walking with miles

ok, so i got hold of porgy & bess, the miles davis/gil evans one, which, now i remember it was one of the 1st cd's that dad got with his new cd player when he retired & i was either a late teenager or very early 20'ser...

a beautiful album, accompanied me through many different parts of my life...

i remember how neatly prayer (oh doctor jesus) & fishermen, strawberry & devil crab used to fit exactly into the cycle ride from my house to my work when i was working in that vast windowless room for directory enquiries in leamington spa...

also how the entire album fitted into the journey time from here to a past lovers house...

the way gil evans makes the musicians rise & fall so gracefully and seemingly without structure while miles floats over or plays his part within...

so anyway, i carefully didn't listen to any of it until it was all on my shuffle and then me & dinah went over manolis's where we were in a perfectly stupid laughing mood... i left her @ the busstop heading to college and put on my headphones and set off walking down tufnell park road...

strange mix of familiar emotional reactions to the music and contemporary sights & sounds...

i walked in a wide arc from there (walking away from ours) back round to our road and our house...

found this beautiful rainbow of leaves, similar to the leaves that turn so wonderfully red in our garden for a couple of weeks each year... but so many different hues in one place...

found myself taking loads of pictures and a few videos - all on my phone - greyish autumn day throwing up strangely satisfying dark glimpses of landscape and buildings...

then these wild flowers that i carried for awhile in my buttonhole, destined for a jar on dinah's desk...

all to that album, to miles & gil...

i was concerned that when i got to the main roads i'd have to cross to get home the cars would interfere with my listening pleasure, but crossing both holloway & hornsey roads was remarkably easy and natural, you know when you don't even have to stop walking, just drifting over in a gap when the traffic is stationery, or the traffic in both directions thinning out miraculously to let you cross...

and so i was about to cross over into our road when the album came to it's huge end and i'm very happy that it's back in my life...

x

emotional

just listening to a CD i've made for an old friend who i don't see so often any more...

bo is the name i call her, and when i was going through the recordings of past gigs me & josiah had done i found a tune that we'd dedicated to bo, being as her mum had just died...

so i'm seeing bo tonight @ volupte, me & dinah are going out to celebrate dr K's birthday and many of that old circle of friends will be there and it seemed daft to just give her this cd with only one track on it, so i rummaged around and found a beautiful selection of tunes to give her and that's what i'm listening to now & it's bringing me quite close to tears...

last track now, allen ginsberg reading howl...

not so easy blogging while listening to his strange monotone voice...

but i wish to describe a couple of things from this last week... i intended to blog it yesterday but the rhodes got fixed and all else left my brain...

so firstly porgy & bess that godma G had free tickets for and which we went to after attending part of producerG's music forum on thursday night, (at which i sang my naked flame tune which godma G told me later had been tender as an autumn sky)...

i know porgy and bess from the miles davis/gil evans album, that great musical partnership which only gave us 3 albums (give or take a few reissues)...

it was a great production and i was pleased to hear what i thought were direct borrowings of gil evans arrangements in some of the tunes, great story, great performers, although a couple of the voices weren't quite up to the amazing gershwin songs in my opinion...

it's made me really want to find the miles davis version, which i have on minidisk and maybe even on cd but i'm trying to find on mp3 through soulseek so i can hear it on my shuffle (strange the way today's technology pushes me in strange directions - my computer so full i'm reluctant to import direct from the CD even though it would be exactly the same amount of memory that downloading it would be... hmmm... where is that cd?)

and then yesterday going to volupte to pay for my & dinah's tickets for tonight, placing me in the right part of town to visit the lebanese bakery that i used to eat at when i worked round there (farringdon) seeing F who runs it and who's opening line to me was how many years has it been? ... 8... 9?...

x