notes from the kelp

…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.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Below, from above.

I’ve got an active life that’s spread around the country and filled with what’s probably an unusually wide range of experiences, in composing, publishing, public speaking, marine sciences, nature, and education. It’s great! But I have to admit that it’s been so busy these days, that when someone asks me where I just came from or what I just did, I initially draw a blank, stare at them with that “deer in headlights” look, and struggle to remember the last, no doubt delightful, thing I just came from.

Along these lines, I also confess that there are times on the road when I open my eyes and for a few moments, actually cannot remember where I am. This is an unsettling yet simultaneously hilarious feeling. It often strikes me when I awaken by the edge of a runway at SeaTac. No, not splayed out on the tarmac like a forgotten piece of Samsonite. In a bed. Airport hotels are a version of purgatory for business travelers. If I’m in one of them, I’m not at home, but I’m not at my destination, either.

Last week, this odd, dislocated sensation hit me as I walked into a cocktail reception. I recognized many of the familiar faces holding their drinks, because I had seen most of these colleagues in identical poses in Los Angeles at a reception two weeks earlier, and at another reception in Manhattan only two days earlier. Suddenly, I could not for the life of me remember what city I was in. No clues were to be found in the people or their beverages, and the Very Upscale Hotel we were in looked remarkably like all the other Very Upscale Hotels I’d just been in. After about 40 bewildered seconds (a long time to not have a clue as to where you are on the planet Earth) I finally remembered: Washington, D.C.

Even with my schedule right now, at least I’m home for between four and nine days at a time; luxury! How my fellow gigging, touring road warrior musician pals do it, hundreds of performances a year, I’ll never know. Hat’s off to them.

I realize that I usually write largely about two things on this blog: my life in nature, and my life in the air. Rarely do I devote much space to specific commentary on what it is I actually do when I am not doing all the things you read about here: music. I compose music. Lots of it. I’ve been considering shifting the tone of this blog just a tad, to include a little more musically and professionally relevant subject matter so that you can see that there is more to my life than banana slugs, algae, cute furry animals and airline tickets. The months of April and May alone offer a pretty good snapshot of my diverse existence, so for those at home keeping score (and I think this includes me), here we go:

Giving workshops on career building for composers, hosted by the American Composers Forum and held at McNally Smith College in St. Paul, MN;

Meeting with concert music and pop music production people in Nashville, TN;

Speaking about music artists’ best uses of the internet at the ASCAP Expo conference in Los Angeles, CA;

Hiking and driving through Joshua Tree National Park near Twentynine Palms, CA;

Attending a dinner party on a magnificent, 47-acre waterfront estate on San Juan Island, WA;

Attending a board meeting of the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories in Friday Harbor, WA;

Attending a board meeting and awards reception of the American Music Center in New York, NY;

Lobbying senators and congressmen with the ASCAP board and legal staff about the rights of music creators to receive payment for the digital downloads of audiovisual works that include our music, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.;

Attending the annual Spring Street International School auction dinner in Friday Harbor, WA;

Appearing as a guest on the Second Life Cable Network TV show in the virtual world (cheap airfare!);

Sailing on the Friday Harbor Labs research vessel Centennial (in April AND May!), taking video and photos of the dredges the scientists conduct from the ocean floor around the San Juan Islands, WA;

Hiking with friends on Orcas Island, WA;

Attending the Academy of Arts and Letters luncheon and Ceremonial in New York, NY;

Attending the ASCAP concert music awards in New York, NY;

and so on….

None of the above includes all the business I do at my desk (or that of a hotel room), or all the music I play, write and record in my studio. Or, all the kitty litter I scoop and cat hair I vacuum up when I’m procrastinating from those previous two things. Nor does it list the many wonderful meals I share with friends and of course, with Charles, who, despite being contractually obligated to be so, is exceptionally supportive of all that I do, even though I’m not always doing it nearby.

Just reading this list makes me dizzy. And, happy. Living a bifurcated life that is interchangeably rural and urban, as well as both significantly hermetic and intensely social, is an oxymoron and a joy. That probably makes me a joyous moron. For now, when someone asks me where I just came from or what I just did, rather than draw a blank and stare at them with that “deer in headlights” look, I’ll just point them to today’s blog post!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Notes from the past.

On the heels of several very fun and hectic days speaking, mentoring and participating at ASCAP’s Expo in Hollywood, I stole– no, made– two days for myself. Knowing that I was about to spend as many nights in May on the road as on my music deadlines at home, I revisited a place that has consistently made me peaceful and awe-inspired for 25 years: Joshua Tree National Park.

All those years bring with them a landscape of history, both geological, and personal. Staring out to enormous expanses beyond the deceptively furry looking tips of cholla cactus and ocotillo, my mind galloped across private, sometimes rocky terrain. Memories arose of camping, rock scrambling, friends, wildlife encounters, long drives and the endless drama of angry weather systems. I was in the present and in the past, simultaneously. It was wonderful.

