Book Launch Event for SNOW-DARK CROSSING

I am excited to announce the official launch event for my latest mystorical novel, SNOW-DARK CROSSING, on May 1st at the beautiful Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vermont.

 Meanwhile, the book is available for purchase at amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Dark-Crossing-Kevin-Macneil-Brown/dp/1497336902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397904177&sr=8-1&keywords=snow-dark+crossing

Would you like to start reading now? Here's a short excerpt:

                                                                Chapter One

            I do my best to believe, in the light and shadow of what I came to know about Elaine Bliss and her quest, that the sounds of March snow-melt trickling from slate hills, of red-winged blackbirds echoing their hollow and rattling arrival calls from the marshy thicket, were the last things she took notice of as she lay—cold, in shock, and bleeding out—on wet sedges. That as she took her final breaths, those sounds called her to remember only the true meaning of her life and work, and replaced all fear and all thoughts of the cruelty of what had been done to her.

            In my best moments I think these things and hold to them. Perhaps it’s because I have to.

***

            I was home for the evening when Vermont State Police Lieutenant Timothy Handler called.  It was Shawn who went for the phone, moving slowly toward the counter, her pregnant belly plowing through the warm and cozy kitchen air like a filled-up sail in front of her. We’d just had some of her slow-simmered chili for supper, and the beef and spice and hot pepper aromas were still strong, mixing with the fresh spring smells of mid-April mud and new green growth that came in through the open kitchen window.

             “Hello,” Shawn said into the receiver of my old black bakelite rotary phone. I caught her quick frown, a narrowing of her mocha-colored eyes as she listened to the caller.

             “Sure, he’s here,” she said, pushing dark curls away from her forehead, looking over at me. “It’s Handler…” The troubled look was still clouding her face as she passed the phone to me.

            Now I understood the reason for the frown. Handler calling our home was a reminder to both of us of some dark and difficult things, things that all too often came back to us, and sometimes stole a good night’s sleep. Of memories we hoped might somehow go away forever, but that we feared never would.

             “This is Liam,” I said.

            “Are you still teaching history at that prep school, Dutra?”

            Hearing Handler’s voice again, I could almost see his coiled energy and distracted manner, the tense light of his slate-colored eyes. I imagined I could see his relentless pen-clicking, the way he gulped hot coffee without seeming to taste it, to even know it existed.

            “Part time. Yes.”

            “Excellent. That means we can probably pay you. We’ll call it an expert consultant’s fee. Listen Dutra, what I’ve got is a research project for you. Nothing dangerous to you. It’s just that we have a possible homicide case that involves a University of Vermont history professor, and I’m thinking you might be able to give us some background, see if what she was working on, some of her research, might have any connection to her death.”

            “Okay,” I said, “I’m listening…”

            “It’s some stuff she seemed to be looking into, happened in the 1920s. Kind of things that you don’t necessarily think about when you think about Vermont, especially back then…”      I remembered now I had heard mention of her death on the news, with very few details given beyond her connection to the university, UVM. That there might be something Handler thought I could help dig up got my curiosity stirred, of course. And if anybody knew how much I could get stirred up by the power of things that had happened in the past, it would be Handler.

           And Shawn, too, who was seven months pregnant, and sipping herb tea now at the table beside me, listening in.

            Just a few days back we’d been talking about how peaceful and settled and steady our lives had become lately, and about how much we appreciated this feeling.

            Despite that, I found myself taking the bait that Handler put out. I wanted to know more about this strange story, whatever it might be… I pushed away the little waves of apprehension that I felt rising inside me. I told Handler he could come by my office at school after my late-morning class the next day.

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

                                                            

            The next morning, all caffeinated up with dark roast coffee, and wearing shorts, fleece shirt, and running shoes, I left Shawn still snoring, and headed out the door.

