notes from the kelp

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…about the music

Maui in the sunshine, San Juan Island in the snow.

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Well, since New Year’s I’ve been in two equally gorgeous, and very climatically contrasting island environments. I giddily celebrated the completion of my 50th dizzying rotation around our Sun on the sunny isle of Maui, and returned a week later to the unusual experience of inches of cold white stuff on the otherwise often-sunny isle of San Juan. One of the many reasons I love living here is that the winter temps mostly hover in the mid-40’s. So it’s a big deal when snow arrives– especially many inches of it that stick around for two or three days before being melted away by the return to temperate normalcy.

It’s hard to decide which climate to feature first, so I think I’ll juxtapose some recent photos in a weird, blog-of-consciousness stream of pixels. Some of these pix have appeared elsewhere, but that “elsewhere” reaches a slightly different crowd, the majority of whom are also music-makers.

Indeed, my Facebook page gets a lot of the attention from me these days, for short-form offerings. Longer than a 140-character tweet (where the heck did they come up with THAT number?), but shorter than a blog post, it’s a handy dandy communication tool for the attention-starved, multimedia-inclined (yep, that’s me). Photos, links and videos are a quick and effective way to say two things: 1. I have a pulse (yes, Facebook is a Narcissist’s dream come true) and 2. I actually think you’ll like something I like (ok, there are lots of Narcissists on Facebook who don’t really seem to care about #2, but I don’t include myself among them, of course. I mean, really: doesn’t everyone like what I like??).

Clustering under the Maui ocean

Hovering beside the [temporarily snowy] Salish Sea.

I’ve rarely got anything lengthy to say within the cocktail-party e-walls of social media. The format is geared far more toward “immediate gratification tribal interaction,” rather than intellectual pithiness and emotional gravitas. But with more than just a few handfuls of e-friends (my last count was nearing 2500; I better send out for more wine and hors d’oeuvres)– many hundreds of whom I actually know in “real” life (this is a delightful-but-shocking realization)– that instant, happy feedback is an addictive drug. I’m the gerbil who keeps hitting the sugar water bar in the cage, delighted when my tapping results in what I crave. Connection. So sweet.

Sweet indeed: fresh papaya, pineapple, apple bananas and yogurt… plus coffee and connectivity. Absolute perfection in front of the crashing waves of Hana Beach.

Cold, indeed: fresh snow, and not a piece of fruit in sight… plus coat and camera. Absolute contrasting perfection, just a day later, on the slope of San Juan Island’s Mt. Dallas.

So I use the stickiness…

I was disappointed that he didn’t have a Cockney accent. But, we were in Hawaii, after all.

of the web…

This beauty was about four inches long!

…to get others to stick to me. At least for a moment, as I share instances, usually non-musical:

Ah, to be immersed in warm water!

…that matter to me, and perhaps even entertain others:

A whitemouth moray eel! Kewl!

And this, in turn, shows others where my music actually comes from.

As seen from my desk upon return: sea temperature: 46 degrees. Air temperature: 21 degrees. The result: a magical, unusual sea fog.

Leaving an exquisitely beautiful place…

…only made me appreciate the one in which I live even more.

Here’s to another 50 years of precious awe.

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…about the music

This way.

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There may be no better way to begin the first day of the new year than with a walk through a wilderness area. Especially when, at 48 and a half degrees latitude, the temperature nearly matches the map coordinates, and the wind behaves itself (for a change. Lately it’s been a lot like THIS).

It’s particularly awesome when that wilderness is walking distance from one’s own bed. I will never cease to appreciate the beauty of where on this planet I live.

Any happy, alcohol-induced fog from the previous, festive day night was quickly escorted into the ether as fresh, ionized air surrounded my senses. Okay, fresh, strong coffee got there first. But once afoot, the joy of this stunning solitude took hold, and I shot a few unremarkable pix to share with my 2012 Kelphistos of what is, beyond the lens of my limited photographic talents, a truly remarkable view.

The grey-blue land at the horizon is Vancouver Island and British Columbia’s capital, Victoria.

Turning one’s head down and to the right, here’s the clear water at the shore. The beach is lined– as all here are– with the area’s history spelled out in driftwood lettering.

The Olympic Mountain Range is a LOT larger than it appears in this picture. New Year’s resolution # 372: learn to take more effective photos!

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…about the music

Music for fur-balls.

