Träumerei

Träumerei is the seventh of thirteen pieces in Robert Schumann's piano collection Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood"). I had once performed the whole collection. I was already an "advanced" player, but somehow, these short and supposedly easy pieces eluded me. I could hit all the notes precisely, but failed at conveying the gentleness of Schumann's scenes. Träumerei is perhaps the best-known, and was the most difficult for me on account of a non-musical technicality. Träumerei means "dreaming," but the linguist in me kept staring at the title of the piece and seeing it associated with "trauma."

Today, I dug out my violin and found the piece transcribed for the string instrument. I shoved aside the linguist in me and harkened the dreamer. To me, Schumann's collection is like Renoir's paintings, and I tried to draw my bow across the strings as Renoir would have swept his brush across the canvas, with lively flourish wrapped around a core of calm reflection.

In the end, I must admit that my violinist's fingers and arms have not grown up enough to play the piece satisfactorily. Music requires maturity of the heart as well as of the requisite muscles. I dare to think that my heart has grown enough; however, my muscles required for violin still need some time and experience, some gruelling and battering.

Tomorrow, I will try my hand at the piano. Perhaps my piano fingers can channel enough experience and wisdom to paint a picture of gentle innocence.

* Please visit the Wikipedia entry for Kinderszenen and listen to the thirteen different scenes played beautifully by Donald Betts.

The music, the rain, and the fly with the prettiest eyes

I spent this last weekend with a couple of good friends (from Inuvik!). We were at the Islands Folk Festival in Duncan, BC, and took in three days of folksy, bluesy, funky, eclectic music.

On Saturday, the day started off scorching and blue, but in the late afternoon, the clouds loomed in. While the optimistic audience sat unmoving in their lawn-chairs and blankets, the skies opened up and the steady drip-dripping grew more intense. Then, the raindrops eased as dusk fell, and our faces were lit in a surreal orange glow.

We turned our eyes and camera lenses skyward, marvelling at the rainbow that seemed to have sprouted from the treetops. And we swayed along with the masses to the beat from the main stage, the rain and the dusk and the rainbow turning us all into innocent little children once more.

As darkness covered us, the lights on the stage grew brighter, casting their own technicolor rainbow upon the performers. The sky above echoed once again, in lightning flashes against the deepening burgundy. As the audience stood and cheered and waved their arms high into the air, the torrents began. And the rain turned the dancing and the waving into electricity, into a youthful, ceaseless energy. Not only did the storm not dampen spirits, it left a magical sheen on everyone's skin. Toe-tapping became more frantic; cheers grew louder; the gyrating, buzzing bodies radiated an un-self-conscious abandonment.

On Sunday, blue skies and sunshine returned, along with the heatwave. My friend and I took cover as the last performer graced the main stage. We sat along a long wooden table in the shade, and allowed refreshingly cool beer to trickle down our throats. A fly carefully alighted on my friend's arm. With a cocked head and an intensity normally reserved for the hours after more drinks than we had had, my friend stared at the speck on her upper arm. "This fly has the prettiest eyes," she remarked. I stared at the blue-green iridescent insect eyes for only a second before the creature took off. I laughed as I realized how funny and how true it was.

This past weekend was the blue of the sky, the orange of the dusk, the wispy swirl of a rainbow, the greens and yellows and pinks of spotlights, the burgundy of the night sky, the white-gold flashes of lightning, and the silvery blue-green of one itinerant fly's eyes. It was that, and the beat of the drums, the strum of guitars, the babble of sun-kissed children, the rising of voices in song and in cheer. And in praise of a collective experience. In praise of feeling something, of our pulses beating in time, of our bodies moving in sync and out of sync, but moving, moving, our hearts growing stronger and our souls freer.

Both Sides Now

This song says it all -- everything I feel, everything I need to know. My absolute favourite song of all-time:

Once

A guitar takes a journey. It travels from the streets of Dublin to my heart via the medium of film. In the hands of one passionate singer-songwriter, it sings of loneliness, of love, of possibility. This guitar makes me want to be a better musician, to live more passionately, to smile at the simple things. This guitar is witness to the connection between two people. It creates music that echoes from within the void in my heart. It makes me cry and yearn and ache, but also search and wonder and find.

