the company of peonies

I suppose I just live in my own world, a world where my nose is buried in flowers. I step out now and again and am chased back inside by limitations and pessimism. Damn - it's hard to not get infected by that version of reality. Trying to keep my dreams close and my vision of life in the forefront of my mind today.

It's somehow a nicer morning than it was yesterday, even though the sky is gray again. There is a understated sparkle on the water. I felt at conflict with everything yesterday and didn't make time to go outside. Won't make that mistake again today. This is my version of reality, right here.

I don't know what success is but I meet lots of people who are concerned with that and in their company I feel great doubt. I find that I fall into my own trap - I keep trying to inject some of my own energy and positivism into people who seem to need it. Unconsciously. I open up my reality and try to invite them in. It almost never works and I should learn that it's not helpful. Rather, they do the same thing - try to bring me into their reality - and I end up feeling lessened and weak. Then again, if I keep my thoughts to myself and try not to interfere with their energy, I still get pulled down. Something I have to keep working on.

It is too painful to lose my optimism - my faith. Let's just call it faith. I don't ask to stop feeling vulnerability and pain and doubt. Can you be called a living creature without those things? But I'm not prepared to face them without faith again. Don't know how I'd survive that. I hope that one day I will have the courage to open myself up more, and be less afraid of doubt. For now, maybe it's okay to be guarded and to insulate myself whenever I can from the sort of nose-diving energies that are swirling around out there. I don't like to think that I am living in a fantasy world where everything is possible and good, so long as I don't ask anyone else's opinion. No, I don't want that. I think the answer has something to do with compassion; I'll keep thinking about it.
.

at long last

I just finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Crossing." So grateful to have done so on a beautiful and warm day. There is no cheer in that book. None at all. It's a book that sort of scrapes all the marrow out of the bones of life and feeds it to a dying man. Or something like that. Almost all bleakness and despair, one tragedy after another. I wanted to lift Billy out of that world and give him a chance to find some peace, maybe even happiness. Aaagh! It is so troubling to peak into the monotony of suffering that can plague a life. It frightens me, here in this rosy slice of paradise. None of it makes any sense. Why is one person born to pain and poverty while another is born to pleasure and abundance? We are teeming with Spring. There are blossoms everywhere. I just cannot ever appreciate it enough.

..

the hovercraft

The first truly warm day of the year; I'm feeling the way I only feel when I've had a day outside in the sun. I've just noticed a doe outside, staring at me with craned neck and cocked head. As if she overheard me thinking. I feel good.

Had a show last night. Played a set of solo material, and then a set with my trio. There were five extremely good musicians in the audience, plus two friends from my distant past, and perhaps 15 or more people I didn't know who weren't there to hear my music. The talkers out-weighed the non-talkers so the solo set was a challenge. It was good practice to have to dig down and find a place of focus and calm to play from, in the midst of all that noise and distraction. It is no easy thing. I couldn't hear my keyboard properly so it was hard to regulate my dynamics and it was dark so it was hard to read my music. (This was material I haven't been playing - older tunes revisited and new tunes - so I needed my charts.) I am so keenly aware now of what a hindrance it is to be sight-reading in performance. I'm determined to get this swath of music memorized quickly so I can eliminate that handicap altogether. I think I played fairly well, but I was very aware of the lack of polish - the kind of polish that only comes with memorizing and completely internalizing the music, playing it hundreds of times until it becomes not so much a piece to play as a state to exist in and communicate from.

The trio set, on the other hand, was a fucking thrill. We blasted through the loud-talkers, blasted them to kingdom-come. I love love LOVE my band. Going from solo to trio is like going from a dinghy to a hovercraft. Especially when your bass player and drummer are the creme de la creme of experimental avante-garde and genre-slaying, face-blasting, mathy-rhythmic, beautiful-yet-disturbing Art Rock. (I just made that up because there are no real terms for what they do. It's just how I'd really like my music to be described.) Playing with them gives me an incredible sense of confidence, substance, significance and... well, power. They fill out the context of my music and give it a magnitude of colour and depth that I can't even believe.

There's no room for slacking off in a trio - each point of the triangle as important as the others. Our live set is really starting to settle; achieving the details and technicalities is much less of a conscious effort. This means we're listening more and interacting more, paying attention to the whole sound and not to the individual elements. Such an amazing feeling, one I'll never get tired of and will never stop looking for. I swear it's one of the most intense varieties of human connection - an absolute phenomenon of synergy and unstoppable momentum. Hoooo-ah, I love it!

It was great to have those musicians in the audience. I take their feedback very seriously, and it makes me so happy that musicians I revere are responding so well to my music. It's exciting and encouraging. I've realized that I don't care very much about the opinion of the general public. I still don't know how accessible my music is, but that's becoming less and less relevant. I would be so honoured to be a Musician's musician. Even more honoured if non-musicians could love my music too. But I don't want that to influence my work too much. [A topic for another day: Who is Your Audience and How Much Does it Matter?]

I'm so looking forward to this tour in May. It's going to turn this triangle into a circle, I think. And in the meantime, I'm going to be practicing my ass off... Hoooo-ah!

