Afternoon Tea with Rosanne Baker Thornley and "Because of Me"
“BECAUSE OF ME”
+ Twinings Herbal Lemon & Ginger, caffeine free tea.
Ten minutes with Afternoon Tea - June 22, 2022
In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators. Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Rosanne Baker Thornley.
Based in Toronto, Rosanne Baker Thornley is an internationally recognized, award-winning singer/songwriter who writes with an impressive and growing number of international emerging and established artists. RBT has been evolving and expanding her relationship with music (and writing) for quite some time. With her new album, Sorry I’m Late, to be released September 2022, she further delves into her craft, cultivating songs from an intensely personal space.
Like all the songs on Sorry I’m Late, “Because of Me,” is inspired by personal experience. This song is about someone who always arrived tangled, who willingly succumbed to a vulnerable version of themselves, and who left less tangled. It’s about changing that someone to their benefit and how those changes in them, while to the betterment of others in their life, challenges those same people. It’s about the realization and the risk to the person who is the impetus to their changing – and to the realization they’re working against themselves. That every heartfelt moment shared can’t change the inevitable outcome.
The MUSIC : Stephan Moccio “Lionheart”
Stephan Moccio, born in Canada, is a Grammy winning, Academy Award-nominated Composer, Songwriter/Producer. For years I’ve enjoyed the emotive and haunting space of Stephan’s music. And though not a lyric is sung, his music is so filled with feeling that I can hear every word.
Like a song, a photograph shares a story. And so, camera in hand, I am forever inspired to capture moments around me. I love the intense pull of taking photographs and the excitement felt of the perfect shot. I love the romanticism of black and white. I love when the most perfectly irresistible light strikes. I love that when I write songs, I can see the video in my head. And I love that when I look at a photograph it carries me into it. There’s such a creatively satisfying surrender in all of those.
THE VISUAL : “Danielle in Boat”: Rodney Smith
Rodney Smith (1947-2016), born in NYC was a prominent photographer, his whimsical work invited comparison to surrealist painter Rene Magritte. Long acclaimed for his iconic black and white images that combine portrait and landscape, Smith created enchanted worlds full of subtle contradictions and surprises. Using only film and light, his un-retouched, dream-like images are matched in quality by the craft and physical beauty of his prints.
In this, his “Danielle in Boat” image, I can’t help but feel that I’m watching from the forest, a moment shared as this woman leans to the sun and floats effortlessly on a glassy stream through the trees. There’s for certain a story she carries with her. More of Rodney Smith’s images can be found at RodneySmith(dot)com.
TEA TERRITORY
As I stand here in the late night ritual of waiting for the kettle to boil, it dawns on me how much tea plays an integral part in my life. From my Grandma Baker’s tea served in antique teacups; to a friend whose voice forever comes to mind as I let the tea steep and I hear her insisting that I “let the tea steep – don’t just scare the teabag with the boiling water”; or of Nan and her British “milk first in the cup and scald with the tea” and to make sure to “scoop up the money bubbles that form on the top”; to my days on the road and the after-show sooth of tea with honey; to opening a satchel of spiced dragon chai and the memory of a friend late night at the kitchen counter, the whirl of the blender for his favourite cashew tea; to the many who have excitedly looked into my tea drawer and ventured into unknown tea territory; of all the conversations, the writing sessions and the stories that have ensued with the elixir of ‘a cuppa’.
TONIGHT’S TEA:
Twinings Herbal Lemon & Ginger, caffeine free tea. The bite of lemon, the spicey lift of ginger, brought together with a velvety swirl of Greek honey.
AFTERNOON TEA
Artist Collective and Record Label.
Tea Time. Ten minute tea. The Listener’s Group.
Born of the Shun Club. Shunned since 2012.