mumbling monkey

Last Friday, I fortuitously did not have a math seminar to attend, for this would have prevented me from attending my first event of the Deep Roots Music Festival: the fiddling master class.

Being a self-taught beginner, I thought I’d no sooner bring my fiddle than I would bring a dozen ill-trained baby monkeys with me. The resultant noise would be a distraction and annoyance, no matter how chaotically amusing. Lessons are for more advanced people, I thought. They’re for quick learners and people with good pitch. I figured it would be way over my head, but that it would be a good learning experience, and a taste of something I could aspire to.

While I was waiting for the lesson, I met photo fiddler and his lovely wife for the first time. It was nice to have someone to talk shop and share the lesson with. I also ran into Tess, a woman who plays at the Sunday night session here in town, and she had a fiddle in hand, though it is not her primary instrument. She asked where my instrument was, and I said I didn’t dare bring it. Ominously, she said that she had learned to regret leaving instruments behind, and always brought hers now, just in case.

Jay Ungar and Troy MacGillivray each gave a class: Jay took the advanced players and Troy took the intermediates. They each played a little bit for the whole group to give us a taste for their styles, before splitting us up into groups. Most people stayed in the advanced class, while I and a half dozen young children skipped into the adjoining room with Troy.

I should have brought my fiddle. I was twice the age of the next youngest student, and even though he knows more than I do, I could have kept up with the other kids at least. Darn it!

Well, we learned the Highlander’s Jig. Nice and slow, two bars at a time, repeated until everyone got it. What we learned varies slightly from the sheet music here; we played the A part the same both times rather than picking up the second ending.

I made the best of my fiddle-less situation, and I learned on “air fiddle”, as unobtrusively as I could. After we did this tune, I crept back into the room where the advanced class was taking place, and listened to them play a Cajun tune whose name I’ve forgotten. Their music was beautiful and the learners were quick. It was far beyond me, but it was lovely.

Some tidbits I picked up: In Cape Breton playing, you don’t get to slur your notes. Articulate them all, please. The first note of the first bar of a dance piece (not including any partial bars of music that start it off, which I forget what they are called) is a down-bow. The jig we learned was in A, and Troy taught the class to throw a little trill onto pretty much any high A they played. That was as complex as ornamentation got, which is great for me.

When I got home, I yanked out my fiddle off its shelf and scratched away until I got the tune out. Not to speed or anything, but I’ve got the bones of it. It was a lot of fun.

Next time, I’m bringing the fiddle, just in case.

The 2006 Deep Roots Music Festival took place last weekend, September 15-17. It was a lot of fun. It differed in many ways from the Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Fest I went to last month: it was smaller, the music styles more diverse (and more country), it had more of a small-town vibe to it (appropriately), and it was indoors and in theatre settings rather than outside on a lawn. Like the N&LFF, it ended in a sing-along, but rather than ending with a patriotic Canada or Nova Scotia song, we all clapped and sang about “goin’ down to Wolfville to settle down.” It had a great home-town feel to it, with giant puppets clapping and children dressed as butterflies running up and down the aisles, and everyone was smiling.

Friday night the opening concert started with a Women and their Roots multi-disciplinary performance. There was spoken word performance by Shauntay Grant; singing by We’koqma’q Qewiskwa’q, Sara and Kamila, and Mary Jane Lamond; and dancing by Georgette Leblanc. The layering of different cultures and styles of performance art in this collaboration was very moving. It was very honouring of diversity and womanhood, in a celebratory yet thoughtful way. It was one of the most wonderful performances I’ve ever seen.

The other really fun thing from that night was Troy MacGillivray’s set, which was fantastic. I loved the fiddling. I listen to a lot of Cape Breton-style fiddling, and it is really something to live in a place where I can take in some, live. It makes me very thankful.

I’d have to say that the highlight of the festival was the time with friends. When I was in Newfoundland, I met a new friend, Andrew. He came up here to visit me for the festival. He has approximately one thousand friends, and it is sure fun to be one of them. I think we ran into more people he knew than people I knew, even though I’m the one who lives here.