Is there anything more beautiful, more ethereal, more powerful than two voices, a guitar, and music that weaves their lives together?

Run out and rent Once.  Seriously.

The internal musician

I’ve been on vacation for two weeks now. The countdown to my flight to Vancouver is on – just three days left of my northern summer. The days have been absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous. I’ve been spending time walking down by the river, gardening in the community greenhouse (well, just watering my friend’s plot occasionally), and generally relaxing.

About a month and a half ago, two friends and I joined the community band. The high school music teacher had been leading a small group of music enthusiasts every Tuesday night. I tried out the flute and trumpet on my first night there, only to become extremely disillusioned by the vast discrepancy between my self-perceived ability and my actual ability. Couldn’t get more than a tiny wisp of sound from the flute, and could get nothing from the trumpet at all. I had to drag my boyfriend from his station in the foyer, where he waited for me patiently, to show us how to buzz into the trumpet. Even then, when my two friends eventually coaxed some disjointed tones from the instrument, all I managed to get were the giggles.

So, the following week, I decided to pick up the clarinet. It’s been about five sessions since, and I now know most of the notes. So determined was I to finally be able to play a wind instrument that I went online and bought myself a clarinet, one made out of granadilla wood, one that was perhaps too advanced for me. It came last week after many frenzied phone calls to the courier to track it down. One of my friends chose to be the percussionist for the band, while the other picked up the French horn, which must be the most difficult instrument.

One day, when my friend and I were strolling down the main street after a practice session with her French horn in tow, a group of children on bikes came up to us and begged us to show them what was in the black case. We opened it up, and their eyes widened. They asked my friend to play them a tune, but she politely replied that she couldn’t play songs yet. I jumped in, chattering to them that we were in the community band, and that we would probably play in some upcoming community events.

I felt like a child again. On that main street, where children’s eyes lit up at the sight of the shiny brass horn, where the northern summer sky seemed eternal, I could see ourselves assembled as musicians, our fingers all a-flourish, our concentration intense, our songs flowing out to meet the expectations of our internal youth.

On a Mobius strip induced high

I've been on a high these couple of days. Yesterday, we went out for a barbecue after work, at a little picnic area by Boot Lake. I'm hoping that this fall weather will stretch for a at least another week, so that we could squeeze in a couple more barbecues.

This afternoon, I walked around on the ski-trails with a friend. Although I've lived in Inuvik for over three years, this was my first time on the trails. I truly felt exhilarated, surrounded by the majesty of the birch trees, looking at the world through the shroud of branches and yellow leaves. There were cranberries along the trail, and we couldn't resist stooping down to try a handful or two.

Even with the broken key, the new piano has provided me much enjoyment these few days. I've been tinkering at it, honing those favourites of mine: Debussy's “Arabesque” brought alive the soft pinks of the sky before sunset. I could almost smell the gentleness of a breeze, embracing those last notes of summer.

(Why do I seem to be on such an emotional roller-coaster?)

I've been reading Kenn Harper's Give Me My Father's Body, an account of the life of Minik, an Inuk boy who had been brought to New York by Robert Peary, an arctic explorer set out to reach the North Pole. He was one of six “Polar Eskimos” aboard Peary's ship, which was ironically named “Hope.” The whole group became a live exhibit on display at the Museum of Natural History. Shortly, four of the Inuit died of tuberculosis, one left to go back to Greenland, and eight-year-old Minik was left all alone in a foreign land. Because I'm up here, Minik's story has added meaning to me. Although over a century has passed since the boy had been taken from his home, I have somewhat of an understanding of lives lived out in the harsh arctic environment. Intriguingly, I discovered that Alfred Kroeber, one of the scientists who took an interest in Minik, was Ursula LeGuin's father. I had read LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness years ago. How my world, the places I've been, the people I've met, the little bits of knowledge that have accumulated, are all interwoven into each other, twisted into a Mobius strip where all time and space run continuously, simultaneously.

