notes from the kelp

…click to listen:

…about the music

Hot music for a temporarily warm amphibian.

I realize the mug shots of Kermit here make him look like the frog that ate Cleveland. He is, however, just over an inch long.

He is also quite lucky: I narrowly avoided stepping on him and turning him into froggie puree as he sunbathed on my deck today. After the requisite photo shoot, I extended my seemingly gargantuan hand, into which he and his big smile readily hopped. We cooed at each other, (ok, I’m anthropomorphizing: I cooed at him, and he was probably thinking, “get me the heck outta here”), then I brought his slightly sticky, very green rubbery self over to a nice, bug-laden salal patch and placed him on a leaf the exact same hue. I hope I did not separate him from a large family that is now worrying about where Grampa Bubba went, getting ready to place his photo on the side of bait cartons around the county.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Re-paired.

If you happened to read the comment section to my penultimate post, you know that I quietly eulogized the newborn fawn that I saw once last week, but not again the next day when his mother strolled by. Well, happiness today: as I was on the phone in the kitchen, I looked out the window and there he was, standing in the woods in front of me next to his mom, suckling, exploring, with all his white spots looking a little more spread out across his growing body. I won’t give names to these creatures because I know their lives are routinely shortened. Yet it’s impossible not to take some proprietary interest in these cuties.

A very young fox poked her head into my studio door yesterday, too, and then fox trotted off to the front of the house before I could snap a pic. My wildlife photog documentation is sorely underwhelming (the little fawn here is, literally, trunk-ated) and I flog you, dear kelphistos, with amateur shots barely worthy of a sixth grader’s homework report. But what I lack in ability with my camera, I still see in my mind’s eye, observing and pondering these encounters long afterward. Jane Goodall was one of my heroes when I was in sixth grade, after all.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music for two napping kitties.

It’s been bright and sunny outside. Foxes, raccoons, frogs, bucks, does, fawns, robins, eagles and hummingbirds pass by the picture windows at all hours of the day. But do these two notice? Nope. When you’ve got someone great to curl up with, the rest of the world just doesn’t exist.

And by the way, these guys give a big paws up to the growing number of U.S. states finally legalizing same sex marriage. Here’s to purrogress!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Prelude to the afternoon of a fawn.

Truth in advertising.
Here is a little behind, along with its mama’s larger one. Not a great pic, but the best I could do while washing the dishes, spotting the pair, and snapping them quickly through the kitchen window.

There are few things cuter than watching a newborn fawn closely follow its mother as it discovers what this world is all about. So far, it has learned about my wood chopping pile, the salal-draped shore pine forest around it (salal is the low green plant you see in the pic), the neon blue dragon flies that buzz everywhere, my garbage and recycling bins, the endless sound of all the birds and frogs in the trees, and the way the driveway gravel feels under those little hooves. I am hoping that s/he does not get an object lesson about cars. This is a dead end rural road that sees very few four-wheeled critters each day, but there are way too many sad stories on this island of car versus deer. A losing proposition on both sides of the windshield.

I, too, am a little behind. Not only because I am a fairly small person (when people meet me who have only seen me on the web, they’re often surprised by this and proclaim that gee, they always thought I was much taller/bigger/whatever… maybe my photos make me look like Compozilla, the monster whose notes attacked Cleveland?). No, not only that. But because I’ve finally been home for a length of time, and the amount of catch up in all realms– music, social, house stuff, island stuff– has been enough to keep me in the moment of living my life, rather than the post-modern pursuit of reporting about living it. Thus, I’ve fallen a little behind on my regular blogging schedule.

This, however, will change. Enough cool things are going on that I’ll take some time to describe them in upcoming posts. I started to find it ironic this spring that one of the key things that I go around the country speaking about for workshops, conferences, and university classes, is the great professional benefit of being present and interactive on the web, 24/7. And yet, due to being so busy talking about it, I was having less and less time to do it!