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Artists have a tough enough time trying to believe that we’re not worthless, talentless frauds, without further assistance from those who live with us. Pictured above is the face that often looks down on me as I’m composing. It’s a face consumed by a mix of utter condescension, and muted disgust. On second thought, maybe not so muted. If the kibble bowl has not been attended to on some mystery timetable known only to the furriest creature in this household (hey, I shave), there is hell to pay. The emperor does not like to be kept waiting. Not when his hunger strikes. He will not wait in the name of Art, as I try to commit my sonic ideas to paper. And he will not wait in the name of 5:43 a.m., as I try to commit my weirder ideas to dreams.

When Catzilla is in his wake state, I am reminded that He Reigns.
Fortunately, as is the case with most house cats, this aforementioned wake state exists only about two and three quarter hours out of 24 each day.

His other 21 and a quarter hours are spent in various positions of recline and snooze-enabled, paw-trembling, imaginary kitty adventures. Most, with a big pink tongue dangling laughably (don’t tell him I used that word) from his cute kitty lips. Smudge was dealt some good hands in this life, not the least of which is the musical home that adopted him from the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles about a decade ago, when he was a 5 month old stray hiding in a paper sack from some dogs that were trying to, uh, eat him. His subsequent pampered and protected indoor-only, coyote- eagle- raccoon- pit bull- horned owl- vulture-free existence, has been something out of a fairy tale; he’s among that rare, lucky class of cats my grandfather used to refer to as “the one percenters.” Well, just about all of him is a “one percenter,” with the exception of his genetically terrible teeth, which are in the rock-bottom 0.14th percentile. Over the years, with each cleaning, a few more chompers fall by the wayside, making his already adorable visage (and, when not vying for instant feeding, his very adorable temperament) ever the more… goofy.

It’s hard to look too condescending and dictatorial when you’re asleep.
Not to mention, when you’re upside down, or when your tongue is hanging out of your mouth.

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…about the music

Patterned still life.

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It’s been chilly here overnight, then bright bright bright stillness and warmer, 40-something temps during the day. Yesterday morning I walked out to my car around ten o’clock, accompanied by a sun that blazed low and hot on my back as I entered the prairie grass field behind the house. I was greeted with something extraordinary. And, so beautiful, I nearly wept.

A tsunami, of sorts. A giant wave to ride.
A set of fallen leaves.
A collection of feathers, gently landed.
Frozen, museum quality art.

Nature’s natural crystallization at work. Brilliant, Escher-esque patterns and perfect math and utter perfection. I’ve never seen anything like this.

Oh, and in case you can’t tell…. it was the ice on my windshield.

I live amidst wildlife.
I eat wild rice.
And now I can add wild ice to my list!

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…about the music

Still life that’s not the least bit still.

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In the two days following the storm featured in my silly saltwater- and giggle-infused holiday movie below, I had to get outside to explore. Curious to see what odd items Poseidon might have tossed around in his wrath (see Flying Rock Moment at 1:14), I was ever-hopeful that some treasures, man-made or natural, would be mine for the taking. After all, to me, tide-pooling and hiking are scavenger hunts. Free shopping! And all with the fun of a Costco exploration: you just never know what the heck you’re going to find that you absolutely have to take home. Which, no doubt, someone else seeing it would never in a million years deign to put inside their house.

While I came up disappointingly short in the man-made category (what? after all that, the only stuff that’s dumped on my property are a lousy optic yellow tennis ball, a battered crab pot float, and a used firecracker end? Bah!), I scored with the natural. Problem was, the copious amounts of driftwood that were newly deposited on my beach included pieces as large as they were gorgeous, so those offerings from the sea’s tantrum will stay put right where they landed. Until the next storm arrives to tote them off to yet another random spot.

Since it was threatening to rain some more, I didn’t bring my Whoop-de-doo Camera with the Big Ass Zoom, and opted instead for my perfectly nice point-‘n-shoot.

The scene at South Beach.

It was a great day for living creatures, all of whom seemed relieved to be able to walk, fly or scramble around without being pinned by 60 MPH winds. Watching birds attempt to maneuver in these is, admittedly, entertaining; seeing anything moving backward when it’s trying to go forward is quite a [pitiful] sight. But I do feel badly for them, since it’s doubtful they get much to eat on a day like that. No Thanksgiving dinner for these critters.

Walking on the rounded, multicolored stones of South Beach, I spied a Creature from the Deep and approached carefully, with great enthusiasm.
A giant squid??

Nope.
Just some Feather Boa kelp, but with a beautiful, if terminal addition: its root ball is affixed to a rock.

As the wind picked up and the temperature dropped down, it was time to head back. Driving past the open prairie grasses covering so much of San Juan Island’s southern end, a herd of deer grazed, looking as clueless as always, except for two of them who were too busy kissing to be concerned about how they looked, anyway. Yes-sirree, here in Happy Island Camelot, even our black tail deer are in love. Awwww…

Back home as the weather continued to shift, Bald Eagles flew past my desk…

…and landed on one of their preferred hilltop perches. They pay premium rent for this knoll with an unobstructed view.

