nearing the end of the light today as i walked home reading the end of wild life 

wild life beautiful skies rubbish 24

just finished wildlife by richard ford, finished at my kitchen table but was nearing the end whilst i was walking back from the amazon taking pictures of the beautiful sky, shame my old camera's got grit on it, this camera in my phone just doesn't do light well enough,

You get carried away with how things were once, and not how you need to make them better

father to his son in this richard ford book, resonates with me now,

about to watch another episode of 24, third series, it's got that guy from buffy in it, although tough on him to have been in buffy after it was great and now 24 well after it was great.

my brother sorting me out with good telly, or even barely keeping my interest telly, sooooo much better watching six feet under, or the sopranos...

got up after little sleep and made it to the school on time, the day had the makings of a great day as i was walking to the tube @ 8 this morning, found myself singing it's gonna be a... glorious day (radiohead), really feel much lighter after late night conversation i had with E last night, made me angry at the time, but lighter, a resolution i'd been hoping for for months...

met with the director, handed over the 1st draft, my haphazardness matching his, he dropped me off right by my favourite bookshop in brixton, broused for awhile, enjoying looking at all the writers i like even though i bought nothing, can't think of the word but... it's a little like irrigated, feeling... like water that is fizzy, the bubbles rising up through me, just seeing these names, putting me back on my path in relation to buying books, would have bought celine if they'd had him.

overheard a woman asking after books about women pirates, networked a little and got her number for the woman pirate i live with,

x

maybe 4 hours now

insomnia, but self inflicted because of these odd sleep patterns i allow to happen,

oh well, just 4 hours teaching, & i can pull that out of my weary self tomorrow,

4 hours sleep, then 4 hours teaching, seems fair x

1st draft done

handing it over to the director tomorrow,

not bad, not perfect & far from finished but good for now,

just need to get a clear way forward from here to the finished product,

what did i learn from this process of getting it to this stage?

in terms of the composition,
in terms of technicalities of recording,

hmmmm... much to ponder,

5 - 6 hours sleep ahead of me at the most, i will be a little shaky tomorrow, first time with year 8 music students in the school,... oh well, i'll be fine..

x

composition

nearing the first deadline for this thing, an early version by monday, still writing it, some of it is going to be fairly improvised, some heavily structured, working right now on a piece right at the heart of the dramatic action, the central moment in the play, i by turns hate it and love it,

i'm so frustrated with my fingers, not being able to play whatever i decide on at any given moment, the ability to play my composition lagging behind my writing, always will be the case, should be using my pc to program the bits i can't play but i would so love to be able to just think, hmmmmm... maybe ... this, and just play it...

like the music for bash, my first foray into theatre composing, i was writing the music right up to the edge of recording it, in the end i couldn't play the final piece all in one go, glued it all together in the pc, which came out fine,...

timing, waves

began wildlife by richard ford today, still in the first few pages not yet possessed by it but it will get me... the beekeeper was frankly disappointing, snow is worth reading by that guy but the other two...?

had a tricky morning, i was sat in the cafe at lunch feeling pretty rough when E phoned me, and i had absolutely nothing to give to her. bad time to answer my phone, now i've left her annoyed & agrieved with me...

then bizaarely the afternoon session found me much lighter, just about to teach a piano lesson now...

x

composition process

very up & down day,

spent £200 on a new pair of glasses which i'll see next week, that will be great, my present pair is several years old, in fact i was living in kensal rise back then so it must be... 2 years here, 2 years subletting, 2 - 3 years in stamford hill... 7 years ago?

i remember it well, the man in the opticions let me take potential frames home to show my friends and he let me pay it off over three months,

this spend today scares me a bit, i'm not going to get my filling redone just yet, maybe next pay check...

a word on books, i finished night of the hunter two nights ago, it was lovely, all that stuff in the end of the film about children abiding which comes across heavy handed, in the book it is lovely, really emotional as i went to sleep, (unplugged my phone charger in my sleep, continuation of dream wierdness),

picked up snow by maxence fermine in the morning and finished it in top nosh, went home for the second in the trilogy the black violin which i finished this morning in bed, into the third one now the beekeeper...

