October Events + Reflections
Back on Instagram; Improv Classes; Riff on Health vs Healing
Another month gone! Another summer — lived!
It’s fall: I took my first cold plunge of the season this weekend, in a very special waterfall in Rumney NH. Solar eclipse tomorrow. It’s a great time to consider where we find balance: balance between our selves and our relationships, between giving and receiving, I and you, effort and effortlessness. My contemplation for the next 24 hours: What must I focus on, in order to mend any chronic imbalances in my life?
New moons are great times to refocus and shift into an intentional, masculine directed presence — solar eclipses are like super-powered new moons. As it’s a south node eclipse, there may be themes of endings, karmic closings, and letting go. Here is a potent paradox: how can I harmoniously host directed intention whilst embedded within the riddles and dark waters of the deep unconscious?
October Events! longer descriptions at bottom
Exploring Improvisation — first Tuesday, 2nd Wednesday
Tuesday October 1st 6:45-9:15PM — Click here to Sign Up!
Wednesday October 9th @ 6:30-9:15PM :: Click here to Sign Up!
Musical Improv Comedy: workshop and performance w/The Understudies
Happier Valley Comedy Theatre Hadley, MA Saturday October 5th // 1pm & 7pm
Music Meditation Service at Temple Shir Tikvah — Saturday October 12th Evening
Solo piano + a chamber music with cellist Sandi-Jo Malmon.
From last month:
September was great. At home, I’ve been working on music videos for Personal Planets’ EP; revisiting some old songs. Been tracking Orbiter’s album. Writing some spacious piano music. And welcoming new housemates in! My house is turning into a 6-member community house — called Spirit House!
Out in the world, Songbuilder Soiree was incredible and I loved performing at the Hive! A last-minute addition to their Equinox celebration, Personal Planets had (our? my?) first show! Thanks again to Vanessa Hale for joining me (unrehearsed!) for the entirety of the set. My dear friend Josh, founder of the Hive, joined for a tune too. Treasure! A couple more clips over on my instagram.
Soiree is feeling more like a community happening, welcoming in fresh and familiar faces, hosting an overlapping of many circles: folks from songful Shabbat gatherings, my improv classes, Milly’s circle singing community, contact improv and more. Here’s to more collaborative creativity! More flowering relationships and community connections. People loved the outdoors. I did too.
Interlude: A short riff on Music, Health and Healing.
This topic got me 1,400 words into a long essay disambiguating health and healing — and then integrating it into an understanding of what music offers to these twin processes. Hope to finish it and post here in the coming weeks. Enjoy the Tl;dr :
Being born into an unhealthy culture means we personally require healing.
Striving to be “healthy” may seem good, but ultimately you can’t effort yourself into a new level of health. Only going through healing crises creates higher levels of vitality and authenticity — without continual effort. Allowing yourself to be taken by the pain, to lose your ego to the darkness, will — as in the myth of Persephone — initiate you into your sovereignty and power. Healing crises happen when our stories no longer work. A telltale sign is that our efforting works less and less.
Healing happens at all scales of self. The call to wholeness is profound, delicate, and interwoven with the mystery of life. In community, when we mask the authentic state of our health, we denigrate the collective potential for sacred to visit: the crack is how the light gets in. To unmask with trusted others initiates healing within you without you “doing” anything. Realness is required for authentic communities of resonance.
While therapeutic groups (12 step, etc) have provided much healing to others, being in conscious community — integrated with the rest of life — is the signature of a health: healthy culture and healed self. Yes, this does mean that I can only be as healed as my community is. Yes, my health is not separate from my relationships — to humans and non-humans alike. As Charles Eisenstein says: enlightenment is a group activity, and sanity is simply the capacity to be in reality. My work is to bring sanity to music.
