My fairly recent plunge into playing new stringed instruments is a mysterious direction, even for me. Today I realized that some of the emotions and feelings that drive this are similar to when I lived in Montreal and was trying to escape old performance and compositional habits in the spirit of my stay at the Banff School of the Arts.

Of course after playing guitar for more than 35 years I feel most confident and familiar on that instrument. At what point did anyone decide those are the feelings we are after.

I have always chosen to do things in my life that don't come easy and this is no exception. Playing the fiddle, the mandolin and especially the banjo brings me great joy and the amount I can learn in a short period of hard work is highly rewarding.

Potential to fail has always been an important part of art-making and this recent period of study has got lots of that.

tim

p.s. How great was that Leaf game tonight!! Yah baby!