Aaron Collier: The Power of Sound and Storytelling

In this episode of A Chat with Heart, host Christina Martin welcomes sound designer and performer Aaron Collier. They discuss the challenges and joys of living in rural communities, the creative process behind live art, and the importance of mental health. Aaron shares insights from his work with Heist, a performance company, and reflects on personal experiences that shape his art. The conversation also touches on the significance of community, the power of music, and upcoming projects, including a remix Aaron created of Christina's song Take Me Back in a Dream. 

Get in touch with Aaron:

• Aaron on FB
• Aaron on Instagram
• Heist

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to A Chat with Heart
• 4:33 Welcoming Aaron Collier
• 7:38 Lightning Round with Aaron
• 34:00 Exploring Heist and Live Art
• 1:09:57 Living in Rural Communities
• 1:16:54 Upcoming Projects and Remix

Transcript

Christina (00:01)
Hey, you're listening to A Chat with Heart. I'm your host, Christina Martin. I'm a singer-songwriter, curious human. I live on a dirt road in rural Nova Scotia with my partner in crime, Dale, and our Calico cat, Olivia. This podcast is basically just me chatting with people I admire. I like to ask questions that feed my curiosity, and my guests have all taught me something. They either crack me up or they punch me right in the feels.

If you've got questions, comments, or a burning desire to join the conversation, please call my heartbeat hotline, day or night. It's 1902-669-4769. You can also email me at christinamartinmusic at gmail.com. And if you want to throw a little love my way and help keep this thing going, visit my Patreon page. That's how artists like me get paid. Thanks for showing up. Warning, heartfelt content ahead.

Just talk about

We could shine, we could break a day if we just talk about

cut away, we can make a

Hey folks, welcome back to a chat with heart. ⁓ I'm a little frustrated. I'll tell you why. I am reminded every time our home insurance goes up by a lot, it's like doubled in the last last year. And now it's, it's increased by another like, I think 50%. And we're just like, wow, we can't afford this. And

One of the reasons is because we're forced into this comprehensive ⁓ plan that we can't afford because we have a house that was built over 100 years ago. So it's really hard to find an ⁓ insurance company that'll cover us. ⁓ And then of course the brokers want to make money. So they're not exactly giving you all the options upfront. Really have to fight for this.

Anyway, that's where my headspace is today. I'm frustrated, but there's also lot of really awesome things I'm grateful for. I went to an osteopath today for the first time. Tyler in Amherst, Nova Scotia. Thank you, Tyler. Tyler Skinner, I believe his name is. It better be Skinner. Let me just check on that while I'm...

so I don't steer you in the wrong direction. Tyler Skinner, osteopath. I don't know how to spell osteopath. Amherst, Nova Scotia. And yes, I got it right. Mr. Tyler Skinner. ⁓ was a really cool experience. Totally relaxing, very gentle. And, ⁓ I highly recommend. And, ⁓ just getting packed up.

⁓ Dale and I are going to Austin, Texas. It's our first time going together. It's a place I like to go to get back in touch with the creative source. That sounds so woo woo, but it's true. So that's coming up really fast. And otherwise, it's just really beautiful here at home in ⁓ Port Howe, Nova Scotia. And I'm grateful to be

talking to you and for you to be here listening. I'm also buzzing to welcome a guest whose work invites us to reimagine the boundaries of sound, story, and stage. Aaron Collier is a force in Canadian live art. He's a sound designer, a musician, a performer, and co-founder of the genre-bending, queerly playful performance company, Heist, based in Nova Scotia.

If you've seen The Princess Show, New Waterford Boy, or Frequencies, you've experienced Aaron's work. Sonically rich, emotionally deep, and full of wonder. He scored powerful theater like Casey and Diana, which I had the privilege of seeing with my mom at Neptune Theater in Halifax ⁓ a few weeks back. And through projects like Frequencies, he's made music that feels like

It's ⁓ echoing from the cosmos and also from a deeply personal internal place. I welcome Aaron as a longtime admirer of his. ⁓ My friend, I welcome him to the podcast. And at the end of this episode, we will play a remix that Aaron did of my song, Take Me Back in a Dream. But first, a word from our new sponsor, Reelital.

Are you tired of friends who respond to your genuine problems with, just be positive? Sick of colleagues who insist good vibes only while your world crumbles? Introducing Realtall, the first FDA approved treatment for chronic toxic positivity. Realtall works by activating your brain's authenticity receptors, allowing you to respond to Josie from Accountings, everything happens for a reason.

with the eye roll it deserves. Just one dose of Realital and you'll be able to say, actually, today does suck, without guilt. Delete inspirational quote accounts without feeling bad and respond to just choose happiness with just choose silence. Side effects may include sudden bursts of honesty, decreased Facebook usage, losing friends who only want the highlight reel of your life, and finding people who appreciate the real you.

Real It is not for everyone. Do not take Real It All if you have a history of being the good vibes only person in your friend group. Real It All may cause severe allergic reactions in life coaches and Instagram influencers. Real It All, because sometimes life is just a dumpster fire and that's okay. Real It All, available wherever realistic expectations are sold.

I wanna introduce you to someone.

Aaron (06:40)
my god, who are you? You're so small and gorgeous.

Christina (06:44)
She is gorgeous. This is Olivia. She can't hear you,

Aaron (06:50)
She's really pretty.

Christina (06:53)
Erin, I love Dale, but I don't know if I've ever been so in love with Olivia.

Aaron (07:02)
I can relate on a big level. I have such a relationship with my cat.

Christina (07:09)
We are recording this might be public, so just let you know Richie's listening. He may want to tune out for a bit while we talk about how much you your cat more than him. We are a pet-friendly podcast. ⁓ So pets are welcome, meows are welcome, and you know, for anybody curious, I have shown Erin, not that we're using, we're not using video, but I do want to talk a little bit with Olivia. She's a muted calico and she's eight months old now.

and I have shown Erin the cat. She's surrounded by, I've wrapped her in my sweater that has hearts on it. I you can see that, because we're on a Chat with Heart podcast. Welcome, Erin Collier to... Thank you. Oh my goodness.

Aaron? Christina. You know what I want to start with? probably lightning rounds usually happen at the end of a podcast chat, but I wanted to start with one.

Oh, don't get anxious. Are you freaking out? Oh, that was delightful.

Aaron (08:17)
Yeah, I can have this ready to go at any time.

Christina (08:22)
Okay, you could be the soundtrack to our episode today and I'm excited with that. That'll be a first time. Okay, you ready for, okay. let's do a little intro music then for a chat with heart podcast. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the lightning round.

What about a little darker?

Aaron (08:44)
⁓ so we're still going like, yeah.

Christina (08:47)
It could be... Yeah, because it could go that way. Like it could be dark. Okay, ready? Also, I realize I've called this a lightning round, but take your time. Right? Who cares? Like, I don't... We don't need to rush this. I don't like stress. All right. Okay. Aaron, synths or silence?

Aaron (08:53)
Alright.

Christina (09:15)
Do know what I mean? ⁓

Aaron (09:17)
No, did you say what was the first word?

Christina (09:19)
Synths.

realize I did. Synths or silence, if you could only pick one or the other. Synths or silence. Yeah, I'm with ya. ⁓ Feel free to elaborate, but you don't have to. Although I will ask you, are you... A lot of people I know work with podcasts and videos on the background and like, they're working on other things and they have to... Like, are you that kind of person?

Aaron (09:27)
silence.

