report from Clifftop

How to reconcile the various fractions or facets of our life into one comprehensive whole as "designer", or is designer just one piece of something else? Do they battle each other? Is being a parent in battle with being a tenured member of the faculty of a university design department? Is playing classical music from written pages in conflict with trying to understand (well enough to play) old time fiddle styles? Is writing a blog just one more facet, or is it the agent tying it all together. Writing about what is being attended to (like laundry or better, the garden) at present. And crafting some sort of public text/image persona that evolves and shifts. In some sense this blog is as comprehensive a story as anything a single incident or image could represent. A journal that is both public and private, both a private statement and a request for some resonance in the internet universe.

I've loaded this single image from Clifftop, the Appalachian Stinrg Band Festival in Clifftop West Virginia. For those wanting more, please check out the wealth of video offerings on youtube. This year's videos of both informal campground jams and competitions are just starting to appear. Clifftop is about music and dancing, and the renewal and continuation of friendships who share a love of old time music and dance. I rarely photograph jams. Either I am playing in one, or I'm more interested in listening. An image of folks playing music doesn't do what this one image of dancers does to explain the cross-generational and gender-equal (this is debatable, of course but note that four of the five finalists in the fiddle competition this year were young women) view of the culture at Clifftop --- here, flat-foot dancing. A man —who could be my father if he were still alive, a woman close to my age, and a girl just about the age of my son Henry dance together. Watch each other, study and learn, and relate in a way that only music can create unspeakable bonds.