notes from the kelp

…click to listen:

…about the music

Over the water once again.

It was a gorgeous, warm afternoon when I landed today in Seattle from St. Paul. I knew I’d be palming my camera for the flight back north to the island, as opposed to my flight out five days earlier through dense, sleety fog that inspired only a propeller-drone accompanied cat nap.

That trip down was a textbook example of how I’ve gotten used to literally flying by the seat of my pants living up here: it was April 1st and actually SNOWING over the islands all morning. This kind of weather is why I took the 6am ferry and shuttle all winter (thanks, John!) instead of risking iffy flights, but you’d think things would be safe by April. Nope. I was booked on a noon seaplane. Those don’t fly instrument-only and are grounded in bad weather with low visibility. Knowing this, I called in around 11:10 am to see if the plane was going to be canceled. I had a chamber music performance class to coach at Cornish College of the Arts at 2pm.

My schedule mattered not to the aircraft gods, who grounded the seaplane at the very last minute (or, uh, watered it). I immediately called the Friday Harbor airport to see if their fixed wheel equipment was going out. It was. It was leaving in nine minutes. I insisted I would be there.

Amazingly, I was. Charles and I grabbed my roll-on and coat and flung them and ourselves into the car. Speeding is not an option in Friday Harbor, largely because although there is virtually no traffic, there will always be one truck in front of you sauntering down the road leading to the airport with as much urgency as a snail on Quaaludes. Plus, in a tiny town where lots of people actually know you, your face, your vehicle, or all three, it’s just really poor form to cut people off, weave around them, race a stop sign or imperil cute furry animals by speeding. This is what Los Angeles is for, after all.

I rushed into the little building that they call a terminal, and at first saw no plane at all. Well, there was a tiny little thing with wings sitting there, but that could not have been the plane. Wrong. It was a mini-me version of the plane they usually fly for these trips. It actually seated at least eight people, but the “aisle” between the seats was… about 8 inches wide. Good thing most passengers bathed that morning. The cheery pilot greeted me and took my roll-on. I shoe-horned myself into a seat and off we went.

I arrived at Boeing air field, shuttled back up to Lake Union where I was supposed to have landed all along, and got to Cornish in plenty of time. Phew. Had a terrific time with colleagues at lunch and the student ensembles during the afternoon. I was happy to have been able to make it by a hair.

I’ve come to view my little tales of white-knuckle schedule shifts that prevent one from leaving the island when they need to, as a public service to my community: they help limit the hoards of people who, upon seeing the photos I post of this idyllic paradise, might seriously consider actually moving here. Until they read stories like this one, and this one. Then they snap to their senses and the population of the bridge-less San Juan Islands remains at a microscopic count. If you happen to live here too, now you can thank me for scaring everyone off.

Thus was my ordeal on April 1st. Apparently, the Universe decided to reward me five days later, because today I hit the puddle jumper jackpot on my return flight. There were just two passengers: myself, and a gentleman who lives on Orcas Island. We were stopping there first. I loved hearing this, because the flight path to Eastsound takes us over Lopez and past endless atolls and unrecognizable floating lumps of green, one such lump being where my house is (see green arrow). It’s spectacular:

As the Orcasian deplaned, I suddenly reverted to my 9-year-old child self and felt an overwhelming urge to make the last leg of the flight in the co-pilot’s seat. When the pilot returned I asked him if I could join him up there, and next thing I knew I was strapping myself into a contraption that would have secured me tightly enough for a space shuttle launch, much less a gentle landing at Friday Harbor airport. I was in heaven! I don’t think I could get the huge grin off my face the entire flight, and I wished it was a much longer distance between the two islands. For all the many, many puddle jumper flights I’ve taken the past two years living here, even those where I sat in the seat directly behind the pilot, this was just fantastic. I don’t have any intention of getting my own pilot’s license, largely because I think I’d have such a great time looking at everything that I’d space out and forget something important, like, uh, fuel levels. But my Walter Mitty moment was a real highlight with which to start another action-packed week.

Headed in for our landing…

From the air to the sea: the scene from my window at lunch, minutes later.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music for rural visitors.

I just got a really nifty little–no, make that tiny– video recorder. It’s called a Flip Mino, and it’s smaller than a cell phone and takes very cool movies. That is, if the person holding the damn thing takes very cool movies. On the other hand, if that person happens to be me, the Flip ends up being filled with immensely boring-but-cute-in-a-boring-sort-of-way footage of animals doing mundane things. Add this to my talent at presenting this window on the world with a vertigo-inducing cinema verité shaky hand-held technique that only overpaid French directors could rival, and there you have it: I will need a little practice at this new toy prior to posting my new moving creations.