            It’s a bit more than eleven miles from my house in Montpelier, Vermont to Granite Ledge, a boarding preparatory school where I teach American history to high school students. This spring I had taken to running the distance to work once a week, arranging for rides home with Shawn in the afternoons. A river fog hung blue-gray over the Winooski River, rising and engulfing my little white cape house and its neighbors as I loped down the hilly street. The maples lining the street were past bud-break now, I noticed. Their fresh, fragile green and russet, muted by the fog, had a slick, wet sheen.  At the bottom of the hill, my street met the main route into town. Here I ran easily, at warm-up pace, along the flat pavement for a while, beginning to sweat by the time I reached the old iron truss bridge that crossed the river and led to long Barre Street, with its neighborhood lined with railroad tracks. From the fog rose the rectangular bulks of the big old sheds that had once housed a busy industry cutting and carving local granite, much of it quarried from the hills around Barre, Montpelier’s twin city, six miles to the east. A few of the old sheds along the river had been renewed and renovated, converted to apartment and office buildings. But most of the long industrial buildings were battered and empty now, abandoned time-and-weather-worn hulks.

            I sometimes felt I could sense ghosts of the past here, especially on quiet mornings like this. I could almost hear the ring of hammers and whine of the big rock saw, the roar and rumble of trains that used to transport raw material and finished product, but now don't come through here anymore.   Fully warmed up now, picking up my pace, I reached the end of Barre Street and turned onto Montpelier’s Main Street. The wood and brick downtown buildings were quiet in the grayness, a few people out starting their day, carrying coffee mugs, briefcases, cell phones. Just outside of the downtown, I slipped between two quiet backyards on a residential street, headed up a switchback deer path that made a good shortcut, through second-growth thicket, to the steep climb of the dirt road headed north. I was feeling strong and fast this spring, a benefit gained from a winter of long snowshoe runs on hilly trails. Free of snowshoes and winter layers of clothing lately, I was feeling light-- unfettered and invincible—totally in the zone.   

( excerpt from SNOW-DARK CROSSING by Kevin Macneil Brown)

April Meditations, Morning

April Meditations- Photographs by Kevin Macneil Brown, 4/6/2014

Snow-Dark Crossing: New Book Coming Soon.

I am excited to announce that  my newest Liam Dutra New England Mystery, SNOW-DARK CROSSING, will be out in late April!

Here is the Author's Note, which gives a sense of where this book came from:


   In common with my other six novels, Snow-Dark Crossing was born when my own memories, imaginings, and explorations of certain places crossed paths with historical writings that showed up—fortuitously—on my horizon.

            In the case of this book, there were two dominant places: the Barre Street/Granite Street neighborhood of Montpelier, Vermont, with its vestiges of the once-strong granite industry, and the rural River Road area along the Winooski, just outside of town. (This latter area also haunts much of Highway In The Blood.)

            As for the history: in my first year of work as library assistant at Montpelier’s Main Street Middle School, I came across on our shelves a book by Maudeen Neill entitled Fiery Crosses In The Green Mountains (Greenhills, 1989.) The  accounts inside, in particular those of the occurrences at Saint Augustine’s Church in November of 1925, stayed with me,  eventually meeting  up with the story emerging from my imagination as I explored the aforementioned places. This led to further research, and a deepening story.

            While the events at St. Augustine’s really happened, there is no evidence, historical or anecdotal, that anything like the dark and depraved deeds described in this novel ever really took place along the River Road. But in writing mystorical fiction I have learned that it is crucial that I trust the story that arrives, and the voices that bring it to me.

                                                                            —KMB

I will be posting the first chapter soon--   I hope you will stay tuned!

A Way Beyond Words (some thoughts on writing)

"If the mind were constructed on optional lines and if a book could be read the same way as a painting is taken in by the eye, that is without the bother of working from left to right and without the absurdity of beginnings and ends, this would be the ideal way of appreciating a novel, for thus the author saw it at the beginning of its conception."
-Vladimir Nabokov  -THE ART OF LITERATURE AND COMMONSENSE

I bookmarked this passage when I first came across it in Nabokov’s LECTURES ON LITERATURE, because it resonated so fiercely with my own experience as a writer. I come back to it now, because I have somehow found myself in the position of making final edits on a soon-to-be-published book and also at the very start of a new book’s fresh and raw first draft.

