notes from the kelp

…listen
…about the music

Chamber music for commuters.

Ok, I know, I’m rubbing everyone’s nose in it now. So sue me. All I can tell you is that a week after my return from a 2.5-day blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trip back to Los Angeles, aka my home for 24 years, I still suffer from Post Traumatic Porsche Syndrome. Upon my arrival at LAX I was immediately flung into the wilds of L.A. driving at its worst: cars either screaming down lanes at obscene speeds, intent on getting anywhere at anyone’s fatal expense, or cars in a fast-moving parking lot, formerly known as a “freeway,” harboring people so inured to this insanity that they no longer notice what’s wrong with this picture. In either case, all vehicles appear to be controlled by disembodied heads, offering no proof whatsoever that any body parts below the shoulders might actually be attached. Perhaps this is a good thing. That way, the species can’t breed.

Oooh, I’m a toughie on this one, ain’t I. But sometimes a magical, and effortlessly normal experience, like the one I had here in the San Juans a couple of days ago, reels the past and the present into vivid perspective. They’ve both flopped at my feet within a five day period, causing me to take stock of the changes in my life this past year.

One of the reasons I decided to leave southern California, was that I could no longer bear the unsolvable traffic, the endless driving and the angry, frustrated people behind all those safety padded steering wheels. When I moved to Malibu in 1993, it took me about 40 minutes to get from the beach to downtown L.A. for a concert. In the context of big city life this was not unreasonable, and I was happy to make the drive in exchange for a life with toes shriveled from salt water. By the time I left in 2007, that same drive very often took me…. two hours. One way. Creeping along at roughly 7 MPH. Detours? Side streets? Secret back ways? Same amount of time. I felt trapped. Moving into the city was not an option; being surrounded by nature was too important.

It was challenging to relax and enjoy a chamber music concert after battling the myriad of variables that necessitated an alertness so intense that it left me with a throbbing head (unfortunately, never throbbing to the same beat as the music). With less than ideal eyesight, hopping in the car meant taking my life into my hands, plus needing to cut short my own work day by mid-afternoon, just to be able to meet a friend for a quick pre-concert bite and immerse myself in… what I love. Too many times, having given myself what seemed like plenty of time to arrive, I would miss dinner altogether and find myself racing to my seat, my heart still puffing as the opening notes were performed. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was simply crazy. But it was how I lived for many years. I used to joke that the hours and distances we blithely drive in L.A. to get to events across town would be the equivalent of going across two, sometimes three state lines on the East coast. No one would ever expect someone to drive from northern Connecticut or southern New Jersey just to attend a concert at Lincoln Center. And yet, that’s what we do in Los Angeles.

So, now one less person is doing it. And she was struck by an extreme and beautiful contrast on Wednesday, as she strolled on to the inter-island ferry at Friday Harbor, and walked off onto the soil of Orcas Island 35 minutes later to attend a concert of their wonderful annual chamber music festival. The photos you see here are from my peaceful commute. It’s a rather different vista than what I used to squint at beyond my smog-covered windshield. The end result– have dinner, see friends, hear fantastic music– is the same except for one big thing that’s missing: urban insanity. For me, at this time in my life, that’s a wrong, discordant note.

…listen
…about the music

Ways to cross the water.

We spent this past weekend in Los Angeles to attend the wedding of two friends who I inadvertently introduced to each other a few years ago. This is not the first or even second time such magic has occurred after my innocent and often unintentional involvement, so I’m now confessing my unquestionable supreme powers to the world, and accepting applications from any blog readers looking for love. That’ll be $29.95, no money-back guarantee, no promises. Step right up! Shower first; that always helps with the dating thing.

It was really great seeing so many old friends at the wedding, and also at a casual hang I put together the next day on the beach where I used to live and blog: Paradise Cove. If you’re curious about the truth in the name of that place, just check out any of my blog postings prior to May 2007 in the right-hand sidebar archive, and you’ll get an excellent idea of my happy life amid the Malibu tide pools. The cover and booklet photos for my latest CD, Notes from the Kelp, were shot there, too.

Of course, everyone always wants to know what life is really like up here on Gilligan’s Island, and I regale them with stories of joy and delight framed in a world devoid of traffic lights and franchises. Without fail, people are fascinated by the machinations involved with getting on and off, and back on again, a bridge-less island floating in the middle of nowhere. When I speak to friends of this place I am obviously bubbling over with an ebullience so obnoxious and sickeningly sappy that it forces them, in self defense, to ask: “so, what don’t you like about living there? What do you miss about L.A.?”.

Well, the second part elicits one response: absolutely nothing, except of course my friends, and the baja mahi burritos at the Malibu La Salsa on PCH. As for the first part of the question, I admit, I am always stumped. Because nearly a year and a half into my life here I cannot think of anything that I don’t like.

