Alex Eddington: composer, musician, writer, actor, &tc.

Composerly/theatrely things I'm up to: Spring 2012

2012 has been a little less hectic - in some ways - than last fall, when I updated you on a crazy number of performances that I had happening in Toronto and across the country.

But there are some neat events afoot this Spring, including a reading from my new play ("Yarn"), a musical premiere, the professional orchestra debut of one of my pieces, and a narration performance with Continuum.  Details are below!

 

In chronologicalish order...

1) YARN
I'm reading an excerpt from my new solo show.

Yarn is a new autobiographical monologue about my strange and wonderful summer living on the isolated Isle of Mull, Scotland, in 2003 - what living there did to my brain - and the stories we tell ourselves to get by.

I'm planning to premiere the full show in the summer of 2013. It will involve live music on many instruments! And possibly stop-motion animation depicting the perplexing behaviour of sheep...





The Four Winds Collective presents...
A Night of Lies

Join us on Monday, March 19th as we take over the TRANZAC’s Tiki Room, say bye-bye to the Truth for a couple hours, have a few drinks and experience some live theatre fresh from the incubator.

Come for the stories, stay for the conversation.

You will hear excerpts from:

~Peter Counter~
~Alex Eddington~
~Andrew Gaboury~
~Nicole Ratjen~
~Susan Stover~

When: Monday, March 19th
Doors - 8pm
The event will start shortly thereafter.

PWYC
(recommended $5 – all donations go towards funding the future of this series)

Where: The Tiki Room of TRANZAC

2) WATERSHED
for two student violinists (2012)
(one beginner and one advanced)

World premiere! - and a second performance!

Commissioned through the Canadian Music Centre's wonderful New Music for Young Musicians project.

Watershed is a musical journey following the path of a drop of water from the Columbia Icefield in Alberta, through lakes and rivers all the way to Hudson's Bay in Manitoba. The piece is a duet for beginning and advanced violinists. It has seven movements, each of which explores different musical skills as well as depicting different locations along the Hudson's Bay watershed:

Columbia Icefield
Abraham Lake
North Saskatchewan River
The Forks
Lake Winnipeg
Nelson River
Hudson's Bay

TWO performances this April!

a) PING! Premiere:
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
3:30 pm (Student workshop with the Penderecki String Quartet)
6:30pm (Performance)

Featuring new compositions for young string players by Canadian Music Centre associate composers.

Location: North Toronto Collegiate Institute Auditorium (17 Broadway Avenue, near Yonge and Eglinton)


b) Guelph Suzuki School
Spring concert
Sunday, April 27, 2012

Featuring violin students of the Guelph Suzuki School, in group performance on my piece!

Special thanks go to my consulting educator, Paule Barsalou, for coordinating this performance and for her help composing the piece.

Details to be posted at the Guelph Suzuki School website.

3) SATURDAY NIGHT at FORT CHAMBLY
for orchestra (2009/2012)
(my professional orchestra debut!)

Sunday April 15, 2012 - 7:30 pm   BRANTFORD Ontario

Details on the BSO website.

Performed by the Brantford Symphony, conducted by Philip Sarabura.

My music was selected to be part of a concert of folk music for fiddles featuring the wonderful Pierre Schryer band!

My only Canadian ancestor was stationed at Fort Chambly, Québec. I wondered what the culture was like there when the soldiers were off duty. Did they drink beer like "Blanche de Chambly"? What music did they play and sing? My piece is a collage of French-Canadian folk songs (at least 25 of 'em), thrown together in drunken chaos. Sometimes they get along and sometimes they fight, but they'll be friends again in the morning.

 

 

4) Continuum at New Music 101

Monday, May 7, 2012 - 7:00pm (1 hour)

Toronto Reference Library
FREE!

Continuum ensemble
with Alex Eddington, narrator

One concert in a 4-part series at the Toronto Reference Library


"Telling a Story"

There is a long and lively tradition of using music to convey a story,
through many forms -- programmatic music, opera, ballet, lieder. But
possibly the most direct means involves narration underpinned by music.  As
part of New Music 101, Continuum presents contemporary expressions of the
practice, including "l’Eléphant de mer" (from Contes pour enfants pas sages)
by west-coast composer Christopher Butterfield, Why the parrot repeats human
words by east-coast composer Emily Doolittle, and a much-compressed version
of Stravinsky’s classic l’Histoire du Soldat.  

The works call for
clarinet, violin, viola and percussion, as well as narrator. 

---

As always, you can follow what I'm up to, read my blog, and see my collection of amusing and perplexing Things That Are at www.AlexEddington.com

Video: premiere of "Fuzzy Logic" with Continuum Contemporary Music

 

Words and music by Alex Eddington

(the complete piece follows a short interview with me about it)

Performers: Anne Thompson (flute), Max Christie (clarinet), Carol Lynn Fujino (violin), Paul Widner (cello), Laurent Philippe (piano), Ryan Scott (percussion), Alex Eddington (narrator)

Recorded at Continuum Contemporary Music's November 6, 2011 performance Fuzzy Logic at The Music Gallery in Toronto.

Fantastic 2-camera video (c) Gary Popovich

Narrating with Continuum: "L'Histoire du Soldat" divided by twelve

 

Here I am explaining and performing a hyper-compressed version of Stravinsky's piece for narrator and ensemble. I arranged this with Continuum co-artistic director Jennifer Waring.

Performers: Alex Eddington (Narrator), Carol Lynn Fujino (Violin), Max Christie (Clarinet), Ryan Scott (Percussion)

Performance begins at 0:58 after introduction by Alex Eddington

Recorded at Continuum Contemporary Music's May 7, 2012 presentation at "New Music 101" at the Toronto Reference Library

Our fire... photojournalism style!

As you may or may not know, we had an apartment fire last week and are homeless for a while. An electrical fire started in the wall in the basement, and spread to our upstairs apartment through the wiring. Every single thing now smells like smoke, the firepersons ripped our kitchen out of the walls to get to the wiring, there's a hole in the roof, every window is broken save one, and the apartment will not be livable for many months.

The good news: we're not living on the street, no one was hurt (exept two cats who died downstairs - very sad), nothing in our possessions was melted/charred/soaked, we're insured, we got out of our phone/internet contract painlessly, and I'm doing some much-needed spring cleaning. They say that if the fire crew had arrived 10 minutes later, the house might have actually burned actual down. The firemen were quite destructive, but with good cause!

I took some photos of the damage that I thought you might enjoy. It's pretty intense. I couldn't capture the smell, but it's kind of like a campfire rather than a typical electrical fire so that might help you imagine. A friend smelled me and said "mmm... mesquite!" Our car will smell like smoke forever I think. If you help us, so will yours. That's why we're telling all of our lovely friends to hold off helping us until we get a better sense of what insurance will pay for in terms of professional cleaning.

These photos are a little blurry because it is DARK in there and I don't use flash. Everything in the photos is exactly as it was left by the fire and its fighters.

One of the selling features of the apartment was the natural light.

 

There is a gash in the door AND in the wall beside the door.

 

I left the spatula in the entranceway for days, out of respect.

 

That oil-drum-like thing turns out to be the lazy susan from under the kitchen counter, presumably containing much food.

Somehow the toaster is still sitting in its normal place.

 

Everything is where it was after firedude destruction.

 

I feel like an archeologist.

 

It took me about four visits to realise that this spotted piece of crappy wood used to be our countertop. Those are the footprints of dirty dishes that were on the counter before its sudden demolition.

 

 Charred wiring behind the kitchen wall. This is why the fire crew ripped our counters and cupboards out.

Those soot-free patches were once drama books that now have dirty bootprints on them.

 

The hole in the roof, tarped over. That gash is longer than the ceiling is high.

 

My studio, covered in insulation, soot and broken glass.

 

That is a Backgammon set, amidst broken glass.

It's a good thing we hate this loveseat. But now we can't even put it to the curb in good conscience.

 

 

Pigeons at the Helm

I knew for sure that things were funky in the cosmos today when I boarded a bus out in the west end of the city only to run into a friend who I thought was in Winnipeg. This was none other than the lovely Celeste Sansregret, a writer/performer from the Fringe compartment of my life. Okay, I guess part of me knew she had moved here, but I have trouble being sure what city people are in and I've had my head in my studies. And neither of us tend to go to the west end of Toronto. She's working on selling the contents of a house that is about a block from where I'm working.

So we took bus and subway and we got off in the Annex and I got ready to ride my bike the final leg of my journey home - and then I noticed that the bikes were surrounded by a sea of at least 75 pigeons, eating birdseed that an elderly woman had for some reason decided to put around all the bikes.

Sidenote. Have you ever noticed that when pigeons feed, in a group, sticking their tails and wingtips up in the air, they look like a bed of mussels?  

I posit the comparison for your perusal:

I couldn't find more similar pictures, but STILL I think the biggest difference between them is the number of creatures, not the appearance.

Anyway, I said goodbye to Celeste and made my way to my bike, Kilda. Actually, the pigeons were sparse around Kilda but reached their maximal density about 3 bikes to the left of her. As I unlocked and got my riding stuff out they were startled several times. Pigeon-crowd air is warm, dusty, and surprisingly strong. There's a specific, memorable scent to it, not a bad one but not a good one either.

So I was putting on my under-helmet hat, which covers my ears, and realised that someone was talking to me. It was the pigeon-feeder lady, who has a Germanic-ish accent:

 

Pigeon-Feeder Lady (PFL): [muffled talking]

Me (taking off my hat): Sorry, what was that?

PFL: Where is your helm?

Me: Huh?

PFL: You should wear a helm.

Me: Oh...yeah, it's right here.

PFL: Don't you have a helm?

Me (pointing at my helmet, which is attached to my backpack): Yup, I've got one.

PFL: Put it on.

Me: I'm, uh, about to do that. Thank you.

 

And I did. My under-helmet hat looks pretty Medieval-dork-chic on its own.  

 

Composerly things I'm up to (Fall/Winter 2011 and beyond)

 

This is turning out to be a busy season - especially because I'm directly involved in several of these performances as a composer-who-talks-about-their-music (junctQin Keyboard Collective - Sept 30 and other dates), conductor (Scarborough Philharmonic - Oct 29), and narrator (Continuum - Nov 6).

I'm extremely excited about the opportunities that have been coming my way, and the wide-range of these performances!  If you are in Toronto, Hamilton, Barrie, Kitchener, Brantford, Sudbury or Edmonton, you have the opportunity to catch a concert with my music on it - or even a theatrical staging of my adaptation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"! (in Sudbury)

 

1) Big Muddy for piano six hands (!) - world premiere

    Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - 12:00 noon - BARRIE ON. (Colours of Music Festival) Central United Church, 54 Ross Street (at Toronto Street)    Pricing information

    Friday, September 30, 2011 - 7:00pm - TORONTO ON (Culture Days)   North York Central Library, 5120  Yonge St.   FREE!  details  I'll be talking about the piece at this lecture-recital performance.