Music is a birthright. Just like positive relationships, fermented foods, it’s an intrinsic element of human culture, and therefore wellness. Musical engagement is both a signature of health AND a portal to healing — within properly held containers. Full-spectrum engagement in relationship is also a sign of health. As we evolve, and are invited by source to step into more spaces of realness, music can serve an opening to healing and to integrating our “healing parts” with other parts of self. Hosting spaces of healing alongside others is a profound prayer: to our future selves and what the world may become (and what it may already be). There is a lot more here. End rant.
I often joke that I’m an “unlicensed music therapist.” Authentic and empowered music making elicits healing, integration, and emotional processing. To be in alignment with our desires and enthusiasm for music requires us to allow the healing process to manifest. Creativity emanates from Stillness. So does healing. When our attention resonates with what is, the field of potential comes closer to us than any other time.
I’m continuing to integrate my (inner) personal explorations and healing work with my professional (outer) life. I’d love to support work with you on your musical practice to find a new level of vitality, self-expression. In addition to group classes, lessons/musical mentorship, and recording — I’m offering mirosessions ($10 for 20 mintes via zoom), body work, and astrology reading, on sliding scale. Email me to set up a consultation. I’m now offering discounts for referrals too!
Upcoming Events:
Exploring improvisation is back! Two wonderful sessions last month.
Medford Hillside, 20 Harris Road Medford
Tuesday October 1st 6:45-9:15PM — Click here to Sign Up!
Wednesday October 9th @ 6:30-9:15PM :: Click here to Sign Up!
$80 || sliding scale $20-60 || no one turned away for lack of funds
Marketing continues to be a challenge for this offering, but we had two great sessions last month! Some folks think it’s just for seasoned musicians, or people deeply oriented to music as their life path. As a facilitator, my role is to live into the paradigm that improvisation the easiest path into musical expression. While it can be great to learn songs and sing — singing circles with Milly and Jordan are great examples of that — there’s the need to sing in tune, to learn some form in order to get into the music.
The key to EI is that within you lives the source of your authentic music. Our unique voices in music resonate with our Soul. Experienced musicians soulfully express no matter the musical form. Rather than mastering forms, we play with form to unlock the doorway to source. In this welcoming space, we allow the fumbling, diversity in aptitude, and gently host our fullest musical expression.
Musical Improv Comedy: workshop and performance w/The Understudies
Happier Valley Comedy Theatre Hadley, MA Saturday October 5th // 1pm & 7pm
I love Happier Valley! It’s a little oasis of warmth & community improv theatre. I’ll be back again, leading an improv comedy workshop on Big Characters, from 1-4pm. Nearly sold out. Then, I’ll be Music Directing a 75 minute musical with some wonderful improvisers — some former IB folks and comedy veterans. I will laugh a lot, that’s for sure.
Tickets here: $15. 7pm show! I have one comp to offer.
Music Meditation Service at Temple Shir Tikvah — October 12th Evening
Solo piano & duet with Sandi-Jo Malmon.
During the waning hours of Yom Kippur, there’s a 45 minute music and meditation service at Shir Tikvah. It’s a very sacred time. I was very fortunate to connect with Beth and her partner, Sandi-Jo, during my years at Shir Tikvah growing up. Beth was an incredible mentor to me, tutoring my for my Bar Mitzvah and then I sang for years with the choir. Thrilled to be playing once again with my friend Sandi-Jo at the High Holidays. She’s a wonderful cellist who’s done it all (I think she played on a Boys II Men album one time?). I’ll do a piano improvisation as well. It’s a gift to share music with such an attuned and reverent audience.
Spirit House Warming party — weekend of Oct 25th — email for an invite! There will be some music and potentially performances. It’s going to be wonderful. We’ve got a limited space, but if you read this far and didn’t receive an invite feel free to reach out!
Save the Dates:
Saturday Nov 10th Songbuilder Soiree @ the Lilypad. 6:30-9:30pm! $18 presale, $25 at door Ticketing info coming soon. May have a special post here… TBD!
Friday Nov 15th — tentative date of concert with Arthur Goodridge, Michael McLaughlin, John McDonald — details TBD soon!
Lots of great developments!