notes from the kelp

…listen
…about the music

Dream vista.

So there we stood, the only two humans in sight. We were perched on the very end of a long dock in the early morning hours, staring out to nothing but water and little green isles. My gaze drifted to the sky as I searched for the tiny float plane that was to snag me off the island and bring me to Seattle, from where I’d then fly to Los Angeles. I didn’t need to bother looking up, since any engine sound would shred the silence. But look up I did, again and again, wondering when the plane might finally arrive. And wondering why I would ever want to leave this paradise.

As my ride finally appeared out of the clouds Charles and I couldn’t avoid joking in goofy accents, “de plane! de plane!” And then de plane made a landing on de still water, much as a cormorant comes in for one: gentle… watch it… whoooaaa, lower, lower… splash… whoosh… glide…
Stop.

De plane was even smaller than I had imagined, and as Charles and I said goodbye I could tell that we were both silently making rapid assessments of the odds that this flying coat closet would deliver me safely. I climbed the ladder, squeezed myself into the seat and the ear plugs into my ears. Small plane, very loud engine.

As I’ve gloated about over and over again in these pixels, the view flying across the San Juans is just incredible. Whatever quiet terror I feel about hurtling myself through the sky in something with a door slightly flimsier than that of an airline lavatory and a window made of thin plastic that boasts a ventilation hole I can stick three fingers through, well, that [rational] fear disappears when I look out the window. Small plane, fantastic in-flight movie.

…listen
…about the music

Upward, again.

Spring continues to be a verb by my driveway, and daffodils shine at me each time I leave or return. I think I’ve been doing a bit too much of the former recently; still catching my breath from the Virginia trip (see below; much breath to catch), I’m off in the morning for my old stomping grounds: Los Angeles. Info about some of what I’ll be up to there lurks on my website (just click on my Malibu Barbie self to the upper right), along with links to a few new articles and interviews.

My calendar indicates still two more business trips before summer: New York again in May, and Denver in June. After that, the benefits of living in paradise will become clear, as I finally get to stay put while various friends migrate north for short visits. I’m looking forward to meeting the planes, rather than boarding them!

…listen
…about the music

One plus three.

Yesterday Charles and I looked at our paste-colored faces in the mirror and realized that it was time for a walk. Our recent respective deadlines have been slightly absurd, and my backside had spent the last two weeks firmly planted in the substrate of either a desk chair, a piano bench or an airline seat. If I wasn’t so lucky to have the metabolism of a middle-aged hummingbird, I would look like a Beluga whale by now.

And here is where we hiked out to. The sunshine and breeze made our faces far better colored. What a fortunate life I have.

Adding to the sedentary nature of my existence this week is that old American favorite, tax time. Like most people, I can’t stand doing my taxes. I suppose I could sit and do them. But instead, I don’t do them: for many years I’ve had a good CPA who does them for me (and since marriage a few years ago, us). But one still has to round up every bit of the information to the patient person happy to be paid to plow through it all, and thus begins the dance of procrastination. It’s really anti-crastination. Because I’m against having to do this in the first place.

A few years ago it finally dawned on my why, just why, quite specifically, I resist and detest this necessary process.
I hate looking backward.
Truly.
I am a forward-thinking, future-oriented, goal-driven person. Having to face every stupid detail of my past life and finances, incoming and outgoing, over a period of time that now began a whopping 16 months ago, is incredibly irritating to me.
It is completely against my nature.

There. I feel better. My blogatherapy session time is up. Thanks for listening, and now I’m in a better state of mind to spend the evening doing my taxes so someone else can do them.

…listen
…about the music

Island life.

It took me 15 hours, door to door. Each way. Three flights: the Friday Harbor 9-seat puddle jumper to Seattle, the Very Large Two Aisle Flying Yacht to Atlanta, and then to Newport News, Virginia and all the wonderful musicians and notes that awaited: an extremely long, narrow, claustrophobic tube in which only people of shortness could stand up (that’s the politically correct term these days, I suppose). Yes, the trip and all its flying and between-flight grounding time, was worth it. Having never even heard a concert wind band perform before, much less composed for one, I got to hear my new piece played beautifully by the U.S. Army TRADOC Band. I’m told it went over very well with the players and the listeners, despite my fears of utter ineptitude, and perhaps, an orange jumpsuit in my future if I didn’t do a good job.