    Thursday, October 13, 2011 - 12:00 noon - KITCHENER ON. (Wilfred Laurier University - Maureen Forrester Recital Hall)    FREE   details

    Sunday, December 11, 2011 - 3:00pm - TORONTO ON. (Great Hall, Hart House)

 

Peformed by the junctQín Keyboard Collective (Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti, Stephanie Chua)

 

This will be the first installment of a large-scale piece in my ongoing geographical series called "Grasslands, Badlands and Spirit Sands", inspired by soundscapes and landscapes in Canada's southern prairies.  This piece owes its genesis to Saskatchewan's Big Muddy Valley. Big Muddy Valley has big muddy buttes in it, like Castle Butte, on which there are incredible rain-carved patterns. I have mapped the shape and experience of this landform into musical sound, with the help of SIX HANDS on one piano! One of the more dense pieces you are ever likely to hear... but not always. At the top of Castle Butte there is quite the view, and perfect quiet except for the whistle of a gopher.

                      
** You can see more pictures of Big Muddy Valley and Castle Butte, and read about my summer 2010 travels across the south of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta HERE

 

2) Psycho B*tch  a one-woman show written and performed by Tamara Lynn Robert, directed by Laura Anne Harris, with extensive sound design by Alex Eddington.

 

A funny and moving story about a woman's experience living with mental illness: seeking diagnosis, trying to understand and accept herself.   

 

ONE NIGHT ONLY (x2)!

    Sunday, October 2, 2011 - 8:00pm - TORONTO ON.  Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative     Movement (6 Noble St.)

        AND!!

    Friday, October 7, 2011 - 8:00pm - HAMILTON ON.  Staircase Café Theatre (27 Dundurn St. N.)

General admission: $15

Students/Seniors/Artist/Underemployed: $10

Tickets will be sold at the door - cash only.

This event is set to occur during Mental Illness Awareness Week and will help fund future endeavors to help raise awareness about mental illness and the devastating effects of stigma.

 

        FACEBOOK EVENT

        www.PKpinup.com

 

3) Huron Antiphon for brass quintet and orchestra (world premiere - and orchestral conducting debut!)

    Saturday, October 29, 2011 - 8:00pm - TORONTO. 

 

An exploration of deconstruction and reconstruction, composed in reaction to the F3 tornado that leveled many historic buildings in the town of Goderich, Ontario on the shore of Lake Huron. Inspired by Goderich's unique eight-sided town square which the tornado hit directly, the piece asks the brass quintet play from different parts of the perimeter of the hall, creating an acoustic "surround sound" experience.

Performed by the Red Brass with the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra.  Conducted by Alex Eddington.

Part of the concert "An American in Paris", featuring music by Copland, Gershwin, and a new trumpet concerto by Music Director Ronald Royer. 

       Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute, 3663 Danforth Ave.

       Tickets: $30 adults, $25 seniors, $15 youth. (contact me for a reduced rate) 

        (416) 429-0007  spo@spo.ca  www.spo.ca

 

4) Fuzzy Logic for narrator and chamber ensemble (world premiere)

Written, composed and performed by Alex Eddington with the Continuum ensemble.

Commissioned by Continuum Contemporary Music with the support of the Toronto Arts Council.

Sunday November 6, 2011 - 8:00 pm

Toronto - The Music Gallery (in St. George the Martyr Church - 197 John Street - just north of Queen)

How do you make music that sounds like sheep? Why would you do that? How would sheep themselves make music? DO sheep already make music? What kind of music do sheep enjoy? 

Sheep were once my neighbours. I took a lot of notes about them. Here are some things they make me think about, set to music. I wrote myself into the piece because that's what sheep would do. Sheep wouldn't sit in the back row. They'd get themselves dirty.

  

5) Light Looked Down  SSATB choir unaccompanied (2007, revised 2011).  Text by Laurence Housman.

Light looked down and beheld Darkness. "Thither will I go," said Light...

Part of "Living Sound", a concert featuring choral works by Edmontonian and Canadian composers.

 

Sunday, November 13, 2011 - 3:00pm.  EDMONTON AB

First Baptist Church, 10031 109 St.

$20/$15 available at the door or through choir members

http://www.dacamera.ab.ca/season/2011-2012

 

6) A Christmas Carol  for narrator and string quartet (playing toy instruments too). Text by Charles Dickens, edited by Alex Eddington.

Thursday December 8 and Sunday December 11, 2011 - 7:00pm - SUDBURY Ontario

Narrated by celebrity special guests with music by the Juno-nominated Silver Birch string quartet

Presented by the Sudbury Theatre Centre.  Visit their site for ticket details.

This used to be an annual tradition in Sudbury but hasn't been done in a while. The string quartet score creates atmosphere with ghostly sounds and toy instruments, interwoven with many old Christmas carols that would have been sung in Dickens' day.

This is a STAGED performance and will be extremely wonderful.  I'm hoping to attend!

 

And beyond... 

7) Saturday Night at Fort Chambly for orchestra (2009) (professional orchestra debut)

Performed by the Brantford Symphony, conducted by Philip Sarabura.

Part of a concert of folk music for fiddles featuring the wonderful Pierre Schryer band!

My only Canadian ancestor was stationed at Fort Chambly, Québec. I wondered what the culture was like there when the soldiers were off duty. Did they drink beer like "Blanche de Chambly"? What music did they play and sing? My piece is a collage of French-Canadian folk songs (at least 25 of 'em), thrown together in drunken chaos. Sometimes they get along and sometimes they fight, but they'll be friends again in the morning.

Sunday April 15, 2012 - 7:30 pm   BRANTFORD Ontario

Details on the BSO website. 

 

 

8) Watershed for two violins (teacher/advance student and novice student)

Commissioned through the Canadian Music Centre's wonderful New Music for Young Musicians project

To be premiered at Ping! in Fall 2012

 

 

 

The results of the tornado that mowed through Goderich, Benmiller and my wedding plans: a first-hand account

When news of Jack Layton’s death spread two weeks ago on a Monday, I was already freaked out and ill-slept from looking for photos of the tornado destruction in Goderich and Benmiller. I’m not from that area but C. grew up near Goderich, and her parents still live around there. I’ve become pretty attached to Goderich and Huron County in the past five years. And the weirdest thing about this tornado for us is that we had just been up there that weekend. We looked at three wedding venues in different towns (Goderich, Benmiller, and Bayfield) and within 48 hours, an F3 tornado plowed through two of the three. Perhaps you can see why this was unsettling to me. I almost felt personally responsible.

We actually spent that Saturday night in Stratford, were watching Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming during the storm, and drove straight home. There was a tree limb down in Toronto, but we knew nothing about the windstorm in the city either. I dropped C. off at her poetry gathering, went home and unpacked, and was oblivious (even when my mother texted “R U Okay??” which really, could have meant “Are you home yet”) until some worried tweets tipped me off about the destruction up in Huron County. I spent the rest of the evening (and days afterward) contacting family and friends (C. remained unaware for another few hours) and trying to figure out exactly what had happened. How many were hurt or killed (which turned out to be 37 hurt, 1 killed)? How many, and which, buildings are still standing - and which might still come down. Some frankly stupid tweets were flying around saying things like “Goderich is destroyed”, which implies full-scale destruction of the entire town and everyone in it. I couldn’t find any photos or info about the Benmiller Inn, except rumours that two buildings had lost their roofs. If the main building was affected, this could change our wedding plans. But I had no idea (for a week) and people were tweeting about the Inn in the past tense (and about trapped miners in Goderich, and all sorts of other untrue and inflammatory things). 

So, Jack Layton, I’m sorry if I seemed a bit distracted. 

We eventually talked to Benmiller Inn, sent C.’s mother as a scout, and thus ascertained that the main building was okay and that the Inn is open for business and busy cleaning up the damage. Images and videos of Goderich propagated, and we heard some first-hand accounts at a tornado relief fundraising event in Toronto. But I had been wanting to see the damage for myself. 

We went up to C.’s parents for Labour Day weekend so on Sunday I asked who wanted to come with me. C. and her brother didn’t want to see it while the destruction was so fresh (I think) and her parents had already been (her father works in Goderich and they often shop there). So I went with C.’s (and my future) sister-in-law.

Here’s what we saw. 

BENMILLER

Bemiller is about 10 minutes’ drive from Goderich, and the chances of the tornado having gone straight there after coming off lake Huron directly into the historic Goderich town square were pretty slim. I knew that the town of Benmiller was hit really hard by the tornado, so I didn’t want anyone to think I was gawking (it didn’t work, as you’ll see). We stopped in at the front desk of the Inn to let them know why we wanted to look around. C. and I are considering holding our wedding there, so we have an interest in how damaged the grounds are. As you might expect of an old mill, Benmiller Inn has a beautiful setting in a little valley along a creek flowing in the Maitland river. 

Of course, many trees are down. There hasn’t been a lot of press about Benmiller but I read a quote from the manager stating that 130 trees on their property were destroyed. Once the debris is cleared, entire swaths of hillside will be bare. There were many trees, young and old, fallen into the creek. But I’d say more trees are standing than downed. The totem pole on the Inn grounds is also broken, and they very smartly have cut it into sections (bear, eagle, etc.) and placed them along the road or in front of smaller buildings. (That is the first time I’ve seen a totem pole stump!). Other than some damaged shingles (and perhaps a window or two? I can’t remember) the main building is fine.

One of the reasons I am writing this is to do my part to spread word that the Benmiller Inn is still very much open for business and despite fewer trees, still a beautiful setting. The Inn has new management as of only a few months ago and I don’t want to see them lose any more business than necessary from this disaster, because of some rumours that it is “destroyed”. I consider this to be the opposite of “gawking” at tornado damage. Afterward, I heard from the Inn that they plan to have all of their rooms open by the end of September. I'm frankly very impressed by this. 

Sarah and I then walked down the highway across the creek bridge to Benmiller Inn’s group of smaller buildings. This is where the worse damage is. I had my camera out (again, I have a personal money/memory-investment interest in the place) and as we walked down that sideroad (which is also the Main St. of the town of Benmiller) we heard someone driving by on the highway behind us yelling “Gawkers!  Jeez!” or something to that effect. I turned around and caught a glimpse of a red pickup truck.

The building by the pond has some broken windows and loose shingles, but will be fine. Small sections of roof were gone from the Spa building and the little house that you can rent for group accommodations. But the building attached to the spa by that little bridge over the creek (I don’t know its name) is already being completely re-roofed. Apparently they re-roofed it only recently! The weirdest thing is that all of these buildings, which we had seen only two weeks earlier, now look about 10-20 years older. Paint and siding is distressed, windows look old. Capstones are gone from stone walls. All this is fixable, and it could be much worse. Benmiller Inn will be fine. But how strange to see buildings seem to age decades after a 30-second tornado.

We could see some buildings in the town on Benmiller just up the hill. Every building we could see had completely mangled, missing roofs. We didn’t go up there - that would be gawking. Across the Maitland river, loud and heavy equipment was cutting out mature trees that had fallen into the water.

 
GODERICH

C. forbade me to take photos in Goderich. I fought this briefly. I said, what if it’s something incredible, like a doll’s head imbedded in the town limits sign, right in the “O” of “GODERICH”, and somehow everyone else has missed photographing this?

But she’s right. The photo frame would get between me and the reason I went there, which was to experience the damage emotionally, not to frame it artistically. And if I started taking photos of that mess, where would I stop?

