2007 Journal Entries

A Message from Sarah

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Hello everyone.... it is cold and the trees are naked, except for those skinny maples on King Street wearing what look like sweaters of silver-blue lights...

The new album is finally being mixed this week by none other than David Bottrill and I've written my last paper for school... No, the contrast is not lost on me, but such is life, let us revel!

Here is an mp3 of a new song called "Get Home". It is not yet in its final version, but I wanted to give it to you in appreciation of your kind and patient ears... feel free to download it and send it floating off into cyberspace as you see fit. Grind it up and put it in your muffin batter. Heck, keep it in your shoe. Know that its brothers and sisters and partners in crime are getting a final polish and once everyone's in their Sunday best, it will be my honour to present to you another studio album, full of Paris, disastrous affairs, meditations on struggle, moments of clarity and maybe even a nod to Dostoevsky.

I'm toying with the title The Baroness, but I'll have to catch a glimpse of the family portrait, so to speak, before I make any such decision. And though, in these correspondences, I tend to cloak myself in metaphor, it seems my new music has chosen the opposite approach.
Happiest of holidays to you and yours,

x
SS

Baroque Excesses....

Thursday, July 26, 2007

It was a wonder to behold. The trilling French horn, the circus-y wardrobe, the unexpected, opulent chord changes, the Judy Garland encore, the whole rainbow madness of it all! Last night, opening for Rufus Wainwright in Edmonton, was like waking up in one of the ornate chambers of Versailles ... thank God I had loud pink to wear. More jewels next time, more jewels.

The Winspear Centre is now my favourite hall - Good Lord, I felt 20 feet tall... as if my voice was emerging from the abyss at the beginning of time. It's been a while since I've performed those songs... months even... and I admit, I was a little skittish... but the cries of Edmonton's faithful urged me on. Most of the merchandise evapourated (thank you...) so I apologize in advance to Vancouver and Calgary. I'm so glad you like the new songs... I can't wait to show you the rest... It was lovely to see your gleaming, passionate faces.

Things of note that passed my senses...

Rufus warming up in the dressing room next door, working on dazzling piano passages that can only be fodder for the opera he must be writing.

A positively cherubic child with impossible golden ringlets on my flight to Victoria. I couldn't take my eyes off of that hair.

Being asked to write one, and only one, word of utmost importance, in someone's journal, accompanied by my signature... I leave it to you to ponder what word you would have chosen.

Recieving confirmation that my scientist friend in Uzbekistan received a little care package I'd sent that contained, among other treasures, J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories. Another mind will be graced by its cool beauty...

West Coast air flying at me from a taxi window, accosting filthy city lungs with a startling purity... one of life's sweetest sensations...

and now I must be off to walk amidst the lush flowering gardens of memory,

xoxoxo
SS

untitled

Saturday, July 21, 2007

So it's not a piece of poetry, this day.
The clouds are colossal. Offensively fat.
The sky is tight blue, stupified, bright, all those things.
The sheets of paper with information on them breed faster than those with musical notes on them.
One pile so much larger than the other.
How can this be, when the world is constantly singing?
I am such a sieve. I can't catch it all.

Though I promised you every Thursday, it seems, after two weeks,
that I've already failed! Alas...I shouldn't make neat and tidy pronouncements.
But you knew this already...

Yesterday... working on a song call "The Rose" This string arrangement will break your poor heart into tiny bite-sized pieces. "Compatriots" is a manic parade through circus-ville... there are several like this... I shall have to choose wisely come final sequencing for the album, so as not to overwhelm the Toulouse-Lautrec in you. Some other titles...

Good Night Trouble
Notes from the Underground
No Place At All
Willow
Looking for Someone

etc.....

Ugh. I have nothing today. The weather is too beautiful.
I'm on a mini-tour next week.... with Sir Wainwright...
and some stately Yamaha grands...

take your vitamins my sweet...
x
S

Artemis Awakens...

Thursday, July 05, 2007

As promised...

