Christine Kane's Blog Be Creative. Be Conscious. Be Courageous.

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Niche Happens
2007-09-12 06:03:52
Here’s what I wonder: I wonder why marketers don’t consider the internal process (or the heart) of the artist when they offer theories and speculations on music sales. Maybe it’s too hard to do. Mystery, after all, is not marketing. In Seth Godin’s The Dip blog, there’s a riff by Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby. In the [...] ...
Niche 

How Do You Forgive Someone?
2007-09-10 06:03:05
At the retreats I facilitate, I’m often asked, “So, how do you forgive someone?” I’ve also been asked by several readers of this blog to write about forgiveness. This is not always a comfortable subject for me — mostly because there are so many levels to it, and so many ways to interpret and misinterpret [...] ...

Create a Successful Indie Music Career - A Workshop on September 10
2007-09-06 23:16:38
This Monday, September 10, I’m presenting a workshop in Asheville, NC with author/indie music guru Bob Baker. Click here for more details, and let your musician/artist friends know about it. It’ll be a great evening, packed with all kinds of helpful and practical tools for creating success as an artist and musician. Most of these workshops [...] ...
Career  Indie Music  Music  Workshop 

The Five Best Dairy Substitute Products
2007-09-06 06:09:18
Except for soy milk, I don’t use a lot of dairy substitutes. I’m pretty happy eating whole natural foods without trying to substitute ingredients to conjure up the flavor of, say, sour cream. It has taken some time and practice to arrive at this place though. And there are some days [...] ...
Products 

On Giving Up Dairy
2007-09-04 06:04:57
[Which] protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer [in this research]? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy. [...] ...

Blog Days of Summer
2007-08-27 21:18:40
Summer is winding down. I’m going take this week off from blogging. I will post again on Tuesday, September 4. This summer has been busy with lots of travel and performing and teaching. This week I’m doing the very thing I recommend to my readers - I’m filling the well. I’ll be [...] ...
Blog  Summer 

13 Thoughts on Three Shows and Thousands of Miles
2007-08-23 06:07:23
1 - I’m performing tonight in St. Paul, MN. At the Ginkgo Coffeehouse. At 7pm. It’s been five years since I’ve performed in Minnesota, and about three years since I’ve performed in a coffeehouse. I have no idea what it will be like. This is the weirdest thing about touring. So much [...] ...

9 Seemingly Logical Excuses for Clinging to Clutter
2007-08-20 06:04:46
“Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery Guilt is the stickiest reason why we keep things we don’t want. It’s the heavy gooey energy that convinces us we’re bad people if we let go of heirlooms, sentimental items, knick-knacks, unwanted clothing, unwanted [...] ...

My Dog is Not Allowed on the Furniture…
2007-08-18 06:05:25
but I take her picture when I find her on it. ...
Furniture 

The Stickiest Reason We Keep Stuff We Don’t Want
2007-08-16 17:09:04
“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris Just as we can fill our days with a whole lot of nothing — splattering our attention on things that don’t really matter to us — we can fill our houses with heaps of crap we [...] ...

A Blog of One’s Own
2007-08-15 06:04:03
Here’s the deal: This is a list of women bloggers. It’s called The W List. (As opposed to The W Hotel - where the music in the elevators is at Abercrombie & Fitch levels.) I’m thrilled to be on this list. (And not in The W Hotel elevator.) I’ve discovered some [...] ...
Blog 

Tips for Indie Musicians (and Artists of All Types)
2007-08-13 19:45:16
Bob Baker is a music-marketing guru who specializes in helping indie musicians and songwriters build prosperous and creative careers. In the mid-90’s, he predicted that the internet was going to drastically change the music business. He began encouraging musicians and songwriters to take their careers into their own hands and stop waiting for [...] ...
Artists  Tips 

Five for Friday
2007-08-10 06:02:49
1 - I leave town at 7am, so my suitcase is on the floor half-packed. The other half is filled with my cat Atticus who thinks suitcases make great beds. 2 - At 12 noon, I’ll be on North Carolina NPR radio station WUNC. It’s a show called The State of Things. They [...] ...

Bathroom Clutter: The 9 Worst Offenders
2007-08-08 06:07:43
In most homes, bathrooms are the smallest spaces. They are also the most cluttered. So, I’ve taken a poll. I’ve talked with several people about bathroom clutter, why it happens, and what the worst culprits are. This post is the result of lots of laughter and discussion. We’ve all been [...] ...

CD Release Announcement - A Friday Night in One Lifetime
2007-08-06 06:05:58
My new CD is called “A Friday Night in One Lifetime.” (Click here to get it.) Lots of people told me that they actually tried to put my DVD into their car stereos so they could listen to it on their way to work. Many of you might snicker at such blatant non-technical [...] ...
Friday Night  Lifetime 

What’s Easy. What’s Not.
2007-07-31 06:02:30
It’s easy to be right. It’s not easy to be kind. It’s easy to hope. It’s not easy to know. It’s easy to be a damsel. It’s not easy to be a heroine. It’s easy to complain. It’s not easy to make requests. It’s easy to have all kinds of retorts for the other person if they’d just shut up. It’s not easy to [...] ...

