sorrento baby

in about half an hour or so i'll be in bed, and then 5 hours later i'll be getting up again... another one of these stupidly early planes...

so a nap or two through the day would be good...

the wedding is at 4...

we have a hotel for the night and then we're flying back late on thursday...

director B came round and heard through the music as it now stands, he's also under alot of pressure, 3 more weeks would have been good he says...

hmmm... maybe i'll take this opportunity to advertise the play... hang on...



there you go... fancy huh?

this is what i'm slaving over right now, converting everything i've done to mp3 so i can take it to italy tomorrow and think about melodies...

x

at it

deep in this busy week now... i've got tonight and tomorrow to write the music, (for the play), wednesday at the crack of dawn we fly to sorrento for the wedding, getting back late on thursday night, teach on friday morning then Hcello is coming round on friday afternoon to record the music, which i then have two more days to finish/record whilst also going out with old friends on the saturday night, to hand the music over on sunday/monday and the play opens on tuesday...

it's taking shape...

i started it in ernest on saturday, the day that i saw sinatra in the evening, to celebrate felinity's birthday, surprising great actually, really nice to see the footage of frank, mostly from that golden period when he was great (the 50's with capital) but a couple of surprises later on, such as a great send in the clowns which must have been 70's...

an obscure bono bit that went on far too long but even that was funny more than it was irritating (particularly afterwords in the pub. felinity's flatmate E really is very funny) so satisfying all in all... lovely to see felinity and her crowd (her G, her flatmates E & K)... dinah came out at the end of the night to have a drink with us too... that lovely girl of mine...

then on sunday, me & dinah had our customery roast @ the amazon and then i set to work once more, biking over to P's for a haircut midway through the afternoon... nice to see her in her new place, right by the river lea,

cycling back i passed abney park cemetary that i'd loved when i first moved to london, my first flat being on the corner of green lanes and stoke newington church street...

i couldn't resist cycling into the cemetary and i drifted around for half an hour or so, taking pictures... really fantastic place, overgrown and centurys old...

and then today i read yet another great short story in manolis's, from that same anthology, this time by kazuo ishiguro, before going to work and now here i am, petting my cat and pondering the play...

x

crazy

gnarls barkley... just stumbled across him on youtube... that tune... crazy... just fantastic, i hope the album's as good...

brings godma G to mind, somehow,

felt a little scared today, just a tremor, to do with feeling manic, a hangover from attacking dinah in my sleep the other week...

really didn't want to leave dinah this morning in bed but i managed to, raced into work for my 1.5 hours of teaching then headed up to pointblank to sign a contract... getting home with no real clue as to what to do...

not unpleasant, very hot day...

hmmm

not much to say to y'all, i am a cat...

x

the Day of the Cat

actually the day after the Day of the Kat but i'll let that go...

i saw felinity tonight after my work, she who had been drifting around not working while i was working.... reversal of things...

we met in green park by the canada memorial, the second time in the last month or so that i've shared it with other people, (the first time was that great cycling day with hilda & spski), and we dipped our feet into the rippling water, something that it has never occurred to me to do...

i set my camera up for another of my slowing bicycle wheel videos and went off to buy lollies while she lay down and gazed at the trees... altogether utopian... her birthday was yesterday and she very sensibly took these two days off work...

we eventually ambled up to waterstones on picadilly (the simpsons building) where we had tea & cake (although not in such high style as claridges where her & G had been yesterday) before idly looking for books for her present... eventually i got her the virgin suicides (her choice) and kitchen by banana yoshimoto (my choice) and i couldn't resist i am a cat by soseki natsume for myself... which came to more than her two together - which is often the way with buying presents... and which provides us with the title of todays post, taken from this line:

For surely even human beings will not flourish forever. I think it best to wait in patience for the Day of the Cats.

it is my next book, having finished amanda & the 11 million high dancer last night, oh and i read a great short story today in manolis's, the lotus by jean rhys... that collection of shortstories he has in there is stuffed full of good ones...

anyway back to tonight, we ate in Getti's just along from the back entrance of Waterstones, quite pricey for not much food, but tasty...

after i dropped her at the tube i went over to somerset house to check out how easy it is to get to that high place i mentioned before... whether it was a fluke of that day or whether the way is open all the time...

which meant that as the light gradually bled out of the sky i was sat on a rooftop overlooking the fountains of somerset house... somewhere i'd like to take dinah - also felinity -

oh and what a joy it was today to have a functioning bicycle... i got it fixed up this morning after yesterday... as i was cycling from here to blackheath... just as i got to the bottom of the isle of dogs, about to go under the grenwich foot tunnel... i got a puncture... and no stuff with me to fix it...

a friendly passing cyclist pumped up my tire for me but it was dead by the time i got to the other side of the river, it just meant i had to walk through grenwich park to blackheath, fortunate that it happened so late in the journey and probably paying for the luck i had last month, getting that drawing pin in the tire and not getting a puncture...

grenwich park was heavenly, this was 6ish and the day was glorious (as was today) and there were so many smiling people strolling along... i felt it even through the slight funk i was in (joycean funk rather than james brown funk) as not only had i got a puncture but i'd also lost the batteries to my camera... it was dangling from my handlebars as i raced down the canal and the battery lid bit had worked it's way open and those batteries flew out before i even noticed... losing recharchables and polluting the canal all in one fell swoop...