The construction cranes wake me. There is a futuristic dinosaur battle going on out there; the clanging, the explosive thunders, the giant, menacing shadows.
Some of those electric saws sound like the wailing of prehistoric elephants. O the fantastic warfare I envision in those first moments of half-sleep, half-waking.
Then I realize it's 7:00 am and must they begin so early?

Jag, my co-producer, will be over at 11. I set to work trying to cut through the anemic fog. Nutrients, nutrients, please deliver me. A bowl of cereal with all sorts of promising percentages trumpeted on the side of its box. Better work. I feel like lead.

I have a look at the painting I've been working on. It is a portrait of a female archer, (I used a wonderful photo of American filmmaker Miranda July as a reference) standing in a dusk-lit field, with the city-scape silhouette behind her and the trail of dead she's left only somewhat visible. She looks strong, but also sort of pained... troubled.
It's a mix of gouache and acrylic.

I think it will be good. Must ... stay... positive.

Today we'll be adding the icing to a set of five almost-finished songs.... that means tiny shakers that in the final song, you feel rather than hear, and other little subtle flavour things that are almost unnoticeable but crucial all the same.

Then probably a good three hours of singing.

If I can keep my iron-deficient head up, I'll see a fringe play tonight with a girl who's named after a flower. I met her in Paris. She is the sister of an equally fascinating man who's named after a mermaid. Where do I find these wonders.

Til next time, comrades. Wish me luck. I've got my crossbow. I'm going in.

SS

Notes on Art

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Forgive me, dearest reader, it has been over two months.
Much, as I always say, has transpired.

I've decided that since I am in the middle of recording a new album, it seems
appropriate to blog every week (I swear!) to tell you of the progress, disappointment,
doubt and triumph, elation and despair that this process inevitably brings...

After a long, thrilling and particularly stormy section of the "path",
I've experienced a rush of music and enthusiasm that I can only compare to the time I hid in that
remote cabin for four months.... It's as if something suddenly becomes dislodged at last
and a pent-up flow resumes with urgency, energy, almost panic....

Last year I lived in Paris for seven months, as you may already know.
Living there, I was fulfilling a life long dream. Yet I became obsessed with writing the album
and returning to Toronto, whole artwork triumphantly in hand. So many seeds were
being planted inside me, but at the time, nothing would be born and it was excruciating.
I am impatient. I couldn't calm my mind. I burned with a terror I couldn't name.
I was also very alone for the first few months, and being
alone in a whirling, magical city is some of the loudest loneliness I have ever heard. Forests I can handle.
Paris. That takes some serious steadiness.

I told myself to write and play for a few hours a day, visit a museum here and there. Just be.

Instead, I leapt from the poles of paralytic, ascetic neurotic to reckless, hedonistic debauchee...
The saint and the sinner each gnawing at a shoulder.
That seesaw of sin and repentance that Sheila tells me is surely not good for my health.

The images that still live and glow so fervently in my mind ended up forming themselves into song long after they were gathered... but I always believe that I need the release of a finished piece of work... I've never been Zen enought to really delight in the getting there... this is one of my great failings ... although age, they tell me, does wonders for this problem...

As my writing box full of scraps will attest, this little 5"5 frame can't handle the weight of all the collected
cargo... the phrases I cling to, the threads of melodies, the small story, the moment...
The treasure chest gets so heavy that it becomes impossible to proceed any further.
I liken it to a great warrior knight who is so proud of his sword he spends hours and hours polishing it,
putting fine coatings of lacquer on it, until one day he goes to pick it up and can't.

There is a truth hiding in there... there is always truth in struggle.
You see, I think that collecting and preciously archiving each piece of beauty the world gives you is a bit of
a sick twist on what the artistic process should really be... It's like picking a flower and putting it in a vase.
It dies much faster there, where you've tried to capture and freeze and own it. We can't be too precious
about the flames that leap up inside us, our task is simply to, in some way, alchemize it and blow it back
out into the world that gave it to us. Write that song, that poem, that book, craft it but don't destroy it, and then release it. No holding on, says the Tibetan. But we tell ourselves as humans that there is only safety in accumulation... building piles... heck... RSP commercials, I rest my case.

