longcat rhodes & voice improvisation week 50

here it is, recorded this morning and only just now uploaded, just before midnight...

i mention the G8 climate change meeting next week so why not take a moment to sign the petition if you haven't already...

the improvisation is quite ranty... one of those weeks...

x

dawn project nonvideoblog week 12

this time i took the camera but without the batteries... good job the videoblog is only a secondary activity...

it was one of those nights, me & dinah had been over @ T & W's and we'd drank quite a bit and i hadn't risen before midday once so far this week, so my 7:30ish dawn project rise was always going to be a shock...

& my body decided to spread the waking up over many hours...

1st @ around 3 am, accompanied with the knowledge that i'd missed the dawn project and not knowing how to tell the time from my phone which was resolutely saying 3:07, when it was clearly 8ish...

that kind of dream logic that lingers...

then again @ 5am...

then @ 7, even as i closed my eyes again i knew i wouldn't get much after 7...

so i made it out there, armed with umbrella, waterproof trousers, coat... turned out to be lovely, lovely, lovely and i performed my two shots, pootling around on the very muddy disused... rolling up @ T & W's to drop off the camera and the tripod and sip tea and eat toast which has become a tradition over the last month or two...

i came home intending to do my improvisation but i had to do some archiving before i could begin, both in my PC and in my little camera, so it was very close to when i should have left for work when i started playing... dinah had slowly arisen with the mocha i gave her... strange pleasure, waking her up slowly and deliciously...

i did do the improvisation but i had to leave it completely unrendered in any format and go to work... odd... half the job done with that hanging over me all day in a wierd way...

cycling was beautiful, on the way home i was eager to get editing but i couldn't help stopping and taking a few pictures...




beautiful day it turned out to be...

that walk

10.8 miles...

of which 6.8 miles were on foot...

(4 miles on the train)...

i did indeed listen to all that i intended to listen to...

a heady dose of strange era scott...

in the rain...

walking with scott

it is late may...

late may!

and it's cold & wet...

perfect weather for taking out my shuffle with 3 hours of scott walker for a walk,

since yesterday i've been listening to all of his original material from the 60's, i now have the 4 tracks from the 70's walker brother's albums and then the album from each successive decade...

a strange walk it will be x

still

just got back from our sojourn over @ T & W 's and we were pleasantly surprised to find the house completely empty, evidence of the party still all around but empty of party people... won't last long but it's lovely...

bank holiday weekend and no real plans... watched the program on scott walker last night through T&W's catchup TV thing, just made me want to see the film even more but the last showing i can find was earlier this afternoon in clapham...

inspirational man... broken...

lovely to see balthazara on returning x

punctures & gothernberg

Continent : Europe
Country : Sweden
State/Region : Vastra Gotaland
City : Gteborg
Lat/Long : 57.7167, 11.9667


as promised... and gratifyingly pretty it is... Gteborg, or Göteborg, or Gothernburg...

Sweden...

no facts for you, just pleasingly a little like gotham... batman's home...

thankyou oh 6333rd visitor for drawing our attention to this beautiful place...

and now punctures...

3 of them, all on my back wheel which is a real pain...

my front wheel has teflon coating and seems relatively impervious to punctures, but my back wheel is imperial rather than metric so they don't do that kind of tire for it... and it does get punctures... oh yes it does...

so 1stly, a couple of weeks ago, i got a puncture when i still had money, i took it to cycle surgery... they fixed it... marvellous...

the 2nd one came right in my recent no money period and i tried to fix it but messed it up... i had to wait until i had money again to take it in to cycle surgery again, and while they were fixing it they reconnected my gears wrongly...

so on saturday when i picked the bike up the gears were wrong, and the gear lever was very resistant... which meant i pulled too hard on it and sheared the cable...

so i took it into cycle surgery on tuesday and they said - oh look, your cable is sheared, i said yes, but it's sheared because you reconnected my gears wrongly so are you going to pay for it to be fixed? and they said....

no.

so i'm never going there again, cycle surgery on holloway road ladies and gentlemen, bullshit service... (forgive my language)...

there's a bike shop just round the corner from where i work in shoreditch so i decided to go there this morning, drop it off before work and pick it up around now... get them to rectify cycle surgery's mistakes...

i grabbed my bike this morning and lo & behold... my 3rd puncture... back wheel... no time to fix it, public transport into work, no rectifying just yet for my little bike...

gigging tonight @ the metro with T's band...

x

dawn project non videoblog

the camera arrived last night from lovely E, i got up this morning, i cycled up there...

it all went fine except that i left my little camera @ home so no videoblog this week...