Meanwhile, a Great Blue Heron just stood around looking cranky. Business as usual.

Toward the end of the day as the light faded, a family of river otters had their holiday weekend meal just beyond my toes:

And inside the house, warmed by a wood stove fire, the only wildlife I’m allowed [highly encouraged, actually] to feed, Smudge, enjoyed the last rays of sun. He was blissfully unconcerned about any storms, past or future.
Be. Here. Meow.

…about the music

I used to live on a boat part-time. Apparently, I still do.

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I spent Thanksgiving Day at home, in awe of nature’s power– and giggling at it! 50 MPH winds, 10-foot waves, 8-foot high tide… and no, it wasn’t raining. The house, perched on a rocky ledge roughly 20 feet above the Salish Sea, is soaked in saltwater, as you’ll experience through my shaky, untalented, but enthusiastic lens.

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I really don’t mind traveling atoll.

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Home, pictured above.
I’ve just returned from the umpteenth of what seems like umpteen business trips in the past three months. I’m thrilled to be staying put in my house, surrounded by a big moat for a whopping two weeks in a row, before hurtling myself eastward once again. I’m curious to find out whether my brain will properly function at sea level rather than at 39,000 feet, an altitude at which I’ve been quite productive recently. I’m a Gold Medallion member of the Mile High Composing and Email Correspondence Club.

This past trip was unusual, in that after I returned home, it occurred to me that I’d just been on six islands in three days. That even outdoes the standard American tourist cruise ship “a different Caribbean island every day” jaunt. You know, the vacation that gives folks wearing way too much plaid and polyester a quick brush of delusion with what they’d like to believe the local culture is on a given island, from fleeting impressions gathered between the exact hours from 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. By 5:30 p.m., Joe and Martha Tchotchke Collector better be back on the vessel, or it’ll sail away without them and their straw hats, refrigerator magnets and bottles of rum. I know this firsthand, from my amazingly cool gig this past January as composer-in-floatation on the Symphonic Voyages inaugural classical music cruise, which included five islands in five days and five opportunities for me to get so blissed out snorkeling or sailing or wandering around that I could have easily missed the boat. As it is, I already miss the boat, in the metaphorical sense, often enough. Doing so in front of 2500 people, a few of whom might have seen me emcee concerts with my music the evenings before, could have been more than just a little embarrassing. Phew.

So, my most recent itinerary included:

Manhattan Island (on which various meetings and friends were located)
Long Island (on which the borough of Brooklyn is located, in which the venue for my latest premiere, Spark was located)
Vashon Island (on which a chamber music series performing my Intermezzo was located)
Fidalgo Island (on which the town of Anacortes is located, which is where the ferry landing for the San Juans is located)
Orcas Island (on which some wonderful furniture I snagged for a song, and good friends with whom I lunched, are located)
San Juan Island (on which I am now located for fourteen days until my next temporary dislocation)

Ok, this is not a great photo but it’s the best I could do early Friday morning. Looking south, the notable body of water is the Hudson River, and since I was lucky to be on a plane that did not need to make an emergency landing on it (go, Sully!), thus leaving my hands free from juggling life preservers, I was able to snap this pic of my original island home, Manhattan, with Brooklyn in view on the other side of the East River, at the foot of Long Island.

Vashon Island is to the immediate south of Seattle, floating quietly and not making a sound on the Puget Sound, except for some of the sounds my music and that of Martinu, Mozart and Schumann made Friday night.

Here’s what I see, if I’m awake (I love sleeping in my car on this ferry), when we dock at Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island, which is the gateway to what we Islanders refer to as “America.”

I bet you can’t imagine why this mountain on the west side of Orcas Island is named, “Turtleback.”

This is a typical scene from the ferry to Orcas and other islands. That’s my car, in the very front– woot! Best view, ever! Waking up in the middle of bustling Manhattan and ending the afternoon here is, in a word, surreal. And in two words: friggin’ awesome.

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…about the music

Elegy of love.

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Eleven eleven eleven.
A full moon has risen.
It is perfect and balanced and beautiful.

I was born on the eleventh of January.
My father was born on the eleventh of November.
1-11… 11-11…
We were both only children.

When I was little I used to talk excitedly with my father about our 2011 birthdays. It was the late 1960’s. The year 2011 was inconceivable; an arrival point so distant and unreachable as to be almost preposterous. Never much of a numerologist or mystic, I still enjoyed the vertical simplicity of all those ones.

