Value What an intense beginning to October it has been. It feels like I’ve been birth canal-ed – squeezed into a ‘passage through’ from that September of structural change (schedule, mental, energetic) into this October of ‘Now, GROW’. This is the first morning of stillness after a massive storm of People and Events and I find myself looking around in wonder, like a newborn. Bridge on the way to my weekly class at Laurier. Like a birth canal, save that I come back through it every week at midnight. Always an odd sensation. I played back-to-back gigs in three completely different genres from Friday until Sunday at 2pm – the fallout from those rehearsals is over there… Oh yes, and Friday was also my birthday. Why the roses… I threw my old loveseat in a dumpster on Saturday too – the old pullout that didn’t pull out was my bed for the year after my marriage ended in 2013 and despite its’ size and brokenness, the ragged sides ravaged by cats and the seat pillows I never did finish reupholstering, I loved it dearly. We pushed it over the edge and it opened one last time to say goodbye. I whispered thank you for holding me before we drove away. The tears that came then (and now, I’ll admit) are proof of my exhaustion. Change. Sigh. Plaid. High back, which makes me feel short. Longer by two feet. This new old couch has good pedigree (people very very dear to me have sat and slept here) and I have high hopes for it’s eventual ‘rightness’ in this space, though it still feels awkward. The studio cats have shunned it, so far. I suspect it will grow in usefulness as I settle in to the habit of reading books, annotating books, blogging about books and commenting on the blogs of classmates. This is how doing a Masters in Community Music translates into daily life. Ha – even as I write I know that’s not even the half of it. This masters pervades all levels of now – how can it not, when books entitled Music and Mind in Daily Life (Clarke/Dibbin/Pitts, 2010) are on the week’s menu? Every class from 7 until 10 pm) we talk about what is meaningful and authentic. How this changes when music becomes a commercialized product. What does it feel like, to share musical space, to tell true musical stories that resonate and mix across personal and political cultures. How music is so naturally inclusive, yet so easily distorted by projections of class, identity and politics. How Music changes things, always. Books like food. Masters is like eating and eating when you know you are already full. An exercise in stamina… I have not found ‘normal’ yet. In the openness of this morning I look at my weeks and think, something has got to go. There’s not enough room, currently, for the things I need to do, for the books I need to read. And yet this is a stage in any valuable long-term project that I recognize, and relish – a good exercise in using emotional intelligence to understand what’s going to be supportive, gain me greater clarity, sharper focus. And what is not. I’ve added things. Cello lessons every other week (we are changing my right thumb position, working on my bowing, and fine-tuning my ears). New cello students. A string ensemble gathering every other week. Learning lead vocals on two songs – one gaelic, one by Robbie Burns, for a mini-tour in Toronto in 2 weeks. A drawing class for people who think they can’t in November, functional art making, and visual art making for a Studio Tour in December (this is how I will PAY for the masters – I have commissions and buyers, but so far no time to do the work). Christmas mini-tour with my favourite musical collaborators. Regular family visits. Good, slow time with my dear and significant other. Time spent listening and laughing with old and new friends. It’s a lot, yes. Doable if I practise smart self-care. If I can find and work from a new lightness of being. There is is. I know what I need to let go of. All the old heavy I carry that’s not mine. Stories that are long over but still stuck in a run-on sentence. Time to close those old books, and burn them. crazy beautiful bridge.
Bill Reid, Through and In My phone is in Kingston, 200 km of driving sleet and transport trucks ago. I travel through this with my daughter from my aunt to my niece. There’s a rightness to the timing. Bill Reid’s Orca In the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau I find a plug upstairs after the cafe closes. There’s a bench with cushions so I cross my legs and balance the laptop as I would find centre and lift my paddle in a canoe. Then I write, staring at horizon. There’s a curve in the tail of Bill Reid’s Orca that keeps him suspended in the air, impossible and alive. My paddle-calloused fingers type, I intend… a photo of ‘Play’ from a 2001 show Sea Hear, in which I tried with all my heart to paint music. My daughter, at 5, chose all the imagery for this one, especially the orcas. Weightless I am, suspended in the air like this massive hunter whale. Out of my element, on purpose: I intend. I am above the Ottawa River which looks drugged into surrender by the ritual, annual, comforting January cold, across from the Parliament buildings where Justin son of Pierre sits with renewed and informed vigour as our head of state. They built the beautiful, flower-shaped, buttressed library on the river side, away from the possibility of attack. Those Statesmen, their advisors, their Wives. Some of them in came and chose and made it so in ways I can respect. Bell1, 2015, 20″ x 24″, mixed media (acrylic) on canvas. I think about my Scots ancestors who fled here two generations & eight generations ago to look for a horizon they could aim for, for once. I think about now and La Loche and four people dead like lightning, like an arrow to what we need to see and be accountable for. I think about Idle No More, about Truth and Reconciliation. I can barely remember the last specific, technical idea I had about music or painting – these old old ideas are far stronger. ‘Black’. 2014, 36×36, acrylic on dyed cotton. I intend. To take the next precious decade of my life to examine and build a good answer to these things I wonder and care about, more every day. My thinking fingers have written this: We are all a product of our own small community that overlaps in myriad ways with larger ones like the Internet, like a city, a collective, a field, an orchestra, a band, large or small. I’ve come to believe over this small span of years that each is an ecosystem that thrives according to the strength of it’s connectedness. I’ve found also that few connectors are stronger than the making of good music. As a painter who also writes and performs regularly as a vocalist/cellist… …I have experienced this time and time again: visual art and writing connect us more deeply to ourselves but music connects us, through ourselves, to others. One might say that community music is like mycelium – a connective tissue that can convey a supportive ‘nutrient’ through the system to everyone who requires it…. photo by Robbin McGregor, bee-keeper The timing is right. I will get my Master’s degree at Laurier, in Community Music. Like the impossibly suspended whale, like a Rebel, I will pay for this with the proceeds from my paintings. They will be on paper and canvas, in watercolour, ink and oil. They will sing. Find a door you like, one that calls change to you. Then you go through and in.