Plus there are many better photographers than I that have photographed this mess. Here are some places to start:

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2011/08/21/18582706.html  (MANY photos)

http://www.ctv.ca/gallery/html/goderich-tornado/index_.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/08/22/goderich-tornado-big-picture-photos-damage-debris-destruction_n_932766.html

 

I took no pics but I took mental notes.

First of all, driving in from Benmiller there was no evidence of tornado. I don’t know how it got there, but it wasn’t along Highway 8. There was the odd broken branch from high winds, but the funnel hadn’t touched down here.

The first (indirect) evidence we saw was on the edge of Goderich. Two different disaster rebuild companies had parked trailers on the side of the road as billboards for their services. More branches were down, here and there. We popped into Zehrs’ to get some groceries, and the business logos in the mall sign were somewhat mangled.

Further toward the centre of town, some windows were boarded up and the occasional whole tree was down. But it still looked like the effect of normal high winds.

Then, off to the right, was a roofless house. (I guessed later that if there isn’t a tarp covering a damaged roof, that house has been condemned.)

We parked at Tim Horton’s and steeled ourselves with treats. The place was full of cheerful conversation. The parking lot was packed. We saw two different groups of motorbikers rolling through town. There was a flea market on. Normally it would be in the town square, but it had moved two blocks away to a parking lot.  The men’s washroom at Timmy’s was longer than they usually are, and I was squished behind the door. There was a sense of cameraderie in the air. A man using the urinal farted.  Apologized. And after what was more of a coming-timing beat than an awkward silence, another guy in line said: “Well, If you’re gonna toot, this is the place to do it.” Everyone laughed.

From the Timmy’s parking lot we could see some roofless buildings, but it didn’t look like the tornado had come right through here. The worst of the destruction was only two blocks away. On our way to the town square we walked through the little flea market. It’s weird to see old rusty tools and books and things lying decontextualised on the ground, so close to tornado debris. We bought some purple string beans from a cheerful man wearing a t-shirt with a whirlwind graphic on it and the message “I survived the Goderich Tornado - August 21 2011.”  I heard there were other T-shirts for sale in town that say “F-U F3!” 

I’d already seen photos of a lot of the damage in the town square, which is actually an octagon by the way, but it was (of course) far weirder to see it live. The gazebo on the courthouse lawn lost its legs and fell straight down. There is one tree left on those grounds. You can’t get into the square at all, so we went around to a few different side streets to see if from different angles.

The Burger Bar (where C.’s dad used to go for lunch when working in town) is basically squished. The outer wall of the third-floor rooms in the historic building next to it fell outward. There are bricks all around the Burger Bar and its roof is partly caved in. Pot lights at the front of the restaurant have popped out with rectangles of siding around them and are dangling from their electrical cables, swaying in the wind. One of the glass doors is cracked (but not shattered, like auto glass) and open, up at a crazy angle on its hinges. Behind the restaurant is a big pile of yellow bricks that I realised came from the building next door. There is a crushed black car. (It’s the totalled cars that really drive it home to my sluggish brain. This might look a bit like human demolition/renovation but it is absolutely not). The Burger Bar has been seemingly abandoned the way it is. I don’t know if anyone was hurt there. It looks like a movie set.

 
(http://www.saugeentimes.com/468%20Liz/McGuinty,%20Mitchell%20in%20Goderich%20Monday%20aug%2022,%202011/600%20Folder/goderich%20burger%20bar%20destroyed.jpg)

The building above it must be at least 100 years old. The entire wall is gone on the 3rd floor and you can see into the apartment there: shabby green paint, a thin wall and door between rooms, tall ceilings like an old building might have. No evidence of furniture or possessions; I don’t think anyone was living there. But no tarps, so the two floors below must be forsaken as well. Again, it looks like a movie set.

From where we stood, we could see that across the square, the building that houses Coffee Culture (where we ate several times during the Goderich film fest last April) had also lost virtually all of its 3rd floor, and some of its 2nd. Again, no tarps. It will be coming down.

We walked over to the Livery (a performance space and rental hall) which was another potential wedding venue for us. Totally fine. I even think the paint on the shutters was already a bit flaked off before the storm. Across the parking lot, though, is a dense clump of fallen mature trees. The Bedford Hotel next door is also fine, and the restaurant (Paddy’s) there is the only business on the square to be open. And this is only one street over from the destruction at the Burger Bar.

Then we went the other way to the 140-year-old Victoria Street United Church, one of two U.C.’s in town. From the photos, I knew that the tornado had collapsed most of the the roof and part of the walls, but left three heavy roof beams sticking up like letter-A’s above the ruin. It was a really dramatic image, and you can see it from many angles in many photos of post-storm Goderich. Only one of those A-frame beam structures was still standing now; one was leaning up against the side of the church (which was a little surreal) and the other has been carted away I suppose.  What’s weird when you view the church from the square side is that part of the roof (above the balcony I think) is still fairly intact, and you can see one nice lamp hanging from it as though everything is normal. Houses right next to the church are largely fine. Across the street, two men (father and son) were carting damaged siding from their house to a pickup truck.

Someone I talked to joked/said that they’re trying to take the church down as quickly as possible before the Heritage People tell them what to do. They may be right, and I’ve seen this sentiment a few times in online posts by residents. I’m sure tornado victims resent outsiders telling them what to do, but if they rebuild the damaged buildings in the square quickly and cheaply, with whatever suburban-looking architecture is at hand, Goderich will no longer be Ontario’s Prettiest Town. And, I have to say it, Walmart and Zehrs’ and other box stores out on Highway 8 have done worse for the businesses in Goderich’s historic downtown than a tornado could ever do. Now is probably a good time to think about what Goderich wants to be.

Also, the predation I saw evidence of was in the form of the disaster-themed demolition-and-renovation companies, three of which were represented by vans throughout the town.

I’m sure that dealing with the authorities and insurance companies after an event like this is insane as well. I heard that if your house is going to be condemned, there is actually a tiny window of time before it is declared as such, after which you’re not allowed to set foot in it. So families will get out as many of their possessions (some in the basement etc. and completely fine) as they can before the Condemnation Man comes to call.

So...we went back to the car, feeling shaky and ready to go. I wanted to see the salt mine before we left town, so we drove an unfamiliar route to get there (I normally would have gone through the square!). This was through residential streets where some beautiful heritage homes with verandahs and widows walks and B+B signs and lovely gardens were completely untouched. Then we came ‘round a bend where we probably shouldn’t have been able to see over the cliff to the salt mine, but could because virtually every tree was uprooted.

Then suddenly we were in an area where about every 3rd house had a blue tarp over part, most, or all of its roof.  At the fundraiser last week in Toronto, someone quipped that they say it’s blue in Goderich, for three reasons: the mood (improving, I’d say!), the tarps, and all the sky that you can see. (I also asked a woman if she had seen the square when she returned, and she said “Yep - you can see the square from places you’re not supposed to be able to see the square.”  I’m no expert on Goderich sightlines but that seemed pretty true. I’m pretty sure we could see through the square to the salt mine down at the lake. That didn’t seem right.)

We headed down to the beach, which was PACKED with cars. Some guys in red shirts were taking donations for something (I don’t know what, the lineup was long so we turned around). The salt mine is very exposed on piers that jut into the lake; this is where the lone fatality occurred, involving a worked on the high boom. There are big chunks of siding and roof missing, and you can see right through one of the salt dome building structure things.

That was enough, really. I'd meant to look for some of the residential streets where most houses were gone, but that felt wrong. We went on home. I still feel pretty dismal about the whole thing, but really struck by how cheerful the residents of Goderich seemed to be.

I personally want to support Goderich and Benmiller as much as I can. I’ll be trying to volunteer when I’m up and they can use me, and we’ve donated some money and will support the businesses on the square (like the Bean, which serves the best veggie burger I’ve ever had, hands down) when they reopen.

If you’d like to help out, here are some links you can follow:

 

DONATING MONEY:

http://www2.unitedway.ca/UWCanada/press.aspx?id=1158

 

VOLUNTEERING:

http://blog.211ontario.ca/2011/08/goderich-tornado-update-and-recovery-efforts/

I made a thing! And that thing is silly.

But so, so true...

 

This Sunday! Eddington and Mueller-Heaslip performing at the Soulpepper cabaret

During the Luminato festival, Soulpepper Theatre is presenting FREE events after every performance, including a daily/nightly cabaret.

On Sunday, June 12th at 4:15pm, host Gregory Prest will interview a diverse group of artists and performers in a casual setting.

Soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip and composer/pianist Alex Eddington will be performing three songs from their oldest (decade-old!) collaboration: settings of Dennis Lee's children's poetry including "Goofus", "Summerhill Fair" and "Can You Canoe?"  Here are two other poems, in the original version with string quartet:

"Eight Poems of Dennis Lee" (excerpt) by Alex Eddington - Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, soprano; the Downtown String Quartet.

Time willing, Kristin and Alex might also present some silly faux-Classical music from their hit (??) 2005 Fringe show "Adieu, Friedrich Lips"

(Strangely - in the same building at 3:45 is another free performance featuring Mike Ross (who has an entire repertoire of Dennis Lee songs) and DENNIS LEE HIMSELF). Hopefully you can do both!

The cabaret is FREE!! 

HERE are all the free events happening at the Young Centre during Luminato...

UPDATED: Composerly things I'm up to (Summer/Fall 2011 and beyond)

Some of this is the same as what you already knew and doubtless already had penciled into your iPyd.

But some of it is new!  Take a look, for instance, at the changed date of my June premiere of "Light Looked Down" for choir - which I am now conducting - and some new confirmed dates in the fall of 2011. 

 

1) Sunday, May 22, 2011 - 8:00pm - TORONTO: Performance of "People are not cars" (2006, electroacoustic).

        Mechanical textures are made from human voices speaking phonemes.  Originally composed for Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton) for the "Parking Lot Project" at the 2006 The Works festival.

        The concert will feature electroacoustic works, many with live performers, including premieres by Paul Frehner, Adam Scime, Emilie Lebel, Riho Maimets, and Caleb Chan.

        Gallery 345 - 345 Sorauren, Toronto

        $20 regular, $15 seniors, $10 students

 

2) Saturday, June 4, 2011 - 8:00pm - TORONTO  (NOTE!  DATE CHANGED!):  Premiere of "Light Looked Down" for SSATB choir a cappella (text by Laurence Housman). Voices choir, conducted by Ron K.M. Cheung.

       ALSO NEW!  I will be conducting the premiere of my piece!

This is their 15th anniversary concert, featuring great music by 15 contemporary choral composers including Eric Whitacre, Imant Raminsh, Morten Lauridsen, John Taverner and Toronto's own Rob Teehan! 

