notes from the kelp

…click to listen:

…about the music

Rain croak.

The embossed lettering atop my trash can instructs, “para que no entren los animales… lock the darn lid.” (my translation). Sure, the clever handles prevent raccoons and deer from enjoying the leftovers, but there is no stopping the renegade Pacific Tree frogs, who don’t read Spanish.

My studio window is wide open on this quiet, mild, grey Sunday, and I’m surrounded by the delightful and insistent commentary of many little frogs as I type this. They love this weather. Or maybe they despise it, and are whining. I can’t tell because I haven’t signed up for the Berlitz course in Amphibianese. Against a hazy, shifting ceiling, the grass and the trees are green, and remain so throughout the winter. Even in winter, it rarely looks bleak here because of two things: the perpetual verdant landscape, and the fact that ninety percent of the time, even our grey weather offers fluffy, three-dimensional clouds in varying hues, giving visual depth and movement to the sky. It really is quite poetic. The frogs provide the text. I keep my window open, to steal the music.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Moving. Always.

Yes, home again. After 17 days on the road. In the air, in hotels, in meetings, in rehearsals, in concert halls, in lecture halls, in receptions, in universities, in homes and apartments, in museums, in trains and cars and ferries and buses and taxicabs, in restaurants and bars and coffee houses and clubs, in elevators and up and down stairs and escalators and sidewalks and sometimes wondering where the heck I was going but all-times having a great time getting there and back.

Next week I begin another trip. Five cities. Six planes. Eighteen days.
I will be looking up at trees for partridges.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Places of life and longing.

Above, the view from a friend’s house on the north end of San Juan Island, looking straight out to the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia and straight in to the universe. As I relaxed in one of those chairs, I was convinced that were this my home I would get absolutely no work done whatsoever.

Below, the full, intoxicatingly scented bloom of the island’s biggest lavender farm. Yes, it smells like it looks: instant calm. The web hasn’t figured out how to download that to your desktop yet. You’ll like it when I can put a little button on this blog screen that invites you to “click here” to experience the e-romatic wonder of this place. Now that’s how to reach an audience! Or, depending on what odors one offers, how to instantly repel them.



And here, one of my frequent visitors (or, music critics). He and his big ears keep coming back, as if to check to see if I’ll ever get it right. I mean, seriously: just look at the utter exasperation on his face.

Orange, purple, green, brown and all the other parts of the spectrum make up one beautiful aspect of my life. It’s pretty fascinating to embrace a bifurcated existence: one that’s remote and rural, and another that takes me from city after city– every month. Writing music, then talking about it in all those places. And, back again. I thrive on this balance, and post these snapshots not only to share the scenes with you, but to remind me what awaits in 17 days when I return from the five-state journey my 22″ roll-on and I start in the morning (uh, I think that might be the states of: confusion [where am I right now?], momentary panic [where did I place my boarding pass?], general bliss [what friendly people!] , illusion [surely they get what I’m talking about…uh… no?] and calm [yes, I’d love another glass, thank you]). I’ll try to post something here from the road while I’m traveling. No matter what state I happen to be in.