BE IN MY MOVIE, SEE AN AMAZING BAND, maybe even snuggle!

Dearhearts,

Good golley, I have been absent from myspace because my brain, body and soul were hijacked by art.  I need your help!

5:35 PM - 3 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

SCREEEMERZ

I hope you can make it out to our function: Saturday Sept. 1st at the Silver Dollar Room, 486 Spadina Avenue, Toronto Ontario.

Starts 10PM. On a bill with Tropics and Huckleberry Friends. $7

SCREEEMERZ

a ghost story written by Sook-Yin Lee & Adam Litovitz

narrated by Louis Negin

improvised music by S.Y. Lee, Adam Litovitz, Mark Roberts and Brandon Cronenberg. Featuring dancer Allison Peacock

SCREEEMERZ is the story of what happens one afternoon when four people collide in the dark in the scariest haunted house in Niagara Falls.

Joseph and his friend Anne work at Screemerz. Their job is to touch customers in the dark and spook them. Mr. G. is a pervert who hides inside the haunted house in order to molest young girls. Debbie is the ugly thirteen-year-old girl he gropes.

10:12 AM - 6 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

SEE US PLAY!

Hey Friendilinos!

I'm really excited because I'm performing for the first time in AGES with a swell group of musicians. I hope you can make it out to see us play!

Take good care,

Sook-Yin

Saturday July 21st 8PM
Harbourfront Centre Outdoor Concert Stage
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto
Free

DOCUMENTARY
featuring Sook-Yin Lee (voice, guitar), Adam Litovitz (guitar, keys), Anne Bourne (cello), Kathleen Kajioka (violin), Joseph Shabason (flute, clarinet, sax), Jeremy Finkelstein (drums) and Brandon Cronenberg (didgeridoo, bass)

The DOCUMENTARY set is divided in two sections. The first is made up of new original songs by Sook-Yin Lee.  The second is a series of "acoustic documentaries.". The musicians improvise and create spontaneous scores to live actions on stage that are decidedly non-musical and non-performative. In the past, Sook-Yin has conducted orchestras featuring basketball solos and a knitting section. This is an extension of the idea. DOCUMENTARY explores the intersection of music, sports and work.

DOCUMENTARY opens for double violin assault specialists CHI2 http://www.lizchiyen.plus.com/

Related websites:

http://www.myspace.com/sookyinlee
http://kathleenkajioka.com/bio.html
http://www.myspace.com/nononodynamics
http://www.deeplistening.org/DLArtists/bourne/bourne.html
http://myspace.com/thejewishlegend
http://www.myspace.com/problem69
http://www.myspace.com/bloodceremony

6:15 AM - 5 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

FAKING IT

This week on my radio show, Definitely Not the Opera, we're faking it all over the place cause faking is fun and easy! My first forays into faking it were early on when I forced all the kids in the neighborhood to watch my elaborate performances on the jungle gym in my backyard. One time, I got everyone to close their eyes. I took my fake Hawaiian guitar out of its fake case. A hush fell over the crowd as I played them a song. It went something like this:

(SY plays a fake "hawaiian guitar" solo with her nose.)

I must have been a good faker because they believed me, and they were impressed.

The truth is, I really wanted to play the guitar but I was too lazy to learn how. I used to walk around my neighborhood carrying an empty guitar case hoping people would see me and think I was an accomplished musician. I even enrolled in acoustic guitar lessons. A lady up the street who I babysat for, Mrs. Cork, also wanted to learn how to play guitar, so we signed up together. Every week, Mrs. Cork would drive me to guitar class. The problem was our teacher turned out to be a real dud. He was a mouth breather in plaid polyester pants, without an ounce of passion or charisma, and worst of all he taught us really boring songs. After awhile me and Mrs. Cork started skipping guitar class. It was our secret, we never told anyone. Mrs. Cork still picked me up from home and we pretended to go to class together, when really, we'd go to a cafe and talk instead. She'd drink coffee, I'd drink hot chocolate. Mrs. Cork was a babe. She was blonde and beautiful, and drove all the Dads crazy at our summer block parties. Her marriage was on the rocks, so our conversation usually consisted of her crying about her troubles at home with her husband and kids. That's how I learned about the fascinating world of adults. I was the twelve-year-old confidante to a full grown woman. It was an honor. I remember our secret meetings fondly and know they would never have happened had it not been for us faking.

***************************************************************************************

Listen to Definitely Not the Opera this Saturday, March 17 at 1PM on the mighty CBC Radio 1 in Canada and on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 137 in America.  Free podcasts: www.cbc.ca/dnto or streaming off your computer:  www.cbc.ca

xo!  Sook-Yin Lee

6:32 AM - 12 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

two double oh seven

Happy new year M-friends, it's a good one!

