green and sated

I slept for about 12 hours last night, waking to the rain, falling back asleep to the rain. Deeply satisfying, dream-filled sleep. I dreamt of encountering a very tall benevolent creature (a bird?) and a sweet little girl on a path in a clearing outside a wood. I trusted them right away - our meeting was joyful - and went with them into the forest. The path led to a lake, and the tall creature cheerfully told us all to roll up our socks. They were just thin trouser socks, and as I pulled mine up to my knees, I felt excited expectation. I knew the water was very cold, but there was some kind of magic in the air - and it seemed obvious that once we waded out into the water, the socks would keep us warm and we would walk across the lake quite easily.
Many such colourful and lovely dreams...
The rain is still making its hurried way from sky to earth. It's just beautiful outside - greens full and varied. I think I've resigned myself to summer's fleeting visit this year. It seems distracted. And if It can't commit to sunshine, then I prefer a rainy day to a day of dull cloudy do-nothing skies by a long stretch. Sun feeds us all and opens fruit and flower, and rain nourishes the earth. But cloudy days seem to accomplish nothing.
Trying to put sunshine out of my mind and embrace this determined deluge. As long as I am warm enough, then being out in the rain is delicious and vivid. Elemental. It makes the outdoors an open, uncrowded place, private almost.
Memories from childhood of walking home from school:
There was a steep hill on the last leg of the road home, and it was beside a park. In autumn, rain poured off the sidewalks and coursed down the road under the lip of the curb. A canyon river in miniature scale, with leaf dams every dozen yards or so. I liked to clear those dams so the tiny river was unimpeded, and then choose a single leaf well-shaped for boating. I'd set the leaf boat on the water, let it go, and follow it down its course, feeling like a giant or a demi-God helping a little craft down a turbulent river... nobody watching me, the streets deserted, the soft mists like a cloak and the sounds and smells of rainfall sheltering somehow.
Summer rain is not flat. It does not feel suppressed like a thin layer of apathetic clouds. It's not like a vapid depression, but a full-hearted expression of feeling. Like melancholy or longing or vulnerability. Sometimes there is no sadness to it at all, and it's more like tenderness, nostalgia, introspection, solitude, or freedom and play. It brings memories of stomping and hallooing, streaming-wet abandonment, tents collapsing under weights of water, mud seeping into everything, hot coffee drunk from tin cups, gratitude for even the tiny warmth of a kerosene lamp, and fun had in spite of (and perhaps due to) the absurd irony of our human attempts to control nature, and it confounding us at every turn.

I just paused to look through my photo library for a nice picture of rain to add to this.

I don't have a single one.

It would seem that I only take pictures of beautiful sunny days - no matter the season.

People tell me that I'm full of contradictions. Can you believe that?

.

full blanks

My number one blogging challenge these days is voluntarily committing to more computer time. I'm deliberately looking away from the screen right now, trying to pretend that I'm doing something else, and just thinking thoughts. It's not really working.
The serpent eats its own tail. Want to express all of everything that's going on in my mind these days, but my thoughts are renewing and shifting too quickly to solidify. Trying to grab a fistful and force them into sentences feels laborious.
Okay, that's all I'm going to write. I don't have any trivialities to report, and everything else seems determined to just float as vapor for a while longer.

.

one comment before an early bedtime

This is a blue-footed booby. Ain't it grand?

.

open

I came home in the early afternoon, just in time for the skies to clear. Nobody was around. I laid outside on the grass. All was silent. I ate fruit. I read. I drank cold drinks. I read some more. I drifted. I watched hawks in the sky. I wandered inside to cool down, and I played my piano and wrote some music - easily, effortlessly. I went back outside. I walked, I rode my bike, I watched birds in the sky and boats in the ocean. I swung in the hammock and scribbled ideas in a notebook....

Amigos,
Today, I lived!

.

Bleat, carp, cavil

Spent too much time inside today, shunning the vapid sky, the insipid clouds. I read a lot, and researched travel destinations, but it was not satisfactory. A day of lazing around inside turns me into boiled cabbage. Limp. Bland. Watery. Dull. I tried to do some writing but all I could hear was the sound of my own listless brain. Finally, about 4pm, my restlessness peaked and I broke away from the house. I headed out on my bike, ditched it at a trailhead and walked under the trees. My wits slowly came back to me.

Mossy rocks... deep cool silence... tangled ferns... root-rippled earth...

Irritation and crankiness fell off me in clumps. Guess I was caked in the stuff.

And then.... it came! The Sun. Like a laser beam - vvvrrrap! - that cut through all the soggy remnants of my boggy mood and gave me an hour of pure happiness in the forest.

Shouldn't I have found a cure for this weakness by now? I'm turning 30 in under a month. I've got 27 days to figure out how to be a happy creature without regular sunshine. Honestly! I'm about to enter my 4th decade of life, and where is my equanimity? Where is the stoic maturity of heart?

I wonder why humans were given this spirit of discontent. It is such a powerful thing - just a tiny seed that spawns infinite varieties of both good and evil. It plagues us with unrest. Without it we would never have evolved into the beings we are. Is discontentment the same as desire? Can there be discontent without wanting... wanting something else? Doesn't prolonged discontent dig the hole into which desire pours?

I want more sunshine. I want to spend more time feeling connected to the earth. I want to feel more alive more of the time. My whole being longs for bright, glowing, golden sunlight. But I also want my music, want to feel inspired and to feel the drive of ambition and the reward of producing work. Want to write, want to create, want to collaborate, want to contribute, want want want!

..If I had all the sunshine I want, would I still feel motivated to work? Would I be too content to keep my ambitions and goals alive? Or would I just wake up one day with a horrible realization that I'd let my dreams go? But isn't my dream just to be content? Hrr, hmm, hrr.