Nonetheless, in an effort to assuage my pals’ impatient insistence that surely, no place can be perfect, I end up replying: “the challenge of getting on and off the island,” which I do almost monthly and cannot do in a hurry. Nor can travel be booked while under the influence, due to the dauntingly sober precision necessary to calculate the back-timing of ferries, puddle jumpers, and SeaTac departures so that everything coordinates and you are not stuck overnight somewhere other than where you are trying to end up.

My first photo above is what the “airport” looks like, when taking the sea plane to Seattle’s Lake Union. No security, no inane Kabuki dance of 1-quart plastic baggies displaying your private toiletries to the stranger next to you, and no taking off shoes unless you happen to feel like going for a brisk swim first. I can’t think of a more graceful manner in which to begin any journey. The view is just slightly nicer than what I stare at in the decrepit terminals at JFK and LAX. Just slightly. And the aroma: unquestionably so.

Then you see the noble little sea plane, ready for boarding, and next, the sole alternative for exit: a Washington State car ferry coming in, about to dock at Friday Harbor. Whether flying over this archipelago or gliding past each island on the water, any inconvenience in the many…many hours it takes to get where you want to go just fades into the peacefulness of being where you are at that moment. Ahhhh.

But don’t tell my friends that, please. They will accuse me of being waaaaay too mellow, and next time I’m in L.A. they might not want to see me, knowing that they will have to endure accounts of extreme happiness that, on last check, is possibly illegal in many parts of Los Angeles County.

What can I say? This life is not for everyone, but for those who are not everyone it is sublime. This weekend, my first visit back to Paradise Cove since moving, I anticipated twinges of melancholy and regret, remembering the fabulous years of my life spent here creating music and friendships and a closer bond with the sea. Instead, facing the beautiful crashing ocean and looking upward to squadrons of my beloved pelicans that regrettably don’t choose an air traffic pattern over the San Juans, I just felt blessed to have made my new home in such a gorgeous, if inconvenient, spot on the Earth.

…listen
…about the music

Below, above for the first time.

These pix just can’t reflect the moving experience of seeing two pods of Orca whales pass right by my feet as they gracefully headed north up the west side of San Juan Island on Sunday. I lost count, but there may have been about thirty of them gliding across-and-in-and-out-and-briefly-above-and-back-in the water. Better photos of this too-rare event, along with better commentary, can be found on a co-islander’s blog right here.

Another magic ingredient that my camera can never capture is the otherworldly sound of the whales’ breath. Riveting, soothing, reassuring… amplified over water, the whooshy, slightly hollow, calmly paced blowing can be heard even before the Orcas themselves catch your attention. And with adult dorsal fins reaching six feet high, they DO catch it.

It was especially emotional for me viewing this slow motion parade of the ocean’s gifts, as the week before I had finished the final tweaks of a very involved mix of a brand new piece titled Below, for contrabass flute and electronics, which very prominently features a haunting humpback whale song. Commissioned by Melbourne, Australia-based flutist Peter Sheridan, it premieres there next week for anyone in the vicinity who might wish to immerse themselves for almost eleven minutes in this sonic underworld.

I will have much more to say about this music in future posts, but for now, what I wanted to share was the sense of hope and peace that an encounter with these creatures brings to anyone lucky enough to be near them.

…listen
…about the music

Looking and listening south at South Beach.

Summer in these islands is usually coated with a thin layer of silt and dust. Mystical particles settle from the woods and the sky and the unpaved side roads that take my bicycle to new stands of thistle and gestating blackberry bushes. Everyone’s truck is known not as blue or silver, but “island colored,” as taupey beige nearly camouflages the hard metal that waits in our driveway. So it was a surprise last week and then again today, when heavy rainfall visited, washing away the indictments of July’s drought and bringing moisture to plants that had been prepared to tough it out until the fall. Between fits of downpour, the sun blazed and spent its Saturday painting canvases of magic.

I love the rain. I love the smell and the negative ions and the sharp color contrasts that pop like fireworks in front of my eyes. South Beach, photo-ed above, lends itself so well to all the vivid joys I sense when water pours down from the sky as well as in from the sea.

…listen
…about the music

Here’s a secret about the tuba.

Eastward, across the San Juans to their looming guardian Mount Baker.
I snapped this from the plane (well, I suppose that’s obvious unless I have mystical levitating powers that I have heretofore not announced) a few days ago, before this week’s afternoons of searing sunshine and vivid blue kicked in.