One night, we met up with a Flickr friend of mine, photo fiddler, and we got to spend lots of the festival hanging out with him. That was a blast. The three of us went for dinner, and couldn’t resist taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. Heather did a wonderful job of laying these pictures out so you can see them all at once. We enjoyed great food and even better company, and then we went walking down to the harbour to take more pictures. Besides photography, the three of us have in common an appreciation for folk music, a background in math and computer science, and wonderful smiles. It was fun enjoying the company of kindred spirits.

Another really fun thing was the Gypsophilia concert on Saturday night. They had a really big stage, and a fun gypsy-jazzy-dancey sound, and many people were dancing at the back of the theatre. It would have been great enough on its own, but then the band invited everyone down to dance on the stage with them. I was a bit shy for stage-dancing, but I sure danced it up at the back. Everyone else seemed to have a great time dancing down in front. My camera takes poor shots at night, so I haven’t got pictures, but hopefully Andrew puts his videos up on YouTube, because they really captured the fun and creative feel of the night.

After Gypsophilia’s set, they went out of the main theatre room to a big open space in the building and led a jam, which quickly turned into a drumming session, but was no less fun to dance to. I sweated up a storm and danced until I had to stop. There are few things more enjoyable than such a night.

This was my first week as a graduate student, and I am happy to report that I am as alive and well as anyone could possibly expect.

I do feel like I’m in over my head, and I have the impostor-ish feeling that often comes from trying something new and horribly grown-up sounding, but I have a strong feeling that everything is going to be just fine. The other graduate students are friendly and helpful, and the professors are, as well. My biggest worry is that I will let people down. I just have to trust that with hard work and a good support network, and by the grace of God, I can succeed.

I have two classes this term and a whole passel of assorted teaching-assistant duties. I think I’ll be kept very busy, but in good ways. I’m doing a reading course on algebraic number theory and cryptography, and a numerical methods course that will afford me the opportunity to learn to use Matlab. I’ve worked a bit in Matlab before, enough to get a taste of some of its power and enjoy myself, but having some training in how to use it will be most helpful.

I am settled enough into my apartment to have made a mess of it, so I’m working on establishing some semblance of order and routine. I’d like for my home to be a restful and a productive place, and while I note that I can distract myself quite easily from mess, it tends to be at the expense of productivity and my overall well-being. Plus, I’d be ashamed to invite anyone over while the place is a mess, and I want to end up with the sort of life where I can just bring people on by anytime.

The Sunday evening session I mentioned a while back looks to be something that I’d like to keep at regularly. I went again last week and am planning on returning tonight, and hopefully someday I will begin to pick up on the tunes. Even if I went and never played a note, it would be enjoyable for the experience of listening to great roots music and watching how other people play, and play together. I think I’d learn a lot just from that.

Most magical of all, I have started to knit again a little bit. It’s been months and months since I could do much. I had some muscle strain in my arms that was making my life a bit more difficult, but that appears to have dissipated. I am trying to practice good work habits, and to stop an activity at the first signs of ache. It doesn’t look like I will need to necessarily do a lot of keyboarding for school and work, so that is a big help.

This knitting and clover are things I got to enjoy yesterday. I’ve noticed this rabbit’s-foot clover as I’ve been walking around town. This is another new-to-me species, but it’s sure a cute one. I am able to identify this plant with ease, because I recently obtained a copy of Common Wildflowers and Plants of Nova Scotia. It’s a great little book. It’s not a true field guide; it lacks line drawings and groupings of plants by family, and it makes no claims to completion. But for someone like me, who’s interested, but knows precious little, it is a great starting point. I read through it in an evening, and then the next day went on a short walk, and recognized a half dozen plants immediately. Full marks for ease of use, then! I’m enjoying the feeling of familiarity and knowledge it gives me, even though I still don’t know much.

The knitting behind the clover is something I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. It’s slow going, because of not wanting to strain any muscles, but it is nice and meditative. The yarn was a gift from Vicky, who sent me a care package back in March when I was pretty stressed out. It’s Briggs & Little Heritage Wool in grape, a nice dark heathered purple. That’s all I want to say about the knitting, in case my seat-of-the-pants pattern doesn’t work out and then the project just disappears into the deeps of my closet.

Now, time to stop shirking. Back to cleaning the bathroom.