St. Thomas' Church (383 Huron St., Toronto).  Adults $20, students/seniors $15

http://www.voiceschoir.com

 

3) a) Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - 12:00 noon - BARRIE ON. (Colours of Music Festival) Central United Church, 54 Ross Street (at Toronto Street)    Pricing information

    b) Thursday, October 13, 2011 - 12:00 noon - KITCHENER ON. (Wilfred Laurier University)     

    c) Sunday, December 11, 2011 - 3:00pm - TORONTO ON. (Great Hall, Hart House)

 

junctQín Keyboard Collective (Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti, Stephanie Chua)

 

Premiere (and aftershocks) of "Big Muddy" for piano six hands (!), commissioned by the junctQin Keyboard Collective.  This will be the first installment of a large-scale piece in my ongoing geographical series called "Grasslands, Badlands and Spirit Sands", inspired by soundscapes and landscapes in Canada's southern prairies.  This piece owes its genesis to Saskatchewan's Big Muddy Valley.  There will definitely be clusters!  Big Muddy Valley has big muddy buttes in it, like Castle Butte, on which there are incredible rain-craved patterns.

                      
** You can see more pictures of Big Muddy Valley and Castle Butte, and read about my summer 2010 travels across the south of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta (almost done!) HERE

 

4)  Saturday, October 29, 2011 - 8:00pm - TORONTO.  Premiere of "Dancing About Architecture" for brass quintet and orchestra.

A new kind of dance suite: the quintet moves, spatializing sound throughout the geography of the concert hall, moving among dance music as though strolling among buildings of a city.  Inspired by a quote of Jean Cocteau: "Give me music I can live in like a house!" 

       The Red Brass with the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra.  Conducted by Alex Eddington.

Part of "Music of the Americas", featuring pieces by Copland, Gershwin, Marquez, and a new trumpet concerto by Music Director Ronald Royer. 

       Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute, 3663 Danforth Ave.

       Tickets: $30 adults, $25 seniors, $15 youth.  (416) 429-0007

 

And beyond: 

 "Fuzzy Logic" (for Continuum ensemble with me narrating) premiere in October or November (date tba)

"Watershed" for two violins (teacher and student) for the CMC's wonderful New Music for Young Musicians project (will be premiered at Ping! in April 2012)

and the Brantford Symphony performing my piece "Saturday Night at Fort Chambly" some time in the Spring of 2012!

"Countdown" - It was a piece of music! Now it is an animation!

My piece "Countdown" from 2006 has been in the process of receiving an animation treatment from my Ottawa-based friend Rick Cousins.  And it is now finished!  And here it is! 

This changes everything.  Soon the kids will be clamouring for episodes of "Death to the Butterfly Dictator!, the animated series", and Scintillator figurines complete with dissonant outfits. 

And being the kind of parents we are, we'll probably let that happen. 

 

 

The weather right now is so gross, I'm blogging about it.

Because that seems to be what people do these days.  I'm just happy that I'm writing.  I thought about it all the way home, I was going to tweet about it and I thought NO, THIS is one to save for posterity!  Really.  As John Cage said, "I have nothing to say, and I am saying it". 

And it's seriously gross out there!  And strange.  I just had to walk my bike home from work, because strange grey gross slushyness is spreading over the streets so quickly that riding was immediately apparent as being unsafe. Luckily I had a toque in my bag to wear over my thin under-helmet cap, so I got home with a dry head at least.  Thank goodness for nesting hats! 

What IS it?  It's not freezing rain.  It's not sleeting.  It's, like, heavy rain that turns to thick, potent slush, as soon as it hits the ground, and that slush immediately builds itself into three-dimensional textures that clump underfoot.  The entire terrain has changed in a matter of an hour. It feels like walking on cloud poop.  Maybe is is cloud poop? 

Whatever it is, it's gross - and vague.  I'd take a picture of it but you'd see nothing.  You'd be better off taking one of Turner's particularly vague paintings of a hillocky landscape at dusk, smearing it with vaseline, and observing it from too close in a frustratingly dark room.

Do I sound blunt or angry?  I feel blunt or angry.  It's the weather talking.  It's vague and gross.  Isn't there some kind of vague and gross army we can call in to clean it up for us??

You know what we need?  A slush day to stay home and complain about when it's not as bad as we secretly hoped it would be.  Because we all really want all of this to come to a crashing squealing halt don't we?  Maybe it will.  It looks like the moon out there.  A moon with moon poop on it. 

UPDATE: Composerly things I'm up to (Spring/Summer 2011 and beyond)

It's Spring!  Or is it?  I'm getting contradictory information.  There is snow, yes, there is cold, yes, but I've also heard the calls of three seasonal birds that have arrived into town and might well be peeved that the weather isn't quite what it should be...

Anyway, it's a good time for some news! 

I have several musical premieres coming up (three in April! crazy!), and an old favourite will return.  Nothing theatrical taking the stage in the known future, but don't worry, there's a new solo show brewing... 

 

1) Saturday, April 2, 2011 - 8:00pm - Toronto: Premiere of "Windmill Dance" for 9 wind instruments and percussion.

Conducted by Alex Eddington.

Presented by the Scarborough Philharmonic, the concert ("Spring Serenade") will also feature premieres by Toronto composer Philip McConnell, and major Hollywood composer Bruce Broughton!

Kingston Road United Church, 975 Kingston Rd. Tickets $30/$25/$10.

http://www.SPO.ca

 

2) Thursday, April 21, 2011 - time uncertain - Montreal: Premiere of "Talking with strangers" for string quartet.  Quatuor Bozzini.

Part of a unique commissioning/fundraising project that will see the premiere of 32 new miniatures on the same concert!  *I'll be going to Montreal for this premiere*

Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur, Montreal.  100 Sherbrooke E.

http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca

 

3) Saturday, April 23, 2011 - 5:15pm - Toronto: Premiere of "The Stolen Child" (text by W.B. Yeats) for tenor and piano.

      ** note: THIS PREMIERE HAS BEEN DEFERRED TO A LATER DATE (summer?)

4) Tuesday and Wednesday, May 3 and 4 - 8:00pm - Toronto:  Performance of "Eight Poems of Dennis Lee" (2001) for soprano and string quartet.  Talisker Players with Xin Wang, soprano. 

Concert includes a premiere by my former composition teacher and extraordinary composer Alexander Rapoport. 

Trinity St. Paul's Centre, 427 Bloor Street West, Toronto.

http://www.jentekcompany.com/talisker/home.html

 

5) Sunday, May 22 - 8:00pm - Toronto: Performance of "People are not cars" (2006, electroacoustic).

        Mechanical textures are made from human voices speaking phonemes.  Originally composed for Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton) for the "Parking Lot Project" at the 2006 The Works festival.

        The concert will feature electroacoustic works, with or without live performers, by emerging and established composers.

        Gallery 345 - 345 Sorauren, Toronto

        $15 adults, $10 students

 

6) Saturday, June 11 - 8:00pm - Toronto:  Premiere of "Light Looked Down" for SATB choir a cappella (text by Laurence Housman). Voices choir, conducted by Ron K.M. Cheung.

This is their 15th anniversary concert, featuring works by 15 contemporary composers! 

St. Thomas' Church (383 Huron St., Toronto)

http://www.voiceschoir.com

 

And beyond: 

 "Fuzzy Logic" (for Continuum ensemble with me narrating) premiere in October

Scarborough Philharmonic premiere of "Dancing About Architecture" for brass quintet and orchestra, also in October

"Grasslands, Badlands and Spirit Sands" for piano six hands (!) for the Junctqin Keyboard Collective in the fall sometime (also October??)

"Watershed" for two violins (teacher and student) for the CMC's wonderful New Music for Young Musicians project (will be premiered at Ping! in April 2012)

and the Brantford Symphony performing my piece "Saturday Night at Fort Chambly" some time in the Spring of 2012!

Stop and Go

I've figured out how to take screenshots with my iPhone ("m'iPhone"?). I thought I might share what is on my screen most of the time now.

I'm pretty sure I didn't get this Phone so I could play games on it. I'm more of an iBird guy than an Angry Birds guy. The birds I know are never angry - or not for long. Whatever it is that's bothering them, they shake it off, in a way that people can't.

I learned immediately that I don't have meFone primarily for communication, or even for the music-related apps (though I've found an amazing Theremin emulator if you're interested). It's for stress relief. Playing with a glowing rectangle might be our species' (flawed) way to shake off our troubles like my cockatiel used to (and doubtless still would, if she only could).

I'm not sure that it works. Animals shake off their stress and trauma completely. I think we just put ours on hold. We drive it into the neck and shoulders. We stay Angry.

What I've been is actually Tired. And more wholly and vastly than i've felt before. Deep-tissue, multi-demensional tired. It's not lack of sleep so much as it is the energy I put out as a teacher... and that it's the first time I've been a teacher every day. Plus, running a community orchestra ("still!?!" cry my friends when they find out), applying for school for next year (more later). Come the last two weeks of term, in any free moment, when there were free moments, m'iFone and i found each other.

Like most consumers, I'm all the rage for physics-based games. Figuring out how to get a candy to a little monster, or a ball from one cat to another (while both cats just *SIT THERE*) is surprisingly engrossing. It can be hard to remember that the world outside the rectangle is also physics-based. It is perhaps a symptom of our wacky economy that it is actually cheaper to play Cat Physics than it is to buy two cats, train them to hold still until a ball comes near enough to grab it with their tail, and build a series of environments with cleverly-placed obstacles to overcome.

I wanted to connect myself more to the world before smart phones. While making no effort to play fewer games. So I started playing Go - one of humanity's longest-popular diversions - against a virtual opponent of ever-increasing prowess. What's great about this is that my obsession with this game is possibly attributable to things beyond my phone's glowing screen. There are lots of people who are obsessed with board games played on actual boards. hopefully soon I can play against actual humans. I want to wait for the right moment, when they're really concentrating, and then yell "GO!!!"

You know what's great, though? The other edge of the sword is that since no one plays Go, I'm way cooler than someone playing chess against their phone. Some day, someone will say "what's that you're playing?" and then they'll be impressed. One day.

I've yet to try Angry Birds. Lots of people say it's ruined their lives. I shake my head at it.

Back to the game. See that screenshot? I'm getting my asp kicked, and I'm only on a tiny board.

Impressions on acquiring an iPhone: Day Three.

This is what happens when you put an iPhone in my hand and tiredness in my most of me. Speaking of which, i've been on a kind of quest to load my me-fone up with the most intriguing apps I can find. So far the winner is a game where the object appears to be wrapping up wooden effigies of people and animals in a length of natural hemp rope, trying to cover as much of their bodies as possible with the least amount of rope. Who knew this would exist, let alone be engrossing enough to claim at least 90 minutes of my today? Even better, it's an award-winning iPhone app. And it's actually beautiful. I'll probably dream about it tonight. Will I be the rope or the animal?

Typing this post on a keyboard that I can nearly entirely cover up with my thumb is going reasonably well, considering that all the work is being done by one finger, and that finger is already experiencing some formerly unknown strains that suggest we are on the cusp of discovering entirely new genres of carpal tunnel. Auto-correct is nice, but if I reject its advances it sulks for a little while.

And, if past experience still holds, in a few minutes I'll look up and wonder why I've been staring at a rectangle that is smaller than the combined area of two triscuits, when there is a much larger world with REAL ropes and effigies. My neck is craned in too, real close. I feel a bit like I'm crouching in the dark over a single post-it note, trying to write my ninth symphony in white-out.

And I love it.

