resolution

so today i finished reading the pulp fiction that i started last week, good in the end... pleasing as this kind of books often are, the ending validating the sometimes below par quality of the rest..

also just watched the ending of beautiful dreamer the film about brian wilson... & smile... and it moved me hugely, i've known for awhile that i find an audience cheering and clapping to be deeply moving, and at the end of that film, the royal festival hall gig that was the result of a hard journey reworking smile.. the immense cheer that greeted him at the end of the gig, i cried... but then i'd already been crying as brian (first name terms me & brian) was struggling with the weight of the personal demons he had to face by doing that album and that gig... it means that the whole story is one of finding peace with old demons which is always welcome...

saw P yesterday, might see her every now and again rather than lose her company altogether - which is always what we want to do at first...

really want to get performing with my stuff, brian wilson such an inspiration, then and now...

x

one monkey don't stop the show

fairly horrible week... haven't wanted to share it with you good people, me & P no more...

beautiful dreamer the film about brian wilson and the making of smile has been great and it's one of those times when a song has led me by the hand... surf's up, what a melody, what chords...

i hope to sing it at my landlord's place on easter sunday, currently asking around about that date,

also coming closer to finishing harbour walls... sat @ T's piano yesterday and played through these tunes along with the thrill is gone... really great feeling for them, for that piano... want to see how i can approach that sense / feeling / experience through my keyboard, that kind of mastery of my instrument that good real piano's give me... but when am i ever gonna get a goood piano to perform to an audience on... except @ my landlord's...

gillian welch on the stereo, fantastic new album, it's taken a little while to get with it but i'm digging it now, one monkey don't stop the show

x

and then this tiny footnote, turned on my fender rhodes just now and it was there... not as loud as it can get but just nicely present... tried to get a gillian tune down, then surf's up, the thrill is gone, harbour walls... getting closer... the fender rhodes a living thing... rsponding to certain chords by getting even louder, like it could be about to break through to it's big, big level... gone back to it's familiar quietness by the end of harbour walls.. x

king wen sore eyes pulp fiction

i need sleep, food, water... warmth, love...

that's what i need, i've been sat in front of this computer too long people...

i got sucked into reading the da vinci code as an e-book, read through 40 chapters because it looked like there were only going to be 50 or so, then checked a bit further on and the chapters were going at least into the 100's...

pulp fiction i've been avoiding partly because everyone and their dog has read it but i'm enjoying it...

then something on deoxy caught my eye and i got really wrapped up in terence mckenna and his timewave... appealing both to the mathematician in me as well the (occasional) psilocybin explorer...

which led me eventually to this very pleasing animation of the original king wen sequence of hexagrams that make up the i-ching...

but my bed so sorely calls to me now, e-books....? i don't know how people do it, they must have better monitors than me...

oh and it SNOWED... briefly...

x

zoomquilt loft clearance

deoxy proving to be ever interesting, i got from there to this zoomquilt which i am becoming increasingly fond of, an image which you can just keep expanding, albeit from only one focal point, put me in mind of the mandelbrot set which i promptly posted up on deoxy myself... the evangelism continues...

my sister K is as we speak travelling down to my mum & dad's to clear out the loft of their bungalow, a scary and interesting thought, if i was free i'd be travelling down at some point this week too, got an email from my mum asking if it's alright for them to throw out any stuff of mine they find... definately against my horder instincts but probably a good thing...

josiah & grace were round on saturday night/sunday morning & i'm having grace tomorrow night as well which will be lovely, should P ever re-surface after her mad weekend she'll be pleased to spend time with my goddaughter...

i took josiah & grace out to jai krishna and grace ran around the restaurant yelling with glee, mirroring the last time we went there as a trio and she was just completing her 1st crawling lap of the place as our (delicious as ever) food arrived, the food this time was again fantastic, real quality to be had there..

