Merging the Watched and the Watcher

            Playing back the recent videos I’ve shot of my morning song practice, one prominent element, besides my own mistakes, that keeps some of the song-captures from being upload-worthy is the overwhelming noise of large vehicles going by outside on Queen Street and drowning out large chunks of my music. It occurred to me recently that I had never recorded on a Sunday morning, which is the quietest morning of the week. The reason for this had simply been that Saturdays were so busy that I hadn’t gotten around to reviewing the last video and recharging the battery before Sunday. This last Saturday I made a conscious effort to get that done so I could have less motor heckling infecting the records of my daily concerts.

So on Sunday morning I shot my first of what I hoped would be many quieter videos. There was still the sidewalk vacuum though, which is pretty noisy, and which seemed to return to cover the same areas across the street from my window more than once.

I think I might have actually gotten through a couple of songs without any major mistakes. The song that I always start with is “Le Poinconneur des Lilas” on French singing days and my translation, “The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station” on English days. If I got a good take of the English version on Sunday then the next time I will start the camera recording later so that I can eventually get good recordings of all the songs to upload to YouTube.

It’s an interesting process to record myself because I know that I am being

watched by someone other than my performing self. Even if I am the only person that will ever watch the playback it’s another, more judgemental aspect of me. The camera is like a mechanical conscience and so I feel a compulsion to sing the songs like I mean them. I think that if there had been video cameras at the dawn of civilization people wouldn’t have had to invent a god that they imagine is watching over them.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. As I was approaching Bloor Street on Brock I could see there was a street festival going on so I turned right on Croatia and since the fair didn’t go east of Dufferin I headed north and went back on Bloor again.

            The subway was closed from St George to Broadview and so I had to go out to the left and pass through a narrow corridor between the cars and several long rows of busses until I got ahead past Yonge Street.

            I rode up Woodbine to O’Connor, took that to St Clair and turned right. I went south on Rexleigh and after Glenwood Crescent, because the streets in that area are not laid out in straight lines, I started taking nothing but right turns so I wouldn’t lose track of where I’d been. That first took me onto Ferris Road, which follows the sharp change of direction made when it stops aligning itself with Taylor Creek and begins to go beside Massey Creek. Speaking of water I had to pee really bad, but my hope was that my right turns would eventually lead me to a washroom. The direction of the right turns eventually curved from west dead ends to south cul de sacs. One of them was a very steep hill, which made for an unpleasant climb on the way back, which added to and did not distract from the bothersome situation that my bladder was in.

            The houses south of Glenwood seem much less expensive and smaller, though well maintained.

            I ended up on Halsey where I noticed the Rainbow Coin Laundry and so I stopped to see if they had a washroom. There was no place to lock my bike so I just leaned it against the window where the manager was sitting on the other side and went in. At first he did not want to give the washroom key to someone that wasn’t doing laundry, but I explained my situation and he relented. The key holder was one of those refillable lint rollers with the hook hole of the black plastic handle holding the keys. I thought it made for a pretty good key holder. I relieved myself and continued on. The next right was Dawes Road and I took that all the way to Danforth.

            Between Sherbourne and Yonge I had to deal with another convoy of busses. I went south on St George to College. Since it was Sunday, the College bike lane wasn’t as annoyingly busy as on weekdays.

            That night I had a quick look at the video I’d shot that morning. The first song looked like it came through fine. There was a slight mis-grabbing of a chord but it didn’t really sound unbearable dissonant. I didn’t check out the voice recorder file yet though.