…At the beginning of all this, my muse gave me the illusion that it had disappeared. But in reality, Music is always there, matching my devotion with equal constancy. All I need to do is be willing to show up in the practice room. In that sense, there is a luxury to this time of enforced ‘idleness’ – it has allowed me to experience ‘beauty’s sweetest dress’…
Read More…Banned from our concert halls and opera houses, many of us musicians (Americans, in particular) have been told we will not be able to perform for live audiences until next year at the earliest…Not really certain when we will be able to return to the live stage, isolated from our colleagues and audiences, this moment feels endless. Much like Blake’s droopy sunflower, I find myself “weary of time”…
Read MoreAs I’ve worked on this essay in my apartment in the midst of a citywide curfew here in San Francisco, after having spent the afternoons protesting the murderous brutality of the police against black men, these poems and Vaughan Williams’ accompanying music – which brings them even more vividly to life – feel as relevant as ever. While all ten of these songs in Vaughan Williams’ cycle have a relevance to today, none are more timely than these two, as we work to recognize and combat the dangerous divisions in our society….
Read MoreAt the risk of sounding saccharine, I really do relish my life in music. Thus, I relate deeply to the first line of Blake’s deceptively simple poem. In these times of pandemic, as we are physically cut off from our audiences, the fleeting sweetness of pre-COVID musical life is brought into extra sharp relief…
Read More…It is so easy to look back and focus on the wounds life inevitably inflicts upon us, railing against the injustice of them, clinging to the suffering we felt and blaming them for the predicaments of our present moment. It is so much more difficult to accept them as immutable and embrace them for making us who we are today…
Read More…Blake’s poem, London, doesn’t really paint the most beautiful nor flattering picture of urban life, and although we have certainly made progress in regards to the hygiene and health of our cities over the centuries, our current predicament illustrates just how short a distance we have come since Blake published this poem in 1794…
Read More…Blake’s poem, The Piper, is about inspiration and where it comes from. Singing it here this week in Maine has had me thinking about creative inspiration in my own life, which is something I (like any artist) have grappled with over the years. While I have heavily relied on the tools of Julia Cameron’s Artist Way books over the years…
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