notes from the kelp

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music for two napping kitties.

It’s been bright and sunny outside. Foxes, raccoons, frogs, bucks, does, fawns, robins, eagles and hummingbirds pass by the picture windows at all hours of the day. But do these two notice? Nope. When you’ve got someone great to curl up with, the rest of the world just doesn’t exist.

And by the way, these guys give a big paws up to the growing number of U.S. states finally legalizing same sex marriage. Here’s to purrogress!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Prelude to the afternoon of a fawn.

Truth in advertising.
Here is a little behind, along with its mama’s larger one. Not a great pic, but the best I could do while washing the dishes, spotting the pair, and snapping them quickly through the kitchen window.

There are few things cuter than watching a newborn fawn closely follow its mother as it discovers what this world is all about. So far, it has learned about my wood chopping pile, the salal-draped shore pine forest around it (salal is the low green plant you see in the pic), the neon blue dragon flies that buzz everywhere, my garbage and recycling bins, the endless sound of all the birds and frogs in the trees, and the way the driveway gravel feels under those little hooves. I am hoping that s/he does not get an object lesson about cars. This is a dead end rural road that sees very few four-wheeled critters each day, but there are way too many sad stories on this island of car versus deer. A losing proposition on both sides of the windshield.

I, too, am a little behind. Not only because I am a fairly small person (when people meet me who have only seen me on the web, they’re often surprised by this and proclaim that gee, they always thought I was much taller/bigger/whatever… maybe my photos make me look like Compozilla, the monster whose notes attacked Cleveland?). No, not only that. But because I’ve finally been home for a length of time, and the amount of catch up in all realms– music, social, house stuff, island stuff– has been enough to keep me in the moment of living my life, rather than the post-modern pursuit of reporting about living it. Thus, I’ve fallen a little behind on my regular blogging schedule.

This, however, will change. Enough cool things are going on that I’ll take some time to describe them in upcoming posts. I started to find it ironic this spring that one of the key things that I go around the country speaking about for workshops, conferences, and university classes, is the great professional benefit of being present and interactive on the web, 24/7. And yet, due to being so busy talking about it, I was having less and less time to do it!

Web presence is much more than static website updates– it means consistently creating new material and information to pop across people’s pixels that plugs them purposefully into a perception of one’s personhood. Sorry, just had to do that. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, listservs, and the endlessly engaging blogs out there that deal with pithy matter (as opposed to my often defiantly un-pithy matter here in kelpville), all serve as serendipitous portals to income-producing careers. It’s been working consistently this way for me for quite a while, and so I like to inform and encourage my peers as well, that they might experience similarly happy results.

I joke that apparently, the key to success in my business is to move to a remote, bridge-less island floating out in the middle of nowhere that many have never heard of. Works like a charm– my composing career has never been so busy since moving far away from a big city two years ago. So I guess this makes me a bit of a musical guinea pig. Oink! Maybe my next piece will be for swine flute.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Island time.

I like the pic of the little puddle jumper taking me away from Friday Harbor, but I much prefer the two that show me coming back (yes, that’s a landing strip and not someone’s driveway). I’m home to stay put for a while and write a whole bunch of music notes! Hooray! And, to spend time outside in this glorious weather. After twenty four years in southern California, living in a place where seasons noticeably delineate one’s outdoor activities is still a real change, even into a third summer living on the island. Today was nearly eighty degrees, and despite my ever-present music delivery deadlines, I couldn’t help but spend a couple of hours working on tidying up the decks and the landscaping. It felt great to do a little huffing and puffing in the sunshine, and I suspect that the notes that emerge tomorrow will reflect all that light, too. Summer, while it lasts, is as precious as any creative inspiration.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Ooooh. Aahhh.

Back from NYC this weekend. Leave again for NYC on Wednesday. Despite ping-ponging myself across an invisible net due to an unusual amount of cross country traveling recently, the minute I get back here to San Juan Island I make damn sure to let the ball rest and put my gears into neutral. That doesn’t mean not working; I’ve got several commissions nagging for my attention and a ton of followup correspondence that guarantees I’ll never see the picture waiting on the bottom of a clean, empty email inbox. What neutral means to me is what you see above: the ability to just stop and gaze in awe at something so exquisitely peaceful that it puts everything else in immediate perspective. Like lots of my colleagues, despite the proclaimed holiday, I’m working in my studio. But I’m also working at being a whole person who won’t ignore what’s just outside that studio door. Aaaahhhh…..