Now that it has been a full month since I arrived in St. John’s to take in the Folk Festival, I had better write something before I forget it all! After the details have all faded away, I think I will remember that the festival was a blast, no matter what the weather, and that I ought to go again if I have the chance.

I am finding it harder and harder to write about my holiday, I think because I haven’t had the usual opportunity to reflect on a holiday that comes with going home. Rather than returning to BC, I’ve moved on to a new home in Nova Scotia, so my mind is full of new places and experiences that are now shaping my perceptions. Also, the rejuvenation and the inspiration that I received from all my new experiences in Newfoundland are just real hard to articulate. Still, I think a recounting of some of the facts would be nice, at least for my own future reference.

There were workshops on Saturday and Sunday morning. These were great because they were a chance to hear musicians and other performers in an unamplified setting, which I find far more natural for folk music than a sound system up on a stage. I got to take in storytelling, fiddling, accordioning, traditional Newfoundland set dancing, and more. Any one of these workshops would have been a treat of an event in itself. Putting four or five of them in a single weekend filled with other concerts just about overloaded my system. It was great!

Saturday was a rainy day, and I spent much of the afternoon hiding out in the beer tent so as to stay dry, but by evening it was nice again. Just in time for homesickness to strike! The St. John’s Folk Arts Council was presenting a lifetime achievement award to Ron Hynes, and several musicians were singing a tribute to him. Larry Foley began singing the St. John’s Waltz, a lovely song, but my heart and eyes were just too full to take it in.

I wandered out behind the stage to where it was dark and quiet, and stood by some trees and looked out at the city. There was a nice moon, and a lot of happy sounding people, and a skyline wholly unfamiliar to me. Here I was taking a holiday I’d dreamed of, with fun all around me, and all I could think about was that I did not belong. I had a good cry, but fortunately I was able to realize that there was no sense in staying homesick, because it would mean missing out on all the fun, and I couldn’t try to convince myself that I’d really rather be back home and missing the Festival, now, would I? So I stood looking at the night and composing myself, and a half dozen young teenagers wandered up to me and struck up a conversation. I was glad for the distraction and even gladder for their friendliness, and we spent much of that evening gallivanting together. It was nice to be thought acceptable company by 14-year-olds . . . We closed out the evening dancing madly to Tickle Harbour and Mopaya. I must remember that I do not have the energy of a 14-year-old!

I haven’t been that acutely homesick since the Festival, so I think it must have been a necessary moment of weakness. I try to accept them and remember that “this, too, shall pass.”

Sunday was maybe my favourite day of the festival. It was beautiful weather, the first sun I had seen since arriving to St. John’s. I skipped the first 1.5 workshops of the day so that I could take a walk down by the harbour and look at the way everything looked in the sun. It was time well spent, I think. Harbour time is good time.

It was pleasant to sit on the grass in the sun all day, frying my forehead and the part in my hair because I didn’t wear a hat, and enjoying good company and eating good food. While I had been privileged to spend most of the festival so far tagging along with Heather and her small fry, Jean and Eleanor, I did so even more on Sunday. By then, said small fry and I had gotten to know each other comfortably well and could laugh and play and chase around to our hearts’ delight. At one point in the evening, I was afraid I’d wound Eleanor up to a state of immoderate hyperactivity by pretending that she was a spider I was going to squish, but she fortunately calmed down shortly, no thanks to me. I don’t get a lot of opportunity to hang out with younger kids anymore, and Jean and Eleanor gave me the gift of their perspectives on the world, letting me share in the fun of being young. I enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks, Heather, for putting up with having a third child around to mess with your week and your attempts to find calm!

I didn’t take many pictures of the Festival because I wanted to concentrate on the music, but I did make a Flickr set containing a few. If you want to see more, Heather’s are excellent, and the main Festival site has links to more.

On Sunday, I took myself down to the pub, and brought my fiddle. I had heard there was a session on Sunday evenings, and somehow worked up the nerve to check it out. It is, true to word, beginner-friendly, and just plain old friendly too. There were a good dozen musicians, most of whom made some effort to chat with me over the course of the evening. They asked me what tunes I knew (it being painfully evident that I am a beginner, and don’t have an Irish repertoire to speak of) in an effort to include me, and even encouraged me to come back in the future so that I can get better and develop a repertoire. A kind bunch of people, all around.