The lucky one

It's really easy to be willfully-blind up here. I no longer have access to a daily newspaper, and I've cut off my cable television since June. I keep in touch with the happenings in the world through the several minutes of radio I listen to in my half-sleep state in the morning before work, or through clicking on news-sites over the Internet. Yesterday, other teachers were talking about the incident in Montreal where a gunman went and shot twenty college students, killing one and injuring nineteen others. My throat just tightened and my mind froze. After work, I decided to take my mind off the horror and go and have a barbecue. It was chilly, but it was perfect: The air was crisp, fresh, and inviting, as though it commanded me to breathe deeply. We saw the most perfect jet-stream from a plane. It was heading west in the most gorgeous arc, and it was etched in the beautiful evening light. In this willful blindness to the world beyond Inuvik, I've grown more attuned to the everyday beauty that is everywhere around me.

Monday was the fifth anniversary of the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Centre. One of my students was obsessed with replaying footage of the plane crashing into the second tower when she was on the classroom computer. She was just fascinated, while I was sick to my stomach. That footage was of the moment of many deaths, the ends of lives no different from mine. When I read about Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sri Lanka this summer, I was disturbed not as much by the numbers killed, but by the personal accounts that put faces to the nameless victims. I was devastated by the accounts of the American-Lebanese woman who decided to turn down aid from the embassy in order to remain in the chaos of Beirut. After keeping up with her story for about two weeks, I forced myself to stop reading.

On Monday night, there was an ethereal piece of music on CBC radio; it was of vocalists performing the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40, the “Romantic.” That symphony had been familiar to me since I was eleven, when I studied it in music class. Later, when I taught music history, it was the piece that I could talk about with my eyes closed. I knew every theme, every modulation, every section. Listening to human voices take the place of orchestral instruments carnivalized the familiar to me, and brought out a strange beauty. I want to remember September 11^th as the day I discovered this piece, the day that brought back memories of my eleven-year-old self, the self that was confident that everything (that I, my family, my friends, and the world) would turn out to be all right.

There might be a cat living under the house. I heard it mewling outside while having supper two nights ago. My friend saw it, and said it was a spitting image of my darling kitty, but skinnier and scruffier. I was going to put out food for it tonight, but I had not heard it all day today. Perhaps it has moved on. My thoughts have been with that cat these past few days, all alone in the cold and dark underneath the house. At night, I've been snuggling my own cat extra-close, nuzzling my face on that soft coat and telling her repeatedly, “You're the lucky one.”

My digital piano arrived today. The middle C is defective, so I'll be exchanging the whole thing for another. Hopefully, it won't be too much of a hassle. Despite being distressed over this minor detail, or perhaps because of it, I realize that I'm also the lucky one.

(I have a new student. Rather, she is a student I had before, one who has returned. And she broke/breaks my heart. Yes, I'm definitely the lucky one.)

A passing moment gone

It's a dreary Sunday. I'm having a “down” day, where I don't leave the house, and eat lots of ice-cream and cookies. I've listened to Rocky Votolato's “White Daisy Passing” at least fifteen times already today:

Please slow it down
There’s a secret magic past world
That you only notice when you’re looking back at it
And all I wanna do is turn around

I'm going down to sleep on the bottom of the ocean
'Cause I couldn’t let go of the water at the setting sun
'Cause I couldn’t let go of the passing moment gone

The song speaks to the strange mood that I've been in. Maybe it's because birthdays are conducive to extensive self-reflection and reminiscences. I can't help but think of my life as all these “passing moments” that I've desperately tried to cling onto, but to no avail. The golden leaves I've written about in the previous post are now billowing in the wind, under a blank sky. The tree by the shed is almost completely leafless. The green-gold and burning blue of a few days ago are just another such passing moment. I had taken it for granted then, and am only now seeing how beautiful it truly had been.

Here are pictures of my last walk along the bypass a few days ago, probably the last time until next spring.

* Watch a music video of Votolato's live performance of "White Daisy Passing" here.