I try to stay connected to these waves of disgruntled restlessness and work with them, watch them, learn from them. I know they're not going to just go away. Do they go away for anyone? It's a bizarre and ironic human trait, this Discontent. It's the biggest source of suffering in the world, but it's also what keeps us moving forward. Our curse and our blessing.

Who, when, what, why and where did it come from??

.

Humility Haiku

while I was walking:
your skirt's caught in your backpack,
some girl informed me

.

2 scenes from a bikeride

.

netting

Ah!

I didn't expect a blue sky this morning. My favourite surprise in all the world. Bike and I will be heading out shortly.

I wanted to say a few things about music. For the 3rd year running, I was snubbed by the Jazzfest. And as this is now Jazzfest time and nearly all of my musical friends and acquaintances seem to be playing in the festival, I feel the usual sense of exclusion. I'm familiar with this feeling. I've been put to one side many times in my life because, (and I think I can say this with an analytical detachment) I've been too unorthodox. I don't seem to fit into a category. I have a feeling that Vancouver will need some bigger, better festivals to endorse me first. And then suddenly I'll have support from my hometown in spades, when I no longer want or need it. That's okay - I think I can avoid feeling bitter about it. When it comes to art appreciation, it's a pretty conservative city.

Does this sound arrogant? I hope not. The way I see it, there are two ways of responding to this exclusion:

1. Feel dejected, not-good-enough, and discouraged.
2. Feel good-enough but hard to embrace for reasons unknown, and have faith that my path is still my path.
(Either way, I still have to answer people over and over again when they ask, "Are you playing in the festival this year?")

...
I've heard it said that 'you should only be a musician if there's absolutely nothing else that you can do.' It's not an easy life. I long for the day when I won't have to work a job in the city and can support myself with my music. But there's no point longing for it too much, because it may be a long ways off. And actually, I'm extremely grateful that I don't need to support myself with my music, because it would mean that I'd be making music for money.... and guaranteed, that music would not be the kind of music I want to be making. (I guess this is my old refrain.) It does have to be my goal though, or I run the risk of thinking that my music is not worth money, and that I can just make it at my own leisurely pace, for myself, forever. A balance need to be struck. Deadlines and goals force me forward and too much time and freedom slows me down and causes me to lose motivation and ambition. I need to be clear that music is both my passion and my work, that I should be getting paid for it and eventually need to, but that I'm not going to accept musical work that forces me off my path and onto someone else's.

[Man, how it lifts me to look out the window at the glowing grass and the water sparkling under the mountains. I meant to write in my blog last night about the rich harmony of birdsong that accompanied my walk that evening. I haven't heard such dense orchestration since I was in the tropics. Total jubilance.]

History is such a comfort. A pretty large majority of my favourite artists and musicians were overlooked or scorned or ignored during their lifetimes. What's important here, I ask myself? To be loved here and now, or to make something that will outlast me? I have to go with the latter. (Although, if I can do that and also be a little liked, a little loved, so much the better... I can be honest - I want and need validation still. Maybe by the time I'm an old lady I'll have let go of that.) So much more to write about this topic, but I'll leave it for now.

Sometimes I sit at my keyboard and amuse myself by making up simple catchy songs, improvise with Good Ol' iii-vi-ii-V-I or Blues progressions. They sound great, those progressions. They never fail, and can be riffed off infinitely. I know without a doubt that if I wrote and played in that style, I could win over most audiences instantly. Some smoky vocals, sultry lyrics, a short skirt and a pair of stilettos and I'd be half-way to the Junos. (Now I really do sound arrogant. Oh well.) I smile sardonically to myself. Too bad, but the temptation to please others doesn't hold a candle to my fascination with that which pleases me alone.

What it's taken me a long time to get around to is this: I'm excited about music! Musicmusicmusic!

The joy of writing something new and feeling that I've hit on something! The joy of having an idea flutter, flap, soar and careen through my mind, and to chase it with a butterfly net, breathlessly, and get it down on paper! The joy of that sensation of newness and where-did-it-come-from?-ness! The vague and ticklish sense of honour that it came into my mind and not someone else's! The great, great reward for patiently waiting with the net at hand, even after hours and days or sometimes weeks and months, of nothing coming along to catch.

And now, as the sun is roasting my face and arms through the window, I've got to get out there so that I can come back and have plenty more time to pace around with my net.

..

an audience

Behold this lovely doe, taking her ease. I've never seen deer lie about in the manner
of cats. I didn't think those long bony stilts could bend that way.

...
Now, I will tell you something strange but true:

I sat down at my keyboard today, in front of the window, and saw this dozing doe. I started to play, with my headphones on, and I swear she heard it. Twitched a bit, looked in my direction, right at the moment that I first pressed down the keys. I thought I might have disturbed her repose. But she settled again, smiling sleepily. So I played, and watched her through the window. Soon she had one ear cocked in the air. Cross my heart and hope to die. It was too beautiful for words, a peculiar honour, even to imagine that perhaps she was listening to me.

.

mosquito bell

Tonight I'm tired of thinking, or trying to think, big thoughts. I want my mind to pipe down or pester some other guy for a while. I'd like to live for grass alone for just a day. Or maybe not grass... tree bark, or huckleberries. Earthworms. Turn my conscious mind to a singular purpose, keep it there, undistracted, unhurried, unharried, unharassed, for hours at a stretch.

An old mug,
too heavy to
hold comfortably
until it's empty -
and then
who wants to
hold it?

..

Maestro, Digitalis, Hellfire Inferno

I am always pleased by the sight of foxgloves. For I always imagine elegant foxes adorning their paws with Digitalis Purpurea, gingerly trying the silky bells on for size...