A view like this, above, makes any grueling travel worthwhile.
These are just some of the 740 islands that sprinkle the Salish Sea around San Juan Island and its neighbor, Orcas Island. A number of them don’t even have names. Feel free to suggest some, but please avoid Tiffany and Jason. Overdone in the 80’s.

The flights that take me off the island and put me back down on it are the big reward on each end of these long hauls. It’s as though after schlepping across the country all day, someone turns to me and says, “let’s go to an amusement park and ride the rollercoaster and the ferris wheel!”. Despite being exhausted and ill-fed, existing on a diet of peanuts and sugar cookies on the planes, and cheese pizzas in the terminals, I reply, “Okay, let’s!” With each of these airborne adventures I gain a better sense of the dimensions of our planet and of the magic within this particular archipelago. I also probably gain an extra gray hair or two, because much as I love these flights for the visuals, I’m not the biggest fan of being a couple of thousand feet up in something that seems about as aerodynamic as my toaster oven.

When you land on Orcas, which was a nice surprise stop on our way out, here’s what you see:

Thousands of busy travelers heading in and out of the glass and chrome international terminal are just out of frame.
Not.
But a few deer and raccoons are.

I’m happy to be back. And in eight days, I get to do the amusement park ride again, on my way to Los Angeles. Hooray for the jet age; it brings me closer to nature every time it takes me far away from it.

…listen
…about the music

Very slippery.

As I allowed my obsessive-compulsive persona to shine today by wielding a straight-edge razor to remove unsightly smears of dried lacquer from the glass of the front French doors, my mind wandered. This was probably a very good thing, as I’ve been on so many back-to-back deadlines for so many months in a row that any sort of mental nomadicism has got to be healthy.

I was feeling almost guilty for cleaning the glass that had been bugging me for a while, rather than sitting back down at my desk and attending to any of the music biz things in the next line of triage that need my attention. I don’t usually give much thought to what transpires in the course of a week or a month, nor applaud myself for x,y or z (except a new piece of which I’m proud– that, I will glow about); I just do it and move on to the next thing. But as the glass became clearer, I gradually relaxed and started to recount what I’ve managed to get done in spite of feeling that never enough gets done: two solid new compositions, good adaptations of three of my existing works, a successful conference exhibit, several interviews and radio shows (even a virtual reality TV talk show in Second Life!), orders for nearly two hundred scores, an award for my violin and harpsichord duet, Slip, a presentation about my life at Friday Harbor Labs that benefited their K-12 science outreach program, two trips to New York, a signed deal with a production music library, two published articles, and my friends, my husband and my cats still claim they love me. And this is all since January. More to come over the next three months, from the look of my website.

I should add that both pieces were composed with the ongoing sounds of nail guns, air compressors and very, very loud banging around me, as various house remodeling projects from a new kitchen to hardwood floors became reality. Never in my life would I have imagined that I could compose good works under these sonically stressful conditions. But the fear of a looming deadline is a great motivator, and I surprised myself with my newfound ability to tune out 100 decibels of random firings, on command. It would be fair to say that I have finally learned how to focus.

A great by-product of the hardwood floors that I didn’t think about when we decided to install them: I now sound about ten times more impressive at the piano than I could ever have in what was formerly known as real life. From now on, if anyone wants to hear me play they’ll just have to come to my living room. I will become known as the eccentric island weirdo who refuses to be heard outside her home, in lesser acoustics.

Not only do Charles and the cats keep cheering me on, but the birdies do, too. I try to keep them happy. It’s a bribe, really, because what I see outside my windows is immensely more colorful and fun than television, and since we choose not to have television service, heck, I suppose I’m just desperate for in-home entertainment. Two days ago, I opened up one of the birdseed bins (also sometimes a deerseed bin, admittedly), and was fascinated to see this impressive, if slippery, 4 inch long (unextended) Pacific Banana Slug. This informative web page states that these fellas “can easily be identified by their resemblance to a banana,” but the only time I’ve ever seen a banana look like this was when I forgot to eat the last one in my kitchen before going to Europe for a couple of weeks. Perhaps my exact words upon returning home were, “oh look! there’s an adorable Pacific Banana Slug on my counter!” Probably not. Better still, check out what they have to say about these slugs under “Behavior.” Yikes! And you thought your dating life was masochistic.

