Where does it lead

Katharine Asals2 Comments

For the fall, I signed up for a course.

Habit maybe – the desire for the fall to have new learning, the shape of a new path or a new project.

Teacher has asked us not to post about it during the span of the few months of the class – to allow the process to unfold quietly and privately, a seed germinating in the dark.

So here I am teasing you with something I won’t speak of directly just yet.

But as we muck around in the dark of the process, the questions emerge, and we wonder daily… where might they be taking us…?

One thing we were asked to do was choose a piece of music and listen to it every day.

I haven’t quite gotten there yet.

I mean, I listen every day, but I haven’t been able to choose one single track.

I have a short playlist.

I try to take tunes away from it, but…

Mostly I end up adding to it.

This Sigur Ros track in particular has been enchanting me…

Maybe partly because I finally looked up the lyrics, and it wasn’t what I had thought – for years I had imagined, as an English speaker, the words “it’s you” in the refrain.

But it’s not.

The refrain is “Tjú”, which apparently, “has no literal translation as it is not a standard Icelandic word. It functions as a melodic element in the band’s invented syllable-based language, Hopelandic (Vonlenska), and serves as a comforting, rhythmic sound similar to “shh” used to soothe babies to sleep.”

Tjú… Tjú… Tjú… Tjú.…

Lens-Artists Challenge – Where Does It Lead?

Monarchs on the Move

Katharine Asals12 Comments

The other day was the first anniversary of Dad’s death.

I knew what I wanted to do that day – I wanted to go down to the lake and watch the monarchs flying south.

Last year when the call came that he was gone, I stumbled down to the lake and sat in one of those Muskoka chairs they have down there and just watched the water, the birds, the monarchs. September the monarchs are in full migration mode, making their chaotic tiny flutterings out over the harbour.

There was some loose sense, as I sat there, that Dad’s spirit was flying off on one of his travels – he was always off somewhere.

They might be a little lost in the fog here, but…

It’s amazing, the voyage of the monarchs – how many kilometres for them to fly all the way to their winter sanctuaries in central Mexico? Some 3000 to 4000 km?

We see them making their way out over the Toronto harbour, and then on the other side of the islands, they launch out over Lake Ontario itself.

In fact, a couple of days later I took the ferry to the islands with a friend, and we puttered around, looking north towards the city skyline, and the monarchs were everywhere on the islands –

Deep in their favourite flowers, getting fuel for the flight –

Resting up before the longer leg of the journey over Lake Ontario itself –

Of course some of them – no doubt many of them – don’t make it.

Launch and make your move and hope for the best.

Get as far as you can while you can, while the spirit lives within you.

Dad made it to 90 and a few months – about as good as it gets.

Me & Dad

Lens Artists Challenge – Move your body

Harmonious in the City

Katharine Asals2 Comments

Last night I went to the movies with my boy.

Downtown, city center, Times Square kinda vibe, Toronto style.

We saw an Oasis movie – not a great movie, but nonetheless a pretty glorious reminder of the spirit of Rock & Roll. I said to my boy, “it’s like, my Culture, that big stadium rock & roll scene”. Like I remember first going to massive concerts at Maple Leaf Stadium, drugs preplanned and at the ready, when I was 14. And then by 17 it was the smaller venue mosh pit punks vs skinheads scene, where you’d be ready to run if things got really rough.

Afterwards, we wandered the streets of downtown and talked music. I wasn’t sure he remembered the soundtrack from those early years, cause Oasis was just getting big when he was about two or so, but… sure enough, he remembers those tunes. And I’ve always been a sucker for a wall of sound played at full volume…

Now he’s an occasional music event producer himself – I mean he’s got a day job, but he and some buddies bring in some techno shows, so we were talking about how there were so many giants of rock & roll that came out of Britain…

He was saying in the techno scene also, that there’s a lot of really impressive “acts” that come out of the UK.

It must have been way back when we were living in Mexico City that Oasis was just getting big.

But I was kind of amazed that he remembered a whole bunch of the stuff I was listening to through that period from when he was still pretty little until maybe his early teens – the classic British sound got supplemented with a lot of more international sounds, including Mano Negra and eventually a bit of Manu Chao.

With my boy, eventually we settled in town in Toronto for a couple of decades and lived just up the alleyway from the church at the corner, and there was music all the time, music of all genres, a reflection perhaps, of the diversity of the city.

And somewhere along the way he got all grown up.

One of our more recent musical bonding moments was over this video STORM that I sent him.

He responded, “Oh, I used to be a big fan of Yung Lean”. Ahem. Used to be? I mean, okay it’s a lot about the choreographer and the director, but still…

Lens Artists Challenge – Harmony