Keira McArthur

I feel wonder this morning, as the sun rises. Sparrows flick by the east facing window but my eyes are glued to the clouds – they shift and change colour like a living watercolour painting. Then they part as if to make space and it’s all blindingly gold for just a few seconds. For a […]

Solitude is my natural state as writer and artist; I’m in this 3-year residency to do my work, so I’ve had plenty of it. Monday’s call from Trudeau made complete sense to me: Stay home. We can do this together by staying apart. Let’s help one another with the practicalities of our self isolation, and […]

Drippy Sunday morning; the world outside has shrunk …which appropriately rhymes with Funk, because Funk is precisely what I’m in. … niggly, prickly snappish me with a million essential things to attend to but instead I chop a fridge full of vegetables and chicken into tiny tiny pieces, beat up a dozen eggs, fry severed […]

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 […]

The Blizzard’s Promise:  to bring us all closer. We look out of snow-packed windows at white white nothing but white and wind and remember how wonder feels.  What warm is, what nourishment tastes like. It tastes like time.  Like open, endless time. Time tastes a little like fever. Now finally I can… and then I […]

Every once in a while I see a bald eagle in the sky,  like poetry so beautiful and alive I stop breathing. We have entered the long cold of January.  Winter came early this year – two months ago –  to invite us deep inside where we can tend to the root of things, tune […]

Every year has different elements & configurations, but as of December first each year I look at my calendar in wonder and love my job all over again.  Who gets to do this?  Musicians. shorthand: December 8, 12, 13, 14; Dec 16, 18, Dec 21, Dec 22  (I believe that’s 8 for 19 days?  2 […]

..if you find a loose end, then follow the thread back to where they all connect to the same warp and weft, where the shuttle sails on,  left to right, right to left, and the pedals shift the taught colours up then not, then down again, humming. I can’t express how significant the changes in […]

I wake into this morning still wrapped in a cocoon of wonder, pour myself into hot coffee and sunshine. From this computer two lovely pieces of new music emerge, both via my dear friend Kati Gleiser who is some hundreds of miles away but also next to me, as I write.  I listen to Kati’s […]

I find it’s most difficult these days to be truly still and resoundingly empty like a huge stone bowl on a plinth.  I’m getting better at it, but it’s taking a considerable amount of focus. I seek to do this now because it occurred to me many months ago (years, even) that I need more […]