At last! My long (un)awaited return to the Blogopshere!

It's been almost a month since my last post I regret to say. I had a few opportunities to chronicle my adventures, but have been for the most part too tired or lazy to do so. I'll hopefully get in a few more in the next couple of months, I hope. I want to at least geto fifty by the end of the year. And by Blogopshere I meant Blogosphere. That's right, I chose not to correct my typo! I'm just crazy like that. You never know when I'll go off the deep end, man. Anyway....

Rehearsals have been going well, with their expected ups and downs. We're about to embark on Tech Week as of Monday, which means we go up in less than two weeks!!!

What I wanted to mention was the great couple of weekends I've so far had. Last Saturday night, after rehearsal, me and a bunch of us from the Phoenix attended my very first Buddhist wedding, for our friends Kathleen and David. Besides the wonderful fact that they were getting married (again, back here, as opposed to when they first actually got married this summer in SCOTLAND!), This ceremony--which was led by none other than Eshu himself!--took place in a Christian chapel, which was rather strange. It was odd chanting about the Three Jewels and Bodhisattvas in the midst of the eyes of Jesus at his various stations of the cross, in front of the altar of the Abrahamic God. But it kind of worked, too. The place had great acoustics for chanting, making the whole place ring like a bell (thanks, Linda Hardy). On that note, probably the most interesting part was the chanting. Just like in the Zen Meditation sessions at the chapel, we all chanted the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra, all in unison on the same note. It feels bizarre at first for two reasons: 1. You kind of feel like you're in a cult when you do this. Obviously to be brainwashed to a particular idea is the exact opposite of what the exercise is trying to achieve, but it's hard to slough off those connotations. The point, I think, is we're finding a collective awareness, chanting all as one, and focussing it on the two betrothed. 2. With all the work we're doing at school in our acting classes, this kind of chanting is the polar opposite of what we're doing. Generally you have the impulse to add some kind of intonation, inflexion, expression, and intention, to the words you're speaking. But you don't do that here. The words take on a different purpose and a different shape in this context. It was great to stick our heads into a different world altogether from what we're used to. Because too often we simply don't.

This weekend--tonight, actually, I saw Ride the Cyclone. I'd not seen live theatre that could make me cry. This however, made me cry. I really enjoyed this piece, and am both humbled and blown away by all of the collective talent that went into its realization.

I've been thinking about the kind of prejudices I've accumulated over my Uni career about high school and high school students. As we get on in our years here in undergrad we tend to look at high school students as absolute snotty-nosed, bottom-feeding cretins. We look down our nose at them: just a bunch of dumb kids. As we've been going along with work on Shakespeare in class, I expressed my disbelief that people actually teach Romeo and Juliet in high school. I find it funny because there's SO much sexual innuendo in it, and it is in Elizabethan verse after all. But If I remember correctly, I don't think I was a particularly stupid high school student, and the Shakespeare we studied wasn't completely over my head. I'd argue that it's taught all wrong, but that's not the students' fault, is it? And when you think further on it, there's tons of material taught in high school English classes with suggestive content. There's a lot of stupid going around in high school, but there's a whole lot of stupid going around at every stratum, and there's still people there in secondary land who are mature enough to understand and appreciate something like classic literature for what it is. Sure I had plenty to learn and I may have been more naive than I am now, but when you put things in perspective, I have so much to learn in regards to the future. So before we get all self-righteous and congratulate ourselves on how far we are from high school, remember that we are just as much a bunch of snotty-nosed, bottom-feeding cretins to post-grads, professionals, and our elders in general. Why should we be so contemptuous to high schoolers? some of the most brilliant people I've met I met in high school. I know, Westmount might be different in a lot of ways, but there are still many great individuals roaming the halls of high schools all over the world, and if any of them are truly sane, are probably just as eager to get the hell out of it and move on with their lives as I know I was. Why should you hold it against them just because they are going through it at a later time than you did? We all have to go through it.

Today was a successfully busy day. I say successfully in that I did all that I intended to do, and all that I intended to do was all very important to me. I attended the Amnesty International UVic chapter meeting for the first time, and I'm hoping to get involved with them in organizing campaigns, especially the Human Rights Film Festival which UVic is hosting in November. I don't know how it'll pan out for me since Romeo and Juliet will overlap, but I'll do my damn'dest! After the meeting I attended a panel discussion at St. Aidan's United hosted by Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. The panelists were women who were either from Afghanistan, worked in Afghanistan, or were Canadians of Afghan descent. Their focus was on the importance of educating women in Afghanistan, and educating men on women's rights in Afghan society, and that the best way to get rid of the Taliban over there is education. The stories from these women were very inspiring, and are another testament to not taking our education for granted in any way. After the talk there was an actual burqa on display in the lobby which guests were allowed to try on. I wanted to try it for myself, but someone got to it first, unfortunately. I asked the old lady wearing it what the vision was like underneath, and she said it was terrible. Besides the obvious social controversy of this garb which I won't go into right now, the thing seems entirely impractical as an article of clothing. All in all it was a great evening.

