A Legacy In Motion

Okay, I haven't posted that much recently, and that is for two reasons.

One is the everyday life of an artist is a series of failures and false starts and not anything that you really might want to share with the public.

The other is something that I was reminded of when I attended the most recent production of “Into the Woods” by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival just last week, an absolutely gorgeous production of this Stephen Sondheim musical that has two of the most beautiful songs in the world - “You Are Not Alone” and “Children Will Listen”.

And what I was reminded of is how we don't know where we are, we don't know who we are.

We think we know where we are and who we are. We're walking through these days. We're doing all these rituals with people. We think we have our bearings, but we're not even really close to knowing what is truly happening.

And once in a while, a piece of art comes along, maybe a poem, maybe some music, maybe a painting, and suddenly we understand a whole world of things that we didn't understand before.

We are given something by that art.

We are transported to the place where we really need to be, and that is what I am about creating.

So that means that just making content for the sake of making content isn't that useful to me.

And I'm taking nothing away from all of the wonderful content creators who are explaining how to do many different things or elucidating and understanding about philosophy or music composition or painting or politics. All of that has its place! =

For me, though, I will probably be posting maybe once a week, maybe more frequently, maybe less frequently. The project of “am I going to be noticed on YouTube” is on the side.

Now, the project that I have is working on my communication, working on my projects, and letting those who are interested in what I'm doing know as often as I can what I'm up to.

So I have four things that I'd like to talk about.

One is a new way of capturing what I'm offering to this community and to the world: Cellist In The Park: A Legacy In Motion.

I like this because I have to admit that it is legacy that I am working on now.

For so many years, I just did the next thing, and I think maybe somewhere in the back of my imagination, I realized I was building something, but there have been so many trap doors and windows and entrances and exits that I really didn't have any idea What I was building.

But now it is clear that I am about this work of legacy, making something whole out of everything that I have brought already that's easy for people to see and feel and take into themselves for their journey in order to be transported to where they need to go.

So that is something that I'm going to be incorporating more and more, especially over the next month or so, as I prepare for what will be another benefit concert on the 14th of September at Irvine Roberts winery. We'll be hearing more about that as it develops.

The second thing that I wanted to talk about is my friend Kathleen Strahm, who has been a music maker with me for the last few years. She was young, maybe 38 she might have just turned 39 I'm not sure. We shared a birthday. She was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, and she just passed this last week, and it is a great loss to the whole world.

She was magnificent. She, I would say, fully owned herself. She was really someone who, I think taught me something very key about being a human.

We used to play duets together in the park. She was the first musician that I asked to play in the park, in the space where I play as part of the project that I was creating beautiful music in the park. She was on her way to South Korea to study in the summer of 2024. She'd play played in the season of 2023 and then in 2024, she noticed these symptoms, which snowballed, and she did everything she possibly could.

She had great faith, she had great courage, she had incredible zest for life.

I communicated with her as much as I could. I have a little Episcopalian prayer book, and I'm not in the habit of praying, but I found little prayers in that book to send to her. I wanted her to make it, and I'm so sorry she's not with us. I'm working on a video of some of the moments of music making and an interview that we did with her as part of the movie I was working on during that time period. So I just want to remember and honor Kathleen. She was spectacular.

I want to talk a minute about composing as an anchor for myself, because composing is like life blood to me,

I've gotten up early at four in the morning so that I could compose. Sometimes I compose in the afternoon. Sometimes it's in the evening. I have to keep the flow going. There are more than one beautiful projects that I'm working on right now. So I'm getting close to completion, and I look forward to when this season opens up to the time when I'm not performing so much, and I can work on the composing more. I really like that time, although I have been enjoying this performing season, so much, so many beautiful things have been going on.

And that brings me to the last thing that I wanted to talk about, which is that I'm writing a series of episodes which will be filmed with actors. I don't know how long these episodes will be. I'm going to be telling a fictional story about a cellist in a park and his interactions with people in the real world and people in the invisible world.

So I'm incorporating a daily habit of writing with that. Just starting to get each part of this story mapped out. I think it could continue for many episodes, but the main thing is to launch it, to get it off the ground to begin, and I have a really good coach and mentor for this who has experience with writing and acting and directing.

That is a matter of great inspiration to me at the moment, because it will help me to share in the most enjoyable way, the thinking and lessons and experience I've had along the way of my path, as I continue with My “legacy in motion,” in “this moment of creation”.

Now I've got more than one tagline, and you know, if you have more than one tagline, you're on a roll!

So I wish all of you a very good day. I don't know when I'll be back. Thank you for watching and listening. Please feel free to comment. Give it a like. As I said, my project of becoming a huge success on YouTube is on the sideline at the moment, but I still want to be present for everyone who is interested in my work.