Keira McArthur

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 […]

The clouds are pale indigo-violet, then a blustery bruised grey shot through with long warm lines of golden sunlight  and rich blue – this sets the red reds and the yellow yellows and the living greens in brilliant, stop-in-your-tracks collaboration.  I feel as though I’m watching the gods at play in a game where they […]

Music music all day yesterday – Jacqueline duPre while I traveled south in the morning, then a discussion about building an effective system for music education in Owen Sound with someone who, with certainty, knows how it’s done.  Then some information about Dr. Suzuki, who has changed the world with music pedagogy (like sistema in […]

Happy Friday all.  Big full moon tomorrow – I plan to hang on firmly to my sense of the ridiculous, & keep it light & good. In the meantime, wherever you are, I hope you can get outside and roll around in Autumn. Glorious.

a temperature-taking of the global impact of Venezuela’s 37-year-old Sistema. Read and cheer, then read again, and figure out how do start something where you live.

I woke this morning at 5am with the thought that I was carrying around way more stuff than was actually mine to carry. At this point the image of a lake trout with three sea lamprey attached to it appeared in my mind at this point – I’ve looked for an image like it to […]

There’s a loose ball joint on the car’s right front wheel.  So get it fixed asap; meanwhile go slowly over bumps.  Somehow I have a feeling this has broader application than just the car. My 16-year-old kid has been chosen as the lead Owen Sound candidate for a Rotary International Youth Exchange (11 months long) […]

A black squirrel just yelled at me for 3 straight minutes while hanging upside-down on the trunk of a downtown spruce tree. Was that because I was reading a book about Jungian psychology while sitting in a red car and wearing a red sweater?  It can’t have been for no reason whatsoever, so it must […]

Our house sits on bedrock beside a small old quarry.  We and the quarry are surrounded by big old trees and growing young trees,  so summer mornings are full of birdsong echoing off the high ceilings through open windows.  It can be cacophonous – I often feel like I’m working in a jungle tree-house up […]

I’ve been writing a grant application, due Oct 17, drawing sigils for prayer flags that will be cut out of lino, practising Faure & Brahms, blocking in drawings in paintings, printing Rotary Choices, concert tickets, posters, reading Suzuki pedagogy and I’m stuffed full. So now I can release myself into the great river of domesticity: […]

There are living, breathing loops of news in this community, which we check into and out of regularly, just to make sure all is well. So an so had a stroke but is recovering well.  Someone else will have her baby today after three days in the hospital.  The gig went great on Saturday; the […]

I look forward to this shift to Schedule every year – a good time to set clear intentions. Here goes 2012-2013, Part 1: 1. I will learn the Brahms by March. 2. I will learn the Faure by December, tape a performance and send it down to Guelph, for application as a Suzuki teacher up […]