Speaking of travel and of not being a slug, I am off once again tomorrow to the far reaches (from here) of the U.S.: specifically, Newport News, Virginia, where I’m being flown to attend the rehearsal and premiere of my new concert wind band piece, commissioned by the U.S. Army. For those of you reading this in the States, just glance over to the upper right at that pic of me on the beach, and remember: your tax dollars, hard at work. I’ll post a clip or two of the new piece for which you helped pay, when I’ve got a recording. Meanwhile, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me purchase more seed for my birds, deer, and slugs.

…listen
…about the music

Celebrate!

All paths lead to more green.
Interpret as you wish.

…listen
…about the music

Waiting to find out.

And the little kelp clump is thinking, “someday I’ll grow up to be just like THAT!”

Reality is just perception. Keep the dream alive.

…listen
…about the music

Happily-ever-aftering in camelid.

At some point in this bloglet’s existence, I suppose I’m going to run out of animals to post, but that time has not yet come. Actually, I had really wanted to show you the two adorable young raccoons who have become regular visitors to my studio doorstep each evening this week. But my nighttime photography skills are not good, and to make things even more challenging, I’d have to shoot through the closed glass door since I’m guessing that raccoons running loose in my office could cause just a bit of chaos. Might inspire an interesting piece, though.

The blogosphere has long enjoyed a Friday tradition in which otherwise serious contributors post cute photos of their cats. Despite having never been terribly serious to begin with, I’ve participated in this ritual on many occasions, as my kelp-flogged readers know. Yes, second only to porn and viagra ads, I’m pretty sure that the net is clogged with an over-abundance of kitty pics. But today, instead I offer up for your amusement other incredibly adorable creatures: alpacas.

I would bet that anyone who doesn’t know this island would be surprised to learn that it’s home to several alpaca farms. The animals do very well in the moderate climate, and so do their caretakers, breeding and shearing them to grace the rest of us with clothing even more luxurious than cashmere. If you like the ultra-soft warmth of alpaca fur, you’re in for a treat. At least I’ve heard. I’ve never been able to hold onto these large animals for very long, much less sling one around my shoulders, but I’m told that people just love wearing alpaca.

…listen
…about the music

Grounded.

A signature of this island is the impressive amount of driftwood that wanders to its shores. Not just small branches, flung by a few gusts afar to become suddenly afloat, but entire trees blown over and out to sea from violent storms, and very large logs that tumble from barges while en route to a less sandy substrate. Our beaches are a repository for the thousands of stories these wooden immigrants might tell.

My own story becomes a happier one with each ring I add around my trunk (figuratively, not literally, otherwise my figure would be literally disfigured after 46 such rings and I’d need larger jeans). I spent much of my twenties and thirties adrift on seas of uncertainty. I worked ardently, but sometimes at cross purposes with my true self. Yet something clicked in my later thirties. An inner compass pulled by an invisible magnetic force took hold, and steered me to joy. Love, music, friendship, personhood, all became easier. I have no idea why, but I am grateful.

I’ve arrived to these shores, right alongside of the driftwood. All of us, no longer at sea, no longer adrift. Home.

…listen
…about the music

There is no citrus at Lime Kiln.

Lime Kiln State Park is one of this island’s living postcards. One of the most photographed spots, it seems impossible to resist snapping one’s own pix of the lighthouse across from B.C.’s Southern Gulf Islands, even though the tourist shops offer plenty of far better ones on the cheap. My inner shutterbug bites often.

My outer loquacious self yaps often, too, and this interview just came out yesterday. Anything but a postcard, it is long enough to put you back to sleep during your morning coffee, I promise. The webzine’s side bar even contains an earlier interview with me from a year and a half ago, plus a review of this blog’s eponymous disc. Plenty of music-related fodder, for those in need of additional reading material the nature of which is not usually found in these kelp-infested pixels.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, whaddya think the going rate is for a thousand words?

…listen
…about the music

Neither fish nor… foul.