Not to be thwarted in my voyeur-pleasing endeavors, though, I grabbed a couple of stills that themselves are indeed boring-but-cute-in-a-boring-sort-of-way. I just can’t help myself. My glass studio door, inches from where I sit at my desk, is a portal on all things immensely cute and boring. Nighttime gives me cute raccoon visitors, and daytime gives me cute blacktails. The latter have discovered the joy of standing directly under a bird feeder while allowing seed detritus to goofily drop on their heads. Gravity is their friend, since I made sure that they can’t climb up to the feeder like they used to.

The accompanying track is from a sweet, rural-themed film I scored many years ago that, had the camera been pointing at something other than the actors, would have featured lots of raccoons and deer, all like these: ready for their close-up. As I recall all of us working on the picture were paid birdseed. What comes around, goes around. And comes down on our heads. Happily.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Giving thanks.

Well, it’s the return of the Friday cat blogging tradition here in the island studio battleground, and Smudge and Moses have done their best to camouflage with the black and white surroundings as they are attacked by incoming notes of all decibels. Poor things. It’s also the return of the blogger herself, who has been ensconced so thoroughly in the studio this past week that she neglected her blogerati duties for a few more days than usual. Well, at least on this blog. I did enjoy participating in a good conversation about the digital age’s challenges to copyright protection, on Molly Sheridan’s Mind the Gap. And, I’ve been really busy with score sales, performances, a track being released on a CD label in Australia, another fun commission for a large chamber ensemble, and recording and producing three more pop tunes. A taste of one accompanies the photo, since I’m thankful for having so much fur and music flying around all the time.

I’ll be flying around once more myself next week, stopping in Seattle for a day to guest visit and rehearse this piece with a group at Cornish College of the Arts, and then heading to Minneapolis to attend this performance of one of my favorite pieces, and then speaking at this workshop. If anyone reading this will be in the twin cities April 3-5, it would be great to meet you. And, to sit still for a moment! The cats have the right idea.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Vista of dreams.

I must look like an avid tourist each time I fly the puddle jumper to and from Friday Harbor. And I don’t mind one bit. The camera which is always in my satchel, a petite 8 megapixel Nikon, is held snugly in my hand on every flight, eager to capture… anything. Above are two “anythings” that I like: a sandy spit emerging mysteriously from the sea, variably sized with the tides, tailing off of a small atoll over which I have flown many times and have never managed to identify. And, one of many overviews of this amazing archipelago; islands like pebbles scattered randomly from a child’s fist.

I am a tourist through life, observing as much as possible, visually, sonically, emotionally. I miss plenty. Just ask my husband. But what I capture, I hold on to and appreciate. And share, whenever possible. This blog gives me the selfish opportunity to share all three at once with strangers scattered like those pebbly islands around the world. If anyone had told us thirty years ago that we’d all have the ability to connect like this, 24/7, with the click of a “go to” or “send” button, well, it might have been hard for us to grasp the concept. But here we are.

If anyone had told me thirty years ago what my life would look and feel like today, I think I might have had a tough time grasping that concept, too. I would not have guessed that the die-hard city rat who grew up in Manhattan in the gritty 70’s would have morphed into a country mouse living in the seaside woods on a bridge-less island few have even heard of. Juggling an existence composing and recording chamber music, indie pop tunes, concert wind band pieces, jazz, electroacoustic, and anything else that pops into my feeble brain, plus flying around the country yapping on a lot of panels about the business of how all this gets out into the world so that my peers can also do it more easily, plus writing articles, plus serving on boards and committees for groovy music, science, and education projects, plus making sure I get my backside into my kayak and my toes onto the sand as often as possible, plus playing with the cats and any other somewhat taller denizen who wander into and around the house… well… here I am.

I just ordered a very tiny video camera that will keep my Nikon company in my purse. Maybe they’ll mate and I’ll find a little MP3 player in there one day. My hope is that I’ll be able to share an occasional moving picture with you, to further express the three dimensional reality that surrounds me. Stay tuned!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Unabashedly beautiful.

