the deconstruction of bob

god, it's been a month

2005-03-21T05:48:37Z

Hmmm so what was I talking about in my last post...
Yes, I did kill that exam ---> 91%, baby.
And yes, Crumb's Black Angels does still put a shiver in my spine
Ooh and I performed that Berlioz song in my divisional on Monday afternoon; it went swimmingly, I think.

What else is new. Onegin is done with...kind of sad; I miss the performances with the amaaaazing costumes from Malabars, but I sure as hell don't miss the literally daily rehearsals. We're just rehearsing Street Scene right now for someone's Master's project...so that's low pressure. And I've been learning my role for Xerxes like a mofo which has to be performable in oh...less than two months. Scary? Yes.

I have reached a point where I feel as though there are a lot of days left in the school year, and then I realize that in fact, no, it's true, I do have ohh 3 papers due by the end of term and it's almost only 2 weeks away. Scary...yes. And I just repeated myself almost ad verbatim without even realizing I was doing it.

I had a major breakthrough in my voice lesosn on Friday which was awesome. And it was over something seemingly so small...the position of my support. You see, when you sing, you need constant support from you abdominal area in general; however, I was placing my support too high up, where it's supposed to stay really low. Apparently that has been the block I've had recently, so hopefully this discovery will prove to be useful. My teacher was so active in my lesson, it was awesome; up standing next to me the whole time, she was as excited as I was!

Had a rad weekend. Watched "The Exorcist: The beginnign" with my best friend since grade 8, Mandy. The movie was actually not bad. Pretty good, I'm even tempted to say. And at the risk of sounding umm...not weird, but...I don't know a good word to describe it, but I actually thought the exorcism was kind of sexy...the priest asserting so much confident power...it was hot. Me and Mandy and the third member of our crazy group of three best friends, Kiran are seriously considering moving out into Kits this coming September, which would totally be awesome. I hope we buy lots of orchids (fake or otherwise) to decorate. I looove orchids...so pristine and perfect.

Saturday night was super rad too, reconnected with a good friend from first year (it was sooo long ago, I know) and we went out for dinner ( we shared ribs; we're HOT!!!) and drinks (mmm Moxies margaritas!) and then went and saw this movie called "The Jacket". It was SO good..I Don't care what other people say about this movie. It was. GOOD...yes, it leaves you with many unanswered questions, but it really makes you think and realize that time is so cyclical.

Now it is Sunday night. Had dinner at my grandparents wiht my cousins and aunt and uncle ( I basically invaded on their dinner, but I didn't feel like going out to school; it was such a shitty day out today) and talked a lot to my younger cousin which was rad. She doesn't seem younger than me at all...it's weird.
Ahh. I have suceeded in putting off many things this weekend and look forward (...) to a week that will be as last minute panicky as last week was. It's the only way to go, folks.

WeRd...

Scary music and pretty music.

2005-02-12T05:00:13Z

Hmm a couple of weeks have gone by. It is now the eve of Reading Week...très excitante. I don't even have rehearsal until next Sunday! (...)
So, I just wrote a music history exam (and by just I mean 11 oclock this morning) and I must say that I KILLED that mofo. I feel SO good about it, I could have possibly gotten a 100 percent on it! It's just cause the material included was so damn cool that I actually wanted to study for it. What a notion. Anyways, there was this one piece, however that was the freakiest piece of shit ever. And by piece of shit I don't mean that it was a bad song, it's just so. scary. Even scarier than the Bartok that we did that was used in the Shining.

So, without further ado my friends, if you want the SHIT scared out of you, I suggest listening to George Crumb's "Black Angels: Thirteen Images from a Dark Land". I guarantee you, it will make you cry from the sheer.... -ness of it all. Let me just say amplified string quartet that involves a gong being bowed. That's not a pleasant sound. I refused to listen to it last night while I was studying just because it's so scary, but even as I was walking down Granville street this morning listening to it on my walkman, it still made me cry and have to take my headphones off. But all in all, a pretty rad experience.

On the other hand, if you are looking to cry from the BEAUTY of a song, listen to (or possibly sing if the case may be) Berlioz's "La mort d'Ophélie". This song just reinforces my UNDYING love for Berlioz because it is so freaking gorgeous. Man, that dude could write music.

Anyways. The Opera Ensemble pulled off their Masked Ball last night. From what I saw, it was actually quite spectactular and I hope that next year it won't be the night before an exam so that I too, can dance the night away on the Chan Centre Stage instead of sitting backstage in costume discussing history. (even though that was pretty fun).

