if . . .

... these days i struggle  ... increasing absence of mind, slowness of recall and inability to remember names... ... visit my grandson who turned seven months old yesterday ... every time we meet his penetrating gaze gives me the impression he needs time to recognize me ... the same day i visit my ninety-three-year-old mother whose conversation circles around in a state of confusion repeating events over & over ... am not sure what she thinks ... can call me by name but i have the impression she needs time to reorganize who we are ... ... in conversations, i stutter ... often because as i start to speak there is so much complexity to what i am about to say i have to stop ... i begin to articulate some point & at the same moment realize another point could also be made & another context is required & i stutter to a stop ... when ... feels like ... copy & paste ... " the penumbra of the eventual personal extinction beginning to extend itself over my bein...

... this morning a bag of shoes were left at the door ... first, a butcher knife now shoes ... both unsettling ... are they connected? ... at least the bag was easier to handle ... place it next to the trash ... things will proceed as usual ... the bag will disappear ... more precisely the two pairs of used runners will move to a new place ... that's the way around here - place anything of any value outside in the front or back or side & within a day it disappears ... except ... ... the purse a few months ago ... that had to be dealt with ... a wallet inside with credit cards, health card, drivers licence, pictures ... no money ... even an iPhone, energy bills, correspondence, make-up, pens, pills, candy ... the purse looked more like a travel bag ... couldn't locate a phone number ... phone was dead ... ... drove to the address ... you see i once found a wallet on the street and went to the police to drop it off ... four months later received a thank you note from ...

... i missed my chance ... i had something to say ... sitting before me were ten performers and playwright ... the show had ended ten minutes ago and they had returned for a talk back session ... i didn’t really have a question or maybe i had a thousand questions ... but i did want to share something ... i wanted to tell them how i felt ... i didn’t ... ... what i might have said was their collective epic work about Métis history, struggle, identity, reclamation, exile and recognition  Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show  was a wonderful theatrical spectacle, carefully crafted and an exceptionally acted Wild West show ... i wanted to thank them and honour all their courage and vision ... i also wanted to tell them i was trembling ... ... trembling ... well because ... well that night i would have put it in words like i was full of tension ... one of the actors ... think it was cast member Gabriel Gosselin who played Louis Riel used the word "authentic"...  i would have ...

Asian Centre UBC ... sitting in a room for ten hours listening to a series of lectures in a language i don't understand nor speak & unable to communicate with half of the participants is a powerful experience ... AeRan delievered a two day seminar at the Asian Centre @ UBC ...  an absoulutely beautiful setting ... i knew her material well being the topic of her Phd. thesis which has occupied the past six years & ... i have followed her many conference presentations ...  in fact, we were returning to the site of one of her first presentations ... ... it was a truly remarkable performance ... the electricity of her presence as she delievered was at times overwhelming ... the scope and range were both vast and distinctly detailed ... the conversation elicited was "wild" (the term she used) ... the eager attention whether youthful scholars in the midst of their training or those seasoned academics from visiting scholars to professors and experts from various d...

... 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...

... have lived for 20 years in what could be considered a pretty nondescript community ... others call it rough ... ... true it is on the "wrong" side of the river ... the west side ... on the edge of "downtown" ... across the railroad tracks ... at the bottom of "C" hill ... should there be any more stereotypes ... one more ... heard "once you turn the corner ya know you're in the hood" ... ... i feel safe ... even though have survived one break in resulting in all electronics stolen, a number of house windows broken, car vandalized, tires slashed, driver window shattered, ignition switch destroyed, even a second car  torched by a fire ... house side graffitied a couple of times ... oh ya ... two homicides less than 100 meters from the yard (2014) ... still feel relatively safe ...  ... yet when opened the backdoor this morning saw a knife on top of the fence post ... it was a bit unsettling ... ... perhaps I should e...

... Miles in Vienna 1973 ... ... was twenty ... two months married & having fled what I felt was the cultural wasteland of my Canadian prairie home, barely a couple of months in Vienna had seen Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention ... was now witnessing Miles Davis ... yes goodbye cultural wasteland ...  ... forty-two years later I stumble on a YouTube of the whole Stadthalle concert ... the mythical memory faces the recorded image …  ... didn't remember any of the visual colors ... remembered the intensity of that single, slim figure focusing the entire energy of the momentary space and time into a place at his feet ... we, the audience, were present only to provide a testimonial vortex of the magnetic center of the mysterious electric field ... ... Miles had has back to us the whole time ... trumpet pointing straight down to his foot peddle ... exploring ... no more of a reaching/searching/probing ...  like one who had seen the abyss ......

... there is a rhythmic undulation when traveling. When a child he watched and listened absorbing the process in a kind of intergenerational journey continuance. Ancestors witnessing from the corners guiding the way. Once on the path it is a song/call/dance towards an engagement. The practice is acquired, exchanged then valued. Each repetition is a creative movement embodiment ... ... we, by ourselves, cannot bring about the kinds of knowing that endure. So we journey together beyond geographical and cultural boundaries grounded in a place-specific standing under territory and self, experience and innocence, knowledge and play ... ... in the streets of Ottawa and in the homes of my relations I watch my son move with strength and with a sensual maturity shaped by attention, awareness and insight. My mother on my arm, weak and unsteady, follows doing the things she always did giving thanks. Myself, unsure as to exactly how the push/pull of existence works right now feel between, precisel...

