Another Shore Remembered

Evening, Kennebec River, June.
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, May 2011

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Lately, I've been visited by sudden, strong memories of certain times and places--particular shorescapes I've experienced. After these memories come upon me, I spend time--over the course of a few days, usually-- refining the images within my mind. Once they are clear to the recall, I begin to paint...
-kmb

Book Launch: HIGHWAY IN THE BLOOD

www.highwayintheblood.wordpress.com

this one morning...

...this one morning is the reason i came to this place... (York Beach, Maine)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, May 2011

Good Harbor, Remembered May Morning

Good Harbor-- Remembered May Morning
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2011

There are certain places I return to by conjuring inside myself: real-world places that have made a deep imprint of color, mood, energy, motion; stillness, space, distance; geologic shape and form, inner and outer engagement. By contemplation and imagination I put myself in these places and create a vivid and refreshing sanctuary; a connection and confluence with something I call depth of place.
Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts is one of those places. I return again and again, in memories, meditations, dreams. This painting, made in hazy May sunlight, brings me back to a certain remembered spring morning at Good Harbor: waking up in a sleeping bag in the dunes; watching morning arriving and changing over the water--bringing light from above and shadows from below.
-kmb

Woodland Passage, April Morning

In depth of dark
woods, the sudden slant of
April’s empty light.

Near hard noon meridian
over softness of moss—viridian
underfoot—I stop,
wanting some stillness

and stand
beside a massive quartzite boulder
left here a long time,
almost motionless, glacial
erratic ( but only to limited perceptions.)

I’m not sure
what I can bring
to all this:

Yes, the gift of respiration;
The manifold graces
of being present—

These thoughts cross
inner oceans and
eons in an instant

and at once I find
that I want
to be one who

will stand at the marge of
this season with prayers and passion

seeking the true glide
of wisdom, imagination;

will watch open-hearted for
the fields’ first greening,

the hazing-over of
the hot, coppered sun,

and on the horizon
distant, small, strong,
the broadwings’ lifting arrival.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Mid-March, at the eastern heart of this morning like no other...

Mid-March: at the eastern heart of this
morning like no other,

The perfect pyramid of Spruce Mountain
rises weightless washed blue.

Above and beyond, arrives
a fresh and fearless sky,

Harder blue,
pulsed–through with the hue
of future roses—

Blooms that, in a softer season,
will be here,

Warm and glistening,
fully-fleshed,

In the all-pervasive sunlight
that seeks itself even in shadows.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

winter resonance and the ineffable freedom of captured light

As I worked through the winter on the video paintings in the WINTER RESONANCE series, it became clear to me that I had found the right images to accompany my 2007 composition THE INEFFABLE FREEDOM OF CAPTURED LIGHT.
I had made that long ambient/ textural piece of music over the course of that winter, using steel guitars, an electric table organ from a church yard sale, glass bowls tuned with water, a portable suitcase metallaphone, a Lexicon jam man, and quite a lot of analog and digital processing. The purpose of the composition was to convey in sound my responses to color, light, and shadow in the winter landscape. I painted in acrylics on canvas while I listened back to various mixes and versions during that period --there is even a six-channel surround version intended for a multi-media installation. But ultimately I found that the resulting visual art was, for the most part, too representational-- mountains and skyscapes-- to accompany the music directly.
But these recent video paintings-- really, they are manipulated images of winter light itself in motion--seemed to be calling back to that music. Thus, the video above,which brings them together.
I find myself ready now to turn away from winter contemplations. Though I know that there is plenty of winter left here in Vermont, I can see--and feel-- that the light has begun to change to that of another season.
-kmb

a complete recording of THE INEFFABLE FREEDOM OF CAPTURED LIGHT is available for listening or download here:

snow and steel

Lap steel guitar improv on a snowy afternoon in February.
(Theme and structures from my composition, "Seeking Shadows, Holding Light.")
-kmb

Imbolc Transit (poem)

Imbolc:
Transit
Arrival;

( Always
arrival and
further
transit)



Soft gray light on cold and
wintry morning

( Did I dream of Brigid last night?
that fiery arrow of a young goddess,
her energy and passion
sharp, to pierce dark clouds with longing?)