snow was lovely and perfect for my post night of the hunter state, but the black violin slightly disappointed, perhaps because i started it so quickly after snow, the beekeeper is longer and i'm reserving judgement untill i finish it, but it's a strange thing because i can't wait to read one of the two i bought on saturday & i'm normally more respectful of books than this, giving them their proper weight and timing...

i plugged in my keyboard and my piano module to my computer tonight and i've been recording versions of the music to love & understanding, met with the director yesterday and played him the music for the first time, positive response thankfully, i don't know.. this process gets me down easily but right now, with all my first versions down, albeit scrappy in places it just takes on a whole new reality and i'm liking it again...

E phoned, i was very far back from the conversation, since i was so down on sunday after she blew me out i'm very cautious about her right now,

parts of tonight felt as bad as sunday, although i'm alright now... phoned josiah & grace to get a lift but it didn't really work, does it ever when you need it to? strange times...

x

from inside 

messy picture of.. 

top noshed for the last time

saw the owner, thanked him for great falafel over the years, at least i'll walk out of here on my own two feet, he told me, i ate the falafel, drank the tea which always retains some taste of spice after the falafel,

i finished the book i was reading snow by maxence fermine, the first of a trilogy of novellas i've borrowed from sp, (i finished the second one when i woke up today, the top nosh experience was yesterday), decided i had to go home to pick up another book, i had not much time before i was teaching in the evening, i got up to pay and speak to the owner once more, then on my way back to my table to get my coat i saw...

steve noble, who i blogged only recently as the drummer who was accompanying the cabinet of dr caligari when i saw it for the first time, he reminded me it was elton dean playing sax with him that day, he said he'd seen someone from my college only the other day, he'd been in a drum shop that's closing down just round the corner from us and ramjac and M R had walked in, nice to close the loop with your college he said, meeting me being the closing coincidence,

i told him top nosh was shutting, we spoke about other local cafes, told him about the lebanese place on leather lane, he told me about a new vegetarian thai place on leather lane... nice, great player,

odd/nice to have that coincidence on my last visit there.

x

late afternoon light from three weeks ago x 

balthazara basking in the light of my halogen heater beside my mixing desk which i knocked over in my sleep last night as i walked over to the window, woke up very confused / anxious looking out at the street, stumbled back to bed x 

my tongue is a cat

whenever i change something in my room, my cat balthazara spends a while checking it out, the new configuration, brushing up against edges, pushing the side of her face against things to secrete that my territory stuff on it.

now i've got this huge hole in one of my back teeth my tongue cannot resist checking it out, rubbing up against it, feeling the edges...

my tongue is a cat (and a long one at that),

balthazara just pleased me immensely by sitting in the doorway of the room i was playing piano in while i sang through most of my current songs and most of the rest of the house were downstairs turning up the stereo notch by notch.

a few things coincided today to put me in a raw place, hence the need to sing my stuff, was meant to meet E but she blew me out, spending the afternoon instead with my flatmate dr K & others, i hate that that annoys me but you know what? it does annoy me, spent the day instead working on the music to love & understanding, the writer of which, joe penhall, adapted the novel enduring love for the film which has just come out and has that guy from layercake in it.

curiously frustrating this writing for this play... getting somewhere but i don't know that i like where i'm getting...

shaved today, of note only because i realise that i'm shaving once a week at the moment, so for example my friday students always see me with the same level of stubble... as i was looking through my drawer for new razors i found some new contact lenses... i'm just about to switch to a new kind, if i knew i had these i would've held off... anyway, scatterbrain that i am, i'll hold off the new kind for a month, even though this kind starve my eyes of oxygen... (so my optician told me)..

