dawn shenanigans

so i was up last night blogging away, my head in the clouds, i look out of the window and i see this sky...

so how could i not go and check out the dawn..?

all manner of video's coming out of that little trip, but for now just these pictures and my cycling extravaganza...





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hope?

watched a bergman film called wild strawberries on film four, very good, rich... close to an edge...



my first bergman,

also had a random cycle trip, going over to leytonstone to practise vocals with T & S, for friday's gig, sounded great, it's going to be fantastic on friday...

so i cycle to the station in 10 minutes, just in time for a train that would take me 5 minutes from S's house...

but the train doesn't come, a man with a megaphone tells us the train will only go as far as the next stop... there's been a fire... i get talking to an older guy who runs a computer shop and lives near the next stop...

i have no map with me but i'm already late, (S is also late, she works on this same line)

so i start cycling, get to the river lee and cycle down to springfield park, then over that bridge and along through that mad bit of walthamstow marshes, by the reservoirs...

all this i know the way, but once in walthamstow i have only a vague notion of how to get there... so i cycle onwards in that same direction for a bit, roughly the right amount i think... stop and ask directions and get a few different opinions, but im not very clear about the address of where i'm going...

i'm travelling by a piece of partially wooded srcubland, along a road with town on one side and scrubland on the other and S lives on such a road, and i'm near enough now and really expect her house to just appear but strangely it doesn't...

i talk to T & S and S directs me in... i've been on a massive circle...

anyway... we rehearse, we're great, it's too late for the train back but having done it once without knowing where i was going, i'm happy to cycle home, i travel up to walthamstow and cut across the same path by the reservoirs through the north bit of walthamstow marshes... now dark and a stretch of it with no lights at all, i turn off my bicycle lights and let my eyes get used to the limited light around and it's beautiful...

such a lovely day and then night to be out cycling...

ah and the hope...

this being a combined hope for the world a few months from now when , (as seems likely) both Barack Obama and Tzipi Livni will be head of their respective powers...

now as to whether either of these individuals are worthy of the hope, or rather, whether any individual can make a difference in this very corporate of worlds who can say?

but tonight, i have hope...

x

film star

filmed on one of the coldest days of the year, and first shown on one of the hottest...

me & dinah met up with spski & Kwo, plus a host of others but we were the film makers, for last night's straight8 screening at the curzon mayfair...

Kwo's direction, spski's acting and comic planning, dinah's staring and my bearing...

(old friend tracey said i gave good bear)

it was the 1st time any of us had seen it, as is the nature of that competition, and it was great...

we weren't the best thing that was shown last night, but we were fabulous x

in other news my old windows XP operating system is out of the cupboard and dusted off, primarily because dinah's internet wasn't working and it was one of the things i tried to make it work again, but since it's been back it's turned out to be a much better system for the downloading that i do... (the wire series 4 is in my life now)... also i can use the cubase on it to try out the DML stuff i've been wondering about, this afternoon i was connected to P but not musically, we'll get there...

so ubuntu is taking a back seat for a moment, i'm also considering buying a router, take the weight off ubuntu into a way that i understand... although we're still in the summer drought so it would have to be cheap...

i've also got blender working on my new computer, also XP, i have big plans for my logo, big learning curve...

and of course the gig is on this friday, do come if you're in town, a string section, a great venue, a killer band, great songs...

what else is there?

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yr3wk6 preparation p & rhodes improvisation

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string, wire & earthquakes

there's a minor earthquake afoot in my work life... deep underground because i'm not working now... the ripples... the aftershocks... i'll feel when i get back to work...

but 1st string & wire...

or arranging strings...

and watching stringer in the wire...

it took me long enough to get around to it but i arranged the 2 tunes for strings that i'm responsible for in T's set on august 1st...

composition, and even though the tune was written already, writing the strings is certainly composition... works best for me when i can get it to a certain point, then sleep on it... i don't always have time for that... also i have great ideas in the shower, it's always been a place rich in fantasy, and i know that sounds slightly rude, i don't mean it to be...

so the 1st tune i arranged, track 5 in the set a week on friday...

i got it done then realised that my strings were a little close together... did a version with the same notes but spreading the octaves a little... slept on it, listened to both... combined them, bits of close, bits of further out... because these strings have a place within the 5-piece band they can't be as far out as they would be if they were on their own...

it's interesting to be able to check out the alternatives and to choose... expands my string arranging head somewhat...

the other tune i arranged is the opener on the night and i wasn't so elaborate, partly to suit the needs of the tune...

all done and emailed off to T, along with one of his i tidied up... getting excited about that gig... i don't know if i've mentioned it much but it's a week on friday and i'm pushing more than i normally do to get people there... headlining @ the clapham grand is an event... so i've set up a facebook event for it, T has set up a myspace event, (or so he says, i can't find it)

check it out if you're in town next friday x

and then the wire... just finished watching the 3rd series and it is great...