cedric nash, me & josiah had a lovely night later on, smoking a little and drinking wine, cedric's mum lives relatively close to where josiah's currently staying and it was lovely watching them trade local knowledge... tobacconists they'd frequented... cedric nash being the one who found my fernando pessoa book, just on a shelf not hidden at all... also the creator of yet another marvellous dal on friday night... (i'd just been paid and i went to the pictures to see sideways - really great film)

then last night i ate with the pigs, p2 buying p1 his birthday dinner, at one point p1 talking about how nice it was to see p2 on their own, within which he included being with me.. really old friends... ok piggy...

teenage kicks pessoa returns

heaven, a little surprising to be in heaven so early this saturday...

gillian welch on my stereo, just reached my favourite song (album - time - the revelator), just went out of my room to begin my morning ablutions and someone has placed my fernando pessoa book that has been missing for maybe 4 weeks now, outside my door...

i've been really missing it for all of this time but in particular last night i was writing some lyrics and i really wanted to get a little pessoa headspace in me...

the day i lost it was also a saturday, me & P had been out dancing the night before and we were having a party at my house... i put the book down somewhere when i got in the house, a little worse for wear... once i remembered about it the whole house had been transformed into a party house and back again...

and i wanted to briefly talk about the mandelbrot set that is currently residing over there in my links... the day i first met the mandelbrot set...

i was with K de B, a school friend, we were 16 or so, he took me to blackwells bookshop in oxford, my first visit..

now blackwells bookshop is a small looking building from the outside but if you go into it you'll find a stairway leading downwards into this cavernous space... much bigger than the shop above it, or so it seemed to me..

so it was with wonder that i was being led down this stairway into this huge space, and he led me directly to a stand with the new book chaos - by james gleik, and he opened it to the pictures in the middle and showed me pictures of this mandelbrot set, and my mind was already expanding at quite a rate just to take in this space we were in, looking at the 3 or 4 pictures of the set and then successive magnifications of the set... opened me right up...

i remember it really clearly, the wonder of these pictures...

in the end i bought the book and it was a real factor in me choosing to do mathematics at university, chaos theory made the whole of maths seem glamour itself...

and i longed for a way i could discover the mandelbrot set myself, not just rely on other peoples pictures, but our zx spectrum wasn't up to much back then...

so i urge you ladies and gentleman to just go over there and click on that little fella, click on the edge of that wierd shape and just keep clicking, going deeper into it, increase the resolution as you go in more and more....

ok, evangelism over...

thankyou whoever brought fernando pessoa to my door...

x

upright or not

went over to L's to play a bit, his double bass sound improving all the time, talked about the possibilty of doing duo gigs, might take on this gig on march 10th with him & M (one time drummer of kyo)...

really nice to play, loving my piano module...

i had thought that i had a gig with kyo tomorrow night but D with her mad angle on life got it a month wrong and so my original plan of leaving my keyboard @ L's 'til tomorrow was no longer appropriate, and i took the old fella home in the rush hour... nice...

at one point i found a seat on the victoria line, manoeuvred the bulk of the keyboard on my back onto the seat and sat down within the straps of it, the keyboard towering over me... i got out the london review of books and i read...

it was only when the journey was almost done that i realised my keyboard was pitching wildly over onto the man to my right, i asked him whether my keyboard was ridiculously close to his head, he said it was but it was alright, he'd let me know if it actually touched him...

the difference between my impression of me and the view of me from the outside, i'm happily reading, thinking my keyboard is pointing directly upwards behind me, actually it's leaning right into the personal space of my fellow commuters...

also the calm, relaxed way that man was really not bothered...

anyway, to celebrate S's birthday i'm off out to nunhead... the klinker... i'll be listing just as much on my way home as my keyboard was earlier...

x

tube train perfection interchange mandelbrot S birthday

mandelbrot set (applet), how nice, this is one of the reasons i when to university, trying to talk to S while blogging, really funny, i so love laughing whilst talking to him, but really i can't talk & blog.. hang on..

(it's his birthday)

"this is one of the reasons i when to university.."

i have trouble spelling sometimes but this is pretty out there...