The strong-shadowed trees
cross like paths and
map contours alongside
the steep-sided,
snow-bearing
February hillside

Eastering sun
stirs sap
somewhere,
I do believe--

Yes--

A deep and silent

Somewhere.



-kmb

Winter Resonance

WINTER RESONANCE- video paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown

Making paintings is, for me, a form of active meditation. This winter, finding my mornings devoted to the second draft of a new novel and the afternoon painting light gone by the time I get home from work, I have arrived by accident at a method to keep to my visual art meditations nonetheless.
One afternoon I got the urge to take some flip camera video of snowfall through a curtained window. After a while, I suddenly borrowed an inspiration from film maker Andrei Tarkovsky and began moving the curtain at various speeds while I shot. The video sequence itself was not all that compelling—but I found that isolating still frames revealed some interesting abstractions and motion-induced visual artifacts. So I began choosing frames that, as compositions, captured my interest, then I made simple adjustments in saturation and contrast—until the images began to resonate for me.
In subsequent days I’ve been shooting patterns of light on walls, floors, windows, snow, and trees, with the camera moving, and the light patterns moving also, at some point each day taking time to choose a frame and make an image.
I do miss the smell of paint and the feel of the brush on canvas or paper; but I’ll get back to them before long, when the light gets stronger. Meanwhile I’m enjoying these visual surprises and I am planning on re-animating them, with music to accompany, before winter is over.
-kmb

Ending 2010; 2011 Horizons

(Mountains, Lake: Dusk- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas)

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As I write this, a late December storm is swirling snow hard into dark pines and spruces, making a world of whites and grays in lines and layers.

The first thing I want to do here is offer my gratitude for all who have supported and shared in my explorations, expressions, and meditations in word, sound, and image!

2010 was a sometimes-challenging year for me; but it was also a year of deep engagement with my inner and outer worlds; of expansion and discovery. As ripple and result, I felt a turning point--a hinged door swinging open-- in late summer.
I had taken to visiting daily a certain place on and in the cold, clear Dog River, letting the peace and power of stone, sand, water, sky cover and fill me. One day I spent hours skimming the same blue shard of slate, recovering it from the river-bottom from under clear water, skimming it across surface tension again, finding it...and sometime during all this, in one rushing moment, I felt the truth of my situation and words came to me: "stepping into the river of gratitude." That river is cold with snow and ice now, all these months later, but the moment still moves, warm in my heart.

Thus it's probably somewhat fitting that my main work in music and art during 2010 would flow together in this video:




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As for the 2011 horizon, it seems that there might be a bevy of books approaching.
In the spring I plan to release a mystery novel called HIGHWAY IN THE BLOOD. It's set in Vermont in the 1970s, and features a strong component of vintage country music and steel guitar lore. I'm planning a book launch and reading with live performance on steel guitar and dobro. And in the fall, look for the third book in the Liam Dutra New England mystery series.
There's also a novel in manuscript--I'll be digging into further drafts with the new year. Right now I can barely remember anything about it, which is exactly where I want to be when I return my attention.
I hope you'll be around for some of this-- and, of course, whatever else might come along...

-kmb

Gray Day, But Something on the Horizon...

NOVEMBER PASSAGE; HORIZON MEDITATION 2-- Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, November 23, 2010

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Today the monochromatic November sky inspired me to work mostly with the last of a tube of Payne's gray. As I worked on the first painting, NOVEMBER PASSAGE, I somehow began to think of Bartok. So I listened to the Viola Concerto while I made both pieces. In the second movement-- the "Adagio Religioso" --I always hear light breaking through, and that's what I wanted to paint.

-KMB

Day's Edge, Water's Edge

QUIET WATERS 8, QUIET WATERS 7- Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

acrylic on canvas, October 2010

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Contemplative energies at two edges of the same day in the same place.

