The Life & Miss-Adventures of Emme Rogers
It has been awhile since we’ve checked in with the creative young talent that is Bronwyn Malloy. We found her jamming to her new song ‘Rain Mood’ with her Dad, Stephen Malloy, on a veranda in the Middle of Nowhere, Quebec.
Such talent! Looking forward to seeing where she takes it.
Kisses,
Emme xoxo
I’m not quite sure why I have been feeling a sad sense of reflection this last week. Perhaps it is that the days are cooling down and that the carefree days of summer are coming to an end (even if I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the carefree part). But no question about it, as I read Alyzee Lakhani’s latest post, this time the tears catching in my eyes were that sad reflection, that with summer winding up, we lose the two incredible interns that I’ve been pinching from Ahimsa to school.
Bronwyn and Alyzee, with whom I imagine is the British accented drill Sargent barking orders at Alyzee in her head (see Alyzee's latest post for the reference).
I am really going to miss these gals. Alyzee and her incredible gift with the quill. Bronwyn, whom was born to have a spotlight shine on her and has an incredible gift for the audiovisual arts that I was only just beginning to grasp.
For all that I tease Erica, I do hope she agrees and we can find a way to keep these two involved, if only on those occasional moments that they have a breather between school deadlines, as I will greatly miss these two creative spirits.
Thanks Alyzee and Bronwyn!
Most of us have flown in a plane. This is because most of us prefer air travel to driving over oceans, and steamer ships seem to be in short supply these days.
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports. Most recently I saw a friend off on her way to Switzerland for six weeks to learn French. (People do these things!) Before that, I was on six flights in three weeks, four of them over five hours in length. That’s a lot of hours not only in airplanes, but in airports. All those long hours of purposeful, anxiety-fraught sitting that manage to be more exhausting than running a half-marathon have got to be filled with something. I usually choose a steely yet non-threatening expression on my face (ideal message: not a security threat, but not a potential new friend either), the entire Weakerthans discography on my iPod (including John K. Samson’s 1993 Propagandhi-era solo EP “Slips and Tangles,” complete with the bitterly brilliant track “Airport Lounge”) and a new Shitty-Irish-Chick-Lit novel. It passes the time.
Lots to look at. (Photo by myself)
Sometimes I send annoyed emails to friends, reporting the (non-)action. For example, from last month: “So here I am in yet another airport lounge, listening to a blaring television that’s on a loop of death off to the right. Every ten minutes or so a commercial comes on for something that must be sad and child-related (I can’t see the screen) – a woman’s voice plaintively singing “Head and shoulders, knees and toes…” over a subtly swelling string section. Jealous?”
But, you know – those lost hours add up. And sometimes you have one of those moments when you think, “these minutes are as much a part of my life as any other minutes.” Two choices remain here: panic at the impossibility of living a spontaneous, carefree, world-trotting life when so much of that life tends to be spent sitting in relentlessly uncomfortable seats, or…eavesdrop. (Which may also induce panic. But really, if you eavesdrop on a plot to hijack a plane in an airport, rather than fear the ineffectual plotters you should probably move away in all haste so you don’t get knocked over as the plotters get bodily taken down by lumbering security officials.)
Traveling can be tiresome. (Photo by myself)
During one of my recent stretches of time spent in an airport lounge, I turned the tables and eavesdropped on some security officials. Very satisfying. One female official was standing behind a desk, desperately trying to look busy, as another, older male guard regaled her with his best war stories:
“Tell ya, had two tire totals in one day. Both in the same day! Like, two tires were totaled in one day. So I got myself a four-set of 10 ply plymouths, never had a tire problem again. Can you believe that!?”
Then, he unveiled his real corker:
“Got a couple kayaks, down at Jericho…oh yeah, I go there every week. I’m a member. One for someone your size. Well, originally for my daughter. One bigger one. For someone like me. Think fate’s telling us something? Haha…yeah, I’m an atheist too.”
Next time you’re in an airport, don’t close yourself in a bubble of pointless travel-induced-tension. Eavesdrop instead! You’ll be amazed at the intelligence, kindness, and sheer idiocy of the human race. You may also get a few funny looks. Please don’t sue me if you get taken down by security for staring at people and writing down everything they say.