(this is also pretty out there, found when i googled the word moment to check i'd spelt it correctly, a process i go through all the time with the simplest of words)

dr K back from down under and i had a nice catch up with her...

but i wanted to talk about the tube... briefly, and exactly the moment when the northern line arrives at euston, standing by the doors right at the front of the train, there is a corridor which leads directly to the victoria line, if there is a train on that platform i will want to run for it... the information about whether or not to run is presented to me precisely at the moment when the train has all but stopped...

as the train emerges from the tunnel i'm moving fast, slowing down... once i've got all the way to the other end of the platform where this corridor is we have almost stopped, something about slowing down and slowing down and then all at once coming abreast of the corridor, which is perpendicular to the platform, seeing directly on to the victoria line platform...

hard to put into words but an experience/ritual i really like, combining the visual/spacial/kinetic...

x

a thought

so i was following this really long, mad thread on deoxy, and someone linked to this which i'm placing here because in some way i appreciate the direction it's facing in...

it was written before the election in america and therefore has a kind of hope that the writer may well not feel so much now, it is really long and in fact i didn't read it all, i'll probably go back to it once i've got this down...

this from my experience of teaching people with views different to my own, on for example homophobia, or racism, basic things in my worldview, anti-racist and anti-homophobic is where i put myself, but homophobia is rampant in teenagers and i've taught some kids who have been vocal about there feelings toward gay men (negative feelings) and although i've wanted to violently oppose those sentiments i've realised that opposition is not the way to go, opposition merely hardens what to me is dodgy beliefs, what is needed is dialogue not two opposing monologues...

i've always been very clear about where i stand on these issues, but hopefully opened a space where they can be talked about, or at least that is the intention, i'm not a perfect teacher, (noone is)...

this is something i hold dear to me and when i read this (the same this as above) it resonated with me... even though it's old now, pre-US-election, i think it's worth checking out...

x

jazz old friends swapping teaching

so i wake up on sunday to a text from D telling me about the free gig on down at the barbican, free as in money as well as free as in completely improvised i'm hoping for as me and P make our way down there on the bus, then walking from angel to there, nice to walk through london on a sunday...

we get there and settle down to watch trio AAB who are right up my street, guitar, sax & drums with the last two played by identical twins, no bass which gives them an intriguing sound and some lovely, lovely music, jazz though not freely improvised but still beautiful...

i'm keeping my eyes open for D as this is going on and at some point i look to my left and see P - ex student of mine from the spontaneous music course that i used to teach @ cm, saxophonist, lovely player, i bump into him every now and then at these kind of events, i smile at him and he gradually focusses on my face and smiles back, i'm waiting for D still so i don't go over to him just yet and so i lose sight of him, looking for one person and finding another...

D arrives and sits with us, he's reading kafka on the shore the new murakami novel which i'm waiting for the softback of, it's lovely to see him as ever and we while away the gig chatting occasionally...

we had a barbican beer in the interval and then checked out louis moholo, who had francine luce singing for him, she who was my singing teacher back when i was training to be a teacher, she remembered that i'd given her a piano lesson & we might do some swapping of lessons as we both still want lessons from the other it seems...

also playing with louis moholo was a host of talent, in particular evan parker & veryan weston both of whom i love and who are representative of the improvised community, jason yard & claude deppa representing the jazz thing... all in all a less satisfying set for me than trio AAB but still powerful stuff, nice to show P (my P) some more free stuff to ponder, and they were definately freer than the trio, always an engaging factor...

found the other P in between the two sets and i'm going to try and go see him play @ darbuka with his band dar on march 2nd...

x

all change

it's been an interesting night, it began when i changed the picture at the top to a picture i took and manipulated, then gradually the whole look of this blog has changed... still a bit patchy in places and i really could spend all night fixing little things... learning more bits of html as i go (that's the great thing about the process, LEARNING), but P is almost asleep in my bed and i'm going to go brush my teeth and join her, regular sleep patterns win out over all night internet immersion (for once)...