Places Water Seeks

Lake Light, September Morning- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010
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Places Water Seeks

I

River and sky exchange
Intersticial gleamings and
striations of low-toned
light in September:

gray
to steel to
silver to
bronze



II

I am walking in the
shallows and
stalking a heron;
the heron is
stalking the shallows,
watching the water;

The morning is mostly bedraggled
but also
burnished



III

It’s like this at the places where water seeks
the level of flowing, fulfilling--

Such that EVERYTHING
else becomes the guide to its own

horizon


At the Dog River, it’s the
smoke-blue of White Rock Mountain
quiet and looming beyond the bend

At Lake Champlain, it’s those
strong, jagged ranges ringed hard all around


At Good Harbor, the Atlantic at Cape Ann,
it’s Dogtown’s high granite, yes--
but also the lucent gleamings,
twinned and soft-hazed, of
The towers of the Church of
Our Lady of Good
Voyage.

I am so often looking
up and over, into and
beyond the limit…

It is, after all,
water itself
that rises

To push at, then hold.
the entire sky
and more.


- Kevin Macneil Brown

Seeking Shadows, Holding Light: Music for the Fall Equinox

Sept. 23, 2010

I step outside with coffee mug in hand at 5:32. Clouds riding low on morning horizon, but stars and Jupiter in clear sky above, and a bright satellite moving across from NW to SE. Cricket song hazes the warm air. There’s a band of light, rising pale and high, directly across from where the sun will soon appear.
Coffee half gone at 5:50. I go inside, sit down with my steel guitar, and begin to play, tuning my heart and thoughts toward autumn’s arrival. The music rises, its simple and somewhat stark harmonic motion conjuring for me the image of a web of slow, wide ripples—and also, somehow, the ghosts of British Renaissance church music living on in American mountain ballads.
I listen and play while the morning light arrives on the first full day of fall.

-kmb

Morning Shore, September Light

North Shore Passage- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and gouache on paper, 2010

August Ripening

Horizon Meditation

HORIZON MEDITATION 1- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010)


trust the
symmetry until
something deeper
and more true
is revealed:

the pulsing shapes and
colors can-
not be defined
or explained but,
yes!
they are real.

vessels, structures,
openings, arrivals,
chroma, hues;
saturations of perception.

and all with breath
as solid as any
ancient stone,

vibrating,
infinitely
becoming.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Celebrating the Lush Light of Summer

Toward the Harbor, Morning
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2010

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This is an edited version of a performance at Bethany Church, in Montpelier, Vermont.
LISTENING TO LIGHT was presented from noon to one on June 21, 2010, as contemplative music in honor of the summer solstice and the longest day of the year.
Kevin Macneil Brown- lap steel guitar, guitar, composition, recording and mix.

Upcoming Event: Listening To Light

LISTENING TO LIGHT

by Kevin Macneil Brown

Monday June 21, Noon to One

Bethany Church Working Chapel

Montpelier, Vermont

Free and open to the public

A live performance , in a sacred, meditative space , of contemplative music to honor the longest days of the year. Please come by to listen, contemplate, walk the labyrynth; Stay for a moment or an hour. Noon to One; free and open to the public.


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Beginning with the Winter Solstice last year, I've had the honor of presenting contemplative multi-media events to mark the solar calendar, graciously hosted by Bethany Church in Montpelier, Vermont. It's long been a dream of mine to present my more meditative and ambient music in a sacred space; honoring the intent at the heart of this music: to share in sound a deep connection to nature, spirit, and the ineffable power of creative energy.

(I've also, variously, offered visual art and poetry to accompany the music. )

The idea I have for these events is that they unfold without any beginning or end other than their actual duration-- that is, people can come and go as they please, finding and taking as much or little as they need. I have also found that the contemplative attention that people bring, whether listening, meditating, praying, writing, drawing, walking the labyrynth--has a profound effect on the music--- this I find to be wonderful; surprising, exciting.

My thanks go to all who share this adventure with me. Much gratitude also goes to Mark Pitton, for the enthusiasm and commitment he has brought to this process!