All this animal tying had really dividers

Seriously, auto-correct? "dividers"?

Now I can't even remember what it's supposed to be.

Anyway, it's zenned me out enough to take photos contrasting the various fabrics of my pants and bed, and use this as an impetus for a blog post.

I know, I owe you the rest of my summer travels. Hey, you're lucky I'm breathing three square breaths.

Oh and, a trumpet guy is playing my piece on a recital in Toronto on December 4. Maybe you can go. I'll tell you more soon.

Early night. 'night ...

Things I'm up to or involved with in some way now (Fall 2010)

The main things I'm directly involved with right now are working hard at a new job, and eating.

But while I'm occupied in these ways, various things I've written are being performed by other people!

 

One of these just happened last weekend:

1) Sept. 24-26, 2010: TORONTO (Bread and Circus): "Time Will Erase" - an opera for soprano and alto saxophone (world premiere)

Composed to words written and sung by the marvelous Kristin Mueller-Heaslip (this might actually have been my eighth time working with her?), with the partnership of saxophonist and backdrop-painter Jennifer Wardle, the first three performances of my first opera were a joy for me.  This is the first time I've seen one of my musical pieces stages - and brilliantly so, by director Virginia Reh.  Crowds were good, the piece got recorded twice (once by someone better than me).  And the piece is already getting another performance (see below)!

Rumour is the complete archival recording is soon to be up on my Canadian Music Centre page.  I'll post an excerpt here soon too. 

 

        The others events are yet to come:

 

2) Oct. 5-16, 2010 - various cities across Canada - "Trails" a structured improvisation for chamber ensemble and within a fixed soundscape

The essence is this: I was commissioned by Edmonton's Ensemble Mujirushi to write a new work, and was supported in doing so by an Ontario Arts Council grant.  I recorded the sights and sounds of 4 of Toronto's oldest roads (Poplar Plains, Davenport, Weston and Kingston) and created a 10-minute soundscape composition.  The recording is the same every performance, but the live music always changes; the chamber ensemble improvises according to certain rules, based on listening and reacting to the recording and to each other.  Here are the performers:
 

Helen Pridmore (voice), Chenoa Anderson (flutes), Allison Balcetis (saxophones), Ian Crutchley (computer), Piotr Grella-Mozejko (computer), and Jerry Ozipko (electric violin).

Other works on the program: by Dan Albertson (USA), W. L. Altman (CDN), Darlene Chepil Reid (CDN), Marek Choloniewski (POL), Ian Crutchley (CDN), Piotr Grella-Mozejko (CDN), Michael Kuehn (USA), John Oliver (CDN) and  Jerry Ozipko (CDN).

Here's the tour schedule.  I'll be attending in Toronto:
 

5 October: in Lethbridge, AB (University of Lethbridge)

8 October: in Saskatoon, SK (Saskatoon Composers’ Performance Society)

10 October: in Montréal, PQ (BradyWorks Concerts)

12 October: in Kitchener-Waterloo, ON (Wilfrid Laurier University and First United Church Concerts)

13 October: in Thunder Bay, ON (Lakehead University)

16 October: in Toronto, ON (Gallery 345).
 

For further details:     http://mujirushi.tonusvivus.com/
 

 

3) Oct. 23, 2010: NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE (Shaw Festival Studio Theatre): "Time Will Erase" - an opera for soprano and alto saxophone 

Yes!  Already, a repeat performance of my short opera that premiered in Toronto in September.  This time it is part of a showcase presentation at the Lyric Canada 2010 conference.  It sounds like a wonderful conference to be a part of!  Unfortunately I can't attend as I'll be wrangling an orchestra in Scarborough.  

 

4) Oct. 30, 2010: TORONTO (St. John's Norway Anglican Church): "Humoresque" for viola and piano

I wrote this piece 10 years ago, and it hasn't been performed in nearly that long. This time it will be performed by two visiting musicians from the Czech Republic: Jan Reznicek (violist of the renowned Janacek string quartet) and Eduard Spacil (an electroacoustic composer as well as a pianist!). 

The concert is called "The Bohemian Viola" and is the inaugural concert in the Scarborough Philharmonic's new chamber music series.  Other music: Mozart's "Kegellstatt" Trio (viola, clarinet and piano); and music by Canadian composers Philip McConnell, Alexander Rapoport and Ronald Royer.

 

That's all for now - there will be more in the new year too (premieres in April and June and a new performance of a classic piece in May!) and some cool stuff in the works for the 2011/12 season. 

 
 

Scotty dropped a coprolite

Look at that!  This post is going to be about the remainder of my great Prairie camp/drive, and it's going to stay that way.  I'd better jump write back into traveloguing so there's no risk of going off on tangents. 

Look at that!  A nice sunset as viewed from the guest house south of Val Marie SK, on the edge of Grasslands National Park.  As it turns out, the weather wasn't so delightful the next morning at all.  I got up quite early to meet a park guide at 7:00am - we were going to drive the 1.25 hours or so over to the East Block of the park to go on a guided hike through the badlands there to look at some fossil sites.  But there was rain coming - and it came - HARD - shortly afterward.  Plus, it had rained hard once already in the previous few days (once, memorably, during dinner, which resulted in an invitation into my neighbouring tipi to share some nutloaf cooked in Campbell's tomato soup, which in the midst of a thunderstorm in a tipi is actually the best thing possible).  So the roads into the East Block would have been so bad that if I did get in, I might not get out. 

So I decided to leave Grasslands park one day early.  The day actually cleared up very quickly, and by the time I packed up and drove less than half an hour, the sun was out and the world was bright and drippy.  I pulled into a town called Orkney, once again bemused by the Scottishness of Saskatchewan.

 

Orkney is a near-ghost-town, like many I saw across the south of SK.  There are still P.O. boxes, and a couple of the houses are inhabited, but mostly it's falling down.  There was an abandoned grocery store with the window missing in the door, and debris all over the place - including bits of the ceiling gradually collapsing as water seeped in.  The sound of the water dripping was amazing, so I recorded that as well as taking a lot of pictures.  I couldn't believe some of the things abandoned in there: a not-old microwave, a beautiful antique radio.  There were still posters in the window advertising upcoming events, some of them still to come.  So this place is still a community centre, in a very limited sort of way.

 

 

I kept driving west, though other towns, some also kind of dead and some quite adorable.  Because I got up and going so early I had much of the day ahead of me.   I turned north at Climax and headed north to Shaunavon, which was kind of out of the way, just because I'd been told the ice cream was good.

 

 

 

 

Sigh.  People of Climax, keep on being beautiful. 

To my surprise, Shaunavon was big enough that I actually had to look around a bit for the ice cream place.  I found it, but it wasn't quite open, so I figured I'd wait.  About five minutes after the time it was supposed to open, an old wood-pannelled station wagon pulled up.  The driver rolled down the window and explained that they had had to visit his wife's mother at the hospital, and then the couple in their 70s went in to open the parlour.  It was a drive-up place with nowhere to sit but outside, and only soft serve.  That's what they mean in Saskatchewan when they say ice cream.  And it's good stuff.  And they have coconut dip!  I had that about eight times this summer.

 

No, Shauvanon, you are not the Home of Chinese Food.  Also: surfing the Frenchman Valley? 

I drove west along the Red Coat Trail (Mounties, not the British) and down into the valley to East End, which is surrounded by some amazing coulees and badlands on the sides of the valley.  (this is the same valley that defines Grasslands park)  East End is where Scotty the Tyrannosaur was dug up in the 1990s, and there is a T-Rex Discovery Centre built into the hillside above the town, plus another town museum full of entirely random fossils in equally old glass cases, and dinosaur images on just about everything - though it can't hold a candle to Drumheller for sheer dinobranding.  The T-Rex Centre was open for tours, but work on Scotty halts for the weekend.  We could see into the area where scientists and volunteers are working on his fossils and will be for years to come.  I was shocked to learn how little we know about T-Rexes: only 8 or so have ever been found.  And the only Tyrannosaur coprolite (fossil poop) ever found might have been Scotty's, based on where it was found.  It is conjectured to be T-Rex poo only because of its size. 

 

On my way out of Eastend I took some seriously crazy gravel roads up and out of the Frenchman Valley, onto a rocky sideroad that goes straight up a hill (to access a radio tower - I actually stopped partway up and walked the rest lest my loaded wagon not make it) - the view was incredible, and somehow there was valley to be seen in all directions, almost like I was on an island.    

I can't get these photos to turn correctly.  This is similar to how I can't run a CD player when my students are watching.   

Then, over plateaus, down and up steep smaller valleys where the bridge is as close to river level as it can get, and finally onto Highway 21.

My ultimate goal was Cypress Hills park which straddles the SK/AB border and is a pretty popular spot on a long weekend, which this was.  I didn't have a reservation and was arriving a day earlier than planned, on the Sunday before the August Holiday Monday.  I got one of the few remaining tent sites and was told that I could move to an awesomer one the next day if people left. 

Wow, that was only one day - and it took me a siginficant portion of a day to write it down. 

Coming next: forts, poults, and not a cypress to be seen!

curmudgeon

I know, it's been forever.  The hourglass that was the 2010 Edmonton Fringe Festival spilled itself out, marking the end of summer.  I drove home, in a fun way, and immediately jumped into a new and engrossing job.

I'm not going to blog about the job - not that it's anything top secret, nor even second-rung secret - I just feel that it's professional to keep it out of here.  I'm teaching, and my students know how to use a computer really really well.  Gord knows I didn't when I was their age... which was before they were born.  By quite a bit.  Um... whoa. 

In other, completely unrelated news, my back hurts all the time and I'm increasingly resistant to change.

But I promised to blog this whole summer with you - and in fact I intend to keep this blog going beyond the Fringe summer, for once - but that is going to entail quite a bit of remembering of things that seem like they happened a year ago, even though the front of my station wagon is still covered in fluids that insects would prefer to keep on their inside.  I'm likely to have lost all the on-the-spot insights on the drive home, and all I might be left with are the hardened witty quips used in brief recountings of the summer for semi-interested Torontonians.  It's a risk we're going to have to take - together.  This has happened before: like when I didn't blog in Scotland for about 3 months, and then probably made a bunch of sheep stories up to satisfy my voracious readers back home, and then believed my own stories enough to make a play out of them.  And it will happen again.  I'll be writing my novel in my 70s, my will on my deathbed, and my memoirs in the Beyond. 

Let's start with Edmonton!  And let's be honest.  Edmonton Fringe wasn't what it could have been - but it was something that was okay.  I never sold out my little 90-seater.  I discovered that no one remembered The Fugue Code (a semi-hit in 2007), but some people remembered WOOL, but thought it was from one or two summers ago instead of four.  No one remembered Barry Smith (at first), who has had two previous hits there, one of which was brought back for the regular season!  The Edmonton Fringe-going public, to put it nicely, seems to live in the moment.  Which is great in its own way, I suppose.  But as I discovered when my unsympathetic Edmonton Journal review came out, they still on the whole treat the Journal star system (i.e. 1 to 5 stars) as a kind of scientific data set.  And let's face it, the other reviews have basically no weight, rightly or wrongly.  When my Journal review went to print, my sales literally stopped.  I know this because (as I mentioned in past entries) you can check the progress of your sales in Edmonton as often as you can refresh the page.  It was disappointing - and it's not about the money.  People wanted to come because they'd made up their mind.  And then they handed their mind over to someone else, and no longer wanted to come.  Perhaps they cheated themselves out of seeing something they really would have enjoyed.  Perhaps they saw something lame and dumb (they're out there, lots of 'em) instead, and loved it, because they were supposed to.  Of course, this isn't everyone - but it's enough people to make me not necessarily be that excited about returning to Edmonton Fringe, while one reviewer can still hold that much power. 

