Ottawa, Ont.
A spring day in the nation’s capital, sunny and warm, everyone in short sleeves and the latest sunglasses, drinking beer on patios in the Byward Market and just showing off. I’m sitting in an old haunt called “Memories” on Clarence Street, in the shadow of the American Embassy that wasn’t here 12 years ago when I last lived in Ottawa. Beside me on the floor is a bag of Quebec cheese, some of which I am going to eat with my mother and father and sister on my mum’s birthday tomorrow.
Like every place I’ve lived in in my life, I really love this town. I especially love the feeling of it on a spring day like this, when the intense cold dark winter has released its grip and the whole place comes to life. Spring is the merest hint of a season in eastern Ontario, wedged uncomfortably between the last winter storm and the leaves coming out. Six weeks tops. The predominant odour is one of warm mud and the odd waft of dog poo. It’s not impressive and it reminds one of the flurry of disorganized activity that surrounds someone getting ready to go out to a party. That’s why its fun to be in Ottawa, a city that thrives on order, composure and protocol. In spring, the whole town and all its inhabitants seem to spring to life. Even the stodgy senior public servants and the overdressed political assistants are sporting yellow and light blue ties with their dark suits.
It’s a lovely, awkward and short-lived time. By the time the last piles of snow melt out of the shadows of buildings, people will have recovered their senses and switched to full on summer clothing, the leaves will burst out of the trees and the tourists will descend. Everyone here will recompose themselves and dutifully attend the bevy of free festivals and concerts and celebrations that last until the leaves start to turn and fall comes to put a stop to all the fun.
There are many ways of producing overtones in music. Anyone who vibrates air in a tube for a living produces overtones as their way of making music. THis includes brass players, didgeridoo, alpenhorn and so on. Buglers get their notes strictly from overtones, as they have no keys on their instruments. And of course, vocally, it is possible to produce overtomes as well, giving the eerie sounds of Tuuvan throat singing.
i love overtones because they remind me that there is so much more to the music than what is immediately audible. It is a good teaching that the ethereal lives in the mundane.
Today I stumbled on the site of the Swiss duet Stimmhorn and I found some amazing overtones. Have a listen for yourself.
From whiskey river:
No Knowing
Do not follow the path I say
for it does not exist
you cannot find enlightenment
contained within a list
do not follow leaders
they cannot set you free
and perhaps now most importantly
listen not to me.
– Ikkyu
I’m in the middle of a period of teaching at the moment, having just come off a two day Open Space practice workshop with college students and a three day Art of Hosting with Aboriginal youth leaders and coming up to a three day OST practice retreat.
I can’t think of better advice for my students!
It’s a nice mild spring day here off the west coast of Canada. I’m at home with my kids, and we’re playing games, baking bread and making soup.
In fact, today my daughter cooked her first soup from scratch, an improvised Broccoli-Asiago cheese creation that tastes great. And so, here is our first ever Aine Corrigan-Frost soup podcast (with bonus dessert recipe).
My friend Toke Moeller and I are running an Art of Hosting training this week with 12 Aboriginal youth here in British Columbia. We are having a marvelous time so far with one day behind us and two ahead. There have been some good insights as we head deeper into the essences and practicesof hosting conversations that matter. Today we spent time in a natural circle of trees in Cathedral Grove near Port Alberni, which is a pokect of nearyl 1000 year old douglas-fir and cedar on the Cameron River. These old ones make good teachers, especially when we bring them questions about confronting our fears.
I had one or two insights myself today about the essence of effective conversation. Both arose in an appreciative conversation with Toke. For me, a powerful one was that effective conversation creates in the spaces in which true offerings of the heart can be made. The results of the best conversations include having the participants in that conversation able to give gifts of their time, attention and commitment to the result. All good action arises as a result of this kind of free, heart-based offering.
And we also noticed that good conversations contain the seeds of stories which are repeated for years afterwards. It is, in fact, nearly impossible to know these seeds untila later time, when we pull them out of a bag and tell them as stories. But for sure, an effective conversation is one that conceives these seeds that later brith in the momentof telling. Who is to know what any of these seeds will become?
What can you add to this list?