The Soloist

A couple summers ago I saw previews on TV for the movie The Soloist. I thought it looked interesting, but never actively made an effort to watch the movie once it came out. This fall, while looking through old documents on my computer, I found a random list of movies I wanted to watch someday. The Soloist was on the list. When Jonathan said he was sending a package to me, I asked him to add a few movies, including The Soloist. I got my package more than two months after he sent it, while he was visiting, actually. Tonight the power was off, but our generator was running. There was nothing much to do, but I wasn't ready to go to bed yet. So I got out my external hard drive, plugged it in and scrolled through my movies. The Soloist caught my eye. I didn't know what it was about, other than the few short clips I'd seen a year and a half earlier. I knew one of the characters played cello and I had got an impression that there was a reporter involved. I decided to watch it. It was haunting.

(Warning: Parents, grandparents, anyone else who wishes I was more committed to music, maybe now is a good time to stop reading this post.)

To be perfectly honest, I think one of my better decisions about this year was my choice to not bring my violin along with me to Tanzania. This past summer when people asked me if I was going to, I'd say a definite no. My parents asked me quite a few times during the months leading up to my departure. I said no. When Bryn left for Egypt in June she walked through security at the Kelowna airport with her computer case slung over one shoulder and her violin case dangling from the other. I thought about that while I packed to leave. Jonathan was helping me decide what to bring. I asked him if I should reconsider, if my violin should come along. He said it was up to me. I stuck with my earlier conviction. When the car rolled away from my house last August, my violin was safely lying in its case tucked away in a corner of our music room. I thoroughly enjoyed traveling through airports without the bulky case banging against my legs. And from the first week of being in Tanzania on, I've never regretted my decision to leave my violin at home. I know Bryn used her violin a lot in Egypt, at church, at campmeeting, even at a wedding. But (a) she has a degree in music while I struggled to stay excited about being in orchestra during the whole three years at SAU, and (b) TZ is different. Here people don't really play instruments, they sing. And I've really enjoyed experiencing that part of the culture without bringing in my western instrument and disturbing the African heritage.

I've fought my relationship with the violin ever since my mother tricked me into choosing it when I was four. There were days I hated going to lessons instead of being able to go over to my friends houses to play. Days I told my mum I wanted to retire (of course, she recorded these humourous-to-her/serious-to-me instances on the inside cover of my Suzuki music books). Days of standing alone in the music room tears rolling down my cheeks and onto the dark wood of the chin rest as I finished my practicing late at night after neglecting it all day. There were weeks of music institutes during summer. Of learning to sing entire pieces in solfege (not true solfege, the kind where C is always do, D is always re and so on). Of memorizing pages of music. Of preparing for spring music festivals. There were months of scales, arpeggios, double stop thirds, sixths and octaves. Picking studies, orchestral excerpts and unaccompanieds. Choosing List A, B and C pieces (concerto, sonata, show piece). Endless lessons with teachers and appointments with accompanists. Never-ending listening to tapes of ear tests, identifying intervals, clap-backs, play-backs. Whole years of music preparation just to take the Royal Conservatory of Music exams to pass into the next music grade. There were other obligations. Piano lessons, required theory classes, group practices, chamber orchestras, master classes and weekend music workshops. There were struggles to attempt to sight-read, arguments about whether I could or not. There were disappointing festival marks and unsatisfactory RCM exam grades. There were choices to be made: improve my skill, get more musical experience or keep the Sabbath? The latter always won out.

But there were also good memories. Completing a piece satisfactorily and moving on to a new one. Winning first place at festivals. Inventing new versions of hymns to play for church special music. Finding an amazing teacher who I looked up to and respected. Making friends with her other students. Driving with my mum and younger siblings to a town 40-minutes away two or three times a week for lessons and talking about everything under the sun on the trips there and back. Treats after lessons if we'd done well. Eating suppers in the car on the drive home. The annual Vernon Community Music School country fair with face painting, a petting zoo, pie auctions, a cake walk and mini-concerts from all the VCMS student groups. Getting out of school for several days to travel to music festivals in cities several hours ago, Penticton, Kamloops. Everyone staying together at motels, music floating down the halls in the evenings before and after racing to the pool and water slide for a quick reprieve in our rigorous schedules. Sprawled out on the floor or on pews with the other music students in the church balcony, listening to peers performing while working on homework from the days of school we missed. Running our fingers down the list of participants in the program, realizing our turn was coming soon, rushing to the bathroom to change into dress clothes, brush hair and do last-minute warm-ups before it was our turn to perform while others listened from the balcony. Feelings of friendship and support from the other students, even if we competed against each other. Cheering for those who went on to Provincials.