...

fernified

I knew what I needed today: a hike. I needed to get deep into some woods and cleanse my mind. So I went up a mountain with this beautiful she-wolf/dog:

She has become my new best dog-pal. Until I have a settled life (a few years or decades down the road), I have to just be a friend and not an owner of a dog. That's fine with me.

It was not a radiantly gorgeous day, but it was a very fine day for a hike, yes indeed. It's been a long time since I walked my bones up a mountain, so it was a slog, but OH did it feel good. Purifying!

Hallelujah, glory be, for dogs and Spring and hikes and snow patches beneath mossy rocks, and barnacled bark breathing out sweet pristine air into my hungry lungs.


.

resting

I feel scrambled like 3 eggs. Like a bowl of soppy eggs.
A lot of activity during the days, a lot of activity in my mind.
Really happy about playing new material with my band. Full of ambition to get more music finished so I can start planning the next album. Tomorrow is a day at home, then Thursday I work and have a gig, then Friday through Monday is free time. Free. All for me. I can hardly believe it! I need to spend some time neutralizing my brain. I know I say this about every 3 days. Each time I say it like something dramatic has happened. It's always the same old story, and every time I feel just as scrambled-eggy.
A friend teased me about my metaphor use once and I see that he had good reason to. I love metaphors, but they probably don't love me because I flog them so. I am tempted to continue my egg metaphor now and say that the problem with being whipped into a souffle is that sometimes you just suddenly deflate.
There, I said it. ha ha!
(I don't actually know if souffles can deflate. I imagine that they must.)
I just plow through my time in the city, burn up tons of social energy. And then I come home and ploooooffff, all the air goes out of me. I've probably talked more in the last 3 days than John Wayne characters do in an entire lifetime. I don't know if this is possible, but I have a stomach ache from talking too much.
Ugh.

.

...

admitting little things

I had a show this evening. I made 18 dollars. It was a good night. I made up an awards-acceptance speech (I'm just going to admit that I do this) on the way home, a speech in which I made people stand up and beat their chests and weep on each other in fits of passion. It was a speech about the Art that lies behind everything we hold dear in this world. It was a speech that shamed the government for the Musician's eighteen dollar paycheque and free glass of beer. I don't remember the speech now, but it was memorable to all who heard it.

Anyhow, I was going to say that the gig was actually quite fun. (I don't care about the money - 18 dollars is just a good joke. Why bother? It's like getting a tax refund from the government for 18 cents.) There were half a dozen people listening very attentively, and a few times during my set, I realized that the whole room was quiet. That's a special feeling when you're in a room full of strangers who are audience members by accident. After the show, 4 people told me, with sincerity, that they really liked the music. I gave them free CDs and we became friends. That's what it's all about. Some people might think it's stupid to give music away for free. But those kids weren't about to buy those CDs from me, and if I let them go home empty-handed, they'd probably forget all about my music. This way, they might tell a friend about me. 10 or 12 bucks for a CD - it's just as inconsequential as the 18 bucks for the gig, in a way. I'm not interested in selling my music like that. Yeesh. It feels so tawdry.
Tawdry!
This is probably not a wise entrepreneurial philosophy. I guess I just hate to bring money into the picture at all unless it's really worth it. Like if someone said, "I want to help finance your next album - here's 5 grand." I'd accept that, graciously.
Anyhow - I took away some good lessons from my gig this evening. Task: I need to somehow simulate the common performance scenario of not being able to hear my voice, and practice with that handicap. Sometimes there are no monitors, or the crowd is too loud, etc, and you hear your voice bouncing back at you from the speakers in the corner of the room - a split second too late to adjust the pitch. This is really tough. Especially when you're a born and raised unplugged singer. You rely so much on the sound your voice makes before it's even left your mouth - hearing the pitch in your head, and using all those tiny mysterious sensors in the brain and in the body to place the tone. You forget that you might walk up to the microphone and suddenly become vocally blind. It's a bit like touching your face after you've had freezing at the dentist - your fingers can feel your skin but your skin can't feel your fingers. In a loud room with loud speakers, you can't hear your voice coming out of your head unless you shout. Instead, you hear it at a distance, just a ghoulish echo of your musical intention.
How to practice like this? Maybe I just have to blast some other music in my room while I'm playing, anything to drown myself out. Fill my ears with cotton? Put my monitors in the other room and shut the door? I'm going to admit something else about myself, and that's my frequent Holodeck fantasies. I don't qualify as a Trekkie, but I challenge you or anyone to come up with a more brilliant concept than the Holodeck. I would walk in there, and say, 'Computer - gimme a room full of belligerent drunks, gimme the worst sound system invented by man, gimme a blown-out monitor, and gimme a stage set back 50 feet from the speakers.' And there I would practice. I would rotate through scenarios of course, because there are other challenges that must be faced. Pity that the only way to practice dealing with these horrors is by throwing yourself into the great unknown of real live performance, over and over again.
Well, not a pity really. Ha. It's what I'm here for.

.

veils

Today I woke up to what looked in every way like Spring. April 14th - my Mother's birthday.

How appropriate, I thought. How very nice that Spring is going to pay a visit in honour of this good woman.
Well, it must have had another birthday to rush off to, because it left abruptly, allowing Winter to get its foot in the door again. Tarnation!


