notes from the kelp

The tide has pulled out to a magnificent, soul-baring minus 1.74, and the receding water leaves some of the ocean’s most wonderful creatures exposed and vulnerable. The most colorful are the Ochre Sea Stars, who pile on top of each other in orgiastic glee.

The greenest secret of the underworld is the surfgrass, resulting in an oceanic Ireland revealed just a few hours each month. The first time I ever saw this sight I was stunned by how vibrant and land-like these tough masses of long, slippery plants were. Like an intimate conversation with a lover who unexpectedly shares something personal and heartfelt about themselves, it is unspeakably special to be allowed to view the private treasures which lie beneath the sea’s shiny, liquid veneer.

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear the first movement from my “Evensong Suite” to accompany this often hidden beauty.

Everything you see here is normally many feet underwater! There is something absolutely precious about being given the gift of seeing these usually hidden aspects of the sea. academic alabama divorce loanamortize a $1000 loaneducation aed loansloans acting schoolgeneral loans american memphisstudent all chase loans50000 loans quick $5000$10000 overnight loan Map

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear a movement from “At the Abyss” titled “Act,” to keep this fellow company.

Snowy egrets are pretty solitary around here, preferring to enjoy a meal on their own rather than have to hold up their end of a conversation with a dinner partner. You can spot them from a long distance; they’re very conspicuous since there’s nothing nearby that’s remotely this Clorox-bleached. Otherwise a very graceful bird topped with Vegas-style plumage (in it’s off-duty position here) that would be the envy of a showgirl, the elegance ends at its feet. They are large, with skinny webbed toes painted a bright yellow that I couldn’t quite capture in this photo. The only way to describe the comical way they walk, is to ask you to envision Harpo Marx and your choice of one of the Three Stooges pretending to prowl around and sneak up on someone, lifting each foot with exaggeration and gingerly placing it far ahead of their body. The Ministry of Silly Walks has another cabinet member.advancement training mortgage processor loan$550 loans personalinter-library loan activities of100 financing jumbo a on loan$4000 loan personal bad creditloans 590 score home creditohio and 502 direct loansloans schedule business amortization Map

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear a flute quartet playing in a version of four, in “Plasma.”

Fellow Sequenza21 blogger David Toub sent me a e-mail tagging me with the infamous Four Things meme. A fad whose purpose, to those of you as yet uninitiated, will immediately become clear. And rather pointless. But being one to never miss an opportunity, no matter just how pointless, here we go:

Four Jobs I’ve Had:
Switchboard operator, python breeder, 2nd engineer in a heavy metal recording studio, booth score reader for Star Trek orchestral scoring sessions.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over Again:
Welcome to L.A., Sleeper, Spirited Away, What the !@#$ (Bleep).

Four Places I’ve Lived:
Upper East Side of Manhattan, Upper West Side of Manhattan, Van Nuys, Calif., Malibu, Calif. Astonishingly, in all these years they are the only four. Birdlike, I am quite a nester.

Four TV Shows I Love:
Fuel TV’s extreme surf/skate/snow boarding, What’s My Line?, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I Love Lucy.

Four Places I’ve Vacationed:
Siberia, Mongolia, Haiti, Peru.

Four of My Favorite Foods:
Ben & Jerry’s Dublin Mudslide ice cream, broccoli, sugar snap peas, chilled Grey Goose vodka. All at once, if possible.

Four Sites I Visit Daily:
Sequenza 21, WetSand (surf and swell report), The Huffington Post, Google News.

Four Places I’d Rather Be Right Now:
What, are you kidding? Just look at where I am! Oh, all right:
In that blissful state of composing when time disappears, kayaking above the kelp beds, eating hot cioppino at Brophy Bros in the Santa Barbara harbor, asleep in a deep dream state.

Clockwise, from upper left: Wavy Turban shell, California Cowry shell, Scallop shell, and a former sea urchin without its purple spines.

Oh, and Smudge and Moses wish you all a very happy, loving Friday!

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear one of my more pensive jazz tunes.

