May 2006 blogposts

Failure

In the end I let the rhythms and notes
Slip through my shame-greased hands
And I stayed behind the velvet curtain
Where I could whip myself properly
No safe word

Strike that

I went back to work today even though my doctor said I could take the week off sick.  I tell myself it's better to stare into a computer screen than to lie in bed,  I can't even cry about what happened.  The chorus is much better off without me to sing the wrong notes and throw off the other singers.  The truth is, I'm just not a good enough singer, and I never have been.  Some people will be very happy to see me go.

Obviously I won't be going to Vancouver.  I'll cancel my reservations, and lose the deposits and the plane fare.  Small price to avoid pasting on a smiley-face and pretending everything is all right when it's shit.  Which was the same reason I never went back on stage Sunday, after bowing out from Vincent as a courtesy to the other singers.  I could see I was withdrawing, shutting down, but I couldn't stop it. All I wanted to do was go home.

I'll put off any decisions until after tonight's rehearsal.

I'm not sure I can pull this off.

Four days of self-imposed black despair, complete with a near-total loss of perspective.  I should feel grateful that I snapped out of it so quickly this time.  Instead, I'm just heartsick that it happened at all. 

I only have five days left to finish memorizing all the pieces we're supposed to be performing off-book at the choral festival in Vancouver.  I don't think I'm going to meet that deadline; I'm absolutely exhausted and my brain feels like scorched earth.  I don't want to let the chorus down, but I'm not going to drag them down either. 

John Doyle's List of Most Irritating Canadians (Television-Related).

(Yes, yes, I know, I'm s'possed to be memorizing music, but I had to save this gem before it gets lost in the blogosphere.  First published in the Globe and Mail newspaper, written by John Doyle and posted to Norman's Spectator.)

Now, some clarifications and an update in the matter of Most Irritating Canadian (television-related). Please note the word "television-related." Telling me you loathe certain newspaper columnists who almost never appear on TV is not on. It makes you feel better, I know, but I must decline to include, on the MIC list, some nitwit who writes reactionary nonsense for a newspaper in Calgary. I've never heard of him and he's not on TV. Take comfort in that. Right now, following the flag flap, Our Glorious Leader is way out in front. The Lilydale chef is running a close second. CTV weather guy Tom Brown, who inspires some readers to spew the sort of venom you won't see printed in this family newspaper, is also up there. Michael Ignatieff is holding strong, followed very closely by the woman who yells about serving cheese to grown-up kids -- The Screaming Cheese Lady. Evan Solomon has made a leap to head up a group including George Stroumboulopoulos, Debbie Travis, Rex Murphy, the Idomo guy and the Wendy's salad-commercial woman -- Salad Wailer. After a strong showing at first, The Body Break Couple has dropped in the ratings. The same goes for Ben Mulroney, Don Cherry and Colleen Jones. I propose a May sweeps period for MIC (television-related). Let's clarify the Top 20 and begin nitpicking: It's May, but let's not mellow out, people.

Screaming Cheese Lady is the old woman in the Canadian Milk Marketing Board's series of commercials who pops up at the end of the ad to scream "CAN'T GET YOUR KIDS TO LEAVE HOME?  STOP COOKING WITH CHEESE!"

Never Gonna Forgive

My father had a violent temper and when he got angry, he was loud.  When I say loud, I mean VERY LOUD.   To a small child, say, four years old, it was truly terrifying.  That child was me.

Today I had lunch with a long-time good friend, someone whom I've known half my life and whom I had not seen in several years.  During our conversation, there were times when she became loud (and she can by nature be LOUD).  And the space we were sitting in, concrete walls and a low ceiling, simply echoed and amplified the sound, so that, at least to me, it was VERY LOUD.

I was shocked to find myself shaking. 

I wrapped my arms around myself and fidgeted a bit and I'm sure she didn't notice.  I was doing more shaking on the inside than on the outside.  But I actually had a physical remembrance of the fear I had had of my father, something I hadn't felt since I had recovered the original deeply-repressed childhood memories, thanks to a number of sessions of healing touch by performed by Sister Bernadette and Sister Thérèse.

The mind may forget, especially in trauma, but the body never forgets.  And I was once again that child, crouched down with my back against the wall, my arms over my head to protect myself, and screaming.  Screaming.  Screaming at the top of my lungs. 

It may have only happened once, but once was enough.

As I was walking down a university corridor after lunch with my friend, I was thinking about how much that fear of my father had sculpted, and to some extent still sculpts, my life.  And I thought to myself, I'm never gonna forgive me for what you did, you bastard.

I came to dead halt.  I had switched, automatically and almost unconsciously, from I'm never gonna forgive you to I'm never gonna forgive me.   

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

  

  

  

  

tonight god cut me open

  tonight god cut me open
and i found myself inside

i stood in the holes in his feet
and we danced

i am fearfully 
and wonderfully 
good enough
 
 

Escape

The choral conference is going well.  I'm also been out doing some hiking, and today I caught up on some sleep.  We perform tomorrow afternoon, and I'm nervous but I also think we'll do fine.

My Top 5 Tracks on Last.fm

I finally was able to load the Profile + Tag editor in Last.fm (after rebooting and clearing just about everything out of RAM that I could think of, and waiting and waiting and WAITING for it to finish loading my artists list), and so I spent a rather entertaining evening tagging songs from my eclectic/bizarre list of 250 absolutely essential songs -- all of which are subject to change, of course. 

Which means, of course, that I have a new tag radio station on Last.fm.  If you are a Last.fm user, you can click on the "More Stations" link in the left-hand column on my profile to see the radio station and listen to it, or just click on the hypertext link below (This will only work if you already have the Last.fm player installed on your local computer--see Last.fm for further details):

lastfm://usertags/Quiplash/my%20essential%20250%20songs

Warning: I reserve the right to change this tag without warning; go to my Last.fm user page (Quiplash) to get whatever tag I'm currently using for this collection of songs.

No, it's not my full list, and I actually added another 250 songs that would probably fit somewhere in slots 251-500.  BUT I have exactly 250 tracks that are streamable (i.e. you're able to listen to them) on Last.fm! I think I'll try the "remove one and add a new one" approach with this Last.fm radio station I've created so I keep it at 250 streamable tracks.

And I would encourage all of you to come up with your own Top 250.  It really has made me think more about the music I do listen to.  And it was so cool to be able to program my own tag radio station, with just my favourite songs.  Woohoo!

NO, I am not apologizing for the lack of metal :-) somebody has to counter-balance all the metalheads on Last.fm or it'll just tip right over ;-) and besides, I make up for it by embracing my inner punk rocker.