different strokes

The treat this past Saturday was riding my bicycle down to the overwrought Paramount cineplex, to go to the opera.  I was lucky enough to get a returned ticket to this sold-out event: Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment," in a brilliant production from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.  Live, on screen.  

You sit in the movie theatre in Toronto - and all around the world - as the stage manager on the giant screen says, "Maestro to the pit, please."  And watch the conductor stride through the backstage halls of the Met, emerge into the pit, acknowledge the applause in that vast glittering hall, and then turn to the orchestra.  And we're there, in the pit with him, watching the faces of the oboe players and the cellists as they play the overture.  

And then the curtain rises and we are practically on-stage, watching the singers in close-up.  It was spectacular, especially in this production, which was brilliantly directed, acted and sung. At the intermission - after we've had the treat of Renee Flemming interviewing the stars, literally as they walk off the stage - I saw an elderly European couple unwrapping giant sandwiches.  We all had a breathtaking artistic experience for $20.  What a fantastic innovation this is.

Later that day I confronted another artistic experience, which took my breath in a different way.  My son decided to show me his new tattoo, his fifth.  It covers all of one side of his right leg from knee to ankle.  I reeled backwards in shock.   It was the most hideous thing I'd ever seen.  "How can you mutilate your body in this way?  Carve this into your flesh?  How are you going to get rid of it when it's an embarrassment you no longer want to live with?"

He was hurt and angry.  "Tattoing is a culture and an art form," he said.  "It's artistic expression and I love it.  This isn't the last."  And we left it there.  It's his body.  To mutilate as he sees fit.

You know, the cinema was packed for the opera but there was almost no one under the age of 25.  I guess the kids are all out pursuing their own forms of artistic expression.  And ironically, my bet is that my son's was a great deal more expensive, on Saturday afternoon, than mine.

souvenir

It's spring, and a middle aged woman's thoughts turn to ... income tax.  Ah well, a quick hard sting and it's over, whereas the blooming outside the window, the forsythia and daffs and cherry blossom and magnolia - oh, the magnolia ... these will last for at least a week or two.  It's hard to sit inside working on the perfect days, which my Canadian bones know are short-lived; I unsuccessfully fight the urge to slip out and potter in the garden.  Luckily I can unplug my laptop and move around the house following the sun - even sit outside tapping on the deck.  Hi my name is Beth and I am a lightoholic.

A few days ago I went to my local copy shop - on the way in, passed my Cabbagetown neighbour the magnificent Michael Ondaatje, on the way out - and copied all of my penpal Barbara's letters from the early Sixties, to send to her family in England.  Her sister Penny wrote today that they had arrived - 78 pages worth - and she's almost afraid to read them.  She's waiting till the weekend when her older sister arrives, and they'll go through them together.  Barbara was 12 when our correspondence started in 1962, and 16 when she died at the Mayo Clinic after an operation to repair the hole in her heart.  I marvel that somehow, through all those years, I knew the worth of her letters and kept them safe.  Even as I xeroxed, I was eating an apple and to my horror, the dampness on the counter smudged a few lines, written with a fountain pen. 

As I wrote to Penny today, nothing except the health of my children matters more to me than saving stories, than listening to the voices tell their tales.  One of my life's jobs is not only to chronicle my own life stories, but to encourage others to do the same.  

I opened a dusty box last night that has been on a bedroom shelf, undisturbed, for years, "letters, souvenirs" marked on the side.  Inside I found files: "Writing 1967-74," "Letters by me," "Letters to me," "Souvenirs 1989-95,"  "correspondence," "friends."  I found an envelope marked "Anna's hair, May 9, 1981," snipped when my daughter was six days old.  High-school and university essays on "Jude the Obscure" and "Salinger's Opinion of American Society." High school marks.  A letter my partner and I wrote to my grandfather one weekend in 1980, to tell him that I was pregnant and he would, at last, be a great-grandfather.  It was never mailed because my mother called to tell him the great news on a Friday and, though he wasn't ill, he died on Sunday.  His message to her, to pass on to me: "I am beyond thrilled.  Get married immediately." 