It should not be difficult to make time for a blog. But it is. I have way too much to say and a constant feeling of needing to be doing something else right now. Practicing, that is. It feels like such a luxury to sit down and muse slowly and at length about this and that. I'd like to muse about the book I'm reading and the shotgun to the heart it dealt me this afternoon, and about some poetry and some music, and about the tangles and tears in my mind (tears as in ripped, not as in wept) and about people close and far. Aargh. I'll let myself do this on Saturday, I think.


.

brief hermitage

It's kind of a dull day outside, and so I feel a bit dull myself. I'm not really low, but low enough to catch myself wishing I was someplace else. It's easy to slip into that, but I don't want to. I want to stay with this raw dullness and try to see it for what it is.
One thing I see right away - not a revelatory insight, but a childish urge. I want to jump on a big trampoline. I want a large gulp of fun. Too bad I don't have a trampoline. I also would really like to swim today. I am so relaxed and full of well-being when I'm in the water. I wonder if it's the ol' back-in-the-womb feeling. Or if it is just a relief to be rid of gravity for a while. Or if it's because I get to feel non-human and animal/fish-like. Away from human dilemmas.

I also see that there is a soft layer of sadness over my heart. Sleepiness. Nothing dramatic, just a quiet hum like a misting rain. The sadness is connected to the dullness; my insides are disappointed by the world looking dull. How absurd. But it is the feeling one gets when a lover becomes distant and closed. It's the feeling of something being withdrawn. This thought occurred to me the other day when I was on my way to work on a brilliant and dazzling morning, passing by views of the ocean and mountains that squeezed all of the longing out of my heart. And I just felt as though someone I achingly loved and missed had come back to me.

But oh, what a fair-weather friend I am to nature. I know it, I know it. These are just the puerile remarks of my puerile spirit, wanting pleasure first.

I'm looking at the books of poetry on my shelf. Each of those books is a man's life. Part of a man's life at least. "The Complete Works of..." Yes, I think that's a man's life. I flip through them, scanning for something to hold today. Imagine being immortalized in a book, and poured over by people looking to you for wisdom or solace, or just something. Imagine.

I tried Byron and Blake, but I settle on Ryokan. So much more acceptance there of life.
Here are two that resonate me with right now:

Standing alone beneath a solitary pine;
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky --
Who can I call to join me on this path?

..

Intermittent rain -- in my hermitage
A solitary light flickers as dreams return.
Outside, the sound of falling raindrops.
My black, gnarled staff leans against the wall.
The fireplace is cold, no charcoal awaits my
imagined visitors.
I reach for a volume of poems.
Tonight, in solitude, deep emotion.
How can I explain it the following day?

..

I think I will go back to my music now. No pressure to write anything or make anything perfect. Here's one more from Ryokan, making me smile:

Thirsty, I've filled myself with sake;
lying beneath the cherry blossoms --
Splendid dreams


..

action

For some reason, I'm still thinking about the locker-room scenario, wondering why it stuck with me.

Firstly, I think it's just the energy that was radiating from these women. (Speaking of radiation.) If I hadn't been such a detached observer in the situation, I would've been infected by their energy. I'm not one for Aura-talk. I just know that people exude energy that can influence and affect me hugely, both for better and worse. These ladies were walking, talking toxic waste plants. Nobody is going to react to that kind of proselytizing except with compounded negativity.

Secondly, both these women seemed to be speaking from a place of outrage over wrong-doing. Which must have roots in goodness and a love of life and this world. Their rant seemed an aberration of the underlying care/concern that triggered the outrage. 'How good impulses turn into bad actions.' Such a disconnect there.

Thirdly, I think it's essentially disgusting to complain about the state of our society when we live here, in peace, health, safety, stability and beauty. There are troubled happenings everywhere, and while I agree it's important to be aware of them, I think it's even more important to be grateful for our living conditions, such as they are. When I think of the people of Japan and Libya, I am ashamed to catch myself in any stance of complaint.

Finally, I would like to find a way to be more of an activist. It requires a balance between an awareness of injustice and a grounding in gratitude. The desire to improve a situation of wrong-doing has to come from a place of compassion and not hate. Mostly, there has to be actual action. Bitching and ranting may be verbs, but they're not real actions. I need to think about this.

For now, I can commit to small but daily actions: appreciate and not abuse the luxuries of food, water, electricity, technology, and abundance; value, love and care for the earth by connecting to it at every opportunity; work hard at my work so that I can meaningfully contribute to the world; help others whenever and wherever I can; remember the fleetingness of all things, be careful of grasping, and recognize the difference between wants and needs; always be aware of the impact I have on everything around me; practice non-violence, forgiveness and loving kindness; take stock each day of my right actions vs not-right actions; practice, really practice humility; take responsibility for my energy and mood and how it affects others; ask the Universe for help with everything, because my own thoughts are too narrow to guide me wisely.

.

swim meet

I've been swimming at the pool these last few weeks; trying to get into a morning routine with my sister. We're both loving it.
Today, I was alone in the change room for a while with two older ladies. They seemed acquainted, but maybe not close friends. They were bitching about this, that and everything else. Here are a couple of memorable quotes:
"I'm so sick of these bloody ignorant people who think that everything is just la-dee-da."
"I'm like, 'Beam me up already' - I want outta here. I can't take it anymore - just beam me up."
At some point, they became aware of my presence, or maybe they could tell I was eavesdropping, and they started to speak in low voices.
I still overheard something about the 'radiation we have to deal with because of Japan'. And plenty of other doom and gloom.

