That lyric sums up the week at Girls Rock Camp Mississauga (GRCM). The song is still stuck in my head! Written by newly formed all-girl group The Scatterbrains, it was performed for the first time last Friday. Oh and by new, I mean they just met four days before the Friday performance.
Video: GRCM Showcase featuring The Scatterbrains
Where do I begin!? GRCM was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done as a musician. Yeah, even better than opening up for Motley Crüe! I mean, a Crüe gig fulfills one’s ego. A Girls Rock Camp Instructor gig fills your heart and soul. Giving is one of the most human things we can do in this life.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I initially thought it was just going to be a camp where you learn or get better at an instrument like the one I went to back in 2002. I wasn’t expecting the pride and the tears. I witnessed these young tweens and teens blossom and gain confidence everyday. What they didn’t realize was that everything they accomplished at their showcase Friday night was inside of them all along.
On the first day, I asked my guitar students what they wanted to learn and almost all of them said they wanted to learn how to play solos. It made me smile because:
1) I LOVE playing solos,
2) you can’t buy curtains for your house before you build the house.
I handed out folders with chord charts, tab paper, instructions on how to string a guitar and guitar exercises. We worked on rhythm, different chord progressions, learning to read tab and chord charts, 12-bar blues, palm muting and dynamics before I gave in and showed them a minor pentatonic scale. Even then, I only let them use two notes of the whole scale. Then we added notes gradually. Oh yeah, and all this to a metronome!
If the cost of love is grief, let it rain tears.
Four twenty is a special day for a lot of people, but for me it’s the anniversary of the day my puggle Rufus got lost in Montreal, just three weeks after moving there. I remember it was 4-20 because as I looked for him, Parc Lafontaine was covered in a big puff of green, and no I’m not talking about the tree tops! Two years ago today, he ran out of the apartment during a delivery and chased the bus he had just seen me get on. I got off about a kilometre later and saw a dog that looked just like mine limping across the street and laying down in front of a Dollar store.
“That’s not my dog”, I thought. “My dog is safe at home.”
Turns out, he was my dog. Watching helplessly as his mom walked right by him.
What ensued was four days of overwhelming grief and panic. Sixteen hours per day, 1000 posters, $500 dollars and 1 good samaritan later, he was in my arms. There are no words to describe pure joy and happiness, just tears. Oh, he was so spoiled that day! A trip to the pet store for treats, an afternoon spent in the park and an evening of cuddles was in store.
It made me realize that eventually I would lose him for good. Or vice versa. In fact, one day, long past the wedding and first child phase my friends are currently in, there would be the funerals. That’s if I’m lucky enough to live till then.
Let’s face it. Love hurts.
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