 

Each of my novels has begun as a sort of yearning energy summoned from, it seems, the act of moving through certain places and feeling a sense of something powerful going on there in a simultaneous past and present.  This “yearning towards” may go on for a while—weeks or months--but then there seems always to come a time when things focus and the book suddenly appears to me whole and finished—I can feel the weight of it, see the words and spaces on the pages, understand absolutely in a way beyond words what the book has to say and transmit.

Ah, but then I have to write it.  That becomes the daily work, sometimes flowing and effortless, other times close to impossible. Each draft does seem to bring the book closer to that initial vision. And eventually, first readers’ and editor’s comments and suggestions will be taken and addressed in the light of that first apparition. Details may shift and change, but the book will, for better or worse, arrive at being itself: Paradoxically, words will accrue to transfer the wordless energies that inspired in the first place

All of this was clarified to me further yesterday, when I came across another passage in my reading, this time the story of the bell-stand carver in THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU ( Thomas Merton’s translation is the version I was reading.)

  Khing, a woodcarver, is asked the secret behind the beauty of the bell-stand he had carved. He explains that there is no secret, but that the wood itself—and his own focus on the “single thought of the bell-stand”--tuning out all distractions--was necessary to the outcome.  

 

 What Khing says next makes deep sense to me:

   “Then I went to the forest

    To see the trees in their own natural state.

   

     When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

     The bell stand appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

    

      All I had to do was to put forth my hand

      And begin.”

   I’ll be keeping these words in heart and mind as I explore the surprises of a first draft, as I ferret away at the fussy details of a final proof.  And I’ll do my best to keep my focus and desire on the original vision as it first appeared: clearly, beyond doubt.

       -KMB 

Winter's Edge-- One Last Painting

Toward Lost Ranger Peak, Winter Dawn

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2014.

              Only a few more days until spring, or so I hear. It has been a cold winter here in Vermont. I am almost out of the paint that has made up my winter palette, so that's pretty good timing, I think. Here's what will likely be my last finished painting for this winter. This is a view toward the Continental Divide, from Clark, Colorado, made from sketches done last December.

And now, with spring on the horizon, I'll be switching focus for a while, getting my newest book ready for publication in late April. I will be reporting further before long.-KMB

A Writer's Window

     I am far from the first to share the feeling that writing fiction can feel like a lonely pursuit at times. I am fortunate to have a few creative venues in my life, and I have learned that surrendering to the sustained alternate reality of writing a novel day after day can be fulfilling in a way that is opposite to the fulfillment that comes with, for example, performing music for an immediate audience. That said, when an appreciative letter or email from a reader comes along, it can really make my day. Such letters have let me know that I am on the right track, that what I feel resonating might indeed be transferred to resonate with another person as they read.  I can’t help but think of what John Cheever said so elegantly:  “The room where I work has a window looking into a wood, and I like to think that these earnest, loveable, and mysterious readers are in there.”

   

 A few years ago I experienced a moment when that window opened in another way. I had finished my first two novels, and though neither had been published yet, I had made some headway selling articles about running and outdoor exploration to magazines and newspapers. I was working as a record store manager in downtown Montpelier, Vermont at the time, and had just had a very personal essay about running, history, and memory in Gloucester, Massachusetts published in the magazine NEW ENGLAND RUNNER.   I was at work in the store one busy Saturday when a young woman and man walked in. The young man roamed the CD racks. But the young woman was obviously not interested in shopping for music. Instead, she stood in a quiet corner, reading a copy of NEW ENGLAND RUNNER—bought most likely at the sport store across the street. It was clear from her body language that she was utterly lost in what she was reading:  there was no page-flipping; her eyes stayed on the page; a focused intensity was visible on her face. Somehow, I knew exactly which article she was reading.

  I helped some customers. A few minutes later I walked past the young woman, who was still reading quietly. Of course--and I will admit that it felt invasive to do so-- I could not stop myself from taking a very quick glance at the page open in her hands. Yes, she was reading the Gloucester article. I felt a little chill as I went on to greet another customer.

