Read.Eat.Listen: Iterations

I grew up on a wooded hill so I'm always jonesing a little for a nature hike. Getting outside is generally the most reliable head clearer. These days, living in Alameda, the San Francisco Bay is both the backyard and the nature escape. And with no hills to climb, that means heading for either the beach or on the water.  On Friday, we took off for a long-planned overnight sail to Paradise Bay, a lovely anchorage on the east side of Tiburon. We'd sailed there more than a year ago and I had memories of a smooth sail, warm air and gentle anchorage, suitable for a little yoga on the deck and napping in the sun. Anticipating a similarly idyllic two days, I dressed in shorts, brought my iPad writing set-up, and we added the mandolin to the on board instrument inventory. However, though the weather was warm and clear when we set out on Friday, the water soon became choppy and rough. Out came the long pants and foulies.

It should be noted here that while I'm a pretty experienced outdoors person,  I'm really a fair weather sailor. Suddenly, I was feeling nauseous.  Fortunately my captain is more than capable, and ably navigated the rough patch while I worked on steadying myself. 
I was reminded how easily the mind gets attached to an idea of how things should be like they were before. Hah! Paradise, it turns out, like everything, is changeable.  The upside of the strong wind and current was arriving at Paradise Bay in record time, albeit amid high winds, cool air and a half-hidden sun.
Once I got over partially cloudy and cool weather, I embraced our actual circumstance. There's something so soothing about sleeping on water. And waking to coyotes howling through the morning fog and loons paddling on the calm morning water isn't bad either.
Read: The Folded Clock, by Heidi Julavits, is a diary, but it's nonlinear. Comprised of two years of highly literate entries, each started with "Today, I..." Julavits mines insights about her everyday motivations and encounters with bracing candor, about herself, her strength and shortcomings, creating a new order of experience.

Eat: A friend handed me some scissors and directed me into her garden recently to harvest some of the many fava beans she'd grown. I shelled them for salad and for pasta and proceeded to see fava's everywhere, on menus and grocery bins. Fava beans,  are something I would have hated as a kid and now find beautiful. Large and green and kidney shaped, I like them as much for their aesthetic as their flavor. This Fava Bean and Pecorino dish is simple and pretty.
Listen: I've been fortunate to hear a lot of great live music lately a while reviewing shows for No Depression. Someone I'm looking forward to seeing play there next month is Steve Poltz. I'm not sure any video can capture how mind-blowing Poltz is live — he's as much performance artist, comedian,  faith healer and spirit channeler as songwriter/guitarist — but this will have to do until you see him. Poltz tours a lot. (Bay Area heads up: He's in Berkeley in May and in SF in July.) Check him out.

Read.Eat.Listen: Art & Magic

The pursuit of truth and beauty through plumbing one's own line of particular inquiry is a road I trust, even if it's fairly unmarked. I've been neck deep in a bunch of projects this month, while planning a whole course on getting projects done, so I was pleased to be tagged on Facebook as part of an artist challenge earlier this week. The challenge is to post your work 5 days in a row and tag two other artists while you were at it. Already on day 5, I realized I've a lot more folks I want to tag! Oh my! 

In the meantime, I flew up to Portland for a few days, mainly to spend more time for my sweetie whose been traveling a lot, and also to enjoy that hyper-creative city. It was raining, and cold for most of my visit, but the trip started beautifully, with a view of a rainbow over the Willamette River, and ended sweetly with a big slice of gluten-free berry pie, with a good helping of quality time with my husband, yoga practice, good coffee, writing sessions and catching up with friends who live there. I got back in touch with a dear and brilliant artist, Kitty Wallis, who I knew years ago in Santa Cruz, while in town. She was already a master colorist when I first met her and I'm lucky to own a couple of her pieces. What a delight it was to see her current, just that much more realized work! If you're in Portland, look her up and seek her out. She's also continuing to teach her vivid and inspired approach to painting. 

Read: I've pretty much designed my life to be surrounded by creatives.  So I love coming upon this book:  Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, by Janet Malcom. 
Eat: I ate out a lot this week, in Portland, at home, for Easter. I'm grateful for all the good food, and happy to see spring is busting out on menus in the form of an abundance of artichoke and asparagus based and laced dishes. Artichoke and asparagus on pizza, artichoke ragout under poached fish, artichoke grilled with x on top, asparagus on goat-cheese ravioli, asparagus lightly with brown butter...you get the idea. Go green I say!
Listen: With a name like,  Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, how can I not want to listen? Love the sass and soul of this group. Check out Mama Knows: 

Read.Eat.Listen: Between Seasons

Read: In the bird world, it's spring, and if you're paying attention to Bay Area falcon populations, you know peregrines have commenced nesting. I was a slight bit saddened to learn that our local Alameda pair of nesting peregrines set up house across the estuary, in Oakland, this year. Nonetheless, I'm getting another sort of falcon fix reading  "H is for Hawk", a memoir by falconer Helen Macdonald about training a Goshawk in the wake of her father's death. While the Goshawk is the star of this book, falons and falconry get my play.
Eat: As we've had very little in the way of typical winter weather here on the West Coast, eating with the seasons hasn't been much a helfpul concept for meal planning. Fortunately, this Ginger, Turmeric Spice Carrot Soup splits the winter/spring difference pretty well.

