Say Yes to Your YES

Initial Montanaro instructions are simple:  Run in a circle. Say the word "yes." Repeat. Continue. Go.

Keep it that simple. Feel : Yes.

What will happen? We don't know. Mine won't be yours, yours won't be mine. Start, to just get there. GO.

Embody the word, the meaning. BE : YES.

Wildermann Photography

Really feel it -- deep, visceral, both the animal and the angel of it. Keep running. Say / scream / whisper the word Yes. Keep running until you feel it first here, and then there. Yes. Higher, beyond, through the core. YES. First physical, then mental, then spiritual in whatever that means for you. YES! Feel it in every part of your being, every layer, linear and vertical like a gorgeous berry cream trifle, spherical and horizontal like an ancient wider-than-arms weathered oak.

You will know when you arrive. YES. We'll watch. We are the Witness. YES! We're with you in your shoes, or your bare feet, your flailing, screaming, elevating, rousing, softening self in this white-hot red-tinged experience. YES!! We'll feel the exhilaration, the universal multi-level-layer orgasm void of doubt, concern, ambition. YES!!!

One focus.  Be -- and be in -- YES. It's deceptively simple. You might, like me, sometimes break down into a NO -- a solid pithy grey foamy bog that refuses to abate despite figurative foot speed and vocal volume. Go, again, in a day, or a month, or a year's time. YES.

It can't help but bubble up -- or geyser push -- to the surface. It's both small and BIG. Maybe not so wide anymore, but oh so deep. It's strength is rooted and also shooting straight through the earth and out the other side, no dimension, phobic-free, unshutterable, cadence-less. YES.

What is it, to what do you say it, how you do it -- not the point now.

YES feels like this... preceded, and followed by, both question + exclamation marks.

It's choosing to wear the red dress in addition to your standard black. Roaring through walnuts off the pristine park path. Whisper soft fist-clench-pull-in -- or hoarse yell spread-finger sky sprint -- when you've nailed the note or the chord, final-stroked the creation, aced the looming test, clearly answered the query, sharp-pinned the presentation, made the goal, screwballed the pitch, shot the arrow BAM to middle center black.

It's behind the life-changing decision AND behind the choice of this week's peanut butter brand. YES.  The one that fuels both the beginning -- and the end -- of painfully personal relationships and power-play professional alignments.

