When authors and editors write music together, Part 2

Birches in Summer, paper collage, by Baye Hunter

It's been two years since my first album release with my long-time editor and wonderful musician, Allister Thompson, but today is the release of album number two! I'm so honoured to share it with you.

Please enjoy Birches at Bandcamp
It's also available free here: Birches, FMA 

You'll find eight instrumental guitar pieces, in the style of Bruce Cockburn or Samuel Beam, inspired by the Canadian forest of Algonquin Park and the Haliburton Highlands.

Here's the title song: Birches 

There's a song for my sailing life, Outer Harbour, and the companion piece, Algonquin. I play both songs with Travis picking, a distinctive style I love. There are a few songs celebrating family life, including Sarah Tiptoes, written for my daughter. And there's even a tip of the hat to Lovecraft, Mountains of Madness, where Allister does some very scary stuff with his voice.

This release also includes my first vocal recording, Moonlight. I have to thank Allister for convincing me to record it, but it's a lovely song about sorrow which is also bound with love and joy. I wrote it for my sister-in-law, who had the most beautiful voice of all.

Many thanks also to Baye Hunter, another musical friend and a terrific artist, whose paper collage work, Birches in Summer, adorns the cover. You'll find more of Baye's collage and watercolour here: www.bayehunter.com

Our first release, Fifth Season (Nov/2015), has had over five thousand listens, and one song, Summer, was the Free Music Archive Song of the Day in May, 2016. Plus, many tunes have been adapted by various folks in artistic videos, you can see them on my Youtube channel (I love the one from the Netherlands the most, I think, it's the windmill).

It's always a joy to create music with my friends. Please enjoy Birches, with our gratitude.

Double barrelled graduation year at my house

Congratulations to the Class of 2016!

In a very rare moment of personal revelation, I'm using this space which is usually reserved for bookish-stuff, to post these two graduation pictures of my kids (hey, it's my blog, my party!).

That's because I'm incredibly proud of both of them.

Top photo, my son graduates with Honors from high school this spring, and heads to university.

Bottom photo, my daughter, the newly minted university graduate, commences this fall.

What strikes me most about these photos, is how quickly we got here. The year 2016 always seemed so far away, it was one of those future dates in our lives, in which both of my children would be finishing an important part of their academic lives, at the same time.

The thought of them actually ever reaching 18 and 21, seemed so, so very distant. Yet somehow, all those warm summer nights in the park, pushing a stroller and coralling a pre-schooler, have turned into now: 2016.

So here, to celebrate and commemorate, my favourite poem about being their mum, from so long ago:

Musings from the Back Porch: Found by Dog

And this one's pretty good too:

That Clothes Thing, in the Basement

And finally, this:

That Crazy Dress Your Mother Wore

Congratulations, my loves, my dearies!

Sibs, 2003

A favourite time and place

The author at Wasaga beach

Beach trail

Summer sunset on Georgian Bay

It's been a short summer. It always is. Three weeks until school. So here, in no particular order, are some photos that say we'll live the last three weeks of our short Canadian summer like kings. Or, as Stuart Little said, "Never forget your summertimes, my dears."

'72 Corvette at the cottage

The January of funerals and flamenco

What an intense month. Two very close friends lost their mothers this week, and another close friend lost her mother on Christmas Day. All three were strong, interesting, and intelligent women.

In the past two weeks I've been to funerals, and mourned with my lifelong friends. I've also spent a night watching the top flamenco troup from Spain (Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca), dance, sing and clap their hearts out in a great affirmation.  The hypnotic, ecstatic dances expressed love, loss, joy, death, the song of life.

Funerals and flamenco, about as far apart on the human emotional diversity scale as you can possibly get, and yet equally intense. Needless to say, I'm a bit drained.

January is a difficult time of year here in Canada, at the best of times. I read somewhere once that the third Monday in January  is considered the worst day of the year in the western world, because it is the exact middle of the winter, and it's the day credit card statements arrive in the mail with all those excesses from the holidays. I've also read that the happiest people aren't necessarily the richest, but instead are those who have fulfilling work, a close network of friends and family, and who have a creative outlet to express themselves.

My creative life has definitely been a great source of happiness. There has never been a time when I didn't want to write, even when there might have been brief moments that I didn't enjoy my family life or my other career as a copywriter.

So, in keeping with the memory of three lovely women and the ecstasy of flamenco, I say affirm yourself! Throw paint at the wall! Let words drip through your fingers! Dance, stretch, play, sing, cook a favourite recipe, read a great book or write one. Clap and stomp your way through life, swirl your skirt, clasp your lapels, pull up a chair and dance with friends.

This January has made me think it's time for a change. Flamenco lessons, anyone?

(Rare) love poem, #2

Some time in the middle of January 1983, I met my husband. We were university students, we did the dishes together one night and here we are, thirty years on.

How, I still wonder, did that happen? And so, a poem:

Constance

 

With the heat furling
off my hot-watered hands,
you come in
breathing snow,
and change the quality
of the light.

It is winter, overnight.

For decades holding
the towel,
as my wifely foot
breaches the mat,
this tender, domestic act.

Burrowed like
misguided squirrels in our eaves,
we’ve led a family life
with ease,

fulfilled, in such quiet lives as these.

It’s a different kind of surrender,
to love that avails
from May to December,

such constance, like seasons,
must change, yet remembers.


PD/2013