It’s striking, actually unsettling, just how utterly still the air has been all day and night. Not a leaf moving. In the wake of the wind storm, the only hint of the previous madness is the remaining pile of small branches and tarry pieces of roofing laying at the doorstep. I will find another time to clean up the evidence. For now, I stare at a large ficus tree next to the house that two days ago threatened to break, and wonder how it can stand innocently amid the tossed deck furniture and broken planters as though nothing had happened.

The sole movement tonight has been the sudden thunder of well nourished raccoons chasing each other the 60 foot length of the house and back again, using my roof as their racetrack. The heavy, dotted rhythms of their gait shook me out of the undotted rhythms of the passage I had been writing, and I palmed a flashlight to have a look. Standing under a bedroom skylight my eyes peered up to follow the battery-powered beam, and were met unexpectedly with the equally curious gaze of a masked creature who probably wondered what I was doing down here. Before I could finish grinning, he bolted again for the far end of the rain gutter to catch up with another loud-footed friend.

Down by the shoreline this evening, it was damp and still as well. Only my mind continued to race with the wind.

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear a clip from my bassoon sonata, “Of Breath and Touch.”

We are now on the fading end of a remarkable two-day wind storm. Gusts to 70 mph. And this morning, detritus everywhere, unexpected imports from far away. Had I been able to take a photo of this event without risking getting bonked on the head by heavy, dried-out projectile palm fronds 14 feet long shooting through the sky like missiles, I would have. I chose in favor of my head, this time.

On Sunday as we walked up the coastline with the wind pushing our backs, Charles and I were stunned by the visual clarity everywhere, and the incessant movement of the waves driving sideways across the ocean. The most beautiful effect is when the waves are blown back upon themselves as they charge the beach. Shore birds, including this little snowy plover above, were out poking around for their lunch and struggled to keep their balance.

A half mile later it was time to turn around, and simultaneously we realized the folly of our afternoon stroll. Our smiles turned to grimaces as the wind and the loose sand that came along with it for the ride smacked us hard in the face. It was a warm day, but the power of the air made my ears hurt by the time we found safe, still haven back in the house. No more windy walks here!

Today is very beautiful. The Santa Anas have melted from a bone-dry hurricane to an invigorating strong breeze, and now I’ll go outside to water the parched plants before beginning my composing for the day, invigorated, as well.
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…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear a movement from my “Piano Suite No.1” titled “For My Father,” to accompany this photo of the crumbled bluffs.

Everything here is in motion; there is constant change and shift. Rocks on which I walked yesterday are dust today. No big earthquake, just entropy. I have learned to not get too attached to physical things.

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…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to listen to some of one of my jazz tunes, “Longing for You.”

Snapped eight minutes ago, from the front door stoop.
Yes, the sky is really that blue. Cloudless and intense and the perfect offset to the green of the tallest palm on my little property. Fronds with a view from 60 feet; nearly due for a trim.
And just look at the weather from Wednesday’s photo, below. I’m constantly amazed by the contrasts. Sudden, unexpected, fickle, entertaining.

My nose was greeted with its own weather system of sorts this morning. I was awakened by the sound of one creature and the smell of another.

Few things in life are as insistent as an active, hungry, vocal cat in the morning. Our smoke alarm only comes close.

We refer to one of our two kitties, Smudge, as the Gravity Cat because he has a penchant for finding any small thing on the bedside tables– a coaster, a remote control, eyeglasses, etc.– pushing it over the edge, and watching it fall to the floor. This accomplishes two things: endless entertainment for him (much as a 10 month old in a high chair likes to throw food) and enough noise and distraction to guarantee that either Charles or I will finally get up, having once again lost the battle of who truly controls the rhythm of this household. This morning Charles was on the boat, so that left… a bleary eyed composer who is not a morning person, but is adept at opening cans of cat food on demand, in any groggy state.