x

bluetoothed up & a-quiverin' with cleanness non blue teeth falling out

this here picture of brighton old pier with skylarks flocking in amazing ways above it was taken on my phone, i now have the power to transfer from my phone to my pc, and onwards to the internet.

all bluetoothed up i am and proud of it,

got the bluetooth dongle from a computer fair today, would have been £30 in a shop, got it for £17,

managed to get through £80 in a just got paidfrenzy today, wired off £30 to josiah, bought 2 books, the dongle, some blank DVD's, food, catfood...

an epic trip into town it was, got off the tube @ russell square where the budgens has metamorphasised into a tesco metro (wierd), walked over to tottenham court road, further even, got a little lost finding the computer fair but found it in the end, then straight south to oxford street, into soho and over to charing cross road for foyles bookshop, a few stops on the central line to chancery lane then a walk up to top nosh for the best falafel on town (not for much longer), then walk back to russell square and home, blisters on my feet by the time i got home, only a half hour or so here before i was out again going to a gig in st pancras old church, but more on that later.

i've been lusting after buying a book all week, borrowing books has been great but i've really felt the need for my own path again, i bought wildlife by richard ford & the history of the seige of lisbon by jose saramago, both in the harvill press, i've got the rest of night of the hunter and then maybe these three novellas by maxence fermine before i can read either of them, it is so delicious this kind of waiting, they are going to be great, i can feel it.

night of the hunter is great, i've really warmed to it, it's always the same with a new writer, it takes me a little while to get with the style, two lines have really struck me that i remember from the film, one of which i'll record here:

I feel clean now, Icey. My whole body's just a-quiverin' with cleanness.

which i so loved in the film, willa harper sets her mind at rest about the preachers intentions towards her...

the edgy nature of the book, the imagery, it's great.

top nosh i've mentioned before, turns out they are shutting at the end of the month as i knew, but not reopening, must go in there again next week to see the owner, thank him for his great falafel.

for a while now i've been feeling one of my back teeth with my tongue, maybe a month or so, i've noticed ridges in it which feel odd, just now, since posting, feeling there with my tongue and out comes this lump of metal, a filling, my only filling in fact, i didn't realise the ridgy tooth was that one, so now i'm all gappy at the back there... feels kind of fascinating in there now...

so this gig, belgian R, grat violinist that i worked with for one gig, in this church that's been there (or at least there's been a church on that site) for 1600 years, great gig, although i felt a little distant from it, maybe because i was wearing glasses...?

x

my filling with the book, bluetoothed in just now 

brighton old pier with skylarks 

bukowski gone

very tired now, worked all day on little sleep, both me & my fellow teacher a little ratty through tiredness, sang harbour walls to my students & got a good response, still improvising many of the lyrics although the hackney lyrics are still there...

finished women by charles bukowski before i went out last night to see my sister K & her new place, a little like the sexual life of catherine m or thomas bernard in it's intensity, a strange celebration of women mixed with the odd misogynist remark, a tumult of words that left me feeling flooded & at peace.

a while ago in a series on tv made by jon ronson, a white supremacist lets his liberal facade slip for a moment while discussing with a fellow racist about whether the oriental woman they've just been talking to is a high yellow. wierd to read the same lingo on the lips of bukowski's protagonist in an airport bar near the end of the book, bukowski mentions the celine book journey to the end of the night which i'd like to read, somehow my impression of celine is tinged with dodgy beliefs... i have no idea why,.. then there's the elderly knut hamson, (also talked about in women) who, close to death, allows his name to be linked with the nazi's...

writers i love who carry the bullshit of the time they were part of...

so now i'm reading night of the hunter by.. i can't think of his name right now, the book that was made into that robert mitchum film, very scary film, robert mitchum menacing as anything, the film appears to be very close to the book so i'm finding it a little dull right now, the film very clear in my head, but i've been so tired since i've started reading it i haven't really been in the right space.

got paid today, ordering some food, then my richly deserved bed,

strange state i'm in these days, not uncommon, weather in london hideous today...