I had slept directly under rocks that balanced precariously and impossibly as they awaited the next temblor, a few miles away from the quite visible San Andreas Fault. I had slept in the open, covered by nothing more than a sleeping bag that could have been nocturnal haven to scorpions or rattlers, but thankfully provided only a fuzzy bunny rabbit sniffing my feet at dawn. I had slept in tents erected in winds so strong as to nearly make me give up trying to pitch them. I had slept looking up at stars so bright as to make me question everything I ever imagined about the universe. And I had awoken, so many, many times over 25 years, to insights about my place in nature, and my place outside of it.

Driving back to Los Angeles to fly home, I absolutely had to stop at one of southern California’s cheesiest and silliest roadside attractions: the dinos at Cabazon. If a culture does not have pyramids one can enter, well, a Brontosaurus or T. Rex is surely the next best thing.

Past and present. I will always make time.

…about the music

A lovely collartboration.

I was charmed when British painter Simon Kenevan contacted me out the the blue last year after stumbling upon my music, several CDs of which he then ordered. What led him to me? Well, in a quick quest for visual stimulus to inspire his next work, Simon did a Google image search. Blanketed by a groggy, morning coffee haze familiar to many of us, he randomly typed in the word, “flotsam.”

Right. “Flotsam” and “chamber music composer” fit hand and glove, don’t they?

As he wrote me later, “Up came a nice photo of you in amongst seaweed, dead jellyfish, stuff like that. So you kind of stood out.”
Thank goodness for that. And I might add, I smell a tad better, too.

A year later, Simon is creating the third in what may be an ongoing series of what I’ve dubbed “collartborations”: videos that pair his painting process with one of my pieces. We are both sea-loving artists, and it has been a natural fit. More natural, even, than “flotsam” and “chamber music composer.”
Imagine that.
I do love the internet.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Don’t wanna slip up.

Here’s my new pal, Sluggo, a Pacific banana slug who nearly became an ex-slug, when I almost slipped on this banana while hiking near Point Caution yesterday. Lucky fella.

And lucky me, that you’re still reading this e-tome despite my less than frequent postings! I promise to do better. As seen below, it’s been a whirlwind time and I’d much rather post pix from this pix-turesque island than from the many airports I continue to get to know far too well. Trust me, the scenery here is far more interesting, even if you don’t care for squishy things.

In the early morning I’ll head out on the Friday Harbor Labs research vessel, the Centennial, captained by our brilliant friend and former lab executive director Dennis Willows. Along for the ride with marine scientists and educators, I’m hoping not only to come back with a mucky memento or two from the sea floor, but with some cool video and photos, as well!

…click to listen:

…about the music

A sonata for the senses.

Last week: St. Paul. Today: Seattle. Tomorrow: Nashville. Two weeks later: Los Angeles. Four days after that: New York City. And so on. Yup, anyone taking a gander at my professional e-presence has a good idea of how often I fling myself around the country for All Things Music Related.

But each time I bounce back onto this little rock of an island, I take advantage of what is so unique and exquisite about it: pretty much everything. Woods and sea coexist right next to each other. Yesterday, I took a hike that brought me through dense, old-growth forest, with thick undergrowth of huge ferns, and even thicker moss: almost the same moist environment of our neighboring Olympic Rainforest across the strait, except minus the… rain. After a very steep climb, followed by a teaser of a long descent that felt disheartening, since the point was to go UP to the crest, rather than back DOWN to the beach, the trail finally caused me to huff and puff some more as it roared at a good angle up from the enchanted forest to a sudden expanse of miles and miles of open vista.

Stunning. Those are the Olympics, across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. Turning to the left, is the south end of San Juan Island with the little lighthouse at Cattle Point, with the southern mini-isles of Lopez Island beckoning in the distance.

As I stood in the field, my eye still squinting from the contrast from dark forest to bright sunlight, an adult bald eagle swooped from behind, a few yards over my head. I gasped. These are huge birds. What a moment. No time to grab the camera.

But other critters along my path moved a little slower: a young fox, still in his black-coated stage, and an adorable garter snake who, if he didn’t keep moving, was going to become someone’s lunch (no, not mine; I’m not into snushi). Usually I don’t allow myself to interact closely with the animals, but I couldn’t resist gently picking up the little snake and feeling it’s incredibly smooth, soft skin glide through my fingers.

Just look at that cute face! I miss snakes. A piece of trivia about my sordid, wild past: I used to breed pythons as a hobby, and was an active member of the local herpetological society in the San Fernando Valley back in the 80’s. At one point I probably had about 40 different kinds of snakes, ranging from a 19 foot long Burmese (yes, you read that number correctly) and several other Reticulateds and boas, to corn snakes, king snakes and yes, garters like this one. Even a rattlesnake, who was actually very sweet. Plus, a few frog and lizards. I always wanted a turtle; never had one. Yet.

