Levels of entertainment

There's always so much more to a concert than the music -- especially at Chamberfest.

A few nights ago, the Chamberfest Chamber Orchestra, eighteen top-notch musicians led by Julian Rachlin, a violinist who, I gather, is a big deal - I'm not that knowledgable about violin virtuosi - contrasted Vivaldi's Four Seasons with twentieth century composer Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

I'm fond enough of Vivaldi and the Piazzolla piece had its moments - again, I don't have a great ear for violin music - but what was going on in the audience and on stage provided plenty of entertainment.

We had the usual drama with the generous donor who has a reserved seat right in front of us. This time, a lady sitting with a party of four, when confronted with the donor claiming her seat, handed the laminated reserved card, on which she had been sitting partially, to the volunteer who had come to help, with an air of largesse and mild puzzlement, as if she didn't understand what "reserved" meant, or was under the impression that the seat had been reserved for her. (She and her party had probably paid top price to seat in the front row of the balcony.) The Resident Fan Boy calls this "Ottawa entitlement". Gawd, I'll be glad to leave this city...

The volunteer asked repeatedly if the party would like to take special seats in the second row, for their comfort. The gentleman in the party switched seats with the "gently puzzled" lady and shook hands with the donor -- perhaps guessing the reason for the reserved seat.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of excitement below. The virtuoso snapped a string in mid-passion, and barely breaking stride, commandeered the concert-master's instrument, while she relieved the second violin of hers. Second violinist scurried backstage to re-string, and the instruments went back up the food-chain in the next movement.

The first violinists included a towering gent with flowing ginger locks named Edwin Huizinga who mugged at his fellow musicians and plucked his violin, not lasciviously but slyly, during the second movement of Vivaldi "Winter" concerto. I can't provide you with a visual, but here's the movement in question:

Elder daughter tells me that Huizinga is a character (really?) who prefers couch-surfing to home ownership. I gather from his Facebook profile that he's rarely in one place for long.

For comparison purposes, here's the "Winter" portion of Astor Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buones Aires - without the mugging, as it's a different chamber group.

Personally, I only really like the final minute -- which is rather Pachelbel-ish. As I've said, I'm not much of a violin-fancier.

Elegiac Elgar

Saw the flick Dunkirk today, so now I've got Nimrod on the brain.

Queues and pews

There's an Ottawa mentality about queuing and seating. Oh, I'm sure similar attitudes exist elsewhere, but here in Hades, it's just so damn noticeable.

Recently, the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter, and I went to the first screening of the day at the Bytowne Cinema. We, and some others, were standing around in a scattered sort of semi-circle, waiting for the box office to open in about five minutes. An older lady asked me, "Is this the line?"
"No," I replied.
"Well," she said. "Maybe it's time to start one." And she actually reached out to nudge me into place.

I looked around in disbelief. I could see the staff dismantling the locks and setting out the signs. There were no more than ten people standing outside. Ignoring her, I moved toward the opening door, following those who had arrived before us and who weren't in line either.

The Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter went in to get our preferred seats, the ones on the left side of the left aisle. We've discovered from years of attending films at the Bytowne that our view is unimpeded, few people sit there, and it unlikely anyone will clamber over you to sit by the wall. They saved me a seat directly in front, while I fetched the popcorn.

Unfortunately, they'd chosen seats two rows behind Line-up Lady. This would normally be no problem because of the way the seats are staggered, I'd have a clear view over her right shoulder. After a few minutes, the film not having started, she got up, paused meaningfully by my seat and informed me that she was moving because the smell of popcorn made her ill. I cheerfully made sympathetic noises, because I find, on the whole, refusing to take the bait from someone who's annoyed with you for the egregious sin of eating popcorn in a cinema - just for an example - is far more satisfying in the long run.

So, a few days later, we arrived in good time for a performance by the guitar virtuosi Assad Brothers at Dominion-Chalmers United Church. The Resident Fan Boy, a veteran of many years of Chamberfest seating wars, hurried to the balcony where our season tickets are, and sat to the far left of our pew. The tickets give you the section, pew number, but no seat assignment, simply ending with the word "Pew", so, if you're early enough, you can stake out the part of the pew closest to the central view of the stage. The view is perfectly reasonable from other parts of the pew, but, hey, there has to be some perk for showing up early.

