Brain surrealism

Not much blogging time right now. Spent all day at my desk working on a very intricate handmade 'promo kit' yesterday. (I hate that term.) I'm so hungry for more time to spend this way. In my quiet cozy room in front of the window, busy with my hands, ears free for listening to music or interesting lectures or videos. I discovered 3 amazing science specials about brain development, genius, etc. I love listening to this kind of stuff while I'm crafting away. But sadly, the day seems over in the blink of an eye. That was it for my weekend- now I've got to go into town to work a concert, and then my week begins, with a big grant due and a festival application to submit, rehearsals, work, and the interminable commute. I'm not complaining though. It's all by my own choice, and it's all totally worth it. 3 amazing videos:
Brainman
Shortstuff the Genius
Chess Queen

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this is where i live

This is my backyard.

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The Squamish

Well, the wind is up again, and it's extreme. Here on Bowen it's known as "the squamish"... it comes roaring down Howe Sound all the way from the Arctic, down through the Interior, 80 km/h and freezing cold! We live close to the most exposed and wind-beaten point of the island, so we're feeling it full force. It's absolutely howling out there - the windows are rattling, things are crashing around the house... the power situation is touch and go.

But it gives me comfort to think that if a tree comes down on top of me in the night, at least I'll die warm and comfy in my bed, having lived a good life. :)

I loved the weather today though. Had a fantastic walk in the morning around the cove - the air crisp as an apple. Later, in town, I noticed that the streets felt empty, deserted almost. Paper cut-out mountains, the roads ghostly pale... it was a bit surreal. Like 6am on a holiday.
Just can't get over how much warmer I am this winter. So snug in my down coat. Makes me really happy to be aware of my well-stoked fire keeping me warm. I often think of the amusing irony that I could probably handle Jan and Feb in Vancouver this year - now that I've planned my escape. Well, hell. What can I do? Hawaii is already booked and paid for... I'll get through it somehow.

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Camp styling

Yesterday we had no power all day. It was out when I woke up, and only came back on as I was heading to bed last night. And now, I'd like to say a brief prayer.

God bless the woodfire stove
God bless the woodfire stove
amen.

It's still windy as Kansas out there, but nothing like yesterday. If this is just high wind, I don't even want to imagine a hurricane. It was unnerving to have all those giant firs bending over and thrashing around us. But it was great - such a deep silence, such an immediacy of the howling wind and scuttle of leaves. No internet, no humming fridge, no microwave or washing machine.
Spent a lot of my day crafting around with papers, and doing small things. But mainly it was just all about the wood stove. Lentils were stewed in a big pot on the stove. Bread was toasted on the stove. Coffee was brewed on the stove. Books were read, in cozy chairs, around the stove. God bless the woodfire stove, giver of life.

Some stunning sights these last few days:

Walking down to the ferry in thick whirls of snow. Huge flock of coots making wide black banners in the icy water. (I saw a picture of a coot recently- so I think they were coots, but I don't really know.) Coming across a stag on a trail - huge steaming body just yards away from me - seeing the same one out back of the house, violently grating some branches of a lilac tree with his antlers.

Last Wednesday's gig went well, by the way. The crowd was not large, but who cares, they were attentive and responsive. I played my tunes from memory and we carried it off with really connected energy. Our band chemistry feels damn good. What I noticed most was that old familiar feeling of crossing over an abyss... the only thing that keeps you from falling is to suspend disbelief that there's no ground beneath you. Don't allow yourself the split second of doubt, cause that's when you fall. Trust your body to do what you've trained it to do - your brain is babbling freaked-out jibberish, and you ignore it and distract it by thinking things like, "Where is my breath?" "What do the drums sound like?" and other childishly simple questions. That just seems to be the trick. I was high man, high high high after the show. There IS no better feeling.

Now I have 10 days to book tour gigs and write a huge grant application, and get press kits and posters out. It's time to get busy.

