Warren Lee Cohen

This is my second Lyre, carved from a single piece of walnut with a padauk bridge. I used ultra-fine guitar strings (D, G, B and E). It is tuned to a pentatonic scale: D, E, G, A, B, D, E, which creates a gentle floating feel. The tone is quite mellow and can be amplified by placing it on a table.  The music dances about the central A, “Sun Tone”, and meanders without settling into a resolve – perfect for young children whose hearing does not crave the more grounded resolution of a major or minor scale. For them music floats just like their imaginative games which can flow fluidly from one theme to another without interruption.

I am grateful to Luciana, who sewed a beautifully quilted case for it complete with a little pocket for the tuning wrench. She is a craftswoman extraordinaire. We will play it every night at our story time to punctuate the beginning and end of the stories as we prepare to go to sleep. Now all I have to do is come up with suitable melodies and lyrics.

A forlorn stump of a once grand maple has been waiting patiently in our back yard for a bit of love and attention. Staring patiently at us as we make our pizzas and tend our garden, this stately stump has been crying for some sort of redemption from its untimely demise. but it is so large, over 2 meters tall and more than a meter across. Then one morning as the girls frolicked in the garden my gouge came to life to reveal this being within the tree. What release we felt as chips came flying away.  And now we have a new friend in our garden. Welcome!!!

3 years ago we lived in Stroud where I had the pleasure of working with Gavin Pond. Gavin is a luthier, teacher, musician and all around great guy. 4 months before moving to Canada, I asked Gavin to teach me how to make a guitar. No matter how much he encouraged me to keep it simple, I refused to listen. I was simply too inspired by the beautiful forms he showed me of traditional instruments like citterns, lutes and other guitar precursors . If I was going to take the time and effort to make a guitar, I wanted to make one that was interesting, beautiful and that might hopefully sound ok. I was over ambitious and made just about every mistake possible. Nevertheless, with his guidance, I did manage to complete this instrument in about 2 1/2 years – a sweet little guitar, which I played publicaly for the first time at our summer festival of arts and education.

The woods that we chose for this guitar reflect the geography of my family. The back and sides are of English walnut. The top is made from North American Sitka spruce. The neck is made with a Brazilian mahogany. The little end peg is made with Canadian maple, our latest home. Thanks Gavin!!!

It was such a treat to work creatively with Kuniko, Paul and Bree again, an honor to reunite with Emerson Foundation Year colleagues. Somehow we all seem to have all grown a bit older and wiser and more tender through the challenges we have each had to meet in our respective countries. Kuniko is now a trained and practicing Biographical Counselor in Japan – a wise woman who is ready to listen and selflessly reflect. Bree is teaching music and English and developing her beautiful voice. And Paul continues to delight students and writers around the world with his creative approach to “silly-seriousness.” His genius, all of their genii are contagious. I am grateful that we created another opportunity to work together and that they had an opportunity to meet my family in our home outside of Toronto where they effortlessly warmed their way into the hearts of my daughters.

These pictures are courtesy of Kuniko, who courageously came all the way from difficult circumstances in Japan to study  with us in our Encounters with Imagination: festival of arts and education.

May we find many more occasions to come together in our striving and in our desire to play artistically.

Camphill Communities Ontario invited my family and me to build a festival bread oven to help them bake pizza and bread during their seasonal festivals throughout the year. 16 intrepid bread oven builders joined us to create this well sculpted oven out of clay, sand and straw. Our crew included people from age 3 to 60 and was inclusive of people with a variety of abilities. Everyone was able to contribute and feel pride in their creation.

We spread the work over two days, which gave everyone a chance to need the cob with their feet, build the oven, play in the straw and contribute to sculpting the final bread oven. There was plenty of time in between for sharing food and for discussing slow-bread-culture, for singing and silliness too!

It was hard to call it quits on Sunday afternoon as finding the final form was such an enjoyable process of collaborative sculpting. (Notice the temporary door that helped us model the oven as the real door was still being fashioned out of local hardwood. Soon a pavilion will be built to house the bread oven. This will match the architecture of the neighboring Novalis Hall)

Luciana took up the task of making a fire spirit, a salamander to acknowledge the essential working of elemental beings in this creative process of transforming flour, water, salt, leaven and fire into delicious bread. It is nice to see such a beautiful and lively fire being being born out of my calm and collected partner – nothing boring there!

Already one of the families who participated in the workshop have built their own bread oven at their farm outside of Toronto. Others are busy gathering clay and bricks…