Seven hundred pages and four years of journals, four hundred pages and four years of blog posts, two hundred photographs, twenty projects / performances, thirty poems, three notebooks, and three binders full of journal articles and syllabuses, a bookshelf of Community Music and related literature.

All but the last two are my data, which I’ve sorted through for keywords and phrases, references and pivot points, using a sieve made out of the course syllabuses for my masters.

I can with complete honestly share with you that in the process of doing this, the person who wrote the data over these past four years has become quite distinct from the me who is reading through, and analyzing it.

What has been caught in the sieve has then been fashioned into a story, called Seven Swans, Seven Rooms, that I will make into a physical book (just learned how, then made the paper for this book yesterday with the inspired and inspiring artist Susan Barton-Tait – check out her work here).

As I do this I’ll take the journal articles and CM & related literature and tie it back in to the story, which will be added to the book as annotation.

Three weeks from now, with the active help of my audience, I will tell you a tale of transformation from the more than human world, where trumpeter swans deliver messages, where doors are opened by secret keys, where a woman is saved by, then released from, knowledge.

After that, with the more passive assistance of powerpoint, I will briefly tell you the other story. After both are told, like Jan Martel’s Pi, I will offer you the question:

Which story do you prefer?

After some discussion with the audience and a panel of wonderful PhDs for whom I have a great deal of respect, we will all make our way down the hall to my studio for wine, nibbles, conversation, and I hope, some spontaneous music-making.

I love good research, and what can be made from it.

Hope you can come to this: 6pm, on Tuesday April 30, room 206 at The Cotton Factory.

This is a free event, a ‘show-and-tell’ after 31 months of Masters study at Laurier. That said, there will be ways to help me pay for the event, if you are so inclined. Books and cards for sale, signed copies of the Seven Swan’s book available for pre-order, paintings, and plain old donation jars.

I will continue to check in here between now and then. Write it you have questions!

Thanks, for reading.