Good morning my lovely friends.
Love Joyce so much. How much this song touches every minute strand of my being!
https://youtu.be/ln-NPSsihEQ?si=ifvmDh4jQXGzbEWq
​(Take the time and have tissues at hand!)


No surprises what she says about artistry and of course, its essence speaks of life generally.
Been so very blessed by so much in my life; blessings which have perhaps made me entertain boldness from time to time.

Michelangelo said, “love and be bold!”
This morning I am reflecting on the possibility that it is in being loved that we might be emboldened. A chicken and egg question!
But whichever way around it is, behold the bold and be, do, think around corners and into being your true self with no apologies!
Love you all and have a wonderful week which has Spring at the end of it.
Kxx

​Marking a little anniversary today….
For ten years ago we went to hear Jonas Kaufman at the Hamer Hall. 
We waited in the freezing cold at stage door to say hello.
Only ever done that once before for Dame Judi Dench!

You get my drift…..
It was a starry night in every sense. 

https://youtu.be/G8kGulIP4lc?si=l5iFhuqiF4Zni4De

We had parked down in Dodds. 
As we walked towards the car I suddenly had a blindingly clear epiphany …..
That I needed to move from the idyll of my lovely Northcote home, studio and garden to Southbank!

I had watched the building of what was affectionately known as Southbank Village, when my VSO rehearsals and performances took me there in the mid 90s. Scouring the streets for parking I wondered what was going on behind the scaffolding in the surrounding streets.

We both had to get used to the idea so we didn’t get serious until 2015. By now it was clear what I had espied on those nights scurrying to the VSO’s HQ in the CUB building (now gone!) and the State Theatre Stage Door.
So it was on one of those community hubs that we set our sights. 

A few gloomy moments ensued, not least the apartment we saw which was low-rise, but on that particularly bright, sunny morning, the Eureka Tower next door cast a long and unforgiving shadow; eclipsed only by the miserable couple clearly making the move to separate. 
Boxes everywhere and the glummest faces. An inconsolable toddler completed the picture. 

But, it so happened that the estate agent who showed us that place was an old mate! We had clambered around Into The Woods another lifetime ago. And he said, “all is not lost, because I think the very place for you is poised to come up……”
A few days later we climbed (and climbed and then climbed again) the stairs and were rewarded with a light airy, cathedral-ceilinged home, two balconies, Monet-esque swimming pool - a place with the lot! 
In….. drum roll 🥁 🥁 🥁……Dodds St! 
The moral of the story is to follow those castles in the air. You never know, one may be waiting especially for you, already!
Love to all, Kxx

Thanks to Andy McCalman who manoeuvred the sale, Cris De Losa whose company made the place into a palace and my beloved Phil James for putting up with me and my madcap schemes!

​Forty years ago I chanced upon a piano bar round the back of some, I think northern, suburb of Perth. 
I was immeasurably miserable at the time and I don’t recall quite how I found myself there. I’d done piano bar work back in London; The Way We Were, What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life and All That (kind of) Jazz, so I thought I knew what I was in for….
I didn’t.....
For I found myself in the company of a genius. Definitely that and yet there was something profoundly amiss as he swayed and muttered to himself, occasionally looking up with a beautific smile in our direction, but for the most part lost in the works of Chopin and Liszt.

Early in ‘85, I tootled off to Melbourne and a new life where the sun finally shone for me.

Just before Stace died we went to see “Shine.” 
As the story unfolded I realised what I had been party to a dozen or so years before. That piano bar and the music David Helfgott made there were the early days of a long and difficult recovery, I discovered. 
But how could it be that such a tender and brilliant soul should suffer so much that the pressure of his artistry ultimately crushed him?

I saw the movie again just after Stace died. This time with my darling dad who had come to be by my side and my friend Julie Raines as I recall. 
My father was a gruff old thing, but he was an easy target for such a story. And we cried together in sorrow for David Helfgott and the loss of Stace so fresh in the mix. 

Can we rise above adversity? Can we heal?

Well in David Helfgott’s case he did live to play again and in so doing, showed us how the deeply creative mind works. “Shine” gave him permission to be this new, childlike self, unashamedly revelling in the music, reciting the whys and wherefores as his fingers flew around impossibly difficult music.

This evening, forty years after that extraordinary night in Perth, I found myself on my feet, stomping and cheering with David’s fans, wishing him the fondest of farewells with tears in my eyes and gratitude and love in my heart.
Thank you my friend for showing me and so many, that a way can be found to be one’s true, but maybe different self, and not to falter. 
KS - Melbourne - 4th July 2024

Haven’t been here for a while, but trust me there are plenty of words elsewhere!

However, I read this quote yesterday and rather liked it, so I’m sharing it this morning.
“Genes are the cards you are dealt and life is how you play them.”
Nick Coatsworth

I was interested to know about the “anxiety gene,” but it appears the jury is still out about nature/nurture.

Anxiety is my nemesis! I have always had to work so hard at playing the right cards for a win there. And my little victories are never decisive in the overall scheme of things. Back it comes for another round!
I think too, that those of us “of an age” are finding that expectations and new challenges confront us daily, when in the past we’d have our slippers on by now. Yet here we are, still in the world, wits waning with the morass of modern tech and all that means.

Ah well. I try to Be Like Pamela whenever and wherever I remember. A learnt behaviour from my songbird mummy and a deep seated anxiety gene from my daddy. Such is life. Still grateful for my cards though.🙏
Love to all and have a fabulous week.
​Kxx

Term two kicks off tonight with a full Performance Skills Class.