and of course once i couldn't use my camera the visual world erupted in perfect pictures... a warehouse frame that was psychedelic, a path in grenwich park lined by trees that give off pink blossom... the path dusted with pink...

i met uncle filmo and we saw a modern classical concert given by ian pace, an excellent pianist, playing stuff by xanakis and finisee (i don't know how he spells his name the second one)... very good, more than a little mad... filmo said a piano string snapped in the xanakis, there was also a piece involving some technology with the piano written by the woman presenting the night - eva... somebody, based, it seems, on the novels of juan rolfo... whose pedro paramo i read a few months back... good stuff, less to filmo's taste but i liked it, intriguing use of technology... the pianist was a kookie guy, strange concert hall mannerisms...

oh and talking of concert hall mannerisms i met skinnyman in the bike shop this morning, he of the conscious lyrics UK hiphop... often does stuff for the stop the war demos... certain of my students have told me he's great, nice fella, council estate of mind is his latest album, he said to download it and then if i liked it to give money to wateraid...

groovy cat...

x

more videos this world

ok, so a couple of videos today, one more of mine from the elephant on friday... shorter, less steady of the hand but more cheering which frankly is the only thing that i didn't like about the elephant experience... that the great, wet, british public just don't know how to properly cheer a spectacle like that... this being one of the few cheers and that whoop at the beginning being my whoop... (oh how i love my whoop):


2nd elephant video


and then this one which my sister felinity took, presumably on sunday after we'd left, (hurrying back to london to show the elephant to Wfloopy shaman):


spinning bears


these same spinning bears that have been on top of the piano in blewbury for the last 5 or so years... they were on top of the piano when i was performing on saturday night, i sometimes was conscious of them and tried to keep them spinning through the music, other times i let them be...

i've just watched the video i took of the first half of my saturday gig, sadly i forgot to turn the camera on for the second half... the sound is surprisingly good, although still rubbish, for some reason the s's don't come out right and i sound as though i have a lisp... i'm half tempted to put a tune up on youtube put i'm also scared...

my tax rebate came through so yet another briefly poor few days comes to an end... (that is a rubbish sentence)... i may get another camera...

i went over to pointblank today to check out work and i did alot of videoing from my bike, the camera dangling from the handlebars or from my arm... a particularly mad genre of footage gathering that may prove just too damn mad to use, but i'm gathering it anyway...

so anyway i was cycling along the canal and i passed another cyclist who put out his hand just in front of my face then took it back... to scare me i guess... dumb behaviour... i started muttering to myself about how it takes both kinds of people to make this world and gradually, over the course of my journey (which included picking up my new trial contact lenses... wahey...) that sentence became the beginnings of a song...

so that was nice...

x

welcome

thoughts of a longcat welcomes it's 3000th visitor...

ooooo.

it does please me...

x

sultan's elephant

No words...pure poetry...


video of the elephant

i so wanted to shake each of these performers hands..

x

spaceship

so much cycling in the last couple of days, down to clapham to see felinity last night, (back via chelsea bridge, heavenly in the dark)...

then to work in hammersmith today, back via town to see the spaceship... getting fit it seems.. the spaceship is on waterloo place... where the elephant will be showing itself @ 1 tomorrow...

x

self assessed one of two things

this is the future...

today being the 2nd of may, i've just completed and submitted my tax return... online... (as i did just over 3 months ago for the first time)...

and yes, that is right, i did last years tax return only 3 months ago... and yet here i am doing my tax return now?

it has been my practise over the last... i don't know, 5 years or so, to do my tax return at the absolute latest moment... jan 31st...

it has always represented a deeply stressful week or so...

but NO... not now...

this IS the future... oh yes ladies and gentlemen i have struck out into the new...

short of cash you see, and i need my refund now...

and also this online business is so much more straightforward...

anyway, reluctant DIYing aho... (the other thing)

x

beltane bluebell vistas

it's quarter to three... there's noone in the place... just you & me...

me & dinah at 2:45 last night, listening to frank sinatra just before bed...

waking up & breakfasting @ manolis's before getting the train over to kew gardens...

going to kew on or around may 1st has been something i've done or thought about doing for years now, (as documented in this post after last may's kew visit), the bluebells are in their element right now...

i'd left my camera at home by accident and i like the freedom this gave me, and the more direct experience of kew, though i'd like to go back with a camera... much to take pictures of...

it's such a visual experience, happening on one of the vistas, suddenly the trees open out and form a wide channel... beautiful... i really love the way it's planned out, vistas...

shortly after we arrived we decided to take a ride on a cart pulled by working horses... drey horses if you will, heavy, big fella's... it turned out we were the only takers so we had a private trip, just us in the back and the couple up front, another guy shovelling the occassional shit... the sunlight just beginning to break through the clouds... my beautiful girl and me...

we found the bluebells, swathing the ground, and we wandered about gazing at the trees... it turns out you can go up the pagoda these days, not today, but in the summer, we went in the palm house, 1840's designed and built,

our meanderings ending with tea/mocha & cake, dinah leaving to go to work and me remaining... producer G had emailed me a recording of last weeks gig and i'd put it on my shuffle before we left today... once dinah had left i put it in my ears and wandered...

good to listen to it, my performance ropey where i thought it had been ropey but good in general, good to lay to rest the fears i'd had about being terrible, whilst being realistic about my shortcomings...

