My Blog
Seattle area jazz fans, rev up your engines! We’ve got a big weekend coming up with two GREAT events that are sure to delight and satisfy! Read on. The North Bend Jazz Walk takes place on Saturday, September 8, 2012. Beautiful downtown North Bend is all about jazz this Saturday night. One cover gets you into six venues and the performance line-up is very tasty indeed. Featured acts include: Bernie Jacobs with the Danny Kolke Trio The Kelly Eisenhour Quartet with Alexey Nikolev Chris…
Today I’m writing about other people and how they impact our creative lives. Of course, “other people” is a broad swatch. It can include friends, fans, people who buy our products/services, family, “the competition,” mentors, audience members and possibly, the crazy next-door neighbor. Unless you’re living and creating in some isolated spot far up in the Himalayas, other people are going to eventually wander into your creative landscape in one way or another. So how do they affect what you do? Do they inspire…
An Open Letter to LGBT Youth, My name is Katy. I live in Seattle. I am a writer, a jazz singer and the proud mother of a wonderful gay teenage son. You don’t know me. We’ve never met. But I am writing today to deliver this message: YOU MATTER You matter a lot. You are important. You are perfect just the way you are. You have a right to live with pride and dignity. You deserve your spot on this planet. By virtue of…
For a little over a year now, I’ve been writing a series on this blog called “Our Creative Lives,” which is an examination of the creative experience and a tender look at some of the things that we encounter along the path of our creative pursuits, both in our own psyches and also in the outside world. The response has been extremely positive and I think it's high time to open up the conversation to include other voices. As such, I am super excited to…
RIFF ON A PERFECT WORLD In a perfect world….. The days would begin and end with a chant, a wink and a smile that stretches across miles, winding in and around the Milky Way and back again. There would be outbursts of spontaneous salsa dancing in grocery stores and it would be the norm. Chocolate would be the new broccoli. My living room would have cobalt blue walls, a baby grand piano and a vase of stargazer lilies. In a perfect world…. Live…
It’s actually the “Caribbean Seasoned Roast Beef Torta Sandwich"– a monster of a feed with a whopping 10 ounces of beef on a ginormous bun, topped with a garden of cilantro and enough jalapeño peppers to kick you from here to Texas and back. It’s the ultimate gastronomic bliss-out for meat eaters. And oh yeah, I’m a vegetarian of over 20 years now. Did I ever think I’d be writing about a roast beef sandwich on my blog? Er, no. So why am…
My guiding principle in creating this blog is authenticity and I always write from a place of openness and honesty. But every now and then, I wrestle with the conundrum of vulnerability and the simple question of whether or not to post about some of the more tender aspects of my humanity. Such is the case with this post. In the process of chewing this over, I reread a few older posts that I’d written, in particular, one on inspiration. I’m reminded that the artists…
My son came out to me in the form of a text. I was working on my computer late one night last September. Enzo was staying at his dad’s house that particular evening. I had my nose deep into something I was writing when his text came in. The text, which was sent to both his father and me, was succinct, yet in my mind, absolutely beautiful. It said, “I’m gay. But I’m also very tired, so I’m going to bed. We can talk…
Emmett stopped by my apartment briefly yesterday. He was swinging by to raid the fridge and to show me the new tattoo that he’d just gotten in honor of his fallen comrade, Nap. I hadn’t seen him since Nap’s memorial last week. He dropped in late afternoon and his visit was brief. Emmett comes and goes like that. Still, it was good to see his face and to see with my own eyes that he is doing OK. Nap’s memorial was held in the Paccar…
As Venus passes over the face of the sun, Nap is soaring above the heavens; moving on to the next leg of his grand adventure. *** Shower the people you love with love. – James Taylor