Run literally and metaphorically until you feel flight. YES.
Out of breath -- not beaten down, but pulled up and out. YES!
Move until every fiber of your being knows that yes, this is... YES.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Low -- Walk Into the Sea
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Sense of Place
Procrastination as Punishment
~~~~~~~~~

Now Hear This -- Self-discovery through music and stories
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Life Lines Up Like That

Here, arranged chronologically from right to left, are the journals I’ve written, illustrated and shelved over thirty plus years.  Over time, they have morphed from tiny cloth-covered lined-page notebooks to large blank-paged sketchbook tomes whose covers I paint myself.

She holds it for me -- a relic from a college-era nude body sculpture class tightens it up.

Over the course of my life, I’ve gone to great lengths to hide them from others, and even from myself.  After all, who wants that mirror?

Apparently, hell yes, I do.

The other day I pulled out that green one.  Because I date everything I write, I knew this particular book charted the amazingly painful waters of my music therapy internship in a large failing medical/psychiatric hospital that was poised precariously between wealthy pristine neighborhoods and the impoverished rougher part of a grey gritty city.  Day and night sirens screamed full-throttle into our unprotected 4th floor dorm cavern, and my entries waxed on about my doubt and achy longing for personal and professional connection.

I surmised that reading my own writing again, now, would help highlight how I can be fully present and open to today’s test-drive “Now Hear This!” event that I’m holding in just a few hours in my home -- a house that is stunningly similar to what I dreamily described on Super Repeat in that journal.  This gathering is all about careful music listening, storytelling, and the literal lightening of memories.  And that green journal -- among entries about brazen many-hour walks through questionable urban territory, an intense observation of a forceps (two types!) baby birth, and what I ate too much of at all hours -- included a particular entry about a very specific piece of music.  

This piece of music, when heard in a group setting among people actually listening with me, had suddenly shed light on who I was at that moment, what music truly meant to me, and the shape and color of my immediate future should I choose this or THAT (or some other) direction.

Except the entry wasn’t there.

Looking for it meant reading through the entire book -- shockingly, I could not put it down.  While that memory could still be hiding in some paperwork I have yet to resurrect from a bedroom closet, very slowly it dawned on me that the reason I pulled out that journal wasn’t for that entry after all. 

Past Trista survived and documented her path so that Present Trista, at least this week, could look back and appreciate, pull forward, share, and luxuriate in the very bits she once meticulously and tirelessly worked to hide.

You've experienced this, too?

Perhaps the experience of reviewing written periods of one’s life feels, oh, I don’t know, sickening, and invites “I’d-rather-[fill-in-the-blank]”.  Thoughts of zealous book-burning may come careening from dark corners.  

What comes up when sitting through that Hell for just one moment longer? No, the moment after that? Holding it -- the feeling, the book, the passage of time, the acknowledgement of change -- and realizing, Yes, it’s clear I am no longer that person, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Life lines up like that.  And on it goes -- a chapter shelved, another begun.

Helping others realize the rich value of those challenging moments and how they reward us NOW, especially through music and the arts, is an Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn experience.

So today, won’t you help us hold moments for each other, casting away what is NOT,  and allowing glorious light to fall upon what we’ve been / who we are? Together we throw wide open the doors for new experiences to oh-so- gladly, good-wickedly, confidently and seductively usher themselves in.

Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Peter Gabriel -- Secret World
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Sense of Place
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Procrastination as Punishment

So, we'll just jump in -- what if your fear isn’t completely about failure or rejection? 

What if this “holding back” thing is only partially about recoiling from having to feel bad/unwanted/stupid/insane?

What if you are procrastinating because you don’t believe you actually deserve the incredibleness you’re on the precipice of experiencing? 

What if your procrastination pause is a form of systematic self-induced punishment -- a wildly creative sabotage you’ve designed especially to keep the beautiful-fantastic-happy AWAY?

What if your procrastination is protecting you from both ick AND bliss?

Withhold the good stuff from yourself? Why... would you do that? 

What if your fear is about not quite believing you are worthy of a better life, of having heaven instead of hell, of feeling good, REALLY good, no explanations nor apology necessary?

What if your fear is about being lauded, appreciated, acknowledged, respected, recognized, seen, heard? 

Holy cow what would THAT be like?!

I mean, what the hell would you do with that it would feel so foreign you’re so not used to it and what if everyone expects big everythings from you now and what if you have to constantly live up to that and sitting with the discomfort of praise is SO “blank” and what will others think of you past present and future and how would you explain this newfound whatever to your parents/significant other/church/the government/the cats?

OHMYGODJUSTDOIT.

Stop punishing yourself.  

What if picking up that pen, the phone, the paintbrush, or hitting “send” means your whole life could change? It could. It will. It is.

What if this next thing you’re about to do makes the dream that much closer to coming true? It could. It will. It is.

Isn't it fabulous we always have this choice?

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Simon and Garfunkel -- (a very specific verse of) Bridge Over Troubled Water - Live
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Walk Into It
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings.

Walk Into It

So, it's a big birthday.

Go to the desert, meet what comes up.  Walk.  Right.  In.
Surround yourself by people who get it, and come together in love.
Then venture out alone.
Pick up the lemon that rolls out to meet you, greet the mountains surrounding the sun-drenched cacti, smother the apple in leftover peanut butter, invite all of it, in.
Float in the warm water, gaze at shooting stars, let purging tears flow.
Glorious light.

This is what it looks like, this is what is, Now.

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. -- Mary Oliver

It is, just right.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Led Zeppelin -- Fool In the Rain, Ramble On
Bruce Springsteen -- I'm On Fire
Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues (thank you, JD)
Mumford & Sons -- Sigh No More (thank you, Ally)

~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Dear Creative Work
Sense of Place

~~~~~~~~~
Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here
Get notified of posts to this blog

What I Do for the Super Bowl that is Not Football Related

It's Super Bowl time! But I had to look that up.

My life is measured by creative projects (including those involving the harp), and I remember the Super Bowl is around this time of year because I agreed to have a floorcloth done and delivered by my client's Super Bowl party.

My client came to me because her first floorcloth was crafted by someone else from linoleum, and it turned strange colors and curled and peeled and was an overall disaster.

Stapling down and priming a very thick raw cotton duck canvas is what it takes to make a floorcloth from scratch.  Art room paraphernalia is pushed to the walls (as you see in the tulip example below) to make space for this kind of project, and measures are taken to ensure the cat won't leave prints in the paint.

For every floorcloth that's going in a particular room, I use the motif, colors and photos the client provides.  Above is the simple drawing I submitted to her for approval, at right is the finished floorcloth.  Click here and scroll down this page to see how the 68" x 100" floorcloth complements her other decor.

Function and where the floorcloth will be installed determines the design.  The border became the focal point in the above floorcloth because it's home was under the table; the center field (ha -- a Super Bowl reference, no?) of the floorcloth below became the focal point because it was going to be installed in the main room of a contemporary loft in California.  This massive 6' x 9' floorcloth's final tulip motif offered unexpected depth.