Listen:  Leading up the Lucinda Williams Tribute show in Berkeley last week, I was pretty much listening to Lucinda 24/7. Now that I've got a batch of her songs learned, I can turn to other sounds! Turns out that the big voiced, old soul Brandi Carlile released another batch of  clear-eyed songs earlier this month in the form of 'The Firewatcher's Daughter.' Take a listen to "The Eye"

 

Read.Eat.Listen: Edgy

After using the word 'edgy' to describe work I liked at last week's house concert (which was great, thank you Self & Soul Center), someone asked me what I was implying. By edgy I didn't mean irritable rather than innovative. I meant someone who knew the less shiny parts of living — the contradictions, the uncomfortable truths, the heartbreak, cravings, nameless itches and all-too-blatant injustices — and didn't turn away, but felt it, and made art of it, maybe, rather than medicating or sugar-coating or otherwise denying the real.

There's a lot of uncomfortable truth going on right now and I appreciate those willing to go to the edges more than ever. Perhaps I should take a break from reading the news, so full of more of the failings of humans (Everest, South Korea, the bigot in Nevada), rather than the triumphs, but I don't want to deny it either. Challenging and painful as forging something new can often be, creativity lives and breathes by the truth, not ignorance.

Read:  I've taken a couple of workshops with wisdom teacher and writer Deena Metzger and always felt empowered at the possibility of effecting change and transformation through story afterward. To fix my current trip-up, I'm turning to her Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing and From Grief Into Vision: A Council  today.

 "There is a silence that is the heart of God. And there is another kind of silence that kills. We were shattered when we came home from Africa, but also we had been restored. We had been broken down, we had been reconstituted. Story can do this; it can take the sharp slivers and the shards and organize them into a light. This is a book or it is letter or it is a long conversation. A memoir, a series of stories, a meditation on despair and beauty and hope. A book of healing...."

Eat: Gluten-free and living in the Bay Area and missing the satisfaction that a good piece of bread can give? A lot of GF bread is not good--gummy, bland, not-all-that-easy-to-digest for its poorly proportioned mix of GF flours. Then a friend turned me onto Bread Srsly, a SF-based company that delivers most of its wares by bike! Very cool people behind this operation and their GF sourdough bread rocks. Plus they now ship. 

Listen: Hurray for the Riff Raff, née Alynda Lee Segarra, a New Orleans based artist, has the edge and the soul going on:

Read.Eat.Listen: Regeneration

I was dismayed, heartened, inspired and confused by the latest report by the UN on Climate Change. Dismayed that things are as bad as they are; heartened that experts are not shying away from the truth; inspired by the possibilities for taking action and confused at how and where to start on the individual level. The upshot is, of course, there's no more time to waste when it comes to taking action to slow climate change and no more excuses to be made: climate change is a man-made problem. We've a couple more decades, if that, to halt or slow the crisis. This lifetime. Right now. Where to begin when the problems — from fossil fuel use, to fracking, to plastics in the ocean, to rampant development —  have such momentum? Fortunately, there are many people on it. Now it's our turn to listen and believe that what we do today affects tomorrow and  that the affect can be beneficial. Toward that end, I've been so encouraged to see all the footage of hatching Peregrines from the 'nest-cams' set up around the Bay Area. By the 1970s, the Peregrine was an Endangered Species, a victim of rampant pesticide use, but with diligent efforts by biologists and a ban on DDT use, the falcon population recovered. Thirty years of combined legislation and action works. Now look at them go: 

Read: Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, a takes on climate change in novel form. "Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths." 
Plus, this article: UN Climate Report Charts Ways to Halt Global Warming

Eat: An afternoon snack at Piccino in Dogpatch the other day entailed a spring soup made with butter beans. Butter Beans, or Fava Beans, are those large, lovely kidney shaped beans that look engineered for presentation possibilities. They're also yummy. I've got my eye on this easy breezy spring salad of Fava Beans with Red Onion and Mint.

Listen: I've been on an Over the Rhine jag most of the year, I admire The Lone Bellow and I've been a fan of eTown since the 90s when I lived in Boulder and watched many a live taping. So I was delighted to see this Over the Rhine/Lone Bellow/eTones rendition of Slip Sliding Away. Beauty. Yes.

At the Roots: Music, Matthiessen & Earth Day Marin

©Dave Perkes photo, http://www.peaceofangkorphoto.com/

The weekend was punctuated by hearing a bunch of great music, attending and playing a tune at the Earth Day Marin Celebration and learning of the passing of writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen.
Friday, we waved goodbye to a songwriter-friend who is moving across the country and then got ourselves to Lafayette's Lamorinda Music Store for "3 Voices in Song," an evening with songwriters Wendy Beckerman, Louise Taylor and Karen Almquist. Wendy is the ringleader of a 'songwriter's exchange' we've been participating in for years. I've written about 'song group' before — a regular, grassroots gathering of diverse songwriters who come together to share a meal, their latest work and feedback — as it powerfully and stealthily became a trusted sounding board for many of my songs.

