Purple: The Colour of Intuitive Interactions

What I'm about to tell you is the type of interaction that happens all the time on Salt Spring. Or, perhaps I should just speak for myself. Although, from anecdotes, I know this type of serendipitous interaction occurs regularly.

My day began with a drive to the South End. I passed Drummond Park, and took the right hand fork up Musgrave on  my way to Sacred Mountain Lavender because I wanted to get a glimpse of the sumptuous purple in bloom, blooming, about to bloom. English. Spanish. French buds tinted the green landscape mauve. My visit was not going to coincide with the annual Sacred Mountain Lavender Festival which will take place this Sunday, July 14th. I was one week early.

After my wander around the lavender fields, I went into the small store on the property. Lavender coffee, tea, pepper, lavender wands, spritzers, white cotton night gowns embroidered with lavender, massage oil, salves, bunches of the purple buds. A quick trip to lavender heaven.

I spoke with a woman working there. Her name was Diana. She asked me where I was from which launched me into the story of my former residency on island.  She asked me why I'd left. “Didn't think I could handle another winter. Couldn't make enough money. Wanted to be closer to my 92 year old father."  I told her he'd died a month after I returned to the city in November 2011.

She asked me what I did. I said I was a writer, about to start a new writing job but when it came to writing, what was really consuming me, was the completion of the first draft of a non-fiction manuscript I'd been working on. I told her that I was having trouble pulling my thoughts together to create an ending that would deposit readers to a more insightful place about Salt Spring, about themselves, about mid-life journeys and jumping off points. I'm not sure why I felt I could tell her this. 

“I think you need to incorporate your father into that ending.”

I was silent. My father? Why was she saying that?

“I feel somehow that your father has something to do with helping you find that ending,” she said. 

I barely mentioned my father. Why was she saying this? 

I said that I didn't see how that could be and I didn't really want to write about my father but I would think about it.

I told her that Ruckle Provincial Park was my touchstone, the place I had camped at when I first came to the island in the late 1980's, a place that had not changed in the 20 or so years since I’d been coming to visit. I told her I was writing about Ruckle trying to explain how a physical place can become as important as the relationship we have with another person. It takes on the persona of an individual and our relationship with them.

She told me her touchstone was Mount Douglas in Victoria and all the Garry Oak there.  "I go back there and I’m nine again," she said. We decided that everyone probably has a geographical place that is, for them, that kind of place and if they don't, they should.

After having left, I notice that when I return to the island, I always feel a little fragile. It’s hard to explain.  As a visitor, I don't belong. I feel wistful and regrets arise about not having made it work better - financially - so that I could have stayed, knowing that it's a place that holds such a significant place in my life, yet knowing that I have a lot of company in both regards and knowing, as well, that I wasn't meant to stay any longer or I would have.

She told me that her sister was a writer and on their father’s 80^th birthday, they had given him a list of everything about him that mattered to them as his children. He loved it, she said. He loved being written about.

She seemed so convinced that my father has something to do with the ending of the manuscript and as she said this and we talked a bit more, we both began to have a wavering in our voices as we spoke and our eyes became glassy and she admitted that just thinking about it was making her cry and I told her to stop because she was about to make me cry. We shared a moment of being disarmed by each other’s openness and we hastened to hold back, to stop what might come, but there was a raw feeling there; a chord struck. Emotion as intuitive messenger.

Now, having lived on the island, I know to pay attention when these types of interactions occur. I know they are not a coincidence. I know this because it was a similar type of recognition that helped me move here in the first place.  These types of interactions are a gift, a message from the other side or from the future that’s being formulated for us.

So, I will consider Diana's suggestion seriously, not because I'm convinced that it is the right one. It may not be. But, I will consider it because when we spoke, emotion rose quickly, connected us, brought our humanity to the forefront and that’s the kind of emotion that makes a story worth  telling; the kind of story we can all learn something from.

And besides, purple is the colour of the crown chakra. It's the colour of peace, and wisdom, of the quest for fulfillment and personal identification with the infinite and that's good enough for me.

Restaurant Roulette on Salt Spring

It has been a bad couple of years for some restaurants on Salt Spring.

First the Fulford Inn closed its doors. I was still on island then, so, even though I know I should go out of my way to find out the exact date, I'm going to guess that it was some time in 2010. There were various rumours about what sent it over the cliff. Then, Raven Street Cafe turned off the oven. I loved their wood fired pizzas and the miso dressing was to die for on their salads. I also liked the quietude of the North side but quietude is not what lets restaurants thrive.  Marketplace Cafe packed it in. I have to admit, I never went there. Bruce's Kitchen shut its doors in March. Bruce left the island with no forwarding address. I'm so glad I lived on island when Bruce was cooking there, especially in the first place on Gastronomy or Gasoline alley as it's sometimes called. Now Mobys Oyster Bar and Marine Grill has locked the front door. On Facebook, there's the usual outpouring of dismay.

Well, if it mattered that much, why didn't you support us? Why didn't you come to eat? That's maybe what the restaurant owners are thinking. Just guessing.

Mark's Work Warehouse expanded and the complex where it was located meant ripping down some old buildings which meant some charming small businesses either chose to close, had to close, or shifted location. Then, after the big reno, Marks Work Wearhouse packed up its inventory in 2012 and got the heck off the rock as well. I don't have the scoop on what that was about but bad decision-making at play to say the least.