…click to listen:

…about the music

Quite a view.

One of the many joys of self employment is the ability to play hooky. On Friday we walked onto the ferry and chugged over to neighboring Orcas island, where friends picked us up at the landing. They took us to a beautiful spot we’d never seen, except from our own island: the peak of Mt. Constitution. 2400 feet up is actually quite a lot if everything else around you is far closer to sea level. Despite a little haze, it was spectacular to get a cartographer’s view of this entire area, from Canada to the mainland. I particularly love poring over the framed legends at lookout points such as this one, trying to exactly match up someone’s [not always exact] drawings of what’s in front of me. The expanse was awesome; I think my eyes needed a passport.

Click either graphic above to watch the show.

I’m so consumed with my First Life that I barely have time for a Second Life. But for the third time, I’ve had the pleasure of being a real guest in a compelling virtual world. I’m convinced that this alternative, parallel venue is going to become as significant as anything else to which our attention and time are tethered on the internet. And just as with Twitter, while I don’t yet participate much, I fully believe in its power.

If you click on a graphic above, you’ll be led to a page that will demand your patience as it loads up the stream of Music Academy Onlive’s latest show for Second Life Cable Network, hosted by Benton Wunderlich (Dave Schwartz, in Life, Version 1.0). You can let it do its thing in the background while you surf the net, do your laundry, or get some of your own actual work done. At some point, the Quicktime video will be ready to go and after a general introduction, you can hear two of my electroacoustic works in their entirety: Below, for contrabass flute, electronics, and Pacific Humpback Whale (who has the best pitch of us all) performed by Peter Sheridan, and Desert Tide, for soprano saxophone and electronics, performed by Doug Masek.

About halfway in, after the music, there’s a 25-minute interview with me during which I do my best to be mildly interesting and entertaining. Remember what you paid to watch it, folks. Heck, the top I’m wearing (or what’s left of it) and those nice gams of mine in the long shots are worth checking out, if only to see what I might never have the nerve to wear on a show in Life Number One.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Below, from above.

I’ve got an active life that’s spread around the country and filled with what’s probably an unusually wide range of experiences, in composing, publishing, public speaking, marine sciences, nature, and education. It’s great! But I have to admit that it’s been so busy these days, that when someone asks me where I just came from or what I just did, I initially draw a blank, stare at them with that “deer in headlights” look, and struggle to remember the last, no doubt delightful, thing I just came from.

Along these lines, I also confess that there are times on the road when I open my eyes and for a few moments, actually cannot remember where I am. This is an unsettling yet simultaneously hilarious feeling. It often strikes me when I awaken by the edge of a runway at SeaTac. No, not splayed out on the tarmac like a forgotten piece of Samsonite. In a bed. Airport hotels are a version of purgatory for business travelers. If I’m in one of them, I’m not at home, but I’m not at my destination, either.

Last week, this odd, dislocated sensation hit me as I walked into a cocktail reception. I recognized many of the familiar faces holding their drinks, because I had seen most of these colleagues in identical poses in Los Angeles at a reception two weeks earlier, and at another reception in Manhattan only two days earlier. Suddenly, I could not for the life of me remember what city I was in. No clues were to be found in the people or their beverages, and the Very Upscale Hotel we were in looked remarkably like all the other Very Upscale Hotels I’d just been in. After about 40 bewildered seconds (a long time to not have a clue as to where you are on the planet Earth) I finally remembered: Washington, D.C.

Even with my schedule right now, at least I’m home for between four and nine days at a time; luxury! How my fellow gigging, touring road warrior musician pals do it, hundreds of performances a year, I’ll never know. Hat’s off to them.

