B l u e P a r a d e - A S a r a h S l e a n F a n s i t e
|
Sarah Slean seeks her place in the universe
"Ohmigod..."
First comes the widening of the eyes and the little overture of gasps as the Saturday Arts section flutters open, revealing to her the face of her beloved.
"Ohmigod... Ohmigod... OHMIGOD!"
Then, the familiar crescendo of Crush as Sarah Hope Slean -- U of T music student, former York U. Piano Master Class enrollee, singer/songwriter of rare insight and what the Eng. Lit Profs manning the Austen canon used to call "a mature 20 years" -- breaks form and abandons herself to her obsessions.
Her thin pianist's forefinger touches newsprint, caresses her crush's 2-D jawline. She heaves up a sigh: "Of course, I'm really into him as an artist, but he's so good looking, too. Look at that hair..." She taps thick, pixel-dot locks. "...You know no matter how he cuts it, deep down it just wants to be messy."
Sarah shivers, flips the Arts section around to reveal the strapping, Dionysian love stare of... Glenn Gould.
"If he'd just lived 20 years longer," she sighs, "I'd have been totally willing to start a May/December thing. He was a genius, and now I'll never meet him. I feel so completely ripped off..."
Not for Sarah the usual obsessions: a girl and her piano've gotta have higher aspirations than "Cornflake Girl." So... no "quirky" little lounge tinklings, but classically inspired arpeggios, diminished sevenths and a cello gently seething under rosin; no "cathartic" little noises in the back of the throat but simple, undecorated bel canto (in its literal sense); no panting-up-that-bourgeois-art-hill to Kate Bush covers, but a graceful leap to the highest C in a reworking of Faur�'s Pie Jesu. And -- hosanna in excelsis! -- no manic compulsion to commit every last minor disappointment to rhyming couplet.
"I like to write in a way that's not all 'AIIIIEE!' " she giggles, yanking her face into a passable replica of that M�nch painting. "I like to say it subtly, cos it keeps that sense of dramatic apprehension going and anyways, the words say everything to me since I already know the situations.
"Actually," she considers, "at first even the idea of performing scared the hell out of me. When I started writing the songs I play now, they turned out to be the sort of things I couldn't play in front of anyone else. I'd only play them if my parents weren't home. I'd have to play in the living room -- in the dark -- almost like I was embarrassed."
But your family's got to know what you're doing by now...
Sarah Hope Slean throws a quick glance to Glenn Gould, who looks out comfortingly from his newsprint. "Ye-ees," she starts, "but when my mother and father come to shows I still get a little shaky and short of breath. Somehow, you always wanna be a happy little kid to your parents, not a woman with a woman's feelings, if you know what I mean."
Sorry, does this make her sound insecure? Anxious? The Vast Unknowable is actually a comforting thing, thinks Sarah: an attentive young woman -- not unlike the composer herself -- who can be engaged in debate ("Universe"); a supernatural grace that turns lovers into seraphim ("Angel"); a font of holiness (Faur�, op cit.) and a renewable source of We-Are-Not-Alone optimism (see alien artwork, in inlay card and various sketchpads).
"I'm fascinated by the macro," she explains brightly, "by the macro as a mirror of the micro. I just think when you've got personal problems, if you think about how enormous the world is and how much matter's in it and how massive the sky is at night, like a huge, living organism hanging in a sea of space, that's such a comfort. A lot of people say that makes them feel insignificant, but I think it makes me feel part of something that huge. And it's beautiful..."
She gathers up the Saturday Arts section and its portrait of Glenn Gould that will, later, sit onstage beside her on her piano bench.
"It's more beauty than you could ever attempt to put into words."
Sarah Slean opens the Animal Alliance Benefit Friday (Sept. 26) at 9 p.m. at the El Mocambo.
|