[Warning: I'm letting myself go to town on adjectives and extravagant descriptions today. Prepare yourself.]

A dull-looking day. Nonetheless, beautiful to be out in. I am guilty of complaining about cloudy blah-days. The thing is, once I push myself out the door, I realize that the essence of a day is about much more than the colour of sky. I just came in from a long, sweet walk. The ocean air comes into the lungs like a tonic, expunging staleness, evicting sourness, eradicating boredom, exfoliating the senses!

Esther agrees.

The tide was low, so I was able to explore around the corners of beaches, scuttle over rocks and seaweed, revel in the naked barnacles and slippery ocean life. And then I entered the forest, a green tunnel of damp earthiness, vast verdant swaths of foliage, and chortling birdsong. There is so much to love about the BC coast - the view from my window does not touch it. Inside, it is quiet and pleasant. But there's a certain deception in this little shell. There's warmth and safety, but also isolation from the breezes and the sounds and smells and shifting moods of the trees and sky. I need to get outside every day or I forget this.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young...

Yesterday I watched a film about Maestro Valery Gergiev. I am still feeling the effects of it. Awe and longing. I think in my heart of hearts, I yearn to conduct an orchestra. Or to play in one. (More to the point, to play in an orchestra conducted by Gergiev.) Or... the Ultimate Dream: to compose for orchestras.

I am glad that I am a pianist - perhaps I would never have taken to any other instrument. But there is rarely a place for a pianist in an orchestra - except as a soloist. When I'd finished my ARCT, I knew that my chances of becoming a concert pianist at the concerto-soloist level were about equal to my chances of becoming an Olympic triathlete. I torture myself sometimes by wondering if I would be playing in orchestras now if I had learned the cello or bassoon instead. Then again... if that was the case, I would quite likely not be writing music - as the piano is such an excellent tool for composition. So then I torture myself further by wondering if I could be composing symphonies and concertos instead of songs, if I had devoted myself to composition right after high school - had spent the years since then in European Academies, studying with great Masters.

I did not include the 3rd stanza of e.e. cummings' poem (above), because the first 2 stanzas speak perfectly to me. But the 3rd does not.

(and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile)

I feel a note of resignation when I read those lines. They turn down a path to which I dig in my heels. I've known this poem from heart for some time - and I realized yesterday, after watching Gergiev, that I feel a pang of hollowness and regret at "do nothing usefully". It's not that I take those lines literally - I too love art because it is, in a sense, 'use-less'. It's that they evoke in me a feeling of humility and insignificance that I relate to a little too strongly.

Walking, yesterday and today, letting my mind drift about, I found certain bare patches inside me - hungry places. I tried to discern if the familiar sense of uselessness and not-good-enough-ness was just a result of comparing myself to Gergiev. (How could I compare myself to Gergiev?!?!) I doubt there could be more than a few handfuls of people on this entire planet with his passion, drive, enormity of spirit, and staggering talent. It's beyond comprehension. I don't need to be such a God-like creature.... I am but a modest little being with a wish to make some contribution to the world. Gergiev studied in the same rooms as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Borodin, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev.... He was raised in their footsteps, in the richness of that tradition. Thinking about this, I feel like an ambitious ant in a parade of elephants.

My heart and mind are thirsty, hungry - but are they fearless and supple? I take my steps forward inchingly, because even inching is sometimes hard and overwhelming. I do what I can when I can, because if I let the weight of my expectations ride upon my back, they crush me. But am I too gentle on myself? Will my lenience, in the end, leave me so short of the mark that I will have bitter regrets for not pushing myself harder? What is 'the mark' to me, anyways?

I feel confident about the path I am on, and pretty overjoyed to be on it. Overjoyed to have given myself permission to live this life. Overjoyed to be creating and performing my own music. But that hunger is pacing around like a tiger in my belly. Hunger for more. It's easy to be hard on myself and wish that I had acquired more skills by now. There's no point in doing that - it doesn't help me in any way. The only thing I can do is assess the present and ask myself if there is something that I could be doing that would be more satisfying now, make me happier now.

One thing continually comes to mind: Writing for larger ensembles. Writing outside of my little niche. Learning how to orchestrate. Hell's bells, I think I've just hit the nail on the head. I have a fear that I might be venturing down a street with a dead end. I'm afraid that if I keep writing songs in my own convention, that I will get bored of my song-writing and find myself not knowing how to do anything else. I don't want to be confined to writing tunes for a band. I want to write string quartets! I want to write for brass ensembles! I want to write suites for orchestra! I want to PLAY with an orchestra... And I'm not talking about 'Symphony Pops' garbage.

I read something once that said that Fear is a signpost that says you're going in the right direction. The scarier something is, the closer you are getting to the real Essence of what you want. Again, it's the dragon guarding the treasure. Delving into 'real' composition scares the hell out of me, because I don't think I'm capable of doing it. And because composition sometimes seems like a mysterious elusive alluring dangerous hypnotizing Being that I don't know how to approach.

I feel that I'm a dabbler. Like someone who dabbles in the Occult, but stays safely on the fringe.
I fear It will eat my Soul, or that my Soul will eat It. Yet.... I yearn for it so passionately. I listen to 5 minutes of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or Rachmaninoff's 3rd, and I want to both step into the fire and run away from it. I don't care what anyone says... there is nothing more ecstatically/horrifically elemental than an orchestra united in an exquisite inferno of music. Aaaaaaghhhhhhh.

