Newsletter Final Thought, December 2008 It’s only 4:17 but it is dark in Beijing. There’s no daylight savings time here. I just got home from the crispy cold of outside, having pedaled my bike back from the subway and then the post office. I ride a rickety old blue basket bike here that keeps me sitting upright like a prim,…   …read more.

I’ve spent the last two weeks translating in a tiny recording studio tucked into a heavily subdivided hutong (alley) here in the Beijing lake district called Hou Hai. The neighbours are curious about me and the tattooed collection of dreadlocked boys swarming about the mysterious blue door that regularly leaks grooves — new music — that has never before been…   …read more.

Car alarms are chirping, buzzing, screaming. The fire crackers have been going off regularly here in Beijing for the past fifteen days. It’s Chinese New Year. That doesn’t just mean the day; it means the first half of the lunar month, so 15 days right up until today, the full moon in the year of the Tiger. Even though this…   …read more.

They are building some high rises about a kilometre from my apartment. At night as they weld the steel together, I can see the sparks cascading down, just like they did when we used to play with sparklers as kids on special occasions that fell on summer nights. For the two or three minutes it took for them to burn…   …read more.

Final Thought, August 2010 Some of you might know that I’ve been studying Tai Chi for over a year now. I am studying the “nei da quan” or internal martial arts of Tai Chi, which means that I am studying how to control my body’s internal energy as well as the energy that directly surrounds my body in what is…   …read more.

Final Thought, October 2010   In the past few years, I’ve found myself in China at exactly the time when big feasts are being served up back home: Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. Let’s just say I’ve missed out on several large, heaping scoops of mashed potatoes. This year, however, I happen to be touching down in Canada the day before Thanksgiving…   …read more.

ALBUM PLANS: Support Needed! I need your help to get this record finished. As I mentioned in my newsletter, I am looking for support for my new album project. Here are some optional “bundles” or “packages” but, please keep in mind that they are OPTIONAL. You can mix and match. We can talk about it. If you already have what…   …read more.

So, I got married. Yeah. Some of you already know this news and some of you are shocked to read it. Trust me, had you asked me three years ago if I imagined myself meeting and falling in love in China (with a man, no less) and then agreeing to get married to him, well, I would have raised an…   …read more.

Final Thought, January 2011 I see this music industry as a similar industry to the organic farming industry. Independent Organic Food Producers farm their land and grow their food for the same reasons that Independent Musicians write our songs; we believe in the philosohpy, we enjoy the process, we want to be part of a larger cycle of sharing and…   …read more.

March Newsletter’s Final Thought… AN EMAIL EXCHANGE… I have been in the act of promoting this fundraising project for over two months now. I received this email from Jonathan (in the US) in response to my thank you note for his $20 pre-purchase of my new album. I asked his permission to share this with you and it was granted….   …read more.