Dear Friends,
Ten years ago I began a book called A Thousand Points of Darkness, the story of a tortured executive in the Corporate United States of America who cannot follow through with a ruthless business decision and trades his identity to become a drug worshipper. It's gone through many lives. One friend of mine read a version and said "It's a good book that could have been a great book."
That hurt.
So I worked on it. And worked. And worked.
I'm at the point now where, at long last, I'm ready to call it "done." But before I do, I have a decision to make, and you can help me.
One of my choices is to send the book to Kirkus Discoveries for a review. Kirkus is a huge reviewer in the industry and generally only reviews industry-produced books. Kirkus Discoveries was set up to give self-publishers like me access, but for a price: $415. Lest you think this is a scam, rest assured that a good [...]
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Hi, Musicfriends!
Remember the Wipes? World's best cover band? Years of benefit concerts to support the Grant Park Cooperative Preschool?
Well, the Wipes hung it up last spring. Most of us no longer have any connection to the school, and we decided it was time to let other folks with kids there step up and become the Wipes.
But guess what? The people in the band wanted to keep playing together. So we kept meeting, and we changed our name. We're now "Patience Grasshopper." A lot like the band you love.
And we have TWO gigs coming in a couple of weeks. First, we'll be playing at the Summer Shade Festival in Grant Park. We open the festival, playing at the Americana Stage at 12:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, August 27th. This show is free and open to the public!
Second, amazingly enough, we'll be playing Smith's Olde Bar on Wednesday night, August 31 at 7 PM, as part of the Humble Heroes project to assist [...]
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Dear Musicfriends,
One of the joys of my job is that, occasionally, I get to take part in Professional Learning activities that expose me to the best in music making.
I had a great experience working with a man named Dave Holland, a percussionist, and an absolute master at getting children (and the children in grownups) to make music together with percussion. It took him about 10 seconds to have a crowd of 70 people laughing, drumming and LISTENING to one another.
If you're an educator, I'd highly suggest looking him up and seeing whether he's available to come to your school.
www.beatinpathrhythmevents.com
www.interactiverhythm.com 404.819.4053
Happy drumming!
Yes, the more I stay the same.
I periodically go through these cycles of elation, determination, depression and resignation. A lot of it has to do with my creative life.
I love my creative life. I love that I do all these things. It's fun. I'm good enough that the things I do now are decent and can be shared.
I'm not making any money at them, and sometimes that bothers me. I read a LOT of how-to business articles, get a lot of good advice from my family, but the facts remain and these are the facts: I by my nature am chimeric, spinning in a million directions at once. I do all these things. It's fun. But sometimes I wish I was that guy that could only do one thing so I could market myself as that one thing.
"Hi. I'm Adam Cole. I've published a book called 'You Can Do Your Own Duct Work.' I give workshops on how to do your own duct work. My next book will be called 'You Can Do Someone [...]
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Hi, musicfriends!
Did you know I had another website dedicated just to the Feldenkrais Method?
http://www.feldenkraisinfo.com
On that site I publish a monthly newsletter about the Method. This month I talk about piano playing and the photo on the homepage of mymusicfriend.net in which I made a major discovery.
Go to
www.feldenkraisinfo.com and click on the "newsletter" tab.
Love, Adam