#10: the lava life

Before anyone gets the wrong ideas and pulls an eastwood, I should explain. Tonight we went to "Worshipping the Volcano Goddess: Fierce Love Stories from Ancient Polynesia," an Ottawa Storytellers event at the National Arts Centre/Centre national des Arts (NAC/CNA). It featured two tellers, one of whom I had the great misfortune to spill coffee on during intermission at the Ottawa Storytelling Festival's Saturday night "High Stakes" concert on Nov. 3. We agreed to share the blame for that episode, although I still suspect I was at fault for not watching where I was going. She was so gracious about it--she suggested we could tell spin stories out of our mishap--we ended up having a pleasant exchange, and that's when I learned that she was telling on Feb. 21. I much preferred her stories over the other teller's.

Still, the evening didn't quite live up to my expectations. Perhaps I've been spoiled: I've witnessed performances by the likes of Chirine El-Ansary, Elizabeth Ellis, Jeff Stockton, Laura Simms, and Liz Weir. I'm beset by the same disappointment I feel when I've chosen a movie and it just doesn't gel. I will say this, however: the NAC's Fourth Stage is the perfect venue for exactly such an intimate event. It seats 150, it's cozily dark, and according to that link above, it's got "valour" drapes. (I myself thought they looked more like velour. Maybe something got lost in translation? Then again, the NAC is only a short trek down the street from, practically facing, DND.) There are pot lights all the way around the periphery of the room. We sat at round tables, 4 chairs to a table (yay, we didn't have to share), and the centrepieces were candles in glass pear-shaped lamps evocative of volcanos--the kind of candlelight that was popular in restaurants in the '70s and '80s. I can't explain: you'll just have to wait until I can post the photo (it's trapped in a cellphone) to see what I mean. Suspense...

Friday morning:
OK, here's the cellphone photo. I'm pushing my luck again. I don't have Photoshop; I've got something called iPhoto, with which I'm not super familiar. However, in order to make this image viewable, I had to click on "Enhance" and then "Effects-Boost Color" or you would have been looking at a lot of extra noise (as you will be if you click to enlarge it).

Photo © James Chychota, 2008

I forgot to mention above that the program we received was also very cool, with its map of the Hawaiian islands and notes on character and place names. See what I mean about the candle?