I watched The Soloist expecting to be intrigued by the journalism portrayed in the film. I was, but mostly because I noticed things the reporter did that we were taught in school not to do. (Don't take gifts from your sources {reporter accepted a soda}. Don't give gifts to your sources {source was given a cello, an apartment and private lessons with the first cellist of the LA philharmonic}. But, to be fair, he was a columnist, maybe those rules don't apply to them... Also, some of the gifts were given from column-readers, so I guess that doesn't break the rules.) But it was the music in the story that really drew me in. Nathaniel Anthony Ayers loved music more than anything else in the world. Lived for it. Breathed for it.

I almost understand Mr. Ayers. While I can't honestly say that I ever lived or breathed for music during the 22 years I've played violin, while I'm thoroughly enjoying this year of not being 'Alison, the oldest member of the Quiring trio,' I realized I do miss a part of it. I miss the disobedient thrill of holing up in my room with a classical CD of my piece playing, pretending to practice while really lounging on my bed reading a book behind my music. Although many times it was a pain, I miss unpacking my violin alongside my siblings and trying to come up with a suitable piece for special music the next morning at church, arguing with each other about bowings and who got to play the harmony part. I miss the nervous excitement of sitting in a half-empty church in the middle of a school day waiting for the current performer to finish, the adjudicator to scrawl out notes and advice for improvements and the secretary to call out my name so I could walk to the stage, announce my piece, place my violin under my chin, and draw the bow across the strings so the notes could escape the instrument, escape my brain.

Last year, in my last semester of university, I was absolutely sick of orchestra. I didn't like the pieces. I wasn't impressed that we only went on one short day tour the whole year. I had nothing to say to my stand partner. I wanted out. Now I'm out and I'm enjoy it. But, if I'm completely honest, I also miss it. The camaraderie in rehearsals, the frantic flipping of a page in the middle of an important passage, the hustle of dressing in black and rushing to the church in time for pre-performance last-minute run-throughs. The grinning after the last note, the applause from the audience after seconds of post-completion silence, the simultaneous rise to our feet at a motion from our conductor who whirled around to thank those listening with a series of bows. Moving your chair to part the orchestra like Moses did the Red Sea so she could leave the stage. I don't really miss playing the violin. I don't really miss playing in the Quiring trio. I don't really miss playing in orchestra. But I do miss the feeling of performing, of knowing the piece backwards and forwards, of being part of the rhythm of the piece without even trying.

That being said, I think I'd be quite fine to leave my violin in my case for a while longer yet. I know, I make no sense...
Is this whole musical autobiography one big oxymoron??

Bittersweet visitation

When I woke up this morning I decided to stay in bed for a bit and start a new book. The one I finished last night was part of the Dear Canada series (yes, I'm pretty sure it's a copycat of the Dear America books) about a slave girl from Virginia who escaped with her family to West Canada (modern-day Ontario) during the Civil War. The book I started today "The Unfinished Angel" by Sharon Creech is written very differently than any book I've ever read. I'll probably do a review of it on Enjambments when I'm finished with it though, so I'm not going to spend much time talking about it here. While I was chatting online to Jonathan, my friend Jodi called so I spent about an hour on the phone with her catching up on her life and telling her about mine. It was nice to hear from her again, but it definitely would have been better to see her in person. Oh well. She spent Christmas with her brother and sister-in-law in Spokane and then went to Walla Walla to visit her grandparents before going back to Alberta. After that I was planning to get some of my stuff together and start packing since we're flying down to Seattle tomorrow evening, but that never happened. At this point in time I'm unsure if I'll even be finished packing by the time we have to leave for the airport. I don't even want to think about it since I'm not sure what's going to happen once we get to the airport. Since the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt most international flights to the States have new security measures and many airlines aren't allowing carry-ons at all. I sincerely hope that rule relaxes before we fly out tomorrow since Bryn and I brought home our violins and we sure don't want to be checking them. Oh well, whatever happens happens. I'm not going to worry about it tonight.