Well, I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the wonders of the Industrial/Electronic age. And I'm not going to scoff at speculations on topics I don't truly understand. Perhaps we are all being slowly poisoned by radiation, perhaps we are about to be devastated by earthquakes of our own, and perhaps 2012 really is going to be the end of the world as we know it. These things are beyond my powers of prediction - completely outside my control. They're also too frightening to contemplate. But... is it really so foolish and irresponsible to live in optimism?

I am a positivist. A realistic positivist. I've learned from my own experience that good things do not come from bemoaning the lack of good things, that bad situations do not disappear when you try to hate them away, and that it's always dangerous to label anything 'good' or 'bad' in the first place. That last item was and is the hardest to learn, and I still grapple a lot with it. 'Nothing is good and nothing is bad - everything just is, exactly and perfectly as it should be.' Well, like hell it is, the mind says. A tsunami is bad. Injury, death, poverty, pain, torture, crime. All bad. (Pleasure, joy, relief, etc = good.) And once I start down this rabbit hole, I get bedeviled quickly.

eg.) OK - so let's entertain the idea that nothing can be inherently bad or good, because every event influences some other event which influences another event ad infinitum, and therefore cannot be isolated and evaluated. Fine. But if there is no good and no bad, then what can I call that which triggers pleasure, joy, relief, etc.? What can I call the energy that I am drawn to; what is it that I focus my energy on trying to attract? Should I be wary of and neutral towards 'blessings' and 'gifts'? Is it foolish to revel in success since every external event has an unknown future manifestation that might betray me?

But - nobody can deny the powerful dichotomy of dark vs light in this world. I have to assume that the Dharma (or any philosophy) is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. The salt of Common Sense! There is the good that is the positive and the light, and is maybe the inherent quality of/in life. And then there is the 'good' that is just a label and brings with it hopeful expectation. There's certainly no question in my mind about what true 'goodness' is and what it feels like. I really do believe that it is possible, and more helpful than foolish, to extract the good from bad situations. I believe that faith in goodness begets goodness, and that adherence to negativity brings nothing but more of the bad. And I guess I'm writing all of this as some kind of self-affirming reassurance that even if I am a 'bloody ignorant person who thinks that everything is just la-dee-da', that I still might just be better off.

.

a living roof

I'm thinking about horses again, after watching a Western last night. It made me think of the horses on Kauai. These pictures now look to me like stills from a movie I've always wanted to star in. I've forgotten what it's like to be drenched in sunlight and almost-impossibly-festive colour.

Today's unconscious mental-loop from Tintern Abbey:

That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
have followed; For such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.

I promise soon to get onto another poem. Even though I think I could probably make do with this one for the rest of time. It seems to have something in it for every thought, feeling and situation in my life. Wordsworth, you wonderful crazy devil.

There's a bird singing away outside, singing an ecstatic and half-drunken waltz. I don't know what its name is, but it has always been my favourite evening singer. It has a huge range and its call is rhythmic and joyful - somehow reminds me of the sound of a burbling creek. Looking out the window at the grey skies and low mists, it sounds out of place. But when I open the window, there's that smell of spring... undeniable. So glad to be home, to have a day and a half of being on the land.

Being on the land - that's what I long for. The feeling that I can open the door, put my feet on soil - pull up the turf and bury myself in rich damp earth if I want to. When I'm in the city I actually feel that I could be on a space station. Nothing but concrete and metal underfoot. It's hard to believe that where there are gardens planted, you could tunnel down into real dirt. But that's a rant I've ranted too many times to need to re-rant any further at the moment.

Ooh- a fragment of a dream from last night just came back to me. A gorgeous scene. I was in Hawaii, in a new home. The walls were solid rows of living trees, and there was no roof - just the starry sky above. It felt wonderfully safe and magical, but I wondered whether animals might jump on us while we were sleeping. The solution was simple - at the touch of a button, the canopy shifted and spread until the thick branches formed a roof for the house.

I've just spent a half hour trying to write about a revelation I had the other day. In the end, I've erased it. For some reason, I can't put it into words properly right here and now. Perhaps it's just not a revelation I need to share. Or maybe the idea hasn't formed completely enough in my mind yet to bring outside of myself. So, I think I'll just let 'er go.

Time to go practice anyways.

.

underbellies of clouds

I am caretaker to one of the world's most affectionate and needy cats. He is a charmer. And, true to his kind, he is continually getting in the way. Cute, huh? A sitting lap is a sitting lap to Charles, whether or not you're doing anything with your hands or legs.

I feel a bit lumpish right now - have been sitting at that keyboard all day. Didn't even get up to go for a walk. I'm looking outside at the black wetness - hmm. Fresh air and blood circulation would be good, but Oh the unappealingness of it.