No, I am. Well, partially because I'm a sound designer. like, no, it's I can't listen to anything else. Yeah. But then in video land, I've tried it and no, I just I just need whatever I'm working on. that's that's kind of it.

Christina (10:07)
Yeah, distracting. It's distracting. ⁓ This is what people tell me, always like, are you listening to this? And have you heard this artist? And have you heard this? And I'm like, I'm working all day on stuff. It's not always my own music stuff, but like side gig or whatever. ⁓ And at the end of the day, I don't want to do anything at all. Like I don't, don't, I just don't. I don't actually, I mean, I would like to listen to more music as I did when I was younger, but

Aaron (10:11)
Yes.

Christina (10:37)
I just don't for that reason. I'm working all day and then I don't want to listen to anything.

Aaron (10:42)
Yeah, I totally get that. If I'm listening to music, I'm often running or walking or driving. ⁓ then occasionally, once a month, I'm in that delicious point of time where I'm like, I'm just going to lie down and listen to music, but it doesn't happen very often.

Christina (10:53)
same.

Yeah, maybe we'll make more time for that in our lives in the future when, in like 40 years when we have a break.

Aaron (11:15)
Yeah, Homer, 85.

Christina (11:18)
something about you that most people wouldn't know that you care, that you're comfortable sharing, like a secret or like a secret passion. Or something weird. Are you a weirdo?

Aaron (11:30)
Hahaha

Definitely.

Who isn't? guess that's, you know, I think everybody's really secretly very weird.

Christina (11:40)
Yeah, I think I am. I have quirks. I-

Aaron (11:45)
Right.

⁓ I'm just trying to think, like, I'm kind of an open book, ⁓ but I really love to dance like a total weirdo. But I feel really self-conscious when I go out dancing. Yeah? Yeah, like, I like dancing, but I really like dancing like a weirdo. Like, total, like, I don't know, just wild, unrestricted, wild flailing.

Christina (12:05)
⁓ yeah

I like to do leaps and spins. ⁓ And Dale and I, one thing, so before we were married and when I used to drink, we would have like little dance nights and things. But after we got married, like he stopped dancing. I do love to dance, but he kind of wouldn't dance. He was just very shy about it. And then during the pandemic, we would have these like short, but like little dance parties at home.

Aaron (12:21)
Okay.

Christina (12:45)
I love watching him dance because he dances like a total weirdo. I hope he's okay with me saying that. And I like to do the same thing, like just whatever. And then we'd imitate each other sometimes. Because that happens, right? When you're dancing with people, like you tend to start imitating them, especially if they're doing something that looks like fun. But I gotta say, it was very liberating to get back to dance and fun to have that experience with him.

Highly recommend.

Aaron (13:16)
Yeah, I can relate to like sometimes Richie and I have spontaneous dance parties. ⁓ I really like a spontaneous slow dance is the best thing in my life. I love that so much.

Christina (13:28)
What is a sound that you find unexpectedly soothing?

Aaron (13:32)
Yeah, unexpectedly.

Christina (13:33)
Or annoying, like maybe do both if you... Do have a sound that really irks you?

Aaron (13:40)
I, okay. Well, the first thing that popped into mind is the voice that people tend to give to automated services, like a, like when you do the self checkout Canadian tire or, or at the grocery store and that, ⁓ there's a tone of voice that really irks me that, ⁓

So I don't know if that's a real sound sound thing, but you know, you know what it's like. It's like, thank you for using self checkout. Sorry, you put that in the wrong place. Please scan it again. ⁓ I don't know what you're trying to do. Please ask for help because I don't like you anymore. Anyway, those things I, it's my blood boils immediately. I wish they were more.

Christina (14:18)
Right, it doesn't sound-

Aaron (14:39)
just more like a direct like a computer program like yes, no.

Christina (14:45)
You up. You fucked up.

Aaron (14:47)
Yeah, I don't need I don't I hate it when it apologizes to me. I find it very patronizing. ⁓

Christina (14:53)
I love it. You could pitch like a whole redesign for that.

Aaron (14:57)
I, yes, yeah, it would be, it would be to throw it away. ⁓ I don't know, certain things that are like unexpectedly soothing, like I really like ⁓ the noise of things. I'm like hiss, tape hiss or noise, like the sound in the background of things. I've been recording piano lately and I really like the sound of the. ⁓

Christina (15:02)
Okay.

Aaron (15:26)
like the mechanics, like if you can hear like the.

Christina (15:31)
The lifting of the keys, the air in the synth.

Aaron (15:36)
Yeah,

and the movement of the hammers and stuff like that.

Christina (15:39)
I like that too, yeah. ⁓ Okay, a piece of gear that you can't live without.

Aaron (15:47)
like, like, ⁓ technology.

I mean, I was going to say the piano in terms of an instrument, but ⁓ like a piece of gear, mean, my whole life revolves around a computer. ⁓ so.

Christina (16:10)
That was a cool sound. Did you hear that when you were rubbing yourself? Not inappropriately. That's a cool sound. I found that soothing.

Aaron (16:16)
I was scratching my pants.

It's

a very sensitive microphone.

Christina (16:24)
Okay, the most cosmic experience you've had lately.

Aaron (16:29)
most cosmic experience I've had lately.

Christina (16:33)
Are you having fun? Is this boring?

Aaron (16:35)
No, these are great questions. They're just massive sometimes even though they're just like, what's your favorite piece of gear? I'm like, my God.

Christina (16:41)
I know, I didn't give you these in advance either.

Aaron (16:44)
cosmic experience. I've been in the Bay of Fundy a few times recently, which has been, it's always quite incredible. I went with my friend ⁓ who came to visit. We went to Partridge Island here in Parsboro and we just decided to go to the bay and there's this thing called the bubbling tides ⁓ and it's sort of caused by

I think the pressure of the tides coming in is forcing air that's trapped underneath the shore to come up. so like the whole shoreline just sort of bubbles and roils. ⁓ And so that just happened to be happening while we were there. And it was just a beautiful day. The water was icy cold. ⁓ And yeah, we just swam in the bubbles and ⁓ yeah, sometimes, you know.

and thoughts disappeared. And it was just a really present moment.

Christina (17:44)
Did thoughts disappear because you worried for your life as I would be if I were swimming in the of Fundy? Have a little bit of a fear of dark waters, waters in general, but the cold, the extreme cold, you just have to...

Aaron (18:00)
I'm an extreme cold person, about 13 years ago. I was going through a rough time. I maybe for the first time in my life shifting my perspective to take on what I would call chronic depression that I had since I was, I don't know, a kid, but certainly an adolescent.

And so that was a huge shift in my life and I changed a lot of things at that point. And one of the things that I tried, I tried a lot of things, ⁓ was ⁓ cold showers. And so I started taking cold showers and then it was like an immediate gratifying experience. It was like, it was hard to do. So I felt accomplished if I had done it. But...

I also just felt incredible after the shower in a way that I'd never felt. I feel incredible in a warm shower, but I don't feel incredible when I turn the water off.

Christina (19:09)
That's right. Yeah. It's sad. It fuels your depression. It's like, ⁓

Aaron (19:11)
⁓

Well, I want that to be forever, just a warm shower forever. But the cold, just like it was a whole different thing. It required me to be extremely present. I had to convince myself not to panic. I had to stay present in myself to make sure that my breathing didn't get shallow. And then the longer I stayed in the cold shower, the better I would feel.

