Alaska, my muse

Just outside Thane, about a mile from downtown Juneau. That's downtown Douglas on Douglas Island. 

I know that I haven’t updated this blog in a while, but that’s not because I have grown bored with it. It’s not because I stopped being creative. In fact, quite the opposite. If you are a naturally creative person, as I am, you cannot live in Juneau and NOT create. It’s like breathing. It just happens. You don’t have to try.

I haven’t updated because my creativity has kept me to busy to do so.

I’ve always been a writer (poetry, short stories, failed attempts at novels/screenplays) but music is my first love. My dad is and was a professional musician so, naturally that was my bent too. I played in bands all through high school and throughout my twenties. I recorded half a dozen albums, went on half a dozen west coast tours and, never had much success, and only sporadic bouts of fun.  Making music, in a band, is, difficult. Egos, long road trips, very little financial payoff: All of these factors contribute to a difficult life style.

And, I have had many friendships end or become permanently strained as a result of being in bands. So, in 2010, about a month before my wedding, I quit my last band, and swore off music. I even wrote a poem about it:

Flailing Empty Capillaries

You were there from birth,

passed down from father to son,

waltzing through my veins, My muse.

We embraced, in perfect pitch,

a song, and then I found

another

and I left you.

Still I see you

tattooed on my wrists. Thick

black lines, a G

and an F. Permanent,

my former muse, over my veins,

under my skin,

a perpetual reminder.

I stare at you, remembering.

Still wanting

to create with you. After all,

you are still in my blood,

but you’re left my heart.

Empty capillaries flail

like strings waiting to be plucked,

longing to be played once again,

but I’ve forgotten the tune.

The irony of that poem is that one my “Permanent markings,” the G (a reference to the G or Bass clef) has since been covered by a feather quill and ink, which I had published shortly after I published my first book. Yet, tattoos never go totally away. If I look closely, I can see it through the ink blot. It reminds me of my roots. It reminds of, perhaps, my first love.

But, I made this trek to Alaska, selling all of my musical equipment, with the exception of my Blues Harmonicas. I haven’t played a guitar for at least a year. I sing, I sing a lot (in the shower, at home, at the karaoke bar), but, really, the creative side of me musically was dormant, perhaps in danger of dying.

Enter: Alaska. My muse, all of my muses—writing, drawing, musically—has/have been reawakened. It’s glorious! I a no longer tormented by unwritten ideas, I am no longer bothered by the expression trying to get out and be expressed. So, I embarked on something I have never done before: Solo music.

Under the name The Proper English, I have composed two songs completely using my IPhone. One is a middle eastern inspired, dance/trance piece called “Pipa Longstocking” (the Pipa being a Chinese instrument, which makes up the lead instrument in the tune). The second is a spoken word piece called “Open Air West Side Market on the First Day off Spring.”  Set to, what I like to call, Youth Group altar call music. The poem, first published in an anthology poetry collection about Portland, Oregon ironically enough, is a tribute/mockery of my home town.

I don’t know if they’re any good, these songs. I have never ventured being a solo artist before. I have never created music without a band to hide behind. Even my first band, Five Minutes Cooler, where I was lead vocalist and wrote most of the songs, I still had two or three bandmates (the band fluctuated from a trio to a quartet throughout its four-year career) to hide behind.

But, something about Alaska, coupled with approaching middle age and with it supreme confidence, gave me the strength to write these songs and share them with the public. I hope there’s more. One thing I know for sure, though: Living in Alaska has revived my muse. In every form that she takes.