Volume 26 Issue 2 - October 2020

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN
WHICH WAY TO TURN
SHARON LOVETT.
My father would have
instantly recognized this
For Openers title as a
line from Flanders and Swann’s
song “Misalliance” (a cautionary
tale about the dangers of potential
cross-breeding among vines
that turn in different directions as
they climb). It is on the comedy
duo’s live album, At the Drop of
a Hat, recorded in glorious mono
on February 21 1957 at the Fortune
Theatre in London’s West End.
It was perhaps the one of their
songs, not all of which have stood
the scrutinies of time, in which my
father took the greatest delight, singing along with the last stanza and
watching, in the faces of anyone who happened to be listening along
with him, for some mirroring of the glee the lines gave him every time:
Poor little sucker, how will it learn
Which way it’s climbing, which way to turn.
Right? Left? What a disgrace.
Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face.
It’s a cautionary tale we would be well advised to apply to this
fall’s socially distanced dance of choice – the pivot. It’s not just about
changing direction, it’s about what direction you turn.
Take the transparent mask I am wearing in this photograph, for
example. I got the mask a few months back from Laura Mather who
runs a small company called powhearing.com, providing services and
products which allow businesses to be accessible for persons who
need hearing support during customer interactions, at live events, and
in workplaces. It is, incidentally, the very same one that is hanging
around my neck in the photograph on page E7 of the Toronto Star on
Saturday August 29. (That photo was by René Johnston; this one photo
is by Sharon Lovett in the newly grassed backyard of the home she
shares with WholeNote recordings editor David Olds.)
I get asked about the mask dozens of times a week – we none of
us realized quite so clearly before how much we rely on being able to
read other people’s lips and for other people to be able to read ours.
(Think about this observation, for example, when you read, in Choral
Scene in this issue, Brian Chang’s comments about trying to rehearse
pronunciations and languages while wearing a mask; or when you are
planning a visit to the relative who, these days, finds it hard to hear
what you’re saying, even at the best of times.)
As much of a difference-maker as the mask itself is, is Mather’s
fight now under way – not, as you might think, to stop people from
stealing “her idea”, but to stop anyone from trying to patent it in order
to corner the market on something so clearly in the common good.
A turning point in thinking? Yes I think so. As soprano Measha
Brueggergosman says elsewhere in this issue (in the sprawling conversation
I had with her and violinist/composer Edwin Huizinga from
her Halifax kitchen): “If we circle our wagons together, kind of in the
same direction, we might just not only come through it, but come
through it on the right side of history.”
Remembering Ida Carnevali
I have written over the years in this
spot, about how, at some times of the year
(and in some years more than others),
I find myself thinking about my dear
former neighbour, Ida Carnevali, founder
of the Kensington Carnival Arts Society
(KCAS). Never more so than now, hearing
of her recent death, in Italy, at age 82.
What I wrote back in May 2006 seems particularly resonant right
now, so I offer it again:
“[Her] projects over the decades were a living example in the art
of throwing some transforming activity into the path of the ordinary,
nowhere more dramatically and effectively than in the annual
Kensington Festival of Lights which to this day takes the form, at sunset
every winter solstice, of a hand-made lantern-lit Market-wide march,
from scenario to scenario, re-enacting all the world’s yearning for light.”
‘Scenario ambulante,’ she called it, organizing various scenes to be
performed along the route of the march, enlisting everyone she could
round up to participate and then leading the audience on a journey to
discover the story.
“It is that potential for accidental discovery that I yearn for in the
urban context. Urban art, it seems to me, should be judged by the
extent to which it can be ‘come across’ by people engaged in the
ordinary. And even more so by the extent to which the artists themselves
are willing to go beyond ‘business as usual’ by availing themselves
of the opportunities for chance encounters and spontaneous
collaboration.”
So here’s to Ida Carnevali. And here’s to accidental discovery, chance
encounters and spontaneous collaboration. And to figuring out, all of
us, the right directions to turn.
publisher@thewholenote.com
Upcoming Dates & Deadlines for our NOVEMBER 2020 edition
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Tuesday October 27 (online)
Thursday October 29 (print)
Volume 26 No 3 “NOVEMBER 2020”
will list events
November 1 to December 7, 2020
and include
The 21st Annual BLUE PAGES, part 2
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