all the world's a stage, so pay your money and mind your own fucking business

"What do you do?"

It's a question that is usually always asked when you first meet.
It is the default question, the one I'm never sure how to answer.
It is still considered rude in some places, but here it is as common as offering your name and your hand.

What do I say? I'm an actor? Singer? Voice-over actor? Performer? What I do encompasses so much, that it is hard to label it so simply. And I must admit, the connotation of quotations-actor-end-quotations was so distasteful to me for a long time because had become synonymous with flaky, flighty, drama queen. It still is, I suppose, but I try to embrace the other more creative and positive (and non-pretentious) aspects of this career.

And career is the word. I have the greatest respect for those who are always looking for ways to challenge and improve their craft. And who look at it as a business. There is a huge difference between those for whom the arts is a job, and those who use it as a lifestyle. And it is the latter that (in my humble opinion) ruin it for the rest of us.

It's rare that I have the time, or frankly, the ambition or interest, to sit through a play. Usually if I go it's because someone I know is in it and I want to show my support. Recently I did venture out- a friend was in town with a show, and I went for both reasons I've just sited. Incidentally, the show was quite good, but the pre-show was dead annoying. And by pre-show, I mean, ticket line up. Inevitably there are some "theatre-types" at a show, talking loudly in the lobby about whatever projects on which they are working. Or giving their critique of some performance. Or simply just "performing".
There are certain bars or cafe's frequented by this kind of person, and I will avoid them like a cat avoids a bath. Just sitting within sight and earshot of these posers can send me into a blind rage, and they are the reason I am so reluctant to say what I do. Sometimes I must fight the urge to offer them money, and suggest they use it to buy a big bucket of "Shake Your Fucking Head".

There are usually a few options to the reactions that I get when people find out what I do.
Sometimes there is a simple "ah", although such a small word can be so heavy with judgment, as in "ah, you don't have a real job". Sometimes people think it is quite glamorous. They are the ones who will ask a bag full of questions bordering on intrusive. I don't like to discuss the particulars of my work, and try to find ways to avoid the inquiry. There have been times in the past when someone has asked me what I do,and I instantly answered "massage therapist". Or, if I'm feeling sassy, "secret agent".

So if I feel this way, if I can't openly discuss my career, why do I do it?
Sometimes I blame my lack of math skills. My inability to work with numbers has foiled my chances of becoming a doctor. Well, that, and my lack of interest in that field. (Although, in high school, I did think I might want to be an oceanographer, but that may have only been an extension of my love of swimming and being near the water. )
I come from a family of linear thinkers- scientific, logical, able to figure out angles and gazinta's, take things apart and put them back together. Sure, no one else can sing or perform, but let's face it, what I do is not earth shattering. It does not save lives. And yet it is all I know. And ultimately, broken down in its basic form, it is what I love.

I've always said I am the most reluctant performer. I don't want attention. Applause sometimes embarrasses me. I am extremely private, and yet I have chosen the most public of careers.

Bob Dylan once said "At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage." This I understand. An empty stage can be exhilarating, filled with so much possibility.

I love the language, thought, the process, the creating.
I love the challenge of becoming someone else, and making others believe it. I like finding subtleties that no one would have thought to find, and being better than I was the last time I did it, even if it is just to me.
Singing is completely the opposite, unless of course its a character song in a musical. But otherwise, expressing myself in this manner opens me up, brings out the true me. It is like finding my voice every time. I think that singing is something that everyone secretly wants to do, and yet finds it the most terrifying, because you are truly yourself at that moment.
I know this is why I do it.

And I do it because it is what I know.

I just don't need to discuss it with strangers.

how do I hate thee, let me count the ways...

There are very few things I hate more than hockey.

I'm not much for any kind of sporting event, but hockey really leaves me cold.
Oh sure, that's not very Canadian of me, but I'd rather watch debate on tax reform in the House of Commons than a hockey game.
In fact I couldn't watch a game if Springsteen, Idris Elba, Craig Ferguson and L.L. Cool J strapped on skates and whipped out their sticks.

Even my scientist, egghead sister is a huge fan of the sport. Obsessively so. Mostly in the Junior League (if that's what you call it) and that serves only to make me dig in my heels more, as every conversation drifts to stats and personal information about jocks in whom I have absolutely no interest.

I find it really hard see the excitement in a game that promotes such violence and incites riots, whether we win or lose, and one in which the main goal (pun intended) is to get a rubber disc in a fishing net with a bent stick.
It incites me to no end to know that hockey, and sports in general, are given so much money, while funding is being cut for the arts in schools and government programs.