I didn’t take any pictures, but I have retained my favourite image of the evening in my mind’s eye: the light was warm and yellow and spilled all over the wooden tables and floor, and a couple of dozen feet sitting round in a circle, half of which were tapping and hopping in time. Smiles on our faces, beer on the table.

Best of all, someone played Calliope House Jig. In E. I know that jig, and I know it in E, though I didn’t realize it was usually played in D. I played along and made mistakes, but it was loud enough that probably nobody else could really hear. It was great fun.

Yesterday, I went shopping in New Minas. I saw traffic lights for the first time in weeks.

It is funny to think of how different my life is here. If I was back home in the Okanagan, there’d be no session-going. I would have more friends, but less peace and quiet. I’d be going line dancing tonight, and this weekend I’d be going to the Interior Provincial Exhibition, known locally as the Armstrong Fair. I hate missing that. It is one of the highlights of my year, when I get to go. With chuckwagon races, threshing demonstrations, great cheese, and the Home Arts Exhibition, it promises a great down-home time for the whole family.

Of course, most families these days prefer the midway. But I’ve never been big on rides. I get my big thrill from seeing whether Mrs. T. from Falkland won first prize for her knitted socks again this year. Knitting is part of the Home Arts Exhibition, which also includes other needlework, and everything from kids’ Lego building competitions to coin collections, baked bread, and jam. There are other exhibitions, such as Fine Arts (calligraphy, photography, portraiture, and more), wines, honeys, flowers, you name it.

Unlike other stampedes or fairs, the Armstrong Fair has never lost its small-town flavour. There is more and more “production” every year: things being sold or performed, rather than presented or demonstrated by locals. There are more city kids than 4-H-ers, but the agrarian feel is still very strong. I have never sent in an exhibition entry myself, but I keep meaning to do so one year. I had a friend who used to show her pigs there every year. There’s still tractor shows of both old and new vehicles. (I just realized I haven’t been to a tractor show all year – probably a first. I usually hit two. I love them.) The fair, I think, is still true to its roots.

Thankfully, I still live in a place with agrarian flavour. I saw a truck hauling corn yesterday, two or three fruit stands, and a U-Pick apples place. I am looking forward to picking a bunch of apples in a couple of weeks. We have a great farmer’s market here too. On Saturday I hope to buy some corn and some more onions, and maybe just a few apples. I love locally and organically grown produce. It has so much more flavour and character and freshness.

Speaking of fresh, I am going to go out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, I think.

The first picture was taken on the walking trail that runs helpfully parallel to the railroad tracks. Walking along the tracks themselves is verboten here, probably wise. I find them awkward to walk on anyway. I have short legs. Housed in the building to the left are several businesses, including a nice used book shop and a wonderful bulk food store that sells licorice tea.

The next two pictures are of fields at sunset, taken from the dykes running northwest of the harbour. Then there is a wildflower that I do not know, but it is the most common flower around, so I should start learning plants pretty quick, I guess.

Then, the edge of the Warehouse Mall, which backs onto Waterfront Park, which fronts onto the harbour.

Next, we have the harbour at low tide, which, yes! looks just like a mud flat. I like to watch young boys throw rocks into the mud and laugh at the resulting splats. Then there are some trees that grow by the Woodland Trails, which I cannot help but call the Hundred Acre Wood, since it really is.

Finally, grass north of the harbour in late evening.

Being in St. John’s reminded me of the feeling I used to get as a child at Christmas. The house would fill up with people and with colourful foods and packages and lights, and there would be so much going on – good things all, but just so much – that I would end up running down to the basement and hiding because I just needed a little space and a little quiet. I loved the excitement, but I could not take it all in at once. I’d sit at a little distance and think about all the exciting things going on – my favourite foods, presents in boxes, my cousins playing games, and then after a little while, I was happy and ready to jump back into the melée.

By the end of my first day in St. John’s, I was somewhat disoriented. The landscape and the culture were just different. I wasn’t at all unhappy – getting to go on an adventuresome holiday and take in a folk festival pretty much made me feel like a kid at Christmas – but I was sure not at home, either.