Bloody fantastic day of practice, however. A half-dozen unfinished songs are suddenly coming into focus. One after another - lyrics suddenly attaching themselves to melodies, tempo and time signatures snapping into place. Such a good feeling, to finally fit the key pieces into the puzzle. Some of which I've poured over for ages on countless occasions, not knowing how they might fit together. I always get myself into a big paper-mess when I'm doing work like this. All the scraps of paper with disjointed ideas, open notebooks of lyrics, manuscript everywhere. I went looking through some old journals for more words, an exercise I must remember not to repeat anytime soon. Blech. My journal from last year is just depressingly full of garbage. Just the worst kind of toxic waste. Ugh, so grim. I think I'll stick with the pages I filled up in Hawaii... even though it might put me at risk, one of these days, of writing a happy song. Heh heh.

Speaking of Hawaii: I listened to a TED talk by Elizabeth Lindsay today, on the knowledge of our elders. She was talking about the Polynesians, who first discovered the islands of Hawaii.
"These mariners sailed 3 million square miles across the Pacific without the use of instruments. They could synthesize patterns in nature using the rising and setting of stars, the sequence and direction of waves, the flight pattern of certain birds. Even the slightest hint of colour on the underbelly of a cloud would inform them, and help them navigate with the keenest accuracy."
She spoke about her mentor, a master Polynesian navigator, lying down in the hull of the canoe, using his whole body to feel the shifting currents and direction of the waves.

I've been thinking a lot about the loss of ancient wisdom these days. There are subtleties that I feel have been disappearing, even just over the course of my 29 years. I can't elaborate much; it's just a sense of communication and sensitivity fading. A sense of integrity sort of being leeched out of every form of culture. I know it's not hopeless and it's much more complex than I could ever hope to understand. But it does make me feel the extreme importance of living in an awareness of the earth. And I don't just mean a 'let's recycle and ride bikes' kind of awareness, but a relationship with the ground underfoot, all that grows out of it, and all that lives because of it. I don't think that you can connect to life, and love the Earth, without being outside. A lot.

I am so excited for the warmer days ahead.

.

bucolic strains

Isn't this lovely? Don't you just want to be there, maybe sitting under a tree?
Oh, the pleasure of the plains!

Saw Handel's 'Acis & Galatea' the other day - and couldn't help but chuckle at the opening scene: a group of shepherds and nymphs, swathed in lace and velvet and buckles and ribbons and great flowing wigs, gesturing daintily and singing, "Oh, the pleasure of the plains!" Oh yes, the pleasure, oh the pleasure.

I love Handel, but to be honest, this production was wasted on me. I'm not sure if it was just the story (ie. lack of story), or all the florid embellishments and prudish undertones. Two men love the same woman. One of them is evil - a cyclops in fact. Woman won't have the cyclops, and so the cyclops kills her lover. Too much passion over too little, maybe that's it. The lover is made immortal in the end, and everyone is sad but happy. Oh boy. Just too many perfect cadences and too many ornaments and too much delightful musicality for this sordid little scene. I dunno - maybe I was just too sleepy and dense to appreciate it properly. Everyone else thought it was spectacular, and I felt like a fraud. Which happens rather frequently at these concerts, actually.

The St. John Passion last week, on the other hand, was glorious. Now there's some serious subject matter. An innocent life gruesomely and cruelly taken - that's a reason for passion. Forget the fact that I'm not a Christian - I've never heard any composer imbue the word 'crucifixus' with more pain and depth than Bach. Just excruciatingly evocative.
It was Bach's birthday on that same day - March 21st. Good old Bach. Nobody really paid too much attention to him during his lifetime. His far less talented sons achieved more fame. If there's any character from the past I'd love to have met, it's Johann Sebastian. I'll just bet he was a lovely man. Humble as anything. Brilliant, slavish, perhaps eccentric, but modest. I doubt that Handel was modest.

.

So much for the lambs. This new keyboard of mine is way too seductive, and I couldn't get away from it all day. Just took a little walk before dinner to get some blood moving. DAMN I love sitting at my keyboard, in front of my open windows, looking out at the water, feeling the spring air, and practicing. Why do I keep forgetting that practice is not boring? It's not boring if I'm present and awake - things continually evolve and change. Repetition is not really repetition. There is too much to do with these keys. Too many options, all the time. New songs grow out of mistakes. The body is engaged and thus not restless. And there's the kind of focused concentration that allows for thoughts to ruminate far back in the mind unconsciously. It brings everything in and yet allows for so much expansion at the same time.

I also just had a few glasses of champagne and feel quite nicely right now.

.

No-power hour

This is looking out from a cave I mentioned once before. I love caves! Remember the book, "Hatchet" by Gary Paulson? I loved that book when I was a kid. Small plane goes down in the middle of Canadian wilderness. Boy survives. Has nothing but a hatchet. Lots of close encounters with scary animals, starvation, all the usual thrilling elements of wilderness survival! Anyhow, I seem to remember that he finds a cave on the beach to live in. This is what I imagine it looks like from inside his cave.

8:30pm is Earth Hour - so all power off! I really love this idea, and think we should all do it once a week at least. I can't decide what I'm going to do. Just read in candlelight? Write in my journal? Go sit outside in total darkness? Crouch in the cave and try to build a fire? Stand on the roof and howl at the moon? Fun times!

Woke up to that summer-brightness again this morning. I have one of the world's Great Views from my bed. Ocean, trees, mountains. And I swear I just can't get over how the feeling of spring makes everything look different. I am going to talk about this a lot, I'm afraid. I get way too excited when winter retreats. Best to stop reading the blog from here on in if you're starting to get bored with it.

