notes from the kelp

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Through the archipelago.

It’s been great being back at home for a while on this rock, composing in my self-contained, hermetic phase, and yet remaining remarkably plugged in to the world when necessary, via Skype video. I’ve done a board committee meeting that was held in NY as well as given three interviews this week, all from my desk. No one would have known whether or not I had pants on. And I’m not tellin’.

The snapshots above really epitomize what’s insanely great about my commute when one makes it via water as opposed to air. And especially, on the occasional day when one’s vehicle is the very first car that boards and gets the über-view to end all über-views as we glide through the archipelago. Much of the time I’m on the Tonka toy planes that zip me from Seattle to San Juan Island in about 35 minutes, unless we first get an extra crash landing test stop at Eastsound on Orcas to drop someone off. When it’s windy in the San Juans, it’s really blowing coming up the sound between the imposing lumps that flank it, and this ersatz wind tunnel can make for quite an unexpected… uh… thrill?… for no extra charge!… as the plane and its passengers are jostled about in directions that you’d prefer to think that a small piece of metal in mid-flight would not head. I’m writing this as the spring season becomes especially mild, to thwart anyone from ever wanting to fly here. I want this place all to myself and I’m willing to use scare tactics to achieve personal nirvana.

I particularly love this place during the eight months when almost no one is here. An island of 55 square miles that hosts less than 7,000 human beings during those “off-season” months means that very few cars prowl the roads. And those of us driving have the affable tendency to glance into passing windshields, due to the likelihood that we’ll recognize the person driving by. A “two-fingers raised off the steering wheel” acknowledgment is the norm. Can you imagine that in Los Angeles? Only with one finger, usually located in the middle of the hand, and not because they want you to call them later.

Winters at the beach are magic. Drama. Clarity. Inspiration. It was just like this during my 14 years in Malibu: most of the year, it’s as gorgeous as all the other times of year, and yet you have miles of beach all to yourself because people are too busy, or think it’s too cold, or whatever. So those of us living in these amazing places are the great beneficiaries of having gazillions of square miles of some of planet Earth’s most beautiful scenery, all to ourselves. I remember walking for long stretches on the beach at Paradise Cove on a January day with temps in the 70’s, not seeing a soul. I seriously wondered whether some disaster had struck southern California, and no one had informed me. And I just kept walking.

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A vista, plus one you can hear.

Driving on the south end of this island mid-morning today, I was stunned (as always) by the immense view from the coastline on which my tires, myself and my latte were planted, looking out to Canada’s Vancouver Island directly across the Haro Strait. I liked the unwitting visual symmetry of the space above the horizon until the clouds became dark, and the space between the sea and the bluff on which I stood. The foggy March haze draped itself around the mountains so beautifully. I’d like to go through life draped like that myself. Forget about fabric clothing altogether, and just adorn myself with cloudwear.

I know. You can’t really see all that in this little photo. Trust me: those mountains are really big when you’re standing there. About three times as high, at least. Really.

Turning my head 90 degrees to the left, I could see another, more distant mountain range: the Cascades, making a dramatic backdrop behind several of the San Juans. But of course, in my little snapshot, that backdrop doesn’t look nearly as dramatic as it is in person. You’ll just have to trust me again. Drama baby, drama.

But I can at least give you an inkling of all that craggy, snow-capped drama, taken on another, sunnier day from almost the same spot, but with a 300 zoom lens attached. I liked the dance between the edges of the driftwood and those of the peaks. Voila, drama!

So I’m off on the morning ferry to Seattle, where I’ll be at this wonderful concert on Friday night hearing the fabulous Karen Bentley Pollick do some amazing things with my violin and electronics piece, Vista, as well as with quite a number of other beautiful new works composed by visibly living and breathing composers. Like the mountains, they too tend to look much smaller in photos than they are in person. About three times as high, at least. Really.

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A bit foggy across from the Olympic mountains, indeed.

We all know the dance: See email inbox fill up. Answer many emails. Momentarily enjoy much emptier inbox. Go to bed. Awake to completely re-filled inbox of responses to your responses. Repeat. Yessiree, for those of us who do much of our biz digitally, this is the two-step that keeps us and our typing fingers in tip-top shape. Email is great, but, it’s a bottomless pit of back and forth from which few escape. Yet I have recently discovered a guilty pleasure (or, a key to my sanity) that helps me cope: my iPhone, bedside.

