Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Stripe and Floral mix anyone?


When we pulled down the ceiling tiles and stripped away the barn board, we found the most lovely, ahem, wallpaper from the previous and original owners. Apparently, in the early 1970's, metallic gold and brown stripes went with large green and gold flowers in a psychedelic, hip and groovy way. We also discovered evidence on the concrete floor that there had once been a wet bar in my disco dream office. Right on!

I turned a whiter shade of pale as the guys kept killing huge,disgusting millipedes as they got closer down to bare concrete. So in keeping with the theme here, I give you a great keyboard song from this era. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was released in 1967 by the British band Procol Harum. The organist is Matthew Fisher, who won the co-composer rights to this song because it was unanimously ruled the keyboard was an integral part of the piece. In tribute to the wet bar and haze of my retro, trippy space, I chose a mind blowing blast from the past. Peace, man, make love not war.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Onward and Upward


The studio is getting a facelift! I have been teaching almost 20 years in a space we carved out of our basement. Here is the before picture. I was very tired of the black barn board, it was almost always chilly, and the lighting was bad.

This picture is taken at the frame of the french doors, and the black chair is near a desk that will not be returning. Along that wall instead will be a Baldwin studio upright. The desk had become merely a catch all for paperclips and piles of music.

So, with the help of a dear friend, my hubby and he are ripping this area apart and updating it with all the "modern" conveniences. Stay tuned for pictures of the adventure!

Friday, August 6, 2010

Time Away


The beauty of a flowering plant is in its full-blown energy devoted to blooming. Sometimes I know I feel the effort it is making to shine. Other times, it seems effortless; it is what it must do, it will do, what it was born to do.
Today I am one step closer to what I will do next Tuesday, to give up a holy chalice that bore two, to move forward into the mystery, it has been both an effort and effortless to decide. Although I was presented with three options, I have tried two of them before and they were not really acceptable.
I may continue to be out of the blogging loop momentarily, but I really want to come back stronger. Peace, be well, and be good to each other.

Who's been to Visit?