It's been so long, it's hard to know where to start. If I have to pick something, though, this (video post above) is probably it. It's been an intense time, personally and professionally. Not bad intense, though. Intense with emotion, uncertainty, possibility, promise, and, holding it all together, the certainty of trust in the hand of providence. Guess I really am a believer in "dynamic tension"(something I've been thinking about a lot lately, actually).

My feelings have been all over the map about my new CD: "Stories Without Words", but when my objective lens takes over, it remains a consistent view. This is my first (major) step (perhaps better, lunge) away from the security of imposed structure, to embrace a deeper part of myself that I have been learning to come to terms with. Over the years, I have been continually struck with a common "theme": that my improvisation often struggles to exactly fit in the "jazz box", especially when others are defining it. My ideas are seldom the intricate weavings of architecture, fitting the agenda of a finely tuned "jazz vocabulary", creating within a predetermined structure. As this, however, describes much of the "jazz view", I've often struggled, sometimes touching the deeper places, sometimes mired in "constipation". Known for "creative bursts", but not a consistent presence. What am I, then? What I've always known I am: a conceptualist. But what does it mean? I'm learning. Learning that I've often been tangled in "vocabulary", instead of drawing the "shapes" I instinctively feel. Learning that what I "know" often gets in the way. Learning to "know" differently. This new CD (illustrated by the video post of one of the twenty tracks) is but a baby step. Not a step away from anything, though, except my own roadblocks. Thanks for continuing to follow my journey. I believe in it now, perhaps more than ever. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life". "Trust...."