A rainy 5:20 am in the darkening northern hemisphere.  It is November 1. I was lucky enough to be on the road every weekend last month, to and from Kingston, Toronto, Peterborough.  I drove through ridings filled with campaign signage, fields of shorn crops, hills of red and yellow trees, towns surrounded by housing developments and the occasional […]

This 2015 Canadian election. I don’t want to know how many hours I’ve spent online trying to write through and responding to ‘stick with the brand’ thinking, or the conversations that possibly should have been more focused on personal issues. At the beginning of each day I tear myself from Guardian articles and online debates about […]

Heart and mind, heart and mind. I was teaching a transcribed Bach Air to one of my cello students today and was brought to tears, once again, by the beauty of that music.  Such a dance between air and sea, earth and sky, leaf and root. I’d forgotten what day it was, actually, until my […]

I’ve just read a paragraph in an alternative american news source I trust, in reference to an incident of ‘personal is political’ in Asheville, North Carolina: The misogynist (woman-hating) viewpoint is currently embodied in this thing we’re all just hearing about for the first time, called Red Pill culture. Simply put, this is a social […]

I got up from writing to answer the knocking at my front door, wondering if I’d have to speak federal election with someone I’d never met, or if my neighbour needed a hand. There was no one there, save for a couple walking down the street.  When I looked down to the stoop I found a […]

I think about reflection, and Oscar Wilde pops into my intuitive fishing net.  He brings his Dorians Grey for discussion – the beautiful ageless public face and the ever more twisted and toxic one hidden in the attic. Oscar the bon vivant who hides a keenly perceptive heart behind his great wit – he’s good company when I’ve […]

Do we all have a natural buoyancy?  I wonder.  Some call themselves ‘sinkers’, and describe the great effort required to stay afloat.  This is subjective, of course. Effort, to some, is a thing to be minimized if not avoided altogether.  To others effort is a joy,  a ‘coming to meet’, a solid, positive investment in something […]

I’ve been dreaming poetic dreams of mycelium which is really thought connecting to thought through boundaries which are really just illusions.  I’ve been coiled and waiting like a pike in the hot weedy shallows, ready to spring at my duckling dinner.  Racing like a strong salmon through the lines and hooks that dangle my possible death, crawling like a crayfish […]

Summer grows into Autumn. In two weeks I play cello for these, and for Gloria and the Oboe Concerto in F (more info here); it’s good to have such a soundtrack to live and work by.  Thank you, Vivaldi, for composing this music 300 years ago. I listen to II mvt of the Oboe concerto as […]

There are few things that turn me off more than cheap thrill seekers or sensationalists.  I could not be less interested than I am in watching a horror film just to feel my hackles rise.  For me this is like wanting to lie down on a bed of sharpened nails just to remind myself that I […]

i used to identify with the glamour I can pull up out of my performance joy, as though it was the best part of me. It certainly got the most attention. Now I think of it more like one of many essential ‘functions’.  A runner learns how to run, or a digger to dig- I’m […]

This is a ‘try’.  I made a loose promise to myself that I’ll do something I’ve never done at least once every week, preferably daily.  So far the results have been truly eye-opening.  I get stuck less and less, I’ve made more mistakes than I can count, and every one of them has led to […]