I realize that I usually write largely about two things on this blog: my life in nature, and my life in the air. Rarely do I devote much space to specific commentary on what it is I actually do when I am not doing all the things you read about here: music. I compose music. Lots of it. I’ve been considering shifting the tone of this blog just a tad, to include a little more musically and professionally relevant subject matter so that you can see that there is more to my life than banana slugs, algae, cute furry animals and airline tickets. The months of April and May alone offer a pretty good snapshot of my diverse existence, so for those at home keeping score (and I think this includes me), here we go:

Giving workshops on career building for composers, hosted by the American Composers Forum and held at McNally Smith College in St. Paul, MN;

Meeting with concert music and pop music production people in Nashville, TN;

Speaking about music artists’ best uses of the internet at the ASCAP Expo conference in Los Angeles, CA;

Hiking and driving through Joshua Tree National Park near Twentynine Palms, CA;

Attending a dinner party on a magnificent, 47-acre waterfront estate on San Juan Island, WA;

Attending a board meeting of the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories in Friday Harbor, WA;

Attending a board meeting and awards reception of the American Music Center in New York, NY;

Lobbying senators and congressmen with the ASCAP board and legal staff about the rights of music creators to receive payment for the digital downloads of audiovisual works that include our music, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.;

Attending the annual Spring Street International School auction dinner in Friday Harbor, WA;

Appearing as a guest on the Second Life Cable Network TV show in the virtual world (cheap airfare!);

Sailing on the Friday Harbor Labs research vessel Centennial (in April AND May!), taking video and photos of the dredges the scientists conduct from the ocean floor around the San Juan Islands, WA;

Hiking with friends on Orcas Island, WA;

Attending the Academy of Arts and Letters luncheon and Ceremonial in New York, NY;

Attending the ASCAP concert music awards in New York, NY;

and so on….

None of the above includes all the business I do at my desk (or that of a hotel room), or all the music I play, write and record in my studio. Or, all the kitty litter I scoop and cat hair I vacuum up when I’m procrastinating from those previous two things. Nor does it list the many wonderful meals I share with friends and of course, with Charles, who, despite being contractually obligated to be so, is exceptionally supportive of all that I do, even though I’m not always doing it nearby.

Just reading this list makes me dizzy. And, happy. Living a bifurcated life that is interchangeably rural and urban, as well as both significantly hermetic and intensely social, is an oxymoron and a joy. That probably makes me a joyous moron. For now, when someone asks me where I just came from or what I just did, rather than draw a blank and stare at them with that “deer in headlights” look, I’ll just point them to today’s blog post!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Notes from the past.

On the heels of several very fun and hectic days speaking, mentoring and participating at ASCAP’s Expo in Hollywood, I stole– no, made– two days for myself. Knowing that I was about to spend as many nights in May on the road as on my music deadlines at home, I revisited a place that has consistently made me peaceful and awe-inspired for 25 years: Joshua Tree National Park.

All those years bring with them a landscape of history, both geological, and personal. Staring out to enormous expanses beyond the deceptively furry looking tips of cholla cactus and ocotillo, my mind galloped across private, sometimes rocky terrain. Memories arose of camping, rock scrambling, friends, wildlife encounters, long drives and the endless drama of angry weather systems. I was in the present and in the past, simultaneously. It was wonderful.

I had slept directly under rocks that balanced precariously and impossibly as they awaited the next temblor, a few miles away from the quite visible San Andreas Fault. I had slept in the open, covered by nothing more than a sleeping bag that could have been nocturnal haven to scorpions or rattlers, but thankfully provided only a fuzzy bunny rabbit sniffing my feet at dawn. I had slept in tents erected in winds so strong as to nearly make me give up trying to pitch them. I had slept looking up at stars so bright as to make me question everything I ever imagined about the universe. And I had awoken, so many, many times over 25 years, to insights about my place in nature, and my place outside of it.

Driving back to Los Angeles to fly home, I absolutely had to stop at one of southern California’s cheesiest and silliest roadside attractions: the dinos at Cabazon. If a culture does not have pyramids one can enter, well, a Brontosaurus or T. Rex is surely the next best thing.

Past and present. I will always make time.

…about the music

A lovely collartboration.

I was charmed when British painter Simon Kenevan contacted me out the the blue last year after stumbling upon my music, several CDs of which he then ordered. What led him to me? Well, in a quick quest for visual stimulus to inspire his next work, Simon did a Google image search. Blanketed by a groggy, morning coffee haze familiar to many of us, he randomly typed in the word, “flotsam.”

Right. “Flotsam” and “chamber music composer” fit hand and glove, don’t they?