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Breakfast rainstorm

It's a wild mess out there - the colour all but gone from the trees. Strong dreams mixed in with my thoughts again this morning. Every night I dream of travel and of something to do with performance. My subconscious is mashing it out non-stop, 24 hours a day, kneading like a breadmaker. Turning that dough over and over. I can feel it, you know. Rising. Go to sleep, and whack-whack, pulverize it, work out all the air bubbles. Then it rises again. I'm outside, walking fast as my legs can take me, sucking in that sweet air, and there's that rising in my chest. Like wings, like a hot air balloon. And I have this sense that one of these days, it's going to just lift me right off the ground, and I'm going to float up to the very tops of the trees, even higher. Maybe like tonight, or at some other show, it will suddenly inflate in me and I'll go drifting up and hover above all that anxiety and dread and insecurity and look down at it and laugh and wonder. I don't know how to put this into words... I keep getting flashes of a vision of who I really am and what that means for the life I live - flashes, big pieces of the puzzle. It gives me the greatest sense of excitement and peace. There's some kind of truth about myself that is struggling to rise up to the surface, and I can wait for it.
I am looking forward to tonight - even though it's just a little gig. I might not be the least concerned what anyone thinks. Actually, for real. Free from that binding self-consciousness - is it wholly possible? I don't know yet... but I feel like I'm going to be met by my child self who acted and danced and played and dressed up, just for the joy and thrill of it and for the pleasure of sharing something. Maybe a part of me that has been quashed for - 20 years?- is alive and is able to take the reigns again. Excited, saying, "Come look what I made !!"

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Practice, hee hee

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old wood, new paint

See this hair-do? In all my years, I don't think I've ever been as happy with what was on my head. It took a fair bit of time for my Mom to braid it all, and then pin it like a crown, with little bow-tie barrettes. What a transformation - like the fairy Godmother waving her wand. Pink dress, princess hair, and rock-star face paint - I felt like a million bucks.

I'm going to paint myself up like this tomorrow for my gig, just for old time's sake. It will match my new dress just perfectly.

It's nice to see a picture of my old piano too. Spent so many hours with my fingers on those keys - I can recall exactly how they felt, and the smooth wood, and the wiggly old pedals, and the lamp and the bench and the carpet underfoot. I felt so traitorous when we said goodbye to that piano and bought a grand.

Now that all my music is tucked securely into my memory, I feel totally different about the songs. The best part has been sitting at my keyboard, with headphones on, in my room at night - playing in the dark. The keyboard is right in front of the window, so if the lights are off I can look out at the trees and the water while I play - my fingers just know where to go and my mind can sort of float. Sounds cheesy and romantic, but that's how it is.

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Review

Big lungfuls of misty forest air - mmm! It's like a dream out there. Ma mere took this shot a couple days ago. So magic!

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So, this man I barely know somehow found out about my last CD, gave it a surprising amount of attention, and recently sent me a message about it. He gave me some really honest feedback, which I appreciate.

"... I even uploaded the album to my Ipod, thinking that repeated listenings would enable me to better appreciate it.... with mixed results.... I haven't really changed my position... certainly, you have a wonderful voice.... but... um... I still find your musical idiom... a little distressing."

Funny, eh? I don't think anyone has ever listened to my lyrics so analytically before. He said he found them 'disturbing.' Most people don't pay much attention to my lyrical content - certainly don't take the words too seriously. I'm pleased that somebody really delved into my songs. It's an honour. Even if, in the end, I've won a critic and not a fan.

Which reminds me: Art should provoke thought and feeling, not just admiration.
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Evolution

Look at this guy! He's one of many new species just discovered in Papua New Guinea.

ODE TO THE TUBE-NOSED BAT

You burrow your
rough face in the
saffron crocus
all day long
and then pretend
that you have just been
napping in the sun.
But your fuzzy mouth
and trumpet
nostrils are stained
Yellow, you little
bearded
devil.