Moments of glory, speaking generally, are few and far between. One has to seize onto these moments when they come, and, if at all possible, immortalize them. Turn them into stories. Mind you, most moments can be turned into stories if one tries hard enough…whether they’re interesting can be judged by the opacity of the glaze over the audience’s eyes.
I have a story to tell – and it’s not just any story. It’s a story about a major moment of glory. The fact that I consider this a glorious moment is, I suppose, a testament to my eccentricity. My moment of glory could easily have been another, more balanced person’s moment of abject mortification. Also, as I can’t see any of you, myriad readers, I will have to trust that the glaze over your eyes isn’t sufficiently viscous to prevent you reading.
Firstly, I suppose it has to be established that I’m a bit creepy/fangirlstalkerish about certain musicians. These include The Weakerthans, The Decemberists, The Mountain Goats, Hey Rosetta!, and…Dan Mangan. I have been lucky enough to see every one of my mild (wild?) obsessions live, most recently The Mountain Goats just last night at The Rickshaw, a show which one of my friends described as the closest to a religious experience he’d ever been. In other words: I’ve been to some fantastic concerts. None of them, however, can quite match Dan Mangan’s show at The Vogue in Vancouver BC, on May 8th 2010.
Photo: Christine McAvoy
It was the third time I’d seen Dan live, the first having been at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in the summer of 2009, where, after chancing upon him performing with a group of other musicians, I made sure to be there every time he was playing, the whole weekend. I then bought his first album and EP, waited with baited breath for his second album, and have lived and breathed Nice, Nice, Very Nice ever since. Needless to say, I was a little bit excited about Dan’s sold-out show at The Vogue. My group of Dan-loving friends that managed to get tickets got there early, and we set up camp in the third row. From the first note of “Sold,” we were absolutely enraptured.
Being the slightly-creepy-fangirl-stalker that I am, I had read some reviews of Dan’s other shows from his nation-wide tour. Many of them mentioned a magical moment during “The Indie Queens Are Waiting,” which is a duet between Dan and the fantastic Veda Hille, when, in the absence of a female vocalist on the stage, the girls in the audience took up Veda’s part. This being a hometown show for Dan, combined with the obvious rapt attention of the audience, led me to believe that the same magical moment would organically occur when Dan played “Indie Queens” at The Vogue. However, and this was an interesting, perhaps even revelatory moment for me – moments have to start somewhere, or in this case, with someone.
The moment of truth arrived: Dan’s wonderful ten-piece(!) band left the stage, leaving him alone with all 1150 audience members. He began playing the quietly mournful “The Indie Queens Are Waiting,” and, the first time that Veda Hille would have sung alone, there was a conspicuous, and total, silence. I swear Dan looked a little surprised, and, with a wry smile, he said, “I couldn’t find Veda Hille, to sing those parts. I don’t know where she went.” Honestly, what’s a girl to do? The next time Veda’s part came around, I was sure that everyone would sing along. So, right on cue, I belted out, “Are we cool now?”
ALONE.
And I was LOUD.
Photo: Christine McAvoy
Dan looked over, straight at the area that I was sitting, and, despite my heart beating about seventeen times its normal rate, I kept singing. This was one of those marvelous moments that teeter on the edge of complete humiliation and endless glory. The girls in the section around me joined in on the “aaaaahhs,” and Dan said, “Perfect pitch!” and “I don’t even need a band!” Each time the group of us sang the next bit of Hille’s part, the rest of the audience laughed, but I swear it was a joyful (not mocking!) laughter. (Really. Someone filmed this and it’s on Youtube, so I’ve had time to assess it whilst my heart is beating closer to a healthy pace.)
Oh, alright…
One of the many reasons that I think the show was so fantastic was the aura of love and support that simply radiated from the audience toward Dan. When they laughed along with us Indie Queens that knew every note of Veda Hille’s harmonies, I knew I wasn’t alone in being proud that Dan is a Vancouverite, and a humble, charming, incredibly talented one at that. The entire concert was a moment of affirmation that I came close to finding in the Olympics, but never truly did until Dan Mangan took the stage, smiled, and began to sing. By the time he played “Robots,” the entire plaid-clad audience was on its feet, singing along, buoyed by the joy of being in a crowd that, for once, wanted only to sing “Robots need love too!” and bask in an atmosphere of what I can only call complicit, reciprocal…well, love.
“Tina’s Glorious Comeback”-level-glorious? Definitely.
Photo: Christine McAvoy