So, unfortunately there were quite a few times during Edmonton Fringe where wished I had stayed home to get ahead on work for the fall.  Despite my best intentions, I can't get anything done during Fringe tours.  Nothing!  I've been trying for 5 years.  I become so obsessed with getting people to come to the show that that's all I can think about.  This summer I thought I turned the corner when I realised that I have a limited tolerance for flyering, but then I would just sit around and silently wish that people would buy tickets, which generally doesn't work.  Martin Dockery pulled me aside and basically tried to stage an intervention.  It half-worked, in that I stopped feeling personally cheated by my Journal review.  Of course, Martin sold out his 175-seat venue for the entire run (and deservedly so), so he didn't have to worry about flyering so much at all.  

So when people ask me how my summer was I usually say it was great, annoying, okay, terrible and fantastic.  What was fantastic?  I met Martin Dockery!  And hung (hanged?) with Carly Tarrett!  And Jeff Culbert!  And Miss Hiccup!  And the Turtle Boy, and other real-seeming people with amazing shows.  This summer was all about the people - and the prairies.  I've been wearing my "I [heart] SK" shirt with pride.  My friend, whose initials happen to be S.K., was taken aback.

Also wonderful: the library venue in Edmonton, the two Ginas running lights/sound/love there, and the wonderful David Cheoros organizing it all.  I'd perform again there in a heartbeat.

The weirdest thing of the summer happened in Edmonton too, when all the B.C. forest fire smoke descended on the city without warning for the last four days of Fringe.  I actually wore a mask during the worst of it, until I decided I looked stupid because no one else was.  Like anyone, I'd rather fit in than avoid having to cough all that stuff back up and possibly increase my chances of lung cancer.  The Thursday was the worst: the sun was a red disk that you could look at comfortably with the naked eye - though I was smart enough not to stare.  The sky itself was Martian.  Take a look at this:

Gord Janet!  I've got to change the title of this blog post again!  This is the second one I've called "Written in Stone", with the intention of actually recounting the rest of my camping trip across the Prairies (including Writing-on-Stone park).  I will do this SOON.  There are photos to remind me of what might have actually happened, and barring that I'll make some stories up. 

Edmonton Fringe lead-up makes me feel like a head with my chicken cut off

Argh!  Argh, I say!  I can't get any work done.  Not that this is really anything new, or anything different than my usual Fringe touring life, in which I flyer and worry and perform and flyer in that order and sometimes I remember to eat, but in the last couple of days since I drove limply into Edmonton with mud-caked tires and my bike falling off the back I've actually been able to focus.  Not today!  There's media coming out.  The festival opens tomorrow.  There's so much to worry about.  No one knows how it's going to go! 

So I'm blogging.  Instead of just reading early Edmonton Journal reviews (just now out) or reading, I dunno, tweets about stuff, I'm blogging.  At least that is a kind of Thing, that I am Doing. 

I've been putting up posters - not too many, but some.  Postering is a bit like dowsing.  I hold out my tape gun and listen for subtle tugs of energy and intention.  Where will the audience flow?  How high will they look?  How many posters do they need to walk by before they stop to jot down my website and then go home and type it into their browser?  You almost have to learn to see through their eyes.  You have to be the audience. 

This is all all of us are talking about.  How many posters did you print?  How is that tape gun working for you?  Did you know the triangle posterboard thingies are up on Whyte Ave?  Will my poster get ripped down if I put it here?  There's a lot of rumour swirling around, a lot of buzz.  Sometimes, we ask each other whether we teched today.  How many people does your theatre hold?  Have you checked your presales?  (the answer is either "I don't like to know, so I don't check" or "about 10 seconds ago.  They hadn't changed yet.")  Mine are at 82 seats, and have been for a couple of hours.  Obviously I'm in the second camp. I just checked again: 82.  My demographic seems more likely to purchase in person, and the box office is closed for the day.  We talk about each other's demographics. 

Seriously, though, 82!  I've handed out ONE flyer, and sold 82 tickets!  That's one effective flyer!

What I guess I'm saying is that we're all demented from anticipation.  I feel like absolutely and that when this festival actually starts we'll all finally relax.  And then remember that we're supposed to be performing shows.  And then the reviews hit.  This is why we're really nervous here.  For the bad ones.  And for the pressure of the good ones.  If you get a five-star-'un in the Edmonton Journal, you can't not sell out.  They might hate the show, but they'll keep coming.  You couldn't keep them away if you physically assaulted your lineups with a basketful of rabid ferrets.  They have to come.  It's like, they've been called.

We're all demented.  Not just the performers. 

The most exciting thing that's happened so far is that the Fringe ran over my bicycle.  I was parked outside the Orange Hall, near the box office, and a truck (technically a sub-contractor) dropped off a kind of big bin thing.  I was in the library nearby, and only when I tried to ride the bike a while later did I notice that the front rim was warped.  And had three broken spokes.  And the very strong lock was bent to the point of being unusable.  No human kick could have done this.  Not even a basketfull of rabid ferrets could have done this.  Thankfully, the Orange Hall is where the Fringe security is, and was setting up at that time.  They took full responsibility on behalf of the Fringe, and reimbursed me for my repairs (which were done *very* quickly by United Cycle) and a new lock.  The damage was done on Tuesday, and here I am Thursday evening with my fixed bike and my money in my wallet.  Wow.  I feel very well-treated! 

 

Oh!  I guess you want to hear about the rest of my trip across the Grasslands, Badlands and Cakelands (just kidding, deliciously) of Saskatchewan and Alberta!  Well, I want to tell you about it.  In my next post.  I've got a lot of photos to put up and I have to get my memories in some kind of order.  And right now I feel like I should do SOME work before the library closes and I feel my way across the street to the Next Act Pub to put and end to my dementia for the night. 

By the way, the photo above was not cropped, except by the young boy who took it in Dinosaur Provincial Park.  This was taken on the very morning of the day I drove in to Edmonton; I'm pretty sure I left this part of me behind in the badlands.

This is probably about how the dinosaurs feel too.  They were big ol' featherless chickens, after all.

I'm the mayor of Prairie Dog Town (or, Little Dog on the Prairie (or, Prairie Dog Companion))

Has this ever happened to you?

Today I drove to a place where I wanted to go for a hike.  I found the spot, parked on the side of the gravel road - and the moment I got out of my car, I was lost.  I wasn't even sure I'd parked in the right place.  I hiked west into the hills on what looked like it might have been a trail 75 years ago, found a track heading the right way by serendipity, may or may not have turned north too early or too late, and climbed what may or may not have been the Broken Hills after which the trail is named.  At which point, I had a great view of the Frenchman River Valley (one thing I was expecting, at least) on my left as I hiked east over a completely unexpected group of hills, hit some high ground and saw the white tent shelter in the Belza campground about 1.5k north of my car.  If it weren't for that tent, visible from miles away, I don't think I'd be writing to you now.  I aimed for where I thought my car was, rather than going down into the valley as the guidebook suggested.  I thought, hey, I'll stay on the high land where it's easier.  Well, guess what, the bumpy high land I'd been in earlier now had an enormous gully in it.  So I crossed that.  And from the top of the next peak I could see an object that may or may not have been my car.  And there was another gully, so I crossed that, and half an hour later I could see that white tent and my car again, and they looked about twenty feet closer.  And more gullies where I couldn't see where I was going, and finally, I was in the clear... and realised that I was probably close to 2 km south of my car.  The trail loop should have taken me to the north - I thought I'd missed those big gullies earlier because I was south of them.  

 

Do you see it?  My car?  That's it on the right.  Not the white thing.  1.5 km to the right of the white thing.  This would be the furthest distance from which I have successfully identified a car. 

So basically, I hiked an 11.6 km loop that was actually more like a 15 km loop, and may or may not have hit any of the sights I was meant to see.  And when I got back to my car there was a warning note on it - the warden had spotted the antlers in my seat (given to me at the B+B in Big Muddy!) and he thought I was taking them out of the park.  I went into the office in Val Marie to clear my name, and also to figure out why the Broken Hills Trail has NO markers on it.  Turns out the bison get itchy in the spring and have a tendency to take down the signs with the force of their scratching.

I did see an antelope, though - and he saw me.  He watched me for about 25 minutes as I walked along a high grassy plateau.  He'd stare for a while, then back off by a bit, then stare some more, then sniff, then come a few steps closer, then take off behind a rise in the land only to appear a little ways away.  This is pretty much exactly what sheep used to do with me in Scotland, except they would lose interest more quickly.  

 

rabbits and antelopes look roughly the same.  This could be either.  Or both. 

I also saw a rabbit and a dove-like bird that didn't fly so well.  And that was it for animals!  Come to think of it, no birds in the sky, no bison turds, and considering this is the wettest summer ever for Grasslands National Park, the ground was very parched - like, cracked-mud parched - in a lot of places.  And now I'm being serenaded by chattering birds, howling coyotes, and there's a tiny toad hopping by.  I must have hiked into the dead zone today.  One thing that was very much alive was the grass - there are 70 varieties in the park! - and very hardy they are.  It just took me an hour to pick out most of the speargrass spears and other novely-placed seeds wedged in my socks.  There must be over fifty grass seeds embedded in each sock - and keep in mind that I was wearing fairly high-topped hiking boots!  I'm impressed that plants could be that good at spreading their own kind.  I will probably have to throw the socks out...

Yesterday I went on a driving "Ecotour" of the park that has points of interest along it marked with signs that are surrounding by fencing to prevent bison-scratch incidents.  Two of these sites were "dogtowns" - communities of prairie dogs that you can only really see in a place like this where the little dudes are left alone to do their thing.  Every ten to fifteen feet there was a mound, with a hole.  Most of them had a single prairie dog sitting atop them.  As I walked along, they made continuous sounds - a sort of chirpity-barkity-throat singing, because they make a sound on the inhale as well.  It seemed to be the way they conversed above the wind.  Each prairie dog has its own pitch, timbre and rate of chirping, so you get really cool polyrhythmic music.  And as you walk along, the instrumentation changes.  When you're too far from a particular 'dog, they stop chirping and just stare.  When you get too close, they descend into their hole.  So there are never more than 3 making sound at a time.  I recorded this - and some insane grasshoppers who hovered in front of me while rattling - and was excited to get to the second dogtown.  But at that one, every 'dog was silent.  Why?  No wind?  Until I got out of my car... It was then that I figured out they the sound they were making was the sound of them being upset that I was walking around recording them make the sound.  Shrodinger, meet dogtown.  