The trio's show at Lamorinda displayed the long-time friends' musical mastery. This wasn't flashy or trendy music, it was real and heart-filled music by dedicated artists. Three-part harmonies, blues riffs, delicate finger-picking... a great expanse of musical range and heart. Everyone had a firm command of their instruments and the joy they were taking in playing together was palpable. Wendy has a finely tuned sensibility for melody and meaning. When she isn't writing songs, she's teaching mindfulness classes: her songs are exacting, excellent and poetic. Karen, a kick-ass guitar player and self-proclaimed song 'interpreter', covered Jesse Winchester and early James Taylor, offered up several beautiful originals and added some cooking harmonica to the mix. Louise Taylor, also new to me, is a longtime troubadour who calls Hawaii home and wields a hollow-body Duesenburg guitar with the confident swagger of a gunslinger. Only it's her voice which is the real weapon. When she's not writing and performing, she's a voice teacher so...think Bonnie Raitt's long-lost sister. It was a truly nourishing night of authentic and highly skilled music. 

You think that would have been enough but ...we had tickets to Gurf Morlix house concert presented by KC Turner on Saturday night.  As a longtime devotee of Lucinda Williams and lover of Austin music, I'd heard Gurf's name a long while: he accompanied Williams for 11 years, and produced her first two albums (also co-writing one of my favorite Williams' tunes ,'Big Red Sun Blues'), but that's just a note in a long and storied career. As well as being a sought-after producer, he's a master guitar player and to-the-bone honest songwriter in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt, Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen and Blaze Foley (to whom he pays homage to live and in multiple recordings). Sitting back in a living room and hearing him sing and play a small-body guitar accompanied by singer-songwriter Amilia Spicer on vocals, I was musically transported to South Austin, and lyrically transported to the back roads of Texas where the living is hard and choices life or death. Again, a night of real-deal music.

Right before we left the house for the Gurf show, I learned that writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen had passed. Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard was required reading for any self-respecting Environmental Studies major at UCSC. As a nature loving,  aspiring writer undergrad, I ate up that landmark book, as well as, in subsequent years,  his many New Yorker essays and writings on Buddhism and nature through the years. His words are steeped in integrity. When I had the privilege of meeting him in person after hearing him speak in SF a while back, I was struck by his immense heart and exacting presence. Reading his obituary and the many, recently penned tributes  (he has a new book that's set to be released tomorrow),  I'm struck again by his dedication to truth and activism: "it’s our duty [as writers] to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves."
Mostly, I'm reminded it's a privilege to read and to write, period.
On that note, while a contest is somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the artists mentioned above, I was nonetheless honored to have a song co-written with Kwame Copeland, "Your Own Reaction," chosen as a finalist in the Earth Day Marin Song Contest. And despite my cold-compromised voice, we ventured to Larkspur for a full day in the sun, listening to many speakers and musicians who are actively working on behalf of the environment and sustainable living, and performing our song. Marin residents are truly leaders on this front, and I was impressed with the effort made by producer Hannah Doress to pull the various organization and events together to share their knowledge and activism.  Kudos, Hannah!
Alas, our song did not win the grand prize (and a recording of it is just getting mixed so I can't post it) but I hope its message will add to the effort to make the world a better place:  

"Start your own reaction/See what you can do"

Read.Eat.Listen: Staying Warm

And whoosh, we're home. Holidays, travel, shows, oh my, but I'm happy to be home for a few weeks of holiday schmoozing and general life catch up. Given we've been up and down the West Coast between Seattle and LA, during the past 10 days, I can vouch for the fact that it's cold (relatively cold, I know, if you're in California) just about everywhere. A great excuse to cozy up, read, eat and listen well.
Read: It's also the time of year for the 'best of' lists. Seeing The Goldfinch on several such lists (it's been compared to Dickens), I had to give it a go. I just started this long tale by Donna Tartt about, ultimately, how art saves us. Have you read it? Let me know what you think
Eat: It's easy to get out of whack traveling, and as a counter to changeable schedules and the holiday glut of sugar, we're hitting the reset button with clean eating. Here's a warm, nourishing recipe from the Clean blog for Roasted Vegetables and Rice.
Listen: We've seen a lot of great music of late including being completely blown away by Steve Poltz's humor and energy at the Swedish American Music Hall. Equal parts songwriter, comedian, monologist and musician, I haven't quite seen a live show like his before. He took the audience to school on how to really engage a crowd. He even had more than one holiday-related song in his mix, such as this Christmas Wish.

Artist Interview: Cosy Sheridan on Making and Taking Songs and Vitamin C (Creativity)

My ears went on high alert and I sat up a little straighter when I first heard Cosy Sheridan play at the Far-West Conference in Irvine last month. Playing impeccably wrought and heartfelt songs about everything from the wonders of learning to play your own guitar to the dangers lurking in the waters of a mining town, it was immediately clear why she was one of the conference's official showcasing artists. Of all the very fine music I heard that weekend,  her songs were exemplary... you know, songs with a capital S, songs that make you believe songs can change the world.  Plus she had that uncanny ability to make everyone in the audience feel as if she'd known you your whole life and knew exactly what type of song you wanted to hear.