I put my coat on my spot and dashed off to the washroom, because the line-up at Intermission is a nightmare, especially with a sold-out audience. When I returned, I found another older lady standing by my coat and looking pointedly at it. Under her watchful gaze, I carefully rolled up my coat, stowed it under the pew, and took my place next to my husband, feeling somehow that I had broken some secret rule. She remained standing, as a couple established themselves at the other end of the pew. Eventually, a gentleman greeted her and they sat down.

Meanwhile, in front of us, another mini-drama was unfolding. A lady was trying to explain to the couple in front of us that she had reserved seating on the prized left end of the pew, that is, dead-centre in the front row of the balcony.

She was holding up a fairly sizeable plastic laminated square, which read: "Reserved". Apparently, the female half of the couple had been sitting on it. I watched as the reservation lady calmly and patiently explained the situation, apparently to no avail. The other lady was making sweeping gestures towards other parts of the balcony. Eventually, one of the volunteers joined the conversation, and the couple made room. Elder daughter explained to me later that the reservation lady is a major patron of Chamberfest; in fact, it is safe to say the concert was taking place thanks to her support. She has to claim and explain her reservation every damn time.

The concert eventually started after a bus-load of Montreal music students rumbled into the upper balcony pews about fifteen minutes after the show was due to start. The brothers rippled and nodded. I've never heard nor sensed such an intent audience.

This was my favourite, particularly the "Musette Rondeau", which is about at the 3:50 mark in this video.

From our pew, their bent legs made them look a bit like Muppets.

"You don't understand my phrases"

As winter nights (and Donald Trump and his merry band) close in inexorably, I bury my head in art, drama, and music.

Recently, we went to see the New Zealand String Quartet (one of whom is actually a New Zealander) at the lovely Dominion-Chalmers United Church.

Younger daughter was furious, saying it would be too long and at night, but I felt her relaxing into a Haydn concerto, and stimming happily during a piece composed specifically for the NZSQ, which involved a playful popping bass-line (rather like that in "Somebody That I Used to Know"), and a lot of dramatic pauses to stretch on the part of the violinists.

The Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter made a quick exit during the intermission. Good thing -- the Schubert quintet that followed (with a guest cellist from the U of O faculty to make up the number) was lovely, but l-o-o-ong, especially when the regular cellist broke a string during the vigorous third movement, and had to vanish back stage for several moments.

I spent much of the time listening intently, of course, and following elder daughter's movements with my bird binoculars, as she slipped quietly into the darker recesses of the balcony to take snaps with my camera, to be published on social media -- part of her job as a communications and marketing specialist.

I recognized the second movement immediately, a summery, sleepy bit of beauty which brought out-of-focus green fields of tall grass to my mind's eye, and tried to remember which film this might have been. When I looked it up at home, I realized that it's the music that closes Conspiracy a dramatic, all-star imagining of the Wannsee Conference of 1942.



On Bank Street, largely and rather worryingly deserted at 10:30 on a Saturday evening, I searched for a bus stop where the shops weren't dark, and was accosted by a bag lady, who had a few conspiracy theories of her own. She even gave me the name of another lady who, she assured me, would tell me a different story.

"You don't understand my phrases," she said.

She was right, there.

Auf Wiedersehen

I was working in the kitchen last weekend and reached over to turn on an audio book to engage my brain from the more mundane.  The Resident Fan Boy had left the radio on at Espace musique (or whatever Radio-Canada is calling it these days), and before I could switch the machine to the CD setting to listen to Wolf Hall, my ear was caught by some rather lovely French horns, so I decided to enjoy them.

It definitely sounded like Handel or Haydn, but I couldn't place it.  During the final movement of whatever it was, the music seemed to be ebbing away and I turned up the volume.  I heard distant voices and clumping, and wandered if another signal was intruding.  Toward the very end, I could hear voices calling out softly:  "Auf Wiedersehn!"

I was rather spooked, until I worked out that I'd been listening to Haydn's "Farewell Symphony" which I haven't heard in years.

