Hi. Darcy James Argue here. You might know me from my other blog, and as you might have guessed, this whole Pulse blog thing was my idea (just in case you are looking for somewhere to lay the blame).
I want to begin with a hearfelt thank-you to newly inducted Pulse Ensemble violist Frank Foerster. As fate would have it, circumstances required the violist who was originally scheduled to appear with us at the Old Stone House tonight to bow out, leaving us scrambling to find a suitable replacement at the last minute. And by "us," I mean Joe, whose powers of persuasion never failed us yet. However, I admit to sweating a little, as the piece I had written for tonight's concert was a viola feature, and the part is a real mother... contains a variety of techincal challenges.
Frank, who between his gig as the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's Principal Violist, his solo career, and his teaching commitments, clearly has a ton of time on his hands, agreed to step in with two rehearsals to go and killed it on the first reading. I cannot adequately express how humbled I am to have this guy playing my music, and playing it with such tremendous fire and grace. Frank is also a warm and down-to-earth human being, which, believe me, is very much appreciated when everything is coming down to the wire.
As far as my piece goes, well... it's called "E Hastings." East Hastings Street is ground zero of Vancouver's heroin epidemic. Faced with a mounting death toll from overdoses, infection, endemic poverty and homelessness, and drug-related crime, a few years ago Vancouver's civic leaders did the unthinkable -- they listened to the experts. Public health advocates had been pushing for a policy of harm reduction for years, and in November 2003, Vancouver opened North America's first supervised injection site, where the city's thousands of injection drug users can get clean needles, medical supervision, primary health care, and — if they ask for it — addiction counselling and treatment.
The notion that heroin addicts are still full-fledged human beings deserving of dignity and compassion instead of a de facto death sentence is (I'm sure you've noticed) still something of a radical notion in our culture, and so "E Hastings" is dedicated to the workers and volunteers that staff Vancouver's supervised injection sites, and to the people who continue to advocate for them in the face of overwhelming prejudice and ignorance.
Over the course of writing "E Hastings," I found myself including several allusions to "Memories Can't Wait" by the Talking Heads, a song I used to listen to a lot back when I was growing up in Vancouver.
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