Of course, I was just late to the party. To date, Cosy has released more than 10 CDs of original music, founded a successful folk camp and toured a one-woman show to much acclaim. Wanting to get more up-to-speed, I asked Cosy some questions about her work as she wrapped up another successful songwriting camp in Moab, Utah. 

Q: Tell us a little bit about early inspiration to be a writer & your writing process? Do you remember the first song you wrote? 

CS: The first song I wrote was in junior high. I had a guitar teacher in Concord NH who encouraged me to try writing a song. So I wrote about how it would feel to walk through the doors in the doll house I had when I was younger.

Q: What first brought you to Utah and motivated you to make a home there?  Listening to you play 'Don't Go in the Water' reminded me of Ed Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams who love(d) the land there and have fought for it's protection. Can you talk about living in Moab and how the Southern Utah landscape and community influence your work. What is your thinking about writer-as-activist?  

CS: I moved to Moab in 1994. I had been driving through there since the mid-80’s — I used to work in the Grand Canyon—I would sing in the Bright Angel Bar — in the summers and I would drive through Moab on the way there and back and I fell in love with the town, and with the southwest.

Living in Moab exposed me to the writers and artists of the southwest — like Ed Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams; “Desert Solitude” (Abbey) and “Refuge” (Tempest Williams) were two of the books that I read in my early years in Moab. They both taught me a lot. 

I think the landscape of the southern Utah influenced my writing in a couple of ways. First, I found I had more time to write — large blocks of time — because there really wasn’t much work (concert venues) in the immediate area of Moab, so I would either be on tour, or I would be home. In New England it was more likely I would be working every weekend and so I wouldn’t ever get as quiet and introverted as I might in Moab.

As to writer-as-activist: I have found that if an issue effects me enough — if it really gets into my heart — than a song will arise from it. I don’t think of myself as the sort of writer who can choose a topic, though — and then write a song about it. The one exception might be “Don’t Go In The Water” — which I wrote on a run on along the Colorado River. There was a lot of discussion in town at that time about how to raise awareness on the issue of the uranium tailings pile. I really wanted to write a song to help — and that song appeared.

Q: Your song 'Air Guitar' details the great value to ones life in having a guitar.  Can you tell us about some of the teachers who have had the biggest influence on your playing?

CS: My biggest influence was my babysitter Patsy Niswander who taught me how to play guitar when I was 9. She taught me for probably 2-3 years. The next biggest influence was probably the musicians in Portsmouth, NH in and around Boston in the mid-80’s. I dropped out of Amherst College and moved to Portsmouth in 1984. Harvey Reid was one of my first roommates — he was a  Winfield national fingerpicking champion. I also took guitar lessons from Eric Schoenberg and Guy Van Duser — they both taught in the Boston area. (Eric now has a guitar shop in Marin County, CA.)

Eric is a seemless player — he is one of the early DADGAD pioneers in fingerstyle guitar; and Guy developed a way of transcribing stride piano pieces to the guitar. Sitting in a room with him was  overwhelming and yet inspiring. He did things no one really was doing at that time.

Q: Who were some of your earliest influences and is there any music/writer you're finding especially, or newly, exciting or inspiring right now?

CS: My earliest influences were probably my brother and sister’s record collections — Peter Paul &a Mary, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles. My strongest memory is of my brother putting the little headphones from his Walkman on my ears in about 2nd grade — and playing me Bonnie Raitt’s “Streetlights” album (on a cassette, of course). 

"There's a lot to be lost in this great wide world

Don't walk away from love

It might not look like you planned

your family might not understand

Don't walk away from love

We move around the wheel

up and down how we feel

Don't walk away from love

We are darkness, we are light

we don't always do it right

Don't walk away from love"

     — Cosy Sheridan "Don't Walk Away From Love"  from The Horse King

Q: From the looks of the curriculum, Moab Folk Camp seems to be among the more comprehensive songwriting camps around. How has this evolved and what's new this year (if anything)?

CS: Moab Folk Camp is 6 years old this year! The curriculum started out being mostly centered on songwriting, singing and guitar; over the years I have tried to add in other instruments and styles. This year we have banjo, ukelele, mandolin and percussion — as well as photography and painting. My all-time music camp hero is  Puget Sound Guitar Workshop up in Washington State. They have a remarkably comprehensive program — and a very supportive open-hearted approach. They are a much bigger camp, and they have three weeks of workshops — but whenever possible, I have tried to model our little camp on them. 

I have to give a nod to my campers, though, for making Moab Folk Camp a success. They have returned year after year to help co-create this fabulous community of friends and musicians who spend a week together in a beautiful place — sharing and learning and filling up on Vitamin C (creativity).

Q: Gazing into the future a little bit, what can listeners expect over the next 6-12 months? Any big tours or recordings or?