Out of town business trips can be a little tiring, and I seem to be flown somewhere to do something every month these days. Since each voyage involves music and friends on the touchdown end of the plane trip, and since I limit my travel the rest of the month, I have a great time. But I always look for things that make the tedium of the to- and fro- segments amusing and productive.

For the latter, my laptop and Treo are invaluable. Email and web access anywhere, any time, are fun fun fun! There’s always something to read or answer… always always always! And, I like having the chance to keep working (or work at all, if I’ve been putting it off) on essays coming due, or the arc and scope of a new piece that’s in the gestation stage. I sometimes write my compositions by literally writing about them. What I want the music to do. Where a certain section will lead. How a particular passage could be developed.

Adjectives and adverbs and occasional wildly scribbled drawings, too, are all used to move a piece forward to the next step, and when I get back to my studio, I’ve got a nifty map of what I’m doing. That is, until I do it and the music itself chooses to do something entirely different. This actually happens a lot. I often compare composing a piece with walking a border collie on a leash: you think you’re going one way, but the dog thinks otherwise. A kind owner will sometimes allow the dog to choose its own direction and not rein it in too tightly. I try to be kind to my music. Most of the time I think it has me on a leash.

One of the constants on my desk is a stack of CDs received from colleagues, all waiting to be heard with my full attention (I marvel at people who can have music on in the background and still function at other things). It’s often hard to carve out time during a week to sit a listen to a disc, no matter how wonderful, when there’s so much to be done. And many times at home when I’m in the deepest throes of composing, I just can’t listen to other pieces at all because the constant music in my head leaves little room for anything else. I wish the solution for catching up on my list was to take discs or MP3s with me for long trips. But alas, listening to music on a plane is pointless; the jet engine drone devours all the low and mid-range frequencies that the music does. Given the choice, I’ll go with the engine drone, since the lack of one would put an effective stop to any need to listen to those CDs at all.

Last week, instead of taking the 9-seat puddle jumper to Seattle and droning Boeing 737 points beyond, I spent an hour and a half on the ferry from Friday Harbor to Anacortes, a small town on yet another island named Fidalgo that’s connected to the mainland by a bridge. I had left on the 6am boat and my ride east was accompanied by a sunrise that gradually revealed all the islands we passed. From Anacortes, it’s about 2 hours east and south to Seattle. The first third of the drive rolls past farmland framed by snow capped mountain ranges to the south and the east. Glorious.

My trip down was filled with wildlife, right up to take-off. In an open field on the right, thousands upon thousands of snow geese had gathered. The bright white was nearly blinding against the green pasture. A few minutes later on my left, I passed another field with even larger, even whiter migrating birds: trumpeter swans. Hundreds of them. To cap it off, as we neared a Douglas fir by the roadside, my van driver pointed to a full sized adult bald eagle perched only about twenty feet up. What a sight. All of this. A nice morning commute, indeed.

Yet, inspiring as all these birds were, nothing could compare to what I saw from Alaska airlines, above, as my Delta flight taxied to the runway. The Oscars should hand out Best Art Direction awards for aeronautics. I’ve always seen the potential for planes as mural canvasses. Now my dream has come true, at least on a few metal tubes. After wild salmon, can grizzly bears and moose be far behind? The thought of all these animals flinging themselves through the air with the rest of us from one coast to the other makes me smile. In my search for productivity, I am almost always amused.

…listen
…about the music

A trio for this trio.

Moses (in silhouette); Smudge (in attack mode); and Bambi (in fine dining attire).
This trio amuses me on a regular basis. Most of the time, Smudge doesn’t seem to care about these weird looking dogs that come round the studio to bogart the birds’ sunflower seeds. But on occasion, he feels the need to defend his territory, and jumps at the glass door in a noble, if pathetic, attempt to scare off the antlered interlopers.
It’s of no use.

I gleefully await the spring, with its new shoots and buds, already becoming visible. And: the promise of a few very non-indigenous sunflowers popping up here and there in the woods, courtesy of the potent combination of my largess, and the digestive systems of the local venison.

I’m off at the crack o’ dawn to NYC; more blogging when I return home at week’s end. Have a lovely week, my sweets.