BlogHer07 Begins Today
2007-07-27 06:59:53
Conferences and conventions are intense. There are echo-chamber rooms that resonate with so many loud noises that you have to shout to the person you’re meeting. There are people dressed in tuxedos with trays of tiny food offerings that combine such an unlikely group of ingredients that you have to stare for a good three minutes before [...] ...

How to Play for 5000 People Who Have No Clue Who You Are
2007-07-25 18:27:51
I’m at the Chautauqua Institution today. Tonight I’m performing in the Amphitheatre with the Chautauqua Ballet. I play. They dance to my songs. I’ve been told there will be 5000 people. It’s not the biggest audience I’ve ever played to. I opened for The Beach Boys in front of 14,000 people. Of those [...] ...

Splattering Bad. Moodling Good.
2007-07-23 06:04:11
“So you see, the imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering. The people who are always briskly doing something may have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.” But they have no slow, big ideas. [...] ...

13 Free CD’s Going Out To…
2007-07-22 15:06:02
Thank you everyone for your funny, kind, and Law-of-Attraction-y comments. It was fun reading all of these again. Here are the names I picked. There was NO favoritism for dogs or dog owners. My dog is a very unbiased name picker with many standards and values. She took this very seriously. [...] ...

13 CD’s to Give Away for Thursday Thirteen
2007-07-19 06:03:00
I’m fairly new to the Thursday Thirteen as a blogger. As a Thursday Thirteen reader, however, I’m an old soul. (On the internet, an old soul is anything over six months.) So, today I’m doing a special Thursday Thirteen that coincides with the release of my new CD, A Friday Night in One Lifetime. I’m giving away thirteen CD’s. THAT’S my Thursday Thirteen. So, here’s how it works: Leave a comment below. Any person who comments on this blog from midnight on Thursday until noon on Friday - that’s 36 hours - will be added to a hat for a drawing. Me and my dog will draw 13 names from the hat over the weekend, and I will announce the winners on Sunday on my blog! (My dog would announce the winners, but she has a hard time typing.) The CD’s will be mailed out on August 1. For those of you who are new to this blog, I’m a songwriter and performer. (and teacher and blogger too.) You can see a YouTube video of me performing one ...

Attention Splatter: The Top Ten Cleaning Solutions
2007-07-17 06:04:09
Note: This post is Part 3 of a multi-part series. Click here to read Part 1. Click here to read Part 2. By now, you probably know whether or not you are prone to Attention Splatter. Here are the top ten solutions that have helped me (or are helping me) clean up my splattered attention. Keep in mind that this stuff takes persistence. I still work at it every day. And I still have days where I am splattered all over the place. However, the following practices have helped make these days less common. 1 - Lighten the load. Consider having no more than one to three priorities for the day. Let’s face it. There’s only so many things you can get done in a day and still enjoy the day. Get into the habit of spending five minutes each night deciding what top thing you want to get done the next day. Ask yourself, “If I only accomplish one thing tomorrow, which one thing would make me most happy to have accomplished?” (Or something less grammatically awkward.) T ...
Solutions 

Attention Splatter: The Top Five Culprits
2007-07-12 06:03:51
Note: This is the second part of a multi-part series about a phenomenon I call “Attention Splatter.” If you didn’t read the first post on this topic, please click here. Have you ever been at home all day when there’s nothing in the fridge? You open the door. You look in. You hum a little tune as you look around. You sigh. You grab a handful of pine nuts. And you go back to your desk. Then about an hour later, you’re still hungry. So you go back to the fridge and look in again. Nothing new has appeared. You pull out some black olives and put them on a saucer and go back to your desk to eat them while you stare at your computer. You think, “I should just go out and get something to eat.” But you just can’t motivate yourself. It’s like a part of you is convinced that a solution will appear. Maybe a Sous Chef will arrive. Amazingly, this doesn’t happen, and eventually you’re back at the fridge. You look in. Then, ...
Top Five 

Attention Splatter
2007-07-10 06:03:55
I guess it’s called irony. After I wrote last week’s blog Where’s Your Attention?, I began noticing the power of attention in every situation, especially in my daily life. I decided to write a blog about the ways in which we scatter our precious attention all over the place so that we don’t give a full percentage of ourselves to our dreams and our goals. So, then I wrote the blog, right? After all, here it is, right? Well, sort of. I sat down to write it three days ago. I even said to my husband, “I’m gonna write my blog now!” I wrote a little. Then I decided to “check some email.” I got caught up in a mini-drama and opted to write emails for an entire afternoon, while occasionally jotting down some thoughts on this blog. The next day, I sat down to write again. I made the same announcement to my husband. I wrote a little. And then I started surfing the internet (I called it research) and found lots of interesting (and most ...

