One of the sliders is a link to the page for Fallen Voices, the new opera project I’m working on with Jen Wardle.  Check it out!

1. Back when I did the Eckhart-Grammate tour, I was interviewed by a reporter from Artscape magazine, a monthly magazine about the arts from my beautiful hometown of London, Ontario. After doing the interview I heard nothing about it, and sort of assumed that it had been cut or just never published for some reason.

Well, if you plunge very deeply into the Google results for my name like I did a few weeks ago in search of other possible reviews of I Puritani, you might find that it was published after all. It’s a pdf – it doesn’t appear to be available in any other format – so if you really want to read it scroll down to page 30. Anyway, I don’t think I came off as moronically as I generally do in the press, so it’s a plus.

2. In 2005 I recorded a piece called “Chants convergeants” (by Gilles Tremblay) for the CBC. It’s an awesome piece – I had to learn to sing quartertones for it – and it was scheduled to be broadcast on a programme called “Two New Hours” that fall.

That was the summer the CBC went on strike. By the time they got back to work, Chants Convergeants was indefinitely pre-empted, and then Two New Hours was cancelled.

Last night at 11:30 or so I opened Tweetdeck and saw this:

The CBC website being that irritating combination of overly informative and totally lacking in relevant information, it took me a while to find out what for…and it was Chants Convergeants. Of course, it was too late to listen to it. If it pops up in the podcast version I’ll post a link.

Anyway. Two little bits of the dead past popping up alive again.

All along the avenue the houses squat
beautified only by love and spring sun
and a certain charm lent by a blue spring sky:
houses built where the waters used to lie.

And when they’re gone, we’ll all say “Pity,
Everything changes so quickly these days,”
forgetting the waves that once stretched along
a beach forever and so recently gone.

State follows state – impermanent,
each erasing the forever that came before.
And we fools build houses, dreams, to the sky
on earth where the waters used to lie.

[We are listening to the podcast of The Rachel Maddow Show while I do yoga and he plays a videogame on his Ipod. No, really. This episode is an in-depth documentary about Timothy McVeigh. Background: Ben is planning on biking from Toronto to Saskatchewan this summer to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. The route will go through the US at several points.]

Ben [after a mention of the Michigan Militia]: That’s the one thing that scares me about biking across country: Northern Michigan.

Me: Patriot country?

Ben: Yeah.

Me: But you’re an anti-establishment punk. They like people like you.

Ben: No they don’t.

Me: Well, they hate their government. You hate their government. You should get along.

Ben: That’s what I’ll do! I’ll tell them that I, like the entire WORLD, hate their government, and then they won’t kill me.

Me: Problem solved!

You may have noticed – if you cared – that I have not been posting at Plan C lately. I had only just gotten started at it when Plan A (“Become famous opera star”) suddenly, and without my doing anything really, came to life again.

Well, now that those projects are over I’m back out in the outer darkness where there is some very tuneful wailing and, if there is gnashing of teeth, we are sure to wear our Doctor’s NightGuards^TM, and once again I am faced with choices about what to do with the rest of my life.

So do I, after a taste of success, go back to Plan A and devote myself to auditioning, practicing, coaching, and generally increasing my fabulousness until I burst onto the international scene? Or do I resume work on Plan C and make my own superstardom?

I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, and the answer is: Both.

Both.

There is absolutely no reason why I can’t be both a superfamous opera singer and an independent self-producing artist.

In fact the two plans might help each other. I learned a lot as a singer and an actor from both of the productions I was just in, which will make me perform better in the opera project I’m doing this fall. Just like I learned other valuable things about singing from the work I’ve done with the PRO, things that I could (and did) apply to my classical singing to make it more emotional and expressive.

Since I still have to work to earn my living, this means working a hell of a lot, at least for the near future, but that’s OK. Now I am off to buy finger puppets for the Tammy Faye opera.

- Did I ever tell you about the time the guy tried to lick my face on the subway?
- Was he really short? – No, do you know him?- No, but for someone’s mouth to accidentally hit your shoulder…
- Speak of douchebags, and they appear.
- I have a theory about that: You’re not an asshole.
- SCIENCE!
- I’m not sure how “You have a huge ass” came out wrong.
- Clearly, that’s what ALL of us want – to have sex with random strangers. /eyeroll
- That attitude makes them assholes…and no one wants to sleep with assholes.
- Well, there’s point when you’re younger and you think, “There must be something about him, because he’s such an asshole and people still put up with him.” Then you get a little older and you realize, “No, he’s just an asshole.”
- First of all, leave me and Celeste alone…but regarding the other women of Toronto, you will probably get a lot luckier if you treat us like actual people and not interchangeable objects.

Check out Celeste’s art at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=94865193144&ref=ts

…and we have hyacinths!

Actual photo from my actual backyard

At least I think they’re hyacinths. They are, anyway, what I think of when I think of the word “hyacinth”. Last spring I was walking somewhere with my mother-in-law and I said, “Oh look, some of those reverse daffodils. The ones with the white outside and the little yellow bit inside. I love those.” She gave me an odd look and said, “Those are actually called Narcissus,” and I was all like, “Oh.” Yes, I know nothing of gardening. Remember how I said my mother was kind of controlling in the kitchen and only taught me the most basic aspects of cooking, that I mostly learned by trial and error after moving out on my own? She was just the same in the garden. I was more or less banned from gardening after I pulled up a bunch of volunteer chives thinking they were weeds. Well, I’ve had over a decade of cooking practice by now, but this is my first garden, so I’m bound to suck at it.