I write this from my midtown Manhattan outpost in a lovely little boutique hotel, to tend my blog, as well as to tend my psyche. I adore this city and it was my home from 0 to 21.5 years. I return often these days for various work-related activities, framed by visits with friends and my mother, who like so many New Yorkers tethered to a great piece of real estate, still lives in the same apartment in which I grew up. There’s something really adorable about getting a big hug from the doorman, Tony, who has known me since I was six and instantly recognizes me from 41 years ago the moment I step out of the taxicab. I fight the urge to ask him for a piece of candy.

It ain’t news to anyone that New York is a very noisy place. But the unending onslaught of construction, honking, sirens, jack-hammering, and rumbling subways underneath the ground on which this hotel stands, starkly reminds me that I am no longer inured to this noise in any way. Each hair in my ears is on full alert and on edge with every blasting horn, and I have not experienced a single moment of atmospheric silence since arriving last week. It’s exhausting.

I think back to growing up here, and of how I seemingly heard next to nothing of this racket. Or, more to the point, I heard it but it did not register. I was deaf to the noise; my subconscious automatically tuned it out. My thoughts were rarely interrupted by incessant city sounds and I probably even found some tribal reassurance in them, as my senses were swathed 24/7 in the utterances of civilization. I was not alone, even if I was alone.

I enjoy being alone. The utter silence around my home on the far other edge of this continent swaddles my psyche in a different way, allowing my own thoughts and sounds to appear within my head. The photo above, taken from a ferry at dusk a couple of weeks ago, contrasts the noise that accompanies me as I type this. And for further contrast, I’ve chosen a clip of some very active chamber music that makes a joyous noise, to me at least. An unabashed reminder that my life encompasses the full spectrum of frequencies with some frequency. A dichotomy to which I am not inured in the least.

…click to listen:

…about the music

There’s truth in rainbows.

A double rainbow deserves a double blog title. Welcome to my backdrop on a ferry ride at sunset last week, coming from Anacortes back to Friday Harbor. I’ve never before seen both ends of a rainbow at once, and I wish that I had the ability to show you the entire expanse of arc and magic, lifting and sinking from the sea like a colorful slinky toy. I hope this brightens your Monday.

My corporeal being will be off the island for a few days, surrounded by concrete and steel and some wonderful professional interactions. But my spirit remains here and intends to create some blog posts to remind her of why she always looks forward to returning to interact with this. Stay tuned for a few more favorite pix from my most recent adventures!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Jazz at the beach.

Well, Tofino, plus the wild, mountainous midsection of Vancouver Island one traverses to get there, is nothing short of stunningly beautiful. Like so many of the villages up here, summertime tourist crowds swell the size and the local economy, altering the vibe for a four month period of warm air and long nights. But the rest of the year offers a peace and solitude that few July visitors can experience. Wintertime on a beach is always magical to me.

I remember when I lived at Paradise Cove in Malibu, and this time of year I’d have a mile-long stretch of sand, cliffs and raging tides all to myself. I’d walk up and down the empty beach completely alone, occasionally wondering whether a bomb had gone off in Los Angeles and I was the last to know, and perhaps the last person left standing. My twisted psyche sort of liked this thought. Experiencing that kind of solitude within reach of one of the worlds’ busiest cities is fascinating. Experiencing it as I did this past weekend, many hours of travel away from any such metropolis, is another fantastic form of isolation.

Surfers, like the fellow who looks like a black smudge in one of these photos, come to Tofino around the year to feel the first push of the Pacific against a right-hand land mass. Tsunami warning signs and evacuation route information are everywhere. And so are reminders of California’s Malibu, my home for 14 years, as nearly every car we passed had a surfboard or two strapped to the roof, and bicycles sported board racks instead of kick stands. Home again. Just a little colder. And apparently, grayer. No, I did not bring an antique black and white camera. But the light, which showed my eyes plenty of forest green in the trees and a hint of pale teal in the sky, played tricks with my lens, to nice effect.

I think I saw more Bald Eagles in three days than ever before, and one of them was kind enough to pose for me outside the deck to our room on Chesterman Beach:

Looking at this noble image, I can see why it won out over the turkey for the U.S. avian representative!

Tacoma and New York beckon early next week, but I have more photos to post so I’ll be back on the blog soon!

…listen
…about the music

Water. Items.

Here are two lovely views from a couple of afternoons ago on South Beach. I’m facing the Olympic mountain range across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is where I will be headed tomorrow as Charles and I venture east, (ferry to Anacortes) then south, (drive to Edmonds) then west, (ferry and drive to Port Angeles), then north (ferry to Victoria) and then finally west again (drive to Tofino. ) A mini vacation that I have now officially dubbed the 2009 Pacific Northwest “Wheel and Keel” Winter Tour.

