OK!
Business First, A thru D:
A.
SALE ENDS TODAY! Last official day of 25% off Cybersale! Use
code "THANKS"
B.
ATLANTA = Harp
Workshop THIS SUNDAY! Tell your friends in Atlanta
(and yes, people who play other instruments besides harp can come
even if it doesn't look like they can - just email
me if
you want to do that)
C.
BLUES! My FIRST
TIME EVER (Almost) All Blues show at The Center for Arts
in Natick - Sat.
Jan. 7th! (Their listing doesn't SAY it's (almost) all
Blues, because I didn't send them that all-important info
yet
- I'm telling you first!!)
D.
NEW YEAR'S EVE = First
Night Worcester (buttons go on sale tomorrow!)
And my Pre-Spring
Tour starts sooooo soon! The tourdates
are here in various states
of informativeness.
And
here's what's on my mind:
 I'm
doing an experiment this week. Instead of 'writing a newsletter'
- I'm just writing, like I would to my aunt (who's one of my best
friends).
So, no
editing, here goes and if it's stilted at first,
that's OK. I want to get better at just writing to you and I have
to start somewhere...
So
now that my October/November touring is over, I have just a little
breathing space before I start my Jan-March show. I've been wanting
to start two projects for the longest time, and it's interesting
to watch myself struggle with them.
One
is my "Blues by the Dozen" project, which is
a series of Blues tunes for electric harp that will give me a
chance to pass on what I've learned to other harpists - but also
focuses my own brain on playing Blues in a bunch of different
keys. I don't have a picture of it, so here's a picture of us
playing "Purple Haze" at my 11-11-11 Birthday Extravaganza
concert.
(See at right: me on e-harp, Jonathan Wyner on Tuba, Ben Wyner
on e-guitar, Katya Herman & Veronica Kent on e-harps, Catharine
David on tambourine - thanks to Mark S. Hoffman for the photos!)
So,
about the Blues ... 'til
now, I've focused on only two keys: F and Bb, and because of the
way
the instrument is built, working out Blues in different keys
is kind of a mathmatical problem. So that's fun. But, as
usual, it's like pulling teeth to get a project out of my own studio
and start sharing it. Which reminds me that I should blog
about that, and how I got so resistant (memories of musicians
looking at my music scores and saying, "But that's a mistake.
If that's how you wanted it played why did you
write it like that?" Makes my stomach churn
just to remember that. OK, so maybe that's why I haven't blogged
about it).
And
it's funny I just said it's like "pulling teeth" because
I actually just had a wisdom tooth pulled recently and
it was ... ha, well, maybe this is a good analogy ... it
was agonizing to get myself to actually deal with it, but
amazingly fun to actually do it. I credit the
oral surgeon for the fun part. He not only offered me nitrous oxide
(and yes, I did laugh -- and true to my genetics, didn't
just laugh but snorted), and then afterwards his assistant sent
me home with written directions and quart of ice cream and
I spent the afternoon watching old movies, which is how I decided
my student, Katya Herman looks like Grace Kelly [sorry, no time
to create a photo tutorial about it here, but you can see her above,
leaning back in the photo - the resemblance isn't as striking in
that photo - it might be the accent, too - not sure. And no, this
observation was in no way affected by the nitrous oxide which was
- according to the dental assistant - completely neutralized by
ice cream. Or ... I THINK that's what she said.]
 OK,
so where was I? Oh, right, the other project I'm committed
to is "Re-DHC" which is a year-long project of
weekly releases of projects, recordings, drawings and stories
that I've already created and are just sitting on my shelves (and
yes, I do have actual shelves - I am speaking literally - see photo
below) And again, wow, it is so hard for me to
get over the hump of revealing all this
'imperfect' often 'unfinished' work.
So
it was great to get a comment about how meaningful it is for other
artists to see 'behind the curtain,' when I wrote my
preliminary blog about the first "Re-DHC" video I plan to put up (hopefully
today ... or tomorrow) (riiiight ....) (no, really, I'm DOING it)
(unh-huunh??) (OK, just watch the blog).
 But
... sometimes things just happen and make their own
timeline. And
... hmmm... how can I explain this kind of whirlwind of things
that happened in the last two weeks? OK ... on 11/11/11 I had
my birthday concert (see photos above right) and asked
filmmaker Ian Brownell to videotape it. When Ian brought
by the edit, we got to talking about projects, like artists do.
So
next thing -- and I can't really remember the chronology
here, but somehow all these things happened in quick succession: producer
Clint Conley from Chronicle in Boston emailed and asked
if this was a good time to come do a story about the "Burnt
Food Museum," Pee Wee Herman posted about
the BFM on his Facebook site resulting in thousands of
hits on the site and our first
sales of BFM gift items through our Cafe Press store (FINALLY,
after 2 years ... though, I gotta admit, it's pretty hard to find our
BFM
Cafe Press store).
Normally
the Museum lives crowded like culinary refugees onto
three long kitchen shelves, but
since Chronicle was coming
to shoot it, we set it up like a real museum ... or sort
of. And since it was already up, Ian and director Brian
Agosto came over last night and we did our own shoot ("A
Tour thru the Burnt Food Museum" - see a photo of them somewhere
on this page, seriously considering the best way to shoot "Green
Beans Black").
BUT
HERE'S MY FAVORITE PART ...
Oh
wait ... first... I forgot to say that on Thanksgiving,
I walked into the bathroom
after dinner and cut my hair. So no more braids. WHICH MEANS ...
that suddenly I can be all kinds of people, just by putting
on a hat or a wig, or glasses - or whatever. So suddenly,
being me means getting to be a lot of people, which is really,
really, fun!
SO
HERE'S MY FAVORITE PART ...
Last
night, with Ian, Brian and Katya's help, for the first time we taped
interviews with many of the people associated
with the Burnt Food Museum, not just the curator, but
the janitor, the Gift Shop Manager Wendy, and Janitor Louise --
who, by the way, is also a contributor to the museum (see
photos of those three at right). Also the detective who investigated
a sad disappearance of nearly a whole exhibit, an art critic ...
and maybe someone else I don't remember
just now.
So
that's some of what's on MY mind. What's
on yours?
See
you next week! 
p.s.
Just now correcting the spelling above, I remembered learning
to write words. I was sitting on the livingroom floor in a very
tiny apartment, with the exquisite whiteness of tiny pieces
of paper. I'd just learned to make letters, just written my
NAME and I
said to my mother, "So, you just put a bunch of letters together
and that makes WORDS??" And she said, "Yes!!"
So
I put a whole bunch of letters together, and held it up and
said, "So what word is this?"
and she said, "That's not a word."
That
was my first experience in grammatical betrayal ...or maybe
you know the right word for it.
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