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3 - 2 - 1 ...

My masters arrived yesterday. So here I am, listening through the CD to check for glitches and digital errors, before I take it to press today. I gotta say, it feels good to finally be at this stage. In a couple weeks I'll have a mountain of CDs and suddenly will have to do something with them.

Yikes!

I think maybe I'll just keep a bag full of em at all times, and sneak them into people's handbags, leave them on bus seats, throw them into open windows, drop them off buildings...

You know - whatever it takes.

Hey people, if you want a CD, just say the word. More than anything, I just want my baby to get listened to.

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some necessary acknowledgments

Here are some of the great things about living where I do:
1. Coming home from the city: It's so dark when I get home (and I always forget my flashlight) that I have to walk slowly, feeling the ground with my feet before each step down the long black driveway. I always get a little thrill of fear from the total darkness. And it jolts me out of my city haze back into reality.
2. I don't spend any money over here. I don't think about things I want to buy - I don't get object envy. The build-up of material wants from the city just dissolves when I step off the boat.
3. People smile and wave when they pass you in a car. They smile and say hello when they pass you on the trail. I feel like I actually belong to this place, but I also have a comfortable anonymity.
4. There are no distractions or empty fillers here for me. A day off feels long and luxurious, full of quiet and space. It feels like there is ample time to both work and to relax - I practiced for hours today, and went for a long walk, and had a nap, and read my book, and still the evening is young.
5. The ocean is just right there. Right there.
6. I can walk out my door and smell all my favourite things about life in one big gulp of air. Rain, woodfires, ocean, wet leaves, pine...
7. I never give any thought to how I look or what I'm wearing. I never feel inadequate or self-conscious when I'm out - and you can tell most everyone feels the same. It's completely the opposite from being in town.
8. Even though I mostly keep to myself, I know there's a lot of community I could get involved with, if I chose to. I don't feel isolated.
9. Beauty is thick and lush everywhere and I see deer and ravens and eagles and all kinds of creatures everyday. There's so much nature, that creativity is just a given.
10. Silence. I get to hear SILENCE !!

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textile torture

What a perfect afternoon. So quiet and now rainy. Been thinking these last few days how much easier Autumn is to handle than Winter. The big explosions of colour on the trees and the bright leaves on the ground make the gray skies so much more beautiful.
I had a FNC last night - the first one in a while. Man, I'm bad at this stuff. From the moment I woke up yesterday morning I was all tangled in a knot. Irritable, cranky, discontent - just had this vague anxiety all day without even realizing it was because of the upcoming 'night out'. Blech, shudder, yuck, gross. When the time came to go out- and as usual it took me 5 times longer than necessary to get ready, because I was so nervous - I almost squirmed out of my skin, March to the Scaffold running through my mind. I used to wish I had an invisibility bubble to go out in. Now I wish I had an obscuring bubble. I want to see people and have them see me - I kind of like some of the social interaction. But I dread the scrutiny... if I had a film of haziness I could drape around myself so that I was like a blurry picture, that would make me feel safe.

A lot of this anxiety comes from not quite knowing how to express who I am in a visual way. I hate fashion and I hate trends. And I hate the stereotypes that different styles create. In my day to day life, it's not an issue. I wear something that's comfy and is suited to the weather, go straight from Bowen to work and back, end of story. But for a show, suddenly it becomes a crisis... I like to dress up, but everything I try on feels like a disguise or cover - some kind of false statement. I want to perform, but I don't want to be seen. Kind of a problem.

I've been thinking about this lots, and thinking about what it is that I would want to wear, that would feel like me, and wouldn't feel like me trying to look like something I'm supposed to be. End result: I've hired a seamstress/designer to make me a dress! Late 1700s-inspired. We went fabric shopping the other day at this amazing Indian fabric store, and chose some gorgeous satins and chiffons. I'm super excited. Now I don't have to search in stores for something that doesn't exist; I'm just going to have it made, dammit. Garment #1 of my future Wardrobe.