Tomorrow, weather willing, I'm going to drive a long way to the East Block of the park to go on a guided hike of the badlands.  If there's too much rain, the roads will be impassable.  We had a dramatic thunderstorm this evening - my tipi neighbours invited me in for nut loaf (how can I have not discovered this yet?) and roast potatoes - random things in random parts of the tipi got wet.  There's talk of more random wetness tomorrow.  I have to meet at the park office near here at 7:00am to find out whether the hike is on.  Yes.  I'm that committed. 

coyotes and footlights

It looks like I actually might make more money performing at the Grasslands National Park Fringe festival than I ever did in Saskatoon.  My audience so far here has included one prairie rattlesnake, two nighthawks, something that sounds like a toad, a gaggle* of coyotes, one mormon metal-mark (sp?) butterfly, rabbit turds, and a sneaky little mouse.  Roadies: an antelope, many sparrows that fly up at the last possible moment, thousands of dragonflies (thankfully fewer than ten now living in my grill), and just as many gophers - one now, alas, dead under my wheels - another that stood tall in the road, oblivious to the fact that I had to pass it - many more near-misses - and all the ones that scurry off to their burrows on the side of the road.  Or IN the road.  I mean, seriously.

* I think the term is actually a "heckle" of coyotes. 

I'm staying in a tipi!  I was going to camp, but I upgraded the moment I realised I could!  Advantages: I can stand up in it.  Heck, I could stand another of me on top of me in it.  Disadvantages: colder than a tent, and more bugs can get in.  But for some reason, they don't.  Last night I sat in the door of the tipi, looking out at the landscape, writing, and watching the mosquitos cloud around about two feet from me.  Only one of them thought of entering the door, and tentatively at that. 

A mouse kept me up last night, though, constantly scurrying through looking for something or other.  And I kept thinking that I was about to go onstage.  Yes, I'm in a vast and ancient prairie landscape, staying ina traditional shelter, and I'm having performance-anxiety dreams.  And all under Nature's lighting special: the Moon.  Tonight is astronomy night and I'm thrilled.

The landscape is oddly like Scotland, by the way: treeless, windswept, wacky-shaped hills, and the trees only grow in the sheltered coulees.  But much drier.  And Scotland lacks black widow spiders and rattlesnakes.  In fact, there have been many strange parallels between this trip over the last few days and my Scottish memories - but I won't go too much into that now as I've been sufficiently inspired (as hoped!) to do some writing toward Yarn: the "sequel?" to WOOL that I hope to have ready to perform before too long.  Dervaig: meet Val Marie.  Calgary: meet Calgary.*

* look it up.  I've gotta get back out into the scenery.

So: to get you up to date: Winnipeg Fringe ended on Sunday night, and it was my most successful ever.  I'm itching to get back there with Yarn but who knows when?  This is a busy, busy, and busy year coming up.  Thrice busy, once having trouble finding time to write, as they say.  Anyway, very fun festival this year, I had a great time, got to know some people better - including Darrel, a long-distance trucker who takes time off every year to see 40+ Fringe shows!  On Monday I passed on a day at the beach (sigh) to take HOURS to get my stuff organized (I'd been staying in Winnipeg for 21 days!) to drive off westward.  I spent two nights at Spruce Woods provincial park (MB) which was buggy but very cool.  The spirit sands are all that is left now of a HUGE dune area on the shore of the large prehistoric lake.  There's a strange, multicoloured spring in the sands called the Devil's Punch Bowl.

I spent two nights in that park then drove a long way west into Saskatchewan, passing through Weyburn for the second time this summer but from a different direction - like I was meeting myself - and then into the Big Muddy Valley, which was SO quiet, and vast, and hot, and amazing.  It's private land, but you can hike around/on Castle Butte.  I had no idea Canada had anything that looked like this.  It's amazing. 

 

(uh, this one should be rotated.  Not sure what happened.  Look for the varmint!)

The moment that my car pulled up I was visited by two begging gophers.  I recorded their whistling and did, eventually, feed them baby carrots, if only to make up for killing one of their kind earlier on the road. 

I stayed at a B+B on a farm just out of that valley and had a lovely walk up to the top of the hills where I failed to find a complete tipi ring (a circle of stones that once held down tipi skins), but found a mystery bone that had been gnawed by a porcupine and a whole lot of beautiful.  Then I drove out to Grasslands via the St. Victor Petroglyphs (very hard to make out) and a whole lot of tiny towns that are equal parts lovely and pathetic.  I've been putting my backroads map to good use!  

 

 

I'll post more photos of Grasslands etc. soon but I'm anxious to get back out there now.  I've been hiding from the hottest of the day, but the day is getting away from me...

(after Grasslands... Cypress Hills park via Eastend SK, then Writing-on-Stone and Dinosaur Parks and into Edmonton via the back way through Camrose.  A week and a half without major highways... or even secondary highways for the most part!) 

Exchange

This is the time of the Winnipeg Fringe where everything gets a little muddy.  Particularly this year: my fourth, and if you look at it through green-tinted glasses, my best.  By the third last day or so I was sick of flyering.  Every year in the final weekend I start majorly losing what little ability I ever had to remember who I've already talked to.  Or as my character might point out: "to whom I've already talked".  But I should flyer in the last weekend, because there are plenty of new people out there who haven't been around for the whole week before, and some of them aren't between the ages of 45 and 78, and if I don't get my show into the minds of these fresh new unbiased theatre-likers, then they'll just go to the five-star shows by default.  But by the time they've shown up, I'm worn out at worst and terribly cynical at best.  Yesterday I was going up to people (in fun) and saying "OK, look, we're going to be honest with each other here.  I'm running out of flyers; we're running out of days in the Fringe festival; so tell me: are you still actually making decisions about shows to see, or are you all booked up?"  But I find it draining to be told by hundreds of people that they've made their decisions (on what basis, I wonder?) and that I just haven't made the cut.  It's hard to hear that an hour before performing.  That's why I didn't flyer much at all in the last few days.  Because I have to get up on stage and genuinely love my audience. 

This happens every year, for a lot of us I think.  And it feels like the festival, as it comes to an end, should come to an end.  And then we go on to Saskatoon Fringe, or Calgary Fringe, (or camping, for me, this year, which actually might be more profitable)... and then we get to Edmonton, where people have planned out THE ENTIRE FESTIVAL in advance!  You flyer them, and without saying a word they reach into their purse or their handbag, and they pull out an enormous, complex schedule of every show they already have tickets for, and they have no idea whether your show is on the schedule or not.  And they find you on it, or not, and they either nod or shake their head, and the schedule gets folded back into the purse or handbag and no words are ever exchanged.  And then you go eat a green onion cake because at least you know what you're going to get from it.

Last night I had my last show, which wasn't my hugest house (I actually sold out part of this Festival run, it's been awesome) - but they were amazing.  There was a woman who hilariously vocalised her reactions.  "Oh yeah!"  "Oh no!"  And possibly "D'oh!" at one point.  We had a great time.  After the show I drank a bottle of Bushwakker Bombay IPA while walking up Main Street, while continually wondering aloud whether or not this was legal in this province.  I tried to go to Breast Friends, but we went in at the last minute and somehow the show had oversold... (first time I've even HEARD of that at a Fringe)  So I got scooped up by Brent Hirose and we saw two crazy shows in a row: An Examination of Rapheal Saray's Oeuvre... and Scar Tissue.  Then as I was approaching the King's Head everyone was leaving for a dance party in one of the tall warehouses of the Exchange district.  We climbed up to the third floor and walked through an enormous dark dusty room with pillars toward the music, and then up a ramp through a small door into what must have been a neighbouring building.  LOUD music, fog, nibblies, what looked like a schmancy clothing store behind a curtain, lots of dancing people, a handful of Fringers.  The first thing that happened was two young strangers asking whether I was that guy they saw climbing down off a building earlier that night.  Which is weird because in 2006 I saw a guy climbing down off a building in that area in the middle of the night.  In Winnipeg's exchange district all times are one time.  Danced for a while, drove Celeste (local performer friend) home, talked of many things in the parking lot, and I got home just as a robin was announcing the day.  I wasn't tired.  I wasn't hungry.  My bladder didn't care that it hadn't been emptied since my show ended at 8:45.  I was satiated. 

Today, though, I'm irritably tired.  But catching up on some shows.  And getting ready to go CAMPING tomorrow.  I'll be blogging all that plus photos when I'm able.  Like, when there's the The Internet.

The reviews are in! Well, as far as Winnipeg is concerned...

Tired Clichés had a great run at the 2010 Winnipeg Fringe, which is wrapping up around me as I write.  I sold out part of the run and had big and really responsive houses for the whole thing.

And check out some of these reviews!! 

Now it's on to Edmonton Fringe... after a little camping expedition across the southern Canadian prairies!

---

Grade: A    (aka. FOUR-and-a-HALF STARS)

"... a hilariously funny, fast-paced one man show...  Eddington’s razor sharp delivery, quirky sound effects courtesy of a pocket full of small instruments and Dawe’s thought-provoking script ensure there is never a dull moment."

- Anthony Augustine, Uptown Magazine (Winnipeg)

"[Eddington is] a whiz at the breathless free association that marks Dawe’s observational humour."

- Morley Walker, Winnipeg Free Press

[FOUR STARS]

...

"While Eddington doesn't have Dawe's geeky boyish charm, he does display many admirable qualities in his own performance style: he's quick, intense (to the point that he borders on frightening sometimes), and - as you might expect from a composer - he has a great ear for the rhythm of language.

There's nothing clichéd about his performance or Dawe's writing."

- Joff Schmidt, CBC Manitoba

"As someone once said, you can’t miss with good material, and this is an absolutely great TJ Dawe script.  What I liked best, though, is the way that Alex Eddington made it his own, by bringing his physicality and talent for sound to the production.  It was a totally mesmerizing hour. ..."

- Kevin Longfield, the Jenny Review (Winnipeg)

(you can read the full reviews HERE)

ghosts in the wiring

Some weird stuff has been going on around here.

First of all, right at the beginning of the festival, my billetmate Harvey forgot about the third lane when he was crossing Portage Ave. and very nearly got hit by a car driven by a teenager who apparently didn't ask himself why the cars in the other two lanes might be stopping.  Harvey is from New York and considers himself an expert street-crosser, so this was a shock.  Every city has a different driver culture.  Apparently lots of people get hit around here, even on the sidestreets.  Winnipeg's philosophy is that the east-west streets above and below Portage are actually alternative main streets.  So every time I have to cross the one street just south of John and Naomi's house I have to remind myself that the cars are going to shoot through the intersection at about 50 - double that at night.  Consider that late at night my reasoning ability is halved, and we are in for trouble. 

Ragpickers is haunted.  I always suspected this.  Venue 13 (I'm not making this up) is the Bring-Your-Own-Venue where I performed Old Growth in 2008.  It's a charming place, but wacky beyond belief.  The wooden stairs are rickety, there are inexplicably two side-by-side doors into the theatre, the theatre itself is an irregular heptahedron, and the stage is apparently part of the remains of the deck of a Spanish galleon thrown onto the shores of Lake Manitoba in a storm.  Including a trapdoor.  It was oddly perfect for Old Growth (playing a big forest in a small room actually works well), but for Tired Cliches I knew I had to go somewhere else where I wouldn't get splinters, shards, or entire young trees stuck in my foot. 