Below is a picture of the tulip floorcloth installed in the client's home -- click here to see another view and and close-ups of those bulbous blooms.  I would also love to see it hanging on an otherwise empty wall.

My current project is a pet mat for a beautiful golden retriever, and it will probably look something like this, except not quite, and incorporate an awesome shimmering iridescent lime green, the pet's name, and a black and white checkerboard border.  The mat is water resistant and can be wiped clean with mild soap and water so pet bowls can be placed right on top.

Once I figured out my own method of priming, hemming, acrylic painting, non-toxic varnishing, and (sometimes) waxing floorcloths, the door opened to a variety of home decor options.

At left is an advent calendar, measuring 10" x 38".  I fashioned this after a wool felt version from my childhood that has long since disintegrated.

Two sets of felt and velcro-backed Joseph and Mary are included; one travels from left to right, the other right to left.  Day 1 is the first house on the lower right, and Day 23 is the last house on the upper left; Day 24 is the stable, Day 25 is the mirrored star of Bethlehem.

Each house has a velcro piece on the path where Joseph and Mary stop to rest.  A pocket on the back of the painting stores the travelers not in use.

On the art table now -- a four panel project for my mother of fruits / vegetables that she and I have yet to figure out how we'll hang in her sage green kitchen -- I'm loving the idea of suspending them by shimmering sheer white ribbon.  So far, one panel is of carrots, and another is of lemons, each highlighted with metallic and glitter paint to accentuate curves and undulations.




This method creates the perfect floorcloths, advent calendars, personalized wall hangings (at right), highchair mats, and more...

Click here to read more about floorcloths.

Click here to see the Floorcloth Design Gallery on my website.


Though all images here reflect a very color-blocked graphic style, I do have a softer side.

And now off to enjoy a Super Bowl of spaghetti, ice cream, or chocolate something, on a placemat like this little girl's.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Very halftime-worthy, can't-help-but-get-off-the-couch Pa' Bailar (Bajofondo Mar Dulce)

~~~~~~~~~

Popular posts:

Breaking Through: Philip Glass and Maybe Minimalsim

What Do You Believe?

~~~~~~~~~

Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog

Coaching Opportunities

Breaking Through: Philip Glass and Maybe Minimalism

This week Philip Glass celebrates his 75th birthday.  In a most interesting interview with his second cousin Ira, he explains, "It's not how you find your voice, but how you get rid of the damn thing... "

I first experienced Glass in a college music class that offered an uncreative listening format of brief lectures followed by corresponding music samples.  Sitting through Minimalism, 12-tone theory, and the like had zero appeal to my frazzled spirit.

I had barely survived creating my composition for this module in another class, shutting myself inside a piano practice room for the weekend to get it done.  Now I know the immense value of composing and performing "live" your own piece for each style we studied, an element I embrace and employ in my own teaching / coaching today.  But at the time it was an exercise in insanity -- I had very limited time then to appreciate the assignment as a way to learn the music from the inside out, truly absorb it, through an intensely personalized process.

Fortunately this time, we were able to play a pre-recorded version of our piece instead of perform it live.  My aggravation shone through in the title I selected.  "This is called S.O.S," I told the class simply, enjoying that it could be interpreted whatever way the listener chose.

A classmate who knew my angst slowly smiled and asked what that stood for.  I stared at him, stood a little straighter, and delivered.  "S.O.S. stands for Same Old Shit."  Snickers ran around the room as I pressed "Play" to share the angry solo piano recording I had probably made only 12 to 48 hours before.  That class included written critiques.  My classmate's: "Well, it didn't sound like shit to me."  My professor's: "I hope 'S.O.S.' isn't the way you really feel -- you do good work as I've said before and I've really enjoyed having you in class."

But back to Philip Glass.

Armed with all my baggage and preconceptions, I braced myself for our listening session.  And then, there it was -- loud and clear and jarring, the frenetically perfect musical example of my life as I knew it.

I have no idea how the professor introduced or explained this musical sample -- I could only feel the class recoil at the maddeningly repetitive nature and the sheer volume and never-ending layers that cascaded over us.  "Can you hear when one element is shifting, an instrument, a rhythm, one note in the melody?" he offered.  "NO!" The class screamed.  "What IS this?!? Make it stop!"

And then there I was, maybe wearing yellow, staring hard at the wall, dead silent and solid, mentally pushing everyone and their noise away, Shut Up! Yes I can hear it! FEEL it! Let me listen! Do NOT stop!

I was riveted.
I couldn't wait to get inside it.

listen listen LISTEN don't you hear?!?? - this is life, this pulsating hypnotic incessant NOISE, this pounding pulsing driving insistent forcing of rhythm and melody - this pattern, over and over and over again, sustained tones that do not go away - what bravery to capture the human condition like this, to be with it, over and over and over - how as a listener or performer do you not go deep within it and yourself to find the nuggets, the seeds, the place from where all this expanded and grew?