i stayed @ kew for a good couple of hours after dinah had gone, just the perfect place, by now the sun was out, casting long shadows, warming... my shuffle in my ears, listening to all kinds of music, salif keita remixed, miles davis remixed, (a spacey version of in a silent way while i gazed at the temperate house and it's geometric perfection... made me want to get hold of the original album)...

walking aound and experiencing that visual world that has built up over the last 200 years or more, appreciating the layout of some designer hundreds of years ago...

a temple high on a mound, surrounded on all sides by undergrowth, unreachable...

a strange building with only one room, full of graffiti, really made me think of the leopard, burt lancaster and the faded glory of his once vibrant aristocratic life...

oh and my curtains almost fell down, more reluctant DIYing ahead...

x

curtains magic cafe

first i was going to partially cover the bay window in my room with calico... which i have some of...

then i was going to take the things which attach the rail to the wall from the curtains on the small window, spread them out and use them for the bay window, cover the small window in calico...

i was stood on top of my bedside cabinet, screwdriver in hand, beginning to unscrew the first of the things when it struck me that i could just go to the shops and buy more of these things...

such is the reluctance with which i put on my DIY head...

so i began the process of refixing the curtain rail to the wall yesterday and i completed it today... i can't remember how long i left it last time, i could only find one reference to it in this blog... but this time we had dinah's bed to sleep in... no rising with the dawn like it was back then...

wednesday night to sunday afternoon... half a week, that's fair enough...

reluctant DIY...

so yesterday i went into the amazon and there was uncle filmo... we chatted and then i helped him get a TV/DVD player from argos, a completely new shopping experience for him, it's like shopping in a dole queue, he said...

i love how daft it is in there, finding what you want in a catalogue, writing it down on a piece of paper, going to someone else & paying for it, getting another piece of paper, going somewhere else & waiting for it, collecting it...

reminded me of old fashioned civil service caricatures... like the nightmarish world portrayed in brazil the gilliam film...

funnily enough another gilliam film was mentioned on the box of a DVD that we watched on the TV/DVD back @ filmo's, the one we watched is called la jette a film told entirely in still images... very beautiful, it was made in 1982 and inspired one of gilliam's films from the 90's... (i won't say which one, the DVD box told which one it was and it slightly spoiled the film for me)...

we also watched an ornette coleman film and a roland kirk/john cage film...

lovey to see the filmo...

i left there and cycled up to Wfloopy (shaman)'s for a game or three of chess and some great talk... he bringing out his dead... said he was glad to, most people snigger when you say you're a dead head... (as gillian welch was it seems)...

then today me & dinah went into the amazon only to find M & L of instant flight, it took a little time for all three of us to get on the same page, M knew from the off who i was, L remembered with the line oh... you're chet (baker) and it crystallised the night for me...

it was back when i used to play tiny gigs @ the effra in brixton, something i'd forgotten about, precursor to the vibe bar gig... M & L are going to meet moje later, a great old friend from that era, maybe 3... 4... 5? years ago...

wonderful to have bumped into them, somehow symbolic for my musical journey, reconnecting my current performance aspirations with that time and those performances...

x

soft hard blurred clear

last night at around 10pm i finished the milk, i'd better get some more before the shops shut or i'll have to go out in the morning before i have my tea... being something like what i thought...

i'd been out with felinity @ eat & 2 veg and i was very well fed... i didn't go out again last night, i settled in front of the tv and watched six feet under on more4 intending to watch the larry sanders show on itv4 after...

so this morning when i woke up after not enough sleep i knew that i had to go out to the shops or forego my morning cup of tea... i put on my big coat and went to the shops before my shower, before anything, it was wierd...

before i set off for work i tried to pump up my bicycle tires but failed to... i've been failing to pump up my tires for weeks now, i just don't get how that pump works and spski's out of the country, he'll be back on sunday to answer my questions...

they were getting too soft...

near the end of my bicycle journey to work this morning i could see that something was stuck to my front tire, making a sound with each revolution, i thought it was a piece of paper but it turned out to be a drawing pin, stuck all the way in... so i took it out and was thankful that it was the end of the journey, got to work before the tire deflated...

then after work i cycled to a bike shop to have it changed, only it didn't seem to be deflating... the drawing pin had been sticking right into the tire... it didn't make sense...

so the man in the shop checked the innertube and it wasn't punctured... he said as my tires had been so soft the pin hadn't had enough resistance from the inner tube to pierce it... so he pumped up both front and back tires for me and i went out onto the street again...

cycled over to the bookstall under waterloo bridge and played G the bookseller at chess, he was playing someone else when i arrived so i cycled all the way to vauxhall bridge and back to kill time... really hard tires... no bounce... i felt every imperfection in the path... my bike rattled and my fingers holding the handlebars had to cling on really hard...

anyway he beat me and then i beat him, i've been meaning to play him at chess for a few weeks now, i'll be returning for a rematch in the near future, i cycled home to get a couple of things then went out again to the opticians, a sight/contact lens test with someone there i hadn't met before, P, very nice...

he gave me some daily lens's to keep me going until a trial pair comes for me next week, some new kind that allows my eyes to breathe more... these ones he gave me are stronger and i had that wierd attention to detail/almost too much precision thing going on... he told me that one of his customers doesn't like to have a properly clear prescription, he asks for it to be blurred a little,

i got on my bike with my too hard tires and my almost too precise eyes and i cycled up to manolis's where i read a ted hughes short story over my lunch, the rain horse was very good, it's in a collection of short stories he has in his cafe, edited by malcolm bradbury,

then since i've been home i've done almost nothing, just lain on my bed amongst the curtains and read and dozed, the not enough sleep catching up with me, dinah waking me up just before she went to work, a little love & affection perfectly suited to my just woken self...

