Archives for category: Articles

Cricket Mania

February 17, 2011 //
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For years now, I’ve been experiencing the onset of a slow love affair with cricket. Maybe it’s because I love puzzles (especially the cryptic kind), and here in North America, cricket is usually shrouded in mystery.  It’s viewed as baseball’s exotic, off-kilter cousin whose rules are just a bit too cryptic to figure out, thank you very much, especially if there’s a baseball game on.

As it turns out, just as with cryptic crosswords, puzzling through the rules of cricket offers great satisfaction.  Now that I have a clue what’s happening on the pitch, I can hardly tear myself away.  And the language!  Can any other sport compete with googlies, doosras, yorkers, maiden overs and ducks?

There’s a kind of poetry to cricket.  In honour of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, about to begin in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, here’s my mini-doc on how I came to love the sport:

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And my guide to Team Canada appears in this week’s edition of Eye Weekly in Toronto.

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Categories Articles, Docs

Our Constant Companion

February 1, 2011 //
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It’s been six years since the tsunami devastated South & Southeast Asia, and just over a year since the massive earthquake in Haiti. There was a lot of coverage in January about how Haiti is faring, one year later, and hearing all about it has gotten me thinking again about being in Sri Lanka in December 2004 and January 2005.

I was in Colombo during the time just after the tsunami, and I remember being overwhelmed by a feeling of uselessness. I wanted to help in some way, but at first, charities weren’t interested in someone with my skill set. During that time, I began to question whether I had made the right choice in life by studying music. Is music ultimately useless?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering ever since, and this article appeared in the first edition of BoulderPavement about a year ago.

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P.S. For some powerful audio about compassion and perseverance in Haiti, tune in to CBC’s Tapestry this coming Sunday, Feb. 6th. They’ve got a great show lined up.

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Categories Articles, Music

Signal to Noise

August 4, 2010 //
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These days my tinnitus is pretty bad.  It’s a ringing in my ear that I notice most frequently at night, when all else is quiet.  It used to be just in my left ear, but lately my right ear has been acting up.

Recently I wrote about how tinnitus has altered the way I think about noise, and about silence.  You can read my thoughts in Issue # 2 of BoulderPavement, the Banff Centre’s new online literary journal.

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Categories Articles