⁓ coming out of that. so, yeah, since then I've taken cold showers every day of my life. ⁓ But I also do cold baths, like ice baths, and I swim in the ocean in the winter.

Christina (19:54)
Woo,

inspiring. I also live with depression and I have not, I should maybe try that. I've opted for esitalopram instead, but, ⁓ and it's great. But I've never thought of doing the cold thing because I despise being cold. Same. Yeah, you did too.

Aaron (20:20)
Same. Yeah. Well, I used to, but I've come around to, it's like a difference between, not, if you stop resisting it and you're able to relax into it and be like, it's okay to be cold. I mean, I don't, you know, we're talking like one to five minutes of exposure here, not like all day cold. And then I feel sort of when I get out of the cold shower,

You wouldn't think so, but I feel quite, I feel really warm. Something about your body, like you warm up from the inside, like that's sort of how your body deals with the cold. When you start letting it in, your body sends blood all around your internal organs. So you start getting warm at your core. But anyway, I highly recommend, I tell everybody about it. Nobody takes me up, so I don't. Cause everybody's like, okay, great.

Christina (21:11)
I'm

going to think more on it. I'm going to think more on it. have been thinking about what it might, just, you know, weaning off of this low dose that I'm on of the SSRI, which I love. Right. But maybe there's a more natural way, you know, to, uh, to help. so you have found this has helped with you. Are there any other things that you've taken on that, uh, was it like, do you, you think it was just something?

Like it sounds like you live with this for your whole life. ⁓ Or do you think part of it was like just the nature of your life and like circumstances or environmental or just being an artist and kind of always? mean, you know, like your, ⁓ when your sense of security is threatened, which it often is when you're self-employed. ⁓

Aaron (21:55)
Yeah. ⁓

Right.

Christina (22:07)
you know, that does affect your mental health as well. But then there's also like the, you know, genetics and there's also sometimes our brain just needs a little extra help and yeah. boy. It's complicated sometimes.

Aaron (22:19)
It is, yeah. think, I mean, so yeah, I mean, like I said, I've tried and tried a lot of things and it is sort of like just an ebb and flow. Like it's not always the same. I wouldn't say that cold showers cured my depression, but it's the one thing that I stuck with the whole time that is like a, it's a constant good. it's, it never doesn't work in that moment to feel better on the other end of a cold shower for me. Yeah. ⁓

Christina (22:42)
Yeah.

Aaron (22:47)
But yeah, think part of it, you for me growing up queer, had so, I was, you know, a closeted gay kid. So there was something about that that was traumatic up until a certain point. And then what I realized is that it gets pretty dark, right? Cause the church tells you you're gonna burn in a lake of fire for eternity. So that's not a good thing. And you internalize that.

Christina (23:12)
It's not funny, but it's like,

Aaron (23:15)
And yeah, there's so a lot of dark things you internalize. And I think what I started to realize in my 30s, I'm 44 now. So what I realized in my 30s was like, oh, like when I came out of the closet, it didn't undo all that trauma. if it took 20 years to build that trauma up and to hide it and to cause that sort of internal thing, it takes a long...

It takes a long time and it's hard work to go back in and fix it. You have to go back in and fix it like no one can actually fix it for you. can alleviate the pressures or the symptoms of holding that kind of trauma. But until you actually go in and start healing it bit by bit. So I'd say I'm in a better place now because I've done a lot of that work.

I wouldn't say I'm out of the woods or nor will I ever be. I learn a lot about brains and the way they work. I think I'm probably on the autism spectrum and I think I'm probably an ADHDer.

Christina (24:32)
Mm-hmm.

to further add to the amazing things about you. Yes. yeah. Well, I think one of the gifts of getting older is, mean, we sure we could complain about a few things, but I do feel grateful for that, ⁓ for being able to learn to recognize like what you just said about these, things that happened to us when we're younger, the thoughts that, you know, society

imposes on us or we believe because that's what the people we trust and love are telling us that They don't just go away necessarily even though you intellectually know well That's that's a bullshit, but you get you can get better at which it sounds like you have at seeing that thought for what it is and then you have all these other tools and you have built this life around love and light and truth and so you

you can kind of at a distance go, you know, it's all this, it's practicing going, that's bullshit, here's the truth. And more and more I live the truth, the more I have. I'm leaning more towards that. I believe more, you know, I'm not gonna let this get to me too much today. I'm able to walk away, let it go. The thought comes and goes.

Aaron (25:51)
Totally. Yeah, you realize you're not your thoughts.

Christina (25:55)
Yeah, Aaron, you're not going to hell. No, you're not. I mean, in fact, if there's a heaven, if anything, I think it's a ticket to heaven. Right. Yeah.

Aaron (25:57)
I'm not going down. It's just not...

I love that. Get your ticket to heaven. Sign up to be gay.

Christina (26:12)
Yeah,

that'll be in hell.

Aaron (26:15)
Heterosexual hell. ⁓ no.

Christina (26:20)
begging for you to just get me in.

Aaron (26:23)
Yeah, there's definitely a back door VIP access to heaven where like, people can get in, I'm sure of it.

Christina (26:34)
hope so. I'll be knocking on that back door. Hey, do you have a favorite human and why would they be your favorite human? You probably have a lot, but like just pick one.

Aaron (26:46)
Yeah, I have a lot. I mean, obviously I've been with Richie for many years, so he's one of my top people. But the person who popped into my mind was my friend Patrick, ⁓ who's my best friend. Yay, hi. He's a... We went to high school together. Yeah. And we just like... I think there's one of those brain synergy things, right? One of those people that...

Christina (27:00)
Patrick.

Aaron (27:15)
Although we keep in touch quite often now, but like we could go for, you know, a year without speaking. then when you pick up, it's just, the connection is so deep that you don't really need to spend a lot of time catching up. You're right. You're easily back into sort of being playful or being very deep in my junior high time or my high school time with him. remember like,

Like he was the person that I could work on some of these darker things with, right? Like I could talk about being queer with him very early. was one of my first friends that could know that, you know, those kind of things.

Christina (27:54)
Did he ⁓

Aaron (27:57)
Yeah. ⁓ and then musically he's like, he's, we, we sort of like nerd out on some of the same types of electronic music. He's like a experimental, electroacoustic, ⁓ composer. So it's kind of on the fringes. I think I lean towards more popular forms of music, but

Christina (28:20)
Cool. Will you send me some of Patrick's stuff to listen to?

Aaron (28:24)
I can, yeah.

Christina (28:26)
Why not? Hi Patrick again. Thanks for being a really good friend to Aaron.

Aaron (28:27)
score.

Yeah, thank you, Patrick.

Christina (28:34)
I have little bit of an obsession with end of life planning, so I just wanted to ask if you have a preferred way to die? Like, do you have a... if you could choose? Like, do you... how would you like to go?

Aaron (28:45)
I'm grateful to be alive. and I kind of recognize, know, once you start paying attention, you're like, there's so many points in time where I could have died. So I realize I don't really have a say in this, but ⁓ yeah, I would hope that it would be a kind of thing that I'm able to, in the moment, make the choice to let go.

Christina (29:08)
Mm, yeah. That'd be nice. A lot more peaceful.

Aaron (29:12)
Yeah, to just sort of be like old and maybe there's like a sickness, I don't know, but you know, in any case to be able to say, okay, I'm ready, see you later.