12:57 PM - 11 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Saga of Sook-Yin Lee

When I was thirteen years old, I was chosen to be part of a Canadian swim team made up of swimmers from across the country.  We competed in Darmstadt, Germany. On the team, there was one boy I instantly fell in love with.  His name was Michael.  He was a freestyle champ from Calgary.  Michael was short with brown bangs cut straight across his forehead, freckles all over, and sweet and cute to the extreme.  Anyway, I mooned over Michael from afar the whole time we were in Germany, but I could never tell him because I was too scared.

When the swim meet ended, all of us returned to Canada and went our separate ways.  I was alone on a plane back to Vancouver when I finally got the courage to write Michael a love letter on old Air Canada stationary.  Before I left the airport, I forced myself to drop my secret love confession in the mail.

Half a year later, I was swimming in another meet in my hometown.  To my surprise, who did I come across?  There was my not-so-secret crush, Michael, walking towards me in slow motion on the deck of the pool.  He was smiling and waving, trying to get my attention.  Suddenly I was overcome by the terror of meeting him face to face, knowing full well he knew my intimate feelings for him.  I wish I could say I threw caution to the wind and ran into his arms in a loving embrace, or at least a clumsy teenage grope.  I wish I could, but I can't.  As Michael walked towards me,  I turned around and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction.  

To this day I wonder what he must've thought of that crazy Asian chick with a perm who confessed her secret love only to kibosh the whole affair before it had a chance to begin.

1:35 PM - 14 Comments - 19 Kudos - Add Comment

from the EMAIL BAG

Hi Friendilinos!   I figure this blog is a good place to share some of my Myspace correspondence.   I got this email from Billy aka Willia.   She wrote:

hello sook-yin,

I keep wondering if sudden attention and success for the creative work one puts out into the world makes a person feel more completely wrapped in the love of the universe, or if it makes them feel infinitely more lonely… 

Well it's certainly awesome to finally be able to share Shortbus with the world.   There has been every reaction under the sun, and i'm happy so many people can relate to it!   It's a relief to be proud of a piece of work because it doesn't always happen that way.  You can give it your best, but the art can still suck.  So on a personal level I'm happy to say with Shortbus, I can hold my head up with pride!  Whenever I watch the movie I'm blown away by the amazing community of artists who made it.   In my small capacity, the thing I've learned after promoting the movie for the last 6 months is, all the glitz and glamour associated with "celebrity" is hard work.  You can be sure all the stars you see on covers of magazines are working their buns off and most likely finding it hard to find time for themselves.  So there is a disconnect between being the object of admiration and feeling overworked and rather regular compared to the fantasy image.  The entertainment industry boils down to making money.  The star system is an artifice, it's used to attract the public to buy stuff.  I've been very lucky through my work to be able to demystify the cult of celebrity for what it is.   Pretty much wherever I go people are remarkably similar: from meeting celebrities to non-celebrities, people from the heart of rural Senegal to talking with Tony who runs the vegetable stand around the block from me.  We're all trying our best to lead happy lives and things are okay but sometimes we collide into major obstacles.

I'm really interested in in-between spaces, and it seems to me that you, and some others from the shortbus collective, are in such a space. You're practically a celebrity overnight, yet, you probably still have to work a day job to pay the bills.

I remember wondering how much of my life would change after Shortbus.  Some things that have changed:  I have more confidence in myself as an artist and there's a lot of nice people recognizing and congratulating me.  I've been given a few scripts to consider but have not come across anything I want to take on, so I'm concentrating on writing my own movies.  I'm nearing a final draft of my first feature movie, Year of the Carnivore, that  I plan to direct.  I'm also starting a new script for a movie I will act in.  (I'll have to find the right director once I've written the screenplay.)   My life is very similar to how it was before.  I spend a lot of time on my own in my imagination.  I'm really happy to be home making new work. 

Don't all creative people who put their work into the world secretly, or not so secretly want their stuff to be consumed and appreciated…I just wonder, when that begins to happen, do you let yourself trust it?

I love telling stories and making art and sharing it with others!  I also love being affected by other artists' work.   My personal life can be a real wreck sometimes, but I'm happy to say, I trust myself as an artist.  I love the process of making art, it's challenging and substantial, a real pleasure for me. 