#Selfie 19: The Writing of Book As predicted, each painting for #Selfie has had it’s own arc of becoming. They have all been surprises, have all taught me things I wouldn’t otherwise know. It’s been a privilege to be at the centre of this project and participate in the discovery, the shaping and polishing of each facet. Quite a geological process – I am changed by it, I know. I sat down to pull the book together and realized that even though the whole project has a broader, wider arc I was still inside it, making. Still in process, still on the curve… It became clear over the days of showing up for writing that this lovely broad #Selfie arch also had a corresponding shadow. As I walked along this one it became narrower, and darker, and steeper – in descent. Then I realized, “Ah. This is personal now.” also, “Ah. This is writing of Book”. ‘map’ for the last #Selfie painting, Totem. #Selfie has been a great collaborative experience – music, performance art, spoken word, poetry, well-considered response and story. Ron de Boer and staff, david sereda, Kristan Anderson, Larry Jensen, Coco Love Alcorn, Christopher McGruer, Paul Hartmann, Christian Wilke, Marcus Vichert, Norm Bell, Thom MacFarlane, Kate Walsh, John Fearnall, Brad Morley, Frank Klaassen… so many more who climbed in and on to add thought, response, notice, rhyme, feeling, rhythm, comment. Highly resonant, this idea of examining #Selfie. #Selfie Examination. three of five images, underdrawing… Did I think it had already got personal, in the making of the paintings? Yes. Yes I did think that. But the paintings were one of five components to #Selfie. There was also the collaborative performance; the collaborative spoken word; the blog (the way in to the paintings); and the book. The book is the larger arc – both visible and public, and invisible, personal. Not a compilation (though I thought that’s what it would be), not a summary or a closing paragraph. It has elements of those ideas, but the book needed to be a distillation of the experience into something …chewable. So I wrote a folk tale. all five images on, blue wash on butterfly It begins this way, A girl was born with a sleeping wound buried deep inside her. She also had joy, which was clear for anyone to see. While she was growing up, her family, who loved her very much, gave her another wound to keep, and buried it deep in her future. They also gave her love, which was clear for anyone to see. They made the wound they gave her out of pieces of their own memories, fragments of their parent’s arguments, scattered bits of rage and anger that they had collected from behind the doors and under the carpets, in the chesterfield beneath the pillows, under the beds, under the kitchen sink. they put all of their hopes and dreams for her in the wound, and wrapped it all up in a beautiful cloth made from their love. That was the way it had happened for them, the way it had always been, and the way it would always be. more colour, corrected drawing I’ve loved the essential nature of Folk Tales for as long as I can remember. They don’t mess around with descriptive filler or emotional drama, but deliver metaphor in layers which the reader can take in and combine, to build their own image and intuitive response. Always I’m trying to do this with my paintings. This last #Selfie painting more than any of the others – possibly because of the book writing, and the Folk Tale… When the time came for the girl to leave her parents and seek her fortune, everyone agreed that she was well-prepared. Beautiful and full of life, promise, intelligence and talent, it was clear that she would have no trouble finding success, fulfilment, happiness and love. And so she did. As the years passed, everyone who knew her was reassured by the clean arc of her life, since This was the way it had happened for them, The way it had always been, The way it would always be. She herself was happy, content and grateful for the comforts she enjoyed, until she came to the day in her future where her parents’ gift was buried. Today from 6 until 8pm we will launch the book and this final #Selfie painting. The show will come down on August 8th, and then #Selfie will be in Chapter Two, which I’ve not written yet, but I shall. Here’s the link to that event if you’re nearby & on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/748736241853940/ The story to be told there is a more introspective one – it’s mine, certainly, but also it belongs to anyone who is pulled to #Selfie Examination. Good heavens there are riches there – fragility; audacity; strength; disempowerment; blind, mute sadness; singing joy; risk and nourishment. It behooves one to keep walking down the path…. Final painting. This was taken outside at 6am, so as always, the colour is… interpretive. Come and see the original if you can. In the story, the girl meets a Hermit. Then she meets the Great God Pan. Then she meets Baba Yaga, and …. Well, write to me if you want the rest of the story. It belongs, I think, to all of us.