Christina (29:25)
I'm with you. I do want to live to be like 120 though. Well, there's just so much, like, there's a lot of things I want to do and not just, I love to sing. I love to, you know, but there'll be periods of my life as I get older that maybe I won't be able to sing and I have other interests. So I'd like to try just wearing different hats. and so I see it getting really old as that opportunity to just

Aaron (29:29)
120

Christina (29:55)
live a kind of different life. Yeah.

Aaron (29:58)
love the thought of you. You're like 110 and you're like career change.

Christina (30:04)
Yeah, totally. I'm gonna go get my PhD. I mean, if I'm able-bodied, even if I'm not like, if I wasn't, if I wasn't in intense pain, but just maybe e-mobile, I could catch up on all the music and the audio books and like, I could sit and listen more because we're so, the way I'm built now, I like to be doing things and making things and...

And I don't take a lot of time to sit and listen to new things. So that'd my catch up time. That's my retirement plan. Also, yeah, drugs. Like I'd like to do more experimental drugs when I'm a lot older.

Aaron (30:38)
⁓ nice.

⁓ Why when you're older? Why not now?

Christina (30:49)
I'm worried that if I do them now, it'll kill me. I'm worried that I'll become addicted and I have less concern if I become addicted and I am a senior citizen towards the end of my life. Especially if I have some kind of physical deterioration, then bring it on. If I become an addict, that's, you know, might be kind of a blissful, cool time. I don't know, but... ⁓

I now, right now, I prefer to kind of, for the most part, be sober and in control and not affected. But taking drugs now does affect my mental health and then kind of I usually end up on the feeding into depression and I try to avoid that.

Aaron (31:34)
⁓ I'm a similar person in the world. I choose sobriety because it's the most successful choice for me. It's kind of interesting when I've toyed with sobriety and not sobriety in my life. Of course, I played in a rock band for 12 years, so that's what that was like. That was a good 12 years of drinking.

And I never became a drug user. Like I didn't become addicted to hard drugs. I had a healthy fear of them. watched cocaine destroy some of my friends' lives. And I was like, well, that doesn't seem right. ⁓ So, I pot, pot was like an immediate like, I love this kind of love affair. And it's really only recently in my life that I've chosen sobriety from pot.

even after I gave up alcohol, kept pot for a while. ⁓ But it's kind of an interesting thing. Maybe it's like the cold showers, when I suddenly, now I feel like attached to the clarity as opposed to attached to the numbness.

Christina (32:54)
Yeah. Yeah, sometimes I like a good numb, but my doctor once said, just make it a treat. Like, don't, cause I was like, look, is this like, I don't do a whole lot of research on this stuff, but government's making it legal now. Like, what's the deal? Like, is this going to be long-term horrible? And she's like, just if you want to do it, make it a treat now and then, like going out for ice cream. Right.

or something if you're, yeah, and you'll be fine. that's kind of less, not moderation, just make it a treat, which to me means like a couple of times a month maybe. If the circumstances are Friday night, Saturday night.

Aaron (33:43)
Gotcha. That feels great. I don't have that kind of self control. I'm like, there's ice cream in the freezer. I'm eating it.

Christina (33:50)
Well, I to build up to this.

yes.

No, I don't. Well, so here, here's my trick. Don't buy it. Same with drugs. Like don't buy them. But someone did just give us some yesterday and I'm excited to try those as a treat. But if there is ice cream or chips in the house, like we try not to buy them because it's just, it's gonna, it's going to be eaten up like, ⁓ very quickly, but just like in, ⁓ unhealthy amounts. Like I, I do come from a family of, believe maybe I'm

Aaron (34:09)
That's so.

Yeah.

Christina (34:24)
make it know exaggerating this but of binge eaters or binge. Yeah so it's like just don't buy this stuff. Just make it a habit.

Aaron (34:34)
Yeah, that's really smart.

Christina (34:37)
Well, ⁓ we have talked a lot about, we've covered a lot of ground in this lightning slow round. It's fun. Are you okay? How you feeling?

Aaron (34:46)
Yes.

Yeah, I'm feeling great. Yeah, I love it. Fun. It was a wild lightning round, actually. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground.

Christina (34:52)
I

Tell us more about Heist.

Aaron (34:59)
⁓ Heist is a live art company that my husband and I founded in 2016. So ⁓ my husband Richie is a theater artist, a director, actor, writer, dramaturg. ⁓ And when we met, I was a professional musician. Actually, he was... ⁓

It was funny. He wasn't a professional musician, but he had auditioned for Canadian Idol and then made it to the top 10 of the first season. So ⁓ suddenly he was like a very famous singer for a little while. So, but his true passion was theater. It always was. And I sort of tangentially, you know, would be involved as a composer or a sound designer sometimes in some of his projects, but just sort of a supporter and, you know.

watch her from afar and then or maybe watch her from like right beside him.

Christina (35:59)
Yep, the bed, right there.

Aaron (36:01)
Just

right there, yeah. And so when he, when I stopped touring, yeah, I just, I got a little bit more into theater. One thing led to the next and because I suddenly wasn't touring all the time, I was hanging around theater people. Richie had a job at the University of Lethbridge at the time.

Christina (36:23)
yes, I totally forgot about your Lethbridge period.

Aaron (36:26)
yeah, that's a, that's a, we can put a pin in that.

Christina (36:29)
Okay.

⁓

Aaron (36:31)
That's sort of where the cold showers came in.

Christina (36:33)
Okay, could have done, yes, no offense to Lethbridge, maybe we'll come back to that if we don't. Goodbye. ⁓

Aaron (36:40)
⁓

So anyway, the theater thing just sort of like started to become more and more predominant in our lives. We moved back to Halifax and ⁓ Richie had a previous company called Angels and Heroes Theater Company and they had done lots of great shows, but it was like, you know, the people who had started it had sort of went their separate ways. And Richie and I were talking about sort of picking up from some of the energy we had sort of

learned and accumulated in Lethbridge where we had done dozens and dozens of shows and events. ⁓ And so we thought, well, you have this old sort of not-profit that's sort of occasionally revived to do one show a year or something like that. So maybe we could take that company and sort of rebrand it, if you will, and give it a new sort of mandate and sort of like put our sort of current energy into that. And so we

We heisted that company. We took Angels and Heroes. We took it over. And we rebranded it to this live art company that was committed to doing what we call queerly playful work. I think a big thing for both of us is just that some version of our reality is presented to the world on stage. And so we were both queer. We have different sort of experiences with that.

that that is central and then playful, well, I think we're just, yeah. I think joy making is also at the heart of this. I think the experience of feeling sort of unexpected or at least unhindered joy is a gift that we can give as artists for people.

Christina (38:28)
Yeah.

Aaron (38:30)
Yes, since 2016, we have created a number of original, mostly theatrical works, but they sort of like run the gamut from more musical or more multimedia based or full on just straight plays. There's drag involved. We throw parties under that name as well. We produced the Creative Nova Scotia Awards or we don't, you know, as a rule, but we have produced it for five years now.

So we get into all sorts of trouble and fun with that company. And in 2017 or 18, Sylvia Bell joined our company. we're a trio now of folks. Nice. And actually, actually, and then just the last year, Blaze Frazier sort of joined us as an admin assistant. So kind of four people now.

Christina (39:29)
Yep, you're a quattro. ⁓ Favorite projects that stand out that you've done with Heist? I mean, like that. Was there one that was like, my God, this was a total blast, but we also like learned a ton. I guess you're doing that with each one, but like if you could take one on the road, if you had unlimited amounts.

