My studio is new and beloved. The paintings, the sewings, the drawings and the music have all surged ahead after long weeks and months of stasis. Patient, faithful and still, they have all waited like the good friends they are, for my return. Ahhh. So rich. Bathed in sunlight I stand at one of my […]
Shall I drink more coffee, or would water be better? I am once again staring at a shovel, and axe, a music stand, and a cello case. My clock ticks, the cars’ engines sing relative health, relative speed, change of gears, turn the corner. My studio is almost functional again after a mad mad summer. […]
The high frequency sound of my own mind woke me two hours ago. July 2013 is finished, incredibly. So many things stuffed into a month, and June was only last week. August will also finish in one week – 2013’s August of sleep-deprived days, 2060 kilometer weeks, lousy cash-flow, last suppers, Pearson Airport, and cello […]
My friend these forty-eight years and fifty to come is reserved but possibly this is because he is so exquisitely aware of and compassionate with his audience. If you can lift yourself to the place where he responds, appropriately, to the dynamics and currents of the moment, you will hear him, clearly and cleanly like […]
Even the loud old fridge is drowned out by straight-down-rain. Not sheets and thunder and driving – but a rain that will drench us for days, soaking the soil, swelling the creeks, rising the shoreline of Georgian Bay above the sad sorry rocks that appeared this spring, covering their nakedness once again. It is 12 […]
The Parkdale branch of Toronto Public Library is packed full of people reading, working, talking, goofing around, crying, whining and laughing. The security guard gives advice to a young girl, who says something like ‘I just feel like they’re not hearing me sometimes….’. The library is a single floor, nestled in a relatively underprivileged neighborhood […]
These days the greater part of my awareness is below the ground amid the roots of plants I’ve put there – encouraging them to reach down, to spread through the warm rich mix of compost, loam and peat moss I’ve made for them – drink drink, feed, grow. Above ground the signs are good – […]
I wake into this morning still wrapped in a cocoon of wonder, pour myself into hot coffee and sunshine. From this computer two lovely pieces of new music emerge, both via my dear friend Kati Gleiser who is some hundreds of miles away but also next to me, as I write. I listen to Kati’s […]
I dig into the Brahms E minor cello this morning and find myself swimming strong in a strong river – a great deep and fast and roiling that collects and contains a watershed of stories as it carves it’s way through the land. Why, Mr. Brahms. It is good to meet you here from across […]
The morning is still still and grey weighed down by two feet of spring snow. Even the sky is heavy. The birds do their best to lighten things up but we have no warm welcome for them this year after the long flight north. Just heavy grey, heavy snow, covered in old rabbit tracks. It […]
Ahhh. I’m coming back to earth after these weeks of rehearse practise teach perform travel teach record rehearse. It’s barely seven in the morning, and there’s enough daylight outside to watch the fine fine fall of snow. I find it comforting. It’s as if each snowflake is a simple thought that has been sifted into […]