Theme Songs

When I turned on the radio on Saturday morning, the first thing that I heard was Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” I’ve already written previously that it’s been my theme song for this past year. I’ve always associated different periods of my life with different music. This past year has been a roller-coaster of sorts: I’ve tried to hang on to the illusions of life and love, and have tried to capture an organized innocence akin to Blake’s theory. We all move past innocence to experience; hopefully, I’ve been able to transcend pessimism and still choose to see the good in everything.

Some of my past “theme songs”:

Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavours”: This was my song of early 2003, the months before I moved up to Inuvik. I was teaching in New Westminster, and more or less had the most stressful work of my life; I was up during the early hours of the morning, fretting about the classes I had to prepare for. In December of 2002, I had turned down an opportunity that I still think about today. I was living in a world of regret at the time, and I used the song as an anguished mantra of sorts, to remind myself that despite all appearances, I was a phoenix that could rise from the ashes.

Green Day’s “Good Riddance”: This was my song of 2000. This was the year I had settled into a deep contentment. My life was progressing as it should – I was in love, I was independent, and I was enjoying my daily engagements of school, work, and friends. I had saved enough money to take a trip to Western Europe, and took in the splendours of Paris, Florence, and Barcelona. To this day, I dream of returning to Paris, to the Musee D’Orsay. What I remember is not the impressionist masterpieces there, but the gentle light that filtered through those windows. The museum used to be an old train station, and the light made the most spectacular, spiritual shapes along the walls.

“The Water is Wide”: This song captured 1998, the year I graduated from high school. Specifically, it perfectly encapsulated that summer right before I went to university. It was a time of lounging around in overalls, of sunburns, of consolidating friendships, of faith that all of our dreams would be realized.

George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”: One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever, in my opinion. This is one that makes me cry. This is the piece that makes me feel free and find peace when I loathe any part of my life. When I listen to it, I can imagine myself drifting, floating above everything. Suddenly, all my troubles seem less traumatic. The enormity of the burdens previously on my shoulders transforms into an enormity of potential and possibility. This is music that should be painted.

Part of my quest for an organized innocence includes finding simple elegance in the everyday. Hence, here is a photo of the scroll of my violin which is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also holds such potential to create beauty in the form of music. Perhaps one day soon, I’ll stumble across my next theme song in one of my crazed sessions of music-playing.

Soulscape

Two nights ago, CBC Radio was playing a piece performed by Evelyn Glennie, a brilliant percussionist. The piece was on the marimba, and was infused with a disquieting whimsy that I don’t know how to describe. At the end, Andrea Ratuski, the host of the program, noted that Glennie was profoundly deaf. I was glad that I hadn’t tuned into this little tidbit of information until after listening to the music because Glennie is first and foremost a musician, who just happens to be deaf. She performs by feeling the vibrations of the music through her feet. I was so inspired that I picked up my violin and played in the dark, trying to rely on feel instead of my usual dependence on the visual and aural. In that midnight stillness, I sensed that I had found something in my fiddle of which I had previously been unaware. Playing well means more than hitting the right notes and bowing smoothly – it’s an instinctive knowledge of what the music feels like.

I’m reaching the end of my spring break, but have yet to continue my French course as I had planned. Instead, I have gone on a musical journey of sorts. So many things that I’ve encountered these past few days have been coincidentally related to music. At the library, I read an article on Eve Egoyan (Atom’s younger sister), who is a pianist. She remarks that through others’ music, she is able to get inside herself. I’ve also learned how to express myself through others’ music: Chopin’s nocturnes, Debussy’s “Arabesque,” and some of Beethoven’s sonatas have formed part of my internal landscape. Children find shelter in their parents, and in an imaginary world that they create for themselves, a mix of real experiences and fantasies borne out of innocence. As we grow up, we come up with ways to shelter ourselves. Music is what I turn to over and over again. People who know me well are fully aware of times when I’m upset, because that is when Scriabin is pounded out of my keyboard. In moments when I just need some peace and solitude, one of two Michael Nyman tunes will waft out from my room.