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wolves

"Why everyone so crazy here?!" asked the old Iranian man sitting beside me at a bus stop last night. He was drinking Orange Crush, and wearing sunglasses in the dark. I said I wished I knew.

It made me think of an encounter from a few weeks ago. I was walking around the lake on Bowen, and a lady jogged passed me. A few minutes later she came running back and yelled at me from down the trail, "Are those your dogs?"
I didn't see any dogs around. "Uh, no- what dogs?"
She looked really anxious. "Are there any... scary things here?"
"Er, like what?"
"Wolves?"

Can you imagine if we did have wolves running around on these islands? There are only fierce beavers, and otters and minks that squeeze into chicken coops and eat the chickens. And I guess the occasional ornery stag. And owls. Owls are pretty tough. They'll try to eat your head if you have a pony tail or bear any other resemblance to a mouse. Yesterday, in the silvery early morning, there was a big owl sitting atop a fence post in the back yard. A pretty awe-inspiring bird.

My cat is still sick and it's pretty sad to see him so out of sorts. He's home from the hospital though, and is definitely bored with not feeling good. People and animals are funny. I just found out that this really quiet and conservative guy I know used to own 5 snakes, and would let them just roam around his house. One of them was badly poisonous, and it bit him. Now he doesn't own snakes.

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femme-in-ism

I've been thinking more about the 'roles' I was talking about for men and women, and arguing with myself about all that. Maybe it's all the stories I've been reading, set in olden times, when women were just child-bearers and slaves. It's jarring to realize how recent this whole gender-equality issue is. In all the thousands of years of our existence, only a few dozen of those years have given women much freedom. Weird, eh? Makes me think of my late Grandmother, shaking her finger at me, her eyes sharp and her chin set strong, proclaiming, "I'm a feminist!" and ranting about 'useless men'. She saw some tough times for women, that's for sure. So let me be pretty clear about one thing: I say that it would be nice if we could relax into our 'natural roles', but with the stipulation that all roles be viewed with equal repect, given equal value. And fully realizing that there are men and women who would, quite naturally, feel natural doing the opposite of ' natural'. (?) In my Pearl S. Buck book, O-lan gives birth to a baby girl (alone in her room and crouched over a basin) and when her husband shouts at her through the door to ask what it is, she says, "It's not worth mentioning. Just a worthless slave." Whoa.
Yeah - I'm bloody grateful to live in a time and place where I have total freedom as a woman, and I also know I've got pressures and burdens that men don't have to face. But my generation of men are feeling pretty mucked up about this stuff too - and they also carry burdens unique to their sex. Guys don't know whether it's cool to offer a lady a hand anymore with her heavy groceries, or let them walk through the door first. They know they're not supposed to look for a wife to cook and clean for them, let alone bear them sons, and that they're also supposed to be less macho and more sensitive, but still dashing and buff. And women know they're supposed to have fulfilling careers and be able to handle their own financial affairs and mechanical issues, and defiantly look good for 'themselves' and not for men, and have children casually but perfectly, and maintain eternal youth and slimness.
So I don't know what I'm saying - it's all crazy and confusing. Where o where will we be in 50 years? I guess I'll just stick to my original thesis that we would all be better off, somehow, with more time alone, and more time spent in creativity. Oh, and more time outside too.
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Inward

From "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
I had left off with Anne talking about the importance of being alone, and finding "that inner stillness." Then she goes on with:
"The problem is not entirely in finding the room of one's own, the time alone, difficult and necessary as this is. The problem is more how to still the soul in the midst of its activities. In fact, the problem is how to feed the soul.
...Mechanically we have gained, in the last generation, but spiritually we have, I think, unwittingly lost. In other times, women had in their lives more forces which centered them whether or not they realized it; sources which nourished them whether or not they consciously went to these springs. Their very seclusion in the home gave them time alone. many of their duties were conducive to a quiet contemplative drawing together of the self. They had more creative tasks to perform. Nothing feeds the center so much as creative work, even humble kinds like cooking and sewing. Baking bread, weaving cloth, putting up preserves, teaching and singing to children, must have been far more nourishing than being the family chauffeur or shopping at super-markets, or doing housework with mechanical aids. The art and craft of housework has diminished; much of the time-consuming drudgery - despite modern advertising to the contrary - remains. In housework, as in the rest of life, the curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.
..(One) must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal fores of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own.... What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive."