I gather this was an older recording made in London in the late forties or early fifties, hence the need to make audible departures.

A quick look around YouTube reveals that some orchestras play it straight - if you'll pardon the expression - while others take the opportunity to milk the joke for all it's worth.

Here's one of the latter sort.  The fun begins around the three-minute mark.

Classes of classical

Elder daughter has now been working for a small but major arts group in Hades for the past five months, and has survived her first music festival with them. Part of her job is keeping the social media posts for the organization fresh and interesting. Heck, I'm hooked! This appeared on Twitter and Facebook today.

I particularly enjoy the stand-off between Beethoven and Mozart over who represents "classical" (we were taught in Music Appreciation that Beethoven straddles Classical and Romantic) -- and I love the bit where John Cage's silence is blotted out by Claude Debussy.

*Not* the Merry Widow

The "Gold and Silver Waltz" by Franz Lehar has always been my very favourite waltz, so tonight, when I stumbled across this George Balanchine version from his 1977 ballet Viennese Waltzes, I couldn't believe my luck.  This is, I think, a 1983 performance, judging from the youthful appearance of  Peter Martins, here partnering Karin von Aroldingen.

Crashing the Splash

I had a bucket list for the fortnight of fleeting freedom before the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter joined me at this summer's house-sit. Not that I'm planning to kick the bucket anytime soon - but who is?

Among my goals was dropping by the Symphony Splash on the Inner Harbour. Although this has been an annual event since 1990, I've never been, although I used to stand on our front walk in our last house in Victoria, so I could hear some of the music. I'm not a fan of crowds, nor of competing for spots, nor of sitting for hours in a deck chair or on the ground.

This is why I wanted to drop by for the period just prior to the concert, just to get an idea of what I'd been missing. Also, a friend and her daughter were amongst the scores (perhaps hundreds) of volunteers managing the crowds and collecting the donations, so I set off in search of them, knowing well that I might not find them in the mob.

And you know, it was a pleasant stroll. Traffic is blocked from the surrounding street. Many people had camped out since the morning and early afternoon. (You're not allowed to set up your chairs a prime viewing spot before 8 am - a result of eager beavers pulling overnighters in the past.) However, many people were just turning up, which is fine if you don't actually need to see the orchestra. The last people in place were the kayakers who paddle up in the water in front of the floating stage - bladders can only hold out so long.

I saw interminable line-ups for the food kiosks, and the many picnic hampers of veteran Splashers. I made my way past the audience gathered on the grounds of the Empress Hotel, and around the larger crowd settling in on the lawn at the Legislature. I carefully descended on to the Causeway which leads to the Marina, paused to snap a photo, and was instructed by a security volunteer to step into the area marked out by tape. I assured him that I was only stopping for the photo, but he was adamant. I turned and beheld my chum and her daughter, made a donation, and recalled an evening more than fifteen years ago when they took elder daughter to the Symphony Splash. The two girls climbed a tree in front of the Empress to watch the Victoria Symphony play the opening music from Harry Potter. The tree was chopped down last year. New management at the Empress.

While I was walking in front of said hotel,I heard bagpipes and saw a kabuki cab occupied by someone all in white. At first, I thought it was a wedding crashing the splash, but the procession turned out to be the conductor of the Victoria Symphony, waving like the Queen, as the musicians, also in white, paraded behind. They were en route to the floating stage.

Me? I got a hot dog at a restaurant further up Government Street, and went home to watch PBS. I felt the guns for the 1812 Overture rock the house after sunset.

Things I learned during March Break

The corridors leading to the exhibits at the National
Gallery. It's a slow incline and is rarely this deserted.

March Break is usually pretty grim in Hades, but younger daughter gets two weeks off from her independent school.  We generally spend the first week catching up on movies, because the museums are crammed with kids from the regular school system -- usually in March Break day camps, so they're there under duress and often with not quite enough supervision. It can be a bit of a zoo.

In the second week, we hit the museums because Hades, being The National Capital, is rife with them. We found them well-attended (lots of university and school groups doing special tours and scavenger hunts), but less zoological.