What to do, what to do? I don't want to turn my life upside-down and toss out my plans. They are still valid. But... maybe I apply for a grant to go study orchestration with a composition teacher for a few months somewhere. Or maybe I just start working with an orchestration programme like Sibelius, and learn how to do it hack-style, on the computer. (Ergh, that appeals much less.) I'll have to give this some thought, and see if I still feel this way in a few days, after the Gergiev spell wears off. I think I will - this was a deep primal reaction and I know it's been there all the way along. Maybe I find a teacher in the French Caribbean and I combine my studies with my winter-getaway? Mmm - now we're getting closer to the mark! (Honestly. Why must the great music centres of the world be located in such miserable climes? Russia in Jan/Feb/Mar? No thank you.)

This blog is starting to outgrow its breeches. I'd better finish off. My keyboard is staring at me, leering even. It's losing respect for me by the minute...

..

moving bricks around

Re: the clarity I was writing about yesterday.

I knew that there was some obstruction in my path. Yesterday I finally saw it and named it. It was nothing more than a goal/expectation that I'd formulated a long time ago and become attached to for no good reason. Before yesterday, I hadn't scrutinized it carefully, and once I gave it some serious attention, it excused itself and quickly left the room. Interesting. Ideas can be so very powerful. The only things shaping my future and my path (apart from uncontrollable events) are my intentions, my actions, and my expectations. I can feel clear about my intentions, but my expectations are often not in proportion, and they can affect my actions and distort my intentions. (Why is everything so circular and cyclical like that?)

I like the Buddhist precept of non-attachment to beliefs and ideas. It's obviously important to be rooted strongly in both, but maybe it's also important to be able to let go of them when they are no longer helpful or relevant. We really let our identities become defined by our ideas and beliefs, as if they are non-changing characteristics like eye colour or ethnicity. But I want to stay open to change in all ways, and notice (like in this particular instance) when I’m getting stuck on an idea that is simply not helping me to move forward.

Removing that obstruction opened the channels; my mind is moving freely again, and ideas are flowing. Now I have a one-year game-plan that feels right. When I think through it, it feels manageable, attainable, but still really challenging and full. Here’s the quick run-down:

June – send CDs to media in Europe; plan show for birthday

July – rehearse with band; play birthday show; start planning September show

Aug – rehearse with larger band; prep for September show (get publicist); find contacts in Scandinavia

Sept – promote show; rehearse and play show; start booking May tour; apply for Music BC tour grant

Oct – apply for Can Council Career Development grant to hire publicist and media manager; apply for Factor Recording grant; more tour-booking

Nov – apply for Can Council Music Project grant for composition/living subsidy; more tour booking

Dec – apply to music festivals internationally; rehearse and play show with Andy’s band

Jan/Feb/Mar – relocate to Costa Rica or the like; play solo shows; finalize May tour

Apr – major tour prep and rehearsal; apply for Can Council Concert Production/Rehearsal and Can Council Intl Touring grants

May – apply for Banff Indie Band Residency. Leave for solo tour in Scandinavia

June – rehearse for festivals and plan for new album

Summer/Fall? - festivals, new album, etc etc

*((It also goes without saying that throughout the year, I will continue to practice and write on an as-close-to-everyday basis as possible.)

Man, it feels so good to have a game plan. It's not about adhering to it strictly. Maybe lots of these items will change and I need to be open to that. But for now, I have an intention and motivation again, and it feels exciting and good.

.

devil's club

This is the little patch of earth under two big maple trees that I am calling my garden. It doesn't look much like a garden now and I don't really mean for it ever to look like a garden. It's just an area that was overgrown and weedy, and now is open and clear.

This is a 'before' shot, when my garden was full of hollies and hawthornes and salmonberries and other aggressive and fiercely armed plants. To be fair, I like wild and weedy underbrush. I just thought it would be nice, under these particular trees, to create some space for new things to grow. And there really is something so lovely about a bare woodland carpet of composting leaves and needles. One just wants to lie down then and there, amongst the scuttling beetles and the smell of woolly earth and sleep deep and long.


I was able to escape the city today, and I feel so much better, infinitely better than I did yesterday. My mind has replaced the images of packed streets and garbage and cars and glassy buildings with whole, frank beauty.

I'm sitting outside right now in a silence speckled with bird calls. The blue of the evening sky looks much the same as this morning's blue, but the air smells of cooling grass and dews falling - so different from the rising scent of a new day.

I'm getting back the sense of direction and purpose that I've felt estranged from these last few weeks. Found some clarity today. Who knows why. After so many days of low-pressure, drooping grey skies, it was just a relief to get a day of sunshine. Ah, my fickle fair-weather heart.

I do my best under a ceiling of clouds, but I can't help but pine for the brilliance of the sun's unshrouded light. There is nothing, nothing like standing under a deciduous canopy and looking up into the diaphanous skin, veins and glowing chlorophyll of the new leaves, watching the shadows dance and change, all from a breeze so slight as to be undetected by the senses. Nothing illuminates the essence of things like the sun. Nothing lays everything so transparent and naked.

I needed that today - I've been feeling like a dense mass of confusion and conflict, and I needed a glimpse into the simple perfection of life, needed to feel my own transparency. It's amazing how mental and emotional states obscure reality. I'm just water and colourful cells busily working, with a mind whirring away, creating problems and fantasies, and a life source that connects and feeds me but is too mysterious to comprehend. Not quite so impenetrable and hopeless after all, if I can just try to keep tabs on that ol' devil of delusion.

..

Ode to Cat

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Having a cat can be darn nice. Especially if your cat is part-rabbit, and easily enraptured by a morning pat.

coming back

Hmm. Well, I've probably lost all my readers by now. Hello, human being, if you're reading this.

The engine fell out of the cab and it took me a while to fix it, and put it back in. Man, you just can't trust machines anymore! Just when everything seems to be running so smoothly...

I've always found that the only thing as difficult as having no options is having too many. I'm at the base of a mountain and there are no paths. The way up the mountain IS the path, but the trails are too many, the choices limitless. I have no idea where any of them might lead.

