week 7: re-organization

A day late with this. I decided to take yesterday off as both E & J were home. Read. Spent most of the day in my pjs. Then went to my Modern Dance Technique class which revved me up for the rest of this week. J is off school all week so I think my goals—which are totally unformed in my head at the moment—will reflect that.
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weeks 5 & 6: colony, colony, colony

Last week was gloriously full. I got a lot of work done, but also had a lot of fun. susurrations sat for a few days, the Regina 60×60 event was fun and I met some great people, and the MidWinter SWG Salon was a great success and created more fans of Klingon Opera. Spent a lot of time with the fabulous Tracy Hamon. I didn’t get enough sleep, but I’m catching up.

It feels like things are flowing as they should at the moment and opportunities for collaborations and projects are coming up. These goal-setting posts are helping me to keep focussed on my work and what is important at the moment as opposed to becoming overwhelmed by what is in my calendar.
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week 4: just before a segue

I’m almost at a segue with my goals this week. It’s partially because I’ve managed to complete all four goals I started out with and part of me is thinking “now what?” Today I’m going to try to come up with some new goals and still keep the reasonable aspects of them.

Last week was very successful in terms of my one goal: to do a rough edit of susurrations. I completed that with ease and did some audio editing and mixing with Gilles at Froghappy Studios. I’ve gone beyond that and have done more video editing and the titles. Gilles and I are meeting again tomorrow to do what will hopefully be a final audio mix for the piece.

So though it was useful for me to only have one goal last week I surpassed it, which feels good but makes me think I could have added another goal. I’m not convinced that is a reasonable way to think about it but there it is.
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Regina 60×60 concert – Jan 29, 2009

60x60 Regina

60x60 Regina

Thursday, January 29, 2009
8pm
the 60×60 project—Canadian Concert mix—is being presented at Bushwakker’s Brew Pub (2206 Dewdney Avenue) in Regina.
My piece interchange is part of the mix

To make the prairie performance of the mix a bit different from the other performances, the pieces will be diffused throughout the space.
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habits & goals

Over the holidays I read Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. It’s a book geared towards creative individuals that encourages them to look at their work habits closely in order to create ones that serve the work they want to do. The last five years have been a whirlwind for me, and since recovering from such a long illness and being (happily) thrown into a new cyclone of work last fall, I’ve found that I had lost a lot of the creative habits I had in place before we moved to Japan in 2003.

So it’s time to create some new ones. For the New Year I’ve made a morning routine that I think may serve my work well, and plan to blog in here weekly about my projects and goals. This blog became a promotional tool last year, which I am enjoying, but I also feel it’s not really fulfilling my vision of what I’d like the blog to be, which is a document of not only the work I do, but some of the processes I go through to do the work I do.

As a template for these weekly goal-setting blogs, I’m using my own version of Carol Lloyd’s “partnering worksheet” from her wonderful book Creating A Life Worth Living, which, if you don’t feel quite ready to deal with what Tharp asks of you, has a slightly less steep learning curve on how to set up a life where creative work is of prime importance. I have used this partnering worksheet on my own and with others in the past, but for whatever reason, feel that it’s time to go public with this sort of work.

What I want out of this is a public statement of “this is what I’m working on and here’s how I’m planning on going about it”, which I hope will create a sense of realism about my goals because I am very good at setting unreasonable ones. It will also make my process public, which shifts me from doing my work in a vacuum, to me doing my work in a public forum, no matter how many hours I spend alone in my studio.

So here we go….
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Tonight it’s Poetry – Issue #23

I’m the featured reader at the first Tonight it’s Poetry of 2009.

Sunday, January 4, 2009
8:00pm – 10:45pm
Flint
259 Second Avenue South
Saskatoon, SK

emerging readers are:

Cy Gerard
Gabriel Mansuy
Tara Stadnyk
and Lisa Johnson

and will feature local multidisciplinary artist/poet Lia Pas.

I’ll be reading from my 3 books, Husk, what is this place we have come to, and vicissitudes, singing a bit, and sharing parts of my film-in-progress, “susurrations”.

The facebook event can be found here.

about the mouth – concert – Dec 15, 2008

about the mouth is a cabaret-style concert of new and improvised vocal works. Lia Pas and Helen Pridmore, singers trained in extended vocal techniques, will perform an hour-long concert of compositions written by Lia Pas and John Cage, improv-based scores by Helen Pridmore and Lia Pas, and a bit of Klingon Opera thrown in for good measure.

Please join us at Lydia’s Loft for this exciting evening of drinks and exploration.

Monday, December 15, 2008
7pm
Lydia’s Loft – Saskatoon
admission by donation
cash bar

more info below the cut…. Continue reading