Aaron (39:31)
We're Quattro.

so many,

Yeah.

Christina (39:56)
of funding resources. Because a lot of the times you're doing, you're creating a project that might have a short span. Like you're putting a lot into this and it just run for a period of time. then that's kind of retired, am I correct? Or just sort of that's when it lived and that's it. And now we're on to something else.

Aaron (40:17)
Yeah, some things, think the show, Heist really began in a way with this show called The Princess Show. And it was the show that I created around the cold shower time. So coming back to Lethbridge, I created it in Lethbridge. And ⁓ we kind of knew that we were leaving Lethbridge. We had done a lot of cabaret shows ⁓ with, and we had created these drag alter egos. I was Princess Edward and Richie was able to suck his own. ⁓

Christina (40:46)
Nice.

Aaron (40:47)
Same.

I know. ⁓ So these characters, like we performed a number of things with them, like ⁓ cabaret shows, so like drag performances. And I wanted to create a show that just sort of compiled them together. I didn't really have a strong vision, but I was at a period in my life when I had sort of turned a corner with how to take on my own

mental health. And so that ended up coming out in the performance. I created this show, I was obsessed with anime at the time. I was watching these shows called Dead Man Wonderland and Attack on Titan. And I didn't grow up like watching Japanese cartoons. But I was sort of enamored with A, how they would just do wild things stylistically to show the emotion of the characters. And then

To the stakes in most of their stories are extremely, extremely high. Like it's the end of the world or like it's gonna be the collapse of a whole civilization or something of that magnitude. the real problem is always that the protagonist has a block that they won't be able to save the world unless they get through this block.

It's usually like they have a negative self-image or they have a trauma that they haven't healed. And so I wanted to create something sort of like that, but with my drag character. And we created this show called The Princess Show, ⁓ where my character ⁓ is sort of like we meet my character. She's very depressed. ⁓ She lost her entire family. ⁓

in sort of this sort of, where I should pick it up a little bit further. ⁓ It's a post-apocalyptic world. Storms have sort of like destroyed earth. so nothing grows in the natural world anymore. So people have sort of like sheltered in this sort of mountain range where there was fossil fuels, a lot of them. It doesn't make any sense. Trust me, it makes no sense. It's camp. ⁓

They grow all their food indoors and sort of the world is in this sort of holding pattern of like it's not very safe to go outside if there's storms because these strange storms have destroyed everything. And her family was destroyed. A lot of the world was destroyed, but her family was destroyed on the same night that she was performing a concert because she was a famous performance artist. And she was performing a concert. Her family, the whole town that her family lived was wiped out.

And she stopped performing. She made an association between these two things. And ⁓ she's extremely depressed anyway. Her beloved Abel T. Succason ends up being kidnapped by a mysterious beast who is done with claymation.

Christina (43:59)
Hey, I love it.

Aaron (44:02)
And ⁓ she has to go on this quest to solve this beast. It turns out, you know, the storms were actually caused by people. She was actually causing some of the storms ⁓ by her own sort of self-loathing and self-hatred. So she realized that to sort of win, you know, to destroy this beast, she actually had to show herself love to do that. ⁓ And then the beast sort of like shrank away and she got her beloved back. ⁓

That show was the one that started it all. I still can't believe it. It's, you know, since 2016 it started. And we've done it all across Canada. It still keeps coming back. I just like to imagine that I'm, at some point I'm going to be a 60 year old man performing this show. I just know it. We built that show with the idea that it would tour. You know, it requires ⁓ a bunch of costumes, but it's easy to tour that show.

And so then we sort of kept moving forward with the idea that we would build shows that could tour so that they didn't just have one life. ⁓ And so we've done that show. We did a show of Richie's called New Waterford Boy, ⁓ which ⁓ is like sort of like a Cape Breton kitchen party. So there's a live band on stage and Richie tells the stories of growing up queer in Cape Breton, ⁓ which we sort of interweave with sort of the songs of Cape Breton.

⁓ And we made several other variations of the Princess Show, like sequels. Pretty much the whole pandemic was spent creating fantastical shows on Zoom with Princess and Able. ⁓ And out of that wildness came this idea to sort of lean into this digital creation idea.

And I created this show called Frequencies, ⁓ which is probably the biggest sort of like, it's the very ambitious, and it's sort of the most personal thing that I've ever done. Even though the Princess show was based directly on personal struggles, ⁓ I was my drag alter ego in a fantastical world I could make up. And in Frequencies, it's more actually sort of verbatim, truthful.

Christina (46:05)
Like very ambitious media.

Aaron (46:26)
⁓ show about ⁓ growing up and my struggles through life, some of my struggles of taking on this depression. ⁓ But also my family's first child, so my oldest brother died before I was born and I didn't know much about him. I didn't plan on being this way, but that show ended up becoming a ⁓ sort of

vehicle to connect with my brother who I'd never met. So that show, my brother is sort of cast as my scene partner. With the audience as witness, I speak to my brother for 70 minutes, which is a trip.

Christina (46:59)
Yeah, wow.

And so frequencies would not exist had you not, as is the interesting thing about our work, our, I guess, a body of work for lack of it, is like, this couldn't have come about. Had you not worked through so much in the first, with the previous projects, this just wouldn't have come out through you. Like you wouldn't have had the itch or the idea or the, and I, we haven't even mentioned yet that you are, you were born in Prince, on Prince Edward Island? Yes.

Aaron (47:31)
No.

Christina (47:42)
And in frequencies, is there a moment where you touch on your first experience with the piano, which has been a huge part of your life? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. it's boiling. Yeah. Frequencies comes back and we can all go see. Good. Okay.

Aaron (48:02)
⁓ yeah, it is coming back. ⁓

hoorah! It was another show. It was built to tour. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, I remember when I was two years old, the first time I saw the piano, and it was in some, I think it's a church basement. It was my aunt and uncle's anniversary party. And I was two. And my parents were obviously going to this anniversary party.

And there was a piano in the basement of this church. And so I remember, you know, I remember the view of looking up at it and seeing, you know, just this massive row of those keys ⁓ and just being totally spellbound by it. was like, what?

Christina (48:48)
Yeah.

Aaron (48:56)
is that it looks so inviting. know, like kids like buttons and this thing's got 88 of them.

Christina (49:02)
Yeah, they make sounds when you push them.

Aaron (49:04)
Well, that was the thing, you know, when I, you know, from below, like getting into that sort of like...

Christina (49:13)
Mm-hmm. You touched it. You touched the piano.

Aaron (49:14)
my god.

And then like other things, right? Like, you like, I was sort of obsessed with like, this thing was magic as far as I was concerned. It literally just made real magic possible and I couldn't leave it alone. Super obsessed with it. That was like a, a big opening in my psyche. I didn't know it before then. Well, how could I, guess, but then

Christina (49:26)
Yeah.

Aaron (49:48)
It sort of started to reveal to me that I had a quick aptitude for music. I could understand it quite immediately. ⁓ Like I just understood as soon as I started to play with it. Like it wasn't long before I could hear sounds and I could play them because I understood that's the sort of relationship between frequencies. I could hear the distance between them. That started my life. Like I wanted to take piano lessons. My parents got me a keyboard after that and then

⁓ Eventually when I was eight years old they got my first piano. It was a surprise. I came home.

Christina (50:25)
⁓ my God.