  

  It might be that famous authors get used to seeing their words read by strangers in public places.  But for me it felt like I had received something sacred--experiencing through outward signs that my words could be read deeply.  Though part of me still needs to make peace with my actions in sneaking that glance, the larger part remains grateful for what I received that day.

  Now, with plans to delve into a new first draft on the horizon, along with final edits on a novel that will be out in the spring, it is almost time to sit down again with the screen and  page before me.  Also before me will be windows that look into the woods, toward those mysterious, welcoming readers in there, out there, and beyond. 

-KMB

From a Journey, Part Two: Colorado Watercolors

     MOUNT ZIRKEL WILDERNESS FROM CLARK, COLORADO, WINTER LIGHT AND SHADOW.

     BIG AGNES MOUNTAIN AND MOUNT ZIRKEL FROM CLARK, COLORADO.

       Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2014.

Moving through this winter, I have been working from my Colorado sketchbooks to make some finished watercolor paintings. I remain deeply haunted and awed by the shapes, colors, and textures of the mountains in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area, along the west side of the Continental Divide, up near the Wyoming border.
Here are two paintings made at home in Vermont, working from pencil sketches I did while on a snowy trail run near Vista Verde Ranch in December.-KMB

From a Journey: Colorado Sketchbook

I spent the winter holidays with family in the mountains of Colorado, up near the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness.
I sketched and painted every day, blissed and excited by the scale and surprise of this incredible landscape. Some days the winter sun warmed me-- I felt like I was outside in the spring; other days a cold wind in clear mountain air kept my  hands and brushes from making any but the broadest of gestures and strokes: ELK RIVER MEDITATION, the calligraph at the bottom of the page, was created with watercolors mixed with snow, using pine cones and spruce needles as brushes.-KMB

Sketchbook pages by Kevin Macneil Brown, December 2013.

December Light (watercolor painting)

DECEMBER LIGHT- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2013.

 Today is the winter solstice in this northern hemisphere, the beginning of returning light. As this sacred and powerful time unfolds, I want to take the time to say thank you to all who have shared in my music, art, and words, and to wish you all the best in the days at hand and ahead.

It has been a busy autumn-- great painting light, lots of music. In early December I finished a final draft of the fourth Liam Dutra New England  mystery novel, SNOW- DARK CROSSING. It goes back to the editor in January, and should be out in April. For now I am taking a break from focused writing work, instead enjoying the luxury of reading for pleasure in the mornings. 

Again, best wishes to all; I'll leave you with this new winter solstice poem:   

In cold terrain, from winter rock,

enclosed and protected

by bare branch, bending hemlock

the wellspring rises,

breaks the hollow song of ice:

Water with the clarity of light.

 the pulsing of all deeper life

 revealed, renewed, free-flowing,

 centered;

In December darkness,

stillness entered.

-Kevin Macneil Brown, December 2013.

Lake Champlain, Winter Light (watercolor painting.)

LAKE CHAMPLAIN, WINTER LIGHT

painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2013.

Iced in at home on the winter solstice, I decided to paint a scene from a remembered December day two years ago, when I walked the shore at Burlington from Oakledge to Perkins Pier in cold and changing afternoon light.-KMB

Big Sky Music

November is big sky season  here in Vermont. This composition from a few years back is inspired by the November horizon, the colors and textures of that open sky after autumn leaves have fallen. It was made with steel guitar and tuned glass bowls.

CHROMA HORIZON II is one of six of my compositions that can be heard in the soundtrack to FREEDOM AND UNITY: THE VERMONT MOVIE. I am honored to be part of this amazing project that goes deep into the place that I call home:

http://thevermontmovie.com/

DAWN, WINOOSKI RIVER ( painting and poem)

DAWN, WINOOSKI RIVER - painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, October 2013.

Old moon, shining, sets.

The opposite sky is steeped in the luminous

blood of new roses.

Last leaves shimmer in hard darkness.