People have teased me before about my addiction to metaphor. I was thinking about this the other day when I was in the garden. I realized that even in my attempts to understand why I always gravitate towards metaphors, I was starting to create a metaphor. To me, it's unavoidable. Everything is contained within everything. The workings of a garden seem to explain all that I encounter in this life - as do the rise and fall of seasons, the tides, a sea shell, a grove of trees, a human eye.... They're all just different translations of the same story. There is comfort in metaphor, the comfort of interconnectedness. It's just the only way that I know how to make sense of this life. For nature is and always has been my greatest teacher.

(How do things take root? How do things begin and how do they grow? How do they survive? It all starts with a seed, and the seed needs nourishing.)

My music was spread all over the piano, the floor, my bed, my desk. Heaps of fragments, scores of unfinished attempts, and piles of blank manuscript glaring at me. I realized suddenly that I needed it all to be in one book, where I could flip to and fro various pieces, and have all the fragile new fragments inside the cozy covers of a nice thick album of finished and partly-finished work. So this is what it looks like:

It's a comfort to me to be able to flip through the pages of music that, believe it or not, have come from me, from my mind. I can see that somehow, quite inexplicably, I have produced work, much of it that is of some value I think, and the likelihood is that I will continue to do so. It's heartening. In the last few weeks, I've strayed from my routine. I haven't been practicing, and I haven't had regular time for writing. At least 4 days of my week are spent in the city and I have not had the time or the space (or discipline) to fit any music into them. This is not sustainable - I can feel the erosion that has already begun. But this is just a question of logistics and schedule and discipline, and I'll figure it out. The greater concern, of course, is how to continue to move forward artistically as well as professionally.

My mind says - eeerrrblechhhh! -
I love having a project and a challenge. But it's pretty damn hard to decide on what that next challenge is going to be, and to commit to it. And if I don't decide, and commit, then I drift, and my energies trickle out in all directions, and all of my seedlings get just a tiny bit of very diffuse attention, and none of them flourish. So: I'm going to decide in the next couple days what to focus my energies on in the next while. Rather than having a to-do list that's a page long and completely broad and overwhelming, I've going to choose a few specific items, commit them to this blog, and track my progress. I feel relieved even to have decided that much. The first thing that will be on that list, just as a given, is spending time at the piano every day. And writing something down. Even if I can only squeeze in 15 minutes before I run out the door. I've made this commitment to myself a thousand times in this life, and will probably have to make it another thousand times or more. I make a promise, I break it, I make it again, I break it again.... I go away, I come back, I go away, I come back. This is practice. I may never ever be able to achieve anything more, but I remind myself that the point is not to stay forever on the path but to be able to return to it over and over again.

..

the inexplicable

I don't have anything to say; I only have words of others to share. I found a poem that I had printed out last summer that I had meant to memorize and then forgot about. I didn't remember it at all, but it seems that I must have known somehow that I would be needing it.

"But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence ofthe individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." - Rainer Maria Rilke

And tonight, flipping through pages, looking for something more to fill me. Nothing filled me, in the end. But I found some words that seemed to have come straight from my own psyche. (If only I could express things in such ways.)

A cold night - sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed, several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines through the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry
of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

-Ryokan

"... Strange, as if never charted
Stares my fortune untold.

Why is it I am bedded
Beneath this infinitude,
Fragrant like a meadow,
Hither and thither moved.

Calling out, yet fearing
Someone might hear the cry,
Destined to disappearing
Within another I."

-Rilke

Livin' the Blues

Sitting here in silence, thinking about all the times I've heard this emptiness in the silence. I hear it now - vastness and emptiness - and all the objects around me look hollow and frivolous. I'm floating in space.

Yesterday, I worked for hours in the garden. It feels good to sit in the earth, with bugs scuttling around and over me, feels good to put my naked hands in the dirt and pull out the weeds one by one. The weeds are quite pretty unto themselves, deserve a nicer name, but I am clearing them away for my little shade garden under the tall maples. I encountered roots, deep in the earth, thick and strong as rope, roots you could never imagine such little wisps of plants possessing. I suppose all life takes root first, and then it grows. Even before stalks have grown tall and buds have opened, roots of immeasurable strength and tenacity are spreading wide.

It's the way of life and it's also the cause of suffering. We cannot grow without roots; we go through our days attaching ourselves to whatever feeds us, and our roots are severed again and again. So as long as we live, we are bound to suffer, for we cannot live without forming attachments.

(The blackberry roots are shocking. I find a knot under the surface of the earth, follow it down with my shovel, take a firm grip, and pull. The soft loose soil gives way all around me as a network of long shaggy ropey wood pulls taut in all directions. There is no end to these roots. I can't pull them out.)

...

baskets and watches

An odd, unsettled weekend. I had high hopes of a gloriously sunny, spacious, time-to-recoup long weekend, but it's over now and I feel more agitated than when it started. I had the thought today that I may need a more secluded island. Bowen is unfortunately becoming something of a summer fair-ground. Alack. The solitary side of me is just way too high-maintenance.

I'm watching a wasp wander slowly around the surface of the couch. We pay little attention to each other. I think about putting him outside, but would rather just let him be. Maybe he's winding down towards death. Maybe he'd like to die on a soft cushion.

Earlier, I sat outside overlooking the water as the sun went down and the stars began to emerge, and everything was quiet save for the sound of three deer softly munching grass. It was the most peaceful hour of these last few weeks. I had a few moments of feeling very much like myself, saw the wider picture ever so briefly.