Yes! Let me IN!

I remember the album cover as pulsing light emanating from a bright white center that both pulled you in and pushed you out.  I can't find that image anywhere now, perhaps I made it up, saw it as it felt.  In my single dorm room I huddled next to the cassette player, closing off everything around me, pushing everything to the side, get and go AWAY, I'm going in.

Overlapping patterns, shifting ever so slightly, in any direction, required my dedicated attention.  Wavering even slightly from an inner focal point rendered it chaos.  Brilliant.  Devastating.

My own life then was exactly like this.  I had created so many layers of existence, and it was a constant fight to not drown -- my journals from then document my mind-bending frustration, isolation, and a strange dependency on the glutinous anchor of schoolwork and a schedule not my own.  Overloaded with credit hours each semester to graduate early with two degrees, in the throes of a full-blown eating disorder, grappling with imploding issues at home, attracting attention from all the wrong places in all the worst ways, I retreated to campus hiding places where I locked myself overnight to hammer out papers and projects, and walked for miles and hours off campus longingly gazing at warm-lit windows of houses where life appeared to be far removed from my daily careening chaos. I had a zillion eyes watching me but none that really saw.

In all the chaos, Glass' music assured, there is a subtle shifting.  The shifting is inevitable -- nothing stays static.  Direction is unknown, but headed somewhere.  Linear doesn't apply, there's no room for it.  Paying attention to what is happening along the way, hyper-aware and sensitive of the pulsing shifts, is the only way through.

That album cover and that music was a musical illustration of hope in a world where I felt I had little to no control.  It was a vivid portrayal of what didn't make sense, and the meta-vision of what did.  In a morass of confusion and overwhelm, choosing one pathway or anchor -- an instrument, a motif, a rhythm -- and following it all the way through, suddenly lifted the veil and revealed a brilliant landscape of incomparable intensity and magnitude that, in a powerfully parental way, demanded focus and reverence.

This is how transformation happens -- to be pulled, by your own volition or not, out of one place and into another, of newness, openness, and expansiveness.  Glass seeks for himself -- and offers to us -- a way "to break out of your own training."  Time and time again I've seen my own students at the harp or piano, all faculties ablaze, hit that white center.  With a little coaching, they usher in small and large transformations and breakthroughs that shape the course of life from that day forward.

The "noise" is begging for you to notice its layers, what lies beneath.  Demand the space and time to grab that glittering end and hold on tight.  You're in for a ride.  Open your eyes.  Get IN this place that is anything but Minimalism -- inside the chaos is immense beauty and light, illuminating both the path you're on and the one you've been searching for.

Happy Birthday, and Thank You, Philip Glass.

What is your transformative "Philip Glass" moment?

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Philip Glass excerpts, all recordings listed on his website

~~~~~~~~~

Popular posts:

Maybe You're  a Harpist All Over the Beastie Boys

Dear Creative Work

~~~~~~~~~

Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog

Coaching Opportunities

What Do You Believe?

"Do you believe what they say about 2012?" she asked suddenly, in not quite a whisper.  She had just finished playing through a familiar tune on the piano we had learned together only minutes before.

"What do they say?" I ask.  I can halfway sense what's in her head and heart.

"That... it's the end of the world?"

I search her small face -- no trace of fear there, only tiny glittering ghost-wisp question marks.  "Hmm, I've heard of that," I say.  "What do you think?"

"Well, I don't think so.  I saw a movie..." and she describes all the natural disasters the film so vividly paints.  The scenes etched in her memory are poignant and meaningful given what I know she's already endured in her young life.  "But no," she concludes, "I don't think it's the end."

I believe her decision to not believe.

Extra flexibility is required to fully pivot for a good view of all the ways my own beliefs have been challenged, my stories tested, this past year.

Across the sea of retrospect, I spy:  The various literal and figurative dimly lit stages that threw my thoughts and feelings about celebrity and self-worth directly into spotlight glare.  My multicolored-snake-rope thoughts about creativity and relationship and their ability to intertwine without strangling each other.  How much bigger movement, more nourishing fuel, and increasingly voluminous light my aging body, mind and spirit need to thrive.

My re-drawing boundaries when they are again unwittingly crossed and building them out of a different medium or neatly packing them up to take with me when I exit.  Walking the crunchy undulating sandy path of truth alongside heavy discomfort and volatility, and seeing what small air-starved naked creature toddles out from between.

How I've brilliantly re-colored the magnetic energy of money and funneled it both toward and away.  Questioning why I questioned whether I really need a vibrant, beautiful calendar / house in which to hold all my crucial appointments and to birth-chart my life work.