This week, hockey talk has filled every line up at grocery stores and coffee shops, in anticipation of the big Gold medal Olympic game between long time rivals, Canada and the U.S.

It was not hard to tell when the game was over tonight, and that Canada had won.

Even now, I can hear them, in the streets, whooping like it's New Years Eve or a large small-town wedding. Car horns blaring, groups and gaggles of people screaming nonsensical wooooohooooo's.
All over Facebook, people are posting status updates that say lame things like "we live in the best country in the world"
Why? Because our toothless mullets beat another country's toothless mullets on a frozen surface? Woo fucking hoo.
Is anybody posting "we live in the best country in the world because we have a better health care system than most" or "Canada rocks because we discovered insulin or life saving procedures and vaccines"?

That being said, I do like the way the country comes together, united around tee vee's in living rooms, bars and pizza shops, to cheer on their own. Too bad it wasn't to talk about hospital wait times, arts funding, or helping the homeless.

I admit, hockey and I have been in a fight for a long time.
Many years ago, I was a hockey widow, living with a man who played nets for a local scrub team. Dirty, stinky, sweaty, smelly gear sat by the washing machine for days, festering and fermenting until someone aired it out. For a long time it was me, but then I just gave up.
Every Saturday night, the Hockey Night in Canada theme played in our house, rendering me invisible. A certain New Years Eve was preempted when the game went into over-time and I sat, in my expensive sequined party dress and new hairdo, waiting to go out. In the end, I took a bottle of champagne over to drink with my elderly neighbors.

Oh sure, I tried to make it sexy.
Once I even strapped on his goalie pads and wearing nothing but those and his hockey shirt I walked seductively into the room. He didn't notice until the commercial, and that was only because he asked me to bring him another beer. Initiating sex during a game was out of the question, as it was too distracting. It's really hard to stay in the mood when you're sucking on someone's face and he's trying to keep his eyes on the face off, or when the only moaning and groaning he's making is because someone missed the net.
Yeah that's dead sexy.

The only thing worse than dating a guy who plays hockey, is dating a guy who's kid plays hockey. You expect you'll never come first as far as the kid is concerned, but in this case, you are on the benches, (to use a dreaded hockey reference) taking a back seat to the kid, his schedule and the game. Then it's always Hockey Night In Canada. Early practice makes sleep overs impossible, and evening games rule out any thoughts of dinner plans.
So, yeah, where hockey is concerned, I suppose I'm a bit bitter.
I guess hockey and I will never be friends.

With that in mind, while the rest of the country is screaming in the streets, tossing beer on one another, and taking credit for winning something they had absolutely nothing to do with, I will be thinking about how I'd like to beat them all with a hockey stick, and then put it up their collective arses.

I Would Have Done This One For Free

This is my voice over for the Canadian Breast Cancer Screening Project

not enough "oh"'s in smoooth

Sade has a new album.
That's right, I said album. It has been so long since she's produced new music, that the word album was valid last time. Before that, it was record. There seems to be a long wait in between
Sade seems to put out a new piece of work with the frequency that I have sex, but that's an entry for another time (said the Actress to the Bishop..)

She is the original Smooth Operator, has given us the Sweetest Taboo, and No Ordinary Love, and I for one, am very grateful.
I can't wait to get my copy of Soldier of Love.
The very first line is :

"I lost the use of my heart/But I'm still alive"

There is no mistaking Sade's voice. There's no chance you will mistake the sound of another for hers. No- her voice is the equivalent to having the finest, silkiest, most velvety piece of milk chocolate melting in your mouth.
Sade is as beautiful as a Nubian Queen, her face could launch more fleets of ships than pale Helen, and Marc Anthony and Ceasar would not have looked twice at Cleopatra if Sade was in Egypt.
Her very name is a sigh.

Oh Sade

one day you wake up and realize that you're never going to play Juliet

How its so hard for us to see those things in us, that others notice easily.

One evening last week, I found myself in the company of three lovely women.
Each of us are performers- that we have in common- although we are all at different stages of life and career.
One is a single mother of twin toddlers, one is only newly (shhhh! so new it's a secret) pregnant, and the other has no children. And then there's me. I have cats.

All of these women have experienced (and are currently experiencing) success in their careers. Two have had television series, one is currently getting tons of stage work, traveling from production to production. And then there's me.
I can't say I haven't had some sweet gigs in my day, but nothing on a national scale- well nothing consistent anyway.