I'm in good spirits today, rather glad to be on Bowen and not in St. Louis, where I hear they are still frozen solid. Ugh. I'm quite excited to go check out the little lambs today, and a particular beach I haven't been to in a while. Funny how I've got this compass inside me that often just points at where I need to go, any day that the sun is out. Without even having to think about it, I instinctively feel a part of the island calling to me. Tally-ho!

I think I'm just prattling now, and I could keep prattling for a long time, like a happy kid. But I'd better get my practice in before I head outside.

.

presents that go poof

Two more pictures of cherry blossoms. Because there are few things as heartening as cherry blossoms against a blue sky.

What a strange couple of days. Today felt like November, yesterday felt like May. Life is amazing, incredible fun, mostly because it's often not that fun, so when fun things happen, they're sometimes more fun than can be believed. If you follow. It might seem more bizarre if every now and again a huge present exploded out of the ground and landed at your feet. But it wouldn't be more bizarre than the way life actually operates. Even if the present sometimes imploded as soon as you untied the string, it still would be terribly dull compared to real life.

I don't feel like writing about the real life events of today and yesterday and the day before. I'd rather write about the things I've decided to take away from them:

1. Always be ready to play a show, at the drop of a hat. Practice every day, you lazy ass! (These are instructions to myself.)
[As a side note, even after writing that, I'm tempted to erase it... I almost said out loud, "Every day?! Aw man..."]
2. Yes, every day. (But not today because my arms hurt and I'm tired.)
3. Get a case for the keyboard with WHEELS and make sure the sustain pedal always works.
4. Don't let your hosiery get to a state of unwearable-except-around-people-who-won't-judge-or-care-ness.
5. Always keep passport and important medications close at hand!
6. Continue to be careful about not committing to time-wasting, sticky obligations.
7. Never run out of good reading material.
8. Pray every day to the God of ever-changing-ness for acceptance of Not Having Control.
9. Imagine everything as possible and even inevitable and also forgiving.
10. Always say YES to opportunities when the heart lurches upward. Say NO when the heart lurches downward. (Do not confuse movements of stomach for movements of heart.)

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i saw the conga line for spring

My mind is a windmill, and my heart is gusting at 100 knots. Spring is unsure and tender life unravels secretly. I am inexplicably overcome by a desire to keep bees, not for honey but for pollination. While walking today, I listened to some music of my 'immortal elders', because it was transparent enough to allow the birdsong to come through. If it had been recorded that way, it would be saccharin; but outside under first cherry blossoms, it was sombre and lovingly painful. I am a thicket inside; paths are growing over. I am full of static but not stasis; all my organs are shifting position, I think, in restlessness. I want to see spring on my skin and want to know that I will bloom too.

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green soaked

Today can't possibly be long enough.
Brain is steaming, steaming like an ox in the field. So much stimuli and inspiration and emotional energy; I need time to work through this.

I had a dream last night that I was on a big ship, and I realized that there was a whale onboard, had somehow been sucked up by the engines and was on the ship deck. I pulled and tugged and screamed for help, and we managed to haul the whale to this hole in the ship, a hole that went straight down to the water. I had to aim so carefully when I pushed the whale over the edge, because there was so much machinery that it could hit on the way down. But it dove perfectly into the water, and I felt, strangely, so overwhelmingly sad. Then after a few moments, the whale came shooting back up in a perfect graceful jump, to say thank you. And I felt a little better.

I must have been exhausted yesterday - slept for almost 11 hours last night in a continual cold sweat, soaked through about 5 layers of blankets. I'll be so thirsty today. Woke up to the brightest sun I've seen since Hawaii. The light of summer. And the openness of summer too, as it's my day off.

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the sun behind

This will be the shortest longest blog I have ever written. Many many words were here, but none of them were right - and I am not being a perfectionist.
I took the ferry home during sunset; it was the gentlest sky, a palette of spring blossoms. The sun was gone, but the feeling of it still hung over the mountains and the water, over me. For it just couldn't take back with it all that it had brought.

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for the sake of variety...

... I thought I'd write about monster trucks today.

Rarrr!!!

For some strange reason looking at this picture makes me think about getting breast implants and hair extensions. I'd also like someone to bring me a cold beer, someone with vein tracks down his neck and barbed wire tattoos, named Bruce or Micky.

Hell yah, baby.

(*This segment of satire brought to you by a.ha.)

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if I had a pig

This handsome fellow is a Visayan warty pig.

This is a curly-haired Austrian Mangalitza pig. Looking coy.

Nice looking pigs, eh?

after a bright moon

What a day. I don't know why I always feel the urge to try to describe what I see, but I do. Maybe I'm just trying to put a net over something.

I was walking outside and had good old Tintern Abbey in my head. I was stuck on one section... This is what I like about memorizing poems. Once they are internalized, parts seem to just surface now and again in connection with some feeling or memory. And sometimes they come up, slightly changed. This part, I kept hearing in my head, with the beginning line of, "For I have learned to look on love..." I realized later that of course that was not right. But so it is, and it fits just as well, I think.

For I have learned
   To look on nature, not as in the hour
   Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes                    90
   The still, sad music of humanity,
   Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
   To chasten and subdue.

