Grovers' Corners

Sometimes I get frustrated living in a small town. I don't go to many professional shows. I'm not in any loop. It's not like there are any connections to make here in Cranbrook that will help me take my writing to the next level.

I was recently talking to a young man from Montreal who runs a Chinese Opera company. He fell in love with Chinese Opera in university and he and some like-minded individuals banded together and perform with some degree of regularity. He talked about Chinese Opera a lot. As in, I think it consumes most of his thoughts. That's not a bad thing at all. In fact, I envy him.

There are many people living in Cranbrook whom I've asked to what degree theatre is on their radar, as in do they go to plays(?). More often than not, the answer resembles "If I had to . . ." or, "My girlfriend wanted me to go to a play once, but I was like, 'No' . . ." or "No. Theatre can happen or not happen and my life would be no different." When it comes to the local theatre scene, there is a small band of folks here who will go to everything. There is a larger group who will go to all of the high school musicals. There are others who will go to plays if they know someone in the show or if they heard it's good. Many will visit the touring large-scale musicals in nearby cities. Precious few will attend the shows of local professional companies in said nearby cities (i.e. Theatre Calgary).

So, in contrast to my Chinese Opera-minded acquaintance who is surrounded by folks who may spend days just learning how to get a particular movement sequence just right, I spend most of my time around a wide cross-section of people. Pastors, stay at home moms, teachers, nurses, miners, landscapers and the like.

I often crave to get away and burrow myself into some little theatre cocoon where I'm just around theatre people all the time and I would go to plays and write plays (which everyone would just love and praise incessantly) and talk about plays and my life would just be about theatre. Nothing would be boring and everyone would just get me. I think about that a lot, actually.

But then. I go down to the Farmer's Market on Wednesday night (it took about five minutes to get there). It's pretty packed. There's a girl who I taught a couple of years ago - I really like her a lot. We hug and exchange "You look good"s. I see a whack of people I either currently teach with or have at one time. The musicians are former or current students. There's a bunch of church people - I find out that one of my good friends is going away next week, not this week like I thought. Everyone is glad to see me and I'm glad to see them. I don't know, it's charming. And irreplaceable. That's just one example of why, when to comes right down to it, I in fact do not regret my choice to live and work where I do. The other, more vital example is the shortbread chocolate cookies at Max's Place downtown (mmmmmmmmyummmAH!). They fix everything.

Yep, I'm unproduced. Yep, the biggest likelihood is that I'm going to stay that way. Really, it's true (it's okay). One of the reasons for that could be that I'm remote and don't have my finger on the pulse of our diverse, changing and urban world. But, people love stories. And who else is going to tell the ones that only I can tell? So, I'm telling them. And though yes, sometimes it does make me discontented with Grovers' Corners to go away and see (or think about seeing) other things, I know that I'm where I'm supposed to be. And mostly, I like it.