first day back @ work later today

only a training session, or a skills sharing as they call it....

i hope it's a paid session but maybe not you know, i'm down to lead one of these fairly soon, on active listening... putting that counselling skills course to some use...

not only is it my 1st day back @ work, it is also the very 1st day of september...

and what, you may ask, am i doing being awake right now? with only 3 or 4 hours left before i've got to get up for the afore mentioned work...

well sleep is not coming, partly down to the good time i had tonight celebrating witchy godmother's birthday (a surprise party at that... she didn't have a clue... great preparation on the part of her mum...),

and maybe partly down to the slight insomnia i often get the night before work begins, i think i've explicated on this before in this blog, the holiday is ending and perhaps in my mind i see going to sleep as giving in to work, staying awake prolonging the holiday a little further... lingering with this delicious freedom...

could be a little of that in there...

in order to get to the surprise party last night (tonight) i had a monumental journey from walthamstow to frien barnet, in fact after i left the revellers still going @ 2:35 am it took me an hour to get back home... cockfosters to finsbury park...

so being as i'm not sleeping let me just lay out the details for you, (those not interested in my cycling patterns yesterday can fast forward to the cello rehearsal i had with H... i'll try and make it easy to find)...

first i cycled from mine @ finsbury park to walthamstow... wood street, where H is currently staying, took me 45 minutes in the blazing sun, streets all the way to stamford hill and then simply gorgeous parkland riding over the marshes (hackney, walthamstow, tottenham - i saw them all today), in between the reservoirs...

waltham forest really good for cyclists as H has told me and it's true...

after we had our music making fun i set off from hers & crossed the marshes & reservoirs again a bit further north... tottenham marshes this time, at one point i saw a small group of cyclists puzzling over how to get past a forbidding looking fence, to where i was... nice to check in with them briefly and show them my map before plunging on...

then intense map reading and many streets, some hills, not too far from the north circular getting to frien barnet...

the whole journey took me 1 hour & 15 minutes...

then after the do we slung my bike in the back of R's car to get to their's and as i've said after a little more razzle dazzle i set off from cockfosters to finsbury park and it took me an hour, some huge hills, both ups and downs to deal with, and me in my depleted state...

ok bike stories over...

BIKE STORIES DONE YOU CAN COME BACK NOW...

because i want to close on H... music making with her,

she is the cellist that i worked with for a couple of those gigs @ my landlords place, we are so rubbish at getting together, it's been way too long, it was heaven...

we worked on the tune i wrote for catalan E, the one which i posted up here a little while back but didn't want to draw attention to until i knew she'd heard it, it's over there with the other mp3's, it will almost certainly form part of a larger piece that will include the ethereal chords i wrote @ christmas and the slightly old-fashioned but beautiful chords i came up with just before the jam @ work that i led, i only had two other musicians present and we went round this gorgeous change i'd come up with...

me & H worked on each of these three bits today and it was great to be involved in it again, with her, the sad piece for E sounding almost messianesque in places with the cello, her playing the tune an octave below my voice...

the ethereal chords still so openended as to where it's going, just nice to spend some time negotiating the space with her,

then that beautiful change i've worked into a cycle that could even break off and form a whole nother piece, by the end of the rehearsal we were experimenting with my voice moving a certain way over her cello moving slightly differently, maybe even stripping down to just this and bass notes...

hmmmmm

creation and arrangement, thinking musically,

now i'm thinking about music i may as well forget about sleep altogether, this headspace often just too busy, too excited, too full of notions to rest...

but then these crucial 4 hours now before i have to be at work, it always looks as though i could make it through without sleeping but then my body takes over and says enough is enough mr longcat, get in that bed... i don't care how much you feel inspired, you want me to get you to work on that bike in the morning so do what i say and fall asleep damn you...

ok

that's me

x