In the sunshine, everything is rosy, slightly glowing. It's like a pregnancy glow... nothing much to see yet, just a subtle but unmistakable luminosity to the tips of the bare branches, and the soft smudge of yellow-green at the edges of the fir boughs. I sat a long while on some mossy bluffs overlooking the ocean. I love a bed of moss - the way it looks like a dense forest from an airplane window. Love blurring my eyes, and viewing the ground as if I was 10,000 feet above the earth, looking over forests and hills and rocky mountains, swamps and desert. I love that all of life is contained in every aspect of life. I love that even a mass of people looks like a land formation from afar, and that everything enormous is contained inside everything minute, and vice versa.
I also felt nostalgia and a prickling of senses that I couldn't identify. I don't know if I was reminded of spring or summer or fall or winter. But I also think that all seasons are present in each season, and that human life is the same way. We are never just one age, and continually slide up and down the spectrum of youthful to ancient and inspired to exhausted.

The ocean was quiet and contained like a lake today. It was divided in half, one side writhing on the surface as if with delicate snakes, the other pulled taut and smooth. Something far away was jumping in the water. The splashes were big enough to make me wonder if it could be a porpoise. And above me, of course, were eagles and ravens, and in the woods sweet chicadees and robins.

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wood vs plastic

This is my piano. My sweet dusty piano. Doesn't it look scary and mysterious and all too inviting in there? Such a thrilling maze of hammers and felt and strings and pegs and wood and iron...

This is my keyboard. My workhorse. Even though it's just plastic and electricity and who knows what else, it's been good to me. I plug headphones into it, and the privacy is a glorious thing.
But I still think that all electric pianos sound like garbage when they're amplified, and this one is no exception. It's such a dim dull shadowy ghost of a real piano - not something to perform on. Though I have many times.

This is my new toy. It's a lovely thing, and I think I'm going to have to stop renting it and start financing it. The thing about electric pianos is that the 'acoustic piano' sound is just not something that can be mimicked by a keyboard, in spite of all our amazing technology. (In my humble opinion, of course.) But keyboards that don't try to not sound electric - rhodes, wurlitzers, organs etc - sounds fantastic live. Music I write for the piano can be saved for those rare shows when I get to play a real piano... if I also write music intended for keyboards and synths. I think that the more I embrace it, the more creative I'll be.

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anti-rust

It's not a good feeling, to reflect on this boredom. I resent it and I hate to catch myself feeling ungrateful in any way for living here, in peace, safety, freedom and security. Yesterday I said I would make amends for the boredom - that's what I plan to do today.
I'm just going to chalk up the sleepiness, lethargy and low mood to a purely biological response to the climate shift. I'm probably low-iron too and did just slightly decrease my meds. So, no big deal - nothing to take personally or puzzle over anxiously. There's a croton in my window - it has about 7 leaves. It probably does not trouble itself over why it is not thriving here.
Fortunately, I now understand that plunging into depression in search of a cause or an answer is a dangerous past-time - and that those black back alleyways in my mind are places I don't want to go alone. There aren't many answers to find back there - just plenty of addicts ready to lure me into a shadowy doorway and lock me up for a spell. I'm going to drop this metaphor now before I confuse myself. What I mean to say is that, as unromantic and drolly sensible as it seems, it's better for me to go to my toolkit and try to fix whatever is coming apart.
I slept for 10 hours last night so I don't think I really need the nap that I feel coming on. I'm going to close this laptop, put on my wellies, take my camera, and go for a walk. I might not take any pictures, but having the camera will encourage me to look at things the way I do when I'm searching for a good shot. Recite some poetry. Then I'm going to make myself a really beautiful lunch and eat it outside all wrapped up in blankets with a hot cup of tea. Then if I'm still grouchy, I'll call S. Then settle in with my keyboard and wire up the damn interface thing and record something on my laptop, whether I like it or not. OK, that's as far as I've gotten. That might be enough. I also have 2 great books to read, so I'll save that for a treat for later.
Btw: I did succeed last night in getting off my bed and writing some music. I wrote something I think could go interesting places. Something to play with.

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Just after 8pm and I'm trying to talk myself out of going to bed - or write myself out, I guess. I'm lying on my bed so I'm dangerously close to just falling asleep. But I want to fight it. I'm tired and I shouldn't be. There is something just screaming inside of me that I'm trying to suppress because it feels sacrilegious. I think I'll just say it and try to make amends for it later...
I am DEEPLY BORED here!
I want to play after I work, and I want to work and play and play and work, in whatever balance feels right at any given time. I don't mean play my piano - although often that's 'play' for me. I mean play like a child, like animals, like adults on vacation. I played all the time, every day, in Hawaii. Swimming in the ocean is play. Now I don't know how to play, and I'm bored. All I can think of to do is work and without some good play it all feels oppressive.
I'm being a grumpy-pants and hopefully it will be just a passing fit of immaturity. Actually, I think the boredom is just sadness. I miss that easy and instant daily dose of joy and I feel caged and impatient. I feel like I'm looking at a beautiful painting of a nature scene, yearning to jump in.
OK, time to man up and work on some music.

'Wake up, ding-dong.' (Said to myself.) 'Don't music-work, music-play.'