I probably have a lot more to say that I'll remember once I've posted this, but whatever...I don't really care that much.

salsa dancing and singing opera

2005-01-31T03:20:53Z

Ah the end of another weekend. Ah the impending doom of the week to come, which includes an exam I have tomorrow in my lit class that I haven't started preparing for yet. I sang in a Scholarship Winners Concert today out at the Ube; we did the Don Giovanni Sextet in which I was Zerlina. We've done it a few times before, so no pressure. It was totally fun though. Choir also performed Lelio by Berlioz with the Symphony on Friday night, which was pretty fun. Berlioz is so freaking sexy and hot music. I'd so do him (not in his present state though *barf*)
What was not so much fun though was the time I had to wake up this morning to get to church, which was 8:30. Normally, this would not be so bad, but seeing as I had stayed up until 3 the night before dancing in a drunken fervour, it was not very pleasant. The party I went to Saturday night was so freaking rad. I reconnected with a few people and drank some (a lot) of red wine and then spent hours dancing to salsa music and then motown music. It was totally hot. Everyone was drunk, and hot and sweaty and our hosts, two incredibly fine brothers were in various states of disrobe...wearing only white undershirts and thus elevating the joys of salsa and dirty dancing with them so much more...*mmph*... My new philosophy is your life is not complete until you've danced, and I mean *danced* with these two brothers.
Ahhh. All that aside, I'm left feeling very depressed with the prospect of the next couple of months. I just feel like this term 2 is never going to measure up with last years term 2 and that makes me sad. I know that's a totally backwards, pessimistic way to think, but I can't help it. We won't be doing the CBC Easter Sunrise thing, won't be doing Carmina Burana with Ballet BC, won't be singing for the Dalai Lama, won't be going on an amazing tour, won't be feeling the giddiness of a new love...It's sad. But I shouldn't look back, I should look forwards...but it's hard too when you're as exhausted as I am right at this moment. Prospect=Bleak.
MAybe next time I update I'll have happier things to report...hopefully!

Ah Opera School dramas...

2005-01-24T02:39:25Z

I used to laugh, scoff at people who would be dumb enough to get involved in the histrionics that occur in the Music Building, especially on the third floor around the Opera Board. That's until I became embroiled right in the middle of one, where I'm the bad guy, all because of my own idiotic mistake. I won't elaborate on this mistake...sufficed to say I deserve to feel like a shit, but I don't deserve the petty rumour spreading that's going on. I've taken solace in the fact that my true friends who actually know me will take what they hear with a grain of salt...and the people who don't, well, who needs 'em.
All that aside, something pretty cool happened the other day; Natalia, my roommate from when I was working at a resort this summer,phoned me, to whom I haven't spoken in months. She's the only thing that's keeping me from blocking this past summer from my mind completely; we got eachother through the long summer of ridiculous isolation that a resort that's not quite in the bush, but not quite in society either will do to you. We are defintely kindred spirits and soul sisters, and I wish that she was in town more, but she's constantly wandering, trying new things out, having adventures.
It's a Sunday night, the end of a typically not-long-enough weekend, which mostly consisted of Church Choir. Our new director is trying to make us into a real choir, and therefore we had a 6 hour "retreat" yesterday, thankfully in which were many stragetically placed breaks where we were plied with coffee and baked goods. Then this morning was the service. Well...that's why I'm getting paid, I suppose...
In my free time (i.e Friday/Saturday nights) I've taken to lounging around in my pajamas in a semi catatonic state which is what springs from a week that consisted of nightly rehearsals for *something* and then a long commute back to the Slur only to commute back out the next morning. I'm looking forward to the week after next when I'll be able to move back into my palace in Shaugnessy...my grandparents get back from their sojourn to Hawaii this Friday...hmm that'll only shave ohhh 2 hours from my commute.
Right. I'll sign off here then...

"we'll always have Ireland"...the breakdown is beautiful

2005-01-13T05:42:54Z

Man. I am one sick puppy. I finally had to call it a day today and make the trek into Surrey to collapse in bed; I got to about Noon and then realized that I was going to have to be there until 10 pm and promptly boarded a bus. Plus I'm sure my music school cohorts were really pleased with me coughing my lungs up over them all through Theory and History.

A wonderful friend let me spend the night at her place in Fairview so that I could just get up at 8 and get to my 9 oclock class instead of getting up at 6 and catching a bus at 7 in order to get to my 9 oclock class from Surrey. On our walk home from the Music Building through the slushy snow and warm light of the street lamps, we spoke of Ireland and my incapability of writing about it and not understanding why. Well, actually I do understand why. How do you verbalize something like that. Something that you could literally call the definitive experience of your life on some many levels.
Where you sang Franck Martin's Mass in a cathedral centuries old?

Where you looked into someone's eyes on a hill in Cork, Ireland, with the lights of the river town the only witness to your fall that ultimately turned into a fall from grace?

Where you walked around the heights of Cork randomly and happened upon a cemetary at dusk where the headstones were so ancient that you could not make out the names in the waning light?

Where you sang Joni Mitchell with a friend that accompanied you on this walk as you tried to make your way back downtown and had no idea where you were and it was getting darker, but you. just. didn't. care. For the first time in your life, you were OK with being spontaneous.

Where you set foot in a castle of stone in a sea of lush greens and realized that people actually lived in these places hundreds of years ago and walked through Druid rock formations and felt the ages pass through you?