I spent a good portion of the day wandering downtown streets. I loved the row houses, colourful, distinctive, and no two alike, but it unnerved me to find that many of these old houses do not have front yards. You can just about touch them from the sidewalk. It felt very close, larger and brighter than reality. The air is heavy and salty as well, leading to a sensation of being pressed-in or squeezed.

Some of the roads are a bit steep too.

It took me a little while to get used to the scale of St. John’s. There are not a lot of large buildings, but having a lot of buildings close together changes the shape and size of movements a person makes. The great thing about it is that there is something new to discover with every step. The old houses are full of character, and there are a number of lanes that are accessible only to pedestrians (and, perhaps, stair-enabled vehicles). Some go around corners; others pop out of nowhere; others end unexpectedly. Cats wander freely. Occasionally there is something left on a doorstep to hint at the corners of people’s lives: a book, a basket, a child’s toy.

Being so close to houses means you get to see lots of mailboxes. St. John’s has the best mailboxes of any town I have ever visited. Lots of people paint them interestingly: to look like a set of row houses, a miniature of their own house, a garden, or something else entirely. I did not take many pictures because I thought it might be weird for the owner to look out the window and see a camera aimed at the house’s front.

Still, I could not resist when I saw a house number that was not an integer. Go figure eh?

It was in a row of three: 28, 28 1/2, and 30. I can only surmise that, being on the “even” side of the street, 29 was not an option. Does St. John’s have watering restrictions, like many other towns do, where you can water your lawn on even days if your house number is even, and on odd days if your house number is odd? If so, what does this place do? I love to wonder.

Anyway, after my wandering, I found something for dinner and wound up at the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival for its opening on Friday evening. I was excited, let me tell you. I love me some good folk music, and the N&LFF is reputed to be among the best.

It was then that I began to encounter the race that knows Joseph (go read your L. M. Montgomery if you don’t know the reference. It means “kindred spirit”). Heather and her family turned up after a hard day’s travel home from holidays, but still with spunk and smiles, ready to hear some great music. It was so good to meet them in person and have friends to enjoy good company and good music with. I had been having fun, but joy shared is doubled, as they say.

Memories from Friday night are scattered and snapshot-like in their quality: hearing Frank Maher sing “O’Brien is Dead,” which I still think is one of the funniest songs in the world; seeing Heather’s Eleanor dive behind her mother when introduced to me; meeting their friend Andrew, another member of the race that knows Joseph; eating a moose burger and not being sure if it was really moose meat or not; and trying to get back to the university in the dark after having taken a wrong turn, not exactly sure where I was.

As for the music: it was incredible. Superlative, delightful, and it, too, was larger than life, as any music must be when you’ve come to love it from recordings and suddenly get to hear it played live. My expectations were not only surpassed, but also reshaped by the musicians and the atmosphere. I had done my best to imagine what it would be like, but I had only imagined the edge of things. There was a whole dimension I had not known that unfolded before me until I just sat back and let it all wash over me. I guess the folk culture is just deeper and stronger than I had thought. What I had imagined to be a sculpture turned out to be a creature, with complexity of structure, as well as mannerisms, eccentricities, humour, and personality.

It was harder to capture than I expected.

Yesterday morning, I received my computer and managed to get it online with no trouble, so I am feeling rather like someone who has had a gag removed and cotton wool pulled out of her ears – able to communicate, and overwhelmed by all the voices and sounds.

It is hard to know where to start. There is a lot to say. Consider this part 1 of catch-up.

In July, I was packing and working, preparing for my cross country move, and busy. On August 2, I left, to move from the Okanagan Valley in BC to the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, with a holiday in St. John’s, Newfoundland in between. Flying east, I had adventures typical of one who is scared of flying and who travels via Air Canada, but arrived in one piece, only a few hours late.

I got to St. John’s at 6 p.m. on the following day, ready to enjoy a week’s holiday in a city I had long wanted to visit. I checked into the room where I was staying at MUN, and hoofed it downtown. Goal: To make it to Gower St. United Church by 7:30 for Multicultural Night.