We had a really early supper, well at least it was early by our standards. We ate around 4 p.m. and then cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for a night of visiting. We started by dropping by my friends Brad and Sharlet's house to see their new daughter. She was a week old on Thursday. She's pretty tiny and pretty adorable and Bryn, my mum and I took turns holding her and getting pictures with her. Then Brad and Sharlet gave us a tour of their new place. They've only been in it for two months now so it's pretty new to them. Finally we let them have their baby back and then drove down to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth. She seemed in a better mood then when Mum and I were there to see her yesterday. My mum read her an e-mail and then I asked her some Bible questions from a trivia game my mum had brought with her. Then Bryn read another e-mail, Ty read a short story from the Women of Spirit magazine and then we sang a few songs to her before my dad closed the visit with a prayer. Then we drove to Vernon, a town 40 minutes north of us, where we visited our former pastor and his wife. They have been family friends of both my mum and my dad's side of the family for years and have been like an extra set of grandparents to us kids throughout the years. I really wish I had the words to describe how Pastor Teranski and his wife have impacted my life. Maybe someday I'll be able to find the right words to say, but for now I'll just say that they've always encouraged and mentored us in life whether in our music, or studies or just choices that we had to make. I so appreciate their input and guidance. The best picture I can give you to describe Pastor Teranski is that he is an extremely kind-hearted and caring man, who adores jokes, riddles and puns. He's of Ukrainian descent and his favourite jokes are Ukrainian jokes. He will never pass up an opportunity to tell a good Ukrainian joke. For years Pastor Teranski has raised money for new churches in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. He has traveled to Ukraine many times to dedicate the churches and to put on evangelistic meetings. When I was seven or eight, my mum and her sister went along with the Teranski's and did the VBS and children's meetings for 500 children a night while Pastor Teranski held evangelistic series for three weeks. A couple years later my dad went along with the Teranski's on another visit to Ukraine. Mrs. Teranski is as petite as he is rotund, but they compliment each other perfectly. She always would be playing the piano for church services and meetings and she played so beautifully. I hope that gives you a bit of a picture of the Teranski's.

The visit was bittersweet for me. I care for the Teranski's quite a lot and it's hard for me to see people I care about hurting. Mrs. Teranksi was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about a year and a half ago. The first time I saw her after I heard about her diagnosis was right after I came back from my first year at Southern. I was at our high school gym for the Mini-Campmeeting that our valley has during a weekend in May when I ran into Pastor Teranski. I gave him a big hug and then turned to give one to Mrs. Teranski, too. She was happy to hug me, but then asked her husband, "Now, who is this young girl?" He looked both shocked and terribly pained as he explained who I was. Then she said, "Oh yes, of course I know you," and the rest of the conversation went on normally. This past summer our family went to visit the Teranski's just before Ty left to come back to Southern early for RA duties. Mrs. Teranski seemed to know and recognize our whole family and was pretty good with carrying on a conversation with us and remembering trips to Ukraine with Pastor Teranski and my parents. This visit was different. Right from stepping into their warm kitchen from the chilly outdoors, I could tell Mrs. Teranski was worse off. She kept interrupting sentences with nonsensical phrases. Her words made sense, but not the way she arranged them into sentences. My mum and I sat on either side of her on the couch and tried to respond to her ramblings so that she wouldn't feel left out of the conversations, but it was hard to do that and try to follow what Pastor Teranski was saying. He questioned each of us kids about our schooling and how things were going down in Tennessee and asked about our cousin, Breanna, as well. Of course we slipped in several jokes, too. Then my mum told Tyler to bring our instruments in from the car and joked to Mrs. Teranski that she would have to play the piano to accompany us. We'd brought our instruments along to play some songs for the Teranski's. They've always been so encouraging of our music and Pastor Teranski has always promised to take us with him to Ukraine to play for the churches there that he goes to dedicate. Up to now we still haven't gone, but he mentioned tonight that he feels really urgently about fulfilling his promise to us. He talked about how he was thinking of going back there in June once more to dedicate several new churches that have been built since his last trip. As we got out our instruments Mrs. Teranski stood up from the couch and carefully made her way to the piano. At first we thought she just wanted to be closer to us to hear us better, but then she fumbled with a songbook sitting on the stand. My dad got up to help her flip through the pages and then she stopped at one song and placed her shaky fingers on the piano keys. "Audrey, why don't we just listen to the kids play?" Pastor Teranski tried to encourage, but she broke in. "Let's play a song together," she said to us and pressed the keys. The first few bars were filled with mistakes and incorrect notes. I didn't know the song. Neither did Bryn or Ty, but after quickly glancing at each other, we all started to play along. As we got close to the end the incorrect notes faded into beautiful chords and Mrs. Teranski continued right on to the second verse, the violins and cello following her lead. My dad sang the words and my mum joined in. Pastor Teranski sat in his chair listening to the harmonies fill the living room. As we finished the song, she immediately start flipping more pages, but then Pastor Teranski suggested to her that maybe the Hymnal would be easier for her to play from than the Christ in Song book so my dad got that and helped her find the Christmas section. We played "Away in a Manger" with her and during that song Pastor Teranski was wiping his eyes. He seemed so amazed to see his wife still playing the piano like she has always loved to do and that she was still able to do it quite well. She kept apologizing between songs that she hadn't practiced in a long time and that she wasn't very good, but we made sure to tell her she was doing great. Next we played "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" with her and for each song she wanted to do all of the verses. Then she wanted to try out some non-Christmas songs and had a harder time with those. It almost broke my heart to watch her try to figure out "All Creatures of our God and King" with two sharps. She could figure out the C sharp, but not the F sharp and she kept playing the first line over and over again and trying to get the F sharps, but the chords kept turning out minor. Bryn tried to show her which key to play, but then in the end my dad found "Softly and Tenderly" and we played that instead to end off. Then Pastor Teranski told her she had done a great job and now she should take a break and just listen to us play. So we played our version of "All Creatures" that we played for church at school at the start of December and they both really enjoyed it. We told them about how we didn't know we were supposed to be playing for communion and that we decided to dial back the rhythms a bit to be more appropriate and Pastor Teranski thought that was so funny. He just let out huge Pastor Teranski-esque guffaws and we all grinned to see him so humoured by our story. Then he made us sit down while he cut up some slices of a Ukrainian poppy-seed dessert for us to try. It was an acquired taste, but by the end of the slice Bryn and I shared I kind of liked it, minus the raisins embedded in the pastry. Then, after a few more jokes and enquiries about family and friends, we gathered together for a prayer before exchanging hugs and saying good-bye until the next time we get to see each other again. Just before we left Pastor Teranski said again that he wanted to take us to Ukraine with him in June. I think if we don't go soon, it won't happen so we'll see what happens with that. We all, including my dad, want to go with him. Anyway, I'm extremely glad we took the time to drive all the way to visit them. They're very special people to us all.

