Katy's Blog
I recently sat down and wrote a letter to my muse, kindly asking her to please return. At some point in the spring, she wandered off. It seems I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. My mind was so engrossed in just trying to survive the last few months of my teaching gig that I didn’t notice she was gone right away. That is, until I needed her. It took a little work to coax her back. She rightly wanted to know, “What’s in it…
"Our Creative Lives" is a new blog series dedicated to the examination of the creative experience. Throughout my own evolution as a writer and a vocalist, I’ve often been curious about how other artists think and feel about what they do. I am interested in everything from the inner workings of the creative psyche to the day-to-day challenges of working our craft, whatever it may be. Each month, I’ll throw out a topic, put in my two cents to get the ball rolling and then…
As a writer, it is sometimes very difficult to capture the riveting loveliness of an experience and translate it into mere words. This is the dilemma that I am confronted with now as I attempt to write about a very enchanting band that I had the pleasure of hearing last night at Bake’s Place. I am talking about Ben Thomas and his magical group Tangabrazo. As the name suggests, Tangabrazo plays tango music or, more specifically, the three main styles of tango dance music: tango,…
Last night, the Garfield High Jazz Band played its annual “Farewell to Seniors” concert. My son Emmett is among the 20 musicians who are graduating from high school (tomorrow night-yikes) and leaving this amazing program. As I sat in the Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, I was flooded with an odd mix of melancholy, pride and satisfaction. It almost feels like waking up from a beautiful dream. As I write this today, I seem to…
You just never know. Every now and then, life gives you a much-needed boost from an unexpected source. This recently happened to me. Around the holidays, a generous soul gave me a pass to 8 Limbs Yoga, a beautiful studio here in Seattle. Thusly, I’ve spent the past few months rediscovering the joys and benefits of yoga. I used to practice a long time ago in a past life. However, I don’t recall feeling the same zeal for it then that I am feeling now.…
First of all, I apologize for the unintended gap since the last post. Unfortunately, I was recently slammed with the mother of all sinus infections and for a brief period, everything came to a screeching halt. The body is like that sometimes; it demands that we stop everything and tend to it and rightly so. This was the sickest I’ve been in well over a decade. After over two weeks of misery and a course of Amoxicillin, I’m just now climbing out. Although I’m still…
I spent the weekend trying to write a new post for this blog. My plan was to kick off a new series about the creative process, starting on the topic of inspiration. Although I’d riffed on the subject in my journal for a week or more, when I sat down to write this weekend, I couldn’t seem to get there. All my thoughts were on Japan. As I read the news stories and watched the horrifying video clips, I knew that anything I had to…
