piano moved

emivore & me, over the last two days, began work turning this flat into something lovely again...

when me & dinah moved in we (well, i say we, it was largely her) made it lovely... then after me & dinah broke up and she moved out a little later, it drifted back down into something i loved, but let's be honest, it was not lovely for anyone else...

i had been letting it drift down, partly to do with getting over dinah in my own way...

anyway, the move to get it lovely again, (partly to do with me wanting to have grace here, and making it nice for her, partly for emivore), began this weekend...

and part of it for myself was getting my beautiful piano out of the room where it's been since it moved in (that day a couple of years back, when landlordE, spski (now dad), floopy, dinah, me... movingM & his sidekick... struggled for many hours getting it up the stairs and round that corner)...

getting it from that room, which is above my downstairs neighbours living room and therefore not a very friendly place to play my loud piano, through the seemingly very thin floor boards and straight into their TV watching room...

into this pink room which dinah used to use for her uni work... which is above my stairs and their front hall...

emivore left a few hours ago, after much work clearing, sorting, cleaning... we ate @ lava's and i took her to the tube,

i phoned spski (now dad) on the way back to the house and i had a lovely chat with him, he's in great place, sad not to be with KWo & the little one, (she's in the hospital still, nothing dangerous, just resting after the birth), but drifting in the clouds in a hallucinogenic, childish way as he described it to me...

30 minutes on the phone with him, then i put on Aja, the Steely Dan album,

there was a little preparatory work to do still, and i set to it, moving lesser things, dinah's (now my) wardrobe, with all kinds of floopyness on top, clearing a path...

then i started moving the piano from there to here, shedding clothes as i did it... a mad energy within me as i pushed it, pulled it, shoved it, lifted it, many trips from one end to the other, midway through doors so the only way was over the top of the piano...

balthazara watching in cat bemusement...

after the album finished the spanner jazz punks demo came on, (i'd forgotten that i'd accidentally put it in the same playlist in itunes, before noticing and putting it in the right playlist but obviously leaving it there also)...

at this point the piano was half in the hall, half in the living room, having turned about 10 degrees and was about to change direction, heading into dinah's (now my) room...

so the last part of the move came with the 1st 2 tunes on that demo (which may or may not have made it's way onto the SJP's myspace by now...?), and as the last 2 tunes played i smoked some and sat at my freshly moved piano, not playing it, just sitting @ it, smoking...

when Punk Jazz Spanner came to it's nutty "band going mental but being slowly driven away" ending and gradually faded to nothing i was left with a lovely silence, as i contemplated the piano in it's new place...

still no playing of it, it is the middle of the night and i don't yet know for sure it's not going to bother somebody...

naturally, midway through the move i thought i should have set up a camera, filming the whole thing, speeding it up afterwards... but it was too late then, so no visual record remains of that mad dash...

strange, i just got a skype phone call from someone in russia, strange but kind of nice... not someone i know (i don't think) perhaps he found me because maybe he calls himself longcat as well...? not sure but... anyway...

my piano moving story is told, i still have the post moving settling back from the chaos to deal with, but maybe that's tomorrow now...

ok, laters x

rain and no rain neve joy

last night around midnight, cycling by the thames, the houses of parliament on the other side of the river... lowtide, mad, mad rain pouring on me... joni mithcell's hegira in my ears... as though the river was so low because all the water was falling from the sky...

tonight, around the same time, (a little later), no rain, clear, crisp sky, a bite in the air... carl craig in my ears...

last night, coming in and having to take every single item of clothing off, not even my T-shirt escaped the wet... a hot shower, careful arranging of things on radiators...

similar shaped days today and yesterday... well, yesterday and the day before yesterday if you're reading this on thursday... me being in the early hours thereof...

saw spski yesterday, he of job interview fame, lovely to hang out with him, popped in for a tea around 2...

today i was supposed to meet one of the actors from the show i'm doing, to go through his big number... he didn't show, wasted 90 minutes of my life, time i could have spent fetching the proust which has arrived at the bookshop...

then, yesterday and today, i spent a couple of hours being a session piano player for the students @ CM, yesterday with MM running the class and today with yimkin in that position, yesterday i recorded my weekly improvisation after, today i recorded some current compositional ideas...

had a bleak moment or 6 around 6 o'clock and i was very glad of that piano to play... came up with some melancholy drenched thing... worked on the "dreamt i was bach" piece, just learning how to play it on the piano...

yesteday i went and got spski again, dragged him out of the flat to get a curry, today i met yimkin, (who had in the mean time been @ ginger B's studio) and we got a curry -

yesterday on my own but meeting T (and M) there, today with yimkin in tow... i went to the studio... down in kennington... new home of my rhodes...

yimkin & me got something working in the system, UAD plugin's which i thought we had but which weren't showing up... the PULTEC of which i'd heard tell and several NEVE plugins's - channel strips or EQ's... so very sexy...

i'm going to put this weeks improvisation through some of it... in fact that all worked really nicely, recording @ CM and then opening exactly the same file in the studio...

good times ahead...

much work to do on the studio but it's going to be so, so sexy...

of course it's quite alot of time away from my dinah which is sad... this week she's a studio widow... last night dripping wet me found her asleep on the sofa...

tonight she'd gone to bed by the time i got in...

and that's where i'm headed now, hammersmith work tomorrow and i'd like to cycle in, i wonder how the distance compares with the studio schlep? hmm... and weather..?

i'm rehearsing with the spanner jazz punks tomorrow night so if i cycle i'll have to get back here and then strap the keyboard on and hit the tube...

anyway, must sleep, i want to get that proust in the morning, and in fact that would be beautiful, the whole tube journey to hammersmith (barons court), to try and start this proust, then head down to the studio, do my thing with the improvisation, then skip over to the rehearsal...?

which to choose? bike or tube?

x