When we got home we made hot chocolate while my dad brought in some wood and built a nice roaring fire in our fireplace. Then we sat around the fire drinking our hot chocolate flavoured with peppermint stir spoons. Somehow we got around to talking about how my parents ever started dating and found out some new things about them. Those kinds of conversations are usually quite interesting and informative. Then my mum read a story from a "Christmas in My Heart" book and then I read another short one. It was a good ending to a kind of happy, kind of sad, day.

Trident Layers

When I was a kid my favourite kind of gum was Hubba Bubba. I think the watermelon was usually my flavour of choice. I loved how fruity it was and the size of the bubbles I could blow. (Unfortunately my grandmother did NOT appreciate the bubbles, but I still blew them anyway.) The one downside to Hubba Bubba was how quickly the gum lost its flavour, but that could be remedied by either throwing out the piece and replacing it with a new one, or just adding another piece along with the first one. In addition to Hubba Bubba, I also liked Dubble Bubble, which my grandpa bought in large bulk buckets and handed out to his grandkids or any other kids he and my grandma babysat. That gum was fun because, along with having the traditional bubble gum taste and being able to make gigantic pink bubbles that stuck to your face when they popped, each piece had a comic included. My siblings and I used to collect the comics and we always planned to send them in when we got the required number for a prize, but of course we never kept track of where we hid our collections so that never worked out. Later on I decided that despite Hubba Bubba's great flavour and bubble-blowing opportunities it just wasn't worth the cost of having to keep trading out pieces of gum for new pieces when they lost their flavour. My new favourite became Juicy Fruit, which had the same fruity taste, but flavour that lasted longer. And while I couldn't blow bubbles that were quite as big as with Hubba Bubba, Juicy Fruit was good for making small bubbles that could be snapped with quite a resounding noise. (My grandma still wasn't impressed.)

More recently my sister introduced me to Trident White. I like both the peppermint and the spearmint types, but last night in the check-out at Bi-Lo I spotted a new kind of Trident, Layers. This gum looked so intriguing that I just had to buy a pack and try it out. My verdict is that it's awesome. It's got all the qualities a person would ever want in a piece of gum: great fruity LONG-LASTING flavour, gum-snapping ability and, the best part, awesome design. Yes, this gum even looks cool! Think of an ice cream sandwich and then imagine the cookie parts on the top and bottom a light pink with the ice cream area a darker magenta. At least that's the colours of the flavour I bought, WildStrawberry+TangyCitrus. There was also another kind on the shelf, GreenApple+GoldenPineapple that I want to try sometime in the future. Anyway, my advice is to try out this new line of Trident gum.


*In the writing of this blog post I came across Gum Alert, a blog totally devoted to finding and reviewing different types of gum. Check it out for some extra-curricular reading when you've got a chance. Please note that I don't agree with their reviews of either flavour of Trident Layers.