x

day after party six feet under bliss

so i went to that party last night, very tired at the end of my week but i went, as if i could possibly have not gone,

as soon as i arrived i sat down & played the skryabin to F, whose party it was, they turned off the sound system for me. didn't play it perfectly, in fact by the time i'd finished F had wandered off so i went into something else improvised, came back to bits of skryabin a few times then played the whole piece again, lovely piano, returned to many, many times through the night, alone or with others, always playing barely audibly against the sound system,

had a lovely night, sad to see the last of F for a while, odd that i see her so infrequently but she is so important to me, although that does happen with all kinds of people i guess, standing @ hackney wick train station waiting for my train home @ 6 am i wrote some of another verse to harbour walls, i'd like to finish it soon & then do a tiny recital of it with the skryabin in my house, just to the inmates... what with josiah & grace more removed now & F headed off, godmaG already gone, (her shadow so haunted the party last night), i have quite enough leaving to draw on, it's just how do the midparts develope from the verses?

a man took a fancy to me & announced his intentions by shouting that man's staring at my crotch and pointing at me, reminds me now of the first day i ever ran a session in a learning difficulties day centre and was quite pleased with how well it had gone until this guy in a headbrace started pointing to me & yelling that mans giving me an headache, formative scary teaching moment...

my brother has come through and today in my slightly ragged state i watched the first of the four remaining episodes of six feet under, and what a wonder it was, just how great can tv be sometimes....

off out now to see the pigs... x

skryabin saps my strength

but i at least know all the notes now, can't play it every time but i'm close,

energy levels is a strange old thing, lack of money & the effect that has on my diet is partly to blame but i realise also that the energy i'm putting into this skryabin tune does indeed take it out of me, particularly in this well the party is tomorrow night and time is PRECIOUS mode of working, but maybe that's also to do with just how hard these last few sections are, not the very last bit which i've now got under my fingers but the REALLY achingly beautiful bits just before that, soooooooo hard, maybe there's no way to learn really hard music that isn't hard, hard work.

the London Review of Books continues to be great, since the bunuel book i'm back in LRB limbo, in the last interview with Edward Said he talks about a book project he's working on on late style, an essay on this by him appears in one of the LRB back issues i've got, i read it yesterday & it covers several writers that i love, the leopard by Lampedusa, C. P. Cavafy the poet... but i found it hard to read, he is hard to read sometimes, but also i don't know if he himself prepared it for publication, coming out after he died as it did...? then again i might have another go at it with a clearer head one day.

on a thursdays i run a module on a course along with another teacher, roughly split between us but i ended up teaching a little more than him this time, the module is split into two, the first half teaching various different musical theories, ideas, compositional tools... the second half getting them into groups and letting go off and write some music. the first half of this module ended today. i was responsible for the music harmony side of things, my coteacher more for the rhythmical stuff. breaking down all that i teach when i teach music theory into 3/4 lessons has been tricky, always will be tricky. anyway ended today, kind of glad to see it gone, good though it was...

x

day out piano moment skylarks

took a coach to see josiah & grace, coach travel, cheaper, more boring than train travel, well, maybe not strictly true but longer that's for sure,

@ some point had a magical - oh look that's what we were looking for, just in the nick of time - moment with the cooperative bank, wandering through the town...

had some lovely time with grace, some lovely time with her mum, was a cold day and i spent a little too much time outside but that was the deal. the first of many visits...

just briefly, the piano.

when i got there josiah was not around, it took her awhile to get to me, i was right by a church so i went in, out of the cold.

i put down my bags near the door and explored, there was a woman cleaning, i went to go & talk to her but i saw someone else resting in a pew & thought better of it for some reason.

after awhile i found the piano, found two pianos actually, but sat @ the grand, an ofenbach, kind of plinky if thats a word but i got into it, nice really.

i played through the skryabin piece as far as i've got, not very well, i haven't really got the last bit yet, that's what i wanted to do, practise, but i was conscious of the bags near the door, so i got up from the piano, walked through the central altary bit, setting of brief alarms as i went, got the bags and brought them back to the piano, this time i set off an alarm as i sat @ the piano...