And in what direction my heart pulls hard and how it matters less if that trajectory is logical, practical, and sustainable.  What and where my wild childhood abandon was, when it left, and my semi-shock at it's insistent return.  What is spewed and what is left unsaid.  How continual digging only leaves scars.

What expectations I've dramatically thrown into artificial and pure-true light, and how they've either grown into both high-arching beyond-control jungles or lay dormant in desiccated white picket plots.

I actually celebrate the human capacity to fabricate, in the name of both growth and resistance of, a thoroughly complex and elaborate everyday life around a simple but fully-believed story.

The extent to which we manipulate our surroundings, the lengths we go to convince ourselves and others of our reality, and the way we invent patterns of thought and behavior that support this story scream of our immense and innate creative potential.  

What do we choose to do with what we believe? An amazing amount of time, energy, and power goes into building the world (s)he / you / I live in -- just look at this incredible system, this intricate protective framework all spindly and giant and spread-eagled over the itty buried sleeping treasure whose name, color, texture, and makeup we forgot long ago!

"I don't know how..."
"I can't..."
"It's impossible to..."
"It doesn't work..."
"I've already tried..."
"I could never..."  

Such powerful building blocks, clobbery concrete foundation squares upon which we build a precariously leaning tower that we're incessantly scrambling to prop up.

How rich the deconstruction can be, how powerful to step aside as it topples, how sudden and frantic the manic digging to uncover the small kernel of truth singing out for a bit of warmth and light.

She leaned in a little closer to hear me say, "I believe that you and I have a lot of important and special things to do, and be, in the coming year."  She nods.  I briefly mention my affection for even-numbered years.  "I was born in 2000," she beams.

Later, at the door, I exclaim in my sincerely exuberant way, "I'm SO excited to see you again -- next year!"

"And it's even-numbered," she smiles.

I believe in a Happy Healthy Blooming Unfurling 2012, for you.
And in the words of Maurice Sendak:  "... live your life, live your life, live your life."

~~~~~~~~~
Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
The exploding-bubble Surgeon and the scissor-soaring Cruel (St. Vincent)

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The year's popular posts (wait, do you have one that's not listed below? Post it in the comments!):
Maybe You're  a Harpist All Over the Beastie Boys
Dear Creative Work
Sense of Place
A Night in the Life
What IS Performance?

~~~~~~~~~
Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here
Get notified of posts to this blog
Coaching Opportunities

What IS Performance?

**For an entire month this Fall (2011), Deborah Henson-Conant and I threw ourselves into a joint traveling adventure of performances, workshops, and the ongoing development / implementation of fantastical ideas and dreams.**

And so, what IS performance, really? We'll peer into the window of my own experience, conveniently captured in this hardly-vampy video.

Here's the setup:  It's the last performance of the DHC Fall Tour 2011.  For an entire month (or more) we had been talking about playing on stage together and disagreeing about the reasons why it wasn't happening.  In classic uncomfortable 180-degree style, rebelling against our own resistance, we threw this not-quite-duet together just minutes before the show was scheduled to start.  DHC showed me the form, the parts she wanted me to play, and areas open for improvisation.

We are wearing outfits that I don't normally choose for myself and that DHC chooses for herself all the time -- about which she commented a few weeks earlier, "Good thing we don't get tired of seeing each other in the same thing every night..."

We are tired and had just finished building our own sound system out of equipment we had in the over-packed van, due to miscommunication about what the venue could provide.  I had spent many tens of minutes behind the video camera documenting this process and wondering whether it was for learning purposes or because we were gathering evidence for a Just-in-Case we might file down the road.  I had yet to slam together / sacrilegiously transform a sacred platform into our product table in all its glittery well-organized glory.  In short, in many ways I was completely unprepared to do this.  This is my least favorite way to perform, or really, do anything.

In high boots and tights that I now see aren't true black, I'm crouching at the harp stand because I frankly had never officially played an electric harp before, and playing it at an uncomfortable height was less of a liability than my actually wearing it.  Both string tension and the "voice" of the electric harp are unlike that of a pedal harp -- this requires in-the-moment readjustment of technique and reevaluation of engagement with the instrument (think of an acoustic vs. an electric guitar).  All this is to say, I had no idea what I was doing, feeling very vulnerable, on an instrument foreign to me, playing music that just barely made sense, as the closing piece for someone else's show.

Explaining the setup is not to sell you on why you should see this as a remarkable performance.  Because in many ways it's not, and while I treasure honesty -- Exhibit A, the last post -- whether it is or isn't is beside the point.