Cold wind, slicing, Pleistoscene

finds long-lost dreams

of flint, fog, footpath;

dark spruce and blue-black

homeward waters.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

October (watercolor painting)

OCTOBER- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and graphite on paper, 2013.

Seven Randomly Chosen Sunrises

Sandpiper Summer

 Late summer now, and it seems that each of my running journeys makes its way to a shore: hard-packed mud or pebbled bar along the Winooski River; sandy urban beaches along Lake Champlain at Burlington. And in these places I keep meeting up with the sandpiper—that fleet, long-legged shorebird with plumage the pale, summer-washed gray and sandy dun of distant ocean beaches, that pealing ripple of song as the bird runs, feet wet, wings lifted up and held back, along the light-silvered shore.

 

 I’ve come to feel a connection with the sandpiper this summer. I, too, have been solitary and shore-exploring, drawn to liminal places: meetings of water, land, moving light.

And as the summer reaches fullness and ripening, I feel the sense of something finished, of movement on— no, toward— a different horizon.

 

  The time alone has been time well-spent—long runs for meditation, contemplation, motion, memory. This has fed the work I’ve made: the long sound art composition THE HARBOR AT DAWN, the series of Lake Champlain watercolor paintings that began with sketches made beginning last summer and that I finished this week. I feel myself carrying a sense of completion; of deep, deep feelings recognized, engaged with, and acted upon-- with focus and discipline; with patience, effort, and love.

 Also, all that time for reading. Just enough band practices, gigs, shifts at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, and dinners with Robin to keep me from total isolation. I am grateful to have gone deep this summer. I have come out different.

 There is still a sense of uncertainty about major things ahead—domicile in particular. But the school year begins anew in less than two weeks, and I look forward to the intensity of middle school energy. There are lots of gigs on the near horizon, and singing and playing steel guitar with the great musicians I have the privilege to work with is an utter joy. And my creative decks are cleared for beginning draft three of Dutra mystery novel number 4, with first-readers’ notes compiled and partially contemplated—ready to roll sometime in the fall.

  Back now, to that late-summer sandpiper, running on hard-packed sand alongside blue-green water. The breaking white of small waves;  a hazed August sky above.  A ringing call rises, sounding above the white noise of those waves. The shorebird runs, wings swept back, held high, now lifting, lifting--lifted…

  

 Journal entry and watercolor sketch by KMB, August 2013.

Ask the Morning

ASK THE MORNING, 1, 2, and 3 
Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown watercolor on paper, Summer 2013.

The idea behind the ASK THE MORNING series is simple: Drink some coffee, do some morning reading and contemplation. Gather paint, paper, water, brushes. Go outside and begin painting, going along with whatever wants to arrive.- KMB

Eastern Sky, 5:45 AM, 7/21/13

   Eastern Sky, 5:45 AM, 7/21/13.

     Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper

This morning's dawn sky was worth the early coffee. No camera, so I had to paint it!

-KMB

the harbor at dawn (new music)

In the past few days I have been putting finishing touches on a new long-form soundwork composition entitled the harbor at dawn.
This, the first section, was made with steel guitar, Lexicon Jam Man (for long delay/repeats/layering), and lap top. I was thinking of the steel guitar as a string ensemble, and I sought to find and share the quiet energies of a shoreline dawn.
The complete work will be released in August. Thanks for listening!

-KMB

Hawk on a Hill

 From all the way across the river, in the hazy green/gold  light of a June evening, a stirring sight and sound: High, high on the ridge above Hill Street, from a bare tree above lush green woods, lone sharp-shinned hawk calling, a  slow keer-keer-keer.

 That sound, I think, should not be heard so clearly across such distance; but the elevation/altitude seems to have set it loose to ring and echo.

 Now, a week later, I find that there is something in this event that has stayed with me, surfacing in my deepest meditations, my contemplations of all that is possible.

     -Journal entry and watercolor sketch by kmb, June 2013.

rust/rose/violet- music and watercolor sketch

                    A soundscape/color-field piece for  steel guitar, looping device, and laptop. As with last summer's VIRIDIAN WAVES, the idea was to create a meditation on color/light rendered in sound.The accompanying watercolor sketch was made while I listened to the final mix. -KMB


                           

Eastern Sky, 5:40 AM, 5/19/13 (watercolor painting.)