If you should go half dreaming where  the soul quietly leaves the body  insensitive to all suffering. saying "I love you." & encounter millions, desiring hundreds  but love only the one who haunts life  & watches death  say "I love you." Then go to the horizon of the impossible  believing happiness will inevitably come. And get rid of your identity, bury it in a hiding place like a secret caught mid-air in a trust so gentle. hearing "I love you." ::Note:: .. . the Temple space has been unused this past month ... have not heated the space ... with the weather extremes yo-yo - melting/freezing ... ice has appeared on the carpet this morning ... like a body ... soon disappeared ... like all the experiments within the Temple space ... reminiscent of   Dante  @ tweet

Sometimes it's best to let the director speak: Directors Notes      So, what exactly are we up to? Well, I've had a number of conversations and debates over the past few years as to what a theatre company really needs in order to put on a Shakespeare play. Do you have to have a dozen actors to do Shakespeare justice? Do you have to have elaborate historical costumes? And that isn't knocking large cast productions (nothing makes me happier than wearing chainmail and wielding a sword) or even knocking large cast productions (more actors on stage, yes please!). But if we're already willing to accept that we're all in a theatre and not in a castle that is over two thousand years old, then how "simple" can we go? Shakespeare's company didn't trouble themselves with accurate costumes, so we're not worried about it either. If Shakespeare's company had men playing women, then I see no reason why women can't play men (if an actor is wear...

You bring all you know about a person. Their life, their desires, their dreams, their likes, their dislikes, their duties and their practice.Yet it is the photos that haunt. I remember entering the retirement home on a January evening. The body lay resting on the bed. She rested a lot these days. The mind - well who knows what is in the mind. Not wanting to startle but hoping she would wake, washed the few glasses accumulated from the daily pill taking each morning and night, collected the invoices and flyers sorting then dispatching most to the trash, checked the telephone messages, turned on the television to Law and Order, though not too loud, and waited. Waited what seemed a long time. Only half an hour it turned out to be. I felt she was ok. Still sometimes sleep looks so close to death. Couldn't really hear any sound. She was almost ninety.  - Mom. Mom. I whispered. She didn't stir. I reached down and brushed her shoulder. - What? Oh, hi. My stom...

, Morning Prayer January 19, 2015 Our theatre guild has just wrapped another offering to our school and community. Last weekend, the play MacBird showed to audiences including grade 8 students who will become part of our Feehan Family. Thrilling tension, outstanding lead performances, many strong supporting performances, original writing, technical innovation – Macbird showcased the talent and commitment of our students and of course the guidance and permission of Mr. Montalbetti. Macbird is based on Shakespeare’s MacBeth, and as all those who have been grade 10 English students remember fondly, both plays are about ambition which overpowers compassion in the lead character. Macbird  is  tempted by power, the ability to control other people, and their desire leads to violence which spirals into their destruction. The play prompts us to ask and to wonder: when have we been tempted to put aside compassion and pursue what we want ruthlessly? Theatre, and all art, allows...

... yellow, pink & orange walls shelter us from the heat as the air conditioner clicks on & off ... a place of contrasts ... garish lights & humble artistic center stretch outside ... clean swept streets & unkempt staircases ... aggressive drivers & exceedingly polite greeters ... wide, fast flowing highways & narrow, empty passageways ... buddhist temples, shaman homes & churches ... the one constant in clothes soaked in sweat is exquisite food ... everywhere in open markets to single small eateries ... ... probably only slightly different than any city anywhere but it is the place I now inhabit to experience the familiar as surreal ... here I am the other ... the naive wave to me shouting out "hi" excited they can use an english greeting ... an elder reaches out smiles & strokes my arm ... school girls on their way home exclaim "foreigner" ... it all happens "on the way" ... ... many are anxious to demonstrate the g...

You practice the art of healing. You believe in a tribe & the migration of birds. You know about the mingling of Christianity & Confucianism. You tell of the four rivers & the delta waters. Are the churches, shrines, relics, saints and dyke observation sites of the depositif ? What are you teaching? ::Note:: ... traveling around the region near  Iksan ...

Réunir by Pj Prudat featuring the 2013-14 Circle of Voices is ... Letters float in ... Are they from the past to the present? From the future as recollections of the present sent to the past? Were they sent by the drum ... The fiddle ... The hanging wolf skins howling silently trapped in a braid of tree branches ... Perhaps the trees themselves  or the leaves of the trembling aspen dropped the letters to the earth Who reads the letters ... The Kookum listens ... a spirit Kookum, a grandmother to a people ... listens to her daughter ... her sister, her grandchild, her lover, her lovers ... listens to the voices of elders, leaders, oppressors, voices, gunshots, silence, shouts, the heartbeat ... listens to the aspen leaves as they tickle the sky with their stories Why  ... trembling aspens are relatively short-lived, an average lifespan of up 80 years in the wild ... reproduce clonally by root sprouts to form large long-lived stands, essentially, one large plant ... an ...