The point is that it happened, because we grabbed at and stepped into the opportunity to try a Big Something.  We could either let that slip by, or seize it in a myriad of semi-reluctant ways.  The mere act of doing it became more important than how.  That's not to say the "how" didn't in some way matter -- witness the video edit punches where both DHC and I cut out parts we declared were uninteresting or unacceptable and didn't want the rest of the world to have access to indefinitely.

This was imperfect action.  Messy, uncomfortable, and also oddly enlightening, liberating.  Two tired harpists unsure of an outcome and going for it anyway.

This was living out exactly what we were presenting in workshops during the tour:  Navigating the treacherous and oft-visited waters of Perfection and recognizing the futility of expecting, waiting, and striving for it.  Exploring how structure frees rather than limits you, musically and beyond.  Letting your life experiences show up on stage and disabling the old and out-of-date stories that can otherwise sabotage your experience.  Living in the moment and having that be enough.  Committing to your authentic self when you feel anything but -- "don't do more, hide less" (Karen Montanaro quote, from the Barn experience).

Would we have done that performance differently? Yes! And! No! The point is we do not even know what Yes and No are until we step into the experience.  Live it, in the moment, imperfectly.

And what happened after? We splayed all the travel food on the table we had thus far hoarded to replicate a massive congratulatory feast, then quickly tired of that and went on a slow search for frozen Snickers bars.  DHC edited out parts of the video we didn't like as we randomly commented and cursed about what was and wasn't happening in it.  We sat through late night tension about whose computer housed what and the proper way to affix receipts to larger pieces of paper.  We wrestled with illogically designed alarm clocks.  Real life.  The stuff that happens before, after, and during a performance.

Performance is not about editing life / reality OUT.  It's about letting it IN.

DHC will be in Atlanta on Sunday, December 4 to share with you both the broader and more detailed elements of what we experienced above, using the Blues.  I will be there a day later, but that's fodder for another post.  Will you step up and into the unknown, to learn about parts of yourself you didn't know were there, and other parts you know damn well you are both aching for, and hiding from? Click here to learn more and register for the Atlanta workshop.

Congratulations for the brave yes-and-no way you will choose to hide less today.
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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Joy to the World  (Pink Martini)
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Calendar of December 2011 performances
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Other tour posts (in non-chronological order):
Prepared or Paranoid?
Firsts -- How the Tour Began
Sense of Place

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Opportunities to explore who you are, with your music, unconventionally, using principles above, with me -- visit the website / email.

A Night in the Life

She is booking it quickly quickly quickly through the aisles of the grocery store in her high pink plastic boots and grey baggy pants she is hoping no one will notice are pajamas. Her puffy white coat is hot but it's doing a great job of covering up parts she doesn't want seen, wait are people staring do they notice no makeup behind the hair do they see parts of her losing the gravity war? Hurry hurry hurry avoid lingering looks but they keep looking all that's needed is some foil some parchment paper a toothbrush to replace the one in her frenzy she mistakenly used to clean the bathroom and there is no way she'll make that mistake again due to the neon selection only available to her now.

How did she work herself up to this? Days upon days of being unable to make a decision, so far away from her heart now, all in her head, there is no right or wrong, it's complicated. She is afraid one way means she's not stepping up and that the other way just spells trouble and that doing neither means a constant folding up like endless origami or the Chinese whatever folded paper fortune teller game that incessantly moved like a chomping mouth but never said anything at all. Eating even more of that vegan peanut butter cheesecake with brownie crust isn't helping because this decision has grown bigger and more weighted and more important and she's almost convinced herself that if she can't make this happen she is flawed and failing and destined to flail this way forever.

At home it looks like again someone has ripped the corner gutter off the house and tossed it five feet away, why would someone keep doing that how ridiculous is it to reattach gutters in the rain doesn't this just fit okay okay it all flows and we just direct it that's what they keep saying keep creating the way to direct the flow show it where and how. Again.

Inside she hates the foil box because it rips at her hands but she's got to cover these holiday items at least that decision is made the ripping foil makes a glorious musical noise. The oven fires up like an opening line and the boom box designed to look ancient launches into its otherworldly soundscape she responds like a fluid Howard Schatz photograph work this out in the body maybe it moves up into the mind and blows wide open her heart and soul will feel the way. It's a really big boat in thick deep blue fog and it's aching to change direction but it is slow to change this monster, she's already alienated some with small decisions and losing them overboard as they willingly go not running but simply blind-stepping off the edge. Somehow it's hard to notice the people coming on board running at her with arms wide open because they are so light and beautiful and not in the heavy cloak of need she's used to.

She is thrashing in her grey baggy pi's and it's dark and rainy and cold and she knows that if she just keeps focusing on beauty and the escalation of her own universal spirit she'll feel connected and homeward and warm again like tears moving flowing not stuck and there is light somewhere and the heated rhythmic drums the high arching echoing guitar line the aching voice -- what's it all saying where is it going? Follow.