strange day all round then for me, i still can't believe i went out to the shops before i had a tea this morning...?

x

curtains tunnel theatre

i tore the curtain rail (with the curtains) off in my sleep last night... a nocturnal disturbance violent enough to upset dinah... the strange circumstance of waking up to a crying girlfriend, then comforting her as i'm acclimatising myself...

when i woke up i was fiddling with the window fitting, i looked down and there was dinah, so i attended to her, looking up at the window and the lack of curtains and wondering if i was dreaming or not...

no memory of the dream that did the violence...

cycling in the rotherhithe tunnel under the thames i was truck yesterday by the lights reflecting off the tiles... the tunnel was built in 1908... at points along it there are 2 spiral staircases leading upwards, i suppose that they must be at the banks of the river... there was fresh air coming down the one i had a closer look at... locked of course... i wonder what evidence of those staircases there is on the surface...?

kind of panicky down there, partly to do with the polluted air, partly the cars rushing past (you have to cycle on the pavement, there are hardly any pedestrians) and partly the enclosed space... i was glad to get out of there...

i was on my way to my last schools visit of this year that was just south of the river... i was pleased to find that it only took me 40 minutes to get to the school, half an hour from my front door to the bottom of the regents canal (via victoria park) then 10 minutes under the rotherhithe tunnel and i was there...

i had one of those lazy, aimless journeys back afterwards, along the canal all the way to angel, then 20 minutes reading and filming one of the slowing bicycle wheel films, then a jaunt down to dinah's theatre to meet her between shows...

and then this morning, well, early afternoon, after the curtains, after dinah had gone off to work, i was woken from my half sleep by B (director) ringing me to ask if i could do some music for a theatre production he's doing... he who directed bash, my first theatre music thing (this one will bring my theatre music experiences to 3)... really nice to talk to him and great to be asked... no money... i can't wait...

x

overwhelmed

so firstly, let's all breathe a sigh of relief that that advert for the gig is no longer at the top of this blog...

it happened... it was alright, sound man not really on the ball and a large group of loud men at the back shouting all the way through my set meant that i didn't enjoy it much at first, but as it went on i found a way in and it was good...

the second tune i played was a song i've been trying to write for weeks now and still haven't... the chorus is grace's name repeated, the verse on monday night was about me being in brighton the day she was born, before josiah even wanted to live in brighton, improvised in the way that i said it... i had a second verse idea about the melody to harbour walls but i only did the one verse... it was interesting, the first tune had gone down alright but i felt i needed to stake a claim to the space, in my own way, that second tune did that somehow for me...

improvising lyrics is something i like the idea of a lot... i'm thinking of not finishing that song anymore than it is now and doing it at gigs, using the verses as an open letter to grace, improvising but probably knowing the themes...

felinity was there with her flatmate E & her boyfriend G, P (poet) came with J, three lovely people i meet randomly in cafe's on or near the holloway road came... L from work came with a friend... dinah made it somewhere in the middle of my set, i looked up at one point and i could see her... raised a smile...

producer G was fairly dashing in a suit jacket over jeans, Hcello also fairly smart, me in the paul smith suit and one of the shirts i'd bought at gresham blake's on saturday...

the night was lovely, both M (cameron) and S who run the night were lovely... i was a social butterfly once i'd played, so many different people to see...

and it was the first of many such gigs that i hope to be doing with this trio... much to learn still... eager for experience...

since then i've been a little flat, or overwhelmed at times... funny the focus and energy that went into that gig and then the time afterwards...

cedric nash came round last night and we had a meal together with people in this house, very nice too, he is such a good energy to have around and we got on really well as a house for the first time in awhile...

i was up chatting to cedric & dinah until the early hours, quite trashed, a tiny absynth with cedric when he arrived, my share of 2 bottles of wine and then some smoking, we closed the evening listening to van morrison's common one album, very close to both mine & cedric's heart... he cycled off into the night and me & dinah played cards and laughed alot until we were a little straighter... even then it took me a long time to get to sleep, combined effects of getting trashed that night and the overwhelmed/lostness i was floating in anyway...

then today the rotherhithe tunnel... which i will tell you about sometime when i haven't told several days worth of stories...

x

Vibe Bar 24th April (blog below)

MONDAY 24th APRIL VIBE BAR... i'm on stage between 8:30 & 9pm, i'll be singing my own original songs and i'll have a cellist & an MPC player with me... gmap x (see below for my blog as normal) x

where i'm at

woke today after 9 hours sleep with only 10 minutes before Hcello was coming round...

