Consider the Strawberry

Strawberry - Fraise

"The Strawberry was valued in Roman Times for its theraputic properties. Ancient hunters ate it to sharpen their powers of perception. The alchemists of the Middle Agers considered it to be a panacea, and as late as the 18th century Fontenelle (who died at 100) attributed his longevity to his fondness for strawberries. He ate them every day when they were in season.... Strawberries should never be soaked, handled too much or exposed to heat, and should be eaten 1 hour after their preparation..."

-from the Larousse Gastronomique

Meeting interesting people in Vancouver is like shopping for candy in an organic food store: You probably won’t find anything. If the gods of sucralose and fraternity show their favour upon you and you DO manage to find something that looks remotely delectable, it will most likely be past its expiry date or full of ingredients with impeccable organic pedigrees that taste like crap. Don’t get me wrong, it will probably look fantastic.

Indeed, we are surrounded by things that look fantastic but have no taste. I have found that this maxim can be applied to a myriad of objects, from produce to people. Take the California strawberry for example … It is plump, it is red and shiny and looks inviting. You bite into it, expecting cascades of unctuous strawberry flavour, and you find it has the taste and texture of watermelon rind. Of course, you can buy these year round and eat them whenever you want. How convenient! How sad.

I do not eat of these strawberries. I wait until June and then I take a ferry to Granville Island and buy a flat of the local berries. And I eat little else for about a week. I like to make strawberries marinated in balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper. Or strawberries dipped in sugar, or chocolate. But mostly, I just eat them as is. They are misshapen. Some have mold or bugs on them, some are rotten. But the taste!

The wonderful thing about real strawberries is that each one tastes completely different.
One is tart, the other one is a little too sweet. The quest is to find the perfect berry that has the perfect balance of both. Sometimes this takes quite a long time, but can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon?

What we eat most of the time are cultivated strawberries. But the best strawberries are the tiny wild ones that you find in the forest. When I picked berries in the summer with my mother we would have pails and pails of blueberries, but I would find, at the most only five wild strawberries. These were hidden immediately (lest someone steal them from you) to be savoured in a secret moment, , or to be offered to another as the ultimate token of affection. They were never apparent to the naked eye, but had to be searched for painstakingly, because they liked to hide under the grass. Wild strawberries have never been successfully cultivated. They have tried to do so but have failed. The wild strawberry remains elusive, individual and rare. But taste one of them, and you no cultivated berry will ever fully satisfy you again.

So I implore you to eat not of the impostor strawberry, the one that has been grown in fake soil to satisfy an immediate hunger. The strawberry encased in plastic, uniform and pale.

It is better to look for something that rings true; perhaps more perishable, perhaps less to look at, but something that is real.

So let it be written, so let it be done!

I got a job! Hurrah!
I got a job as a singer! Hurrah!
With Vancouver Opera!
Next year, I will be traveling to hundreds of schools around BC singing the part of Prince Tamino in a condensed version of The Magic Flute!
I am so very excited. I couldn't tell anyone for a few days, I had to keep it "under wraps"... But of course, I told my parents. Here is an excerpt from my conversation with my father:

"Dad! I got a job!"
"You already have a job"
"I got a job as a singer! I'm going to be in the Vancouver opera Touring Ensemble next year!"
"Will you leave the Passport Office?"
"Probably"
"Oh no, you can't do that. That's a great job!"
"But I'm going to be living out a dream!"
"How much money will you make?"
"Oh, about the same as I make at the Passport Office."
"Is that gross, or net?"
"I don't know"
"Well, you should find out...Remember to keep all your expenses. We'll have to develop a tax strategy. By the way, why haven't I received your tax return."

(I have of course omitted the sections where dad tells me he's proud of me and that he loves me. They are not nearly as amusing. )

This sort of reminds me of the time my dad told his mother that he got a new job as a superintendent of schools:

"Ma! I got a new job!"
"So"
"I'm a superintendent!"
"How many buildings do you look after?"

Now please remember that my grandmother was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who smoked 3 packs of Du Marier king size a day... SO you should read the preceding conversation with this in mind.

Anyway, because I couldn't tell anyone about my news for a few days, I decided to rent the Ten Commandments to keep my mood up. I love this movie. It is tawdry, it is sensational, it has got everything, including one of the best lines in all of moviedom (Nefretiri: But Moses, I am Egypt). I remember watching it with my grandmother. She would cry. I remember watching it with my mother. She would laugh. I just ogle Yul Brynner. Incidentally, the setting for the Magic Flute is also in Egypt, and Tamino is a foreign prince. So maybe he is Moses? If you ask me my religion, I will tell you I am Jewish. But really, I believe in Cecil B De Mille.

And I am ready for my closeup!

In the words of Seti, so let it be written, so let it be done.

Just Offal

Note. The following entry is morose and self-pitying. I also wrote it when it had been raining for 10 day straight.