Art, like life, has to continually move. I become such a blacksmith and try to hammer these thoughts until
they yeild... but that's not the way. One has to be sort of tai chi about it... the force comes at you and you
mediate it, you aid or amplify its flow. You can't catch it. We're not out there with nets, we're out there with eyes, hearts...
and THAT is enough.

Paris and I had our terribly dark moments. Nights when I could hear
the hollow wailing way down deep in my heart, relentlessly in
my blood.
How very cold we can get. How cold in the soul. It can be temporarily masked, it can be drowned, beaten, strangled, stepped on, ignored, starved.... but it will slink back, ooze through the floorboards and seep into every crack. You are never safe from it.
You will never be immune. Sometimes you wonder if you'll ever get warm.

But you will. Of course you will.
And I did. That's why I'm here, healthy, and pregnant with tune! Aching to give you it all!
Sometimes, that seems to me to be an utter miracle.

I've got 18 songs for you... all will find their way into your hands next year I hope.
I'm working with a pierced man named Jag and there's a garden of microphones in my apartment.... strange flowers they make. Wires swirl and eddy into piles. Divine mess!
Speaking of flowers, I've got lilies everywhere, stinking and exhaling their gorgeousness into every square inch.
I move the guitars off the couch to sit and eat my cereal. Construction cranes and jackhammers do their best to spoil the lovely morning, but my powers of imagination are formidable, and this little balcony is my own personal "terrasse"...

It is with profound love that I build this next offering. My new wisdom will not let me poison it with overthinking. I want to tame my scientific eye, make it more of a democracy up there in the "editor's office", .... the lab-coats of course get a vote, but so do the skirt-wearing, street-waltzing cinderellas. Amen.

O, I do speak strangely...

The scorebook and new poetry book should be out by November or so. Thank you so much for your requests...

More very soon, as I have promised, my dear dear dear one. How I treasure your ears and eyes.
Off to the piano and her circle of attendant electronics!

xo
SS

TORONTO KISSES DEEPLY

Friday, March 16, 2007

Citizens, dreamers,

Toronto has slipped under my skin again... the love has returned.
It takes me a while. To recall, forgive, re-infatuate.
I am slow. So very very slow.
But it is only because my love is so deep, so fierce.
If my love were a feather-light passing fancy, I'd just flick a switch
and slide back into Toronto-ness like an old shoe.
No no. Not this bird. It must be colossal. Typhoons, operas, warships.
Therefore, it takes time.

When I came back from Paris every little cell screamed "no!" to you, fair city.
I bemoaned your filthy corners, your inconsistency, your haphazard slapdash
jigsaw puzzle arrangement.
"URBAN PLANNING!" was going to be my frustrated graffiti phrase of choice.

I lingered on the airline websites. I sent pretty cards to French friends.
All the while, Toronto just waited, tenderly, like a wise lover who knows by heart your every blink and sigh. It carried me to and from Philosophy class on red chariots that rattle. Its windy corridors echoed with new waltzes. Its sirens sang me to sleep. College and Roncesvalles began their subtle seduction. Horizontal sun on the financial towers at 5pm...blazing orange..., the biting wind in UC's hallowed, vaulted halls, the whirring Gardiner, the churning lake.

O Toronto!
Two nights ago I saw a country rock show in a dingy underground tavern.
Looking around at some of the familiar faces and listening to my pal make the fiddle sing I smiled the kind of smile that swells in your lungs. Home home home. Take me in my compatriots... love me again... how I've missed you...

The Art of Time Ensemble show last night was wonderful. Martin Tielli, Danny Michel, Andy Maize, John Southworth and myself made new creations out of a Schubert trio... It has ignited my desire to make music and music education top of my charity list. I want to make sure everyone gets to touch its magic, to be warmed by its mysteries. And dear Passioneers, thank you for your continued patience and presence!... without your support I'd be... I'd... oh I don't even want to think about it...

The new album is coming along fabulously... I cannot wait to sculpt this one into the elegant machine it longs to be... I am aiming for your heart - your throbbing, vital core... and I have been apprenticing with the finest archers. Look out sweet listener... this is my deepest haul yet... from the darkest part of those dangerous, intoxicating waters... love love love love inside me, like a restless animal!