thankyou to my brother D who i phoned for html help and he came through with some hints and solutions, realised he didn't even know i had a blog...? or he'd forgotten... (outrageous that anyone could forget this marvellous place, surely the whole world rests on my every utterence...)

anyway, like i say, bed..

let me know what you think of things here, the changes, if you have a thought, if you exist, if i have any readers? (i think my sister K reads me now and again)...

x

deoxy teaching vocal range

so firstly just to say that i've put deoxy over there in my gradually expanding links section, deoxy being the deoxyribonucleic hyperdimension which P is so enamoured of and which she goes to almost every time she goes online, i've been slow to check it out but i'm going to it enough to warrant it's own link from here... loads of stuff on psychedlics, memes, anarchy... i was delighted when i saw P reading hakim bey on there a little while ago, he of mushroom taking, anarchy theorising, sufi studying... i have one or two of his books cluttering up my bookshelves somewhere...

taught in the school today, new thing, assisting in the main classroom with a year 9 class, mad, mad as ever in that school, with the newness (for me) of the situation making it all the madder...

and i've been singing that new tune again today, similar vocal range to harbour walls, want to have that finished as well soon, particularly as i don't feel so continually inspired by living for that tune anymore, things with P are on a different level now, hopefully can simply take what rantings i had before and gently shape them into a finished...

writing radio dal i hope

third post today, not normally this wordy but i have to blog that i've had a productive hour or so...

sat at T's piano, playing chords i wrote back @ christmas @ my folks... introducing the major third into my wierd chords giving them some blood they otherwise lacked, ethereal bodies now flesh... (matthieu uses the expression ga-blooded to talk around major thirds), so i started to sing and this came:

found my way to love
from that other
wish i could trace my steps
i always do and i never can

then today i welled up
spilt a little
and i give thanks for that
and the fluid grace that that brings

just the beginnings of something, kind of used that technique i've spoken of before of imagining playing a gig, letting that lead the creation...

then i really enjoyed one of cedric nash's dals... honestly that man can cook, i might well time a gig @ my landlords to coincide with him staying (he cooks the soup for my gigs)..

for awhile i've had the notion that we should all have radio shows, on whatever subject we most love, this idea has more recently turned into we should all have blogs and i'm currently trying to persuade cedric into having a radio dal blog, which he occasionally posts to, writing of his eating a good dal somewhere, or of his cooking of a good dal, recipes for dal, the refining of the recipes that he goes through... who knows if it'll happen, watch this space...

going to P's... having marked all the essays, eaten really well and written some of a tune....

x

stooging around on raison d'etre's website found these nice pictures

KYO: L, rio & S, P & D (with B & G, drums and bass, no longer with the band) the back of my head, D & L, P (just)

x

tears new times

it's been a funny couple of days, partly through lack of sleep, then i woke up today really happy by contrast, partly through it being my day off (although i have essays to mark), one of those funny times in which i'd liked to have cried but circumstances meant i didn't let myself, being at work, being with other people...

so it surprised me just now reading one good thing, her appreciation of her sons early learning teacher (can't bring myself to use the word kindergarten... images if the governor of california..) to be welling up and spilling a few, not surprising because of the post, beautiful thing it is, just nice i guess... i love crying,

i started work yesterday in the new semester, new regime, the dust hasn't settled yet from the mad end to the last semester, the tax return mixed in with all that frenetic teaching of improvisation workshops...

my teaching very much influenced by harmonic experience, although i confused my students a little so i need to find a cleaner way of getting to it...

feeling excited about writing music, want to get this place geared up to creation, being able to reacord keys almost immdiately over anything i program, actually the same in relation to recording voice, have it all right there ready to go...

gonna go over to record some keys for cameron dundee some day soon, he sang me his riffs after the kyo gig @ the spitz on sunday, a face who pops in and out of the raison d'etre community, although he's probably there more than i am...

x

saw on another blog and i nicked it

**10 bands/singers you're really into lately**

1: Gillian Welch
2: Nick Drake
3: Miles Davis
4: DJ Marky
5: Semble
6: Caetano Veloso
7: Squarepusher
8: Andrew Hill
9: Portishead
10: Peggy Lee