I hate Easter. It has nothing really to do with the supposed ressurection of Christ, although that kind of marked the beginning of the end for us Jews. I am just glad that the Christians don't physically harm us for killing their Lord any longer, as they used to. Progress! I content myself with the fact that Easter is named after a Western European pagan fertility festival. It would be like the Jews calling Passover "Spring Break" or "Frosh Week", or the Muslims calling Ramadan a crash diet. You get the idea. No, I hate this season because of a particular piece of music that never fails to put me in a funk. It is the Allegri Miserere. You have probably heard about it.. you know, the piece that was forbidden to be heard outside of St Peter's Basilica until the 14 year old Mozart copied it from memory after one hearing. It is traditionally sung at the Easter vigil before Good Friday. Therefore, it is associated with suffering. This is why it was featured in the movie version of E.M. Forrester's Maurice, which gives new meaning to the word "tortured". Consider it a Brokeback Mountain for the tweed-and-high-tea set. I remember watching this movie with my mother in grade 10, when she was developing material for the first ever Gay and Lesbian Literature course at the University of Winnipeg. I of course was not out (although I cannot imagine a more supportive environment... I mean, my mom encouraged me to grow a ponytail and take ballet. In response, I painted my room grey and started dressing like Perry Como) . I watched this movie in petrified silence, hoping to God that my face would not betray any sign of what I was really feeling... Of course, I went out immediately and bought this said piece of music... "Miserere meus domine.... Lord have mercy on me". Grade 10 was a particularly horrible year. I decided to join a show choir because I thought I was in love with a boy. I endured week after week of horrible rehearsals for things like "Disney dazzle" . The only thing that saved me was the Miserere. I would sit in my room and listen to it and read the Larousse Gastronomique...the Bible of French cooking.
One day I came across the entry for "heart":

Heart (coeur): A type of red offal from various animals, which must be bright red and firm when bought. Remove the hard fibres and any clots of blood, if necessary by soaking it in cold water. Heart is devoid of fatand inexpensive. It is considered to be an excellent dish despite its lack of gastronomic repute.

I was comforted, I was saved. The heart, after all, is not something that feels. It is something that is to be eaten. A heart is tough and must become bloodless. It is cheap and must be consumed. Yet, it is considered good. Remember that the mother in Oranges are not the only Fruit mistook a gastric ulcer for feelings of affection.

The heart is just offal.

Do you think I look Gay?

Halloween

Soula and Ben as Tokyo Rose, and Rudolf Nureyev, Respectively.
Below - Arvedt (my friend the German diplomat) as "Stalingrad".... Or was it the 1939 non-aggression pact?

When I was a child, I had very interesting Halloween outfits. One year I was Glinda, the good witch of the north. I had high heels and everything. It was grade 5. I remember walking down the hallway of Montrose elementary saying "one has to suffer to be beautiful." One year, I decided to be a ghost, and of course wore a sheet. My mom decided to up to up the ante and added washing instructions in permanent marker. Get it? Sheet? washing instructions? ( I think she was having a Magritte moment... Ceci n'est pas une phantome or something like that). I didn't either. For about 3 years running, I was a druid. Which reminds me of the time I was in grade seven and I got excited about my school's Spirit Week because I thought it would be a festival about comparative religions, complete with processions, ritual, and incense. How wrong I was. I think that my finest moment in elementary school was when I decided to take the label from the "Wandering Jew" plant and wear it for the day. I would go up to the teachers and say "do you know where I am supposed to go?"... Needless to say I thought it was hilarious. The teachers, not so much.

In other news, I just had a voice lesson. I was working on an aria from The Magic Flute where Prince Tamino sees a picture of a beautiful woman and instantly falls in love... I know. Anyway, here is a classic quote from my teacher, David: "Who are you when you sing this aria? You're a prince. You are not Ben Schnitzer. Those are two different people (but David, can't you see I'm of noble birth?). You have to sing it like a prince. You have to be in control. The conductor is not a prince! Fuck the conductor! If he's worth his salt he'll follow you. You have to sing it like you want to sing it."

"Next Year in Bamako" ossia "I don't want to hear, I don't want to know"

Well, gentle readers, I was supposed to be productive and clean my apartment today, but I am afraid I got off to a bad start and never did find my groove. Last night I went out to clubbing with Pablo, my new-age Mexican friend. Pablo is on a very restrictive diet right now because he has elevated levels of yeast in his system. He got his ears candled (after discovering that he was a number eleven in his numerology book and realizing that it was therefore important to cleanse before determining his life-path) and the woman who candled his ears said that he had a rash and had to give up everything but organic vegetables, herbal tea and brown rice. He even gave me his prized package of Serrano ham that he had shipped from Seattle, saying "ju know, it is so jummy, but I cannot eat it." He was solemn, almost like those mothers in war movies who pretend they are not hungry and give their children the last piece of bread. I was feeling mischievous so I proceeded to eat some chocolate in front of him. He reached out, and cried to the heavens like a man condemned, "ay, I want chocolate, ju are so mean." I told him he was being racist and he told me that I was being more racist. Only in Canada.