the 5th series is coming on FX any day now, but i've got the 4th series in between me & that so i won't be watching it just yet, although i may catch it up through my means... but going back to normal TV with adverts, once a week, when you've had it with no adverts whenever you want... it's a different deal...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3rd series spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stringer bell... what a great character...

and what a great end... i leapt out of my chair and cheered when he got it... i love good TV...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3rd series spoiler over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so back to to the earthquake, some background, quite a few years ago i gave up my "working for all kinds of people" life and settled down to only working for one company... at the time there was ample work and i flourished, got a taste of having more money, not buckets of it but more than i was used to, liked it...

then gradually over the years that company cut my hours... every time it happened i was pleased, more time for creativity... the improvisations, the compositions, band stuff, film making....

but less work means less money... and the current earthquake takes away more work, although it's a big change and it could possibly signal more work in the long run... i'll believe it when i see it...

what it means is that my "only working for one company" notion is no longer working, now i started working for another college about 3 years ago and that's been good, even opened another horizon with the maths tuition, although i found out in the last days of work for the academic year that the maths tuition is being taken away, which disappointed me much and makes me feel somewhat undervalued over there...

so...

here we are, and like every other time work gets taken away i'm faced with a choice, celebrate the extra time my creativity is being given, or find more work...

and like every time i think that this time it's gone too far and surely i'll get more work now...

but will i?

it's funny, having less teaching work could also open the door, or give the space to, more music work, playing in restaurants and suchlike...

watch this space...

& watch the wire...

& come to our gig @ the clapham grand...

x

yr3wk5 rhodes, delay & voice

it's leaving me around now, but on friday i woke up with a sore shoulder... still here but weakening, so this improvisation from yesterday was in the thick of it:



trave & clementine are just about to get on a train back to leamington spa, they went to the lovebox festival yesterday in victoria park and we put them up for the night, they took us to the amazon cafe as a thankyou today...

and on the way back from there me & dinah popped into maplins and i got this wireless keyboard and mouse that i'm now using to type this in...

sadly both the mouse & keyboard attach with a USB connection, so i can't plug them into my KVM switch, they belong to the new computer only therefore, and my old keyboard/mouse is still in operation with the old PC, the monitor is still shared between the two computers...

and i've got to arrange a couple of tunes for strings tonight, get the 6 other tunes that T has arranged into a printable shape before he comes round tomorrow...

(i love the arcdev industries dubb box delay that is all over yesterday's improvisation...)

x

digital musician wild sanctuary

tempted by flock...

although i do love firefox...

D, the drummer and owner of the moog over @ HWLC, (in the last improvisation), was telling me about some facet of ableton live which allows you to play over the internet... and being as i'm in the 3rd year of the improvisation and one of my aims to improvise with people in other continents my ears pricked up...

so i was checking it out online and although i didn't find out about that i did come across digital musician...

it seems to be just what i'm looking for... you sign up for a free account and you can download the software which can plug into cubase, logic, ableton... most of the flavours of audio recording around these days, it allows you to record in realtime over the internet... i think...

i'm currently downloading the thing myself...

of course, whoever i want to play with also has to have it, but that's not too hard...

the future is just there beckoning to me...

and then wild sanctuary, i read about it in the new scientist, it's a layer for google maps with sounds recorded in wild environments... beautiful stuff...

recordings from 1968 to the present...

check it out x

Rotherwick birthday reading while cycling

as promised last tuesday, although it took a week rather than a couple of days, 21 miles SSE of my home village of blewbury lies Rotherwick...

and our 8888th visitor hails from this place, close to Hook in Hampshire, the village of Rotherwick:


it turns out that this person comes to see my blog every now and again, they were here this afternoon, then 3 fridays before that... and they were the 8888th since that counter began...

"Situated between the Whitewater and the Lyde, both tributaries of the Loddon, Rotherwick stands 300ft. above sea level."

so says this website devoted to Rotherwick... ok enough rotherwickness... thankyou sitemeter for providing me with this counter which feeds my obsession with numbers...

i'm currently reading the master & margarita, possibly for the 3rd time, finished the book thief last week which was wonderful...

note to self - don't try reading while cycling, even if you survive your journey you will find that you won't have been able to read very much...

coming back from a jaunt into woodgreen i was so taken with the book that i tried reading it while cycling and honestly... it's just not a good idea...

one of these days i'm going to get better acquainted with the journey from woodgreen to here, it goes via noel park and i'm forever getting confused... my local biking knowledge is very good up to about half way up woodgreen high street but to where the tube is...

