22 December, 2017

QTN 2017 End of the Ear Retrospective

And now it’s winter… winter in America…

Long time no type a hello and howd'yadoon. Today the Winter Solstice and tomorrow, days begin to lengthen toward springy summeryness again. It’s been a tough zoom of a year for everyone I know in so many ways and a kind of a missing year for me as I have been less in my homebase of the northwest involved with my usual writing, performing and recording and way more involved in eldercare on a daily basis (as many others are as well). The day to day of finding the groove in caregiving is like the routine with full plates spinning on sticks that those guys used to do on Ed Sullivan. Clearly many of you won’t remember that but I betcha you know what I mean allasame…

The brianQTN.bandcamp.com page has many of my recordings available for streaming, download or to order CDs by mail and it is good for us both: I get to come sing to you wherever you are and you get to help me keep this road open and get fun music to lift your spirits whenever you need it most. The latest album, The Sound of Photosynthesis is in its second CD pressing and I’m still planning to press it into vinyl, perhaps in 2018. Been looking for an able hand to help retool my old website too. Any design folk interested?

This most propitious time of year is full of the sounds of a worldsphere mechanism resetting itself amidst onslaught, detritus and chaos. Even though it seems like sometimes a darkopolypse comes, it’s so important to remember there is still a heart beating underneath it all and stronger than ever, getting clearer each breath and day, an autonomic holding space even as it often appears to be exactly the opposite. There is an opportunity for a re-visioning here alongside the hairpin turns and chaos triage and an open elastic way of seeing as well. A practice of some kind to ground it all is essential through it. 

If I didn’t play guitar, there is no way of knowing where I’d be today. It is the way I process my day to day. Moving fingers on wound wires and wood feels mighty good. If I didn’t breathe and stretch and listen to the onlyeveryany, I’m sure everything would make way less sense than it appears to now. Perhaps it is a time of looking at old patterns and transforming them, pulling old belief system tapes and updating them on a regular basis loaded kinda process to recreate and image something untried and new, to snap out of habit and evolve into a different grace.

It was pointed out to me that this December 31 will be the only day when every adult was born in the 20th century and every child was born in the 21st. The turn of the year is a good time to check in with those we call family, by blood or by choice. As many folks drop off the sphere each year, older generations vanish and youngers too.  It’s always a good idea to tell someone you’re thinking of them. 

I can’t imagine where I would be without all your ears, support, letters, affirmation, ideas and feedback and I’m glad I don’t need to imagine it. Somehow I have been doing this musiclife for a very long time and it is a strange sustenance. A fine community too of creatives who revision each day and bring new thought and clarity into being through hand and heart made art, silliness, music, dance and bright beingness.

May your New Ear hear thrilling music unanticipated and incredible. May your close ones enjoy health, wherewithal and as many graces as an opening heart can hold. To my fellow Northwet pluviophiles, I hope to be back there soon to drink the winter skies and sea.

Yogi Berra once said “ You can observe a whole lot just by watching!” and that, my friends, is more than enough for me…

You corn forest pundit,
bq