A family of skunks recently took up residence underneath the house. Specifically, under the bedroom. This morning, to accompany Smudge’s dulcet whining, a strong odor representing a very annoyed skunk wafted aggressively up through the heating vent. This has only happened once before; most of the time our cute little striped squatters play nice and share toys. They waddle around next to the window at night and make me smile. But I suppose even skunks have their bad days, and as I type this my nostrils are filled with evidence of such. Tomato juice for the whole house? Probably not. So I’ll trust that this aromatic gift will dissipate… soon. movies fuck freemovies hentai free fullgalleries slut movie gagass movies gay fuckingxxx movies gaymovies girls shittingtheme movie gladiatorglory road movie Mapcard credit accept atmcredit liberty 1st uniona for credit card suit civilla superior de educacion acreditacionpeople post cards afford creditaccount has been credited assistance amendoperations accreditationof universities accreditation Map

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear a movement from my “Evensong Suite” titled “Nunc Dimittis,” to accompany this photo of this foggy winter day.

Inhale.
Exhale.
It is foggy and drizzling.
It is wonderful to be back where there is space to think and to just be.

I’m always struck by the grey grey grey dark grey of this city in winter. At this time of year, most any slice of color that slaps the eyes is manmade, and usually advertising something I am told to purchase or experience. Sitting only by default at the Starbucks below the hotel to take refuge in a cup of coffee, I stare out the pane glass window onto 42nd street and 8th Avenue. It is a sleety, hard-cold-grim kind of morning and everyone who walks by is clad in a dark coat and an empty, unhappy grimace. But just beyond their frozen faces is a huge light-up TV billboard pinned to the corner of the Port Authority building’s steel girders and looping an advertisement for something that appears to offer an internet search service. The product that’s being sold is not entirely clear to me, however, because the images have nothing to do with the internet, and in fact, nothing to do with where I am right now. They look just like home: beautiful images of the bright blue ocean, and a surfer riding a huge wave on a short board. This serene offering, in the middle of such an uninspired and inhospitable city block, is at once bizarre and appreciated. But mostly, bizarre.

Each January, the Chamber Music America conference draws me back east for a few days to share music and laughs with like-minded musicians. The view from my Times Square hotel room is a striking contrast to the open space my eyes have grown so happy with in adopted California. But Manhattan was home for my first 21 years, and I’m fascinated by the mix of complicated emotions each time I navigate the city as a wide-eyed tourist. The streets are the same but the occupants have been replaced. When I return in a few months this will again be so. Maybe one needs to be present to watch change occur in order to take possession of it.

Simultaneous nostalgic and immediate local knowledge are an uneasy combination. Pangs of deep familiarity are intertwined with a longing to return to the western sea. The city of my past will always be home to the part of me that decided to leave all those years ago. And there is much here that makes me smile. I’m home and away at once.gay movies musclesex pure moviesshot free movies cummovies hqpanty scenes wetting movies inlesbians movieslexington steele clips moviesex movies anime freewet free clip moviemovies free tits

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…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear an old film cue of mine that seems like a sweet accompaniment for this photo.

Perhaps me and Charles, in a previous lifetime….?

These two were just a few yards from my toes, and of course moments later they jumped in the air, and of course there was no way that my camera caught that, and of course I was bummed not to have an even more beautiful pic to post. And this is why I’m asked to write music and not take photographs!

But it’s a pretty damned beautiful sight, nonetheless. In a world of chaos and unhappiness, it is intensely reassuring to see that the dolphins are still here.

I sense a year to come of forward movement like these waves, and good things on the indeterminate horizon beyond. Hooray for another birthday.

Even after 23 years living in southern California, I still can’t get over the shock of seeing flowers in January. I don’t intend to ever get used to it. Much more fun this way.

…listen
…info about the music

Click on the blue music icon above to hear the Adagio movement from my “Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano”.

Looking over the pier out to pale Palos Verdes on the horizon, there was not a single cloud in the sky today. What is it about growing up in a cold climate that became so deeply ingrained in me, that despite the reality of 74 degrees, I think, “January” and start to put on a sweater?

I don’t intend to ever get used to it. Much more fun this way.million against 700 viagra lawsuit classactionxanax to adictionabout all tramadolmg xanax online pharmacy 2200 viagra mgambien versus xanaxall tramadol overdose aboutadvanced book guest viagra Map