Some people leave the past behind and march on.  Others keep looking back.  No accounting for it; it's just a way some of us live, keeping a paper trail of the heart.   

in praise of Eleanor Wachtel

Sunday afternoon of a perfectly beautiful day.  Last Monday, at 10 a.m. it was winter, and by noon, it was summer.  That's how it is in Toronto - one hour of temperate spring.  Suddenly you throw off your winter coat and scrabble in the closet for sandals to put on your pasty white feet. We've had such a heavenly week that Torontonians are desperate for something to complain about and have settled on a possible transit strike.  

This was a typical Sunday, more or less, though I didn't go for my usual Sunday morning walk. It was my friend Gina Dineen's 50th birthday last night, which she celebrated in her usual dynamic fashion - in a local community centre with pot luck food, a cash bar with profit going to an Afghani school, and a D.J.  My only New Year's resolution this year was to dance more, and I kept my resolution admirably last night.  So, no walk. 

But my afternoon was like all other Sunday afternoons - tethered by CBC radio.  I listened to part of Tapestry, the excellent program about spirituality at 2, though phone calls and errands got in the way.  But at 3 every Sunday, my job is to find something boring to do with my hands - cooking, ironing, dishes - while I listen uninterrupted to Eleanor Wachtel interview writers from around the world, on her program "Writers and Company."  Today she was in Mexico City talking to Mexican writers.  As usual, she was gracious, intelligent, informed, warm, humourous, thoughtful - and as usual, we her listeners entered another world and learned a great deal.  One writer had difficulty with  English and said, at one point, "We Mexicans are not bictims.  We are not billians."  I myself might have had to suppress a chuckle, but not Eleanor; the interview proceeded with gravitas. 

The minute it was over my phone rang and I knew who it was - my mother, who called from Ottawa to talk about the interview.  "She's marvellous!" she exclaimed, as she always does. "What a wonderful ambassador for this country."  And as always, I agree.  Eleanor and I have been friends since the mid-seventies in Vancouver, when she was a theatre critic and I an actress. She is in person just as thoughtful, warm and wise as she sounds on the radio.  And fun, too.  

As I sit here drinking a glass of wine and watching this lovely day begin to fade, I celebrate a friend who has found the perfect job and does it perfectly.  

Theatre people

Yesterday night Philip Clarkson, a set and costume designer and an old Vancouver friend of Nicky Cavendish's, threw a small party to welcome her to Toronto.  It was a treat for me to be part of a group of theatre people once more.  Except for nine weeks doing Wendy Wasserstein's "The Sisters Rosensweig" in Vancouver in 1996, I have not acted onstage since the fall of 1980, when I discovered I was pregnant and transferred my energies to writing (and babies).

I lived in the theatre for a decade; it's a language I still know how to speak and don't have much chance to use, but did last night.   At the party were actors, designers and a dramaturge, who embarked on fervent discussion and gossip about Stratford and Canadian Stage, the emergence of "artistic producers" in Canada, the lack of money and vision and Canadian plays; about Nicky's exhaustion in a much too-short rehearsal process.  How heated, how energetic and out-going they were.  Theatre people are theatrical even when not at work; they do voices and perform with perfect timing; they're hilarious, melodramatic, riveting.  I miss the warmth of that contact and immediacy, sometimes, in my new desk job.  I miss the camaraderie of the troupe and the instant feedback from an audience.

Writers sit alone in a room.  They're as crazy as actors but in a different way - committing thoughts and words to paper in the hopes that one day, maybe not until years later, someone will read.  Someone, perhaps, if they do their work well enough and are lucky or wise or talented or timely enough to get it out into the world, will listen.  Actors know instantly if something is working or not; writers may never know.  And yet, though writing is hard and lonely and pays just as poorly, I think it's much easier than performing.

At an opening once, an old theatre friend introduced me to a cast member. "Beth used to be an actor," he said.  "She got out."  

 

a cacaphony of Kaplans

This was taken after my talk in NYC.  A family of determined chins.