Aaron (50:27)
was insane. I was really excited to walk. I just walked in the front door and I'm born in April, right? So April is like the month that you wish was nice, but it really isn't. It's just like slushy and cold. And I remember I got off the school bus and I stepped into a big slushy puddle and like, so my boot filled with icy water. And I was just like, I didn't like school either. So I was like,

Christina (50:29)
Did cry?

Yeah.

Aaron (50:55)
I

just in a bad mood and I trudged home with a wet boot. And then I walked in the front door and there was a piano in the house suddenly. It was one of the best days of my life.

Christina (51:06)
Good example of like, can only go up from stepping on a cold bottle. Like just stick around folks. Like if you think, it's not going to get any better. Might as give up now. Just stick around. You never know what's around the corner. They're absolutely. Yeah.

Aaron (51:22)
It will be a piano.

What's interesting is when I, this speaks to my probable autism, when my mother told me, I wanted a piano and I asked her if we could get a real piano. And my mother said, well, wish, just wish for it. And I took my mother literally and often would like get onto my hands and knees and pray and wish, like actively wish for it.

But not like I hope someday I get one. I took my mother's advice literally and I tried in those moments to manifest it. Like I tried to create a piano so that I would just focus as hard as I could. Yeah. And then I would open my eyes and check to see if it had. And then I would sometimes go to other rooms to see if I, maybe it appeared somewhere else. ⁓

Christina (52:09)
What was there?

I really love that, visualization has always been a big part of my life as well. I learned how to do it when I was playing sports. And the coach would take us through visualization before a show, and I used it in the summer when I was training, and then I'd come back to school, and I could do things that, even though I was training all summer, but never doing them with other people, but I could do things better than I could before, because it was part of my training.

And I've carried that on in my life in trying to dream up what I wanted musically, you know, like it's become a hand in hand. I'm starting to write a song and the visuals and mind's eye is working. Whereas imagining how this can sound, how this could look on stage perhaps, ⁓ all kinds of things. Like every aspect of making something, I start to picture how it may not end up being exactly like that, but oftentimes it actually is.

you know, pretty, pretty close. Like, yeah.

Aaron (53:19)
I really relate to that too, like about how, yeah, I think all my ideas come as visions. not as like, you know, visions, but as, yeah, similarly, like when something starts to come, my, yeah, I start imagining it. Seeing it in situations.

Christina (53:35)
Yeah

Yeah, I'm grateful for that. Because I remember reading that some people don't have a mind's eye, and that they just can't picture things.

Aaron (53:47)
I grew up with somebody who had that,

Christina (53:51)
And I wonder, is that, are they better off than me? Or is that like a kind of a secret gift too? To just, like how, and how do you get through life? Like I just cannot, I can't actually imagine that.

Aaron (54:04)
I wonder if it is a, like what other sort of ⁓ parts of the consciousness are sharper if they don't have a visual. And I'm curious about what that means because like your visual field, like the visual field you see in the world and the one you see in your mind aren't really all that separate. There's like a direct stimulation of your visual field through the photons that come through your eyes and your optic nerves.

But like you can sort of, you can play with them, right? You can blend them. You can look into the real world and you can imagine something that's not really there, but you can see it in your mind's eye overlaid over what you see with your regular eyes.

Christina (54:47)
Yeah, like I'm looking at my mug right now. I'm closing my eyes and I can actually visualize that mug melting on my desk. I open my eyes, it's not melting. It was in my mind's eye. I'll have to have somebody on the podcast. Now I want to find someone who doesn't have a mind's eye and then have a hole, like pick their brain apart. What's your gift? You guys, you know, I'm like, what's the, there must be maybe, yeah.

Well, I'll get to the bottom of it, but.

Aaron (55:17)
Do have a mind's ear?

Christina (55:19)
I suppose so because I can... A mind's ear would be... Are you asking me or is that like a general? I'm asking you. I have three mind's ears. ⁓ Listen, you'll never see me play piano in front of anybody and I can't really play like a... But in my mind, I can hear the music and I can... ⁓

I just, can't necessarily translate it to playing it. I could if I just took my time, but I can hear it in my head. But probably not in as precise a way as you could or somebody who's like classically trained or has like a perfect pitch. don't have perfect pitch. ⁓ So, but I definitely can hear things. Yeah. Yeah, I do, I guess.

Aaron (56:10)
Right, yeah. I wonder if people don't have mind's ears.

Christina (56:14)
Probably. I'll find that person too. It'll be a whole, I'll have you on as my special guest so we can pick them apart too. We'll have no mind's eye, no mind's ear. And no, can you do have a ⁓ scent, a ⁓ mind's scent? That's gotta be it. Can you smell toast right now? Like can you imagine what it is, the smell of toast, let's say.

Aaron (56:25)
You

Christina (56:42)
Then there we go. got, we have a right now this episode that we're to do has got you and me co-hosting and three guests.

What about a nice touch? my god, we could go on and

Aaron (56:55)
Yes, I think I think I can sort of like yeah, you know, think I have a mind's everything I think so

Christina (57:02)
Yeah, okay. That's

the name of the episode, mine's everything. Who has it, who doesn't? ⁓ Listen, my mom and I just went to see a case scene, Diana, which you did the sound design for. We went to see it at Neptune Theater in Halifax. It was extremely ⁓ moving for both of us. My mother lost her brother, Roger, to ⁓ the AIDS epidemic. And I was very fond of him, except my last memory was being mad at him at Epcot Center.

Aaron (57:08)
You

Christina (57:31)
because he made me sit on his lap, always we were going through this ride and I wanted to stand up and he was like, no, down. And so I feel kind of bad because I think I was a little shit the last time we hung out at Epcot Center. But it was such a moving and funny and I remember sitting in the front row and just getting lost in the performance and the soundtrack was such a big part of that. And of course I welcome you to.

to say whatever you want about this wonderful play, but ⁓ I did want you to share, if you could, a magical moment in creating the soundtrack for you, maybe something personal or a moment that really stood out for you.

Aaron (58:16)
I'm glad you saw that show. I think that's one of the best shows I've ever worked on. I mean, it's just fresh. It just happened. But it really was. There was something about the play and the people that were gathered to make it and the sort of time it was being put on. And yeah, it landed so hard for people, right? ⁓

To be honest, there's something about working in theater that's really gratifying for me, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't excruciatingly difficult every single time. There's so much when you work on a play, like when you're working on an album, eventually there's self-imposed deadlines. But with a play, it's like, no, no, people are coming on April 25th. They're going to be there.

Christina (59:13)
Shifting

the dates.

Aaron (59:14)
No, you're done on this day. You know, it's like... And so you have to make decisions. And that pressure gets things done and it makes things really great. But it also, at a certain point in every show I do, I assume that I have... You know, finally everybody's gonna realize I have no idea what I'm doing and that it's going to be revealed.

that I am completely unworthy to be ⁓ in this industry and that I'm going to ruin this play. So Casey and Diana is no exception. Big time. I think most people who work in the arts feel that way at some point during a project.

Christina (59:52)
Good old Impostor Syndrome.

Aaron (1:00:05)
And so, this one, I felt that way. I had a number of ⁓ things that I wanted to do for the sound of this play. For people who haven't seen it, ⁓ one of the characters talks about, you know, it centers around ⁓ AIDS patients and hospice workers in the Casey House in Toronto in 1991, ⁓ during the week ⁓ leading up to when Princess Diana was coming to visit.

So that's a real thing that happened. Princess Diana did visit the Casey House, but the characters in the play are fictional.