My DVD Wins a 2007 Telly Award
2007-07-09 06:03:59
My DVD, Live at the Diana Wortham Theatre won a 2007 Telly Award for Entertainment Production. Some of you may be thinking, “Huh? What’s that?” (Don’t worry - I didn’t know either.) Telly Awards were explained to me this way by someone in the film industry: “It’s like an Emmy Award. Only it’s for local and independent productions. It’s really quite prestigious.” And so it is. The truth is that Kim Ryan White and her company, Viewfinders Inc, are responsible for the award. (Let’s be honest. I just showed up and played.) Kim is one of those brilliant women who makes me tilt my head, RCA Victor dog like, and think, “Can she really be that cool and together and business savvy?” I’m telling you, the woman rocks. She masterminded the whole production and editing and every other last detail. (Then she lured me into the editing suite and tempted me with slick and beautiful effects. She’d sh ...
Award  Dvd 

Thirteen Cool Words
2007-07-05 06:01:37
The Thursday Thirteen is the most popular meme on the internet. I regularly read Michelle’s Thursday Thirteens, and I’ve followed the links on the site to read some pretty funny and original stuff. So, today is the 100th edition of the Thursday Thirteen. An excellent time for me to join in. I love words. And I love hearing and learning new words. Some of that is just born out of being a songwriter. But even before I started writing professionally, I savored the sound and meaning of words. Below is a list of my 13 favorite words. I can’t really explain why I love them. It’s not so much about meaning as it is about the feeling of them in your mouth. Like candy almost. 1 - Tornadic It just rolls off the tongue. “There was tornadic activity along Interstate 40 today.” You hardly ever hear this word. 2 - Gubernatorial You don’t hear this word much either. My ideal sentence would be something like, “There was tornadic activity during ...

Where is Your Attention?
2007-07-03 06:03:48
Genius. It is just attention to something specific. That’s all it is. And so anyone who gives attention to any subject for a period of time will evolve in the direction of that understanding. -Abraham-Hicks I just returned from teaching a day-long creativity workshop for leaders in the federal government. I’m contracted to teach this every two months. (Sometimes more often.) I designed the morning session myself, and it’s geared towards creating a very real right-brain hands-on creative experience. (No small task when you consider the job descriptions of these participants.) Until this most recent workshop, I led the afternoon session, but I didn’t design it. I had merely followed the instructions written by The Center for Creative Leadership. The activity is called “The Visual Explorer.” In this activity, hundreds of 8×10 images - beautiful, rich, and evocative photos and paintings - are placed all around the room and hall ...

Get A Brand New Song. For Free!
2007-06-27 06:03:24
Okay, here’s the deal… In the sidebar to my left, there’s a big new icon. It says “The Real World.” Click on it to download a new previously unreleased song called - you guessed it! - “The Real World.” (Written and performed by me. Of course.) Follow the instructions from there. And if you feel like giving a gratitude donation for this song or for the last song or for this blog, then you can click here and do that so easily on PayPal. Thanks for being my loyal readers! ...
Brand  New Song  Song 

Vision Boards - Another Inspirational Gallery
2007-06-26 06:03:40
Welcome to the second part of the Vision Board Gallery. You can view yesterday’s gallery here. Some of the women at the retreat chose to do Vision Books, not Vision Boards. That way they can continue to add images throughout the year. This is a handy alternative because it’s portable. (I wrote more about Vision Books in this post.) Here are a few images of the Vision Books. Some of these photos are from the same books. I think someone came close to filling her entire book! Here are a few more traditional Vision Boards… Below is a poster board folded up for better suitcase stowaway. This one touches me deeply because of the huge awakening this person had about her relationship with horses after she did her board. One of the participants had come to a retreat two years ago. Her house had just burned to the ground, and she was not only dealing with grief, but she was rebuilding her life. She brought her vision board from that retreat just to see whether ...
Gallery  Inspirational  Vision 

Vision Boards - An Inspirational Gallery
2007-06-25 06:06:20
So, I host these retreats for women four times a year. (You can read more about them here.) On the second afternoon of the retreat, each participant creates a Vision Board. If you aren’t sure what a Vision Board is, I’ve written two posts about them: Vision Boards: A Quick Story. And How to Make a Vision Board. For today and tomorrow, I want to share several of the vision boards from last weekend’s retreat. (The retreat was amazing - on so many levels.) The Vision Boards are on full-size poster boards. Some people flew in from far away places like Arizona, Texas and New Zealand (!) and so they made their boards in composition books. Or they folded up the poster boards. I will display a few of those tomorrow! Vision Boards are not about art. They are about joy and creativity. I’ve heard an occasional visual artist get snooty about the “lay-out” or the “composition” of a particular vision board. And I just want to say, &ldq ...
Gallery  Inspirational  Vision