You've heard of Shark Week, of course, and what a great idea to devote a week to these amazing nearly preternatural creatures. But this week, my musical friends, is SCALE WEEK. I hope you'll join me! Yes, it's a week to enjoy the foundations of our musical language and to practice scales every day. I [...]
I love April because although we can celebrate and enjoy poetry all year, we dedicate EXTRA love and attention to poetry this month. And that makes me happy! As always, I'm celebrating by writing a poem each day. This year, for the first time ever, I'm nine for nine - meaning, that I haven't yet [...]
I bought a dozen pearl arrowhead erasers - an affordable luxury at .19 a pop. So of course I had to sharpen some pencils to go with them! (Poems come from such small things, don't they? From pencils and and erasers and pencil sharpeners, from those who lived in our homes before us, from awkwardness, [...]
Today, two suggestions and one story. Once upon a time, there was a girl who read constantly. She laid on her belly, propped up on her elbows, reading book after book as the afternoons of her youth flew by. As a young adult, she read even more, adding scholarly articles and essays to the fiction [...]
Creating is a joyful, unpredictable connect-the-dots, often with periods where no dots seem to connect, and with other periods when there are more dots than expected and no idea how to connect them. Case in point. I'm composing songs to accompany, and I hope amplify, some paintings by Winslow Homer (and perhaps other New England [...]
What kind of fuss do you love? What's your favorite mess? I think these are great and revealing questions because they point to what you REALLY love rather than to what seems like a good idea to love. All important endeavors involve mess and fuss - the physical mess of paints or sugar or potting [...]
So far, the sweetest, warmest, and brightest moments of this holiday season have taken place at the piano. Helping a student play a carol he or she loves and witnessing the moment of connection - when the music comes into the hands and heart and mind - is delicious fun, and a great privilege. All [...]
Today I walked deep into the woods to a swampy clearing where lilies grow and beavers build dams. It's muddy and ringed with poison ivy, and it's one of my favorite places on Earth. You could hardly stand in a more breath-taking spot when the wind blows. A hawk mewed in the pine tops, [...]
Believe me, I thought long and hard about how to price my ebook on Amazon. There are books three and four times as long as mine selling for half the price or less. Before I hit the button to set the price at $9.99, the usual questions and worries swarmed in my mind: But [...]
I heard someone on the radio yesterday who sounded a lot like Bob Dylan.* I don't know if this singer consciously intended to sound like him or if it is just one of those accidents of nature, so I'm not casting aspersions. All the same, it got me thinking about imitation and so-called "sure-bet [...]