It does not look like this now. That’s because “now” is the middle of the night, and the brightest stars, some falling and shooting and whizzing across overhead, most others staying put for the moment, have taken up all that space in the sky. I had ventured into the darkness a little while ago to place something in the mailbox, wondering what, if any animals I might surprise as I walked into the woods to the road. It was I who was surprised, by the unusually balmy air that embraced me and by the desperately sweet smell of plants as they surrender to summer. I stood still and inhaled, and my face was enveloped by a scent I could never identify but do not want to live without. Instead of continuing back to work, I laid outside in the hammock looking up and out and inward all at once, marveling at the perfection of 3 a.m. and the beautiful secrets it contains.

…listen
…about the music

Just a tad threatening…

Well, continuing our watery theme, we’ve gently migrated from my occasional web geek tradition of Friday Cat Blogging, to Friday Lion’s Mane Blogging. Close enough. Especially if you’re in the water with these impressive and very beautiful jellyfish. They’re the largest of all jellies, and interestingly, also the longest animal, according to Wiki info. This one is about two feet across; a mere toddler. Once or twice a year I come across a small fleet of dying ones washed up on the pebbly sand at my beach, their deflated maroon bodies draping the shoreline like a ruffled bed sham.

These guys can pack far more of a punch with their sting than my kitties can with their incessant yowling come breakfast time. Painful as that is when I just want to roll over and sleep, I’ll take that sound and the brush of their whiskers against my face over the silent sensation of a jelly’s tentacles against my leg, any day!

I will never forget an amazing snorkeling adventure I had far off the coast of Placentia, Belize four years ago. I had been deposited from a decrepit fishing boat twenty miles from shore into the warm open water. The nearest body of land was an atoll straight out of a comic strip: a dab of sand rising from the sea supporting one pathetically drooping palm tree and two coconuts. I expected to find a message in a bottle had I squinted. Wearing just a bathing suit, not a protective wetsuit, I floated happily in the salinity, swimming calmly in the middle of nowhere, intoxicated by the vivid reef and all its colorful life. Every hue of plants, coral and fish passed under my fins, including several barracuda. From time to time I’d glide past small translucent, vertically suspended egg-shaped jellyfish, maybe three or four inches long, which I had been assured did not sting. They looked reasonably harmless. Still, instinct being what it is, I made sure to zig and zag to avoid contact.

As I continued to make my way, I noticed an increasing number of these alien-like creatures floating around me. Then very suddenly, the water became nearly gel-like. I looked straight ahead and was stunned to see an almost solid wall of tiny, to adult, egg-shaped jellies in front of me. I immediately looked to my right: another thick, gelatinous wall of baby jellies. More than slightly alarmed, I swiveled my head to the left: same thing. I was surrounded. There were millions of them. I had somehow gotten past the velvet rope and the bouncer, and entered a private club hosting a wild jelly-fest rave party.

Ever see the flick, “Finding Nemo”? Remember the scene where they were forced to swim at high speed through a thick sea of menacing jellyfish, attempting to dodge the tentacles? Well, suddenly I became one of those cute animated Pixar clownfish as I took a breath, collected my resolve, and threw myself forward into the jelly muck with the optimistic assumption that surely at some point I would reach clear water on the other side. And I did. But not before enduring a few nagging nips and annoying stings from these ever-bobbing party animals. Turns out, the fellow who had told me that they didn’t sting… was wearing a wetsuit!

…listen
…about the music

To that which lies beyond.

As promised prior to my departure last week, here are a couple of soothing views that accompanied me home from Seattle to Friday Harbor at day’s end yesterday. If ever there were proof of heaven on Earth, perhaps this is it. Or at least, the gateway to it. I sit here in my studio and am back in paradise, for sure.

I followed this light homeward, to joy. A pal of mine from years ago, about my age and one of the kindest and most creative people I’ve ever met, just followed it to… someplace else. Awaiting me when I arrived home last night was a devastatingly sad email, telling me of a mutual friend’s sudden death a few days ago from a brain aneurysm. He leaves a wife who adored him, a three year old who will never know the utter joy of his Dad’s utter joy, and no doubt, many amazing ideas and projects that his gifted spirit has left permanently unfinished. Goodbye Niko, and may the light be as beautiful as you.

…listen
…about the music

Quick as a fox.

I’ll be off island this weekend, but back soon with more pix, including my favorite: those taken of this magical archipelago from inside the aeronautical equivalent of a Volkswagen bus at 1500 feet. No, wait: I’m hoping that my puddle jumper is considerably more aerodynamic than that!

Have a great weekend everyone!

…listen
…about the music

Very.

Greetings to all, and here’s to a great week ahead. With this special view, mine started yesterday (for those who think of the week beginning on Sunday. I’m of the Monday camp, myself). I kayaked out to what I gratefully refer to as my front yard, Turn Island, a wildlife refuge just steps and a few paddle strokes from my house. Above is a lovely succession of immersed kelp, a temporarily un-immersed outcropping, and a nearby atoll, as seen from Turn’s northwest shoreline.

