Since the mirandastone.com email list has gone up in smoke, here is the latest newletter from the folksinger. Hopefully it will reach your mailboxes soon (when the server switch is complete)
The Kitchen Table
The Miranda Stone Concert Newsletter
May 2005
A LETTER FROM MIRANDA, TORONTO, ONTARIO - MAY 26 2005
Hello friends and grassroots army kinfolk!
The shocking red of newly planted geraniums on my windowsill tells me it’s just a matter of time before I can join the secret hordes of skinny-dippers partaking in this glorious mystical rite performed in northern Ontario lakes. I know it’s not just for political reasons that some of my American friends want to move to Canada…
Has it really been 5 months since the last letter I sent you?
Yesterday, I sat down with the old calendar sheets of March and April and tried to figure out where the days went. It seems that I did some touring for about 4 weeks with some shows that were quite secretive; I didn’t send a lot of messages out, so unless you checked the web site, we were passing by each other like ships in the night. (Note to self: Tell fans about shows, pester them, grab them by the ankles like you’re their favorite ball and chain!)
New songs are happening slowly, like little prayers written on rolled up papers, shoved into the cracks of Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall. I’m not dead yet, and that’s a good feeling. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to hit the studio before the two-month trip to India (which starts at the end of August) but I’m trying to get as much work on the new album finished before leaving. There’s that feeling again, of what it might be like, to be the mother of two sets of twins…
Truly, major projects loom. I’m doing a series of paintings for an art show happening on the 4th and 5th of June and so I’ve been slack in returning phone calls and emails…again. If you’re in the Toronto area that weekend, you should come down, drink tea at the studio, see a lot of work by artists all hanging out on the east side locale…and buy a painting for that space over your bedroom dresser. (See details for art show below!)
Once the art show is over I’m going to start the massive building project of outfitting the interior of the new van for touring. Many of you have seen the old gypsy beast on wheels (RIP), have been fed by it’s kitchen and amused by it’s "transformers: more than meets the eye!" construction of plywood movable parts and fine wood carpentry. I’m trying to do the same type of thing with the new van, but make it safer. The goal is to be able to "roll the thing" during a car accident and SURVIVE, rather than get crushed by flying guitar/sitar cases and 600 pounds of ¾ fir plywood. This will require me to drill holes through the floor of the van (carefully missing the gas tank.) I also need to find a welder who can fix me up a solid aluminum construction for the back bed (that can be removed) which now needs to hold two people instead of just one skinny mostly-vegetarian folksinger. So… do you know a welder in the Toronto area by chance?
And so life in the world of "25 simultaneous creative projects at once" continues. Chris and I just planted lettuce and zinnia seeds in the rooftop garden this week. (It’s a really large, flat factory roof!) New seedlings of Thai basil, parsley and tomato plants are happily sprouting new growth. Sheep manure has been evenly distributed to all. Marigolds in screaming orange hues are already blooming. How sad it is to think that there are people out there (you?) who haven’t yet realized the healing power of "dirt therapy"…. stick your hands in the mud, dig and muck around. Winter is over, and I’m practically crying tears of joy.
I wish you could have been up on the roof with us tonight. Chris was flying his orange Pakistani paper kite as the sky melted into deeper and deeper shades of royal blue. I tried my hand at it for the first time today and crashed it quite horribly. I had to pull it back up onto the roof, past the windows on the second floor. There was a lot of laughing. Sometimes when we look at the Toronto city skyline, so post-card picture perfect, we are amazed to be here, in the community of this building. As Chris and I figure out how to embrace each others unique communities (Chris’s "Indian music" world and my "Indie folk whatever" world) we run into constant challenges... sometimes you feel like you just invited 10 gregarious wine drinkers and 10 discomforted tea-totalers to your dinner table. You start to silently pray "please get along, please get along…" I hope that you will walk alongside us at we tight-rope; through the doors of all the odd places we play, the church basements, the Sufi retreats, the houses of strangers before they become friends...
Till the next time we drink tea together,
Miranda( News & Concerts )Note: you can get yourself on the email list by visiting
www.mirandastone.com
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