No, I am not using the “vibrate” setting for personal use. Nope. But in the morning, when my eyes peel themselves one-third open and my foggy mind begins to churn with the never-ending to-do list of life, I blindly paw for my phone, tap a few times, retrieve my mail while safely ensconced under my warm comforter, and can instantly see the lay of the land for the coming hours. Who has emailed? What do they need? What fire needs to be put out? What is just fine and can wait? Well, it usually turns out, much of it. And being able to glance at what awaits my work day long before I intend to start it, allows me to happily place the iPhone back on the nightstand, turn over, and catch some more zzzz’s. This is one of the best uses for a digital tool I can dream of. The gift of more sleep!

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Upward.

Photo: courtesy of Charles, who emailed this lovely vision from our driveway on the island as I gazed at yellow snow, rather than yellow flowers, in NYC. Much as I love my home town, I think I prefer the color on the flowers. I have no idea what those purple-blue blooms are, but they’re fabulous.

I post this from a most civilized space (Vino Volo) in a most civilized airport (SeaTac) as I wait for the van to take me to Boeing Field, where I’ll hop on a flying Volkswagen that will plop me down in a less civilized, if yet more beautiful, part of the western U.S. a hundred miles north of here. And apart from a brief trip in mid March to go to the rehearsal and performance of Vista in Seattle by my talented friend, violinist Karen Bentley, for the first time in the better part of a year, my calendar is clear of travel for a few weeks, unless some utterly compelling opportunity is suddenly dropped on my doorstep that would cause me to leave it. So this normally peripatetic (rhymes with pathetic) composer gets to stay home and actually compose without interruption for a while. Hooray! Because there are a lot of notes waiting to escape.

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Delicate. Balance.

What is it about me and snowstorms this month? I’d take my ice-magnet abilities personally if only I didn’t know that most others in the U.S. feel about the same. My first full day in Columbus: a snowstorm that closed schools for a day. My first full day in New York City: a snowstorm that closed schools for a day. If I’d just stay home in that fabulous 50-plus degree island weather, maybe the rest of the country would get a chance to thaw out.

NYC has been really enjoyable this week, either despite or because of trudging through deep gutter puddles of questionable contents in my sturdy $25 knee-high snow-boots to good meetings, fun with friends, and some great live performances. Friday night I was at Carnegie for the Tibet House benefit, which ranged from peaceable singing monks to petulant spitting, mic-stand throwing rock stars: OMG! Patti Smith and Iggy Pop! I was in heaven and instantly reliving my high school years. They, however, are very much in the present with incredibly powerful voices and of course, presences. What a blast. There were quite a lot of other terrific artists in between those extremes, including artistic artistic artistic artistic artistic artistic artistic artistic director director director Philip Glass and my pal, uber-violist/composer Martha Mooke, and the three intermission-less hours flew by (almost as fast as Iggy’s hurled mic stand, which missed the 9′ Steinway by inches).

Last night I went for gorgeous young people in tutus and tights, and snagged a $20 seat at New York City Ballet for the classic Balanchine triptych: Jewels. I had seen this production growing up in the 70’s and it was quite nostalgic to sit up VERY high in the sold-out house (Row N, which stands for Nosebleed section) just as I used to as a teenager who scraped together her babysitting money to spend hours in this theater for countless ballets and opera. Not much has changed since I was 16: I still wear long straight brown hair and the same size clothes, and the State Theater still wears its same 60’s decor. On all counts, I’m so glad.

More professional meetings and more hangs with good friends this coming week, and then back to rural life on the 7th. I’m lucky to have such a demographically bifurcated life.

But if we get a snowstorm in the San Juans, someone’s gonna pay.

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Homecoming.

I returned from The Land of Cold People (see prior post) with a big smile. I could not have been treated more wonderfully by such a talented group of faculty and students. I gave a ton of lectures and private lessons and was rewarded with, among other things, a very, very beautifully performed evening of my music– concert, and jazz. It’s inspiring to be immersed for a few days into a new tribe of music makers, and I came home happy and appreciative.

And, happy and appreciative to defrost: like much of the country that week (except for the San Juan Islands where it remained a glorious, sunny 50-ish degrees), I was caught in one of the blizzards that swept through. The first full day I was at Capital University, they had to close the campus by 1pm. Although one of the three business/entrepreneurship classes I was to speak to was canceled, I told the 30 or so music students at my morning lecture that I’d be happy to pinch hit with my new-found free time, and hang with them to talk further at a local coffee shop. I thought maybe 3 people might show, just for the warm java. But fully half or more of the class was there, waiting for me as I walked in. Great students, eager to talk and question.

