and more...
I wanted to publicly thank Caroline Smith and CHUM TV for giving me this wonderful plug with a phenomenal segment on Mamapalooza. Caroline was so terrific and so professional. I had no idea that our homespun conversation and her single-woman taping would amount to such a fabulous, poignant segment about those of us who choose a different path. It was terrific to hear Miriam and other kids boasting about their mothers!
All in all, what a great experience to work with Caroline and learn more about her. If anyone should be featured on Careers TV, it is certainly Caroline Smith!
I've been quiet, I know. I'm in the cave, but I'm not hibernating.
I'm preparing some new material to perform in four weeks aboard the Seabourne while we cruise the Baltics. I am still diligently working on the production of my mother's memoirs, Be Decent. It's killer stuff.
Scrabble-wise...I don't know how to say this, but I'm kind of jealous of those who have been able to participate in the recent Scrabble tournaments. But I'm also a bit relieved to have a hiatus from word study. It's a conflict, for sure. I miss my Scrabble family. I've commiserated on this "note" with Toronto's own Fern Lindzon, the phenomenal jazz pianist with the great vocals, who packs a travel Scrabble in her car at all times. It's very hard to learn random and seemingly isolated words when you are rehearsing clumps of words or melodies. Yes, of course we study lists of similar patterned words, but somehow learning poetry and music is something else again, taking a lot of discipline, focus and energy. One has to make choices.
So I am working on telling my mother's story while working up a good set of all the songs she loved and grew up with. Yet they are also so familiar to me, too. I must have sung these songs a few generations ago, when I inhabited a different body and lived in a different place. All this esoteric stuff had better pay off onstage with a decent performance, I tell ya.
xoxoxo
moi