Anyway, since Pablo wasn't drinking alcohol ( is too much yist) , I was drinking for two, so I don't remember much other than a bizarre scene at a house party consisting of a room full of gay Mexican men watching a drunk Chilean girl named Felicia doing a mock striptease to Madonna's Sorry. As Pablo's roommate Edgar said "when you party with Mexicans, you never know what to expect!" Incidentally, the opening lyrics to that song are "I heard it all before, I heard it all before. I don't want to hear, I don't want to know".... I think that is an appropriate response to the current state of Madonna's music, and perhaps pop music in general. Maybe I should sing this song to my therapist? Sorry Doctor S, you know I love you. I mean, you know I, um, respect you?

After the excitement of the evening, I was glad that the clocks were being turned back so I could get an extra hour of sleep. After all, it is spring back, fall forward. Of course, I realized my mistake when I was woken up by landlord pounding on my door at noon demanding the rent. Ha ha. April fool's! No rent! Whoops. Note to dad: I am financially solvent and pay my bills online and am not a drunk. I merely play up the debauchery to make myself look more interesting and cutting edge as a writer. The fact of the matter is that I spent most of yesterday translating a Mozart aria and doing vocal exercises in mezza-voce (with closed vowels) that limit my reliance on the vocalis muscle and therefore allow me to sing more lyrically in my passagio. Oh, and I will send you my T4 slips this week. And thank-you for giving me 5 copies of The Wealthy Barber at various times during my adolescence and for helping me with math.

Speaking of dad, you should all know that I am gainfully employed in the public service of Canada because my dad went to high school with the head of a federal department (paging Justice Gomery!). One day in the elevator, my dad said "hey, my son needs a job" and his friend said, "sure thing, ear" (ear was my dad's nickname in highschool). But you know, my dad really did fulfill a mitzvah (Jewish good deed). After all, Maimonedes said that the highest level of charity is to find their son a stable job. Especially if that said son is going to choose something where the chances of supporting himself are questionable at best. Something like opera. Well, my dad, ever the practical one, said "you can do both! Just join the foreign service. Then you can get posted to Paris and sing on the side." I didn't have the heart to tell him that one's fist posting is usually to places like Mali. I can see it now... Ben Schnitzer, tenor, performs Puccini arias with Opera Bamako...

Well, I am off to bed. I just spent the last few hours in singing, among other things, the Apotheosis scene from Faust. It goes something like this: Marguerite gets knocked up, and wrought with guilt, kills her child. She is imprisoned, and invokes the angels to save her.
Then she dies. Some help. Anyway, the devil, Mephistopheles, pronounces her thus "judged", but then a chorus of unseen angels (that would be moi) cries that she has been saved and that Christ will come again and save us all. Does Gloria Steinem know about this?
Sometimes I think Pierre Boulez was right when he said that all opera houses should be blown up. I mean, really. Fortunately, the music is so sublimely beautiful that you forget about the plot. Unless of course, your set consists of a giant puppet and a noose (as ours does! Hooray for Conceptualism! The puppet represents children and control and the noose represents, like, death. And rope.).

I am looking particularly forward to staging this scene on Passover, as Vancouver Opera in their infinite wisdom has decided to schedule rehearsal for both nights. I also learned that in the spirit of sharing, the French decided to call Passover Paque Juif (Jewish Easter). Aww... a resurrection, just for me? Thanks! Except, its not really what I asked for. If the Jews ever needed another reason to continue leaving France, this would be it. So,

Next year in Bamako! Next year, may we all be free! Wait, they speak French there too.
But that is the result of colonialism, so it doesn't count.

Regardless, I am going straght to hell because of my evil writings! Unless of course I invoke the angels. But wait, does that mean I have to die? SO confusing.

Singing lesson

Today I had my first singing lesson in two months. In honour of this occasion, I have
made a collage of my impressions. I am reading Tai Pan by James Clavell and can't be disturbed, so you will have to just interpret my art.

You are your mother's son

Said Heather as we drove through the driving rain to chorus rehearsal. I nodded, gravely, in a way that spoke of a realization achieved through years of therapy and soul-searching. Why was it so difficult for me to realize this? After all, my mother has always been encouraging me to express my true self. Unfortunately, my true self has not always been the self that I thought I should (myself) have. And that is no one's fault in particular, but it is everyone's responsibility to ensure that this conflict doesn't happen to others, like me, who in some way may be different. And so, to all you parents and future parents and people who may never be parents but know parents or children, I have this to say. You will most likely know a child who may turn out to be different (and by different I mean GAY, just so there is no confusion out there). Perhaps they put on your wedding dress for fun, or make mourning stationary on foolscap, or mimic Julia Child. Perhaps they will do none of the above. But if they do, smile and nod and tell them you love them. They could get angry, and try to become the opposite of who they really are. But remember they are not angry at you. They are angry at a world that forces them to always pretend. You can choose to be a part of that world, or you can be brave, like my parents, and say no.

I know that I try to be brave. And yes, in that way, I am most certainly my mother's, and father's son!