Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
None of us is the same person as yesterday.
We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
This downward cellular jubilance is shared
by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle 
a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.

 

~ Jim Harrison ~

from Cirque du Soleil....

 little tech experiment from google: Breaking with the tradition of point and click web browsing, you can navigate through this unique experience simply by gesturing in front of your device’s camera.

 "Making music is like constructing a machine whose function it is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener alike. Some people find this idea repulsive, because it seems to relegate the artist to the level of trickster, manipulator, and deciever -- a kind of self-justifying onanist. They would prefer to see music as an expression of emotion Rather than a generator of it, to believe in the artist as someone with something to say. I'm beginning to think of the artist as someone who is adept at making devices that tap into our shared psychological make-up and that trigger the deeply moving parts we have in common. In that case the conventional idea of authorship is questionalble. Not that I don't want credit for the songs I've written, but what constitutes authorship is maybe not what we would like it to be. This queasiness about rethinking how music works is also connected with the idea of authenticity." David Bryne, How Music Works.

 Reviews aside - I find the book interesting. Bryne discusses some of the very issues that I spend a lot of time talking through with students. AND. Dancing to Burning Down the House, I discovered, is just as much fun decades later as it was the first time. Great concert in Milwaukee last night - thank you!!

MORNING GLORY

                        

These days when the weather is cooling down and I can bear to go out in the yard and drink my first cup of coffee, I am immediately drawn to the morning glories growing all over last years Christmas tree.

A couple years ago I saw this idea somewhere - for keeping your tree year round.  We go on our yearly trek to the tree farm in early December and get a robust tree.  Mid January it comes down and we prop it up in a snowbank outside the kitchen window so we can watch the birds use it for shelter as they come to and from the feeder.  By May it is a brown, dry mess - and as everything is turning green in the yard it's planted and staked out back of the studio -  morning glory seeds planted under and around it.

By the end of August very little of the old fir tree is evident, as it has been covered with morning glory vines and flowers.  GLORIOUS.  They last awhile - as they seem to enjoy the cooler weather as much as I do.

IT'S BEEN A YEAR ....

....since I last posted on this blog.  But this past weekend a wonderful thing happened, which inspired me to begin posting again.  I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with my niece Audrey - who was visiting with her family from Seattle.  We had a chance to talk about life and art and the future and school.  We even had the chance to do some work together (see our collaborative water color above)!!  So our challenge will be to keep up on our blogs and pass some work back and forth between the middle coast and the west coast.  If you are lucky (HA) we will share some of it here with you.

A friend of mine in Ireland sent me this poem today - and I love it.  Like me, Michael Hefferman was born and brought up in Detroit.  

Pietá

Everyone’s agenda’s different.  Reaching between
ease and contrition, edges weaken, cohesion drifts.
For ages we have witnessed the same scene
through the same windows.  Even the sky shifts
focus.  The ground goes on being the ground.
Nothing is ever mentioned about ecstasies,
longings, renunciations, the peace we found
in momentary meadows darkening into trees.
We could fall into a crack in the countryside
and no one would catch on.  We could combine
the mightiest things the human hand has made,
display them in the world’s greatest room.
Faces agape, we’d wander into the rain,
piecing together cab-fare to take us home.   

by Michael Heffernanfrom 'The Breaking of the Day'(Salmon Poetry, September, 2012)