I like objects in or near water. I like the contrast. I like the tension and unspoken conversation between substances comprised of very different elements. I like the drama.

So now I’ll get to be the foreign element, as I traverse through some wilderness and see some extremely gorgeous parts of this planet. I’ll be another object at the sea.
And I don’t object to that one bit.

…listen
…about the music

Water voyage.

I love taking the ferry. If I didn’t love it, I’d be living in the wrong place, since ferries are the primary method of hopping off this bridge-less island. This week I got to ride four of them: one to Anacortes and back when I drove down to Seattle, and two days later, one from neighboring Orcas Island and back, when I went to a friend’s concert. You can’t spell “hooray!” without: a-h-o-y!

I returned from Orcas early Sunday afternoon, on a day so clear and bright that it was hard to believe it ever rains here at all. There happened to be a sailboat regatta that day, and the ferry captain had his hands full as his huge vessel Yakima barreled through the channel into oncoming and, occasionally, clueless traffic. Two boats in particular appeared to come closer to the ship than I might have dared. One was rewarded with an insistent and loud honk of the big horn. The other, on a potential collision course with us as he crossed our bow, necessitated the ferry slowing down to allow him room to pass in front of us rather than… uh, under us. Rules of the watery road are that vessels without power have right of way, since they often can’t quickly maneuver. That being said, it’s not the wisest thing for a 27 foot sloop to tempt fate and try to partner dance with a 382 foot long, 73 foot wide, roughly 2000 ton powered behemoth of the sea.

But physics-defying proximity has its payoff to a camera-toting passenger like me, and I was able to get a few nice pix like all of these, as I stood at the bow with nothing but a tennis net separating me from the sailboats and the chilly Salish Sea.

Upon closer inspection of the above snapshot, fellow sailors will appreciate the subtle humor in the alignment of the passing sloop, and that of the sign on the ferry’s port side:

The arrow should have been pointing UP!

I’ll post more sea-oriented photos before week’s end. And then, I’ll be off on a short adventure to the wild western coast of Vancouver Island for the weekend, which means a round trip of five ferries! Hooray!

Which is Pig Latin for “ahoy,” of course.

…listen
…about the music

Clarity.

Bright, clear, searing sunshine today. Stunning, as it floods the woods and glares into my eyes as I type this. I snapped the above photo a few days ago at the end of one such afternoon; I love the clarity of light as it offers clarity of thought on my walks.

No such grace and clarity exist for the characters in a haunting short story titled “Luvina,” penned by the late Mexican literary figure Juan Rulfo. Thursday night, anyone in the Seattle area will have a chance to come hear the fabulous pianist Ana Cervantes perform my piece of the same title, along with a number of others commissioned for Ms. Cervantes’s latest CD on Quindecim Recordings, Solo Rumores. The music reflects the bleak world of grim, hopeless desert poverty that Rulfo describes in so many of his writings. My outward reality of sunshine, joy and ease, is sobered by a profound inward sympathy for those who will never know such pleasure.

…listen
…about the music

Ahhhh.

Back on the island, with these vistas of the Puget Sound and its guardian snow-capped Olympics accompanying me home yesterday afternoon. Just wanted to share.

…listen
…about the music

Home.

It has dawned on me that I actually travel a fair amount. Much more than I anticipated when I moved up to this floating paradise. But despite how often I seem to fling myself off of this island (voluntarily, so far: I have not been permanently voted off yet), it is truly the place I most love to be. In short order, it has become home, in the most profound of ways.

I type this from sunny Los Angeles, where I’ve just landed to do fun music-related things that you can read about on my website. Among today’s emails was one from a friend in which he asked, “do you think the fact that you travel often makes you appreciate your home environment even more?”.
Yes.
And no.
Yes, because I have yet to travel to a place that I find more alluring than the place I call home. In contrast to everywhere else my body lands, I appreciate this set of coordinates the most.
And no, because even if I never, ever left this island, I believe I would appreciate it every bit as much as I do sitting here, far from it.

Above: three very favorite views from home: South Beach after a storm, False Bay in dense fog, and a magical, Gilligan’s Island type spot on Turn Island right across from my house, to which I have paddled several times and have promised myself that I will camp there. And I will. The shortest trip of the year, yards from my driveway that’s nestled in the woods on the left side of the photo, will probably be the one I appreciate the most. Ahhhhhh.