OK. I'll try!

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breathing in the forest, and work to do

Rain, morning.
Two airplanes and three airports coming home = instant viral attack. I've been fighting it off these last couple days. Today I intend to kick this cold to kingdom come. Neti pot, salt water gargles, vitamin C and 50 cups of lemon tea... No contest.
It's been a whirlwind since I landed in Vancouver, so I have not yet had a chance to get out in the forest. I'm pretty excited to jump into my rubber boots and see what the firs and ferns are up to these days. I wonder if the skunk cabbage is peaking through the mud yet. Is it too early for fiddleheads? I wonder who will have fuzzy fingertips or pink pregnant blossom bellies, and what birds I will see and hear.
When I come back, a hot bath. Mmm, a hot bath. Wear in McCarthy's Crossings some more. (I love a book all ruined by good times. A pristine book has lived a dull life. My big tome of Steinbeck shorts is crinkly with salt water and papaya juice and still peppered with sand. Crime & Punishment, The Sun also Rises, The Secret Agent - all sun-bleached, wine-dabbled, cock-eyed beach bums.)
Then the piano. Too many ideas, some overwhelm-ment of what to do with them all, and how to get them down before they evaporate. Working out a new technique that has a 'phasing' effect, Steve Reichesque - makes the piano sound like more than one instrument. Several new pieces on the go, trying to match up lyrics with melodies, and old pieces coming back in new ways. Had an idea for the piece I wrote for vibraphone a couple years ago - and was kind of shocked to discover that I'd lost the damn thing. I had several copies. Not any more. Waiting to see if the friend I gave a copy to still has it...
Trying to find a photographer cause I need some promo shots, whether I like it or not. I put an ad in Craigslist. 17 responses so far, and not one person that can write even 3 decent grammatically-correct sentences. Isn't that bizarre and scary? Is it wrong of me to judge a photographer by her English usage?
It's time to do a solo-gig circuit. I love a good BC roadtrip. My goal is to book 4 out-of-town weekend gigs before May. Urk, is that feasible? I don't know. Worth a shot. I also have to get busy with some grant writing and find me a publicist, STAT. And book all the flights and accommodations and car and gear rentals for the May tour. Apply for all the summer island festivals. Line up a bunch of rehearsals. And practice my ass off. Something a Dharma teacher said once stuck with me, a quote from some venerable monk: "You are perfect just as you are. And, there is work to do."

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adaptation

I won't lie - I cried when I came home. When I woke up the next morning, I forgot I was in Vancouver until I opened my eyes, and the disappointment was heavy. But now I'm sitting in front of my window and the sun is out, and it feels good to be back. The water is calm and I feel the deep familiarity of that soft but steely blue and that same blue on the mountains. I'm thinking of all the times I've wondered why the forested slopes, clothed top to bottom in green, look blue from a distance. I'm thinking of the sound of that water lapping against stones on a beach. Not the rushing, roaring, crashing vigour of the South Pacific, but a languorous inky murmur. The tall dry grasses and the tall lean firs and the naked rocks and deciduous branches are intimate memories of all my years here.
I am glad to have missed the darkest months. But now I'm glad to be here for the arrival of spring. I love the anticipation of that, the early signs. I love to feel the sun grow stronger and stay longer and I love to hear the birds return. And the first buds opening, so slowly and then suddenly, and the tree trunks yielding with oozing sap and fragrance. All of winter's iron jaw loosening its grip...
I spent this morning tearing apart my room, taking things down, packing things away, discarding things, streamlining every surface and clearing up space. Space, space, space. With spring I want space. Openness and air and a sense of impermanence.
I don't want to be attached to my belongings here. I want this room to be a neutral place, a room to visit for long periods and still easily walk away from. My time away really clarified for me the importance of space and lightness. I felt so free to move about. I want to feel that I am passing through, making nests out of twigs and moss. I am happiest this way - to feel that I am carrying within me all that I need. One day I might need something more permanent and secure, but that's in some unknown future. Right now, I crave having more time alone, and being able to walk wherever I go, being able to live simply and think massively. So I think I'll sublet a little place near work in town, so that I can spend my spare time writing and practicing, swimming, visiting with friends and playing gigs - time that would otherwise be spent on a long commute. I'm going to go back to living off a small cash allowance for a few months so I can focus my funds on my music career. And I will still come to Bowen on the weekends and whenever I have a spare day.
It's funny how this changes. My needs can change quite dramatically this way, every few months sometimes. At least every year. If I am tied down by possessions and obligations, it makes it very difficult to even be aware of these shifting needs. If changes are too difficult to make, then nothing changes until a major crisis forces it. Some people might think this flaky and restless. But I'm not restless, I just feel so much more able to recognize opportunites and possibilites and act on them.
I'm going into town tonight. It's basically a huge FNC. But I'm not too nervous. Because now, I feel like I'm just a visitor in Vancouver, here temporarily. Just passing through.

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Goodbye Hawaii

I'm coming home tomorrow. Don't know what to say about this except that it doesn't seem right somehow. It just doesn't seem right...

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on the volcano

Sulpher deposits from the volcanic steam!

Inside a lava tube.

Forest on the edge of the crater.

Spooky lava steam creeping out of the ground.

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Circumnavigation Part II

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