I celebrated my 50th birthday at Mobys and had some great memories. I recall Tal Bachman and his band. They were great and it was a fantastic evening. And then there's the domino effect. Moby's closure means one less venue for musicians. The loss of all of these means less B2B on island trade.

The first month I moved to the island, October 2008, I can still recall the delight I felt sitting in the front porch area of Raven Street Cafe on a really quiet Sunday afternoon,  savouring a glass of Merlot, and being serenaded by the clear crisp notes of a professional flutist who lived there for half the year.

I will never forget the practices for beginner band in the former Cafe El Zocalo owned by Wendy and Derrick Milton that they sold and then it transformed into the Marketplace Cafe. Eating out on island as far as I'm concerned is an absolute necessity, especially if you live alone. I had to get out of the cottage, see what was happening, bump into someone to talk to and eat food cooked by people who can cook way better than me. That's how it was in the winter, especially. I can only imagine the memories of those who have lived on island for a long, long time about all the restaurants that have come and gone.

On the positive side, there's a beautiful new library. If you want to read and hike and other more private activities, it's a great place. And, of course, there are still some great places left to eat: The Treehouse Cafe. Barb's Bakery and Bistro (Barb's Buns). Auntie Pesto's. Harbour House Hotel. Salt Spring Inn. Seaside Kitchen. Calvin's Bistro. House Piccolo. Rock Salt Cafe. Oyster Catcher. Hastings House.

Even when I first arrived on island, fewer American visitors had been the trend and being a vendor at the Market lets one track these things informally. Ferry prices keep going up. From Vancouver, it now costs $66.15 for a car and $17.85 for the driver, one way.

Add to all that the on-island demographics and opening a new restaurant on island makes about as much sense, financially, as oh, I don't know, selling photographs at the Saturday Market.

Is it just the usual shift, capitalism in action, or is it a more definite indicator of economic decline that slices away at the appeal of visiting Salt Spring? I have to think about the answer to that. What do you think?

Passion Just Can't Shut Up

Photo from Peter Schaaf off Marin Symphony site.

How do you know when you're in the presence of passion? It just won't shut up, that's how. It can't. But, in a good way. That's Rob Kapilow.

An American composer, pianist, educator, author, tennis-playing, karate-teaching, all around intellectual whirlwind, (who surely must have been a child prodigy), Kapilow showed the audience at the taping of a show for CBC Radio last night What Makes It Great with the It, in this case, being classical music.

It's also the name of his new book, an enhanced e-book, the first of its kind, that lets readers read and hear about classical music simultaneously thanks to iTunes, iPhones, iPads  and I can't believe my publisher just refused to get that they should have done an enhanced e-book years ago when he first mentioned it.  That's kind of what he said.

Seated at a piano, wearing grey flannels and a white shirt, attire which was ridiculously conservative in contrast to his gregarious, non-stop personality, this 60-year-old who could pass for someone at least 10 years younger, was mesmerizing because of his knowledge, his riffs on the piano and his out of the box enthusiasm.

He played his way through the first bars of a Chopin piece, talking almost non stop to the audience  as he did and revealing a few of the tricks of the composing trade in a way none of us had ever seen. Or maybe I'll just speak for myself.

At 24, he was a Yale music professor who got the opportunity to step in for one week as the conductor of the Broadway musical, Nine. That experience made him realize that not only is music not about the musicians or the conductor, it's about the audience and right then he was suddenly overcome with a compulsion that would change his life to help audiences feel about classical music the way people feel about the first popular music they fall in love with and  played over and over again as teenagers.

What he discovered by stepping into conducting that Broadway musical in the middle of its run, is that there is no such thing as getting to rehearse. Rehearsing is sitting in the audience and watching in preparation for being the conductor the next day. No pressure. He managed to pull it off  until it came time at the end to throw a large tambourine onto the stage, to the female lead. He had never done it before and instead of directing it at her, it went flying over her head the way a home run hit strikes the back wall, in this instance a wall of curtains.

A few years ago, he was hired by the Marin County Orchestra to write a symphony to celebrate the 75th anniversary (in 2012) of the Golden Gate Bridge. "What does the bridge sound like?" he asked the audience. "Foghorns" was one man's response. "That's right," he said, practically jumping off the piano stool. Instead of sitting alone in front of his piano, Kapilow got himself out onto the tug boats under the bridge, he listened and he asked questions of the tugboat operators and interviewed people on the street and even interviewed parents whose teenagers had, tragically, committed suicide off the bridge and that's when he knew he must have a chorus which grew to 100 so he could tell the full story, not just in music but through words  and he must have this and that and...you get the idea.

He wouldn't be the easiest guy to work with but he would get it done, and uniquely, no matter how many people ended up thinking he was a pain in the butt. Hey, no pain, no gain, no creativity.

I could go on and on about him but really all you need to know is that in his new book, What Makes it Great, which you can buy off iTunes or even the old fashioned way, you can read about some of the famous classical music pieces you love, assuming you do, and hear those parts he's talking about at the same time, right in your own living room. It will be almost as good as him being there. Nah. It wouldn't. But it would be the next best thing.

But the e-book/book here.