**9 things that make you smile**

1: My Goddaughter (16 months)
2: My girlfriends mispronounciachons
3: My own misspellings
4: Good Cake
5: Playing in a good band
6: Meeting nice strangers
7: My cat
8: Finishing my breakfast just as my tea is the perfect temperature for drinking
9: Orson Presence telling one of his jokes

**8 things you wear daily**

1: Contact Lens
2: Socks
3: Pants (underpants)
4: Trousers
5: Shirt
6: Jumper (hoody)
7: Shoes
8: Coat

**7 things that annoy you**

1: People who don't wait for the passengers to get off the train before boarding
2: Students mobile phones going off in my lessons
3: There being no milk in the fridge when i'm making my morning cup of tea
4: Someone else being in the shower when i need to be in the morning
5: Car drivers who don't bother to indicate when turning
6: Trains being delayed when i'm already running late for work
7: Finding a full cup of tea that i've forgotten about and has gone cold

**6 things you're looking forward to**

1: Having my own band running again
2: Performing with Nippy's band (currently rehearsing)
3: Having my goddaughter round for the weekend in a few weeks
4: Being settled into this semester
5: My girlfriend giving up smoking
6: The present from her that is making it's way over here from brazil

**5 things you're scared of**

1: Going deaf
2: Violence
3: Losing my dad (or anyone close to me)
4: Trains not stopping at the platfom and going past really fast and loudly
5: Being lost in a threatening place

**4 things that are on your desk**

1: Glass with ash from my girlfriends rollups
2: Detritus from the process of filing my tax return
3: Arnica
4: One empty and one full (but cold) tea cup

**3 movies you could watch over and over again**

1: To have and have not
2: Donnie Darko
3: Waking Life

**2 of your favourite songs at the moment**

1: April the 14th Part One - Gillian Welch
2: Maria Bethania - Caetano Veloso

**1 person you could spend the rest of your life with**

1: My girlfriend

gigged briefly god dadded grooved on my way home into reason

two gigs in two days, kyo tribe, really, really nice...

right now just bouncing along to this tune i've made in reason that came out of a riff i sang myself home with, reading the london review of books, lugging my keyboard home, thinking about the many images of me, similarly lugging my keyboard, in the surveillance system of the london underground...

me & P celebrated two months together yesterday by lying down and listening to robert anton wilson, later she came out to the first of these gigs @ unity works in hackney, courtesy of the small world stage... full of hippies, rocking gig, i-fly on before us, they of she likes me better when i'm bashing people up fame back @ the turaya gathering, and ben godwin on before them, only caught the very end of his set but bizaarely he was playing at today's gig as well, first on for raison d'etre this afternoon, not that i saw him today either...

P taking pictures, odd portrait of the two of us all in red...

then today woke up after too little sleep for the sound check @ the spitz, hung out for some square pie in spitalfields market then came home to P who cooked her fantastic rice & beans which fed josiah & grace as well us two this evening, grace alittle wary at first of me with my beard but happy as larry with P...

a race as ever as they were leaving, getting them to the train to brighton before shooting off to the gig, P almost coming with me but falling away at the last stage of the journey, a last kiss then off to sleep whilst i ran to the gig, set up my keys madly getting it together for once being the one the band starts to worry about making it...

the gig itself really great, my solo in african woman really well appreciated, if a little scary for me, no less good perhaps, felt edgy... a slightly shaky beginning to the gig with the sound at first really rough on stage, settled down to be a blinder, raison d'etre 's last gig @ the spitz, partly because C PREGNANT, maybe a future for kyo there...

the reason track still bubbling away, the emphasis has shifted since i've been writing and i'm hearing the one in a different place now, (i wonder how i shift it within reason?), it's a triplet five thing and it makes me think of harmonic experience and something rio told me once, that if you can play three over a five rhythm you're effectively playing the major third and the fifth but much, much slower, maybe i'll put that rhythm into this tune, along with the harmonic major third and fifth...?

x