-kmb

In Fathoms: Dreams and Soundings

East Gloucester Liminal- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2009

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Avoiding the wreck
that lay at 30 fathoms
we nonetheless stirred
something from the bottom.

Stranger and
darker than any old bones--
we could not say
what it was.

But between blue basin
and silver shoal water
our captain could
thread the needle;

Through fog now, to Brown’s Bank,
where we arrived by morning,
in time to set out new lines.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

At Dawn

Morning Beach

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010

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Rising
{sun}

pillar of
diffuse light
through

clouds, becoming
the point of
being
every

reach of
now.


-Kevin Macneil Brown

Good Harbor Liminal

LIMINAL, GOOD HARBOR BEACH--Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010)







... Across a tide,



racing to greet a shoreline,



welcome as first light.





-kmb



from NORTH COAST DREAMING:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/luminist-diary-north-coast-dreaming/2499200

Every Journey Has a Soul

EVERY JOURNEY HAS A SOUL- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic and maps on canvas board, 2007)



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So grateful for a world
like this,

where, at 4:30 A.M., I can be
pulled from deep sleep by

the song of a bird
I’ve never heard before.


A stepwise song, with rising and
falling intervals like the summits of
soft and wooded hills;

a green and hollow April timbre,
round with yesterday’s rain,
and clean with today’s shimmer
of sun in the moving river.


So grateful for the way all this pulls me awake
and right into the journey,


this sound that leads the way...


-Kevin Macneil Brown

Good Harbor, Morning

GOOD HARBOR, MORNING- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

acrylic on canvas, 2010)

.... seaweed, kelp, and keen of gulls
where the liminal begins (can liminal have a beginning?)
and bells ride the wind and tide.
I might find, in any sky, that the light makes real the world...

-kmb

From LUMINIST DIARY:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2152993#detailsSection

Atmospheric Skip and AM Country Music Dreams

As I finish up recording and mixing THREE MILE BRIDGE-- an EP, I guess, not quite an album-- of my most recent country songs, I realize that I've never let go of an obsessive memory from my teenage years. It's that of late night/early morning radio, coming up on WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia in the 1970s.
On Saturday nights I'd stay up all night, transistor radio under the pillow, to listen up close-- as close as I could, anyway, through all the static, the distance and drift. Live music with steel guitars and fiddles; singers, some well-known, others obscure; Coffee-and twang-fueled truck driving songs from the Jamboree.
I liked the voices, the stories; the sense of something timeless reaching through those late nights and early mornings; across the plains, up the Blue Ridge Mountains, or from who-knows-where; sounding in the gray-blue pre-dawn of my New Hampshire mountain home.
I can't let go of the yearning and joy those sounds brought to life inside me. So I keep coming back to my own imagination of them; in my own way. Most of these new songs are about places close to home here in Central Vermont.

Upcoming Event: Finding Light

(Spring Sky From Shoreline- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2009)

Finding Light: Music, Word, and Image for Equinox Arrival
A meditative and contemplative celebration of Spring's arrival, with live ambient music, poetry, and images by Kevin Macneil Brown.

Saturday, March 20

Noon to One O' Clock

Bethany Church Working Chapel

Montpelier, Vermont

Free and open to the Public

After Snow, Looking North

AFTER SNOW, LOOKING NORTH

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)

Late-winter Horizons: Poem and Painting.

YOU ARE MY HORIZON III (detail) Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)

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The angel arrived
having the mass
and volume and
hugeness of a mountain range,

While at the same
time the weight and shape and distance
of an entire cloud-massed sky,

and then
The shore-destroying beauty
of breaking
waves.