Those who question how a deaf person could play beautiful music have failed to understand music (and the musician) entirely. Music is a visceral knowledge and landscape - a "soulscape," and is so much more than sounds stringed together. It’s to be felt, not merely heard.

Music-Making

This is the piano at the back of the library in the high school; it’s my weekend hideout, where I can shut out everything extraneous in my life and just enjoy a couple of hours of music. It doesn’t matter that it’s out-of-tune, and that one of the C’s doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter that there are boxes piled up high, muffling the sound. I play for no one – and I can hear the music in my head regardless of how it actually sounds. A few months ago, I dug out a program music piece that I wrote years ago, a piece that was inspired by Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda. I don’t know why it is that I’ve stopped composing. It would be a cathartic experience, akin to my endless scribbling within my journals. I had written all these notes to myself on the "Oscar and Lucinda" piece: to add phrasing, to change a few notes and motifs, to distinguish the tempos between the different sections. I should polish it up and finish it. An audio version of it exists somewhere out in cyberspace, recorded a few years ago on a dinky MIDI keyboard, and cast out into the world to fend for itself. Over the years, several people have commented on it. I remember playing it for one of the kids at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club I was volunteering at a few years ago, and he exclaimed, “Hey, I know that song! I like it!” While I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way little Ibrahim could have ever heard my composition, I was appreciative of his comment. Often, the best works of any genre – a painting, a song, a story – bring out some familiarity from within the recesses of our consciousness. Now, I’m not saying that my "Oscar and Lucinda" was great by any means, but I was thrilled that it had struck a chord with Ibrahim. It’s in part because of him that I’ve come to know that I’ll eventually turn back to composing – perhaps soon.

Full of Jazz and Grace

Last Saturday, I enjoyed an evening of jazz at the Lions’ Den, a cabin in the woods by Boot Lake. The place was jam-packed, and strings of coloured lights were suspended from the ceiling. Razzmajazz was just fantastic, and the group had added John Heaton, a brilliant double-bassist, since I last saw them perform. Only in Inuvik would I find myself sitting in an old cabin with its brown walls, Lions’ Club flags from around the world, and a roomful of faces I recognize, all listening to jazz.

Inuvik has provided me with many such surreal and ethereal moments of grace and wonder. This past Thursday, as well as the previous Thursday before that, the bells were ringing from the tower of the igloo church as I was walking out and about. I felt such a calm stillness washing over me. Perhaps I’m in need of the type of faith and communion that church provides; however I have my own faith. I believe in the power of nature, time, and community. I also believe in healing through contemplation and solitude. As I was walking down the hill, the bells rang out on my left, with an echo resounding across the field of snow on my right.

Valentine’s Day came and went this past week. I’ve never been a great fan of the occasion, but this year, I truly had a memorable time, courtesy again of the strange circumstances in which I’ve kept finding myself in Inuvik. My night was spent with my roommate, my co-worker, her quadriplegic son, the son’s quadriplegic friend, and another friend of the two young men. We sat in the deserted cafeteria of the hospital and ordered in Chinese food. We had planned to have a nice dinner out, but since we had failed to make reservations, our options were limited. Much time was spent discussing whether we could lift the two wheelchair-bound into a vehicle so that we could drive around and find a restaurant with space for all of us, but had finally decided on a “ghetto” Valentine’s meal. We laughed over our fortune cookies: One of the boys had “talent that is not shared is not talent.” Devin vehemently argued that it was bullshit, but could not articulate further. Yes, talent should be shared with the world, but what of the Emily Dickinson’s in the world? Sharing pieces of oneself is a choice, an act of courage; however, lack of sharing does not equal lack of talent. Talent, in the same way as beauty, is in the soul of the beheld, not in the eye of the beholder. A wild foal running free in a meadow has an inexpressible beauty regardless of whether someone is there to appreciate it. An icicle hanging from the branch of a tree has miraculous grace whether or not we take note. Valentine’s Day 2006 will always be remembered as the day when I saw grace and beauty in the eyes of those young men, who had humour and courage enough to fill my heart to the brim.