On another note, I'm reading an anthology on the state of Canadian drama throughout the 20th century for m theatre history class. In it, playwright Sharon Pollock posits that there is no such thing as "Canadian Identity", that Canada is rather a "bureaucrat's name for a geographical area", and what we actually have are British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta, etc. etc., and that we'll only find ourselves when we seek out our roots to where we immediately are, and that those who have found their voices as artists did so because they were grounded in their regional disposition. This is an interesting statement, and quite closely linked to Andrew Cohen's opinion about Ottawa being a capital that seems to have little symbolic relevance to the country it supposedly governs. Perhaps Canada really is too big for its own good. I afterwards read an interview of playwright Rick Salutin who was recounting his experiences in Mozambique. He remarked how refreshing it was to be over there. The interview was done in 1981, so Mozambique was only a few years old at this point. But he was saying how the people came together--people of several distinct languages and customs--because they decided "it would be a good idea to have a country, so they went ahead and did it". They were making up a culture and were quite proud of it, Salutin says. He said he wished that Canadians could be more like this and not obsess so much about the question of our national character, but rather, answer it. That is to say, invent the answer. There's plenty of material to work with.

The Global Climate Wake-Up Call

Here's what Darcy and I participated in on Monday in front of the library!

Trippingly on the Tongue

Last week I made a huge, albeit embarrassing discovery of my own ignorance. I learned that the expression is 'for all intents and purposes', not 'for all intensive purposes', which I had been saying all this time. Yes, I should have known this, and yes, Bryce was right in laughing at me for it. I saw the proper phrase used on my dad's band website. I googled the expression and then came across a webpage with a thread of people listing their pet peeve misnomers, like 'irregardless' and garbled expressions like this one. Sure they're right in being annoyed by these things. It bugs me when people unknowingly butcher the language. But one person went so far as to say 'didn't those people ever pay attention in English class?' And that didn't sit well with me. In my defense, you're never really taught that sort of thing in school, so how can you ever know it other than what people around you say? You pick these things up from the people around you. I think people can take propriety in language too far to be so up in arms about a slip so small. It's like they fear that English will not hold strong unless they are ever watchful and chastise those who try to change it or play around with it, or those who don't even know any better. I think the latter is the majority, but it's still a kind of linguistic dogmatism which I find pretentious, quite frankly. To them I say: RELAX! Kindly correct someone if they make a mistake so that there'll be one less person in the world irritating you. Assuming, of course, they stop when you ask them. But that's another matter.

I've been pondering the nature of language a lot lately. This is in part because it's emphasized in our study of Shakespeare, so it's hard to avoid. But I've always found it fascinating, to begin with. It's strange to think that the English of the Elizabethans was more musical and more onomatopoeic than ours is now, and how we have a more limited pitch and tone in our speech. It just goes to show how language is more utilitarian now than it once was. We use language as a shorthand to get what we need, seldom using it for its own sake. Not only that, but our vocabulary has shrunk significantly since then, too, which is kind of ironic, considering we of the 21st century are supposed to be more sophisticated than our forebears from 400 years ago. We gather a certain amount of words to our repertoire and then just recycle them in different combinations--different, and perhaps large, but not infinite. And that's how phrases become tired and stale, as the pool gets smaller and smaller. What I like about Shakespeare is that it does seem to whet the appetite for words--and not only what they mean, but how they sound. There's a vast ocean of words out there and an infinite amount of ways to play with this trail-mix of a language, and Shakespeare--indeed all the best writers have recognized this. That being said, there are still many people who delight in the power and beauty of language. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many poets, lyricists, and writers running around. When I went to the Faculty Reading of the Department of Writing I sensed that the individuals onstage reading their original works--especially the poems--spoke the words out loud just to hear how they sounded. They had that verbal relish that John Barton speaks of when referring to the Elizabethans. Not only did the readers last Thursday utter the words, but they took a bite out of them. You could tell they were tasting the language in their mouths as they were saying them. It's a comforting thought that language still has that power. As long as people can be moved, there will be words to move them.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Here's a remarkable speech that my movement teacher showed us on Wednesday. It's incredibly inspiring and timely, considering the 90% cut to arts funding in the BC government's budget. Enjoy!

A poll in the Globe and Mail on Canadian policy towards immigrants shows that 79% of the voters believe they should be "integrated into the mainstream" while only 21% believed in "respect for different cultures". This was out of 10,959 people mind you, but that still says something. And although it might not be in the forefront of peoples' minds right now, but this does raise some serious questions about us, and the disparity between official Canadian policy of multiculturalism and actual attitudes of Canadians. Is the mosaic so ingrained in our culture now that it can't be changed? Do we pay lip service to Multiculturalism just to seem less like our southerly neighbours?

Hey folks, sorry for being so quiet on here. I'll be back on the Blog horse soon, I promise. In the mean time, here's some DELIGHTFUL news:

"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/arts-groups-hit-hard-by-cuts-to-gaming-grants/article1271315/"

35,000 cut from the Fringe. Ironically enough Front of House has to thank the BC government for sponsoring the Fringe at every show. Sonofabitch.