CS: I just released a solo CD of songs that students have asked to learn over the years; there is a songbook coming out this winter with lead sheets and chord charts for each song.

I’m also working on a CD of new material that I hope to have out by the winter. It is tentatively titled “Lost & Found.”

Get the latest information about Cosy Sheridan's music, camps and shows at http://www.cosysheridan.com/

Read.Eat.Listen: Retroactive

There's comfort in familiar even if you're reaching for change. I got back from travel in July motivated to finish, curate and compile a lot of my own content: 'downtime' has been filled with finishing mixing, going through a bunch of writing and blog posts and figuring out what's next.
Last weekend, we took some time out to visit a favorite region of the Bay Area and drove up to Pt. Reyes, stopping in Inverness for lunch before hitting the Tomales Point Trail, gazing at the ocean, the bay and catching occasional site of the Tule Elk that live there. It was lovely and scenic and not-so-crowded.
Read: Getting back up to Pt. Reyes jogged my memory banks about The West Marin Review, a lovely art, poetry and literature journal put together by a committed group of West Marin folks along with Pt. Reyes Books. Check out the latest issue's TOC.

Eat: Inverness, a small town along the west shore of Tomales Bay 'only' has a couple restaurants and one cafe but that doesn't mean it's slim pickings. We had a long, lazy lunch at Saltwater Oyster Depot, which yes, has plenty of oysters, but also a nice selections of salads (fish and farro anyone?), sandwiches and pizza —all artfully assembled from locally sources ingredients —as well as wines and beer on tap. We sat in the sun at the communal table and basked a bit before hitting the trail. Post-hike, we stopped in at Blackbird, an art-house cafe next door, for a slice of their daily pie (peach-berry in this case) and made it back to the East Bay to catch two different shows. Yeah!
Listen: I've really noticed how my tastes are so influenced by what music I heard — consciously and unconscious — when I was growing up. My antenna seems especially tuned to beats and melodies ingested at an early age. I hear something from decades back and automatically start boppinging a little, even if I don't really 'like' the song. Back in the 'likable' category: the wonderful songstress Sam Phillips recently released an album inspired by 60s pop music. It's familiar, it's smart and it's new (and she's one of those just-cool sorts).

Check it out:
Sam Phillips "Push Any Button"

Read.Eat.Listen: Summertime...

Read: "Saturday Night" by Susan Orlean a new book, but it is recently updated by the author, of whom I'm a fan.  Given that most Saturday nights in our house involve music, I wondered what Orlean had to say about what much of the rest of the population is up to.  Though she's famous for her book "The Orchid Thief", I came to know Orlean's work through her pieces in The New Yorker. And I loved "The Bullfighter Checker Her Makeup" (which includes a piece about Maui Surfer Girls that formed the basis for the movie Blue Crush) and her travel collection "My Kind of Place" so went in for "Saturday Night" which thus far is a characteristically quirky, clear-eyed and fun view of what obsesses many folks on Saturday night.

Eat:  Did I live on pie and kale chips on this recent road trip? Well almost. How fantabulous it is to be back home and able to make my own meals! And yay, it's summer so the farmer's market is popping with fresh tomatoes. I'm eyeing this gluten free pizza recipe from Saveur to try next:

Gluten-Free Pizza Margherita This spin on a classic Neapolitan pizza was inspired by one served at Don Antonio's by Starita in New York City

Listen: Unfortunately, I got behind on what was going on in the Bay Area when I was away, and missed Bonnie Bishop's show at Freight & Salvage this week. Bishop, a Nashville songwriter who recently had one of her songs ("Not 'Cause I Wanted To") covered by the one-and-only bested-of best singers Bonnie Raitt is indeed a wonderful singer and writer. Check this tune "Free" out:

Three Ps (& a D) in Portland

I'm not here for work or to play, rather I'm in Portland on a bit of a lark while my S.O. works. A wintry, rainy Northwestern city might not be the first choice to visit if you're feeling under the weather, but Portland is hardly a place with which to find fault. Portland really is cool, figuratively as well as literally. As we're staying downtown, I spent my first day in the area and The Pearl District, enjoying some R&R and literary inspiration.
Yoga Pearl: Located, fittingly, in Portland's Pearl District, Early morning Mysore Style Ashtanga class is followed in quick succession by led Hatha and Vinyasa classes with some Yin Yoga and Restorative classes for good measure. The serene studio also boasts a Wellness Center and one of the best smoothie & juice bars in town...

Prasad: I'll go to Pearl for Prasad alone. Veggie bowls, healing elixrs, an extensive juice and smoothie menu. If the Wellness Shot (ginger juice, lemon, cayenne & echinacia straight up) I took doesn't cure me, I don't know what will. Especially since I chased it with Blackberry Kiss smoothie made with Oregon's own Marionberries. Yum and OK, now, I could look at books.