And one of the characters, or the main character, talks about there being a sound, like that hope has a sound. And so immediately I started to think, well, that's clearly an important part of my job. I should think about that. We need to hear that. ⁓ And I thought about how... ⁓

Like in the 90s and in the 80s during the AIDS crisis ⁓ in Toronto, in New York, in a lot of places, there were these gay men's choruses that were truly like in the face of the most horrifying things you can imagine. know, hundreds of thousands of people died and they died largely with the world turning in a different eye. And so in the face of that,

people losing everybody they knew to this, know, your uncle included, I'm sorry to hear that, was these people were getting together to sing and it was a community choir. They weren't professionals and they weren't doing it for money. But at a certain point, they were raising money to help fund things like the Casey House. And I thought, well, that's the sound of hope. People singing together is the sound of hope. And so I wanted to get the Halifax Gay Men's Choir, which is

for the past few years, so know it's a fairly recent thing, it's an incredible group of, I think, 60 to 80 members. And I reached out to them and asked, you know, I have this idea, I think I might sort of compose a short piece of music, as well as this sort of just one chord that I'd like to get the choir to sing. And they were immediately receptive to the idea.

And I have never sort of worked like that as a sound designer or a composer where I've approached a choir. So the experience of getting into a church with a choir, to tell them about the show, to tell them about my intentions that I wanted to make it feel, because we're doing our own production here in Halifax. And so I wanted this to feel like a genuine, like the sound of hope today, not the sound of hope from 1991 in Toronto.

I wanted to tie it to us, the audiences coming to see it here. yeah, just experiencing a choir sing around a purpose that you've been.

you know, like I've been buying into that purpose for months. I've been working on the show for a while and then bringing them onto that board and singing something that I had sort of composed for the show. I would never forget that. was amazing. ⁓

Christina (1:03:33)
That's incredible. As you're talking about this, I'm going back to what you said earlier at the beginning of our chat and just how, you know, that idea of like growing up, growing up gay, the church telling you that that's not, you know, you're going to go to hell. And then here you are in this beautiful moment doing something super beautiful with a whole boatload of gay men. I mean, did that ever come up?

come up in your mind, like, I mean, as a bit of a confirmation, no pun intended, you know, that that was a lot, that that what they were telling you growing up was a lie, that this is actually the truth.

Aaron (1:04:19)
Hmm. I mean, it's hitting like that now. Thank you for that gift.

Christina (1:04:25)
Merry Christmas.

One thing you and I have in common that I wanted to pick your brain about before I let you go is that we have, we've both chosen to live in rural communities. You're in Parsboro with Richie and I'm with in Port Howe with Dale. Not many people know where that is, but those are two rural communities ⁓ on the opposite side of the highway in Nova Scotia. And, I don't know about you, but I, there was this thing that I heard a lot when we said we were going to move to the countryside or the rural.

a rural community, was, you know, how are you going to work? How are you going to do? You have to, you should be in Toronto. You should be going where the action is. ⁓ And we've found that this was perfect for our life and our way. we've made it work. Not that it's always easy, but there are actually things that are easier about living here. And one of those is the affordability of living in a rural community, whereas we can't afford to live in a big city. ⁓

the time and space we have when we are here, you know, is great. We do go to bigger cities and we go on tour. ⁓ So yeah, do you think the idea that like you have to go where the action is, is changing? Or do think it's still like deeply rooted in the arts? how's like, what's it been like? What's it given to you to live in Powersboro?

Aaron (1:05:46)
A lot. It has given a lot. Like you mentioned, there are certain things you get out of this that you can't get in a city. ⁓ I started to be curious about living rural years ago and Richie and I both did. ⁓ there's, you can't, the sustained ⁓ sort of benefits of it being dark and quiet at night, ⁓ of it being, you know,

also quiet during the day, ⁓ of there not being a lot of sort of as much electronic noise and just general energy, you know, the energy of traffic and of just the hustle of things and the trappings of life. Like you mentioned of being, you know, affording life. Like, again, it goes back to my ability to have self-control. But, you know, I love restaurants. Like my, my expendable income,

just went to like going out for coffee and having drinks with friends and going out for snacks and stuff. ⁓ whereas, you know, I just don't have that option here, but it's like, you know, food is a bit of a love language for me. So preparing all of our meals every day and the ability to just like, you know, when you want to go out for a little break, like we can just go down to the ocean. that's, it's a different.

Christina (1:07:12)
I

Aaron (1:07:14)
It hits different.

Christina (1:07:16)
We'll bike down to the beach and for a break, you know, and that's our exercise for the day and go, we'll walk when the tides out, which when you're in the city, mean, you, you can, it just, it's a longer drive to get out there and you're like, I'm not going to make time for that every day.

Aaron (1:07:31)
No, like you can go for a walk in your neighborhood or those kinds of things. But yeah, in the summer I swim every day. And so that's, those are major, major things that you can experience, but you, you sort of have to let go. Like in a way I had to let go of the, the feeling of needing to be seen and to be networking at a certain level. I think we live in a world where with the internet, you know, you can kind of become known or, or.

revered for what you do from anywhere if you're good at documenting it. yeah, I don't know that I've cracked that code, but I try to let go. Like I said, I just try to let go of this need and recognize that life isn't built on a reputation. It's built on experience of a present moment that can be filled with a lot of things that you can choose how, if they have value or not. You can choose that you have value if you gain more.

money or reputation or you can choose that you have value from going out and noticing how many more blueberries are blooming in your backyard.

Christina (1:08:40)
Yeah. Well, you can also have a lot of followers and a lot of posts and no work. to have a lot of screen time or would you prefer to have made something meaningful and had a collaboration that maybe took you away from a social media presence necessarily, but you have all that work and that experience and it keeps fueling you. ⁓

Aaron (1:08:48)
Yeah.

That is it. It's the making of the stuff that really is. It has to be worth it on its own because I'm not part of the 10%, let alone the 1 % for whom this is a very viable career choice. But the making of it is worth it in its own way, and especially if it lands with some people. But I do think about ...

I don't know if you find this, but there are times when I think, this sustainable to live out here? Because I do get work and none of it's here.

Christina (1:09:47)
Yeah, the work that I get in terms of music is completely not here. It's not here. This is where come to work and recharge. ⁓ that being said, I do have now since the pandemic a part-time online job, which I could do from anywhere. But musically, my gigs are sometimes not even in this country or the province. ⁓

I think we will ask those questions ongoing and, maybe come to the point where we, like we've been talking about even having rental properties in our land so that we can work even more from home and thinking we don't have a pension. what do we, we do, I'm a planner and I try to think, can I do to have that, allow me to be home more so I can create from home and have the flexibility to go into the city or go and build this.

If you can see it, you can maybe build it or try. But I have those thoughts every day. I just had an existential crisis yesterday again. So you're not alone. luckily I have a good sounding board. I have lots of good sounding boards, but it is nice to have a partner in Dale to go, hey, I'm having these wild thoughts and just running them by you to see if there's any resonating or am I?

Remind me, remind me why we're here, like what we're doing. so.

Aaron (1:11:17)
Yes. Yeah.

I have that in Richie too. And yeah. I mean, and for both Richie and I, working in theater is interesting because you get in these, like the majority of my life is in theater, right? And I'm making some changes now in my life because I miss music. I miss music for music's sake. So I'm sort of shifting a few projects in that direction. But theater does keep me alive.

in that it gives me enough money to eat. But those are like two to five week contracts, usually for a designer. But usually two of those weeks are on site. so a lot of my life is like, to make that work is just like, I go to Halifax and I live there for two weeks.

and then I come home and then I go back to Halifax and I there for two weeks or I drive back and forth which is 180 kilometers.