And the angel’s message,

silent, was:



Listen;


Wait;



And again,



-completely-




Listen.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Following Trails and Abandoned Highways: Some Notes About Writing the Liam Dutra New England Mystery Series

My first novel, COMPASS,WATER, STONE AND TIME, began in my consciousness with the vague image of a lonely, whiskey-drinking trail runner who finds himself caught up in a solitary search for something lost in the woods of steep-sided Irish Hill in Berlin, Vermont. I’d been running regularly in the area, around Berlin Pond and up into those woods, exploring trails and an abandoned town road that I’d come to call “the ancient highway.”
Months later, the intersection of two events pushed a story to the fore.
First, a coyote on the trail ahead of me on the ancient highway actually led me to an old cellar hole. (It was covered then in brush; now, years later, I notice that the brush has been cleared, and the old Stewart farmhouse foundation has been exposed to the sky and to the eyes of visitors.)
Then, a boxful of VERMONT HISTORY magazines that I turned up at a library book sale offered a serendipity of articles: one chronicling the history and culture of the Irish in nearby Northfield, on the opposite slope of the hill; another offering an account of the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866.
A story and characters began to churn inside me. I got the first draft done over the course of a summer, sitting outside in the sunny mornings before work, writing in longhand with pencil or ballpoint pen in a bright orange surveyor’s field notebook that my mother had found at a yard sale in New Hampshire and sent to me.
Another vital inspiration at the heart of the book came from what I can only call The Muse; in this case, a vision of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet-tough woman who somehow stirred my imagination to create Shawn Donahue, the woman who pulls protagonist Liam Dutra out of his loneliness and shares in his quest.
Liam’s real quest, his deepest yearning, is for connection--communion even-- with the landscape he lives in, including its hidden past. Shawn, I think, having grown up in this place that Liam has come to love, embodies that landscape: physically, culturally, even spiritually. In this, she turned out to be crucial to the story, crucial to Liam’s ongoing journey from solitude into engagement.
Subsequent drafts-- I was using the computer by now-- showed me how hard it could be to write a mystery novel. Changing one small aspect of a character or shifting one event slightly in time might cause a narrative to slide off its foundation and into a horrible abyss. There were some desperate times when I wanted to pull out my hair, rip up the pages, delete all the files; just quit...
But I kept going, thinking and stewing, scrawling notes to myself, shuffling the plot and character details I had notated on blue index cards. Things began to fall into place.
Writing the book within the book-- Neal Donahue’s 1866 journal-- came later, in the winter. It was mostly a pleasure, with Donahue’s voice often flowing clearly and without much effort onto the page. The historical research was enjoyable too; I still carry fond memories of old books, window-focused sunlight, and quiet investigations at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
First—and second, third, and fourth—readers kicked my butt in good ways, inspiring further changes and rewrites.
In hindsight, and with three more books in the series written now, I see COMPASS as a dark, dense, and sometimes lonely woodland of a book, with sunlight and water --and love-- offering redemption and hope. ( A few drafts in, I noticed the way some kind of water-- rain, stream, lake-- tended to be part of the scene whenever Shawn was around.)
Another thing I’d like to say is that in writing COMPASS I wanted to offer homage to the writers who inspired me: John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, Robert B. Parker, Raymond Chandler; Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau. But I also worked hard to find my own voice, and particularly, to honor the northern New England landscape and the way people live, and have lived, in and upon it.

The second book of the series, THE HAWK OF THE INTERVALE was much easier to write; indeed the first two drafts were often intense and instantaneous in the way they came to me. Sometimes I’d have multiple scenes and conversations unfolding simultaneously in my imagination while I was out on long autumn trail runs. I’d run home and feverishly write things exactly the way they had come to me. It was exhilarating beyond belief, and only slightly exhausting.
HAWK allowed me to discover more about Liam and Shawn’s characters, and to deepen their relationship. Virgil, the Abenaki fisherman and poet who is at the center of Liam’s quest, allowed my poetic side to speak freely. And the Gloucester part of the story was a very satisfying way to immerse myself in my own roots and some haunting childhood memories. The prologue, with Virgil presenting his testament in a dream, came from an actual dream I had; Liam’s meetings with Ferrigno echo actual experiences that I had as a teenager in Gloucester, tracing the steps of my hero, the poet Charles Olson.
While COMPASS lingers in my writer’s memory as a sometimes dark and shadowed book, thinking back on HAWK summons up for me a sense of spaciousness, of clear horizons. Even the manuscript itself seems lighter, with more blank space on the pages!

