In the spring of 2019 I completed a 2.5 year Masters Program in Community Music. I used arts based research to examine the transformative effect of this program on my perception and use of arts in community – its value, effectiveness, resonance. I gained a new level of appreciation for the telling of story in times of change, and wrote an allegorical story called “Seven Swans, Seven Rooms”, which I hope will be published in 2020.
The first few hours of the year 2020 are dressed with finely sifted snow. No hollering or screeching of tires, just the old trees rumbling peacefully in Gage Park. Some fireworks to the northwest begin at 11:55 and continue for fifteen minutes. I sense a breathing out in the world, like a photographer does, after … More The Queen suggests…
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 … More tea lights
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 … More Sunrise
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 … More Books & shows
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 … More Beyond territory is… what?
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 … More where might this tunnel lead
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 … More CNAL 2019 -why jump on a plane?
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 … More Come on, Canada.
