Ottawa
I wake up in my hotel suite that morning after spending the previous day with journalists. Remembering how they asked me intelligent, penetrating questions, my heart hurts from their earnestness. I answered truthfully. Sometimes I think I can't lie. If someone asks me something difficult, I feel compelled to answer with the truth, no matter how much of that truth should be concealed for decorum's sake... a peculiar malady.
The sun was out. I walked to a park near the Natural Sciences museum and stared for a while at a fake triceratops.
(The rhythm section)
Trees sighed and threw their new green around as if in ecstasy. It was a lovely moment.
After sweating wildly in the gym to hush my accelerating mind, I get ready to meet industry dudes in leather jackets.
Part of me repels this, resists like two same magnet ends, and my internal monologue goes haywire, wobbly, like a surfer losing the wave.
Hmm. I watch my own discomfort with detached curiosity - good little monk-in-training.
Post-lunch I speed over to the venue to reunite with my sanity - the band. Ah. There they are, setting up their equipment.
Exhale.
The Bronson Centre is falling down! Old gal, keep it together for us, we want to roar magic through your peeling, reeking hallways.
Seriously, the place smells like a locker room but I have Pink Tartan dresses in hand - beauty will reign, dammit, by any means necessary.
But what is it? I can't tell. Something in the air, the weather, the creepy clock ticking is putting me on edge. Put your white dress on Slean, I mean...your armour.
I step on stage but I can't shake the eerie feeling and it sticks to me throughout the opening songs. I wrestle it for the first half of the set and then it finally relents. Sheesh. What was that? Some ghosts like to mess with me, even when I play the piano with all my heart in green high-heels.
Once I shake it, we really catch a wind. The beautiful audience cheers and sniffles and sighs. Voila, the chariot is back in orbit. Merci, milles fois Ottawa.
Toronto
Strings o glorious strings.
Five hours on the road and 15 minutes to frantically load up merchandise from my apartment.
Arriving at the Danforth Music Hall with an hour and a half to spare and a brand new quartet getting ready to sight-read 10 scores cold, I am, uh, in a state.
Full body clench, head down, just rehearse. Never mind that in a few hours all those seats will be filled with expectant faces.
Do not even utter the words "train wreck". Oops.
In sound check I discover that I've made grave errors in a few of the scores. Barking instructions and whipping pencils around I do believe I am sweating while the
piano tuner taps his foot, grunts, looks dramatically at his watch. The piece finally coalesces. Sweet heaven, I guess my little tousle with the ghost in Ottawa earned me a cosmic get-out-of-jail free card. Phew. The tuner can commence his A440 poking and I must get out of my sneakers and into something more befitting of, hmm, a Baroness.
(Hey, get outta my dressing room...)
(soo very tired)
Ooh, flowers in my dressing room! Will I ever tire of looking at them and smelling them deeply? - never. Opting for the purple dress, I creep into the dark, past a grinning Dean and the show has begun. I feel in bloom, full-voiced and free. Toronto, you do this to me! A flub in Weight threatens to unseat the magic. I muscle it back into alignment. Ahem, dear music, I made you, behave!
Poor strings players are attached to their microphones, so our two encores are, hmm, not really a surprise...
but it didn't matter! I could feel friends in the audience. I could feel good flames licking their throats, goose bumps on their arms.
Sadly the security guards kick everyone out of the lobby. Grrr. This makes me irate.
Suddenly I am ravenously hungry. It's amazing how music can feed feed feed you when you're weak - and then when your body is back in the driver's seat you realize
the machine wants more than carrot sticks and ginger candies. Homeward bound in a black car with flowers on my lap and your singing, Toronto, tucked into my ear.
Kitchener
Buying pantyhose in a Shopper's drug mart, a young woman with a walkman stops me and tells me she's listening to me, "right now".
I walk back to the venue in wind and sunshine through the streets that are weirdly vacant, except for two swearing skateboarders and the goofy nodding tulips.
Sometimes I don't know what to say. If the world was asking me something just then, I would be standing, staring, unsure.
The theatre is a dark hollow - a vast gaping mouth. There are blazing white spotlights fixed on us that don't dim or change direction. I feel like I'm being interrogated. A snarky comment from some constipated woman leaps out of the silence. I shoot a blazing arrow back in her direction. We play like soldiers. The sound is surprisingly rich and full.
I still love my job. Though I need a shower and some Charles Simic.
(Dean making notes. Could he be any cuter?)
Fredericton
This piano is the stuff of erotic dreams. HOOO-eee. And the Playhouse is pretty much an ideal sound environment. My purple dress officially needs dry-cleaning so I pull out some bright pink. Look out Fredericton, it's short. Two encores later, beautiful ladies give me home-made earrings. Thanks!
Moncton
Speaking of presents - WOW! We were all blown away by the gift of a painstakingly hand-crafted journal from a sweet-eyed lady in the lobby. I shall only put my most electric truths in there, thank you kindly! The Capitol Theatre gave me shivers upon first glance. Ornately carved and delicately painted, opera boxes, velvet red seats, elegant pillars and trim, the dream I dream when mentally casting my musical. Sigh. There is even a front stage apron where young starlets-in-training can practice their charm-weaving and general tom-foolery... ahem. I contributed an exercise or two. In a puff of Chanel I stroll out and greet the sparkling souls of Moncton. Ah Canadians....
(View from backstage...thanks Royal!)
Halifax
So simultaneously relieved and sorrowful - the last show of a month long tour. I love this venue. Another triple-fudge-sundae of a piano. And beautiful shining Halifax hearts, open to all songs, every song, every note I can hear them drinking in, digesting. In my Andy-The-Anh dress with a shimmery blue cape (wing?), I stir their minds into a giant soupy vortex. We spin and sigh together. My heart cracks and breaks looking at the faces of the lads in my band. Just like that, tomorrow we will plug ourselves back into real life - groceries and the streetcar and day-planners and doctor's appointments. I am a lousy Tao-ist as of yet.
(A beautiful dress by Canada's own Andy The-Anh)
There is no middle way for me, it seems. The terrible low, the glorious height. Ah, but that's the Baroness speaking. She who wrote the Baroness into existence is drinking green tea, enthusiastically poking a computer and smiling that middle-way smile. Right now right now right now right now....
Thank you Canada.
I love you.
S
