by eyes cast down | Oct 31, 2012 | Adventures in Living
It was time for another long weekend in the woods, so in mid-October we returned to the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, IN, which we had gratefully discovered six months ago. Autumn is my favorite season, so this was the perfect time to be...
by eyes cast down | Oct 5, 2012 | The Creative Life, Working That Studio
After a five-month break, during which I played only one live event (a laptop-driven atmosphere for an art show opening in mid-May), I emerged from The Keep in September for a workshop and my highest-profile concert so far. Having determined to begin exploring a more...
by eyes cast down | Oct 2, 2012 | Working That Studio
It’s wonderful how circumstances can push one forward. Venturing out to play live this year has been a major growing process, as one learns quickly (and sharply) what works and what doesn’t. For this fledgling, circumstance dictated a significant setup change, which...
by eyes cast down | Sep 21, 2012 | The Creative Life
In Between the Lines, Book Two: Perspectives on Writing Inspired Music by Robert Bruce, self-published summer 2012 Listening to any one minute of Robert Bruce’s music makes clear his total commitment to the creative act as a spiritual quest for beauty, joy, and...
by eyes cast down | Jul 6, 2012 | The Creative Life
Canadian composer (and long-time friend o’ mine) Robert Bruce has just published the second of three books in his series In Between the Lines. I think Perspectives on Writing Inspired Music is so important that it should be absolutely required reading for all...
by eyes cast down | May 15, 2012 | The Creative Life
This is probably a total Exercise in Self-Indulgence, but anyway… JKN thought it was a good idea, so who am I to argue? Maybe he’s just trying to get me razzed or something… but it will be cool to see what others have to report on this subject, if...
by eyes cast down | May 1, 2012 | Adventures in Living
By mid-April my wife and I were ready for a break. In the first week, I had played two live shows, on the 1st and 7th. If that wasn’t hectic enough, that same week we bade farewell to one of our two 16-year-old cats. Sandor had gone blind six weeks earlier, and...
by eyes cast down | Apr 29, 2012 | The Creative Life, Working That Studio
To get this month started on a hectic note (or cluster thereof), I played two live shows, bookending the week. They were: Sunday, April 1 at one of the empty storefronts in downtown Chicago which have been converted into temporary visual arts studios; and Saturday,...
by eyes cast down | Feb 15, 2012 | The Creative Life, Working That Studio
As I wrote in my blog entry American Dreaming, 2011 was in some ways a lost year for me, due to circumstances around my immigration to the USA, which stranded me in Toronto and separated me from my wife for nine months. In musical terms, I made the best of it by...
by eyes cast down | Feb 14, 2012 | The Creative Life, Working That Studio
There are many possible situations for playing ambient-atmospheric music live, so I thought it might be of interest to describe a different one now and then. This time, it was background music for a small art show. The venue was Healing Foundations, a Chicago...