Christina (1:12:18)
We do it, we do it. ⁓ If you're like me at all though, I find that satisfies the, my mom lives in Halifax and I friends there too that I'll go and stay for a bit and you they have meetings or if I do a gig, obviously sleep over. But I am a city girl at heart too. I'm kind of both. So it satisfies that craving in me to be around. I love the accessibility.

Aaron (1:12:42)
Yeah,

the apartment in the city and the house of the country, right? Not a idea.

Christina (1:12:47)
Should we all invest in one? Yeah,

exactly. I sort of feel like I'm doing that with my mom right now, but she won't accept my payments for her for shared rent. But I do think that's something to consider. That was a very big dream of mine when we moved out here is like, how can we get to have an apartment in the city? So keep us in mind when you're looking to buy a condo. Now, I ask you, ⁓

Aaron (1:12:59)
That's me.

Well,

Christina (1:13:17)
about our remix. Is there anything that you're excited about right now that you want my little heartbeat listeners to know about that's coming up like the summer or this fall to keep an eye out for? Are you just done with this podcast?

Aaron (1:13:33)
⁓ No, ⁓ mean so yeah, KC and Diana was the sort of last sort of major thing. ⁓ I do have some things coming down the pipe that I'm probably not ready to divulge yet because they're half-baked. ⁓ Music, but I am working on some music projects. I just, this piano is new for me. I just purchased this piano and it's a big, big deal in my life. some of those projects, it's called a Keybird. ⁓ And ⁓ it's portable acoustic piano.

Christina (1:13:46)
That's cool.

Aaron (1:14:03)
What? Yeah.

Christina (1:14:05)
Can you me, text me a photo and video later? Not right now. my God. There's that one. what's the, I'm seeing, I'm seeing that the keys, the, I'm seeing the hammers. This is portable.

Aaron (1:14:12)
This one, right?

hammers.

Yeah, this is it's 130 pounds. It comes apart in two pieces and it fits in the back of my Toyota Venza.

Christina (1:14:32)
Okay, this is exciting. Are you working on your music? Okay, this is very exciting. Is it going to go under your name or a?

Aaron (1:14:42)
No, I'll go under my name. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. So that, yeah, that's a big deal.

Christina (1:14:47)
big deal. I'm excited and I will share on my stories no matter what, whenever you're ready.

Aaron (1:14:53)
Great. Thank you. And then, so Richie's been working on a new play since 2018 and it's finally being produced. It's a co-production between Heist and Ships Company Theater right here in Parsboro and Eastern Front Theater in Dartmouth. ⁓ It's a great show. I'm doing video and sound design for that. Amazing. That's a really creatively juicy, ⁓ challenging.

challenging technically. Mm-hmm. Sort of. like lots of lots of brain time, but also lots of play time. ⁓ Colbol Queen. Yeah, I know. It's a great name. Colbol Queen.

Christina (1:15:29)
And that's cool. that again.

Coal, as in coal from Sydney, Cape Breton, kind of the coal mines. Yeah. Okay.

Aaron (1:15:43)
And so ⁓ in Richie's hometown of New Waterford, ⁓ he's kind of done like this sort of trilogy of shows that sort of explore some of his life in New Waterford. And this one he's been dreaming out for a long time. ⁓ There's a national high school boys basketball tournament called the Cole Bowl. Teams from all across Canada come in January or February, end of January, beginning of February.

And it's a week long ⁓ and like it's the equivalent of the winter fair for this town. It actually replaced the winter fair and there used to be a beauty pageant as part of it. ⁓ it's still going on. It's a remark, like you have to experience it. It's remarkable. Like the high school gym is like packed with like 1200 people for high school basketball games.

Christina (1:16:35)
Do you go every are you going this year?

Aaron (1:16:38)
⁓ Well, we've gone, mean, Richie grew up with it and I've gone, I think, probably four times now to the Cold Bull. So this is a play he did, like, maybe around 50 interviews with ⁓ players, coaches, ⁓ beauty pageant, you know, queens, just community members, board members, tons of people who experience and are part of the Cold Bull.

And he transcribed all those interviews and then sort of created a narrative so that there could be sort of a story that would bring the audience through and experience this sort of tournament and the spirit of it more so than the actual tournament. Like it's not really about basketball. ⁓ Well, Coal Bowl Queen, you can be assured that it's kind of about the pageant. ⁓

Christina (1:17:27)
Yeah.

Aaron (1:17:29)
But it's incredible. So 50 % of it is actual verbatim stories from real people and 50 % of it is sort of a narrative that Richie created.

Christina (1:17:37)
And do we know when this will be available?

Aaron (1:17:41)
Yeah, we do. ⁓ It's going to be opening in mid-August, ⁓ the second week of August here at Chipps Company Theatre. then it will be playing in September at Eastern Front Theatre at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth.

Christina (1:17:58)
Okay, great, I'm gonna go see it.

Aaron (1:18:00)
Yeah, I will invite you.

Christina (1:18:03)
Well, I'm going. I'm going to tickets. I know you said invite, but I'm like, want to support. I always try to buy tickets now.

Aaron (1:18:05)
great.

Yeah, same actually. I'm like, I'm in my 40s. I have to be that person.

Christina (1:18:19)
I

know. I mean, if I've spent too much on Teemu, by then I might hit you up. But then I feel guilty, right? Like, I'm buying on Teemu, I should be. Shouldn't even be buying on Teemu. But anyway, Aaron, I love you. I think it's appropriate for us to end this episode with a remix of one of my songs that you did ⁓ under your artist's name a while ago called Chandelier.

And this is song called Take Me Back in a Dream and I love your remix and it makes me want to dance and that's what a remix should do, my opinion.

Aaron (1:18:56)
Yes, I loved making this.

Christina (1:18:58)
⁓

Take me back in a dream

to show you bring us

Too cold to hold

you

Inside, take me back in a dream

small now she's tall I'm imagining the paintings what you said

still

And slide against love

Take me back into the

Stay strong

to satisfy your

Try

Last weekend, you may find

It still matters what I say, what

choosing to void you take me back

you

Say goodbye to

Say goodbye to you

Welcome to the Heartbeat Hotline, 1902-669-4769. I'm the host of a Chat with Heart podcast, Christina Martin, and I'm so excited you called. Leave me your question, a suggestion for the podcast, or a comment about this episode. Please be aware your message may be used on the podcast and social media. Tell me your name, where you're calling from.

And it's also fine if you want to remain anonymous. Thanks for listening. Have a great fucking day. ⁓

I don't want to say goodbye to you, or written by me and recorded by Dale. Want to support what we do? You can snag CDs, vinyl, digital music, and some weirdly delightful merch like custom puzzles and temporary tattoo packs over on my Bandcamp. If you're into keeping indie art alive, or just want good karma, become a monthly or yearly member on my Patreon. It's a platform that helps creators get paid to keep making stuff we love. I swear by it. Sign up, free or paid, at

patreon.com Backslash Christina Martin if this podcast made you laugh cry think or rage text your best friend Do me a solid share it rate it review it and hit that follow or subscribe button Wherever you get your podcasts and to all my little heartbeat listeners stay weird stay tender and I'll catch you next time