Powell's City of Books: Lest anyone think that no one reads actual books anymore, Powell's City of Books spans a city block and  keeps its shelves stacked high with seemingly every tome known to humankind. The largest independent new and used bookstore in the world has color-coded rooms that help you locate your area of interest. There's also a downloadable app that guides you turn by turn through the stacks if you don't want to ask one of the stores friendly book loving staff. It's hardly my first visit, but...wow, I'll say again. I whiled away a couple of hours here, decided on my purchases while reading them over coffee — they let you bring up to 5 books to browse into the cafe — bought the latest Alice Munro collection and re-remembered about 10 titles I want to/need to read.


Ok, about that D. That would be for Ducks. As in Portland Ducks, who I have to say I haven't been following. Nonetheless, I met self-proclaimed 'the biggest Duck fan' on the planet, a gentleman who was flying back to PDX via AZ where the Portland Ducks took the Fiesta Bowl. The birder in me eclipsed the football 'fan' and had to ask what kind of duck is a Portland Duck? Not a wood or a mallard or a whistling duck but a 'Donald-type Duck' I was told. A Disney Duck, was the general conclusion. In any case, congrats to the Ducks!

Read.Eat.Listen: Stay

Despite my many comings and goings, the San Francisco Bay Area has always been home. But it took me a long time to admit that: My process has involved lots of taking off to see what it might be like out there, elsewhere. The shadow side of this curiosity is the addiction to the short-term excitement of taking off to new and exotic places and the 'hey, I'm back' novelty of returning. Not to mention the continual adrenaline of figuring out the who-what-where between trips. Last year, however, I did two things that were radical for me, if actually completely ordinary: within six busy months I got married and bought a house. With these two commitments, I gave my word to really seeing and being where I am. Which of course is the point, and the call, no matter where you are (and, well, everyone figures this out at a different rate). While it's not that I'm not thinking of elsewhere, or planning on going other places anymore, my internal perspective has probably shifted as much in the past year as it has in the last ten.  Staying, I tell you, allows you a whole new regard.
Read: "The Mountains of California" by John Muir. Last week, we played a last-minute gig at a cozy Berkeley neighborhood restaurant, The Westside Cafe. On our break, the friendly staff plied us with fine glasses of wine and food* and discussed local music. Somehow, the conversation turned to Martinez, a town north of here, a little east of the SF Bay on the San Pablo Bay. It's home to a handful of music clubs as well as a whole lot of history I hadn't quite grocked — think Pony Express and California Gold Rush and you start to get the idea. So we drove up there the next day and found, lo, naturalist John Muir's mansion and former ranch. I read oodles of John Muir's writing about the Sierra Nevada and his role in the conservation movement while studying natural history at UC Santa Cruz, but somehow failed to absorb that he settled down...in Martinez, living and writing there 'til his death in 1914. We enjoyed wandering the rooms— including Muir's book-filled study— of the stately mansion on the hill, before heading for a nature walk of our own along the Martinez Regional Shoreline.
Eat: Artichokes have always been my familiar. My dad grew them. They covered (and still do) the fields on the coast north of Santa Cruz. While they seem like the could be native to California, artichokes owe their roots to North Africa, have been cultivated in Europe since the ancient Greeks, and came to the US with French immigrants, reaching California via Spanish immigrants. But until I reached adulthood, I really thought they were disgusting. But now...a roasted artichoke with a glass of red wine is among my favorite things to eat.  Simple. Good. Good for you. (Did I mention, Westside Cafe had them on their menu? Good call).   
Listen: Vintage Jackson Brown, "Stay" which is about going as much as staying, and how for musicians, well, wanting to stay, and play, and go, are all mixed up... another old song that keeps on giving.

Read.Eat.Listen: Feeding the Muse

It's been cold or raining or both this past week in California and I really have just wanted to read and eat and yes, listen. Fortunately, there's no loss of material. Mostly, though, I've been on another Bettye Lavette bender since hearing her rendition of "Dirty Old Town" on the radio and discovering she had a book out, too
Read:  At the same time she released the new album, "Thankful N' Thoughtful," Lavette also published her memoir "A Woman Like Me" this year. Sassy, ribald and rollicking, it covers her 50+ years living big ups and downs of music.
Eat: Smoothies have been replaced by warm rice bowls. Mine usually involves kimchi and avocado, tofu or eggs. Here's an especially inspired Vegan Macro Meal by The Lunchbox Bunch that adds tempeh and mushrooms to the proceedings.
Listen: Who doesn't want to project as much cool and emotion in a songs as Bettye Lavette when they grow up? Her latest collection  is full of her reinterpretations of tunes by the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Neil Young. She takes the song to an entirely new depth,  dripping wisdom and soul. Phew. 