9 hours is alot but i clearly wanted more this morning... i guess i got 5-6 hours on saturday night and today is a big day...

rehearsed with H for the last time before tonight, singing this soon after waking up was interesting... by the end of the rehearsal my voice was suffering a little... much care to be taken through today, long enough day to sort it out before the gig... i'll be trying not to shout at all and i should achieve that...

so now i'm about to gather my self together and go eat with dinah, manolis awaits, we who ate in such style last night...

the conservatory restaurant, which i thought was originally built on 1791, (actually 1709 so the maitre'D told me) was absolutely the perfect environment for my suited self and dinah's elegantly be-frocked in a 30's style self... the food was really nice, although small, and was ridiculously priced, but it was perfect... largely for the place itself and for my beautiful girlfriend... we'd speculated for awhile exactly what an amous bouche was which we'd read somewhere they had in there and we were disapointed not to see it on the menu...

so when our waiter turned up by surprise with an amous bouche from the chef we were almost beside ourselves...

for now i'm clambering back into my adult self... once i've eaten at manolis's it will start to come in to focus... looking forward to wearing the suit for the second night in a row and soooo looking forward to playing my tunes with Hcello & producer G...

a few friendly faces in the audience will include felinity & dinah... maybe a whole heap more...

can't wait...

x

from terrible 2's to dead posh

the only way i survived this morning, being woken @ 7, staving off waking up until 8 by putting her in front of the telly... (she asked for it... she asked for it all day in fact..) playing with her most of the morning until 12 when i agreed to let her watch a little bit of cbeebies again... the set top box... only for 15 minutes this time... then fun & frolics until her mum arrived around 3, only an hour late...

the only way that i managed to remain equinamible (if that's a word) was that i knew the food i would get at the amazon cafe once josiah got here... that vegetarian roast... oh yes ladies and gentlemen... oh yes...

grace was mostly a joy, we had a few tantrums today but i dealt with them amicably...

and now, having seen them on their way, and helped our neighbour with a childs trampoline that she needed putting up... i'm wiped out but i'm about to start getting my arse into gear for the posh dinner me & dinah have got coming... the lanesborough don't you know...?

x

grace

she's asleep in my bed, my dinah is taking this opportunity to stay away, also because her mum is away so her & Wfloopy shaman are having a lads night in as they call it... generally involves playing hogs of war, smoking, deriding keyboard players...

my journey to brighton was productive... partially marking the essays i need to mark, working out the groups for the composition task they start on monday... oh this part of the module, splitting them up to write and then just leaving them to it... drifting around resolving issues if necesary... sorting out equipment... drinking tea & eating cake...

sadly my apprentice J won't be there to share the experience, trying to persuade me to watch battlestar galacticor, opening both our minds to the learning of teaching, which he's near the beginning of & i'm a little further on but still with much to learn...

picked up grace just as josiah was about to sing in her gospel outfit, led by gospelK... they were great, although i spent too much time worrying about the girl to really get into more than a few moments... i love having her, but mixed in with social situations like that today is not so nice for me...

we drank a bit of wine after while grace ran around with some new friends... got chatting with R, R who had driven josiah's stuff away a few weeks back... i'd love to get drunk with that lot some day, they are a lot of laughs...

then josiah took me to gresham & blake where i picked up a couple of nice shirts for sunday & monday nights... (had to get two because we didn't back to london quick enough to catch the dry cleaners where my intended shirt for tomorrow night is)

after which grace and me swanned back up to london, no tantrums yet... played with the magnetic theatre again, started a wall marking how tall she is... ate, bathed... bedtime stories...

and now i've got a pizza on its way from la parma somewhere north of here.. unknown quality... if only la porchetta would deliver... just like jai's, such good quality food but steadfastly collection or eat in only...

x

grime

i'm about to go out to see rollin' with the nines... not expecting much from it, partly to see all those grime music people in the cinematic flesh...

i had a lot to do today... and i've achieved quite a lot... less than half of the list i made, yes... yes that's true... but there's still time...

my last day to myself until wednesday...

going to get grace tomorrow for the night, josiah coming up to get her on sunday, then me & dinah are getting glammed up and going out to the lanesborough hotel for a ridiculously expensive classy dinner...

then it all happens on monday, Hcello coming round in the am, then off to londonbridge work with my keyboard, teaching afternoon & early evening, producer G picking me up from there @ 7:30 and then the gig... oh the gig...

rehearsed with G yesterday and it is going to be so lovely... it will also be the first time that Hcello & producer G will have met, let alone played together... but hey... i've met them both before...

ok... the film...

laters

x

adventures with pianos

at the gig/party on saturday night my sound module was being a bit wierd... turning off for no reason i could see every now and again...

tody i decided to rehearse with the keyboard i'm going to gig with, get my emotional self attached to it... Hcello came round and we statred playing, a little wierd for me, having been practising on the fender rhodes fo so long...

anyway, midway through the first tune the module died... very scary... days away from the gig @ the vibe bar... found out what was going on and fixed it eventually but somehow it reset itself back to it's factory setings...

so suddenly i had to reprogram it to be how i wanted it again, a rehearsal with nippy tonight and in that band i use quite a few changed things within it...

so i've just spent an hour or so getting my head back into that headspace of how to program the little creature...

interesting... one of those times when a pain in the arse makes you look at something you might not have looked at and you gain from the looking... a new piano sound that i didn't realise it had that suits my soloing self, just as the piano sound i knew about suits my ballady/chord self...

packing up shortly and i'll be getting the tube down with my keyboard to nippy's rehearsal, shunning K's lift, partly because i'm not wanting to spend time with that man these days, but also because it's a journey i'm going to have to make next monday morning and it's been a long time, i don't want it to kill me then so it may well kill me tonight...

one of my very first posts on this here blog was about just how mad it is carrying my keyboard on public transport...

getting all the more excited about the gig next monday...

x

blewbury

with my parents down in the countryside for the night... a chance to see their new bathroom & kitchen, a little play on the piano that i'm going to move to my house in the near future, a drink with my blewbury old friend in about half an hour...

woke up deliciously late today, a proper amount of sleep, recovering from the party...

me & dinah went over to her parents last night for a meal, lovely, a good night, good conversations all round... i was struck by certain similarities between T, dinah's mum, & my mum, nothing i can put into words but they're there...

