notes from the kelp

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…about the music

Evensong Suite: Postlude. For Moses.

I’m hoping that absence makes the blog readers’ hearts grow fonder, since I’ve been AWOL on this page for a full three weeks. And full they have been, from lows to highs, with little in between. I’m lucky to be able to say that most everything these days has been a “high.” Almost everything. As I’ll share in my next post.

Twinkling above these words are the deep set eyes of a not-quite-two-year-old miniature Alex, clutching her new, instantly beloved stuffed yellow-eyed black kitty with a grip so unrelenting that we’re all grateful that Aunt Connie didn’t give me a real kitten for Christmas, 1963. I loved cats from that moment on, and since being on my own from age 18, I’ve almost never lived without a couple of strays underfoot: a Maine coon, a Siamese, and various white, orange and grey mottled mutts who all managed to find their way to my address. The fact that there’s a neon sign over my door that blares “Sucker inside: free buffet” has nothing to do with it. Really.

Fast forward exactly 35 years to Christmas week, 1998. A large, scruffy adult black cat with a healed torn ear, a scar on his chin, and a voracious appetite for the doves on my feeder, started visiting my Malibu house every day. Even when the birds flew off, he remained. I’d step outside to cautiously pet him. In a day or two I started holding him. And soon after, I’d take him inside with me while I worked for a while, if only to protect him from more coyote attacks in those dense hillside woods above the sea. Each time I’d return him to the great outdoors, he’d nip at my ankles. He chose me. And he wanted to be an inside cat. I named him Moses for three reasons: that month, I was composing an Evensong Suite for a Los Angeles Episcopal church, and the bible reading for the service was to be Moses and the Burning Bush. And just like that fellow in the Bible, this cat happened to show up at the right house in the neighborhood, with someone who would care for him. And, the month before, my father had died. His father’s middle name was Moses.

My longest stable relationship with a male ended October 19th, when the kindest vet on our island came over and released old Moses, now probably 18 or 19, from the painful results of chronology. I sobbed for two days straight. Mo was the silent witness to twelve important, and sometimes tumultuous, years of my life. He was my constant companion in any place I happened to be, which included the shower, where he would walk right in and stand under the water with me, purring even louder when I’d reach down to pet his wet body with my wet hand. And as readers of this blog know, he loved his adopted bro Smudge; I have almost no photos of one without the other. This cat slept every night tucked under my chin or my arm, and could never be held tight or close enough. Little almost-two Alex finally had her real-life black kitty. I’m so grateful.

During Moses’s final two days, I happened to be finishing the last measures of one of the darkest, most haunting pieces I’ve composed: a work for piano and prerecorded digital audio that Teresa McCollough premiered brilliantly four nights ago at Santa Clara University, titled Vendaval de Luvina. I could never have intentionally timed the alignment of my delivery of this bleak piece and the reality of my life that week, but it was quite intense. I reached the double barline as Moses lay atop my left foot in a near coma, a few hours before we said a final goodbye to each other. The piece, like the moment, offers a heartbreaking release, and I’m told that the emotion translated to the audience that night. My congratulations to Teresa, and my love to Moses. Art, love, and life, are inseparable.

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…about the music

Mood music.

Last week an orgy broke out around my studio (endlessly inspiring for my music-making, lemme tell ya). Many, many presumably happy pairs of insects, presumably happily paired up, were glombed to the exterior of my picture windows at the height of their insect passion (whatever heights they might reach. Frankly, gazing at them in their stillness, I had to wonder what it did, or perhaps didn’t, feel like to get it on in the entomology world). If these couples were looking for a cheap motel with a nice romantic view, they found it. Room, maid and wake-up service, however, cost them extra. For those of you reading this with a fetish for long thin legs, you’ve hit your booty jackpot for the day. Enjoy!

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…about the music

Unsafe driving.

From fishy, to squishy. This beautiful Pacific banana slug would have become part of my gravel driveway had I not happened to 1. need to open the passenger door to place something on the seat and 2. looked down as I approached the car. Lucky fella. In my continuing role as Relocator to the Hapless, I escorted all six inches of this creature off of my tire and onto safer territory, far from my questionable skills when in reverse. Or, for that matter, when behind the wheel at all.

I am in a rare moment of a relaxed, nearly giddy state: I finished and delivered another rather involved piece late last night, and am experiencing the happy illusion result of having a few minutes to catch up on everything and everyone I have been irresponsibly ignoring for the past couple of weeks while my muses and I held a 24/7 rave/séance. After I hit the “publish” button on this little post, I will do something my ever-tolerant friends know is nearly unheard of: pick up the damn phone and return a few calls.

Unsocial and hermetic as I can be sometimes (think, UnaComposer, complete with pajamas and peanut butter jar but minus the explosives), the larger reason for my lack of telephonic connectivity is not only because I enjoy email nearly as much as I enjoy vacuuming (yes, it’s true, I love to vacuum*, and you just can’t vacuum when you’re on the phone; for some reason, people consider that to be rude and annoying), but because I keep hours that make it impossible to call anyone in the United States at the time when I am most willing, able and interested. To wit: roughly between the hours of midnight and 4am, when I am taking a break from my nocturnal composing jags, or finishing up altogether for the evening. My colleagues and friends in Europe and Asia, however, are always amazed to receive responses to their emails from me in real time. Vampirism has its upside.

One state-side friend commented that it had been so long since he’d heard my voice, he’d taken to watching the videos of me on my website, just for a refresher course. So I am about to attack a too-long list of people I really adore and let my fingers do the dialing instead of the typing. Wish me luck: I might need a refresher course in how to use that technology. I think that you press some buttons and then hold the object up to one ear, and then amazingly, you can hear a voice coming out of the object. Gotta check this out!