Younger daughter has been snappish and short-tempered.  For the past five years, the catch-phrase in our household has been:  "Is it autism or adolescence?"  This year an exacerbating factor has been The Winter That Won't Leave.  The whole city has been in the doldrums for over a month.  We've actually had longer winters and colder winters, but this one has had a depressing persistent sameness that has worn everyone down.

Younger daughter seems to be in perpetual fear of another White Easter, like the one we had in 2008. Elder daughter flew off with her class to Europe between blizzards and enthusiastically described the turquoise waters off Cassis as I held the phone in my slackening hand and gazed out at the three-foot drifts on the deck.  Mind you, Easter was early that year and is not until late April this year, so we should be safe.  That's what I keep telling younger daughter.

Anyway, we must grasp what grace and beauty we can, even in the midst of this off-white (and downright dirty) limbo in which we find ourselves.  Keats tells me that all I need to know is that beauty and truth are one and the same, so here are things I've learned during March Break:

1.  John Ruskin, whom I knew superficially as a writer and critic, was one hell of a sketcher and watercolourist.  There's a visiting exhibit about him at the National Gallery of Canada this "spring".  Here's an overview of the exhibition, which focuses mainly on his architectural preservation work. The video excludes, alas, his amazing nature drawings and paintings.  I've dabbled in watercolour and know that the crispness and detail here ain't easy in that medium. The fellows here do natter on a bit; I'd just focus on the paintings and ignore the first couple of minutes. Ruskin was a photographer too -- did you know that?  In short, I went to the gallery feeling vaguely interested and came away stunned.  If you're in Ottawa before May 11th, do go see it!

2.  The 40 Part Motet art installation by artist Janet Cardiff has been to the National Gallery before, because  a)  it is amazing; and b)  the gallery has an actual historical chapel restored and reconstructed off the indoor garden which is the ideal space to set up forty individual speakers so you can wander around or sit in the centre of a flood of Thomas Tallis.  This video is in a less ideal space, but the roaming camera gives you an idea of how you can get close to the separate voices: 

However, that is not what I learned.

I've had a sore knee since before Christmas and am beginning to despair that it will ever entirely go away, so I had to sit down and rest while the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter zoomed off to the Modern galleries. The motet is on repeat, of course and I gradually became aware that the babble in the Rideau Chapel was rather louder than it should be for the half a dozen people visiting at the time. I realized that the installation includes the conversation of the singers as they wait to begin. I got up and limped around the circle of speakers, hearing someone warming up, two baritones joking and shooting the breeze, etc. Then the singing began again, in small groups taking turns before all forty voices filled the chapel with tsunamis of sound.

Gosh.

3. The renaming of the Museum of Civilization which, as I've mentioned in a previous post, has annoyed elder daughter, has changed it not one whit.  We made it in to see a rather unimpressive exhibit called "Snow"(which is about snow), and I discovered I'd actually seen the IMAX film on Kenya before.  However, they have a wonderful new bistro, an extra balm to the spirit since the food in the downstairs cafeteria has been dropping precipitously in quality over the past few years.

4.  The Museum of Nature, a favourite of younger daughter's due to its beautifully renovated exhibits on wildlife, marine life, and dinosaurs (also its close proximity to the Elgin Street Diner), has actually quite a beautiful basement, featuring what they call a Stone Wall Gallery and a 3D theatre. In our past visits we've always used the upper floor washrooms, so this was a pleasant surprise.  We'll have to take in a film sometime.

5. I already knew from past experience, that sometimes one of the most interesting (and indeed devastating) exhibits can be hiding down the little corridor just behind the grim but clean washrooms beyond the Hall of Honour at the Canadian War Museum (another rather inexplicable favourite of younger daughter).  This time we were lucky to catch a tiny display devoted to Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank and their work recording the plight of Japanese-Americans (Adams) and Japanese-Canadians (Frank) -  when citizens of the USA and Canada were rounded up, dispossessed, and placed in internment camps because they or their ancestors happened to be Japanese.  I had long been familiar with the photography of Ansel Adams; I even attempted to replicate his famous photo of the church in Bodega, California when I was staying there the summer before the advent of elder daughter, but I was unfamiliar with this aspect of his work and knew nothing, I'm afraid, of Leonard Frank.  This was the last week of the display; I'm glad we saw it.  (And am even more hopping mad about the subject.)