Wfloopy (shaman) & me got entangled in a synthesisor/guitarist argument... dinah putting her bass playing twopenneth in...

we also watched Dr Who, with david tennant as the dr... he was truly excellent, miles better than christopher eccleston... surprisingly good episode... made us laugh out loud...

then today my journey over here was really nice... the canal in london, beautiful day , the train journey longer than it should have been but this gave me a nice long book read... i'm reading a book dinah's leant me, can't remember the title just now, very good...

also nice just to look out of the window and see the landscape moulding gradually into the landscape of my childhood, we crossed a river twice between reading & didcot, which i guess is the thames, made me want to check on an ordnance survey map... or maybe just the internet now... yes, the thames it is...

anyway... laters potatoes...

x

partied

an absynth at 6:30 this morning with my dinah... my body wasn't having it...

we made it to bed by about 7:30... by 11:30 i couldn't sleep so i joined grace watching cbeebies on our new set top box... which josiah gave to us this weekend, partly so that grace could watch cbeebies while she (& me & dinah) slept off our respective hangovers...

the party had begun with me & producer G doing 3 tunes, part of our set @ the vibe bar a week tomorrow... part of a sequence of performances from people who live in this house (+ belgiun R)... producer G said afterwords how honoured he was to be part of that performance... the quality of the performances was very good... dinah did some, including a song she'd written in the early days of me & her... (don't brake my plastic heart in two)... i loved her all the more watching her sing it...

in my set were the two i've written for her in these last few months as well as harbour walls... a couple of nice comments after from two men whose opinunes i trust... Wfloopy (shaman) pointing out my ability to take the piss out of myself but still be good... and cedric nash pointing to the frankness in the songs... that he could here me clearly within the lyrics... this as well as the invalueable experience of performing in front of an audience that listens... (a luxury i may not get at the vibe bar)... great...

josiah & grace left a few hours ago and dinah was practically collapsed on the floor from hunger...

grace screaming the house down this morning... a house full of hungover people...

the magnetic theatre a few nights ago, grace with a captivre audience of hilda & spski & me... (grace dancing with hilda & T)

the fact that spaki wasn't at the party... missed him... i've been there, i've missed parties at this house & i respect his position on it... but he was missed...

dr K...

nippy & r9, who finally got her high healed shoes back after nippy's set last night, a good gig, maybe my last time with those shoes for awhile...

going over to Wfloopy & T's for dinner tonight, even though i've met them loads of times before it still has a slightly edgy meet the parents vibe to it...

x

CDR full moon

i seem to be getting more spam...

of the four emails that thunderbird delivered to me this morning (after taking away what it thinks is spam) one was from a real person, one was an email from blueyonder that i get every day telling me that my webspace is full... i find it comforting... the other two were spam...

the first opened with the line:

dear friends of the chang...

(am i a friend of the chang?)

and the second was from some company saying:

We supply our customers stainless steel pipes and flanges...

... and i guess it's just daft trying to work out why i in particulr have recieved these 2 pieces of spam... but try and work it out i do...

anyway, it's good friday, and this year has been the first year that i've noticed the full moon in the week before easter and linked it with the knowledge that easter always comes on the weekend after the first full moon after the equinox... trying to place what easter means to me and not getting much... egg rolling... pistachio nuts... christ born again i guess... just not that that engaged with that story these days, i do remember it being a good story...

started in on the absynth yesterday afternoon with hilda... me & dinah brought it back from prague, hilda brought the complicated ritual with the sugar and the burning...

then another one a little later in the early evening with spski... then another, then the three of us deported up to my room to wade through acres of photo's & video's (spski in particular somewhat nonplussed at the amount of camera action...)

then a tom & jerry, then half of the station agent, then i went out onto the streets of london with my book of haruki murakami short stories which i was not really in a state to read... tubed it down to shoreditch to meet producer G (& dinah) @ plastic people for CDR...

G & various students of mine have been telling me about CDR for a little while now, it's a club night where you can take your tunes... in whatever state of undress/readiness and they get played on a big system... very nice sound system it is too down there... you might have to wait a long time to hear your tune... producer G's tune (with my improvising keys on it) was played at around 12:45 am, G said this was good, the stories i've heard from my students have been their tunes being played at around 2am or later...

mad mix of tunes... very loud sound system... various different qualities of mixing so occassionally some harsh, very loud sounds coming to your ears... dinah patiently waited with me until the tune was played... long suffering but elegant... saw a couple of students (one of whom is no longer our student)... met an interesting producer called darko who had a couple of tunes being played there, one of which was directly after G's tune and it captured me & made us linger awhile longer...

then me & dinah made it out into the night and bussed up to crystal where we ate a little before returning home...

a slice of london after our prague break...

prague baby prague

was full of english people... every 3rd couple you saw in the street was english... we certainly were...

wonderful mini-break wih dinah... many stories, most of which i'll be keeping to myself...

had an hour on my own this afternoon before we started the gradual withdrawal process, the buying of provisions for the journey, the last meal out... the tram journey out to where the bus to the airport goes from...

i'd recorded the chords of this piece of music that is half falling dark lullaby & half rising chords from the past... wanted to see if i could make a start on some lyrics for it...

