Pick yourself up off the floor, sweetheart, and go figure out what success means to you now. Way you go now, that’s it. The drama’s just a distraction you made up to keep you down there, so drop it. Get up, and get going. Something has happened; my starting point has shifted. No, it’s more […]
Today the breeze is playful and cool, pushes me out of bed, teases me out of my sluggishness – it was a long night of paying attention to good friendship, while L was in surgery. My liver was talking all night long. It went well, Kate writes, he is resting now. I’m in first coffee […]
Lightning: it is wise not to make a target of yourself. I’m informed here by the following list of encounters, ideas and experiences, as far as I can name them in the moment: J.F. Martel, Guy Laramee, Brian Eno, Kate Raworth, Rebecca Solnit, Greta Thurnburg, Werner Herzog, my Masters study of Community Music, Rutger Bregman, […]
Manifesto woman does not know what to do next. Baffling. Maddening. Humbling. Ego-flattening. Intensely educational. I’ve made at least twenty clear plans for these pieces in the past three months of this residency, and the only one that has lasted the duration is Surrender. I’m thinking this is at the root of what’s happening here. The […]
It took this tree about 100 years to grow and I’m burning it, piece by piece, in four months. It was the one mature tree I cut down to make room for this cabin – a twinned birch, now half gone. Every time I put a new log on the fire I’m aware of this […]
The lake is gentle again. I’m back home after a week of travel, grateful to be working outside on the upper deck where I can drink in this soft shore-song; I’d expected snow, but it was quiet rain instead, as hushed as I am, in this memory of warmth. I write solstice songs, work out […]
We had a lick of brilliant sunlight early in the week, golden trees against a rich blue sky – a day the fauvists and Tom Thomson would have rejoiced in, had they been here to witness it. Since then the lake is has been relentless, grey and broody with the wind whipping off James Bay […]
The sun emerges as I put together the pieces for Wassail!, a Solstice event this December in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. My hope is that every one will feel welcome and loved there – it will be a gathering of us around music, respect, laughter and community – just one of many possible sane answers […]
Ah, Dr. Ford, I believe you. In my bones I believe you, and all the other women our age who were used and abused without remorse or acknowledgement. I’m one of them, a few times over. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, thank you from my heart for speaking your truth; I am humbled. Galvanized, to listen […]
A lovely, gracious wind-down to the green-breathing season this year. I divide my time this week between a lovely old farmhouse where an ancient cat needs my care, and the well-come cabin in the woods, surrounded by my new inter-species kin. Each time I return to the lakeside I’m amazed at how the place is […]
The bowl is close to full with impressions, gathered from this place through me. Loon songs, shore waves and tree frogs singing in alternate – major second, minor third, major fifth, unison. Owl, just after twilight. Snarls of nocturnal hunters as they chase then meet their kill – the unforgettable, intense charge of those screaming […]
I swim in the rain. The lake is now well beyond bracing, but not yet head-achingly cold. It occurs to me as I go in for the third time that this is perhaps what the crows had been trying to tell me, HEY! Time to think about Packing Up! COLD COMES! What I didn’t hear […]