Lindbergh's book is primarily about women. But I think it is universally true, for men and women. Why do we love to go camping? Men chop the firewood and stoke up the fire, pitch the tent and devise clever ways to hang tarps over tables and chairs, women putter around, fixing meals and fetching water and wringing out the wet clothes... It's like we all just suddenly relax into our natural roles. (Lots of women will fight me on this point. For some stupid reason, it's considered anti-feminist. Whatever. If I swing that axe, it's gonna end up in my leg. Please just let me cook the stew. Other women, do what you want.) And these comfortable and natural roles, separated from all the complications of technology and culture, often compel us to be creative, to figure out our own methods. I think it's really hard today for men and women, because these old-fashioned roles are so scoffed at, and undervalued. We're told in school that each of us needs to follow our dreams, and reach for the stars. Be lawyers, vets, astro-physicists, journalists. They don't teach us that we also could bake bread, and that that is also very important and worthy. We're fed a bullshit line about one lifestyle, and one type of work that follows a linear progression, from school to career. Even artists get fed this line. Since when did artistic development follow a linear progression? I'm straying from my point, but basically I'm trying to say that we are struggling with identity and self-worth, because our natural roles as men & women are being more and more looked down upon as irrelevant and out-dated. And that a simple and fulfilling life full of simple but creative work is not on the list of post-graduate options. It's in our inherent, birth-given gifts and natural abilities that we're able to most effortlessly express ourselves, and people so easily lose touch with these creative sources when they are pushed into molds. I think that's my point. We step away from our inherent tendencies and desires to strive for big and important things, and lose all our creativity in the process.

I really do believe that this lack of creativity rots out the core. If I look to all of my depressions I find the common theme. When I'm not doing my music (I don't mean for a day, but for a period of time) I start to feel like I'm dying. Like a bud withering on the stem. It's awful. And even if whatever I'm doing is seemingly creative (like when I was working full time as a choral singer and accompanist), if it isn't coming from inside me, it's worthless. If there's no room for your own expression, you may as well be stuffing envelopes in a dark cubicle. It's a really tricky balance as an artist. Projects come your way that offer good pay, and look great on a resume - all that ego seduction. But a lot of the time, the people who hire you just want to use your sharpened creative tools to express their own art. You end up feeling weirdly used, and bored, and sometimes compromised because the drivel you churn out for them is something you don't believe in. It's really tough. On the other hand, sometimes collaborations can turn into fantastic opportunities for lighting all your artistic fires. You gotta play the field carefully, all right, and make your choices wisely.

I count myself really fortunate right now, because my job allows me creativity (even though it's an office job), in that I devise all my own methods and get to constantly look for ways to improve my systems. That's fun and creative, and in a way I wouldn't normally get to explore.
The memory work is going really well, and I'm finding it so fulfilling. You'd think repetition work would be boring, but it's not. It focuses my mind, and puts the body in line with it. I'm really rediscovering my songs, am constantly being surprised by what I've written. Sometimes I can't resist just stopping at a chord and thinking, 'where did I come up with that?' and playing around with it for a while. The thing that really blows me away is that I have no memory of writing this stuff - no memory of the process - and know that it didn't really come from me. I don't want to sound too spiritual-spooky, but just indulge me for a sec. The good stuff, the best of my music - it comes from somewhere else. That's all I'm saying.
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