phony landscape

 detail from a performance using paper and sand...
watch 

(thanks for the camera work, MS)

listening to an edge of the hoh rainforest

From another late summer visit to the mouth of the Hoh River and the beach at Oil City--a curious name for such an absence.  Massive sitka logs piled by water and time.  Among them, in what almost seem like rooms, one can duck out of the wind and sit on varying floors of driftwood, ovoid rocks, or sand.  A full moonrise not long after sunset, beginning high in the hollows of the forest's edge and arcing to a resting point by early morning on the sea.  But for its seagulls, wind, surf and crows, it's a quiet place until it's stirred...

Watch

'Jamb'--Top Shake Dance Company

 Some scenes from this season's work by choreographer Jim McGinn and Top Shake dance company.
'Jamb' is based, conceptually and poetically, but far from literally, on Jim's experiences working in a molybdenum mine in Colorado.  I composed the music and mixed it live for each performance. 

looking at swifts

There's over a month of nights this time of year in Portland when hundreds of people gather on the grass of the Chapman School to watch the swifts returning for the day in a turbulent display before funneling into the towering brick chimney.

watch

Arthur Heron meets Horace Waters

Arthur Heron, age 4 months, 

and the Horace Waters melodeon, age 145 yrs.

listen

photos from hug point, oregon coast

(nearby, a grandmother in a straw hat sits quietly dividing her attention between me and the actions of her daughter and grandson, who are redirecting the flow of the stream toward their enormous sand castle.. "i'm so glad there's somebody who notices the small things. now at least i know i'm not the only one!" she chuckles to me.)

Watch 'hug point healer' video

two birthdays: April 9th

 

From a crook in the valley floor, I hear the long wires lead away from here with their thrum among the wind--over and out to those places that you observed, seemingly with half-closed eyes.  I know that just over that not too distant ridge is the village of monstrous eyelids on outstretched arms, and the broken house with its fixed gaze. 

Your hepaticas fill the nearby swamps and an unearthly material vibrates across the treelines.

You painted the interstitial kingdom, the insect chorus, and the trenches of a night sky.  And you painted the way death calmly sits beside its bed in the rain. 

And now a small voice arrives in spring like two rings from a bell. 

Arrives through the canopy of green stars.

Happy birthday Charles Ephraim Burchfield.

Happy birthday Arthur Heron Chasse. 

(orb-jects) photographs taken at home while pacing...

a few things so banal

and situational

in a corner of

the livingroom

end up looking

like....

what?

                                                               "old orb
                                                                 slow lost center
                                                               axis become powder
                                                                         barely turning
                                                                   munching dust
                                                              old king"

from a paper planet...

For years now,  I've been working with paper as a sort of tympanum for sound-making and as a material for imaginary landforms--under titles variously using the idea of the footpath.  I've always wanted to properly document the state of the paper at the end of a performance, all covered in sand, pine needles, filings, pebbles, glass, or dust...variously folded, wrinkled, stained or torn.  This week my friend Matty Sidle helped me 'cheat' a bit by setting up the performance situation (without an actual performance!) and, with natural and artificial lighting, shoot some video and stills.  Here's the first...with many more to follow.

window panes for signaling to a child

children singing like bats

On a field trip to the Oregon World Forestry Center last week, two of my students (ages 7 and 8) called me over to listen to them singing into an echolocation simulator.  From nearby speakers, bat recordings played....

Muir Woods 'fantasy apparition'

is this optic flower a symptom of friendships on the footpath below?
it's tempting to project.

in any case, the 'gem' from a weekend in the Bay Area....

from an exhibition of children listening....

On a field trip to the Oregon World Forestry Center with my students last week, I was thrilled to find an exhibit in a side room dedicated to children's works from the Reggio Emilia school system in Italy.  Much of the show was documentation of young children's work with sound and listening as well as their designs for sound sculptures.  I was reminded to pick up 'The Hundred Languages of Children' again and to keep reading and thinking about how to transpose Reggio practices to the context of what we're doing at Springwater School.