Fortunately Ben is good with plants.

Housekeeping!

While this blog has always been quite unpopular – I’m not complaining or anything, it’s all good – I do get periodic drive-by trolls, mainly on ONE POST I wrote ages ago about pick-up artist douchebags.

I have just closed comments on that post, and have taken the opportunity to write a little privacy/commenting policy.

Commenting policies on major blogs with large readerships are tricky to negotiate, because they can shape a community one way or another and inadvertently exclude people who might otherwise have something valuable to add. This being a very minor blog with a small readership, however, I don’t have to worry about that. All that I ask is that you are honest in your comments, that you acknowledge and respect the full humanity of all humans (so no racism, homophobia, or misogyny, OK?), and that you are as witty as you can possibly be.

Now the privacy jag. You give me your email address when you comment, and I promise you that I won’t sell it to a spammer or use it to steal your identity or reveal it to anyone. The only exception to this is if I need to disclose it to the authorities because I am endangered by your behaviour. I also reserve the right to translate into lolspeak, republish, and soundly mock any threatening, abusive, or creepy comments/emails I receive.

Clear? Cool.

Even if they yell exactly the same thing* your partner yelled at you the day before.

OK, that’s mostly about the relationship, about the context. All human relationships involve some kind of frame that determines to some extent the roles of the actors involved. Husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, parent/child, boss/bossed, customer/waiter, bum/passerby etc. The same text can have wildly varying meanings depending on the context. But it’s not that simple or that benign.

Some of those frames are pretty toxic, prejudiced, nasty. That stranger on the subway who yells at you is obviously nuts and unpredictable. How about one who just talks to you? Are they a threat? How do you tell?

I can, of course, only speak for myself, but I believe neuroscience backs me up: you make that decision (“Threat? Harmless annoyance? Possible friend?”) based on a number of complex cues based on class markers, age, race, visible gender, tokens of social belonging. To put it bluntly, you judge people superficially based on stereotypes. At least I do. This is probably unavoidable, but still kind of bad. I don’t *want* my eyes to glaze over in a frosty leave-me-the-fuck-alone way when I make eye contact with a stranger, but they do, especially if I read that stranger’s general being-ness as being outside of the group of people I might like to know.

But it goes beyond the personal. You and I, if we make unwise financial decisions, we lose out big time. Giant financial corporations, however, are allowed to get away with or even rewarded for irresponsibilities beyond our wildest dreams. You and me, if we fail to make our rent or mortgage payments, are out on our respective asses. Wall Street, however, can crash the global economy and still get their bonuses.

This is my long winded way of saying: So they arrested the Hutaree guys who, while completely and certifiably nuts, haven’t actually done anything except run around in the woods in camo and make extremely weird Youtube videos with duck-headed people in diapers dildo-slapping naked men with GWB pictures taped over their junk.** Probably a good idea. But hey – why stop there?

Why not Sarah Palin? Or Michele Bachmann? Or Glenn Beck?

The Hutaree are accused of sedition – inciting violence/rebellion against the US government. Can you honestly say the Beck, Palin, and Bachmann are not advocating the same things? The difference is that they are public figures with large followings. They may be crazy, they may be dangerous, they may be irresponsible.

But they’re somebodies.

Crazy, dangerous, irresponsible somebodies. But still somebodies.

Those nuts with their punishing dildo mallet? Nobodies. They can suffer the full consequences of their (non)actions.

But Sarah Palin, though equally ridiculous (in her own entirely inimitable way) and probably more dangerous? Leave her alone.***

*Imagine your partner saying/yelling “You completely immature [son of a] bitch! What the hell makes you think you can do something like that? You think I’m going to put up with that? Fuck you!” Or words to that effect. You’d be mad, of course, but depending on the general tenor of the relationship and the context, you could work it out. Now imagine a complete stranger yelling the same thing.

**Note the ingenious use of the Green Hornet theme song. And do not – whatever you do – watch this at work.

***I know, I know, if you DID arrest her it would probably cause more violence than she herself could incite. I’m not trying to solve any problems here. Just bitching. I muse frequently about the problem of perverse incentives – you know, how it’s cheaper to buy in bulk most of the time, but poor people can’t afford to buy the giant bags of rice or flats of canned soup, so end up paying more for food in the long run, while the rich who can afford higher prices but can afford the up-front costs of bulk end up paying less. But the shopkeeper can’t charge *more* for the bulk package than an equal quantity of the small package, because it’s in his/her interest to sell as much as possible, so the bulk discount remains. I do it myself, charging less for an hour lesson than for 2 half hours. This may be one of the natural asymptotes of human behaviour that will always keep us from having a truly just society.

Ever noticed that?  That when you’re in a super goal-oriented state, with all of your life focused towards a particular event or achievement on a very short time frame, your thoughts all tend down a very narrow channel?  You literally *can’t* think of anything else.

Well, being out of that state I now can. Granted, these thoughts are usually “I really ought to finish painting the baseboards in here” or “Do I want to make a new quilt for the bedroom or just a duvet cover?” or “Is there a word for the emotional state of being bored but sort of enjoying it?”, but still it’s a nice change.

In other news, the grass seed is totally starting to come up in the 5×10 patch of backyard Ben shifted the stone tiles from and seeded.  You can see little tiny spikes of grass.  In a few weeks we’ll have a lawn!  A lawn small enough to hand-trim with scissors, but a lawn!  So far Ben has taken pretty much full responsibility for the gardening, but I plan on starting to help once the indigenous flora are developed enough for me to tell the difference between the plants and the weeds.