old folks

since josiah came and took her stuff away we can't get our old amp to work down in the basement, somehow her speakers killed it... i remember the day several months back when we were plugging them in, mysteriously killing the amplifier, we knew she would take back her amp/speakers at some point and i'm sure we'll sort something out... but right now i want to hear some vinyl, in particular a miles davis album called someday my prince will come which has a tune on it called old folks...

saw a tony robinson documentary called me & my mum on channel 4 tonight, very moving, resonated with the book i've just finished - running in the family by michael ondaatji, also very moving, tracing rumours, stories and history concerning his family, his mother & father... a fantastic picture near the end of his mother & father together, pulling faces, shortly after they were married, with the caption what we think of married life, his mum reminding me of my sweet dinah... (boobelah seems too long a name, dinah is going to be her jewish name)... both in how pretty she is in the picture but also the mucking around...

i finished it last night in bed, one last spurt of reading to finish it, one scene where his mum walks into a railway tunnel to meet his dad, who is drunk and has thrown himself naked out of a moving train and is trying to stop all the trains that go through... the sense of the struggle that that couple went through for each other... very romantic in a kind of desperate way...

me & dinah (just to be clear, i'm talking about my G) went to see romance & cigarettes last night that was similarly romantic/dark... very good, all singing all dancing, genuine story, the way that story works out was in my mind as i read about michael ondaatji's family and story...

just as michael ondaatji's families story was in my mind as i watched tony robinson's inward struggle with putting his mum into care...

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dinah has borrowed a DVD from her parents... an HBO series called carnivale, never heard of it but HBO do good work & her mum & dad say it's great, we're going to watch it shortly, well, the first episode... good quality tv... (i hope)

and now a small note on playing with musicians who you can't afford to pay, i have two co-conspiritors for the gigs coming up and in the last week they've both cancelled & rearranged rehearsal's twice... i understand, one has to pay one's bills... but it's a little frustrating... they are both great musicians and i'm glad to have them, inconstant schedules notwithstanding...

so a small tale in this vein:

tomorrow i was due to meet H (cello) but her cello is going into the menders so we rearranged & on the offchance i asked G (producer) if he could meet me - our rehearsal last friday was cancelled and we hadn't yet found a time to do it...

yes he says...

then i get a text from felinity reminding me about a tentative plan we'd made on tuesday night, followed almost immediately by a text from G (producer) saying he can't make tuesday after all...

followed by a phonecall from H saying she can't do our rearranged time now...

the moral of this is that i am now free as planned to go out with felinity to see P do poetry, me & H are meeting next week, me & G will no doubt meet soon...

it will happen... the music will be great... just small frustrations that's all...

oh and how beautiful it was cycling over the millenium bridge (illegally) at around 8 in the evening tonight, with the light still just about in the air... the sun must have set maybe 20 minutes before, afew tufts of red cloud around, the sky to the west still bright but to the east it was night time... st paul's ahead brightly lit and an ethereal beauty to everything...

hmmm... british summer time... lost an hours sleep but to have that light in the evenings...

x