From: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org (navy-soup-digest) To: navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Subject: navy-soup-digest V9 #12 Reply-To: navy-soup@smoe.org Sender: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk navy-soup-digest Monday, December 18 2006 Volume 09 : Number 012 In This Digest: ----------------- westender article: sarah slean attends the school of life [wojbearpig Subject: westender article: sarah slean attends the school of life http://www.westender.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=49&cat=44&id=793355&more= Sarah Slean attends the school of life By Peter Hemminger Dec 14 2006 Sarah Slean is going back to school. The Toronto singer-songwriter has been kept busy these past few years by a career that includes three critically acclaimed albums, a Gemini-winning turn in the CBC musical film noir Black Widow, and a new collection of live recordings and studio outtakes called Orphan Music (partly recorded at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre). Her music, which draws elements from classical, cabaret and even polka, in addition to more contemporary sounds, has won her a devoted fanbase the world over. But before all that, Slean was studying philosophy and music at York University. Her pursuit of an academic life was interrupted, however, when the popularity of her music, which she was performing on the Toronto club circuit, brought about a recording contract with Warner Music. Theres no money in philosophy, Slean says, laughing. I didnt really know what I could do with philosophy. I know I can make things with music; its a really palpable creation process. Philosophy feels like swimming and occasionally flying. Youre moving around in an entire universe of thought, and you cant really build something out of that. You can build symphonies and string quartets and songs and records, but philosophy has to sort of be the ether where all of those things hover. Despite putting her education on hold for the sake of her artistic career, Slean has always believed that knowledge is good for the soul. Her website makes references to physicists and linguists, and her songs pay tribute to poets like T.S. Eliot. Returning to the well to finish her degree is just another part of the quest to keep her perspective fresh. I just have an insatiable appetite, Slean explains. Sometimes its overwhelming how much knowledge is in the world. But thankfully we have proclivities, things that we particularly like for no other reason than that we have a disposition towards them. I would love to have 12 lives so that in one of those lives I could have been a physicist, because its fascinating to me, that whole world. But I think every pursuit, every line of questioning, is really, at its height, always philosophy. Its always about being dumbstruck at how amazing and intricate the world is. For most of us, that sense of awe at the world is relegated to childhood. The older we get, the harder it becomes to spot the magic in the everyday world. In Sleans view, the problem isnt that the world changes, its just that we get so used to seeing the same things that even the most extraordinary experiences can start to feel routine. It never ever goes away, Slean says of that sense of wonderment. People just sort of tune it out. I think thats why I tend to wrench myself out of my comfort zone and go to Paris, or go to a cabin in the woods, or whatever, so that I can hear it again. Its always in there, but sometimes life gets really noisy around you and you get lazy and you cant hear it. By jumping out of the rhythm that youre in and going elsewhere into utter ignorance, you can hear it again. You can hear it in Sleans music, too. Theres a point on Orphan Music, at the end of the song Eliot, in which she simply cant contain herself and starts singing I love my job, over nursery-rhyme chords, with a joy thats positively infectious, and that wide-eyed wonder comes through even in her most somber moments. Maintaining that sentiment is no small task, of course, but after living abroad for more than half a year, and with the new outlook her return to school is sure to provide, Slean is up to the challenge. I want to start the next [studio album] next year, she says. I spent seven months in Paris, so it was enough to sort of get those juices flowing again and allow me to hear my awe again. Im not really sure the direction it will take. I never like to say, What Im going to do with this record is... and then go. The record-making process is alive, its organic. If it isnt, it becomes like doing your math homework  which is no fun. ------------------------------ End of navy-soup-digest V9 #12 ******************************