In a new mode of creative working – musicking and moving –  in one practice, one space. Here are tools of the trade – some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue. An old friend: a dance floor, a new hybrid guitar, various amps I’m borrowing/testing out, a loop pedal to create/practice by, the microphone, and in the blue bag, but a excerpt of the vast vault of writing/songs – in the form of notebooks and voice memo recorders. I’m going through journal/journey from the past five years – or more.

I’m at New City Galerie on Church Street in downtown Burlington wrapping up a solitary January residency. It’s heaven. Two art gallery rooms to move and music in, poised lightly above Church Street on these wintry days and evenings when the whole town feels like it’s resting, humming. The gallery itself is humming with a beautiful exhibit of photos  – “Eyes/Vermont” – only there for another few days. My eyes and ears pore over it as I embark on my own work. It is a wonderful way to take in art; the creative mind and body is a most absorptive gallery-goer. Why don’t we make galleries and museums into spaces to both make  – and take in –  art?

As with all work spaces, I fall in love –  enjoying the light and dark moods of the space, the wooden floors and walls and the large windows that frame their own living art –  roofs, trees, birds, sky, and the illuminated clock of City Hall. Wish I could be there forever – making dances, looping guitar riffs, ruminating on Joseph Pensak‘s beautiful piano and amps, singing, and gazing out at sparkling city scenes. But content just to have contributed a bit of my own hum.