It will be accompanied by a volume of poetry that, in my opinion, is far superior to the previous one "Ravens".

And the score book -- I must thank you all profusely for sending me your enthusiastic recommendations....I'm collecting the votes and am touched by how much back catalogue has been suggested... you do care!

Painting ... this impulse has been very distant.... I think it is off in the badlands somewhere doing some archaeological work.... the painter needs to gather what is leagues and fathoms beyond words... and I have been nothing but words lately...
so perhaps when the musical fever settles down and the poetry shop closes up for a week or two I'll find myself sitting at the desk trying to speak with colour.

Before I fly away I want to put my hand on your cheek, tilt your head to the side and say, very quietly, in your ear, "you magical, beautiful thing"

xoxoxo

SS

silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!
I will never forget that breakfast cereal commercial. Remember?

Only now, in my "almost-thirties", am I able to really internalize the significance of that phrase. What is it about that idea - "no, not you, only us, we get it, we are privy" - that so ignites and resonates within the ardent learner, within the seeking mind? "Why not me!! " it asks, I ask. WHY? We draw a line between this world and another, our knowledge, our ignorance. We invent Gods.

But this line of questioning always returns to the silly point that every weapon of thought you whip out is still human..., it has to be. Your thinking snaps and sparkles in the confines of a spectacular (though not yet fully understood by itself) brain that, consequently, is still limited by your human-ness. What then? Arg!!!! Creation Hypotheses only weave even more impossible, contradictory webs.
What is the question then? Is it "what is human"? But if so, isn't that obviously a hilariously futile line of inquiry? How could we humans possibly know?

sigh. You don't see beavers wracking their brains about beaver-ness.

Hey beauties.

I understand that you suffer. As do I. As do we all. It is the common fate. Severity is not the issue. The fact that people starve or endure tyrannical regimes does not lessen such a reality, horrifying as that may sound. Go ahead. Send the hate mail.

I would try to unify holy books and those philosophies of the wisest strugglers...
but I fear (and intuitively sense) that it is a vain pursuit. I must say though, that the 'MTV' "frivolous-nation" mythology we've constructed in our media is just a bright, colourful fiction. Know that, hear it, see it! It's all a lie. It does not belong to you. I certainly have participated, but I certainly do not adhere.

And to think, for a moment, about what that lie serves -- pretty blah, pretty boring and low.

Commerce.
The infinitely successful culture of inadequacy.--- your teeth aren't white enough! you smell! you are unclean! you don't make enough money! you're not sexy! you might end up destitute and friendless! you are too old! too fat! too
fast/slow/calm/driven/poor/afraid/happy/unhappy/educated/
uneducated/sure/unsure/unmarried/married....... etc.

All that nonsense conveniently sells products. But it is preying upon a larger, fundamentally human sentiment.... this not-enoughness, the not-yet-ness, the not-right-ness that we feel so innately and so deeply - so much so that we that we are compelled to name or explain it as this notion of "God"- a long-suffering, purely-loving ideal.

The only thing universal in human metaphysics is our sense of a deep impenetrable ignorance. Or is it self-hatred?

From my experience with the young, expectant and promising this Generation, and every generation that ever was, has the seed (the seed of wonder that forever challenges, asks, desires, longs, fears, questions) that prevents a 'known ignorance' from receding into complacency or tyranny. To them I say - never let go!... Please... never let go. Never get cell-phoned/ituned/media-ed out.... feeeeeel the weight of true knowledge, and its importance. Go slow.

The great questions are not shameful. They do not equal "sin" or slowness or rebellion. They are miraculous. They are your manifested humanity - which is never, ever, an "error". I know this only because I have transformed my idea of knowledge, not because I found some piece that other archaeologists overlooked.

To my bulging inbox, I promise will answer the myriad "Dawkins Questions" when time allows.... until then... permit me my imminent paper on Kierkegaard...

All of my sweet love and strength... every feeble ounce I have.... to you...
you make me so glad to be alive.

xoxoxox

S