Dear Rosa,
I was having some problems starting to write on this blog and Mieka Pauley of the Cambridge Folk scene suggested that I take a look at Josh Joplin’s website which gave me an idea. I am grateful to her and him for that.
And since you introduced yourself on Twitter (via Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies) and since you are in Hawaii and I am in Brazil and I would never have met you had there not been a computer, an internet and a Twitter, I decided to write this blog post to you. I’m having some trouble getting started in the blogging medium I confess and it is your article, “Internet Privacy: An Evolution” that my mind keeps returning to as a point of how to go ahead.
Some of what I work on is at what we might call a brochure-style website named DAKINI MUSIC. That would be step one in your list: “1. Traditional website (need to hire a webmaster).” So when I started to think how I could re-integrate what has been done at Dakini Music work with much older work I did as LIZ HAMILL , I decided to go to “Step 2: Blog platform (actually do it myself).” Somehow, I jumped up to “Step 6: Twitter” and then started following you.
So this post is an attempt to go back to Step 2. Right now I am in the final stages of an audio production of the great Indian Buddhist philosopher, Shantideva’s, The Way of the Bodhisattva. It is a thrilling project and the ten minute learning curve on WordPress for some has turned out to be something much larger for me. The production is going well but really the only thing that has gone well on the blog is the Hello Dolly plug in which at the moment says, “I can tell, Dolly.” Which is SO true!
You said, “With a blog there would be less ‘firewalls’ and people I did not know would easily be able to reach out to me. I liked the thought that there were those who would invite me into their lives for my aloha conversation; the thought that others would lurk in my life for unknown reasons terrified me. What made me take the plunge was not that I came to terms with that; it was publishing my book, and realizing that my contact information would be now public domain anyway… maybe the internet would at least give me a bread crumb trail to knowing who both followers and lurkers were. ”
Fortunate for us that you had your book as an impetus. I will try to follow your example with some songs and arrangements I did as someone who worked in the Avant Guarde Jazz scene at the New England Conservatory and the rich modern Folk Music community in New England.
Wishing you all happinesses,
Liz
Tags: Josh Joplin, Mieka Pauley, New Music Strategies, Rosa Say, The Way of the Bodhisattva
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May 17, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Rosa Say
Dear Liz,
What a gift this is, mahalo nui loa. And timed perfectly for me this sunny Saturday morning; I saw your reply on Twitter, and as I write this I have not even said a hello there yet for today, for I have been magnificently lost within the links you have offered here, so delighted with this chance to know you better (especially via your page at cdbaby.com)
Funny how things happen (to paraphrase W.H. Murray, “Providence conspires”), for we have been connected by a bread crumb that somehow got carried on a fortuitous breeze to Andrew Dubber’s: I am such a foreigner to your world of music, appreciative of it to be sure, but admittedly very ignorant of it. As just one example, I had no idea who Vernon Duke was and had to look him up on Wikipedia! New learning is but one example of what becoming a “citizen publisher” on the web has done for me.
Within the comments of the post you pointed to at my place, I added this from Stowe Boyd, “There is an African saying that says it is through other people that we become people.” When I began blogging I had a 3-decades old corporate career behind me; as a wife and mother I felt confident in thinking I knew who I was. Great as my life is, and has already been, blogging, and the willingness to break through that shell of privacy I once had, helped me understand that there was so much more abundance in the world. I think we are all aware of the world’s largesse, however I think we sell ourselves short in understanding how much of it we can personally connect to and engage in, —and thus influence. So much more reason to keep our aloha-spirited authenticity ever present!
I will tell you to be a bit careful what you wish for Liz, for today, though I love every minute of my web-cradled “becoming people through other people” I find it can be tough to keep up with all those aloha conversations I wished for! Not tough to have them though: I have no regrets and would do it all over again for the joy it has brought me in meeting people and getting to know them —just as now, with you! Yet much as Twitter, my Tumblr, sites and blogs all seem in my life to stay (collectively what I call my Ho‘ohana Community, for I felt compelled to name the wonder), today my efforts are to consolidate somehow, and get my conversations to be in fewer places, a quality versus quantity endeavor, though that tired phrase seems to be inadequate for it… we shall see what this evolution #7 is to be called!
Liz, do let me know whatever more I can do to support you. It seems to me that your music represents just as much impetus and richness as my book did for me: You have so much to share with the world! I am eager to continue learning from you.
With much aloha,
Rosa
May 18, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Liz
@ Rosa Say I taught music for many years and found that the exchange is between myself and the student ended up kind of full circle. It was that very exchange that deepened my own knowledge and inspiration for the work. So too, your experience is showing the technique and your response is opening the way. Thank you for so much rare openness.