Music = real life = music = real life = music = = life = = = light = = = = choose = = = = be = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Achtung Baby! (U2)
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Coaching opportunities using music for when you feel exactly like the above -- visit the website / email.

Traveling

Sometimes you just get in the car -- even a rental -- and go.

will.i.am says in a video (Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind -- Music as Medicine -- Deleted Scenes), "Touring is the best thing in the world.  You get to see... perspective... where you come from, from a distance.  Because you really can't understand where you come from when you're always in it."

Dream while here (DHC's friend's contemporary barn in Efland, NC during the Fall 2011 Tour):

Or here (the beautiful Twin Turrets Inn in Boyertown, PA):

Or here (The Victorian Loft in Clearfield, PA -- see an informal video here).

And home, in its unfinished-flooredness, half-paintedness, lacking door-edness -- I have a deeper appreciation for it.

This going and coming, this transportation outside of self, and in again, and out, and in -- this stretching into the person you envision yourself to be, out there -- bridging, always, between -- here, and there.

I put on a pair of black boots and link arms with a forever friend and absorb the second act in the smoky library auditorium of someone else's pictures and feel completely, utterly, at home.

The home page of the library link above reads:  "Reinvention is the only option."

Sometimes you just get in the car -- even a rental -- and go.

Then, go get more.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Hospital (Andrew Bird) -- free download here -- from the Norman movie soundtrack
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Are you looking for Deborah Henson-Conant 2011 tour posts? Click here.

Dear Nagging Little Voices

I'm not completely sure of your purpose, except to highlight the very pieces of life that are in need of clarity and light.

So I listen to you, but only so far.  And then I thank you as I push you off the edge (earlier than you think).

I know you don't want me to change, you want me to stay my small boxed little self, so you can feel comfortable and not have to move nor get out of the way.

Nuh-uh.

Either you die, or I do.  I'm a Phoenix, and you remain ashes.

Changes announced soon.  It's all good.
~~~~~~~~~
Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
These Are My Twisted Words (Radiohead)
Bad / Wide Awake (U2)
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Sign-ups:
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Are you looking for Deborah Henson-Conant 2011 tour posts? Click here.

Tour Documentaries -- Take 1

**For an entire month this Fall (2011), Deborah Henson-Conant and I threw ourselves into a joint traveling adventure of performances, workshops, and the ongoing development / implementation of fantastical ideas and dreams.**

Imagine...
(actually, you don't have to, since you'll see it all below in the video -- it's only 2.5 minutes long and the end is very important!)

... you're tired and attempting to work after a civilized-for-a-second meal at an Italian restaurant...

... a certain someone is narrating her wandering rambling pre-bath journey around your new-to-you abode, the Victorian Loft Bed and Breakfast (more on this awesome place and its incredible owner, soon)....

Taken with one of our many recording devices -- this is classic TH/DHC on tour, folks.


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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Question (Moody Blues)
~~~~~~~~~
Sign-ups:
Trista's newsletter
DHC's site with links to newsletter and blog
Get notified of posts to this blog

Other tour posts (in non-chronological order):
Prepared or Paranoid?
Firsts -- How the Tour Began
Sense of Place

Prepared or Paranoid?

** For an entire month this Fall (2011), Deborah Henson-Conant and I threw ourselves into a joint traveling adventure of performances, workshops, and the ongoing development / implementation of fantastical ideas and dreams. **

It was 41 degrees Fahrenheit when I pulled the harp out of the car today.

This wasn't a surprise -- I was prepared for this outdoor wedding, unlike the other one.  It's why a huge heater was set up on the covered bridge and I had the prized seat right next to it.  And it's why my hands were cloaked in awesome fingerless gloves (thank you Tammy of Red Panty -- yeah, that's what I said!), and why I donned my big black coat over my dress clothes.  It's why the harp was tuned to itself and not to the digital perfection of a formal mechanism.

Prepared vs. panicking.  There is a fine line between being ready to meet head-on whatever might be thrown at you, and having so many "just in case" resources available you're literally drowning in them.

Purge vs. pile.  I won't say what was which & when during the tour, I'll just lay out the facts.  The van was stuffed with possibility -- interpret that as you like.  We lost many items in it, and gleefully and repeatedly "found" others.  We unexpectedly "gifted" items in random places.  When we sold out of product *twice* at the same show, raking in more $$ than ever thought possible, high-speed high-heeled black boot sprinting after intermission yielded quickly-replenished stock.  When a venue's sound system wound up being unable to handle a Camac 32-string "DHC" electric harp accompanied by looping and distortion pedals, we had a thoroughly road-tested Fishman "Loudbox" amplifier and Fishman SA220 (Solo Professional system) we could set up in minutes that more than fit the bill.

