Although I didn’t think so when I was just a little unopened bud, I’ve come to realize that I’m a late bloomer. Fortunately, the buds are nice too.
The tallest ones bloom last.
Blog
Extreme Imagination Conference
I’m thrilled to be participating in the Extreme Imagination conference, which is put on by the Aphantasia Network and is dedicated to the study of aphantasia and hyperphantasia. I’m really excited to learn more about what’s going on w/ this burgeoning field of research, and to connect w/ other artists who are variously on this spectrum.
Here’s what I wrote about my imagination in conjunction with my participation in this conference:
In my youth, I assumed that my brain didn’t waste time on visual imagery because I was so focused on music, sound, and story. At the ripe old age of forty, I’m a bit more fatalistic: music and narrative occupy my mind because they’re the most vivid and vibrant things a mind without visual imagery can conjure. It seems as if, having no mind’s eye, my mind’s ear has access to much of its processing power! I have no scientific evidence for this, of course — only a half a lifetime of ever-heightening imagination that allows me the ability to understand and sculpt narrative forms in my head. These narrative forms consist of both musical and non-musical material, which means that songwriting, that perfect combination of sound and story, is my most natural art.
I’ll be on an artist panel and doing a Blix Byrd performance. Exciting!
Welcome to the family.
I am not a patient human. I woke up having a dream about a guitar part that required a hollow body. This was inevitable from that moment on.
Also, my first ever guitar was blue. (It was also not nearly as wonderful as this big beautiful blue bastard.)
It will be mine.
Oh, yes. It will be mine.
Wayne Campbell
Joined the Arts Alive! Board!
I’m thrilled to have been asked to join the board of the formidable, cool, and formidably cool local arts service organization, Arts Alive!! (This sentence has two exclamation points because one belongs to the organization’s name, and one belongs to my enthusiasm for the organization.) I’ll be serving at least through 2022.
Arts Alive! is the major connector between artists, arts nonprofits, creative businesses, and the broader community in the Monadnock Region. It’s a major quality-of-life booster, and the locals are super lucky it’s here.
I didn’t know Keene or the Monadnock Region existed until I met Jess Gelter, the AA! ED, at an arts convening in Plymouth, NH in 2018 or so. After hearing her talk about what she and the organization were up to in Keene, I started looking into it, which eventually prompted a move here. So a huge thank you to Jess, because I’m loving my new home, pandemic notwithstanding.
I’m super honored and thrilled to be working with the group of dynamic, intelligent and interesting people that sit on the board, and am looking forward to lending a helping hand where I can!
If you’re reading this and you’re in the Monadnock Region, here are a few ways you can get involved:
- Head on over and take the quick and thought-provoking Arts & Loneliness study.
- Check out the Artist to Artist lineup.
- Sign up for the Discover Monadnock newsletter. (This is absolutely the best way to find out what fun things, both virtual and IRL, are happening in the area.)
Some recent favorite photos…
It’s been quite a year, quite a fall. Here are some of my favorite live screen captures of the last few months.
Fall view from my portside window 
Mom & Zorro in the woods 
Pixel portrait mode rocks, and so do fungi 
I love this rock sculpture 
Canon collection is growing and yes, that is my lunchbox from 2nd grade. 
Not what you want on your toothbrush 
I’m loving my new plant-enhanced living room 
Tree work being done in the neighborhood. The truck was up about 6 feet off the ground! 
Zorro w/ a particularly captivating wild columbine (I think) 
Mushroom in pixel portrait mode 
Greg is trying out my new piano. Zorro is helping. 
So. Spooky. 
Setup for upcoming True Hope mini-doc!
The word today is “cachinnate.”
The piano in its natural environment
New-to-me Yamaha U3 is in FULL EFFECT! Funny, it looks like it’s been there all its life. I’m absolutely thrilled with it so far. My main complaint: it sounds like it should play like a grand, and of course, it doesn’t. That said, I’m SO enjoying the feel of it, esp. for songwriting and classical music, e.g. Haydn sonatas. And a big thank you to Haydn for writing things that I can play. 😀
Here’s the move-in, w/ a bonus photo of one of the piano mover’s incredible waterproof shoes:
Bring ‘er round 
Putting the piano in place 
As if it’s always been there 
Whoa space boots
Love o’ jesus
When you spend all day learning and perfecting a JavaScript charts library, only to realize at 3:00pm that a table is actually the best solution.
Quote from “Double Birthday” by Willa Cather
Even in American cities, which seem so much alike, where people seem all to be living the same lives, striving for the same things, thinking the same thoughts, there are still individuals a little out of tune with the times — there are still survivals of a past more loosely woven, there are disconcerting beginnings of a future yet unforeseen.
This is a beautiful, kinda sad but also sweet little story written in 1929, a time that seems to me to be similar in some key ways to 2020. Success was the word of the day, and it meant money, and if you weren’t with it, and especially if you rejected it, you were OUT, friend. (We’re much more evolved today. Success means experiences, you see, the perfect, frictionless life, full of meaning, and beautiful things, and…oh wait. That shit is expensive, right?)
I’m not sure if our main character, Albert (the artist stuck in a time and place that doesn’t value art), turned out to be “the disconcerting beginnings” of the future or not. If he was, I guess that future is already past.