Momentum is a powerful force; I realize I am afraid to lose it. I am daunted by the work ahead of me, since I carry a great weight of ambitions and have at present only a limited supply of fuel. Needing time alone and time outside to refill my tanks, and also to clarify my goals and unload some of my expectations, the ones that are only going to bog me down.

Come, sweet May. Please, sweet May, bring us the sun.

.

home

On the airplane and heading home. Last night we played our last show, and I'm happy to say we kicked ass. Even if nobody knew it but us.

I've come to realize that a solo tour would be a very difficult and lonely venture. Not just for the lack of company, but for the lack of commiseration and connection. Audiences vary greatly from show to show. There will probably always be times when I'm met by blank uncomprehending stares. But it almost doesn't matter as long as I'm connected with my band. We look at each other, grinning, after every song. Exchange meaningful looks, laugh, exclaim - just get high on our own energy. Last night was the finest example of this. We've never been more locked in, precise but loose and free, energetically entwined. It was way too much fun, and I think the audience enjoyed it too.

It's apparently a known fact that Montreal audiences are cool, very cool. Someone tossed me a casual, 'Hey, c'est bon. It was good," with a look of gracious condescension. Even the opening band, whom I enthusiastically congratulated at length for their excellent set, was dispassionate. 'You guys sounded great,' full stop. Pretty hard to read. But that was the tone of the evening. Neutral, noncommittal, quite positive but with a whisper of snobbery, or arrogance, or perhaps just reserve. A far cry from the warm, generous camaraderie of my bandmates, the unabashed joie de vivre of my drummer and the kind and gentle humility of my bass player. I am so glad that I had them by my side through this tour, which was something of an initiation for me.

I burned through a pretty staggering amount of money for this tour, so I've got some serious budgeting to attend to when I get home. Lots of people would probably question my sanity for investing so much in an unprofitable, low-profile and modestly-attended tour. But it's worth it to me. Every real working musician knows you have to pay your dues, and the financial investment is really a show of good faith. 'With this money I thee wed…' I choose this life, with all its challenges, and I consider it to be an acceptance of terms to lay my money where my mouth is. I know it'll work out. It is incumbent on me to take risks. And, after all, what the hell else would I spend my money on, if not my life-long dreams? Distractions from my dreams? Compensation for not following my dreams? Screw that.

My ambitions are running high now. This tour gave me a good clear look at my strengths and weaknesses as a musician. I won't extrapolate on all the things I want to work on, but suffice it to say my to-do list is very very long.

.

from this morning

Freezing cold in Windsor - stepping out of the van, a biting wind, driving rain. A strange and quiet town, Detroit looming across the river. I hear such tales of Detroit; now I want to go there so badly. A semi-abandoned wretched half-glory, a place that calls to me.

Sitting in the back seat again; the guys are raising their fists, making battle sounds at the free jazz howlings. Talking the way guys do, reminiscing about shows, throwing around names of dozens of players I've never heard of. I'm in awe of them. They're older, and they've existed in a musical world that I've never so much as put one toe into… the world of heavy heavy jazz and free improvised creative music; my heart still hankers for that world. Will I ever go there or is it something I'm just meant to draw inspiration from and admire from a distance? There are certain aspects of my music that I feel satisfied with. But in other ways, I crave more power, almost violence, musical exorcisms. I don't know how to achieve it other than with a larger ensemble behind me. I want the force of a drumkit in my playing. The keyboard is frustratingly limiting. I can't push my energy through it the way I could with a real piano. I feel held back by my voice too. I just can't sing at the level of ferocity that the band is capable of, and short of screaming, I don't know how to get more volume from my lungs. Practice. Need to practice. I'm not so interested in making subtle, sensitive music right now unless I've got an audience that reaaaally wants to listen.

Last night was a 'listen with half of one ear while talking to my buddies' kind of crowd. They seemed to dig it. As per usual, it seemed to really hit home for 2 or 3 people, make a somewhat vague impression on a few more, and pass over the heads of all the rest of them. Confused feedback. "Dude. It was like: okay, whoa, where are we going now?!" There are 3 tunes in the set that are groove-based enough to wash over everything pleasantly; the rest of them leave people disoriented unless they're paying really close attention. And even then…
It's okay, I'm not surprised. I don't need to be more accessible, necessarily. I do want to have enough moments of direct communication, though, to make an impact on even the less-sensitive types. Maybe that's hoping for too much. Got lots to work on. Have to try to reign in my expectations and appreciate the small successes, not get too swept up in my desire to be better NOW. One more show, tomorrow night in Montreal.
.

the youngsters

Today is a day off, so I slept til noon and am now lying around drinking hot water with lemon and honey. I woke up with a big thick cloud in my chest, and a voice like a bullfrog. A new obstacle. This is typical... ever since I had a run of bad throat infections 8 or so years ago, every time I get a cold, my chest and voicebox get the worst of it. I'm not stressed yet. I don't have to sing til tomorrow night, and I'm doing steams every hour or so, which is already loosening things up. Ultimately, I can't do much other than rest. Worst case scenario for tomorrow is having to cancel the show, but I don't think I'll need to. If I'm careful and rest my voice completely, I think I'll be able to vocalize at 50% at least, and we'll beef up the instrumentals. The nice thing about this being my tour, is that the only person I can disappoint is myself. And it's up to me whether or not I want to give myself a hard time about it. I'm tired of being a mean boss.