in it's place will be the little video i made while W(floopy)shaman was gallivanting about tying trees to other trees on sunday...

and while i'm here, i'd like to welcome our 6333rd visitor who will be along at some point today most likely...

a little view of where you live will adorn this blog good reader... all in good time...

x

week 49 - tuned

yesterday a very nice man came round and tuned my piano (as well as T's piano)... meanwhile i was @ work assessing my students perform music they'd been writing in the past 3 weeks or so without me...

one thing led to another and before i knew it i'd already had 3 pints and it was being suggested that we move on to the 4th...

i stumbled home after the 5th pint and fell asleep with dinah, mumbling the words, i'll make you a mocha, that'll wake you up...

i remember thinking, wouldn't it be nice if i could just fall asleep like this?, one hand on the floor, my face pressed into the bed...

so today i've been a little broken, and although i claim not to know why in the improvisation - those 5 pints had something to do with it...

rhodes and piano... in perfect harmony...

x

@ work

nearing the end but still in this mad day...

another couple of hours in bed this morning wouldn't have gone amiss...

AMR school where i was assessing a students teaching was mental... as it always was when i used to teach there...

then racing up to londonbridgework to have a marking meeting, then a tutorial, then a keyboard lesson with T, now a brief gap before one last tutorial then the pub...

the 2nd year teaching students are leaving and therefore drinking...

a couple of whom i really like...

oh.. let this day end soon...

x

antics

we went to pennies and had to wait for quite a while...

always difficult... sunday before our meal @ pennies...

but it did come and it was mighty...

we often remark to each other how different the world feels, before and after our sunday veggie roast @ pennies...

dinah has been camped out in her intellectual world all day (for much of many days to be honest) working on an essay to be handed in tomorrow, and although i was going to go over to kingston to celebrate the 40th of lovely S, percussionist in kyo back then... he called it off because of illness... so i was free to tackle the trees with W(floopy)shaman...

and tackle them we did... to be honest it was mainly the shaman...

he was leaping about, climbing onto the ladder that i'd precariously carried over on my bike (even more precarious on the way home tonight - a little stoned), which was precariously resting on a tree...

he was in his element... we pulled the branch right in front down, then two trees deeper into the picture we pulled left and right, creating more space in the middle of the image...

spski returned tonight after a way too long absence and he approved off the procedure, no cutting or breaking of branches...

me & the shaman returned to his gaff and we played chess, three games, 1st mine, 2nd his, 3rd a draw... i video'd the 2nd two and it'll appear one of these days on youtube...

as will the footage i shot today mid antic... that'll be subsumed into this weeks dawnproject videoblog...

oh i love how gillian welch & david rawlings sing this townes van zandt tune - pancho & lefty...

just heaven...

anyway, must get on, a couple of marking decisions to be made before bed and then a long old day tomorrow, all paid, all teaching related...

x

hungover

the 2nd bottle of wine was dodgy, it tasted wrong, but a wrong you could get used to...

and i felt pretty rancid just before bed, a whitey if you will...

and all day today i've had that small headache, nausea close at hand...

just went over to the site of the dawn project to consider what to do about the branch issue, had some rope in my bag, three east european drunks were right there where i wanted to be thinking... drinking and throwing empty beer cans over into the disused...

i think i know what to do but it'll probably need a ladder...

and W(floopy)shaman's help...

so it's good that i'm meeting with him tomorrow afternoon and we're going to tackle the beast... and play chess...

i got my bike back from the bikeshop today and they've messed the gears up... which is dumb...

i went over to the landlord's to speak with him but he wasn't there so i played the piano for awhile and chatted to someone new who lives there now... H...

ok, fairly simple today...

x

dawn project week 10

x really need some more sleep x

week 48 - grand piano

x

the great eat soup hunt part 2

so i tried to redeem the voucher the night of felinity's birthday but i was denied..

this being the voucher from last week's timeout that i had in my possession and that ran out of validity yesterday...

so there i was, one day left to redeem my soup, no money, free soup a darn good idea...

i set out quite late in the afternoon heading for the EAT just north of oxford circus... i arrived there only to see the same sign that had dismayed me on thursday...

soup soldout... (no soup for you)

i asked the woman serving me where the nearest EAT was and she told me there was one opposite john lewis on oxford street...

so i set off, found john lewis but no EAT opposite it...

decided to go into the apple cathedral before my soup and bumped into A straight away, lovely to see him, he made my ipod shuffle work again and i went on my way, not before he told me where the nearest EAT was...

i found it, tucked away, the same sign... soup soldout (NO SOUP FOR YOU!)... there was a single chicken soup that they offered to microwave for me but no veggie stuff...

