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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