This surprising year. This morning’s write is populated by a surprising jumble of images – the giant blue Christmas bulbs on the giant tree at the Distillery District’s outdoor Christmas market. A market that featured a Christmas Angel who wandered through big fat snowflakes and the crowds, occasional a capella singers, a snow-covered booth selling […]
Each morning both colour and form return to the rooms I write in, despite the rain, the snow and the cloud cover. Leaves of my fig plant appear like green-stained glass in the window, my cello a rich chestnut brown. In all weathers, the sun rises and days begin. For me, each reliable day this […]
You look like a teacher, says the young waitress in the very loud bar the night the Tiger Cats lose the Grey Cup game. She looks like your neighbour’s odd tweenage daughter who dresses like her big brother, a closet spoken word somebody or maybe even closet hip hop but white and really short. I […]
The six hours I spent in the studio yesterday were a snarling, jangled mess of assertions piled on top of counter-assertions, each increasingly aggressive. At least I felt it so. Hilarious after the fact, maddening at the time. Howard Stern through the floor boards loud enough to be sitting beside me, interspersed with the high […]
Just a hint of snow. The occasional fat flake visible against the still leafy tree, in slow dance downward. I watch, mesmerized as if my back window has become a television, the floating white stuff a metaphor, a plot device in the opening credits that whisper a coming change. There are things I am pleased […]
Why travel away from studio and project – to build career? To provoke and push my smaller self who would so prefer to work away quietly in my studio, in my cabin among the trees? To push the known boundaries of my awareness. To become apparent to unknown others, somewhere outside my comfort zone. To […]
The taste of anxiety on my tongue over the Canadian election has been an undeniable distraction. How can there be so many voting humans in this immense and beautiful country who deny the urgency of climate change? I’ve been watching the polls, stuck in bafflement, for weeks now. EVERYONE I speak to on the street […]
One of the life skills required of me as an artist & performer is good facility at writing my own bio, in 50 words, 100, 500. I’ve come to understand that this is important and useful to everyone concerned, since I’m the only one who knows everything about where I’ve been, how I got here, […]
…asks the Tree of my human self as I walk round and round in circles on the forest floor. Mother Mary in the sky full of all kinds of weather, what a time. I want eye contact, good humour, respect and trust, even in the absence of understanding, Willingness to move forward, together into the […]
revolve. One cupboard cleared, one old pine chest emptied, two rooms of six reconfigured. Three boxes of books off my shelves and into the car for passing forward, a trunk full of clothing for VV. Winter wear rediscovered, pared down, and stowed in one kist, guest blankets in the other. I now have a better […]
Mornings, my coffee ritual, made before and drunk after the sharp slap of lake. Pad back dripping to the upper deck where the pause before has been waiting to move on. Sit wrapped in the warm red blanket, pour, sip, begin. Webs. I’m thinking family ones, this morning. About how family spaces are co-created, preserved, […]
We’re at full stop on westbound 401 and collector lanes, just before the Wilson exit. It’s been an hour of this, and I’ve been watching the construction truck inch it’s way across the gridlock for the past twenty minutes. The truck has a huge arrow on the back of it, pointing right. Rush hour folk […]