the nearest EAT i asked forlornly?

i was directed, i got back on my bike, i stumbled across it and walked in, being greeted by a sign announcing chicken soup but no veggie... (NO SOUP FOR YOU!!)

i was weak now with hunger... i walked out of there knowing that the search for soup was in vain... decided to go to the photographers gallery where the lovely cedric nash had recommended an exhibition (he'd turned up the night before by surprise and me & dinah chatted to him for a few hours, delightful man)...

put on by found magazine the exhibition was great, bits of it made me laugh outloud, bits made me think some...

as i left there i decided to go down to that EAT on the southbank, the one that had let me down the thursday before and i almost didn't believe my eyes when i turned up there and they had pea & mint soup...

which i probably wouldn't have chosen but which was lovely...

x

the great eat soup hunt part 1

i get paid on friday...

so, traditionally, i have not a bean...

last thursday it was my sister felinity's birthday and i managed to turn up twice to see her.. as i was going to see wole soyinka be interviewed @ the BBC world service...

i can't quite believe i haven't blogged about that already...?

so briefly:

i was nervous, i'd been to bush house once before, years earlier, when my old friend Becki worked there and i'd just moved to london, she arranged for me to meet her and play a grand piano which she recorded onto a DAT tape for me...

lovely woman that Becki, fiddler from the Red Herrings...

anyway, i was that kind of subtle nervous when in the room with Wole Soyinka, the kind of nervous that makes you want to shout out or giggle really loudly (it was a recording)...

i asked a question, i don't know if my question will make it to the program but i'll let you know if it does, it's being aired in the week of the 29th may, 90 minutes of time reduced down to 26 minutes, he was talking about his uncle the reverend ransom kuti, who he'd been meaning to write a book about, who had died making it impossible to write the book, but still wanting to get across the atmosphere of his childhood he elected to write about his early years, which ended up as Ake - the years of childhood - one of the books i've got listed over there on the right, which was why i was invited to the recording...

so anyway i asked if the reverend ransom kuti was related to fela kuti, (the nigerian james brown) and it turns out fela kuti and wole soyinka were cousins, fela being the reverend's son, it was only a tiny question so it might get in there...

in the weeks prior to the day i was searching for my copy of ake, it was only when i spoke to josiah that she reminded me that i'd leant it to her... so i didn't have it with me to get wole to sign it... it would have so cool if i'd have had it because almost everyone else had the same edition of the book, only me & harriet having the edition i've got... (harriet whose name i've forgotton - who asked the questions of wole soyinka)..

anyway, all this talk and still not even a mention of the actual birthday drinks with felinity...

and still no beginning to the soup story... buckle up folks, this'll be a long one...

on the same day i had done my dawn project and then worked over @ hammersmith where i'd had my teaching observed by my boss... (she's just emailed me her report, i'm a little scared to read it)...

i rolled up @ the chandos to meet felinity and her G and we had a gin... strategically edging towards a larger area of the room to accomodate the later arrivals...

before i left we'd secured a whole side of that bit of room, space for 15 or so, us 3 were trying to make it look full...

so i went off to the BBC and after went straight to the EAT on the south bank to take advantage of an offer from timeout, a free soup and bread... only they'd sold out of soup...

so i met with dinah and i spent almost the last of my money on a little less than my share of the bill for chi, £6 all you can eat noodle place that felinity showed me...

we returned to the chandos where that same space was now full of felinity's friends, livejournallers, and real people...

and a lovely night was had, felinity's G very funny with an idea for the 10person bag of wotsits...

felinity lovely as ever...

but look that's tired me out, only the start of the soup story...

you'll just have to wait...

x

stardust

it was written in the 1920's by hoagy carmichael, it was then covered by practically everyone who was anyone in 30's jazz... 40's jazz... 50's...

anyway, i saw frank sinatra sing it the other day and i was reminded of how much i love it...

that night me & dinah went round to W(floopy)shaman & T's for a shabbat meal that was lovely...

anyway over the course of the night we got drunk & stoned to the extent that once home i couldn't sleep, so i kept my notebook by the bed, so as not to disturb dinah too much in the night...

i lay there for awhile, trying to sleep, then i wrote for awhile, then i got up and went downstairs, eventually getting back into bed just before dinah had to get up @ 8...

i'd spent the entire night thinking about the song and how i wanted to do a version of it, i'd messaged yimkin on myspace about it, downloaded lyrics and a few different versions of the chords, developed the opening couple of minutes for the video...

around 6 i still wasn't ready to sleep so i video'd the sky and the crescent moon, and the sun which was up by then, all from the top of the house, while i watched chungking express...