                                                   Eastern Sky, 5:40  AM, 5/19/13 
                                  painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper.

 Tired from a week busy with music and more, I almost slept in this Sunday morning. But birdsong and a glimpse of the sky pulled me out of bed to paint.  Even before the coffee was ready I was outside in the cool morning, paint, brushes, water, and paper ready. I worked very quickly, mixing from a three-color palette-- paint was flying everywhere. When I was finished, the coffee was ready.
                                                                                            -KMB

from LIGHTFALL: POEMS

Bluets below

Broadwings above

The journey flowing

southeast with wind in spruce

and coltsfoot open

mud-flecked gold

my prayer flag.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

from LIGHTFALL: POEMS:

http://www.amazon.com/Lightfall-poems-Kevin-Macneil-Brown/dp/1483981436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366542286&sr=8-1&keywords=LIGHTFALL+POEMS

Mountains, Sky, Water; Early Spring.

                
Mountains, Sky, Water--Early Spring-   Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
                   watercolor on paper, 2013.

Here is my first painting for this spring. My thoughts and energies have been spending a lot of time in the season's marge--contrast, color, shadow, light.

Sonic Tenebrae

     
   Photograph by  kmb.

Secret Shadowed Geographies of the Triple-neck Steel Guitar.

February has been a good month for exploring the joys of playing triple-neck steel guitar, using all three necks-- in C6, A6, and E13 tunings.
The two pieces here could not be further apart in mood and style, yet were made using the same instrument,  recorded only days apart.
I have found it exciting to feel the harmonic possibilites of all three necks-- extended chords and lovely dissonances.
This first piece is an improvisation recorded in one pass, and then mixed and sound-smeared right away, to keep a unity of mood and intent:

This next is a straight-forward tribute to my favorite western swing steel player, Noel Boggs, who played with Bob Wills, Space Cooley, and others in the 40s and 50s: As you can hear, the steel guitar has many sounds and moods to express! -KMB

Black River, White Pines, Winter 1974 : Improv. for Dobro and Nashville-tuned guitar.

This early-morning improv. for Dobro and Nashville-tuned acoustic guitar was made in one take. It stirred up the memory of a certain time and place, the story and mood that was there...

And then we were awake...

 

And then we were awake in a world that was, if not new, certainly noticeably changed.

We began to notice the elegant symmetries of shapes and shadows in the motions of water, sky, and landforms. We heard all around us, as the sky filled, the music of migration, its massive vibration.

 In our hearts we began to know just how everything pulsed in waves of delight-- crest and trough, crest and trough; That every locus of change was pure opportunity:  for reflection, communion, renewal, and light.

                                                                -Kevin Macneil Brown

 

My Last Song for 2012

Started this in August, finished it today. Voice, guitar, dobro-- my last song for 2012.

-KMB

CALLS MY HEART HOMEWARD

CALLS MY HEART HOMEWARD is a gathering of the shorter contemplative compositions I created during 2012. These pieces are inspired by the textures, colors, and feelings I have found in my journeys through and into New England landscape and memory.

THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER- Book Trailer

In Autumn the Dark Shapes of Distant Mountains...

    A heart-piercing autumnal yearning and memory came from the sight, at Kents Corner beneath pewter sky, of that almost-bare maple tree with its sparse scrim of red leaves; the 1800s white house and, beyond its dooryard, the eastern uplands at the far edge of rolling hills and farmlands…
   How many ways will I need to write around and about and into this scene?  Will I ever get to the heart of the ancient homesick joy that it stirs inside me, the invisible distant horizon that holds the far-away White Mountains I once called home and then the shimmering Gulf of Maine beyond? -KMB

In October...( Music and Images)

A Book's Beginnings: thoughts on THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER.

    I remember the exact moment that THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER, my sixth novel, was born. I was running in the woods on a November afternoon in Vermont. The air was cool-- almost cold-- and smelled of evergreen and tannin. The long shadows of pines were intersticed with reaches of wan, hollow, almost–winter New England sunlight.