found my way down to one of the islands in the river... filming trams crossing the bridge... bright but cold day... may have found a theme there for the song, one or two hooks that i can gently pull at and spin out a true stroy about my life now...

x

spring has so sprung

firstly, i'm meant to be packing right now... this is to a certain extent, displacement activity...

ate in manolis' and spski & hilda met me there, we cycled off, hitting the canal beore camden (foolish) made it through to lisson grove... cycled through kensington gardens until we at last reached a great exhibition of black & white photography that was just great... yes... great...

i'm a little bit drunk but if i remember i'll link to it... german fella, vitkine...

one in particular looking like sheet music, actually telephone/electricity wires...

then we embarked once more in the parks, i led them to the canada memorial, which was similar in ripples to a waterfall in a terrible film that we three had watched last night... the blood of fu man shu... a few saving graces but many, many bad points...

we cycled up to picadilly, stealing behind for a stretch, cycling the wrong way down a one way street coming face to face with 2 mounted police... hilda later expressed regret that they hadn't engaged us in high speed street pursuit... horses chasing bicycles...

but they didn't... we arrived at the simpson's building, i lingered awhile in the novels section (mainly in M) part of a growing romance with books that i'm hoping to have again... then met them upstairs for a drink in the bar...

pricey, nice view...

then over to where dinah works to meet her in between shows, pints in the nell... before hilda headed south, dinah went back to work, me & spski headed home (him via curry hut) and here i am... just set my vacation flag on gameknot... about to put my laundry on... make sure i've got all i need to write music should i need to... check out train times...

this time tomorrow we'll be sipping cheap checq drinks in some romantic bar... (one can but dream)...

deliberately didn't take my camera out with me so you'll just have to take my word for it... it was a beautiful day... stunning sunshine and flowers and buds pushing through...

spring is here

me & dinah will not be here by tomporrow... x

picture heavy high & low places

straight in with two pictures from my travels yesterday, imagine the sun traveling from one to the other...

i'd walked dinah to her work around 6:30 and i knew i had an hour before the sunset so i cycled upstream to get the right kind of bend in the river for these pictures...

my last post being about high & low states of mind, today i'm talking about the high & low places i've been going to in the last couple of days... maybe i should thin down that gig advert at the top... make sure people know that the blog continues as normal just underneath...

so those pictures directly above, whilst also bringing attention to the blog under the advert... are the low... the water level... although had i been able to actually get right down to the water i would have done, these are from the thames path...

today i was cycling around listening to my shuffle and i decided to go check out the barbican highwalk again... that strange mix of inside and outside, like burroughs talks about in his dream book, the city of the dead, loosely based on tangiers where he spent many years... spaces that are domestic but suddenly become streets, covered to uncovered... you can travel (i cycled, but one could walk) along one stretch of high walk and suddenly you're in the barbican arts centre, carry on far enough (particularly unnerving if cycling) and you come out into the outside again...

no satisfactory pictures of the highwalks... plenty of the towers... i'll have to return on another day and try and catch the walks...

it's a very utopian idea... no cars at all obviously... also forbidden to cycle (although i was breaking that rule)... reminds me of mineapolis...

i realised today that i absolutely love cycling in pedestrian places... listening to my shuffle, sometimes going really slowly, very aware of the rightfully pedestrian... enjoying being an interloper... illegal of course... and the more i do it the more likely i'll get caught by the police and fined (£10 spot fine i think it is... maybe more)... but i do love it...

after the barbican i headed west, passing by st ethelreda's catholic church, the oldest catholic church in london...
a long and chequered history, used to house a beautifully out of tune grand piano in its crypt, sadly no more, in fact today i couldn't get into the crypt at all but i know that they got rid of it a few summers ago,

i headed further west, finding myself on the pavement of the strand... still drifting slowly, listening largely to semble, saw somerset house and rolled in, wondered what it would be like to cycle through those fountains but they're down some steps... not wanting to dismount i rolled down a slope to the right, into a place i'd never seen before, steps led down quite a way, to the bottom of a spiral staircase that led up a long, long way...

so i carried my lovely £10 bike down the stairs and locked it up at the foot of this spiral staircase.. black metal affair, fire escape... (if i'd tilted my camera even more directly down you could have seen the bike in this picture)...

climbed a long way up until i got out onto the roof of the building it was attached to, stepped over into a kind of path, again the fire escape, saw two signs pointing in opposite directions for the fire escape, one back the way i'd come, the other onwards up a ladder, which of course i followed...

i pity the people following that sign in the event of a real fire, it ends somewhat precariously at a brick wall high above the city where i sat for a little while and took pictures...

odd mixture of high & low, being able to see down into these arches that are below the level of the somerset house open square, at one point i could see a pillared archway through which i could see cars crossing the river @ waterloo bridge, i look forward to looking at that same pillared archway from the south side of the river...

also looking forward to returning to this place on a sunnier day, the slight rain made it scarier than it needed to be... once dinah has finished working at the producers i'll take her up there as you can just see the big producers billboard on the theatre... i can imagine us now, giving it the finger joyously...

i realised by the time i'd got down to ground level that i'd left some marking in st ethelreda's so i jumped on my bike, this time swapping headphones for helmet, raced through the streets, passing a crowd awaiting dan brown's judgement at the law courts... picked up the cardboard envelope with the marking in it and headed home...

satisfying discoveries

x

rich time

odd not to have posted since sunday, me & my often more than once a day blog...

(listening to this beautiful semble album)

it's been a rich time...

some real lows, many real highs...