6. Being close to the Bytowne Cinema, we have seen the collection of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in past year and enjoyed it again this year.  However, I've never seen the nominated short live-action films, and after seeing this batch, I'd like to do it again next year, though I really wish we could see these compilations before the awards ceremony.

Three of the films are about half an hour each, one is about fifteen minutes and one is about eight minutes. As with the feature films, it's difficult to say which one is "best", because it's very much an apple and oranges situation.

Helium, the Danish winner of the Oscar, is a gentle film about a children's hospice which I sat through dry-eyed until the very last image which hit me in the solar plexus and left me struggling for control while waiting for the next film.   The Voorman Problem (England) is one of the shorter films; it feels very much like something from The Twilight Zone and stars Martin Freeman as a psychologist confronting a prisoner who claims to be a deity.  Do I Have to Do Everything? is also very short, very funny and features a Finnish family struggling through disasters to get to a wedding.  The Spanish production That Wasn't Me was the hardest to stomach, being about child soldiers and serving up a graphic rape scene which I wasn't expecting, sitting there with my seventeen-year-old special needs daughter.

The film that continues to live with me is Just Before Losing Everything which takes a seemingly ordinary day in small-town France and gradually heightens the tension as a woman's break for safety from her abusive husband leads to and through her workplace.  The understated performances and the ambiguous ending are haunting, as is the knowledge that this is happening around the corner, every day.

So, while truth and beauty cannot removed the sting of a relentless winter, nor the heartbreak of a young girl who clearly didn't want to go back to school, I can only imagine how bleak March would have been without some helpings of food for the soul.

Perhaps it's better not to imagine it.

Bass-ic conversation skills

Gotta dash tonight, but before I do, I'd like to give you a little taste of a concert I attended last night. The session-end presentation of "Basses Loaded", a first-come-first-served month-long series of intensive workshops offered by double-bass virtuoso Gary Karr, is, I understand, sold out every year, but Demeter, who has been a Gary Karr fan for at least thirty years, procured tickets for the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter, two mutual friends, and myself. This video is from a Basses Loaded concert of seven years ago, but this piece was featured, a passionate duet for double basses.

If you find that difficult to imagine, get a load of this:

Moving music

As the bus made its way down Rideau Street into downtown Hades, I watched the reflection of the sun flash by, ricocheting off windows and walls, seemingly in time to the Bach piano concerto playing on my ear buds.

Yesterday, I was talking about how statues and sculptures change with the surrounding environment and our perception of them. I suppose this is true of all art. When I was in a youth theatre at age 17, I was amazed how we could perform the same play three nights running and each performance was distinctly different, according to the audience reaction and the moods of the actors.

Music seems to be the most dependent on environment and mood of all, especially now we can take it anywhere. Last summer, I was (again) riding the bus and saw three boys walking along the sidewalk and imagined their adventures. It then occurred to me that they could be doleful or up to no good, but the upbeat song on my iPod gave me the illusion that they were walking with youthful and light-hearted energy. I was superimposing a soundtrack on whatever they were getting up to on that sunny July afternoon, and watching them like a movie.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Tempo on CBC Radio Two and because Henryk Górecki had just died, they played the first movement of his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. No, I don't mean the famous second movement; I mean the first movement that begins with an interminable grating of the lower string instruments as they overlap each other in steadily mounting grief. Listen to the first few moments of it. If you can bear it:

I gazed up and down the street and everybody looked miserable, bogged down, staring at the ground as they waited for the bus or dragged their shopping in their listless hands. Of course, had I been listening to a lively jazz piece, they would have appeared busy, energetic and probably kind of hip.

A few days ago, I was stuck outside a Grand and Toy stationery store, waiting for it to open. Having nothing else to do for five minutes, I strolled over to the railing and looked directly down two levels to the food court below where I could see people strolling diagonally across the red tiles. Every now and then someone would approach the trash bins and deposit stuff in them, pivoting gracefully away to dance across the floor. Well, that's what it looked like. This was blaring on my iPod:
As I listened, I noticed strings of white Christmas lights dangling into the court like tropical jellyfish. The bulbs blinked rapidly along with the notes, as the shoppers -- well -- tripped the light fantastic.