Last night we played to a tiny little audience of youngsters in London. There were 12-15 people, and I'm sure none of them could've been a day over 24. I had a feeling that it was going to be a small show, and I didn't mind. The kids were the most enthusiastic, excited audience we've yet had. They were very vocal - sometimes cheering halfway through tunes, after a blazing riff. It made it a lot of fun. One girl, a member of the band who opened for us, came on stage after the show, and hugged me in total overwhelmment. She was almost speechless, and I had the sense that all of those kids were going to go tell all their friends about the show. We drove all day to get to London, and it might've felt like a waste. But it wasn't - truly it wasn't.
I should mention that earlier, when we were loading in, a man came up to me outside, and asked if I was "x". I said yes, I was, and he said, "I saw the article about you in the paper, and I was very moved by the story, and wanted to make you this dream-catcher." So he presented me with the said dream-catcher, and asked if he could take my picture and get my autograph. It was surreal, I tell you.

.

ghosts of Ontario

Earlier today:
Back in the van, relaxing again. Cruising along through beautiful Ontario countryside. It's a warm day, the sky is soft blue. Newborn leaves on the trees - that soft, luminous green. Ah, the sweet relief of being on the open road. A lot of chaos and hurry and flurry in the last 24 hours. I've got a prankster ghost following me around. I've been losing things regularly, and it's disconcerting, because I'm not one to lose things. The first thing that I lost, 5 days ago, was my ability to read parking restriction signs. (The resulted in the rental van being towed, riding bikes to a remote meat-packing district of Toronto, and a fee of $260 to recover the vehicle.) Then I lost my beautiful sheath of maps that I'd carefully prepared for our travels, with addresses and directions. Gone before our first day of driving. I also lost both copies of our itinerary. I lost my immunity to common germs, and landed a cold. And then, my crowning achievement, I lost my wallet. I put it on the roof of the van while getting gas yesterday. And then drove away. I realized this an hour later, when we were already rushing to make it to Ottawa for the show. In the midst of the ensuing self-recrimination, my phone rang for a radio interview (on-the-air) that I'd quite forgotten about. What trickery! What tomfoolery!
But it's all inconsequential. I have my cell phone, which means I can do anything. (Like cancel credit cards and call for directions and text friends for google maps.) It didn't take any wind out of my sails. You've gotta live for these pickles. These saaaavory pickles. Have to think of them as part of a long elaborate game, with pitfalls and obstacles and goblins to outsmart. It's a game of strategy and problem solving. Acceptance is the ultimate weapon. If you can accept the setbacks and not waste time resisting and working yourself into a state, then you can be more efficient at working out a solution. And a good deal of the time, if you let go of attachment to things going exactly as planned, then fate turns around and cuts you a break. This morning's case in point: I got a call from the Napanee police. Someone had turned in my wallet.
Last night's show was great. I was overly tired, so I had a few dicey moments at the beginning, but then my back-up generator kicked in, the beads of sweat began to form, and the music took care of itself. Another extremely attentive and supportive audience. The band is really crystallizing now, and I feel rock solid in my piano parts. But singing is still a challenge. So hard to strain to listen in that still-counter-intuitive way, to the voice coming out of the monitors and not my mouth, to stay in tune. I'm conscious that my voice is restrained because of this. It's not a handicap, and nobody would notice but me, but I know it could be a lot more powerful and expressive. I think it's something I'm only going to get better at with more practice playing shows. I also need to practice at home with the mic endlessly. I've just taken the singing for granted and been focused on the piano, and am now seeing the folly of this. The voice is the focal point for most people. It's the easiest element to connect to. We'll see how I do tonight, in London.

.

a blog from Thursday written on the road

Thursday morning:
Sitting in the back of the van, heading east towards Ottawa. The boys are in the front, vociferating about the state of the world to a soundtrack of heavy African grooves. It feels so good to be a backseat passenger, listening and observing, with nothing expected of me. I love a good roadtrip, especially when I can just be allowed to look out the window, read a little, write a little, and listen to music.
I'm really pleased with how last night's show went. An intimate venue, a small and really attentive crowd. A distinctly friendly vibe. It was a pleasure to play for such a listening and openly appreciative audience, and I believe we played really well. It was warm in there, and our energy was high. (I typically do not sweat unless I'm hiking up a mountain, but last night I was bathed - could feel the sweat dripping down my calves.) There were a few acquaintances in the crowd, some people who saw my interview in NOW magazine, someone else who heard me on the radio, somebody who just saw a poster. Really gratifying to see hard work paying off, even with just a few more fans. Had a lot of great feedback, the most rewarding of which was from my brother, a very discerning critic of all art forms, who'd never seen me play with my band before. Good news all round.
...

For my cd release back in December, I tried something new - had a dress made for me. I was excited about the idea at the time, but in the end it was not a great success. It was a fun costume but didn't say very much about who I am, other than that I have a theatrical side. I was covered from head to toe, and in the end I felt a bit like a 19th-century grandmother dressed for bed. Not the kind of image I want to project.
I love to perform but have always agonized about how to present myself physically. I can feel very uncomfortable on stage under the scrutiny of so many eyes. So I always feel at a loss when it comes to clothing.
I did something smart this time, and enlisted the help of my sister-in-law, a costume designer and stylist who could make a rhino look chic if she wanted to. She convinced me that a performer's visual image is important, and even crucial… a concept that I have been rather resistant to. After many long conversations, and many long hours of shopping, we found 3 dresses that will last me forever. They are sleek, classy, sophisticated, fresh, modern and slightly edgy. Beautiful quality and construction, bold, not fancy or ostentatious, but uniquely detailed, natural and elegant, unpretentious, effortlessly sexy. (Rather like what I hope my music to be.) They're all sleeveless and to the knee, and this was not easy for me to swallow at first. But my sister-in-law convinced me to show some skin. Not for the sake of being revealing, but because it's easier for people to connect to performers when they can see more of the body, and the body's movements. Also because I want to convey confidence and to get better at feeling good in my skin without hiding. The shoes are almost painfully high patent pumps that add a bad-ass ferocity to the look, and there is no jewellery. It adds a whole new level of polish to the performance that I feel good about. Even if it does still feel a bit foreign.
.