So I was at Ragpickers on Monday night for Paul Hutcheson's show "Third Time Lucky".  Paul is a comic storyteller whose stories can be intense, lewd, or touching, generally all at once.  He opens this show with a story about a dinner party, after which he is violently ill... before he has time to get home.  He ends up vomiting very loudly behind an elementary school where has has been supply teaching.  I won't say more, you should see the show, but anyway...  Paul is doing this impression of loud, intense, seemingly projectile vomiting, and at the climax of the story this really loud, almost painfully loud sound comes over the speakers.  It didn't sound like any thing identifiable, except a very distorted bell or something.  It definitely wasn't a bad cable connection, or a radio signal (those are much fainter).  We all assumed it was an intentional sound effect played accidentally too loud.  Paul incorporated it smoothly: "Am I the devil?"  He had just mentioned in the story that he had just noticed the cross high on the wall - this was a Catholic elementary school.  And then, the sound.  About a minute later when the first story was over, Paul stopped for a second to say he had no idea what the heck that was.  The technician shrugged.  Paul kept going.  And about a minute later, one of the two doors going into the theatre, which had been open very slightly, gently closed as though someone was pushing it.  I checked with the volunteers afterward - no one had been hanging around in the hallway. 

I've told this story to a few people, including my friend Anne Wyman.  Apparently in 2008 she was performing "Porn Star" (yes, the Chris Craddock show) at Venue 4 (Onstage at the Playhouse), an undoubtedly spooky place where I coincidentally performed The Fugue Code in 2007, when another weird sonic thing happened.  In Venue 4 the audience sits at the back of the stage, the performers perform on the front of the stage facing the back with a black flat behind them, and behind that you can see part of the actual hall where the audience sits for full productions during the year: plush seats and balconies with ornate plaster mouldings.  In The Fugue Code we actually used the lights pointed at the balconies to achieve an effect of depth.  It's a very cool space... and it means that Anne Wyman and I have performed on the same stage as Louis Armstrong and even earlier stars than that.

So, Anne's show began with a bit of music.  It faded out, and she began the show.  But for the first FIVE minutes of the show one night, some other music, music she describes as "crackly old French music" came drifting in from the hall behind her.  The technician heard it too, and after the show he assured here that there was NO way music could be coming from out there.  No speakers.  Locked doors.  All that. 

So all of this (and more!  My friend Chris Bange of the excellent "The Excursionists" has been regaling me with spooky stories) - all of this was on my mind when my own Tired Cliches sound went haywire last night about halfway into the show.  The speakers sputtered.  And then they went BUZZZZZZZZZ.  Turned out someone had accidentally kicked the cable at a connection point and it was loose.  I thought of stopping the show and saying "ok, everyone on the left side of the room please look down...".  It could have been funny, but the sound was LOUD and needed to be ended immediately.  And I was already losing momentum in the F-You monologue.  So I made an executive decision and turned off the amp, which is conveniently located in a lovely old cabinet on the right side of the stage.  And I did the rest of the show without sound.  We fixed it in time for "Psycho Bitch".

The Free Press is just going to have to dock me another star for my rickety sound setup!  Jeez Louise, when I die I'm going to haunt their library.

Anyway, I sold out again last night!  Things are going gangbusters.  Let's see if I can fill four more shows.  Lets see if I don't collapse in a pile of my own flyers first. 

shorn out

Last evening I got out of P.S. 69 (Susan Jeremy's show, even better than I remembered it from 3 years ago) at 8:15 pm, and once I had flyered the line for Man 1; Bank 0 and left Portage Place Mall it was the golden hour.  I adore this city in the evening light.  The exchange district has an incredible number of the thing I love most in the world: crazy old signs.  And these signs are painted on the side of warehouses that are old and tall and have amazing fire escapes on them and are at strange angles to each other - because the exchange district is where Winnipeg's different surveyor grids come crashing together with almost as much historical importance, and considerably more force, than the lazy confluence of rivers nearby at the Forks.

So I was walking around taking a photo every five seconds - all of them superbly lit by Pheobus herself - and I came across this:

 

Two blocks south of the King's Head Pub.  Basically right in Fringe central.  How did I miss it?

Do you know what this is?  This is Fringe publicity chalk that I put on this wall in 2006.  My WOOL chalkings have been legendary here, as many of them on the MTC building were still visible in the summer of 2008.  I long ago stopped chalking walls, once I figured out that it takes a long time to come off.  But four years?  Are you really telling me that in four years, no rain ever angled enough to the west to wash off a tiny bit of chalk?

It must be a sign.  In fact, that is what it is.  I'm not going to rub it off.  I want to see whether it can last as long as this sign:

 

Or even this one:

 

There were farm animals at Market Square the other day.  I forgot to tell you this.  Baby chicks!  I tried to do the thing where you put a finger up to a bird's breast and they automatically step up on your finger, but chicks don't respond well to this.  They sort of peck you limply and fall over.  So I had to pick them up with my full hand just like all the other 8-year-olds.  Then I visited Carlos the Alpaca.  The sign said "Carlos loves to talk!"  Indeed, Carlos repeatedly stated his displeasure with the afternoon children's outdoor programming at Market Square by squeezing out a complex series of whines and groans through his massive underbite.  Don't be a spoilsport, Carlos!  The calf next to him was perfectly content with the down-home bull-whipping hoe-down and tinny fiddle music.  

 

Yesterday I saw the most incredible pairing of shows possible.  They were diametric opposites.  The first show was "Commencement" (listed as The Pumpkin Pie Show, which is the company/series/etc.).  I never cry at stuff.  I'm the jerk who didn't cry at Jake's Gift (though I enjoyed it and found it moving).  But I was shake/crying at the end of Commencement.  Holy shlamizzle!  Then we had a quick beer (I had half of Laura's) and went to The Screw You Review in the same venue.  Seriously, it was precisely as obscenely funny as Commencement was sad and difficult. 

Um, so there's something weird going on with reviews this year.  A large number of Free Press reviews mention the age (sometimes very wrong), physical appearance, sexual orientation (in one case, as the first word) and location of origin of the performer(s).  Mine basically says he's got to dock me because my lighting is patchy (I'm in a BYOV and had no control over this, plus, I mean, come on man, you saw my best performance yet).  Really?  In a small word-count, that's what you've got to say?  Could you maybe review the show?  I strongly suspect that some of these reviews were written by Carlos the Alpaca.   

Speaking of which, I don't wanna go to Fringe today.  I'm too tired!  I'm worn out!  But there are so many shows to see...  This is the usual paradox.

In the words of Dudley, an elderly woman portrayed by my billetmate Harvey in his show Love in the Time of Mother: it's CRAZY!  It's STUPID! 

Omi night

I sold out!  I'm a sellout! 

This doesn't happen very often.  Apparently precisely 94 people attempted to see my show in the 93-seat venue, and one person was left to go sulk.  One other person did get to see the show but had to sit behind an enormous statue of an angel with outstretched hands and wings. 

Last night I had one of the most fun performances of my life, for the largest and most responsive Tired Cliches crowd yet.  I felt so much in control the whole time.  I was in the palm of my own hand.  It was amazing.  There were two reviews there too, so here's hoping.*  I like to think the sellout was due to my fine flyering skills, but probably had more to do with the fact that everyone thinks I'm actually TJ Dawe.  Oh, and the great CBC review that came out yesterday morning.  Four stars!**  Seriously, though, Kelly Hughes (the owner/ conversation piece of Aqua Books who finds new ways each night to try to crack me up in his pre-show speech) keeps overhearing people who apparently have only skimmed my program listing (where Dawe's name is mentioned thrice and mine once, but definitively).  I've discovered that when I'm flyering, and then mention that TJ Dawe is not in fact performing the piece (after having made it clear that he wears the hat of author), some people say "but you really look like him", while pointing at the photo (of me!) on my flyer.  Uh, yes.  I have to start all over again.  I'm worried someone is going to contact the Better Business Bureau about misleading advertising.  It's not my fault!  TJ's name, in print, causes momentary blindness.

*this is what I typed!  Of course, reviewers do create reviews. 

** out of how many?  Four?  Five?  Twelve thousand?  It's like the Two Scoops of Raisins.  How big are the scoops? 

Winnipeg Fringe is generally off to a bit of a slow start, though.  There weren't many big lines, generally, in the last few days... but then suddenly Rob Gee (Smartarse) sold out a noon show, Laura Anne Harris (the director of Tired Cliches and Psycho Bitch) sold out her 5:15 opening of Pitch Blond with no known buzz.  Of course, there were fifty trillion people to see the anticipated comback of Die Roten Punkte at 11:45pm last night (I didn't stay... I had a headache after I put so much into my sellout show).  But generally slower than expected.

Shows I've seen:

A Day in the Life of Miss Hiccup (beautiful, silly, oddly logical but always full of whimsy... this is a lady who cries bells!)

The Fugitives: Eccentrically We Love.  Of course I'm a fan.  I discovered The Fugutives (an acoustic/spoken word band) AT Winnipeg Fringe in 2007, and they're back with a much differently-toned show.  Everything is a competition for them now.  I bought a Team Accordion t-shirt.  And their new album, of course.

Company Man: I caught the world premiere of Nile Seguin's latest standup show.  Awesome material that he was trying out for the first time.  Nile decided to read up on business and economics and discovered what I've always suspected to be true: a pair of dogs owned by your theatre friend are better investors than any expert.

Billy Stutter: an Irish Play   Intriguiging drama with some really funny meta-moments including some deliberately over-the-top jokes about Lucky Charms etc.  But it's truly an Irish play because it opens with a grave being dug.  And there's a ghost with a guitar!

Raining in Barcelona:  *amazing* performance from some Saskatoon friends.  I'd never seen them do this kind of dramatic character work, and loved it.  The script is odd.  Laura and I agreed that it's European, and accepted it at that.  However, the sound effect for the seagull was clearly a crow.  And anyone who thinks they know the gender of a seagull is deluded, unless they are a seagull.  Trust me, I'vebeen to Victoria. 

Psycho Bitch: finally!  Of course, I did the music/sound for this one and know it well, but I finally got to see the whole thing fully staged with an audience.  And I teared up at stuff I knew was coming!  Please check this out, it's a very funny/moving show.

Today...  The Excursionists: a Matter of Seconds.   A much-anticipated sequel to Jonah and Chris' 2006 Fringe hit! 

And some other stuff.
 

Non-fringe activities that I will be accomplishing are few, but include a G20-WTF-police-response-related rally (oddly near the Fringe site) this afternoon, and possibly a visit to John and Naomi's church tomorrow (it's sundae sunday!  The tastiest pun ever!).  I missed Omi night on Thursday - although it wasn't for me - that's what their adorable grandkids call Grandma (Na)omi, and their evening with the G-parents (who live just up the street!).  At Folk Fest one of them mistook me for his uncle Chris. Close enough: Long blond hair, check.  Dorky hat, check.  From Toronto, check.  Helped Kristin and Ben move into their new house: check (please see my ealier post about that astounding coincidence)!