As he wrote me later, “Up came a nice photo of you in amongst seaweed, dead jellyfish, stuff like that. So you kind of stood out.”
Thank goodness for that. And I might add, I smell a tad better, too.

A year later, Simon is creating the third in what may be an ongoing series of what I’ve dubbed “collartborations”: videos that pair his painting process with one of my pieces. We are both sea-loving artists, and it has been a natural fit. More natural, even, than “flotsam” and “chamber music composer.”
Imagine that.
I do love the internet.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Don’t wanna slip up.

Here’s my new pal, Sluggo, a Pacific banana slug who nearly became an ex-slug, when I almost slipped on this banana while hiking near Point Caution yesterday. Lucky fella.

And lucky me, that you’re still reading this e-tome despite my less than frequent postings! I promise to do better. As seen below, it’s been a whirlwind time and I’d much rather post pix from this pix-turesque island than from the many airports I continue to get to know far too well. Trust me, the scenery here is far more interesting, even if you don’t care for squishy things.

In the early morning I’ll head out on the Friday Harbor Labs research vessel, the Centennial, captained by our brilliant friend and former lab executive director Dennis Willows. Along for the ride with marine scientists and educators, I’m hoping not only to come back with a mucky memento or two from the sea floor, but with some cool video and photos, as well!

…click to listen:

…about the music

A sonata for the senses.

Last week: St. Paul. Today: Seattle. Tomorrow: Nashville. Two weeks later: Los Angeles. Four days after that: New York City. And so on. Yup, anyone taking a gander at my professional e-presence has a good idea of how often I fling myself around the country for All Things Music Related.

But each time I bounce back onto this little rock of an island, I take advantage of what is so unique and exquisite about it: pretty much everything. Woods and sea coexist right next to each other. Yesterday, I took a hike that brought me through dense, old-growth forest, with thick undergrowth of huge ferns, and even thicker moss: almost the same moist environment of our neighboring Olympic Rainforest across the strait, except minus the… rain. After a very steep climb, followed by a teaser of a long descent that felt disheartening, since the point was to go UP to the crest, rather than back DOWN to the beach, the trail finally caused me to huff and puff some more as it roared at a good angle up from the enchanted forest to a sudden expanse of miles and miles of open vista.

Stunning. Those are the Olympics, across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. Turning to the left, is the south end of San Juan Island with the little lighthouse at Cattle Point, with the southern mini-isles of Lopez Island beckoning in the distance.

As I stood in the field, my eye still squinting from the contrast from dark forest to bright sunlight, an adult bald eagle swooped from behind, a few yards over my head. I gasped. These are huge birds. What a moment. No time to grab the camera.

But other critters along my path moved a little slower: a young fox, still in his black-coated stage, and an adorable garter snake who, if he didn’t keep moving, was going to become someone’s lunch (no, not mine; I’m not into snushi). Usually I don’t allow myself to interact closely with the animals, but I couldn’t resist gently picking up the little snake and feeling it’s incredibly smooth, soft skin glide through my fingers.

Just look at that cute face! I miss snakes. A piece of trivia about my sordid, wild past: I used to breed pythons as a hobby, and was an active member of the local herpetological society in the San Fernando Valley back in the 80’s. At one point I probably had about 40 different kinds of snakes, ranging from a 19 foot long Burmese (yes, you read that number correctly) and several other Reticulateds and boas, to corn snakes, king snakes and yes, garters like this one. Even a rattlesnake, who was actually very sweet. Plus, a few frog and lizards. I always wanted a turtle; never had one. Yet.

And no, I did not have cats when I had pythons. Bad combo. Particularly for the cats.

You can see a much better pic I shot last summer of a similar fox here and some good ones of an adult here.

So thanks for sharing my walk with me. As the weather warms (IF it ever warms: I think many of us around the country are having a colder than usual spring), there will be a lot more of these, because I plan to stay put much more on this lovely piece of floating heaven. It always pulls at my senses to leave, and it always tugs at my heart in the best way, to return.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Purrfect.

On the heated floor, in front of the kitchen sync.
Obviously, an audition for the next Esther Williams movie.
Their agent will call soon to inform them that they got the parts.

If it is not already painfully clear, it takes very, very little to amuse me.