Read.East.Listen: Moving

I'm feeling extra grateful this Thanksgiving as we just moved into a new place! Woo-hoo! So I've been mostly about packing and unpacking boxes and figuring out where to put things rather than online, hence, the pause in posts. Nonetheless, some reading, eating and listening have transpired amid the boxes.
READ: I did manage to attend a lovely, awesome, inspiring, thought-provoking writer's workshop with writer/healer/wise woman Deena Metzger 10 days ago.  She read from her new and PEN-Oakland award winning book La Negra y Blanca. I picked up a copy and look forward to digging in once I settle down a bit.
EAT: Admittedly, many tacos have been consumed amid the upheaval. So much for cooking, ahem. In any case, I'm charged with bringing a dessert to Thanksgiving. Forecast is the Raw Pumpkin Pie from Cafe Gratitude. Yum.
LISTEN: I happened by a performance by Kim Taylor at The Living Room in New York a few years ago and was impressed and surprised in the best way. You know, how when you have no idea whose playing but you go out anyway and you hear exactly what you need to hear? I bought her "Greatest Story" on the spot and have been listening since.  She has a new effort "Love is a Dog" I bought via her recent Kickstarter campaign. The new CD is a great first listen if you're new to Taylor, or this video from one of her previous releases is a good intro, too.

Seal mind

 

"When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink. " — Louise Gluck, 'The Untrustworthy Speaker'

I haven't been sleeping well. We're looking at buying a place, I'm in the middle of a new project and the 'whee!' of starting something new, and the 'woo-hoo' of finishing something are distant shores. I've had a near constant feeling of being lost couple with a chattering monkey mind of worry...and I'm not sure where the shores are anymore.
So Sunday morning I got on K's boat. Unlike the rest life, I kind of prefer 'dull' sailing. Conditions were perfect for me: flat, chop-free and light wind. The bay was like a big bathtub (though not a warm one). We headed south where there weren't any boats and drifted a bit. Calm. Ahh. A certain point we came across several harbor seals in an easy repose. Heads up, looking south, spaced at a distance from one another, they sort of bobbed open-eyed in the water, as if meditating. It was a slightly surreal scene, at once magical and ordinary. They looked at us with only mild surprise and swam a little further away, unhurriedly, to resume their float. Ah-ha. A clue.

Read.Eat.Listen: Short forms

Read: I spent a few mostly unsuccessful years writing short stories before ceding my hand to essays and songs. Nonetheless, I remain a fan of the form. Alice Munro, Junot Diaz and the likes can still pull me into unwavering focus with their truth-filled fictions. This week I’ve been eating up Susan Minot’s Lust and Other Stories. She's more recent work but I missed this when it came out. Clear, immediate heart-breaking reads that are truly short and easy-to-fit lit for a busy schedule.

Eat: It's been the week of the almond thanks to making a batch of fresh almond milk.  Not many easier thing to make really. Soak raw almonds in water, drain, whir in a blender with 3 parts water to 1 part almonds, strain, voila.  Add agave, salt and vanilla to give it more shape. Yum.

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Listen: Aimee Mann, whose songs are sharp and telling stories of their own, has a new release 'Charmers'. We already knew Aimee was great and this collection is no exception. What else is there to say?

Caveat Lector Salon @ Little Bird 10/12 in SF

"Zebra Dream" by Mallory Morrison in Caveat Lector Vol 2. #22

 I recently—and very happily— started a new writing group, based on a form of writing practice I've been doing on-and-off for more than a decade. I held writing groups while I was in India last year, but for most of the past five years or so, the Internet has encroached on the area where my prose-y, essay-y, memoir-style writing life used to park. Yeah, I love that I can look up any fact, figure or map at any given moment — or intersection — on my iPhone, and I certainly appreciate using said device's Notes feature for lyric ideas...and well, it's really not the same.  I've been wired...but kind of parched. And I didn't realize how thirsty I was for that simple, lovely stream of hand, to pen, to ink, to paper that unlocks the unconscious in it's own unique way.
And oddly enough, or rather in that uncanny energy-attracts-energy way, voila, as soon as I started up again, writers are everywhere. I reconnected with some former writing group members at poet Karen Hildebrand's lovely Berkeley reading,  sat next to another poet in a Mission club, and will be playing songs at the salon of literary magazine Caveat Lector. If you're in San Francisco, I hope you'll join us at Little Bird Coffeehouse for literature and literate tunes.

Wednesday, Oct. 12 Little Bird Coffee House

Caveat Lectur Salon - 7pm

835 Geary Street
San Francisco California USA

Artist Interview: Beth Lisick @ Notes & Words

Writer Beth Lisick is just cool. I think the first time I saw her read was perhaps seven or more years ago at what might have been a Writers with Drinks event at the Make-Out Room. Beth epitomized the hippest of the San Francisco literati as she cast a knowing, hilariously self-effacing eye on life as a creative in the Mission District. She was clearly the real deal. Since then she's only built more cred: amidst much writing and publishing, she's toured Europe, played the Lilith Fair with her band The Beth Lisick Ordeal, wrote a nightlife column for SF Gate and continued to help lead the Porchlight Storytelling Series.
With two acclaimed memoirs to her name — the lauded Everybody into The Pool and Helping Me Help Myself—as well as a husband and child, Lisick remains one of the Bay Area's favorite voices. On April 1, Beth will read as a part of Notes & Words, a benefit concert and reading for Oakland's Children's Hospital and Research Center at the Fox Theatre. As she readied for the reading, Lisick answered some questions about the event and what keeps her creating.