    As I ran, two visions appeared in my mind’s eye-- simultaneously, as I remember it. I saw the image of a man sitting alone in a room inside a cold, dark, stone tower. He was looking out a window and across the broad expanse of Lake Champlain, at the patterned skeins of late autumn sunlight that moved and shimmered on the water.

  The other image that came was that of a book… a small book, to my surprise, full of white space around blocks of text, of stories written in many voices.

   I knew that the book would tell me who the man in the tower was. And I knew that I would have to write the book.

    

     Those who have read my other books, my poems, who have seen my paintings and listened to the music I compose, will know about my fascination with the nature, history, geology, and PRESENCE of Lake Champlain—in particular the shoreline and waters  of Burlington Bay. This future book, I knew in the moment of its apparition, would have this locus itself as a main character.

      I had, that fall, just finished reading John Cowper Powys’ A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE, and that novel was still looming large --it is, after all, more than 1,000 pages long-- in my thoughts. I was captured by its sense of place, of mystery, of intersecting lives. I suppose, then, that I was being called to write my own version of a book like that. (I am still, however, a bit puzzled that it would appear to me as such a small volume…)

     

I came home from my run that November afternoon and began writing. I went on to write about 80 pages and an outline over the rest of the month and through December. (This is, so far, the only time I have ever committed to an extended stretch of writing in the afternoons—I am most definitely a morning writer!)

   I didn’t come back to the manuscript until the following spring and summer, when I finished a first draft-- also accruing, along the way, a notebook full of the results of historical research.  Over the next two years I kept writing, editing, and revising, finishing an 8^th--and final-- draft in the summer of 2012.

   

     THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER shows some traces of the mystery/detective genre, but I have no doubt that it is ultimately a strange and not easily categorized novel.  I accept this, knowing that in writing this book I have done everything I can to get to the heart of my own perceptions of --and connections to-- the mystery and power of the lake and shoreline that inspired it.

 

                                                                                   -KMB

 

  You can order  THE LAKE OF LIVING WATER  here:
               
http://www.lulu.com/shop/kevin-macneil-brown/the-lake-of-living-water/paperback/product-20419011.html

Also available in Kindle edition:
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Lake-Living-Water-ebook/dp/B009JJQZMA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349301457&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lake+of+living+water

in october mist, begin a journey (music for steel guitar)

A new composition, made today, on a rainy autumn morning. I recorded in one take on a triple-neck steel guitar, playing across all three necks (C6, A6, E13). Afterward, I spent an hour processing the recording, until I had a sound painting that conveyed the energies I wanted to express. -KMB, 9/30/12

River, September

                                 Winooski River Bend, September- photograph by kmb.

September morning, on a drifting

run, I followed River:

 

  wellspring

   root

   branches.

 

 

My eyes and heart were caught

by slow journeys of mist

wending north-westward.

 

At Cold-Stone Inlet

I found my boat

 

and put in.

 

Now I am

unmoored and fully blessed.


   - Kevin Macneil Brown

     

Winooski River, September

Winooski River Bend, September- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, September 2012.

In the morning, the bell-and-buoy

voices of birds

to mark a sky channel.

 

And then, after lift

of silver fog,

a stillness.

 

In trees, in grass,

the green of growth

held in sere suspension.

 

This is September, when the river sheens and mirrors,

 reflecting the ripeness of journeys fulfilled,

 in depths, in shallows, beyond shadowed bend.

     

 -Kevin Macneil Brown

new music: viridian

VIRIDIAN WAVES was conceived as a half hour immersion in overlapping waves of sound color-- deep greens, blues, rust, and white light.. The piece has its source in a single steel guitar improvisation recorded at Christ Episcopal Church in Montpelier, Vermont in June 2012. Subsequent reworking of this material preserved the tonality, harmonic motion, and proportions of the improvisation, while exploring spatial, timbral, and temporal transformations. - kmb

island horizon- for marsden hartley (painting.)