“I’ll be 49!”
This was uttered with sheer amazement at how old that was. An eight year old is incapable of grasping the concept of middle age, and how she might ever get there. Nor, why she’d ever want to. Yuck.

I wriggled my nose as I tried to do the math. “And you’ll be 83!” I gazed lovingly at my father and had no reason to think that this was an unreasonable request.
It was.
He died thirteen years ago in 1998, at age 69.

It’s rare for a day to go by when the full moon of his wise glow does not envelope my life. In the best of ways.
His complicated essence: often funny, sometimes quietly tortured, perpetually intellectual, always kind, weaves a path through the music I create, much in the way my seaside existence is reflected in so many notes.
It is unavoidable.
It is resonant.
It flows.
It is permanent.

And it is valued, and loved, always.

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…about the music

Observing, wondering, sighing.

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It was 6:15 in the October morning. My body, and a reasonable fraction of my mental capacity, were at the airport in Seattle. I had just completed my participation in the competitive gauntlet-running sport of clearing the hurdles of airport security, and traversing miles of terminals via foot, tram and donkey in search of my gate, and was finally in line for a much-needed, overpriced cup of acidic, burnt-tasting coffee. I spotted my drug connection not far from the plane that was to hurl me to New York. And it was there that I spotted something disturbing, that made me wonder about humanity.

It was 11:30 in the August evening. As I worked at my desk, the power suddenly went out. Electricity wasn’t restored until late the next day. From my deck at twilight, I gazed an acre out to the distance. A lone, adult gull hung lifelessly from the electrical wires.

As I stood groggily in the long coffee line awaiting my fix, I noticed a neatly dressed woman in her early seventies, about eight yards from me. She was lying on the cold tile floor of the food court, nearly underneath the small table on which her purse and water bottle rested.

Throughout the late summer, hundreds of blackbirds migrated to this spot on San Juan Island, favoring these wires for an excellent perch perspective above the sea. Their busy chatter was incessant and lively. I loved the sound in the distance.

As the woman lay visibly conscious, moving slowly in much the same way one does when trying to sleep, hoards of travelers walked right by. The sight of a human being splayed on the floor of a public space didn’t faze a single soul; each was too consumed with their travel needs to even consider pausing, much less stopping to investigate.

I watched the woman closely. When I first saw her hand graze her thigh and shin, I thought she might have been stricken with a bad leg cramp and was trying any position possible to alleviate it. Hey, I’ve had cramps painful enough that I could imagine lowering myself to any floor, no matter how filthy, in search of relief. But it soon became obvious that it was not a leg cramp. As she lay in the middle of the terminal, travelers continued to walk just a yard or two past her, patrons continued to sip their beverages at adjacent tables, and the other twenty people in my coffee line noticed her, and simply looked away. I turned to an older couple behind me, and asked them to watch my bag.

For weeks, the little blackbirds lined up all around the gull, unperturbed by its decomposing corpse as they got on with their daily routine.

As I started to leave, the man of the couple asked, “what kind of coffee do you want?”.
Huh?

This struck me as both surprisingly thoughtful, and deeply disturbing. He, too, had noticed the ailing woman, and now saw that I was headed toward her. Apparently it was more important that he and his wife maintain their coveted place in the long coffee line. Flustered, I responded by rote as I pulled out of the queue, “uh, I dunno; just a small regular one.” I really wasn’t thinking about French roast at that particular moment.

I walked over to the stricken woman, knelt down, and asked her how she was. She was feeling very faint. I turned my head upward to a man in a business suit who simply stood there, watching us. I told him to call the airport paramedics, which he did upon my request. Why I had to instruct him, I’ll never understand. Pivoting back to the woman, I asked her if she had any pain, shortness of breath, diabetes, a history of fainting… had she hit her head on the way down… was she numb anywhere… thankfully, no. And that was damn lucky, since my music conservatory training failed to include an emergency first aid course for anything other than a No. 1 pencil stab wound, or a splinter from a broken conducting baton. It had been way too many years since my summer camp American Red Cross lifesaving classes for me to recall just how many seconds I should pause between mouth-to-mouth puffs and chest compressions, and while I’m pretty good with blood, I’d probably put a tourniquet in some bizarre place that would instantly kill the poor victim.

