if . . .

... entering the gym doors of Gimpo South Korean Boys Schoo we found ourselves backstage ... Yura greeted us warmly ... she had the aura of focused calm yet excited pre-show anxiousness ... a contained nervous energy ... she smiled & exclaimed as i embraced her, “Enjoy the show!” ... ... i remembered long ago waiting with Henry & Susan, esteemed veterans of the stage ... Henry turned to me commenting - “only those who have been backstage can know this feeling” ... I recognized in Yura the apprehension, the vulnerability, the joy & the breath of time waiting backstage ... ... Yura for the first time was dipping her toes into the way of the actor ... ... we (her father, aunt & uncle) made our way to the designated audience seats ... we had been placed ob the gym stage ... the light & sound crew just behind us ... an impressive scrim, a line of facing white chairs and four towering lighting trees created  a formidable performance thrust space ... ... Odys...

... it had never happened ... it could have happened in any one of the other times over the past thirty-three years ... a simple exercise ... face your partner ... one closes their eyes, raises arms & the other gently grabs hold of the wrists ... gently guide your partner ... backwards, forwards, around ... always demonstrated with a volunteer so others could observe ... had taken the class outside to the open field behind the education building just a hop & a skip away from the river ... it was a spring morning & I loved being outside ... we had finished the direction meditation followed by the blind running ... now the partner guide ... ... a large framed male volunteered ... after guiding him we switched ... he took hold of my wrists ... after a few seconds I was spinning around out of control ... could barely hang on ... asked him to slow down and he started to push me backward faster and faster ... I fell head slamming to the ground ... heard the whole class sho...

... the past two months have seen me watching opera on two continents ... both far from the source of their original cultural origin ... Wagner's Götterdämmerung performed by the Canadian Opera Company at The Four Seasons Centre  for the Performing Arts in Toronto & La Traviata  performed by the Korean-Russia Opera at the Sejong Center  in Seoul  ... ... not really an innocent bystander ... daughter played Gutrune/Third Norn in Götterdämmerung & wife co-directed La Traviata ... ... I have been waiting to share the experience of watching Ileana ... Act III, Gutrune awaits Seigfried's return ... the stage is bare, only a dim twilight glow in the distant background ... a solitary figure, Gutrune, stands downstage right ... the epic music has stilled to a whisper ... into the hush, Ileana reaches out delicately ... she takes hold of the entire space sending us into that unforgettable place ... waiting for a lover ... a longing in all its forms ... a d...

No words can prepare one for the event. I sit in the Broadway Theater in Saskatoon and Tanya Tagaq gently guides us into her performance by inviting us into an improvisation. She motions to and introduces Jean Martin and Jesse Zubot as long time fellow collaborators about to dialog together.  Days afterward, I struggle to articulate the experience ... not to name and grasp but to activate and research ... Retribution.  Somehow bracketed by the ever present notions of truth and reconciliation I experienced Retribution as a way of "schizo-analysis" - a pragmatic, disciplined, playful, experimental and collective process. Tagaq sources her ancestral throat-singing to follow an extreme vocal imaginative analysis induced by the colonial capitalist neurosis systems that pillage ourselves and the earth. Her deeply rooted presence enforces her acts of incarnated cultural reality of Cambridge Bay in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut, as a way of maintaining nor...

There's a meme going around, list the top ten albums you listened to as a teen, only one album per group. My Dad was a physicist and had a workshop in the basement ... a fixit master. I believe he wanted me to learn this way. When I said I needed a record player in my room, that the family player in the living room wasn't for me he replied by purchasing a Heathkit turntable. I had to put it all together soldering the transistors and wiring the speakers ... I hated it but wanted desperately to buy records & listen with some sense of privacy. In the end I loved my Heathkit system. Anyway here's the list. This is the stuff I really listened to as a teen. Not only my top ten albums as a teen but as close to order of purchase as memory serves (teen years '66 - '72) Absolutely Free - Mothers of Invention Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles Beggars Banquet - Rolling Stones John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan Songs to a Seagull - Joni Mitchel...