The air really smells like… air!… here, and the visuals in all directions are overwhelmingly distracting. Up: island after island, a dormant glacial ice-covered volcano, and a constantly shifting water surface on which some of the strongest currents in the world wreak havoc, stop, and then begin again. Down: clarity so stunning that you can’t help but stare into the depths as you silently glide over rocks and creatures on the sea floor. And for those who think the Pacific Northwest is only about clouds, take a gander at the solid blue. No color correction, folks.

Gilligan would have loved it here.

Headed over to Turn. Mt. Baker is on the right, and in “real life” looms about four times larger and very bright white. I am a mere amateur photog… but remember what you paid to read this blog 🙂

Landed!

Ahhh…. a view out to the southeast and a couple of tiny private islands, with the snow-capped Olympic mountains (which my camera did not manage to capture) in the far distance toward the right.

Groves of treasured Pacific Madrone, aka Arbutus trees, frame the view out to Lopez Island.

If this isn’t enough to inspire more music as I finish my upcoming CD, Alextronica, I don’t know what is. The hardest part is making myself stay indoors in my studio! All those years in sunny So Cal meant taking glorious weather for granted, knowing you could get out any day you wanted. Up here, there’s a definite summer season. My temperament has always been one of seizing the moment and not letting opportunities slip by. So maybe my work will just go a tad slower than I had anticipated for the next couple of months, as I take full advantage of why I moved up here in the first place. Carpe Kayakum!

…listen
…about the music

Ahhhhh.

There are times when I wish this were a “scratch ‘n’ sniff” blog. This is one of them. Lavender grows in easy abundance on the islands facing both sides of the U.S./Canada border. And with it comes the beauty of an aroma not only unique but, to me at least, intoxicating. Add to that the vivid display of one of my all-time favorite color combinations, purple and green, and a July trip to the lavender farm when it’s in full bloom is a nearly psychedelic experience. Groooooovy! If I can make you just a little bit high gazing at these fields, then I’ve done a good deed for the day.

…listen
…about the music

Primal.

The view from the bow of my kayak in Surge Narrows Marine Park off Quadra Island, B.C. Need I say more? It was a great vacation! More soon, Kelphistos.

…listen
…about the music

Lots of water crossings.

We’re off tomorrow on an adventure in the northern part of the Salish Sea, to another collection of floating rocks known as British Columbia’s Discovery Islands. Quadra Island, specifically, is our destination, where we’ll meet up with three other couples who live part- or full time in Los Angeles, two of whom also have homes in these northern island latitudes. In the spirit of an ad hoc summer camp for music geeks and the laudable spouses who put up with us, kayaking, canoeing, lounging around, conversations both pithy and considerably less so, good food and an abundance (uh, probably an over-abundance) of decent red wine will fill the next few days. This is the first mini-vacation I’ve taken in quite a long time.

Now, git yer score cards out: from San Juan Island, we’ll need to take a ferry jaunt at dawn in the wrong direction, to the east– to Fidalago Island– to catch a ferry going in the right direction– west, to Vancouver Island– in order to hop on yet a third ferry to Quadra, to the north, after driving up the eastern coast of Vancouver Island for about four hours, the first half hour of which requires driving… south, in order to go… north. On our return in a few days, I’ll stop off at Saltspring Island (south of Quadra and north of San Juan) to see more music geek pals– yet another ferry, east and then west again!– while Charles drives and ferries south to Island Home Base. From Saltspring I can make it by foot, bus and ferry back home on Sunday. Catch all that? Good, because I barely can. I’m dizzy just typing it.

Above is an example of the kind of rhythm that separates those of us who are quite happy living on a remote, bridge-less island, from those who would prefer instantaneous proximity to all that mankind has to offer. Ferry and plane schedules are limited and weather-dependent, requiring a good dose of back-timing and a larger one of patience. There are relatively few flights and boats per day. There’s often a day or two in winter when one simply can’t get off the island due to inclement conditions (unless you are voted off, in which case, into the drink ya go, deservedly). And conversely, there are days in the summer when it seems as though everyone is either getting off of, or getting on to these islands, and the wait time in the ferry line is several intrepid hours. Most of all, the concept of having to use highly circuitous routes that take the better part of an entire day, in order to traverse distances one might span in a car on the mainland in an hour or two, is a tad absurd at first. But it quickly becomes second nature, and only when I describe to visiting friends how to get here, am I reminded just how tricky getting here sometimes is.

I’m guessing that the powers that be are laughing, since they clearly planned it this way to keep out the riff raff. Well, despite their best efforts, I snuck through anyway, and I’m just so glad that I did. And, I am very thankful that there is no bridge, and with luck, never will be. Sometimes extraordinary beauty and peace should be earned. Besides, it’s hard to think of any of this as being inconvenient when the view from the ferries are the images you see here!