ISLAND HORIZON- FOR MARSDEN HARTLEY- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and gouache on paper, 2012.

high summer meditations (poem and painting.)

Meditation, High Summer (For Thomas Merton) -painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and gouache on paper, July 2012.


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

Past dry creek-bed

in dark hemlock-shadowed
summer woods

Parabola
of hermit thrush song
spilling
into rill of
amost-silence

Now to compass

an infinity

No longer enclosed within
muffled greenwood
echo

But instead

Streaks of quicksilver
to stir and shard
the rust-blood
heart of this morning.

 -Kevin Macneil Brown

from dawn to dusk, the longest days...(new paintings.)

Woodland Map, Summer Solstice; Dusk Journey, Summer Solstice. Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper(s), June 2012

christ church dark skies almost rain ( art walk improv.)

At the Montpelier Art Walk opening for my art exhibit at Christ Church, I had some wonderful conversations, many of them turning toward water and memory. When people got curious about the steel guitar in the corner, I played some soundscapes for them. I think the shared watery remembrances got into the music. 

Art Exhibit in Montpelier, Vermont, June 2012

Kevin Macneil Brown will exhibit a selection of paintings in watercolor and acrylic at the Christ Episcopal Foyer in the Parish House, Montpelier, Vermont, from June 8 through the end of the month. An opening reception will be held during Montpelier Art Walk, Friday, June 8, from 5 – 7:30 PM, with the artist presenting original music/ sound art to accompany the images.

Kevin Macneil Brown makes art inspired by the revelations and mysteries of shorelines and mountains in New England light. “I spend a lot of time outdoors in nature, in motion and meditation,” Brown says, “and the layers of the landscape, of water and landforms, of a perceived past and present, come alive with something that I just need to explore and convey.”

In particular, the changing waters and mountainous horizons of Lake Champlain offer a deep connection and communion, and Brown engages with those energies in visual art, writing, and musical composition.

The exhibit space will be open Mondays through Thursdays, 10-5.

Depth of Place: Music and Art (Video)

New Music: DEPTH OF PLACE & THE INNER HARBOR

I am in love with changing light, with the colors, textures, and resonances of sky, water, and landforms. Something inside me vibrates when I experience these things. That's why I make this music. -KMB

Coming Soon: DEPTH OF PLACE AND THE INNER HARBOR

My new collection of contemplative compositions and soundworks will be available in April

DEPTH OF PLACE AND THE INNER HARBOR is a collection of recent music inspired by sense of place: by light and water, by liminal horizons and quiet journeys.

Here is some video capturing part of a recording session for the composition "Depth of Place"-- tracking steel guitar and live looping:

DEPTH OF PLACE AND THE INNER HARBOR will be available for download in a variety of digital formats, and also in a limited edition hand-packaged CD-R version.

-KMB

Secret Shores, Spring Horizons

SECRET SHORE 1, 2, and 3--paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2012

Craving a new season's light on familiar waters, for a few weeks in late winter I tuned my palette to reflect and evoke something between memory and new horizons.

-KMB

Dawn Crossings (watercolors)

DAWN CROSSING 1, DAWN CROSSING 2- Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, February, 2012

Running Deep

I'm excited to announce the publication of my new book, RUNNING DEEP: MOVING MEDITATIONS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND PLACE, TIME, AND MEMORY.
Inspired by my journeys through the New England landscape, it's a collection of essays exploring distance running as a way to discovering a sense of place, self, and transcendence.
For a while I have been wanting to gather these pieces previously published in magazines and newspapers. I decided to release the book in the heart of the long New England winter, hoping it might come at a good time to inspire other runners!
You can find the book-- and read a bit of it-- here:



The Kindle Edition is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Running-Deep-Meditations-Through-ebook/dp/B0078F0K6E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331604765&sr=8-1

Eastern Uplands, Winter Morning (for Imbolc)

Eastern Uplands, Winter Morning- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper

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Late-winter morning
spent out mapping
the infinite resonance/distance
between

strong blue shadows,
burgeoning light.

-kmb