the church warden i guess came and spoke to me, out of the depths of the backstage of the church, very much not into me playing the piano, property, i tried to persuade her of how beautiful it would be but she wasn't having it, edge tonight as i was telling the story pointed out how it was my fear of my bags being stolen that made me move and set off the alarms that they set up to stop people stealing from them, had i trusted in the christian nature of the inhabitants of that church i could have just played that piano to my hearts content,

part of the joy of today was josiahs joy @ finding things in her new town, @ some point we were watching skylarks, thousands of them, rearranging themselves into more & more complex patterns, such precise edges, josiah likening it to a movement grace used to do with her hand...

x

autumn the sopranos

autumn is a season for both depression & hope, something i've been saying to a few people and it sure is true,

watched the last two episodes of the sopranos today, one when i woke up, the other just now, this last one had glad tidings by van morrison playing through it, just how great is that?

i am really going to miss the sopranos, such great telly...

and when my brother finally gets it going i will have the last 4 episodes of six feet under to feast upon, then maybe i'll start watching this 3rd series of 24, but it's no real comfort, six feet under & the sopranos are leagues ahead...

now what i really want is that dvd of seinfeld that's just come out in this country, how deliriously happy would that make me?

taught my notation class tonight, taught it well i think, played through bach's prelude in c major while my class followed the score and shouted out the dynamics ("pianissimo"), struggling with skryabin as ever at the moment, makes me feel a certain nervous giddy feeling, so close to being able to play it... i may not be able to play a piano at all tomorrow...

i finished the bunuel book on the tube home, had to wait 30 minutes for my first train, somehow was in a very dark patch for awhile, like i say, this season suits both ups and downs, going to see josiah & grace tomorrow, up early to catch a bus... she'd love to hear that van morrison tune, maybe i'll put it onto a minidisk so we can listen to it, went round to hers to get some essentials she'd overlooked in her very speedy departure...

and my sister safely in her new place too, can't wait to go see it, maybe doing an orange wednesday thing next week,

oh the sopranos, what am i going to do without you?

x

found some of my scribble on a piece of paper from 9 months back

This from 3/02/04, 9 months ago, curiously reflected in current events…:

it’s a sad thing to say goodbye,

as we left, godmaG & i from the college tonight, something had clearly happened, police had cordoned off a huge area, flashing lights, traffic cones, uniforms stood about,
- just what it was is not clear,

skryabin playing really loud,

- maybe i was transported to another time, ten years ago – exactly this version, - that feeling that i gave a lesson that didn’t quite hit the mark – and then no conversation with K after – kind of also an absence on my part? – at least in wanting that, - rare to be not fussed, but then as we left – g & i, suddenly covered in a blanket of snow, - almost as though i’d buried my feelings & then found myself buried,
as i left g @ the busstop the thought that my waking up from this dream – waking up with that unpleasant feeling i get when i wake up from sleep walking (moving) – maybe this shift in my emotions – registered so large on the local map – the police had to cordon off the whole area..

because on Sunday, as i sat in the royal festival hall after watching The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, i was struck by a blues, a real low moment. i was reminded of times when i’ve been closing something, like the times i used to have so many of when i would sweetly obsess about someone, then realise nothing was going to happen, dreaming as i’m wont to do, sometimes dreaming of someone else to mask the real hurt about losing someone, being amazed how well i’m doing, only to wake up after this flirtation has ended feeling as shit as i should have felt all along.

so the night before i’d been to her house, she who i’d once been so taken with, the same she who is featured in this thing from 9 months back, i’d seen her with her boyfriend & for the first time really accepted it, and was happy for them. on the way i still wondered whether she would be with him, still kept a part of that dream alive, now that dream is really dead, and this low i felt maybe the mourning for that dream…?