pre-show

Tonight I play a show in Toronto. This'll be the first time I've ever played my music in a different city. High time!
I don't feel too nervous - it will be a small and casual affair. But even so, I'm in that pre-performance zone that I always imagine is a bit like preparing for war. (If I may be so bold!)
I try to always imagine the worst case scenario... or maybe not the absolute worst case, but the realistic worst case scenario. Say: bad sound, can't hear myself properly, am distracted and screw up a bunch. Perhaps stumble in my heels. Maybe am overwhelmed by dry throat and have coughing fit. Maybe the clasp of my bra will pop open or I'll utter some horrible faux pas.
Can I live with that?
Yep. I've lived through it before. Many times. So, knowing I can handle the worst I'm ready to accept whatever goes down. (I think, I hope.)
I like to be clear about my intention before I perform, so I declare that my purpose this evening is to: Feel my feet on the floor, the ceiling above me, the space around me. Breathe low not high. Look straight out and trust my fingers, listen to my band, and just get high on the energy. Let whatever happens happen. Don't worry about the small things. Play for the one person in the room who will love the music. (Maybe there will be others.) Feel good in my body. Strong, upright, confident, poised, and not concerned - I repeat - not concerned with how anyone else looks or how anyone else thinks I look. This does not make or break anything; it's just practice and fun. Remember that it's an honour and a gift to have music to share, and I don't need to get anything back from the crowd if I'm enjoying my music and my band. Leave the ego at the door and play for Something Else.

.

Ahem.
In other news:
I leave on Friday for Toronto, to visit with my brother's family for 5 days, and then start my tour (my first tour for my own music). Toronto, Ottawa, London, Windsor, Montreal - in that order. If things had gone as planned, it would have been Windsor, London, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal - a nice straight line from west to east. However, booking a tour is, as I've discovered, not an easy thing to do, especially when you're as wonderfully unknown as I am. I had my doubts that it would ever come together. But I wrote that blog back in the Fall stating my intention to tour, and that intention somehow turned it into reality.

I feel significant rufflings of excitement when I think about the small steps my music is taking out into the world. Every now and again I hear from someone in some improbably distant country who has stumbled upon my music. It seems impossible, magic. I listened to a bit of my CD today. (Something I haven't done in quite a while.) Funny how quickly one becomes removed from one's work... it's already a bit of a stranger to me: a snapshot of what I sounded like one year ago, worked into a collage of musical energies and ideas charged with inspiration, circumstances, personalities and challenges. When I listen to it now, I feel a lot of gratitude for the 6 other people involved. I've never quite had this experience before. It's wondrous and still somewhat strange to have a project of my own that other people contribute to passionately. They all give me far more than the work I pay them for. Such a gift. I do hope that I never get to a place of entitlement or start to take it all for granted.

Back to the tour for a moment. I'm really pleased that this is happening, and that I managed to get it off the ground. A year ago I said to several people that I just couldn't imagine booking a tour. Way too hard and overwhelming. So I give myself a little pat on the back. Now, some new challenges: I'm going to book a 2012 European tour. Also, I need to play long weekend mini-tours around B.C. and try to conquer my own backyard a little bit before I head to Europe. I want to find a booking agent and a manager (good ones that I can trust), and get on top of the online media stuff. Get my website happening. I want to send my music to David Lynch and other filmmakers of that ilk. I need to be applying for all possible grants, and to make a list of all the festivals, internationally, that I'd like to play at, and note their application deadlines for next year. Find funding for the next album. Keep writing.
.

and bleeding hearts all in a row

Every year when May arrives, I realize that it's my favourite month. The same thing happens in July and October. My senses forget the other seasons, and refuse to believe that anything but the present could be so beautiful and wholly perfect. Pollens and nectar of blossoms are in every breath of air. Certain unseen but familiar-singing birds that have been missing are back. Trees are opening up into colours and shapes we'd all forgotten. There is a core of coolness in the air but the sun has brawn again. At lunch, lying on a verge under a tree, the brightness lit my closed lids a deep red and when I opened my eyes, everything was purple and mysterious, the colour of a veiled world warming back into life. May has a wind that comes into the lungs like a draught of vintage. It gives me a longing for sensuousness and depth to equal the petals of spring in their thick-folded softness. All creatures are thirsty for new life, I suppose, and want to bloom somehow. I do not mind being mate-less. But the workings of the earth and sun make me want romance as much as any flower or row of bleeding hearts.


.

lustre and breeze

I hiked up Gardner today with the wolf-dog again. This is what it looked like, although not exactly, because my camera batteries died. (This is a substitute picture taken a few years ago.)
I love to hike alone with a dog. I love not to talk, and to go at my own pace. There were other hikers on the mountain today, and I altered my route several times to avoid them. Because even distant loud voices, carrying through the trees, destroys the magic of being alone in the woods. There is something very steadying about this dog's company, and her soundless tread on the path before me. It's a beautiful thing to watch her large wolf paws springing along, her keen nose and ears working to translate all the stimuli of the environment. I can imagine her as a wild creature traveling for miles across mountains and plains; it is easy to fall into the romance of our adventure together, and imagine that she is growing as fond of me as I am of her.
At the top of the mountain, there was an enormous raven. A completely perfect specimen - lustrous, calculating, powerful. I've never been close enough to a raven to see all the details of its strong wedge beak and its rich, glossy feather coat. It was perched on a rock close to a group of hikers, who paid absolutely no attention to its presence. Seemed so strange to me that anyone could ignore the startling proximity of such a magnificent animal. I just watched as the raven inched stealthily towards 2 bags left unattended, beak parted slightly in anticipation of lunch.

.