H cello came round on tuesday, we played through a couple of the tunes i'm doing @ the vibe bar, i love how we sound, me & her, my voice against her cello... hmmm...

had a long awaited conversation with someone yesterday that proved to be most hideous... this morning i woke up with my dinah, went with her to crouch end and once she'd gone off to meet her mum (whose birthday it is today) i was sat in a cafe and only then did i begin to be in a good place with that conversation... 20 or so hours later...

it was a conversation that i'd initiated and i guess i was hoping to get some resolution (for us both) through the conversation itself, but not this time, i've climbed my way to an understanding and a resolution but entirely on my own (and with the love and support of some lovely people, dinah & hilda (G) in particular),

i've thought previously about writing a song from this situation, and it is the classic model for it, a situation in which i don't feel i'm being understood, a desire to be able to better express myself... not dissimilar to how i felt back when i was writing love is lies, and though this situation has felt just as bleak as that did back then the song that could come out of this would be a great deal more hopeful...

and funnily enough if i manage to write it i think i'll be performing love is lies and it as the two other songs in my set (beyond the three that i know i'm doing right now)..

currently in the process of the first deflea of the spring/summer, the weather is warmer and so i frontlined her with the help of hilda (G) last night, when i was still under the spell of the unease from that conversation... hilda (G) & dinah & me drinking sherry and playing cards eased me a great deal... the deflea itself surprisingly easy with hilda's help, balthazara hated me as she always does for an hour or so, although she was beginning to come round to love again just before i retired to bed, she's still quarantined to the basement and the outside for another few hours but she'd forgiven me by this afternoon...

x

my pace

at long last i've set up a my space music thing...

longcatspace is where to find it... which i intended as being longcat space, but now i kind of like longcat's pace...

currently just harbour walls up there, no pictures, no friends (i even deleted tom... the friend that everyone has, everyone except me that is)...

me & dinah just went out to nambucca on holloway road to see some live music, 4 bands, of which only the first: jade fox was any good in my book, although the last (git knickers) were very good, although really not to my taste... too moptopy for me...

ate in the ever wonderful crystal of holloway road, and indeed we'd breakfasted at the incomparible amazon cafe on holloway road earlier, as my dinah so rightfully says... it's all about holloway road...

x

tunes

my sweet dinah left for work and i left for producer G's house in gypsy hill...

half a chance to see felinity and our folks but the do they'd been to (the parents) had no seats and they'd been standing way too long and in the end tiredness won & i didn't get to see them, partly because the session at producer G's went on more than i thought it would... very productive it was too...

i now have a very provisional backing for 3 of the tunes i'm doing @ the vibe bar (and yes, patroclus, please come...) the other 2 will be piano, voice, cello affairs...

i love working with producer G, something functional and fun going on there... we went to the pub for a couple afterwords, with his C, had to leave his cat rudi in the house sadly, he'll make a good boozer sometime soon i think...

then raced home to have a quick pizza and then meet R - chiro R - who put in the cat flap all those years ago... he came to drink wine and to pick up the cot that is the last of josiah's stuff to leave my room...

just have to get the piano from blewbury to london now...

a little drunk now, dinah preparing a ciperinia (yes, indeed, there is probably a correct way to spell that drink) for herself and then we're off upstairs to watch another episode of carnivale... good telly...

x

toilets i have known

i've often considered writing a toilet review section of this blog... i so appreciate a good public toilet... well, more often i'm found appreciating the toilet of a retail outfit, or possibly an entertainment building...

and obviously i'm not at the top of my spelling game right this minute as i write this...

today i worked in the morning and then was let loose on the thames for the afternoon... hoping to get a game of chess with the guy i bought carter beats the devil from on thursday... one of the waterloo bridge bookstall people...

cycling along listening to gillian welch... weaving my way between pedestrians... as the weather improves that strecth of the thames is going to get fuller and fuller with the walking... wounded or otherwise... and i may have to stop using it, even though i love cycling through pedestrian bits, being patient, going at the same speed as the walkers if necesary... being responsible even as you're being irresponsible...

i dreamed a highway back to you came on (shufflewise, came after a miles davis track (with charles mingus)) and i had to cycle a fair bit further than i was going to to accomidate the song, all 10 or so minutes of it...

ended near the NFT and popped in for a cup of tea & a pecan plait, taking advantage of the toilets while i was there... but the mens was being cleaned so i was forced (yes... forced) to use the disabled toilet which was a joy...

very well maintained, a tap you could leave on if you wanted to... (very important)

actaully the second disabled toilet i'd been this week, i'd found one in the barbican that i could fit my whole bike into on wednesday, solving a potentially awkward situation...

so anyway, i sat down with my tea & my pecan plait and i read solidly for a good twenty minutes or so... this carter beats the devil book is certainly a page turner, i've been taking weeks and weeks to finish books recently and i've read 177 pages of this one in 2 days...

echoes of jonathon strange & mr norrell, not just because of the magic theme but also the compulsiveness of it...

going roung to producer G's tomorrow, he lives not very far from the furthest point on that mad 35 mile cycling day i had a few weeks ago...

sang the neurotic love song to dinah yesterday and it was great... partly just to sing it to her whom i wrote it for, but also to practise singing to an audience... i recorded myself singing it today and i have a lot of work to do before the vibe bar gig (24th april)...

then H cello on tuesday, it's all beginning to happen...

my bed calls

x