North Reading Community Coffee House - April Newsletter

 

 (view of Boston skyline from Peters Hill at the Arnold Arboretum)

Hi everyone,

Thank you to the folks who came out to see the Sweet Janes and the Jimmy Tingle shows earlier this month. They were a blast. Just a lot of fun and a lot of laughter. It's nice to connect with people that way.

This Friday I will be performing a show with Mark Bishop Evans at the North Reading Community Coffee House. This is a great listening space, and I look forward to being able to play a bunch of my songs - some newer and some I haven't played in awhile! Mark has moved to Arizona, and is back in the Northeast for a short tour; it will be nice to hear his originals again. And we have Mary Ann McAllister as a special guest opener.

All the info is below! As always, thank you for your interest and support!

:) Kirsten

Upcoming Shows

   

Friday, April 26

Kirsten solo

North Reading Community Coffee House

Flint Memorial Library

7 - 9:30 p.m.
North Reading, MA

 

This show is a co-bill with fine songwriter Mark Bishop Evans. We'll each do some solo songs, and then share the stage for a song swap. I hope to debut a couple of new things I have been working on. The suggested donation is $15 and there will be goodies for sale.

 

For shows further in the future, please visit my website!

 

Creative Musings

One of my biggest challenges when creating is keeping myself from editing right away, as I am first writing something new. I have to constantly remind myself to ignore my inner editor, and just get something down on the page. The first line doesn't have to be perfect before I go on to the second. Nor does the second line, before I move on to the third. And etc. I don't need a perfect chorus before I try to write the second verse. 

If I succumb to the editing temptation when I have a new idea, I make little to no progress, and the songwriting process lags. Whereas if I turn off my inner perfectionist and just write, at least I will have some structure of a song, some story, some imagery, some words I can then go back and play with, refine, and yes - edit. 

I have been reminded by more than one person lately that in The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron tells us we shouldn't compare our beginning work with someone else's finished work. And I would also say, we shouldn't shouldn't try to make our first drafts as good as our own previous finished work. We need to remember that creating is a process, and when when working with a new idea, the most important thing is to get words on a page - or paint on the canvas, or steps in the dance, and so on. :)

Good Stuff

Tim and I decided to explore the Arnold Arboretum this past weekend. We climbed Peters Hill (photo at top of this newsletter), and walked among the huge fir trees, which felt to me like a magical fairy tale land. And we stopped and looked at all the different trees along our pathway, each native to a different place in the world. Tim hadn't been to the Arboretum in a long time, and if I was ever there it was when I was a child, and I have no memory of that visit, so it was like discovering a brand new place. If you think you might like a museum of trees, this is the place to go!