Web presence is much more than static website updates– it means consistently creating new material and information to pop across people’s pixels that plugs them purposefully into a perception of one’s personhood. Sorry, just had to do that. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, listservs, and the endlessly engaging blogs out there that deal with pithy matter (as opposed to my often defiantly un-pithy matter here in kelpville), all serve as serendipitous portals to income-producing careers. It’s been working consistently this way for me for quite a while, and so I like to inform and encourage my peers as well, that they might experience similarly happy results.

I joke that apparently, the key to success in my business is to move to a remote, bridge-less island floating out in the middle of nowhere that many have never heard of. Works like a charm– my composing career has never been so busy since moving far away from a big city two years ago. So I guess this makes me a bit of a musical guinea pig. Oink! Maybe my next piece will be for swine flute.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Island time.

I like the pic of the little puddle jumper taking me away from Friday Harbor, but I much prefer the two that show me coming back (yes, that’s a landing strip and not someone’s driveway). I’m home to stay put for a while and write a whole bunch of music notes! Hooray! And, to spend time outside in this glorious weather. After twenty four years in southern California, living in a place where seasons noticeably delineate one’s outdoor activities is still a real change, even into a third summer living on the island. Today was nearly eighty degrees, and despite my ever-present music delivery deadlines, I couldn’t help but spend a couple of hours working on tidying up the decks and the landscaping. It felt great to do a little huffing and puffing in the sunshine, and I suspect that the notes that emerge tomorrow will reflect all that light, too. Summer, while it lasts, is as precious as any creative inspiration.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Ooooh. Aahhh.

Back from NYC this weekend. Leave again for NYC on Wednesday. Despite ping-ponging myself across an invisible net due to an unusual amount of cross country traveling recently, the minute I get back here to San Juan Island I make damn sure to let the ball rest and put my gears into neutral. That doesn’t mean not working; I’ve got several commissions nagging for my attention and a ton of followup correspondence that guarantees I’ll never see the picture waiting on the bottom of a clean, empty email inbox. What neutral means to me is what you see above: the ability to just stop and gaze in awe at something so exquisitely peaceful that it puts everything else in immediate perspective. Like lots of my colleagues, despite the proclaimed holiday, I’m working in my studio. But I’m also working at being a whole person who won’t ignore what’s just outside that studio door. Aaaahhhh…..

…click to listen:

…about the music

Quite a view.

One of the many joys of self employment is the ability to play hooky. On Friday we walked onto the ferry and chugged over to neighboring Orcas island, where friends picked us up at the landing. They took us to a beautiful spot we’d never seen, except from our own island: the peak of Mt. Constitution. 2400 feet up is actually quite a lot if everything else around you is far closer to sea level. Despite a little haze, it was spectacular to get a cartographer’s view of this entire area, from Canada to the mainland. I particularly love poring over the framed legends at lookout points such as this one, trying to exactly match up someone’s [not always exact] drawings of what’s in front of me. The expanse was awesome; I think my eyes needed a passport.

Click either graphic above to watch the show.

I’m so consumed with my First Life that I barely have time for a Second Life. But for the third time, I’ve had the pleasure of being a real guest in a compelling virtual world. I’m convinced that this alternative, parallel venue is going to become as significant as anything else to which our attention and time are tethered on the internet. And just as with Twitter, while I don’t yet participate much, I fully believe in its power.

If you click on a graphic above, you’ll be led to a page that will demand your patience as it loads up the stream of Music Academy Onlive’s latest show for Second Life Cable Network, hosted by Benton Wunderlich (Dave Schwartz, in Life, Version 1.0). You can let it do its thing in the background while you surf the net, do your laundry, or get some of your own actual work done. At some point, the Quicktime video will be ready to go and after a general introduction, you can hear two of my electroacoustic works in their entirety: Below, for contrabass flute, electronics, and Pacific Humpback Whale (who has the best pitch of us all) performed by Peter Sheridan, and Desert Tide, for soprano saxophone and electronics, performed by Doug Masek.

About halfway in, after the music, there’s a 25-minute interview with me during which I do my best to be mildly interesting and entertaining. Remember what you paid to watch it, folks. Heck, the top I’m wearing (or what’s left of it) and those nice gams of mine in the long shots are worth checking out, if only to see what I might never have the nerve to wear on a show in Life Number One.