Q What are you working on now? Helping Me Help Myself was a(nother) big success--is there a follow-up in the works?
BL: I am writing a novel, which is really challenging and so much fun. After two memoiry, nonfiction books in a row, I was not only slightly tired of myself, but tired of thinking about how to write about myself. It feels so liberating and exciting to write in the voice of another character. I think some memoir writers probably feel that freedom when they write about themselves, but I started to feel very constrained. Like I was constantly editing out some very real material because I wasn't comfortable sharing everything. Helping Me Help Myself was a constant struggle for me to express myself while still maintaining some privacy, so now I'm on to fiction for awhile. It's letting me explore a lot of things without having to take responsibility that these are the thoughts and opinions of Beth Lisick, the person. It's fun to be surprised what weird things pop out of my head.

Q San Francisco has vibrant creative community-how has or does your writing community influence your work?

BL: I would be nowhere without my creative friends. Those are the people who inspire me on a daily basis. I collaborate a lot, which opens me up to new creative possibilities, but I am always amazed by the creative process that happens in private. I'll go see someone's art opening or read their new book or see their new film, and I get so inspired by the work and energy they put into it. It makes me feel like my friends are magicians.

Q Who do you count as big inspiration/teachers or mentors? What have you been reading or listening to lately that blows you away?

BL: As evidenced by the last answer, my friends are my main inspiration! I love all my comrades from Sister Spit, the group of writers and performers that Michelle Tea puts together. I love Bucky Sinister's new book Still Standing about trying to stay sober when you come from the punk/art world. I share office space in Oakland with authors Mary Roach, Lisa Margonelli, Anita Amirrezvani, Novella Carpenter, and radio producer Roman Mars, who are constantly working on smart, interesting things. My comedy partner Tara Jepsen makes me laugh so hard. I co-produce the Porchlight Storytelling Series every month with Arline Klatte and I am so inspired by the storytellers and audiences who come to that show. My husband just made a record with a mind blowing band called Tune-Yards. I'm taking a solo performance class with Martha Rynberg, who is so intuitive and funny. Oakland filmmaker Frazer Bradshaw, painter William Swanson, the hilarious tweets of comedian Rob Baedeker. It goes on and on. There's just something about knowing someone, seeing them dropping their kids off at school, trying to keep their life together, and then they have this whole creative world inside them. It's fascinating.

Q: Do you stick to a writing schedule? Can you talk a bit about your process?

BL: Since having a kid, I'm strictly on banker's hours for writing. Not my natural rhythm, I don't think, but it makes me manage my time better. Something with a deadline usually wins out, but if I'm in the mood (and have the time) to just lose myself, I will pull out the novel. The process for that so far is just to write what's fun. I'm still figuring it out, so I will think of a scene and then try to write it without worrying about where it's going to go. I'm really keeping it loose.

Q What can audiences expect at Notes & Words?

BL: Obviously, the greatest night of our lives so far. I am super excited to be inside that gorgeous theater and hear Kelly and Michael, and listen to the bands. I'm still deciding what I'm going to do. I will probably read from the novel because it's always fun to read something new. And scary. I like to be a little bit scared.
Beth Lisick reads at Notes & Words, April 1, 2011, 8pm at The Fox Theater in Oakland, CA

Mysore: Jasmine Flowers

One of my favorite daily rituals is walking home from practice and picking up a string of fresh jasmine flowers. The garlands are seen everywhere: at temples, strung around rickshaw lights, doorways, in people's hair, and are commonly sold by men pushing or riding bicycles, baskets full of coiled flower. Along the streets and sidewalks, women spend hours affixing the small flowers to strings, cutting lengths according to rupee count. Mysore Mallige, the variety grown around and named for Mysore, is fragrant, beautiful and inspirational: It once inspired a best-selling poetry collection Mysooru Mallige by Kannada poet K. S. Narasimhaswamy.

Read.Eat.Listen: The Road

The road starts here. Every time I'm set to take off, I have to revisit past ground. In this case, a pre-tour-mini-tour of the central coast this past weekend, down Highway 1 to Monterey, through Big Sur, San Luis Obispo and back. It's like an un-offical touching base: both in playing songs (thank you, my band & Jose's Underground Lounge in Monterey for fun and SLO's Linnaea's for coffee house classicism) in the a variety of arrangements and getting back to bedrock, in this case the craggy California coast. In typical Highway 1 fashion, travel was slowed by a rock slide. should there be a road here?one wonders, sitting at the side of the road for an hour while a crew cleared a way the debris, grateful at the same time for the view, perilous thought it may be.
Read: Lonely Planet Road Trip California Highway 1
Eat: Duarte's is a classic road stop tavern on Highway 1 in Pescadero. Artichokes are growing along vast swaths of the highway near Pescadero, Santa Cruz and Monterey. Duarte's soup makes great road soup. Even NPR covered it! Duarte's Artichoke Soup Make it vegan, by sub veg broth and unsweetened rice milk for chicken broth & cream, olive oil for butter)
Listen: "Feeling of Falling" Bonnie Raitt (from Longing In Their Hearts - 1994)