I am a baby knitter. No, I'm not knitting babies (though one day - who knows?). I'm a beginner, at the wax-on, wax-off stage of learning. So far, in the space between Christmas and Epiphany, I have knitted three hats. This, in itself, is something of a Christmas miracle. Knitting patterns look a little bit [...]
It happens to everyone - and seriously, I mean everyone: the famous and the not-famous, the seasoned and the fledgling, the confident and the wobbly-kneed. All of us at some time or other freak out IN a performance or ABOUT a performance. It's debilitating. The self-talk tends to be vicious and crippling. Hands shake, voices [...]
I don’t come from a musical family. Sure, they liked music. My mother kept a stack of 45’s, including old hits like “Tom Dooley” and “Davey Crockett.” We had a hi-fi with LPs that included the soundtrack to “Black Beauty” and a wonderful, dark recording of “Peter and the Wolf.” There was a Chickering spinet [...]
I’ve got pretty good all-around intuition, but in one area my spidey-sense is just about 100% accurate. Specifically, I can read your future as a musician. Within about 60 seconds of talking with you, I can predict whether or not music is going to play a joyful and expansive role in your life over the [...]
After a recent performance of poetry and song, a man approached me and told me that he wanted to learn my "method" so he could replicate it in an upcoming performance of his own. "What method do you mean?" I asked, thinking that what I do could scarcely be called something as systematic as that. [...]
Last evening I sent out my monthly-esque newsletter and almost as soon as it winged through the ether an unsubscribe notice came in from MailChimp. “Darn,” says the notice, “You’ve lost a subscriber.” The reason for unsubscribing was given: “No longer interested.” Ouch. I’ve read the blog posts and the enlightened FB memes and I [...]
Every single new thing we do - everything - brings up fears, teaches lessons, and leaves us with gifts. Whether we are climbing Everest or going to a party, taking up salsa dancing or singing a solo, this is all part of the package. It's a package that leaves us different than we were: expanded, [...]
Have you ever suffered insomnia for so many nights running that you feared that you'd forgotten how to sleep? Or had - shall we say - trouble in the loo-department and wondered if perhaps your body had forgotten how to perform certain key functions? Well, the same applies to writing. Here, specifically, on this blog. [...]
This post is inspired by all I am learning from the wonderful healer and artist, Robin Hallett, who is leading a group of us online in lessons about business and life, and especially by her clear-hearted essay, Love is the Metric. I can't recommend her work highly enough! I want to tell you the story [...]
Everyone and everything is mockable. Did you know that? Every single person, animal, place, item, idea: all mockable. That means that everyone and everything can be sneered at, derided, ridiculed, and criticized in ways large and small. At the same time, everyone and everything is laudable. Everyone and everything can be praised, exulted, magnified, enjoyed, [...]