yesterday i downloaded as many versions of it as i could... many bad, many cheesy, in fact frank's version from the 40's is still the closest to what i want, although a 21st century production...

glen miller does it well too...

my next step is to find a way of playing it, somehow akin to my arrangement of that song i did a few summers ago when i had the quintet that never gigged... what was that song?

x

dawn project videoblog week 9

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FELINITY x

longcat weekly no. 47

on the landlord's grand piano, with W(floopy)shaman's camera, taking the easy way, trusting to the audio that that camera delivers...

x

astrology

ok, so today i managed to get this software called voyager (version 3 - they're onto version 4 for mac but i live in a PC world), which i run a demo of, to look a little like the birth chart that T made for me...

with the ecliptic a circle, each sign marked (although not named, it gives degrees, so cancer is 90 t0 120 degrees), and the planets, (including the sun & the moon) marked on it...

it doesn't draw angles between planets which would have been nice and i have no idea what's going on with the houses in astrology, so that's not in it either, but your basic planets moving around the ecliptic and conjuncting, going into retrograde, ingressing into different signs... that's all there...

so of course i put in my birth day & time (the time that W(floopy)shaman doused for me - as mum doesn't know the exact time - only roughly the time of day - early morning) and my place of birth and i watched the whole day unfold, with my little event @ 3:37 am...

then dinah's birth, both more and less precise details,

and i've been looking at which planets ingress, for example i was delighted to find venus ingressing into cancer @ around 8 this morning, cancer being my sun sign,

the moon ingressed into... oh i don't know, something... at around 6/7 this evening, the moon moves very fast around the zodiac and only spends a few days in each sign, mercury will ingress somewhere in a few days and mars on the 15th...

i saw that pluto is pretty close to an ingress so i hit the go button, making it move in days rather than minutes becuase pluto is far out and slow, and it turns out that pluto and jupiter are currently going backwards, retrograde baby, retrograde...

i also found that in early december this year, pluto, jupiter, mercury & the sun will all be conjuncting together, not that that will be visible because the sun will be blotting everything else out, but if such things have an effect on the weather (emotional/energy weather) then i hope i'll be aware of it then and i'll be open to sensing the shift...

hmmm...

D & M's wedding day?

anyway, must to the shops to get provisions x

wending

finished work @ 1:30 and i made it home around 4:45...

the first hour i was just where i'd been teaching, stooging around on the net, firstly i listened to all the tracks that i've got on my CM page, then, to the track on yimkin's CM page, about 5 different videos i found inamongst ramjac's favourite's...

by then nippy had come in and then K also, they were about to start teaching the afternoon session, me & nippy getting on better now which is good...

so i got on my bike and began to head home but i realised i wanted be out in the sun, reading, i also remembered that i would pass the opticians...

because last saturday i bought some more contact lenses and didn't have my card with me and promised to pay on monday... and on wednesday i had a nagging feeling i was supposed to have done something...?

so anyway, by the time i was cycling past it today i'd remembered and i popped in to rectify... then over the road to hang out in highbury fields where i kicked off my shoes, lay down on the grass in the sun and read from living in time by palden jenkins, which i'm really enjoying, tying together the zodiac and the movement/appearance of the moon, the quarter & cross-quarter days which i first read about over on deoxy, mike nichols telling a good story...

then up to manolis's for a little food and more reading, him on good form...

since getting home i've cuddled with my dinah and worked on a new tune... i've got my keyboard plugged in to the computer and the B4 organ plugin is just gorgeous, found a slightly spooky chord sequence and i've been mucking around with that for what could well be hours and hours...

so now, to feed the cat and then go off to get some shopping to feed me & dinah..

a shabbat meal awaits us but it's a little way off yet x

dawn project videoblog week 8

week 46

words

looking back i realise that this obsession with video has reduced my words quite a lot recently...

that last post, irritated by youtube, testing out googlevideo... showing you 2 versions of the same video i showed you in the post before...

sorry about that...

and i don't even have many words right now either,

my improvisation is uploading - did it yesterday, me & dinah went round to W(floopy)shaman & T's last night to celebrate 1st of may and W doused for my birth time, a crucial piece of information for astrology which my mum has only a vague notion of...

so today i'm armed with a chart and it spins my head a little, but i've read some of what it means, the fact that i have saturn square with pluto is interesting, reading what that should mean and finding it true in my personality, i have a few squares which are tricky and a grand trine which is easy...

astrology ahoy, i'll be delving more into that with time,

time that i really don't have right now, worked this morning and i dashed home to get a couple of things ready and now i'm dashing out to work again, although this afternoon's lesson won't be too taxing...

x