I’ll add my thoughts about the third book at another time.

-KMB

February: Mystery Series Author Event and a. minor's Arty Party

It looks to be a fun and busy February!

First off, I'm excited to announce my upcoming author event/reading/ book-signing, Tuesday, February 16, 7 PM at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont. I'll be celebrating the publication of my Liam Dutra Mystery series with readings from COMPASS,WATER,STONE AND TIME and the other books in the series. I'll also be talking about the process of writing fiction inspired by the power of place--landscape, culture, nature, history. I look forward to answering questions, too!





To visit Bear Pond Books on-line:


http://www.bearpondbooks.com/




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Artist a. minor is presenting a party featuring her dynamic live video art at the Lamb Abbey in Montpelier, Vermont on Saturday, February 13 from 7-10 PM (FREE admission), and I will be providing quiet live ambient textural music to accompany the visuals.
a. minor's work, often inspired by the light and rhythm of ancient Mayan textiles, is a wonder to behold. I'm really looking forward to this event!



---------------------
Also, my exhibit of acrylic paintings, LIMINAL HORIZONS, continues at THE SHOE HORN in Montpelier through February.
Thanks again for reading, looking, listening!
-kmb

Downloads Available Now

I'm excited to announce that some of my long-form ambient compositions are now available for purchase as loss-less downloads.

Ending 2009

(Winter Mountain and Lake-- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2009)

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In ancient Greek myth, the Halcyon Days were those surrounding the winter solstice: a period when calm seas allowed the island-dwelling kingfisher to lay her eggs; a period of quiet and well-being, a time for contemplation of new possibilities.

While we might not always experience that sense of calm at this time of year, I would like to summon a bit of it for just a moment while I offer my deep thanks to all of you have looked at, read, and listened to my work this year; who have come to shows, readings, performances, exhibits; who have purchased books or art; have supported me in other ways too many to detail. You have helped me to have an exciting 2009! Again, my deepest thanks to all of you.

I've some interesting things on the horizon for early 2010, including another art exhibit, an author event for my series of New England mystery novels, and a run of Fridays with Rusty Romance at Langdon Street Cafe here in Montpelier, Vermont.

Until then, happy holidays and a great new year to all!

Solstice Horizons

SOLSTICE HORIZONS


A meditative space with live music and images
to contemplate and welcome the returning light
at the winter solstice



Monday, December 21
12 Noon to 1 PM

Bethany Church’s Working Chapel
Montpelier, Vermont


Free and open to the public

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At the winter solstice we mark the return of —in the outer world of sky, stars, planets — the sun’s light in a dark season. We might also find, in any time, at any moment, the experience of returning light within ourselves.

These sounds, images, and words are offered as a quiet meditation upon that returning light, within us and without. Please feel free to listen, to look; to close your eyes and follow your own thoughts and images as they rise and fall, come and go.

While this event has a beginning and ending in time, it is also meant to be complete in any moment or section, to be experienced quietly within your own frame of time and attention.

-KMB

New Music from 2009 Available on CD-R

FIRST LIGHT ON DARK WATERS (New Music for Steel Guitar)

Also Available:
MORNING LAKE REFLECTING SKY

My two long, ambient/ textural works for 2009 are available on audio CD-R via mail order now. The discs are 10 dollars each, plus 2.50 for shipping. (If you buy both, I'll throw in a surprise bonus!)

Morning Light and Water, Ogunquit, Maine

(November Morning, Ogunquit- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and graphite on paper, 2009)

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Another one inspired by a long walk on the beach in Maine two days after Thanksgiving,

Ogunquit, Late November

(Ogunquit, Late November-
painting by Kevin Macneil Brown.
watercolor and graphite on paper, 2009]
------------------------------------

I made this painting in the days following a long walk on the beach at Ogunquit. I was inspired by the low light on water and the ever-changing skies of a late autumn morning on the Maine coast.