D, along with John Sinclair when he's in london, have moved up to woodgreen, somewhere up there,

John who currently has dinah's memory stick, in detroit...

a journey up there to see those cats is definitely in order...

ok the birthday, it proved to be most lovely, T & M, the singers of the 2 bands i'm in, landlord E, felinity & dad, dinah & floopy, spski, guitarist O (from M's band) and old friend J, who i thought might have been the 8888th but i think he's living actually in reading, not south of it...

we had a great deal of fun,floopy & J accompanying us back home for more frivolity once the bar had shut...

a really nice birthday, somehow i often feel the lack of friends on birthdays, dating back to years ago when me & E stopped seeing each other and most of our mutual friends gravitated to her birthday which is 2 days before mine...

but this year i think i'm finally passed that... of course it might yet raise it's ugly head next year but this time it wasn't to be seen...

oh and i'm playing a song or two next tuesday @ CM, a smallish gig for people involved in the place, i'm getting T to come down and do one or two with me as well, to publicise our gig @ the clapham grand on august 1st, if your in east london on tueday night you're more than welcome to come along, i doubt it'll cost anything...

x

yr3wk4 guitar, drums, moog

from the HWLC staff party on thursday where much alcohol was drunk...

off now to celebrate my birthday, gin in hand x

i mourn your passing

i don't know why but i was explaining to dinah about when i lost that piano almost 4 years ago...

also i'm now 35,

so i started remembering the song, "i mourn your passing... beautiful piano", line by line,

chunk by chunk, it was beautiful, proustian...

now i'm up writing down the words i remembered... found that post and i'd already remembered all that i had, but with one word wrong (old now, flawed then (better))

saw felinity, her G, dad, with dinah tonight in clapham, me & dad walked earlier around here, found much beauty i'd previously not seen, then on the way to clapham, on the tube with dinah i started videoing the umbrella hanging from the rail, i love it x

all the 8's

maybe tomorrow, (i'll try to sttle down...)

no, no,

maybe tomorrow it'll happen, 8867 right now, 21 visits away,

could be tomorrow, or thursday,

anyway the same deal as when i've noticed before, some facts about you 8888th visitor, as much as i can glean from sitemeter...

x

yr3wk3 hammond organ & rhodes improvisation

from yesterday x

insomniac thoughts visions

can't sleep and i'm curious...

we watched "every cowgirl gets the blues" earlier, that was trippy...

started thinking about that episode of the simpsons with the space coyote...

and in amongst not sleeping and too much thinking i started to wish mikhael bulgakov had a myspace so i could put him in my top friends (similar to the desire that cp cavafy have a myspace for exactly the same reason)... which led me to this video... which is in ukrainian, so i don't understand it, but it looks great,

Mikhail Bulgakov


and to close, gazing at my swan & signets video, phone video through the youtube lens it's almost perfect... made me want to find this image/pattern in the interference...



ok, bed now x

reading on public transport

i'm reading the book thief...

i'm really enjoying it...

so, 3 tiny moments on public transport with the book thief:

last thursday, coming back from work i missed my stop on the picadilly line, had to go one back, too deep in the book,

then this thursday i was concious of that happening last week, i looked up at one point and saw we were at my stop so i jumped off, went up the escalator, through the barrier, only to find that i wasn't at my stop, but the stop before...

again, so deep in the book i couldn't tell that manor house is not turnpike lane...

and i didn't realise until i'd gone through the barrier, paid my money, so i wondered a bit through finsbury park, the nice end, took a long bit of video of a swan and signets on the new river.. (how long would it take me to connect my phone to the computer, move the video over, upload it to youtube?)... then got a 29 back home...



and the night before i'd been rehearsing with TC, preparing for our clapham grand gig on august 1st... we lost track of time and finished with not much time to spare before the tubes stopped... K (drummer) offered to give me a lift to the station, and it was one of those strange situations where, if i'd have walked to the station (keyboard on my back) i would have got the tube home, but because he drove me...

he didn't take me to kennington (the nearest station) he just started driving and we discussed that he was going past earls court, on the picadilly line, so we decided he'd drop me there...

then we got stuck in a traffic jam for 30 minutes...

so in the end he dropped me @ trafalgar square and i got the 29 home...

on the 29 i got out the book, and also my headphones, i've taken to listening to ornette coleman to block out conversation while reading, somehow his style of playing the saxophone - so similar in places to laughing and talking - is just right as a backdrop to fiction...

"this is a 29... to enfield" said an electronic woman at every stop and there was a small group of young men who, for most of the journey, would answer the lady with an "ennn - field" falling in pitch, en masse, again, mixed in with ornette, it seemed just right,

just before turnpike lane a man had got on who was singing at the people on the bus, he started with frank sinatra... i stood up and started strapping on the keyboard and i asked him for another frank tune, whereupon he asked me for a frank tune and i gave him a verse of "you've brought a new kind of love too me", a tune he didn't know... but which i was glad to be reminded of, as i'm going to sing it @ the 90th birthday party i'm playing @ tomorrow,

and as i've got to get up and practise before the singer picks me up @ 1 i'd better be off to bed...

x

yr3wk2 piano & words

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