E phoned around midnight tonight, she's off to Thailand for a spa treatment and thought her flight was tomorrow morning whereas really it was this morning (well, yesterday morning now, monday), our first conversation for ages, me a little distant, but i told her what i needed to tell her, not in a rush to see her but i guess we'll meet when she gets back from thailand..

M & her mum going to hampstead heath tomorrow, i'm not working until the night, hoping to get more of this skryabin tune under my belt, would like to play it @ F's do on friday night (obscure though that will be).

spoke for awhile with josiah tonight, going over there on wednesday, grace apparently looked @ her mum today and said Wa Ha?, makes me smile in that breaking my heart kind of way... x

early cinema surviving on coins new theatre thing

once over the initial shock of having very little money until next thursday i realise that i kind of like it, G's pot of money is still there, he's happy for me to spend it (it seems), even suggested a way of converting it to paper money, tomorrow is my day to check that out, the thing is i like that it is just a pot of money, it takes me awhile to spend change, it takes me no time at all to spend notes...

so i went to manolis's, stocked up on loo roll, went to the pictures & spent time in a pub in chiswick, all while spending only change, which is an obscure pleasure but a pleasure none the less.

manolis announced that he was learning how to read music from me, in exchange for greek lessons, i love that, the oddness of it, and who knows maybe one day we'll be struggling over each others teachings one day...

loo roll, 18 for the price of 12, recycled.

the film was the cabinet of dr caligari, made in 1919, i'd seen it once before with two improvisers providing the accompaniment, steve noble and ... the sax player he used to play with, maybe also a steve, this time it was accompanied by andrew youdell on the piano, skryabin-esque in places, he said the only direct quote was abit of brahms, really moved me, the images with the music, such an ideal job for me, i checked it out awhile back, must get on it again, put my learning this skryabin piece in a context...

and then on to chiswick to meet with actors, director, lighting, producer of this play love and understanding that i'm going to write the music for. my initial reaction (this was a read through) not as strong as my reaction to bash but very glad to be working in this field again, S & B, old friends from university who i saw at D & H's wedding are in it & are my contact with it...

and now i'm still a touch drunk, no work tomorrow thankfully, heading bedward.

x

bunuel skryabin search & reflect

it's been a mad week of work, intensive search & reflect workshops that i ran with another teacher, really good but hard, hard work.

then in the modst of it josiah left london, leaving a hole in my heart, i'll still see them but no immediate access to my beautiful goddaughter...

glad it was search & reflect i was teaching, gave me strength through the upset,

i was great (when i was great).

E has been in touch, haven't spoken but it's a beginning, feel a bit ambivilant about it but at least she's reaching out...

playing more of skryabins 4th sonata, tricky but soooo beautiful, about half way through what i want ot achieve now....

lovely to relax on a saturday after a hard week, fireworks tonight @ allexandra palace then maybe a party...

oh and M has lent me this memoir by Bunuel, the director, it's great, it was puplished around the same time that prisoner of love, genet's memoir was published - 83/84 both bunuel & genet dying just before publication... great, great, great..

x

what a day

if i go to bed real soon i'll get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, teaching some familiar pieces tomorrow so i should be ok, arnica close at hand, hit my also familiar wall (money) yesterday, really got me down, such a shock, why didn't i reach straight for the arnica?

so very briefly:

got to the station just as my train was pulling in, decided to wait for the next one & enjoy a croissant & a chat with sam... the next train delayed (of course), a man i recognised wheels his bike into the station, buys his ticket, it's been ten years (roughly), had i caught that first train...

he recognises me too, (my hair not dissimilar from back then), we chat, trade numbers... trumpeter... hmmm?

then later i read in the book (house book, can't believe i haven't mentioned it before), that C is moving out, i guess she could yet change her mind but that's pretty large,

then later i hear from my dear friend that she's really moving, and she's really moving tomorrow...

shit & death people, what a day,

lovely to chat with M @ the kitchen table just now, i'm in shock... why haven't i reached for the arnica?

x