Maps and mere words cannot express the cacophony of St. John’s downtown. The streets are a joyous disorder, or perhaps more correctly, form an idiosyncratic order. A woman I met on the plane tried to warn me about the difficulties of navigation, but I was too tired and ill to pay much attention. Heather had made me a very nice pedestrian’s map of how to get from MUN to the church, which gave me a sense of general direction. I found only about a third of the streets, knowingly, but after becoming more familiar with that walk, realized I had taken several correct streets accidentally.

I do not have a particularly bad sense of direction, but it is heavily cue-dependent. Once I was dropped in the middle of the prairie, miles from any town, and it was a cloudy day. There was no sun’s path to give a clue, and, this being southwestern Saskatchewan, there were not many landmarks or even trees either. A woman commented on how tourists get lost, unable to follow directions out here on the farm roads. I raised an eyebrow quizzically. She put her hands on her hips and sternly asked me, the girl from away, “Well? Which way’s east?” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. Her face relaxed and she said, “Now, most people wouldn’t be able to figure that out.” What I didn’t tell her was that I remembered the roads we had taken to get to this farm, and I knew that they would run fairly true east-west and north-south, so I could essentially count the turns and figure it out. This does not work in St. John’s. It is an old city, and it tumbles uphill from the harbour. I surmise that roads grew into each other over time, and more were added, and probably a few have disappeared as well.

I eventually got completely disoriented and gave up on my map. Relying on intuition and a sight of the harbour, I took an unknown road. I found Gower Street not five minutes later, and got to the church on time. All’s well that ends well, as Ma Ingalls would say.

Multicultural Night was a blast, though I was so tired I left early. I heard the Mahers Bahers play for the first time. What a hoot! Christina Smith plays fiddle in this group. I’m a fan of hers, so hearing her play in person was a delight, and meeting her during intermission sent me right over the moon.

I also met several Saskatchewanites in the room. All you need to do this, should you ever wish, is to shout “Go Riders!” in a crowded place. I met three or four people this way that night. We had a nice prairie-pride moment during our Atlantic holiday.

Sorry, folks, you can take the girl out of the prairie, but…

Did you know that ants have a smell? Yes, they do. They’ll release it all over your bathroom floor if you are having a bit of an ant problem, and the bathroom is the only uncarpeted surface in the apartment, and you finally lose it and grab your shoe and go on a killing spree, smacking as many as you can again and again just so you can walk to the toilet in peace.

All I ask is that ants not crawl on the toilet paper or in my pants or otherwise dangerously near my arse while … well, at any time, really.

So now my bathroom stinks like dead ants. And there are still dozens, dozens, parading around. They are sticking mostly to the carpet, though I have to brush the odd one from my bed, hair, counter, you name it. I see creepies when I close my eyes at night.

All the food is tightly stored. I saw to that right away. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough containers for all the food, so some things are inappropriately in the fridge or freezer.

In unrelated news, brown sugar doesn’t freeze. It weeps a syrupy goo, and gets hard like it does when stale.

My life is feeling unanchored at the moment. I have no computer just yet, although my high speed “kit” was delivered last Wednesday, so hopefully as soon as I get a machine, I’ll be on the go.

Two and a half weeks ago, I left the Okanagan. I ran off to Newfoundland for a glorious and charming and just generally astounding holiday. There is a lot to be discussed, and pictures to share, but it will have to wait until I have more time than the “express” Internet station at the public library allows. I got to enjoy every bit of the Folk Festival and other folk musicy things, and enjoy the unparalleled hospitality of my “Internet friends” Heather and Vicky and their families. It was truly a delight to spend time in their company.

After a week of music and friends and scenery and wild blueberries, I hopped a plane to Nova Scotia, where I am now settling. Contrary to my own deep fears, I have an apartment that is non-scary and non-pest-infested. It is nicer and bigger than I thought from the pictures, a pleasant surprise.The neighbours are friendly and so is the rest of town. I have an office, but no keys yet, and I have groceries, but there is no blackstrap molasses to be found. Just fancy, which is quite all right.

Homesickness has not set in yet. I am doing just fine, although I was a little disheartened upon finding out that certain groceries such as Sun-Rype products or Old Dutch are simply not present here. I will just have to stock up at Christmas.

I must vacate my computer station. Thankfully, a rambly walk along dirt farming roads is on the agenda. This is a nice place to live.