We had bags of food supplies, including dozens of containers in which to store what we didn't throw out (fermenting bananas and apples, anyone?).  We left one back seat in the van for napping, but never had time nor the space to use it that way; instead, it became the home of the SKB.  At the beginning of the tour, we were overwhelmed.  By the end of the tour, we had a system and a process.  We had both mess and perfection.

That isn't to say we didn't occasionally slide into terror over what was (not) happening.  Why do each of our fifty thousand maps tell us to go a completely different way? Why are all the doors we so crucially need to pass through right now hopelessly locked? Where is the pre-prepared promised food when we're famished? Why, when tired and halfway hungry at the foot of the mountains, the very last peach yogurt we saved tastes "like a blanket"?

Sometimes, you have no choice to go in trusting you will have exactly what you need, at exactly the right time.  You find the apple knife.  You locate the third hand-held recorder and there's room on it for another brief but imperative documentary.  You are stuck on the floor and Trista both gets it on video AND helps you up.

Sometimes, the "Do Not Enter" is exactly the place you must go.

You go in cold.  You come out warmed by knowing, hey, that was a temporary hell, but it all worked out.  Again.

Other tour posts (in non-chronological order):
Firsts -- How the Tour Began
Sense of Place

Click here to receive Trista's newsletter
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When will I write here again? Click HERE and you'll know

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Another imperfect post, this time accompanied by:
Vampire Weekend's "Giving Up the Gun"

Firsts -- How the Tour Began

For an entire month this Fall (2011), Deborah Henson-Conant and I threw ourselves into a joint traveling adventure of performances, workshops, and the ongoing development / implementation of fantastical ideas and dreams.

Very early on an uncloudy day, I was dropped off at the airport to catch a flight to Boston.  I was to play with Deborah Henson-Conant and Katya Hermann at the Regent Theater that afternoon, as a sort of kick-off to the month-long fall tour that DHC and I were embarking on together.

And then I got stuck in the airport for over twelve hours under clear unfettered skies.

I chose a sunny window spot to camp out with my new Mac laptop, my snacks (almonds, raw raisin oatmeal cookies, chocolate), and my journal.  Fine, I thought, I'll use this time to catch up on all I said I would do but conveniently haven't.   

I dove in with zeal, not accounting for eye strain as a result of staring at the computer too long, nor for feeling sick after eating only said snacks, nor for being just plain frustrated that there had been so much anxious preparatory buildup to this tour and I still hadn't even left the ground.

And then, slowly, it became a day of Firsts.

It was the first 25th of September in many years I didn't feel a painful simmering anniversary ache.

It was the first official mention of being "a harpist on tour" and it yielded me complimentary cabfare from the Boston airport to DHC's.

It was the first tour veggie sandwich I admitted I needed, which became the signature staple go-to meal for both DHC and I for the next 30 days.

It was the first time of many on the tour that I held the contradictory -- or dichotomous? -- thought that my current situation was incredibly insane and perfectly fine.

It was the first time I consciously and clear-headedly asked for help and support.  I composed a message to everyone I knew and invited them to sign up for my newsletter, and provided ways they could contribute to this adventure if it felt right.  Stepping out into the belief that I was not alone, that people might be interested in what I was doing, especially while stuck for hours on end by myself in the airport, felt both bold and stupid.  And worth trying.

And people responded.  They sent me notes, they sent me money, they sent me pictures, they sent me blessings.  They bought my handmade items, they signed up for something I wasn't sure I could follow through with, they shared my postings, they held the light while I stood on the shadowy shifting edge of the Unknown.

And I hadn't even left the ground yet.  (Thank you).

How will you step up and out today?

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Another imperfect post, this time accompanied by:

Reverie, the new deliciously gritty basement-produced album by Joe Henry.  Link to NPR interview here  -- "and... this person who feels very alone starts imagining the expanse of the world outside of his small little encampment."
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Other tour posts (in non-chronological order):

Prepared or Paranoid?

What is Performance?

Sense of Place

**** The tour schedule:
Sept 27 -- Fireworks workshop w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Pottstown, PA
Oct 1-2 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Denver, CO
Oct 4 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Liberal, KS
Oct 7-8 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Gallipolis, OH / Point Pleasant, WV
Oct 9 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Efland, NC
Oct 14 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Lake City, FL
Oct 16 -- Fireworks workshop w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Greensboro, NC
Oct 17 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, New Bern, NC
Oct 18-19 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Asheville, NC
Oct 20 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Waynesboro, PA
Oct 21 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Westminster, MD
Oct 23 -- w/ Deborah Henson-Conant, Clearfield, PA