Do you feel elated, on the brink of something larger than yourself, or do you feel vulnerable and emptied out, having cut yourself into so many pieces before an anonymous audience, who love you but can never really know you…

For me it's, steady as she goes, the work continues.  I am glad not to be in the public eye as much as I have been in the past half year.   This is a quiet introspective time for me which is an aspect of how I like to live, as well as part of the process that helps access the stories I want to tell.  Remarkably I don't feel strange for having revealed so much of me in the movie. Granted, I was playing a role, Sofia is NOT Sook-Yin.  In regards to people not knowing me, all my life few have really known me.  These days I'm not even sure how well I know myself, or if there even is such thing as a self! 

Who are you?

I don't know.  The other day when I was riding my bike, slicing through the air, I was convinced I am a mass of vibrating particles! 

What do you do for a living?

I host and produce an irreverent pop culture radio show, Definitely Not the Opera (DNTO) for  the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC Radio 1.  I'm also a presenter on TV sometimes.

What are your dreams?

You'll have to read my last blog for the last dream I remember.

Are you in love?

It seems like I'm always in love.  Which is more like unrequited infatuation or romantic projection.  I do have close friends and family who I love for real.

What do you fear the most?

Rejection.

When do you feel the most at peace?

Probably when I'm sleeping.  Or, if I'm awake, when I ride my bike on a nice day.

What makes you smile to yourself?

Watching my Dad practise his Chinese dance moves in the basement while he learns them off a DVD on his jumbo TV.

love & light
willia

Thanks for writing Willia.

8:43 AM - 8 Comments - 13 Kudos - Add Comment

resist the temptation

okay, here's the thing. today i was interviewing Torquil and Chris of the band memphis, www.myspace.com/memphiscanada . They were talking about the importance of community and connection and how they think people are becoming alienated from one another. They remarked how on Myspace we have a tendency to want to convey an ideal image of ourselves with cool photos of us looking good, being cute and saying neat stuff etc. So I want to resist the temptation and capture an aspect of the altogether confused person I am. Right now I'm drunk. rule #1 says you're not supposed to blog drunk cause you say stupid things you'll regret later on. Last week someone posted a rude comment on my profile about me having chlamydia (I don't.) I was tempted to keep it on as part of the chaotic process, but then I removed it and deleted the person from my "friend" list. Afterwards I felt guilty.

****

Next Day Sober:  the first poem I ever wrote was when I was 6 years old. it had an AAAA rhyming scheme and went like this:

            A fly went by in the early July,

            I saw it with my very own eye,

            A fly went by and it started to cry,

            I picked it up and it said, "Let me die."

last night I had a crazy mother of a dream. I was trapped in an old room with my pal cece. a truly terrifying alien serpent was swimming through the air. we were running around trying to avoid it's attack because it had the ability to penetrate our bodies and possess us. it was the bright yellow color of a Chinatown squid, with sharp teeth and ugly. menacingly, it circled us.  We were panicking to get away, but the space was small and we were falling over each other. after awhile I thought, what if it's as scared as us and just wants to get out? So I opened the window. The alien serpent shot towards it, and flung its body outside, but then, just as quickly, it retreated back into the room and hid. it was snowing outside and the alien serpent could not survive the freezing cold so it was forced to retreat indoors. Cowering in the corner, we knew it was close by but we didn't know where. suddenly the alien serpent dove towards me, poised to pierce through my body and possess me. At that exact moment I woke up, disturbed by the realization I was the terrified alien serpent!

Tonite I was out for dinner with my pal Chester and I was telling him about the nightmare. He looked up and noticed hanging on the wall beside us in the restaurant, was an ancient lithograph of a serpent attacking terrified farmers and cattle in a field. Weird.

**** 

For more odd accounts of being alive, listen to my radio show Definitely Not the Opera this Saturday when we take on the cultural anti-hero, the underdog.  I talk with the band Memphis, investigative reporter Wendy Mesley and hottie actor Adam Beach (Flags of our Fathers.)   Saturday November 11th from 1-4PM on CBC Radio 1 across Canada, Sirius Satellite Radio channel 137 in the US, streaming online:  www.cbc.ca.  For free podcasts go to:  www.cbc.ca/dnto

1:05 PM - 7 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

It's cold and wet out and I'm hibernating like a brown bear.

I'm reading the new memoir by author Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and I'll be interviewing him this week on my radio show.  Bill's hilarious, with his funny heartbreaking stories of family and growing up weird in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s, during a time of wealth, prosperity and fear of communists, teenagers and the atomic bomb.  Here's how his memoir begins:

"IN THE LATE 1950s, the Royal Canadian Air Force produced a booklet on isometrics, a form of exercise that enjoyed a short but devoted vogue with my father. The idea of isometrics was that you used any unyielding object, like a tree or a wall, and pressed against it with all your might from various positions to tone and strengthen different groups of muscles.  Since everybody already has access to trees and walls, you didn't need to invest in a lot of costly equipment, which I expect was what attracted my dad.