Where you sat on the beach on the West Coast of Ireland overlooking the Isle of Aran and watched the water and froze in the frigid night air, as someone said they thought they were falling in love with you?

Where you stood in a hotel lobby and held that person and you knew that it was the last time that everything would be OK and it was the last time you would really be there together.

That's the thing. There is no way to capture this. I can write them down, notate them, but I can't verbalize the magic and beauty of this country and my experiences there. And I think I know why...I constantly wished I could write poems about this guy that I mentioned before and I couldn't for the longest time. Then, over the summer, everything poured out in a torrent and I think that was my mind's way of letting go of him; knowing the inevitable, the unknowable.

Maybe I'll be able to write about Ireland once I need to let it go. Who knows when it will be. Until then, I can talk to this wonderful friend who with Joni Mitchell's Blue and River will never be quite the same and try to forget about my fall from grace.
"We'll always have Ireland"

back to the grind (it's SNOWING!)

2005-01-06T19:58:48Z

Well...two days of school done. Actually, Tuesday can't really be counted as a day seeing as I had only one class and a voice lesson. But holy crap, yesterday was "a day", that's for sure. Started at 11 o'clock this week since we don't have theory classes first week, and cause I slept through Opera Rep at 10..oops heh.Whatever, we were out late the night before at Celebrities, which was SO Much fun!! Lucy can break it down on the dance floor if she has a few drinks in her, that's for sure!!
But anyways, That 11 oclock class is really cool, and I'm totally excited about it. It's a music history course that's a survey of the 20th century. So we start off with all this rad,weird modern stuff, like schoenberg and so forth, atonal crap...and then we get to study jazz, pop music like the beatles and the velvet underground and joni mitchell. So rad. Anyways, after that the Opera Ensemble sang at the Tsunami Victim Memorial in the Chan Centre. We sang the Va Pensiero Chorus from Nabucco, a really beautiful piece, and although I think that Usingers could have done a much better job and sung something a bit more appropriate, like something from a Requiem, it was still pretty good. Then, at 2 I went to my Lit. class and I went to the wrong classroom, apparently, even though it's the one listed on MyTimetable...oops, I was kind of disappointed but then I went out for coffee instead with my friend Katherine, an absolutely amazing pianist who I roomed with when USingers went to Ireland last April/May, who's also in that class. At 3 we went back to the school and sat in the lobby chatting with fellow Usingers for an hour until choir started. Man, I missed choir so much, and I was so excited to go to rehearsal just because our director, Bruce Pullan is such an amazing guy. But he wasn't there, cause he's sick, so rehearsal was a bit lame because our Masters TA's conducted us...but it was still cool. We rehearsed this Berlioz "monodrame" that we're performing at the end of this month: Lelio...it's really pretty. Then we went through these three Debussy songs and then these Shakespeare songs that Ralph Vaughn Williams set. Very hard but very cool. Then, I practiced piano for an hour in a freaking sauna of a practice room...and then I "practiced" voice for a half hour, totally not enough, but I needed to go through my technique before my piano tomorrow. From 7:30 until 10 I had opera rehearsal, and it was TOTALLY rad. We're doing Eugene Onegin, by Tchaikovsky this term and so we went through Russian pronounciation and stuff. It was getting a little old when, at like, 9:30, the guy teaching us was like "alright, how about we go through some basics of Cyrillic'...I was like oh Kill me now...but no, it was really cool, and I'm totally excited about that opera.
Ooh and the scores for Xerxes are in, that's the opera that we're doing in the Czech Republic this summer, in which I have the most awesome role ever...I'm Amastris, the spurned betrothed of Xerxes and I'm very angry and dramatic and I get to try to kill myself and then Xerxes himself..I'm a woman dressed up as a man, a warrior so that I can spy and also so that I can wear really rad armour.
SO here I am right now, in Surrey, the snow is falling and I have to write an Opera Rep. paper that was due last term oops. I feel pretty comfortable with Berlioz, seeing as I wrote a paper on his Requiem for my History class last term (and got 90% on it!!), so I think I'm going to write about his operas and how they all flopped cause he was ahead of his time. I didn't go to school today because I didn't feel my one class (German) merited the the 21/2hour commute on a day like today...so I got to sleep in (it's a bad sign that I'm already toast after like a day of school).
Anyways..should really get started on that paper, and go through my piano technique again. Bahhh..

well, it had to be done

2005-01-03T23:13:59Z

Well it's 2005. And after about 3 years of lurking around other people's journals, I've finally decided to make my own. Who knows when it will be updated, if it will be updated. We'll see where this goes.
I got together with a good friend from highschool last night and we bonded over discussing someone else who went to our highschool and the perfection that is him. How he literally glows because of the -ness that is him. It was a good talk, far better than going to a movie which was the original plan...we got to the theatre too late (only like 15 minutes) and the doors were locked. How lame is that?
I'm sitting here and a slash of warm sunset light is sneaking through the slightly parted curtains and is currently striping my arm and hand. lovely.