Seven dear singers gearing up to stare down their fear. Eight if you count me!
(Yes, I get nervous too, because I put myself on the line at PSC)

Brava literally means brave!

If someone isn’t afraid, they don’t need to find the courage to be Big and Brave.
As performers it just goes with the territory. It gets easier once you’ve done it so often and realised you didn’t die, but still.

​Thinking of my lovelies today and looking forward to hearing everything from Grieg to Chicago.
Love to them and all.
Have a fabulous week everyone.
Kxx

Been a bit quiet lately, but active in other ways. It’s a long story……literally.🤪 (In a good way)
Meanwhile, my very wise and wonderful friend Duncan Esler posted this one a while back. The poet is Jarod K. Anderson.

Fab stuff. These days I’m grateful to be generally ok.
​More than merely that mostly.

Even so, I have bouts of insecurity, anxiety and doubt. I suppose it goes with the creative territory when one decides to be a rule-bender/breaker, “out there,” publicly making it up as I go along, stubbornly left field; when at heart I’m happier shutting up shop and being quiet, solitary and reclusive.
Weirdo, me!
But back to the “not okay” and the sense of doom and despair which goes with that and how  this “to be list” might assuage our unworthiness, loss or whatever. One to put on the fridge methinks?

My love to all, especially those struggling. May you lift your faces to the sun, feel it smiling upon you, warming your heart and gently shifting your soul towards the space of okay.
Have a wonderful week.
Kxx

Love this bit of brilliance from my friend Emma O'Brien. Thanks darling.
Yesterday I got in quite a tizz about something inconsequential. I do that. A lot!!!
Lucky for me I have a little project on the go which requires me to listen to a piece of music and write about it as I’m listening.
So, I stuck my earbuds in and popped Schubert’s “Grand Duo” Violin Sonata in them and tapped away, hearing all the ins and outs of it, finding pictures and feelings, jotting it all down. (Probably would be better actually writing, you know with pen and paper?)
When it finished, I felt an extraordinary calm and got on with my day.
I’m useless at meditation.
Empty my brain? 🤣  Me? You must be joking!

But I inadvertently found my version of meditation. I’m going to call it “Constructive Contemplation.”

In our family, you didn’t talk when music was being played. So I’m used to listening to music, even the long-winded stuff, but it was the writing about it that held me with Schubert’s wit and whimsy for the full twenty minutes.
Just sharing that little story this morning to cheer your heart if it needs it.
You’re welcome to try it yourself and let me know how that goes for you.
Have a fabulous week my lovelies.
Love to you all. Kxx
https://youtu.be/-p72e-fv4ro?si=Hoqv64jWHk7VUYEC

I suppose the words of poets like this guy are deemed old hat, with so many since and so many to come of course.

But I’m not one to chuck the baby out with the bath water, because what he has said here is so good and true.

I remember really very soon after Stace died, I was walking down Northcote High St, my sorrow dripping from me and I looked at my fellow pedestrians and I realised that every one of them probably had known terrible loss and those who hadn’t, would sometime sooner or later.
There was nothing special about my loss.
Nothing special about me.

Love and loss are the closest of friends.
Sending you all love today my dear friends.
Have a wonderful week.
Kxx

   

“Perhaps we need to celebrate how far we’ve come and rest more….”
Jeff Brown

Did you ever notice that the word “fine” has been replaced with the word “busy,” as a response to the question, “how are you?”
Sometimes I reflect on my life with that wild pivot which seemed to kick in when 1999 clicked over into 2000. I have never been comfortable with it, wrestle with the unease of it almost daily; trying to savour the good things afforded me by the digital world. And there are many.

The big ones for me are my creative outlets of poems, KateSongs and now my writing, all of which have happened since 2000.

Of course at the end of the last century I experienced my Great Sorrow and somehow that kick started the tumbling of words and melodies when I emerged in this one. And technology made it possible for those things to be brought into the world, so that they could be read, sung and enjoyed.

So although I am still smarting from much, today I give thanks for the good things, find and “relish simple pleasures” and yes, “look for love everywhere.”

​Have a lovely week everyone. Pat yourselves on the back for the person you so uniquely are through the vicissitudes of life and find a moment to sit by your version of a babbling brook.
Love to all. Kxx

I have just awoken from a dream in which I was diving off a cliff!
So I was reminded of what Kawakubo said about “playing it safe” which I found when I was bopping around London’s V&A museum.

I was hoping to fossick in their archives for something but that box was unavailable, so I rocked into a couple of exhibitions.

The first was of costumes from the early 1700s to present day; paltry compared with the Costume Museum in Bath but still, it drew me to what Kawakubo said of her avant-garde work.

Then I went into a wonderful exhibition called, “Divas.”
They were all there.
Melba, Bernhardt, Babs and Madonna. My favs were Callas’ Vissi D’Arte to die for and Whitney’s “And I………” - yes, that moment which blew the world away.
“Playing it safe” was nowhere near anyone in that canon of Divas.
Mostly, we do what we know. Today will be more of the same I suspect. Tomorrow too.
But every single great creator dived into the unkown as a matter of course and were declared insane for it.
Yes, great game changers were pretty much all nutters!
All hail the derring-do of the brave!

​Love to all and have a fabulous week.
Kxx
Image by José Jiménez Alonso