   What made it unfortunate in my father's case is that he would do his isometrics on airplanes. At some point in every flight, he would stroll back to the galley area or the space by the emergency exit and, taking up the posture of someone trying to budge a very heavy piece of machinery, he would begin to push with his back or shoulder against the outer wall of the plane, pausing occasionally to take deep breaths before returning with quiet grunts to the task.

   Since it looked uncannily, if unfathomably, as if he were trying to force a hole in the side of the plane, this naturally drew attention.  Businessmen in nearby seats would stare over the tops of their glasses. A stewardess would pop her head out of the galley and likewise stare, but with a certain hard caution, as if rememberting some aspect of her training that she had not previously been called up on to implement.

  Seeing that he had observers, my father would straighten up and smile genially and begin to outline the engaging principles behind isometrics. Then he would give a demonstration to an audience that swiftly consisted of no one.  He seemed curiously incapable of feeling embarrassment in such situations, but that was all right because I felt enough for both of us--indeed, enough for us and all the other passengers, the airline and its employees, and the whole of whatever state we were flying over."

(Listen up for that interview on Definitely Not the Opera this Saturday, Nov.4 at 1PM on the mighty CBC Radio 1 in Canada and on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 137 in America.  Free podcasts: www.cbc.ca/dnto or streaming off your computer:  www.cbc.ca)

The next surreal stop on the SHORTBUS field trip is Nov. 29 in NYC where we've been nominated for an IFP Gotham award for best ensemble cast!  We're up against the likes of Brad Pitt and co. in the movie Babel and the Little Miss Sunshine crew.  Bizarre. 

Right now, John Cameron Mitchell and the Pauls are lost somewhere in Europe on a never-ending press junket.  As for me, I'm happy to be home working on new stories.

I'm discovering this new Myspace situation is giving rise to all kinds of peculiar technological phenomenon.  First off, it's a lot easier making friends online than in person with a simple click of the "add" button.  Now when I walk around in the "real" world, people resemble JPegs! It's confusing.  And the other night I was eating dinner in a restaurant.  When I returned home, a stranger from the next table over had sent me a message through the computer!

One of the themes running through Bill Bryson's book is the idea of the "thoughtless destruction of modernism." 

What do you think?

10:19 PM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Life is but a Dream

London was a whirlwind. We drove to the screening in a double-decker PINK bus with a disco inside!  We drank champagne and pole-danced toward the cinema where a crowd waited for us outside.  I thought to myself, this is never going to happen to me ever again, then I looked over at Johnny's cousin Neville who looked equally out of place on the fun-fur zebra carpet.  Photos were snapped, questions were hurled and the screening was underway. I sat between Justin Bond and Jay.  I still laugh nervously through the hymen-busting opening sequence of the movie, I guess it's something I'll never quite get used to.  Justin cried during the heartbreaking mayor of New York scene, and the ending.  Me too.  I'm a grizzled veteran of Shortbus, I've lived through it, seen the movie more than ten times and still I was bawling by the end!  

The Brits took a shining to Shortbus.  I think it's because they see us taking the piss out of ourselves, then beyond that, there's this warm gushy heart to the movie.   Afterwards we took the stage for a Q&A. One of the highlights was a question from the audience: 

QUESTION:  Yin, what advice would your character Sofia give to someone who saw ancient dead relatives looking down on them while they masturbated?

SOOK-YIN:  (disturbed at the thought) hmmm, that's a tough one.  (putting on my thinking cap).  Well I would suggest they look directly into the eyes of their dead relatives, and if they see a friendly face---

JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL:  (interrupts)  come.

The after-party was at an old-school Soho burlesque club featuring 1950's style strippers.  I met three of myspace friends in person, Simon, Michael and Layke.  (Hi guys!)  We sang and drank and smoked fags and danced.  In the early morning, PJ, Paul, Jay, Justin, John and I were in big heap on Johnny's bed singing Two Fathers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qf0puHJ-KM

I looked at the clock radio and saw I had three hours before my flight back to Canada.  24 hours later I found myself on another continent, in my own bed, alone in my room in Toronto, waking up from a wonderful dream called Shortbus.

Thank you to my dream team and all of the dreamers.

I love you.

sook-yin

12:07 PM - 6 Comments - 7 Kudos - Add Comment