fragmentation anger spanish alcoholic piano playing

i played piano twice today, once at work, waiting for somebody, and once at home, on T's piano. both times i felt strong in my playing and ability to improvise. this is not always the case.

oh and i lost a game of chess on gameknot which really surprised me, just didn't see it coming, thought i was being clever, very neat checkmate,...

so yesterday i was in waterlow park with A, (who sometimes lives with a very beautiful piano), lovely. Not so lovely was the spanish guy sat near us, alternately playing his flamenco guitar, (cheap sounding, fairly rough playing, and not in a good way), or yelling. the three lines i remember (each one repeated several times) are:

"get a fucking job"

"i just need to stop drinking"

"my wife is a very dangerous person"

he was clearly angry, and also fairly misogynist.

as i was playing the piano for the first time today, i at times pictured myself as that man, although without the misogyny, in fact without any of the content of what he was saying, just anger, yelling, sporadic music. i like my music, but it's quite possible and likely that some others don't like it. when i was growing up i only had to start playing for either my brother or sister to shut doors. the other side of this is maybe that spanish man likes his music...?

now this partly comes from an anger i feel easily at the moment, to do with my work, which is partly directed at myself, it's a complicated business. no need to go into it all here, just worth noting that it's there, sometimes a huge purifying sensation. quite seductive perversely.

sometimes playing / improvising comes from emotions, sometimes from bodily sensations, sometimes the intellect. today this anger was one influence on my playing, and i dug what i played, it had a certain unity to it.

so there i was yelling in my mind as i shaped this piece of music, different phrases coming up and being repeated, (my wife is a very dangerous person my wife is a very dangerous person), reminds me of a bit from that rilke poem "black cat":

"...just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified..."

then once i was home i played again, on T's piano, and again i enjoyed what came out. sometimes i think a truer blog would just be recordings of what comes out when i play the piano. partly because "sadie's gone" is back in my life, a 10 minute improvisation from 3 years ago, i am really interested in this music that flows from me. i think about recording it but i also just love the idea of not recording, of it being heard only once by those near, and never again. somehow an image of water flowing underground.

T comments that it was very sunlit. she said she could hear the sunlight in it. i wasn't thinking about sunlight at all but that doesn't mean she's wrong. the sunlight is so fantastic today how could i not play something infused with it?

and then fragmentation. just a note to do with all this. i played on saturday, and i have been thinking about the ways in which certain other performers were "better" than me that day. as i think they were, K and N particularly, very strong. now it's easy to doubt yourself with creativity and partly maybe it is just that, but i want to think about this. i think i find it easy to experience my self, and my music as fragmentation, and the music of others, and indeed other people, as unity. not sure where this is headed and i've written too much today anyway, but just to mention it. i know that with time and experience i get better, more "whole" let's say, and i'm not talking about a psychological thing here, or at least not only that, a good performer projects a solid image on the audience, that's what i felt the other day. i of course don't know what image i projest on audiences, i've never seen myself perform - except on videos, and i'm talking about something tangible and in the room that videos can miss i think... anyway,...

must go, going to see "the black rider" - william burroughs and tom waits opera.. very excited.

also want to mention the hammock that is now up in our garden, and how much joy that is going give me this summer.

x