And no, I did not have cats when I had pythons. Bad combo. Particularly for the cats.

You can see a much better pic I shot last summer of a similar fox here and some good ones of an adult here.

So thanks for sharing my walk with me. As the weather warms (IF it ever warms: I think many of us around the country are having a colder than usual spring), there will be a lot more of these, because I plan to stay put much more on this lovely piece of floating heaven. It always pulls at my senses to leave, and it always tugs at my heart in the best way, to return.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Purrfect.

On the heated floor, in front of the kitchen sync.
Obviously, an audition for the next Esther Williams movie.
Their agent will call soon to inform them that they got the parts.

If it is not already painfully clear, it takes very, very little to amuse me.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Over the water once again.

It was a gorgeous, warm afternoon when I landed today in Seattle from St. Paul. I knew I’d be palming my camera for the flight back north to the island, as opposed to my flight out five days earlier through dense, sleety fog that inspired only a propeller-drone accompanied cat nap.

That trip down was a textbook example of how I’ve gotten used to literally flying by the seat of my pants living up here: it was April 1st and actually SNOWING over the islands all morning. This kind of weather is why I took the 6am ferry and shuttle all winter (thanks, John!) instead of risking iffy flights, but you’d think things would be safe by April. Nope. I was booked on a noon seaplane. Those don’t fly instrument-only and are grounded in bad weather with low visibility. Knowing this, I called in around 11:10 am to see if the plane was going to be canceled. I had a chamber music performance class to coach at Cornish College of the Arts at 2pm.

My schedule mattered not to the aircraft gods, who grounded the seaplane at the very last minute (or, uh, watered it). I immediately called the Friday Harbor airport to see if their fixed wheel equipment was going out. It was. It was leaving in nine minutes. I insisted I would be there.

Amazingly, I was. Charles and I grabbed my roll-on and coat and flung them and ourselves into the car. Speeding is not an option in Friday Harbor, largely because although there is virtually no traffic, there will always be one truck in front of you sauntering down the road leading to the airport with as much urgency as a snail on Quaaludes. Plus, in a tiny town where lots of people actually know you, your face, your vehicle, or all three, it’s just really poor form to cut people off, weave around them, race a stop sign or imperil cute furry animals by speeding. This is what Los Angeles is for, after all.

I rushed into the little building that they call a terminal, and at first saw no plane at all. Well, there was a tiny little thing with wings sitting there, but that could not have been the plane. Wrong. It was a mini-me version of the plane they usually fly for these trips. It actually seated at least eight people, but the “aisle” between the seats was… about 8 inches wide. Good thing most passengers bathed that morning. The cheery pilot greeted me and took my roll-on. I shoe-horned myself into a seat and off we went.

I arrived at Boeing air field, shuttled back up to Lake Union where I was supposed to have landed all along, and got to Cornish in plenty of time. Phew. Had a terrific time with colleagues at lunch and the student ensembles during the afternoon. I was happy to have been able to make it by a hair.

I’ve come to view my little tales of white-knuckle schedule shifts that prevent one from leaving the island when they need to, as a public service to my community: they help limit the hoards of people who, upon seeing the photos I post of this idyllic paradise, might seriously consider actually moving here. Until they read stories like this one, and this one. Then they snap to their senses and the population of the bridge-less San Juan Islands remains at a microscopic count. If you happen to live here too, now you can thank me for scaring everyone off.

Thus was my ordeal on April 1st. Apparently, the Universe decided to reward me five days later, because today I hit the puddle jumper jackpot on my return flight. There were just two passengers: myself, and a gentleman who lives on Orcas Island. We were stopping there first. I loved hearing this, because the flight path to Eastsound takes us over Lopez and past endless atolls and unrecognizable floating lumps of green, one such lump being where my house is (see green arrow). It’s spectacular:

As the Orcasian deplaned, I suddenly reverted to my 9-year-old child self and felt an overwhelming urge to make the last leg of the flight in the co-pilot’s seat. When the pilot returned I asked him if I could join him up there, and next thing I knew I was strapping myself into a contraption that would have secured me tightly enough for a space shuttle launch, much less a gentle landing at Friday Harbor airport. I was in heaven! I don’t think I could get the huge grin off my face the entire flight, and I wished it was a much longer distance between the two islands. For all the many, many puddle jumper flights I’ve taken the past two years living here, even those where I sat in the seat directly behind the pilot, this was just fantastic. I don’t have any intention of getting my own pilot’s license, largely because I think I’d have such a great time looking at everything that I’d space out and forget something important, like, uh, fuel levels. But my Walter Mitty moment was a real highlight with which to start another action-packed week.