And yet, as accomplished and gifted as these women are, there is that surprising level of insecurity that they expressed; it is something we all face.

In this crazy life and business where we, as Mr Beckett said "Try again. Fail again. Fail better"; where we put our insides out, offering, and expecting carrion bird critics to pick the flesh from our bones, never thinking it's good enough, second guessing countless times.. well, it's hard to see the whole good picture we present.

In that vein, I think it's important to reflect and remind each other of the fine work and gifts we own. I know how we all have our insecurities, which is the fuel to make us strive to burn better and brighter, but it doesn't hurt to have a bit of reassurance now and then. And more importantly, it is crucial that we believe it about ourselves.
Luckily, I know many women who are that supportive of their sisters. Sadly, I know many who aren't. For some reason, the competitiveness in women is very prevalent, whether it be for a role, or for a man. Or with our children.

Sometimes we get so deep in our own forest, that the trees are barely distinguishable, and so I don't think we see how beautiful our own acre is, how deep and secure the roots, and how nurturing and far reaching are our graceful branches.

We touched, that night, on the burdens we take upon ourselves, in our many roles as women; as mothers, as artists and how easy it is for us to recognize the brightness in each other, but not always ourselves. That is why it is crucial for us to reflect the light of each other back to its source, because it is truly brilliant.

It was so good for my heart to be in the company of such wonderful, creative, smart and beautiful women, but I have to admit, there were times that I felt rather inferior.
I am older. My name is no longer known in these circles. My career took another path, and that was based on choices that I had made.
There was a time when, to be honest, I was handed some pretty great parts. But then I walked away. It wasn't what I wanted. My deviance wasn't that far off, but a different path nonetheless.
I moved into music. And it was great.
But now, I feel the pull to return to that part from which I had previously turned away.
Now it feels like I am starting over, and I am starting over at an awkward age and stage.

Now I am too old and too young. I suppose that is the true meaning of middle age.
No longer sought after, I must sell myself. I must find that niche in which I now fit. I crave the challenge of text and complex characters, but I must face the fact that many of those roles have long since expired.
I am never going to play the Juliets or Ophelia's. I'm too old to play The Glass Menagerie's shy, crippled Laura, and too young to be the mother Amanda, pressing her children, and reminiscing about past gentlemen callers.
How ironic that my life's experience now makes me more equip to layer these women, to make smarter choices in the portrayal, but my physicality holds me back.

Certainly there are roles to which I am suited, but in being away from it, in taking my name off the table, I must find where they are, and convince those who don't know me. My absence has made me both rusty and sharp, reluctant and eager.

Now is the time I must work on the honing, and believe that brilliance that others claim to see.
Now it is not only time to make up for that which has passed, but to accept it.

One day you wake up and realize you are never going to play Juliet.
And then you realize that Juliet is just a whiny teenager who has a really good death scene.

this thing we call now, or how the hell did this happen?

Well here it is
And here I am

A middle aged woman.
How did that happen? I am 45. I am older than my father was when I first realized his age and thought it so old. The first idea of age I had was 36. My dad was that age and I was 15. I was a teen and he was a man and I remember thinking how old it was, how he didn't know anything about me because he couldn't remember being as young as I.
Youth is nothing if not arrogant. And misinformed

I don't feel any differently than I did when I was younger.
More patient perhaps. And less. Or maybe tolerant is a better word.

Some days my spirit is young. And other times, it is ancient.

I fought this journey in many ways.
I remained young in my heart. I saw friends become... stayed. Mature. And I thought it was a bore.
But now, I find that is what I want. I'm ready for it.

I had that life of drugs sex and rock and roll.
I created my myth. I believed the hype.
Was the flash in the pan and the slow burning fire.
I have burned out. I have endured.
I am still here.

And now I accept it.
I fought it for so long. I have friends who aged before their time. Responsibly. Respectable. Some of them are middle aged busy bodies in their middle aged bodies, like those neighbors I had growing up, the kind who looked out their window with a scowl every time there was a noise on the street.
I don't want to be that, but I do have a crankiness about somethings as I find myself shaking my metaphoric fist at "kids today". I grumble about 20-somethings thinking they know everything. I have to catch myself when I start to utter phrases like "back in my day" or complain about the work ethic of this generation. I guess that is more evolution than even Darwin could have measured- eventually we all do become our parents.

Ah fuck.