The woman said she suffered from atrial fibrillation, and asked me to check her pulse. I did; it was strong and fairly regular. Phew. In an attempt to keep her conscious, I inquired where she was from (Bainbridge Island), whether anyone was with her here at SeaTac (no; her husband was fast asleep on the island and she wouldn’t want to bother him), and where she was headed (Minneapolis, on a flight that was leaving in 30 minutes and, by my best amateur guess, now with one less passenger). I assured her that I would not leave her side until the paramedics arrived, which I had assumed would be within a minute or two. I calmly told her that it could just be nothing more than an electrolyte imbalance, complimented her on her great figure, and even got her to smile a little. As I knelt by her and held her hand, the older man from the coffee line walked over, delivered my 22″ roll-aboard, and handed me a cup of coffee.
Confused, I said thank you.

Almost as distressing as the many uncaring passersby, was the fact that it took easily fifteen minutes, maybe longer, for the EMTs to arrive. I was thankful that this wasn’t a dire emergency. What if this woman had been having a heart attack, or a stroke? Or had fainted from learning the price of her first class ticket, and bonked her head on the corner of the table on her way down? I felt utterly helpless; had anything been seriously wrong, apart from my strong voice calling out for a doctor, there would have been nothing I could do to rescue this person. In hindsight, I’m sure that had I screamed, “Terrorist!”, we would have gotten a lot more attention.

Americans take for granted that emergency help is almost instantly forthcoming, especially in highly trafficked, public places. We tend to feel even more protected in venues under government auspices. But timely help is not always available: not from those who are trained and employed to offer it and, most sobering, not from fellow citizens who won’t have their need for a cup of coffee, much less their travel schedules, interrupted by a stranger’s predicament.

After the EMTs finally arrived, I made it to my plane just barely in time to board. The man who’d bought me the coffee happened to walk by, and I thanked him again. He didn’t ask how the woman was. He was already perturbed by whatever the gate agent had just told him, and was consumed with the stresses of air travel. It was kind of him to take my sacrifice of a precious spot in the long morning coffee line into account, and even spend a couple of bucks doing so. For a mere stranger, no less. But really, it was all I could do to resist asking him why he hadn’t helped that woman. Why he could be generous and thoughtful to me, but not to someone in distress.

With his wife there, he wouldn’t have even had to give up his place in the damn coffee line.

I wonder about humanity. I wonder about the animal world. I wonder about the meaning of community, and inter-connectedness, for us all.
And if you’re reading this, I want you to wonder, too.

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…about the music

Island food.

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I’d been up and traveling since 4:45am, gritty New York City time. Fifteen hours later, at my body clock equivalent of 8pm, I was thrilled to be walking on the deck to my front door, located more than a bit beyond the opposite coast.

I looked down.
A gift.
From a gull.
Who, in my five-day absence, decided to open a sushi restaurant on my premises.
Looks like the meal was wonderful.

I get fresh sea urchin delivered right to my doorstep. I tell you, this is one sophisticated island.

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…about the music

Look out.

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Lime Kiln State Park is perhaps the most iconic spot on San Juan Island, and during the summer months the easy walking trail to the killer views and the killer whales is padded with polite throngs of blissed-out tourists. When I happen to be there, I’m one of them, too. Tourism begins at home. After all, every time I get on a Kenmore puddle jumper to catch a flight out of Seattle, I look more like a newbie tourist than the newbie tourists, as I gape wide-eyed out the window, clutching my point-‘n-shoot camera that’s poised for any great moments on the other side of the thin plastic plane window. Which is to say, all of them.

Tourism has its sonic aspects, which never cease to amuse the musician in me. The sudden oohs and ahhs spewing from the visitors each time an orca whale spyhops or breaches, probably lead the whales to assume that this is in fact the full vocabulary of the human species. I suspect they pop up to the surface just to check us out, viewing us all like some land-based zoo exhibit. Then they go down below and report back to the pod that really, there’s nothing particularly worth leaving the water for. Ain’t that right.

Last month one of my many, many (did I mention, many) visiting friends arrived on San Juan Island at the very end of the season: the final day of September. We ended up at Lime Kiln at sunset, met up with another friend who volunteers there, and were treated to guest access atop the old lighthouse.

It was special to be there during this exceptionally quiet, graceful time, enjoying the grounds without other people sharing the space. The three of us broke the silence of the sea air with our own zoo exhibit-worthy oohs and ahhs, however, as a pod of orcas decided to take a twilight swim just beyond our toes. The white spray of each exhalation floated in the dusk sky. The whales stayed for a long time, as did we, until it was nearly too dark to see our way back.

The photos describe the vista far better than my words, so I’ll just stop here. Suffice it to say, it was perfect.

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…about the music

And they did.

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Some folks have pink flamingos in their front yard.
These folks opted for the island-appropriate plastic pig and cow.

The pumpkins are real, though.