Between Waters Exhibition Continues Through December, 2009

My exhibition of Lake Champlain paintings will continue through December, upstairs at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vermont.

Just Before Winter (Monoprint Series)

Summoning
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Rising

----------------------------------------------------

Migration

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Beneath the Idea of Home

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(Monoprints by Kevin Macneil Brown, gouache on paper, 2009)

These four prints were made in a single morning, using abandoned gouache, water, and scrap papers. Images were made by manually overlaying and pressing paint and papers in various ways.

Although this occurred on a morning in spring, the images immediately told me a story about late fall; I named each piece as quickly as I made it.

-kmb

Between Waters Live

(October Beach 1- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2009)

On Monday, November 9, at 7 pm in the Hayes Room at the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vermont, I'll be presenting a program entitled BETWEEN WATERS: LAKE CHAMPLAIN MEDITATIONS AND INSPIRATIONS.

This will be an evening combining readings of my poetry and prose with live creation/ performance of ambient music, and a showing of visual art. The works presented in BETWEEN WATERS, inspired by the lake, explore natural and cultural history, evoking power of place and the transformational energies of nature, time, and landscape.

Concurrent with this event, my Lake Champlain paintings will be on exhibit at the library throughout November and December.

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This past summer I had the chance to share my love for Lake Champlain in a video interview with Bridget Butler of Voices For The Lake at the Echo Lake Aquarium. Voices For The Lake is finding interesting and innovative ways to foster stewardship of the lake, honoring a mission to "Connect, Share, Affect." Here's their blog:

http://voicesblog.echovermont.org/

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September and October/ Harvest Report

(September, October- Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas board, 2007}

SEPTEMBER , OCTOBER

*
Long journey
Energy gathering
Small birds calling.

*
The rose that waits
to bloom until
after leaves have fallen.

- Kevin Macneil Brown

9/24/09

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HARVEST REPORT

Arriving at the season of falling leaves, colder air, and opening views, I can't stop thinking about my trip to Chickering Bog a few days ago. I rode my bike up into the hills on a perfect blue sky day. Along the way I was treated to the sight of a hunting harrier in September sun. For a good ten minutes I watched her low flight over pond, sedges, cornfield-- stealth maneuvers and random patterns-- the clear light of sky and water shining on her buff, white, and gray feathers. Later, I stashed the bike in the woods, and ran along mossy trails in pine-filtered light to the bog-- a fen actually: a small stretch of ancient open water surrounded -- and eventually to be covered by-- sedges and vegetation mat; the glug-glug of those waters and the hammering of a woodpecker the only nearby and discernible sounds.

As for my harvest, I'm excited to announce the publication of my mystery novel COMPASS, WATER,STONE AND TIME. It's the first of 5 novels I've written. The story was inspired by one place in particular, the old roads and trails of Irish Hill--running and exploring in those woods and meadows set my imagination in motion. You can sample-- and purchase-- the book here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/compass-water-stone-and-time/7648423

I've also recently finished a long ambient soundwork that I composed all through the spring and summer of 2009.You can listen to it and read about it by going to the post just previous to this one. (It's available on CD in a limited edition version with a selection of prints; to purchase a copy, contact liminaleditions@gmail.com).

Now, looking forward to further adventures, along with cider donuts, snow geese, and the silver light of autumn sky and water.....

Soundwork: Morning Lake Reflecting Sky

Morning Lake Reflecting Sky ( Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

acrylic on canvas, 2009)

Going to Lake Champlain in the contemplative quiet of early morning, I have found that water and sky give off a compelling sense of power and mystery. Fog, breaking and changing sunlight; the muffled sounds of birds, waves, oars, and distant boat engines all add to the softly resonant soundscape, shorescape, skyscape.
Over the spring and summer of 2009 I made this long soundwork to evoke for myself and others the moods and feelings I’ve found in contemplating the morning lake.
This piece is designed to move very slowly; to vibrate in subtle ways and conjure the sounds, sights, and textures of a time and place where water, light, listening, and perception might come quietly together.

-KMB