Just your typical Saturday night.....

I seem to be going to a lot of very interesting parties lately, which is how it should be, this being summer in Vancouver. I just came back from a loft in the remotest part of gastown where a gay couple from Oregon was celebrating their one year anniversary in Canada. Apparently, they lived in the one county in Oregon that allowed Gay marriage, so they got married. A few months later, the supreme court of the state overturned the law, and they were sent a letter in the mail informing them they were now divorced. Understandably, they came to Canada. I wonder what is going to happen if gay marriage becomes illegal here....Well, there is always South Africa.

I have no idea what these men do for a living, but they make a ton of money....and they spend it like children, which is to say on anything that strikes their fancy. There were 4 wine fridges, and a special humidified cabinet filled with whole prosciutto.... there was a room completely devoted to their single malt scotch collection. They celebrated their anniversary in Canada by opening bottles of Cristal with fencing swords and then we read Edna St Vincent Millay in between tokes of a Moroccan Hash Pipe. And just when you thought it could not get any more surreal, I noticed a well thumbed copy of Das Kapital beside the humidor. It is true when they say that the only difference between a crazy person and someone who is merely eccentric is a great deal of money.

I drank single malt langavulin and smoked vanilla flavoured cigarettes and my friend Ellie and I performed an impromptu concert of Puccini arias...Ellie has met a 45 year old man who looks like he is 30 because he is content with his life, and is not a tortured soul (or so Ellie says). And so, most of Ellie's technical issues when it comes to singing have sorted themselves out, even though she lives in Terrace and doesn't study with a teacher right now. This is what happens when you are happy. And that is the crazy thing about having an instrument which is inside you.

I was worried about the smoke and drinking affecting my voice, but then I remembered that Caruso smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day, and then I relaxed and we had a great time. A man told me that I have a voice like port, which was a nice complement because I like port very much. Then this woman named Jen sang Van Halen songs, which was different, but still operatically intense and very good. Jen sings for fun...she is actually a software writer for a Norwegian internet company and just came back from skydiving in Utah. I like Jen because she smokes and drinks and laughs a lot, and clearly likes it. Now that you can't smoke anywhere and people are drinking low calorie beer or worse, we need more people like her. She also has the best books in her bathroom... Like a guide to walking tours in Vancouver from 1974 and a pocket size historical atlas of Europe. She also has a recording of Fidelio, and I think that has added a Beethoven-like profundity to her music making.

Anyway, I don't really know what I am talking about because it is 4 in the morning and I have many substances floating within me... but I am happy that I got to sing with my friend Ellie, just like last week I got to sing with my friend Rebecca. Ellie, Rebecca and I are sensitive people with big voices which is very special but sometimes hard. I told Ellie that some day we will all sing in a production of Die Walkure together. Rebecca will be Brunnhilde, Ellie will be Sieglinde and I will be Siegmund. We will sing lustily and we will laugh and be very aware of who we are and at the same time unaware of ourselves to the extent that we can let the music speak. And that is what you must do to sing.

Last week, my friend Rebecca got married, and I was supposed to write about that today.
However, I almost never write about what I think I am going to write about. And that is what you must do to write, I guess. Well, the wedding was supremely beautiful. There was Albanian honey cake and homemade quilts and the rain stopped when they said their vows.

As I was leaving to come back to Vancouver, Rebecca told me that the world was a safe and accepting place.

And despite all the contradictions, and taking into account the fact that one day a couple can get a letter in the mail saying that they are no longer married due to a clerical error, I believe it.