July 12, 2015
It’s been such a long long time since I’ve allowed myself to feel the wonder of my own buoyancy.
A field of oats on off the sideroad where I drank my morning coffee while my excellent bandmates slept..
Sing a B-flat major chord to the sun as it dips below the western horizon. Play and snap and thunder through two sets of Charlie Glasspool’s excellent music with four excellent and complex human beings. Floating propelled on a big white boat that can open itself to kiss Tobermory and then South Bay Mouth, sharing people back and forth like fluid full of stories, food, art, and music.
Travel in Good Spirits, says the Chi-Cheemaun. And we did. There, and back again.
…and another oat field, blue and shifting in the morning breeze, to the right. At some point I forgot I was drinking coffee, and I drank the blue green of these fields instead.
Mostly my rehearsals are efficient things, scheduled between other things that need attention. Like ritualized steps through the weeks they land precisely where they were planned – morsels of joy and the rich job of listening closely to make the right sound at the right time. Twelve pieces learned and somewhat polished in two hours for a gig the next day. Beginnings and endings. Sheet music road maps are explored and memorized, fingerings and bowings, dynamics marked in (or chord progressions, lead lines, rhythmic textures , vocal harmony parts where and when). Later you pull these out and play with an mp3 to embed them, and on the way to the gig play the mp3s over and over & think your way through your part… I had three rehearsals like that this week – each of them highly rewarding of course, but quickly finished and on to the next thing.
Docking sign at Tobermory. I liked the paint cracks from weather
Sometimes it’s about more than getting the notes right, but there’s no time to explore the bigger philosophy, to feel and hear the deeper currents and learn to ride them with integrity, with sensitivity. Rehearsal is over too quickly, too efficiently, and I carry a residue of missed opportunity through the day…
On rare occasions, though, there is time and a shared inclination to go deeper. There was this week with us as we sang our way to the boat, on the boat, and back again into the next day.
We stepped off the schedule planet, my friends and I, and onto planet possibility for an intense two days. I can’t (and wouldn’t) speak for them, but I certainly know I am changed by it. I feel like a child who has discovered a myriad of new ways to play with old toys. Songs and solutions pop into my head while driving, while reading, immediately upon waking. I can handle and deal with about twice the detail load, and I still have plenty time for wonder.
She opens herself in the approach to Tobermory
What a simple thing, to change so much.
Stop, and play with like-minded people in a place of possibility for long enough to make it count. And it will count.
Thanks you guys. More, please.