So I’ve caught up a bit on things here in the studio this week, only to turn on my heels again on Tuesday for an extended trip to my home town of Manhattan. Three board and committee meetings, plus my mother’s publicly unmentionable Importantly Numbered Birthday (the kind that ends with a zero or a 5). Stunningly beautiful, elegant, and wrinkle-free, without a grey hair on her perfectly coiffed head, she still lives in the same great apartment in which I grew up. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in the city: once you find good real estate, you hang onto it with your soot-lined claws. So coming over to visit her, decades later, is still truly going HOME. The only thing missing is my father, who I adored, and who left the planet way too early eleven years ago. As I was growing up, when he came home from work he used to ring to doorbell in a particularly quick, quirky way as he unlocked the door with his house key(s) [plural; hey, it’s New York]. He was the only person to ever ring our doorbell that way. Now when I show up, I ring it that way, too. Freaks my mother out just a tad. Hi, Daddy.

So I think a lot these days about what home is, because it turns out that by the time you’re my age, it’s a lot of things. It’s the place(s) you grew up. It’s the memory of the many places you lived before you moved all your stuff into the place you currently live. It’s the place you imagine you might live some day. And it’s also a 22-inch roll-on suitcase, paired with a laptop, an iPhone and an invincible wireless connection to the globe 24/7. I have learned that as long as I am doing work I love, and hanging with people that I really enjoy, I am home. I need very little to live well other than that, plus a sturdy TravelPro that will fit in the overhead compartment of life.

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Strong winter fire star.

This morning was pretty great for February: almost 50 degrees. Yes, Fahrenheit. I had to spell check that last word because I can never remember the first “h.”
So as the sun blazed into my windows and the birds chirped with glee as they pecked at bowls of seed I’d put out, I prepared the materials for my upcoming residency at Capital University in frigid Columbus, Ohio, where it is in the mid-20’s.

Mid-20’s. Just like most of the other cities I’ve been trotting around to for my work this winter: Chicago, New York, Minneapolis. What is wrong with me?? Why am I not smart enough to figure out a schedule that would have me in the south of the U.S. between November and March? If I were really clever, I could refuse commissions and conferences in any clime above Latitude 32 during winter. But I won’t, because I love this music life way too much. It’s worth freezing my backside off for, any day.

They are very, very lovely people in Columbus, truly. But they are a cold people. And I am about to be a cold person. If you, too, would like to join me and The Lovely and Talented Cold People, click here and read about the NOW New Music Festival and how you can shiver right along side of some really great musicians and one very appreciative, if frosty, composer.

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Occasionally explosive.

The last of the three articles I wrote this month for NewMusicBox posted this week. So many words have been erupting from me lately, in addition to all the usual musical notes, that I’m starting to wonder what’s in the water I’m drinking. Oh, wait, that was vodka… now I get it… Anyway, feel free to have a gander at
The Economy of Exposure. Disappointingly, no trench coats are involved.

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Up, down, and all around.

More travel. More landings. All directions, literally and figuratively. Mostly quite good, and that which is not quite good is still quite compelling. Interpret as you will. I am looking in all directions. Inward is always the best, even if not always the most reliable.

My outward self, meanwhile, has not only been writing music like a good little composer, but also writing words about outward things regarding artists’ experiences in the world, now that the new digital paradigm is reality. For all that I have failed to blog on this page this month, I have made up for in two recent essays for the wonderful online magazine NewMusicBox. Whether you are a musician or not, you may enjoy the reads: As Important as the Printing Press: Net Neutrality and Artists’ Freedom, and What I Learned About My Tiny Business From Paramount Pictures. NewMusicBox will be publishing another, possibly more significant, and hopefully even more controversial piece (ooh!) this coming week. Stay tuned: I’ll post the link here.

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Interpettzo.

Ok, snapped with my iPhone in low light, but still, Smudge and Moses, butt to butt, seem to appropriately represent “out with the old and in with the new.” Like a gravity-defying circus act atop my heated kitchen floor, they remind me that cuteness can still survive in a topsy-turvy world.

Here’s to a new decade, filled with soft fur and the ability to blissfully ignore any rind shavings and vegetable trimmings that may unexpectedly fall on your head from life’s countertop!