Headed in for our landing…

From the air to the sea: the scene from my window at lunch, minutes later.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music for rural visitors.

I just got a really nifty little–no, make that tiny– video recorder. It’s called a Flip Mino, and it’s smaller than a cell phone and takes very cool movies. That is, if the person holding the damn thing takes very cool movies. On the other hand, if that person happens to be me, the Flip ends up being filled with immensely boring-but-cute-in-a-boring-sort-of-way footage of animals doing mundane things. Add this to my talent at presenting this window on the world with a vertigo-inducing cinema verité shaky hand-held technique that only overpaid French directors could rival, and there you have it: I will need a little practice at this new toy prior to posting my new moving creations.

Not to be thwarted in my voyeur-pleasing endeavors, though, I grabbed a couple of stills that themselves are indeed boring-but-cute-in-a-boring-sort-of-way. I just can’t help myself. My glass studio door, inches from where I sit at my desk, is a portal on all things immensely cute and boring. Nighttime gives me cute raccoon visitors, and daytime gives me cute blacktails. The latter have discovered the joy of standing directly under a bird feeder while allowing seed detritus to goofily drop on their heads. Gravity is their friend, since I made sure that they can’t climb up to the feeder like they used to.

The accompanying track is from a sweet, rural-themed film I scored many years ago that, had the camera been pointing at something other than the actors, would have featured lots of raccoons and deer, all like these: ready for their close-up. As I recall all of us working on the picture were paid birdseed. What comes around, goes around. And comes down on our heads. Happily.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Giving thanks.

Well, it’s the return of the Friday cat blogging tradition here in the island studio battleground, and Smudge and Moses have done their best to camouflage with the black and white surroundings as they are attacked by incoming notes of all decibels. Poor things. It’s also the return of the blogger herself, who has been ensconced so thoroughly in the studio this past week that she neglected her blogerati duties for a few more days than usual. Well, at least on this blog. I did enjoy participating in a good conversation about the digital age’s challenges to copyright protection, on Molly Sheridan’s Mind the Gap. And, I’ve been really busy with score sales, performances, a track being released on a CD label in Australia, another fun commission for a large chamber ensemble, and recording and producing three more pop tunes. A taste of one accompanies the photo, since I’m thankful for having so much fur and music flying around all the time.

I’ll be flying around once more myself next week, stopping in Seattle for a day to guest visit and rehearse this piece with a group at Cornish College of the Arts, and then heading to Minneapolis to attend this performance of one of my favorite pieces, and then speaking at this workshop. If anyone reading this will be in the twin cities April 3-5, it would be great to meet you. And, to sit still for a moment! The cats have the right idea.

…click to listen:

…about the music

Vista of dreams.

I must look like an avid tourist each time I fly the puddle jumper to and from Friday Harbor. And I don’t mind one bit. The camera which is always in my satchel, a petite 8 megapixel Nikon, is held snugly in my hand on every flight, eager to capture… anything. Above are two “anythings” that I like: a sandy spit emerging mysteriously from the sea, variably sized with the tides, tailing off of a small atoll over which I have flown many times and have never managed to identify. And, one of many overviews of this amazing archipelago; islands like pebbles scattered randomly from a child’s fist.

I am a tourist through life, observing as much as possible, visually, sonically, emotionally. I miss plenty. Just ask my husband. But what I capture, I hold on to and appreciate. And share, whenever possible. This blog gives me the selfish opportunity to share all three at once with strangers scattered like those pebbly islands around the world. If anyone had told us thirty years ago that we’d all have the ability to connect like this, 24/7, with the click of a “go to” or “send” button, well, it might have been hard for us to grasp the concept. But here we are.

If anyone had told me thirty years ago what my life would look and feel like today, I think I might have had a tough time grasping that concept, too. I would not have guessed that the die-hard city rat who grew up in Manhattan in the gritty 70’s would have morphed into a country mouse living in the seaside woods on a bridge-less island few have even heard of. Juggling an existence composing and recording chamber music, indie pop tunes, concert wind band pieces, jazz, electroacoustic, and anything else that pops into my feeble brain, plus flying around the country yapping on a lot of panels about the business of how all this gets out into the world so that my peers can also do it more easily, plus writing articles, plus serving on boards and committees for groovy music, science, and education projects, plus making sure I get my backside into my kayak and my toes onto the sand as often as possible, plus playing with the cats and any other somewhat taller denizen who wander into and around the house… well… here I am.

I just ordered a very tiny video camera that will keep my Nikon company in my purse. Maybe they’ll mate and I’ll find a little MP3 player in there one day. My hope is that I’ll be able to share an occasional moving picture with you, to further express the three dimensional reality that surrounds me. Stay tuned!