I was almost sorry when the store opened.

Set sorrow aside

Sad November thoughts pursued me through the night, disturbing my rest and making me resort to hippy-dippy rituals. But when we woke up, it was December and younger daughter has been longing for December, so begins her day with the Advent Calendar and gets herself through the interminable school day dreaming of which Christmas video she will watch when she gets home.

Starting on the long return journey from her school (made longer today by one bus being too early and the other late), I found myself between audio books and dinosaur that I am, tuned my personal player to CBC Radio Two which at that time of the day straddles their morning show and "Tempo" the classical music section. Just as we hit the Transitway, the host put on a piano setting of the "Bergamasca" of Otto Resphigi's Ancient Airs and Dances, (arranged by Resphigi himself) and any lingering November gremlins were swept away by one of my favourite pieces of music ever.

One idea I had for my memorial service would be to conclude the ceremony of tearful and mirthful testimonies about how wonderful I was (oh hush, this is my fantasy) with a reflection time during which the preceding movement of the suite "Companae parisienses and Aria" would be played, and then the Bergamasca would come on, signaling the mourners to get up and, remembering me happily, go off and enjoy a nice buffet.

If that's too morbid for you, imagine me on the bus this morning, as the ice pellets gradually became huge white flakes of snow whirling above the Transitway:
.

Keeping afloat through Art and Science

Went for my first coffee of the new year (not my "first coffee" of the new year) with my gal-pal-with-whom-I-go-for-coffees. While our session was mostly amusing (she's had some family Christmas disasters which are nearly beyond belief -- not recently, thank goodness), it went on for a bit too long and got a tad depressing. We're both suffering from January, I guess, and the inevitable post-holiday letdown combined with trying to readjust to disestablished routines. I'm coping in my usual fashion: clinging to art and family history research like life buoys.

Last Saturday, for example, I took younger daughter to the first of this year's Concerts for Young People at the National Arts Centre. Actually, I think they've retitled them "Family Adventures" or "Family Fun" in a bid to seem more, I dunno, accessible. Anyway, this featured a couple of performance artists portraying a magician trying to help a large bird (a little like Big Bird, but the puppet was strapped to the artist's black-body-stockinged body) find his/her song, by travelling back in time to sample various kinds of classical music. In the end, the bird transforms his/herself into a loon, and creates her/his own song. It was presented in both Official Languages, but had that francophone sensibility that teeters between charming and precious (this performance hit both notes). There was a moment of unqualified enchantment: when the magician takes the bird to the Middle Ages, a Gregorian Chant starts up. It was haunting and it took a moment for me to realize that the male members of the National Arts Centre Orchestra were doing the singing. I only worked this out by focusing my attention on the huge TV screen at the back of the stage. After the concert, younger daughter did a marvelous impression of a loon's call at the bus stop. (My mum has one of those stuffed toy loons at her house which makes the sound when you press it in the right spot.)

Elder daughter is scrambling to complete what her school calls "summatives", the final big projects of the semester. However, word came from My Friend of the Right Hand in Victoria that we have succeeded in addicting her entire family to Doctor Who. She sent us the link to one of those video-sharing sites that keep getting shut down by overzealous copyright-protectors (such as the BBC). Here, to my joy, we discovered uncut copies of all the Doctor Who Confidentials including the one for the last Christmas special. We needed a fifteen-year-old to navigate the technology, so elder daughter spent precious homework time downloading said Confidentials and transferring them to a DVD (which, alas, will only play on our computer). My shamelessness doesn't end there. It turns out that the 2003 BBC TV drama State of Play (not The State Within which has aired in Canada) is at the site, so I watched all six hours of it over three days. (John Simm, David Morrisey, Bill Nighy, James MacAvoy, Marc Warren, Philip Glenister, just a parade of wonderful actors...sigh...) the Resident Fan Boy had to ask me not to watch it on earphones because I kept getting too involved and swearing at the screen. I don't remember a show having quite the same effect on me since Poldark where I swore in front of my future in-laws, the Archdeacon and his Good Wife. (Blush.)