Keira McArthur

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. In the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau I find a plug upstairs after the cafe closes.  There’s a bench with cushions so I […]

It is re-focus time in the studio.  I have all weekend for this – just one little gig for an hour today, then back at it. I think of studio as a map both for and of my mind.  It’s a container for schedule; a flexible structure that can be altered according to the needs […]

The Harness is off.  It’s over there on the floor. Curious, to see this thing I’ve worn for 30+ years…  Who made it?  Why so tight?  Why the rough rope?  It’s ingenious, actually.  There’s a pull cord I see that will jab thumbtacks into my backside when I’m slowing down, and simultaneously tighten the collar […]

Not sure I can do it justice tonight.  There’s a cool change I’m trying to put my finger on…. and a river rock I got in Manhattan in 2009…. I’m not really verbal.  What’s rich for me resides in the resonance and richness of what is visual and tactile and aural – so these blogs […]

There was an impossible amount of STUFF going on in my family when I was a kid.  It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve realized my then-body had figured out a strategy to remove myself from the obligation to participate in the stress:  I got sick.  There were lots of options, some […]

It’s the kind of snow there’s a constant More of.  The plows and trucks and blowers, out all night long are still going strong at 10am.  Cars slide gently sideways to stop signs. Kids and grown-ups both are thoroughly snow-suited, booted, winter-gloved and touqued as they kick & trudge through piled white, falling white, blowing  […]

We were in my studio where almost every inch of wall, floor table and shelf is crammed with stuff in process and use, with tools, & paint & vine charcoal & buttons & books & thread & blank paper & other paper covered with notes or ideas or solo, duet, trio, quartet or orchestral music.  […]

Interesting, isn’t it, that we divide ‘commercial’ music from ‘real’ music?  When in fact all music is consumed, and all professional musicians are in the business of earning a living – no matter what genre they play in.  We say to our kids – no don’t be a musician, you’ll never make it, it’s too […]

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 […]

Rehearsing and conversing with the highly engaged and engaging pianist Marc Pierre Toth and composer Richard Mascall last night, the day after dinner with pianist, singer-songwriter, electronic artist and visual artist and dear dear friend Kati Gleiser – and snowshoeing with her today.  Talk  – of Shanghai, Japan, Hannover, my neice Anna in Germany, The […]

It’s a mighty fine tunnel we’ve just got through. A storm on Saturn in 2011. This already happened, and now we see it. Why do I find that comforting? I am later in the day after the day of find my head get to town rehearse find-a-piano rehearse perform rehearse perform perform so-grateful-for-good-friends enriched pleased […]

While Barak Obama was aging rapidly in the effort to deflect the great toxic nastiness of the 2012 US election and (hopefully!) emerge as President with some vestiges of grace, I was building, making, taking apart and putting together, writing and re-writing new art equations in my studio. Through Hurricane Sandy and my dad’s 80th […]