*when I am stuck on a passage in a new piece, I am making no progress. Where there should be something, there is nothing. Frustrating. When I vacuum, I can see my progress: where there was something, now there is nothing. Rewarding. I think this could be the basis for my new religious belief: Retrograde Inversion Zen.

Safe driving.

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…about the music

Party on with your electric dreams.

Well, if I said, “jellyfish” again, you might not look.
This one was in the same place as the one three posts below. But bigger. Easily 20″ across. And she brought six smaller friends with her this afternoon. A party. They lined up to present themselves to my toes, floating in inches-deep water, suspended in their aging process as small waves lapped them perilously close to the rocky shore. They danced with the rockweed and allowed their bodies to give in to the moment. But they did not set tentacle upon land. The graces of the tides pulled them back out to sea, and to life. This time.

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…about the music

For whoever is under there.

Many people talk about being “over the moon” about something that makes them happy. The other evening as I worked, my eye caught sight of the rising moon’s magnificent shimmer on the sea, and I stepped outside and stood as motionless as possible in the silence to attempt to capture this moment. I was under the moon, with joy.

Sea duck.

See sea duck.

See sea duck flap.

See sea duck duck.

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…about the music

Just ducky.

Duck, as a verb.
A sea duck.
A Harlequin Duck, to be specific.
Clowning around, perhaps?

Welcome to my Saturday morning. The warm air of the equinox insisted that I have breakfast on the deck. Ok, I didn’t argue. Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, strong coffee, English muffin and jelly… fish. Some people get Jehovah’s Witnesses showing up unannounced at their door. I get this guy. A lion’s mane jelly, easily 16″ across; I’ve scribbled about them on these pages before because they just mesmerize me. It’s sad that I always see them at the very end of their life, but then again, given their ferocious sting, I think that’s better than the alternative.

Here’s a closer view of my morning friend for you:

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…about the music

A trio for my trio.

So, as I’m enjoying a silent conversation with this unexpected breakfast companion (good thing he didn’t have much to say; neither do I before noon), I hear a screech to my right. I turn my head, look up, and there’s one of the two mating bald eagles with a nest in this particular tree, hanging out, looking for his own Saturday brunch:

Here’s a closer view of him for you:

Ok, so I admit that my eggs and coffee got a little cold because I spent more time with a camera in my hand than a fork. But I can have breakfast anytime. Nature, it always seems to me, is fleeting. Catch it while we can.

Almost like a tornado…

It leans east and there’s a hint of color…

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…about the music

Drama from my desk.

Oooooh…

Oooooh…!!!!!

One of our fellow Kelphistos laid down the gauntlet a week or two ago, and challenged me to photograph rain.
I shall obey. Soon. When we have some.

But this… yes, this was rain. Intense rain, from afar. Borrowed from those wetter than I, for my personal visual delight. Rain that circled my island on three sides but barely landed. Sometime soon, I will explain the meaning of “rain shadow” to the non-locals reading this. You will hate us San Juanians even more.

So, lacking rain of my very own, I gazed out from my desk two afternoons ago (I am pinching myself to realize that yes, this is actually what I see while I’m aligning all those notes you hear) and watched this downpour appear to float above lovely and even-more-remote-than-me Waldron Island, with little Flattop in front of it tapped with a wand of technicolor grace.

Wow. I need not write a word more. The pictures say it all.

“Oh, please. Are you seriously going to make the French horns play that??”

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…about the music

Hornless here.

I get lots of visitors at my door, but few are as cute as this one, who, along with some family members, figured out quite a while ago that at the end of each day there’s still some birdseed left on the deck railing.

Personally, I just think he’s hanging around, hoping for an autograph. After all, I’m now officially a celebrity on this island, having unexpectedly stumbled across myself (ouch!) in Frommer’s Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands & the San Juan Islands.

What a hoot! Gotta get those 8 x 10 glossies ready…
But first, more birdseed!

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…about the music

Mood music.

… when you look like a parrot?

Nothing like a perfectly placed barnacle to morph one thing into another.
Can nature please attach a little barnacle to all my wrong notes, and turn them into all the right ones? Thank you.

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…about the music

A lovely distraction.

What is it about sunsets?
Each one different, each one compelling.
Theme, and variations.
Inspiration, and distraction.
Yup. Of the most riveting kind.

I can stare over the railing of the deck of this seafaring studio, more boat than house, really, and be transported each evening. Not just to the Canadian isles which dominate the western view, but to an other-worldly place of my imagination (ok, sometimes that’s Canada, but mostly it’s more like some parallel universe populated by alien creatures who neither resemble me in their Socialist leanings nor human life form).

At this upper latitude (48.4 degrees, if you’re interested, and yes, I can claim that I’m north of Canada), the sun still sets pretty late even as autumn nears, and the penumbra of color and glow lasts for a very, very long time. Long enough for me to think about all the things I should be doing instead of gazing mindlessly into the sunset. And long enough to think about how really, there’s nothing else in the world that’s more important to do. I like rotating around this elusive flaming star year after year: age improves my sense of priorities!

,

“Hey you! Cool lookin’ eagle-dude over there! Your fly is open!”

That was SO not funny.
Dumb human…

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…about the music

Don’t mess with nature. Especially when it has a sharp beak and even sharper talons…

“Uh oh…. uh, sorry… um… wait! I didn’t mean it… I was just kidding!… ack!… composers really don’t taste that great… all those sour notes… help!… HELP!… aaaaacccckkk!…”