Tuesday 13 March 2018

Vikings in Canada



            I had to work early on Monday so I had to cut song practice short by just singing one verse and one chorus of most of the songs. I had time for a tall glass of orange juice, a banana and a handful of grapes before leaving. It was winter again in temperature as I rode along Dundas to OCADU.
            I worked in the photography department for David Skopick but he didn’t use me for the first hour of class. I spent some of the time with my laptop pecking at my essay, but I always feel sleepy in that studio so some of the time I sat on the floor with my back to the wall. As usual, I was the subject for a lighting demo, but he did things differently than has been his habit for the last few years. He had me standing pretty much the whole time, and even doing some movement so he could create blurred effects in the photos. At one point he had a student stand behind me holding up a sheet of reflective Mylar and asked him to move it in a twisting motion while I swayed from side to side.
            I noticed that David’s hands are very shaky and yet the photos that were intentionally not blurred looked fine.
            After that he wanted to demonstrate shooting a subject in front of a projected image, but it took him almost an hour to set that up. “Good art takes time,” he declared. The image was an artsy postmodern sci-fi photo of a Barbarellaesque woman with spikes of light splaying out of her eyes. He posed a stuffed owl in front of it first and then after a few shots of that he only had time to do one picture of me.
            When we finished around 11:00, David shook my hand and told me, “You’re the best!” I don’t know what I did to be “the best”, but I’ll take it.
            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I picked up several cluster tomatoes, a large jug of orange juice and a small one of grapefruit juice.
            After lunch I took a siesta and ended up sleeping for an extra half hour. When I got up it was pretty much time to get ready to go to work again.
            I was scheduled to pose for Terry Shoffner’s class in the design department at the top of the pencil box. When I walked into the studio, Sian, the model for the previous class was getting ready to leave. He used to be the shop steward for the models in our union. We chatted about my university classes and he told me that he studied English at York University. He said he found a book called “Tales from the Icelanders” very interesting. I don’t think such a book exists, so maybe he meant “Sagas of Icelanders” or “Sagas of Greenlanders”. He said that one expert claims that there is evidence that the Vikings visited New Brunswick. There is apparently a reference to “Vinland” and “Hop” in the Icelandic texts and the theory is that was the land around the Gulf of St Lawrence and that Hop was in the Chaleur Bay area of New Brunswick. The Vikings mentioned finding butternuts, which of all the Atlantic Provinces, only grow in New Brunswick.
            When Terry came in he told me that though the pose was scheduled to be life (nude), he wanted me to sit for a portrait instead. I did two 20-minute poses and then one long one. In the first half, Terry lectured for at least 20 minutes and I also had the usual 20-minute break in the middle.
I made some progress on my essay and managed to chop it down to nine pages, which still left me a page over the upper limit but I was getting closer.
Terry offered his students a quote from his friend Kerry Kim, who teaches drawing and painting at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “If you work small you make big mistakes. If you work big you make small mistakes.”
For some of the session, Terry, who has done illustrations for some of the world’s top magazines, was set up at an easel and drawing me as well. At the end he showed that he’d done a portrait of me as a WWII soldier.
When I got home I made dinner and watched The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.  In this story, the alcoholic wife (Dianne) of a wealthy businessman (Victor) has been on the wagon since they adopted a baby. She comes back from riding one of her jumping horses and finds the elderly nanny (Andrina, who had cared for Dianne when she was a baby), has her little boy out in a crib near the pool.  Dianne asks their butler, Pedro for a light vodka and tonic and tells Andrina that she’ll look after the baby for the rest of the afternoon. After Andrina leaves, the phone rings, just inside the house. Since Andrina doesn’t answer it Dianne goes to pick it up. Meanwhile the baby, who has just reached the age when he can climb out of a crib, is attracted to the sparkling water of the pool in front of him. Dianne is just on the phone with her husband for a minute, but when she goes back to the pool she finds that her baby has drowned. At the inquest, fearing that Victor will blame her for breaking her promise never to drink again, Andrina takes the fall for the baby’s death. Consequently, Victor fires Andrina. Later, a woman (Consuela) comes to see Diane and says that she is the mother of the baby that died. She wants to see where it happened and then Consuela reveals that she knows exactly what happened and that it had been Dianne that answered the phone. Just then Victor is arriving. Dianne asks Consuela to leave so they can talk about it another time but Consuela refuses. Consuela is there when Victor walks in, and not knowing what else to do, Dianne introduces Consuela as an old friend. Consuela tells Victor that Dianne has asked her to stay for the weekend and so Dianne has to go along. The next morning, wearing one of Dianne’s dresses, Consuela comes down for breakfast on the patio with Dianne. Dianne confronts Consuela and Pedro and finds out that Pedro had given her the information about the baby’s death. Dianne says she will tell her husband the truth because Pedro knows she only had one drink. Consuela says that Pedro doesn’t know that Dianne didn’t make herself several drinks after the first one. Consuela threatens to reveal the truth to Victor. Dianne offers her $20,000 but Consuela refuses. Asked what she wants, Consuela says she doesn’t know and that she’ll stay there for a while to think about it. Later, Consuela reveals to Pedro that what she wants is to replace Dianne by driving her to back to drinking. It happens right away. Every night Victor is away Dianne is woken by the sound of a baby crying out by the pool. Consuela and Pedro are playing a tape recorder. It drives Dianne deeper into despair and Consuela begins making drinks for her. Next Dianne is supposed to host a party at their house but she gets drunk beforehand and makes a fool of herself. Victor wants Dianne to go into treatment for her problem but Dianne is afraid to leave Consuela alone with him. Victor is upset that Dianne isn’t trying hard enough. The next day Dianne goes missing, but while everyone is searching for her she goes to the orphanage where she had adopted her baby. She tells them that she met the mother but the nun tells her that’s impossible because the mother died in childbirth. Dianne goes back and, with Victor there, she confronts Dianne and Pedro. She tells Victor the truth and she also says she has arranged to go for the treatment that Victor had recommended. Consuela and Pedro are sent away with nothing.
            The story was written by the same guy that wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo.



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