stanfield

3rd season of fringe... and i'm enjoying it so far (just seen the 1st 3)...

of course i'm only watching it because i'm marking at the moment... procrastination is the thief of time to quote spski... he whose tax return i'm helping him with on friday... josiah's tax return is also on my list although she's yet to get back to me... so maybe she'll be dealing with it without me...

... maybe not...

then there's my tax return...

but that is not what i am posting about this evening...

nor am i posting about the slightly difficult time i'm having with my heart...

no... i am posting about the wire - and fringe...

in fact i 1st came to fringe because lance reddick - the hard police boss in the wire (his title changes throughout the seasons, but he's always hard) is playing the hard fringe division boss in fringe... and the one in the wire who let his gun go off accidentally and became a teacher... he showed up as a one off character in fringe, maybe i read about it in the guardian?

so we already know about the link... but now bubbles (junky/police informer in the wire) is a taxi driver in the alternative universe of fringe... who is bound to come back because he's bubbles... & olivia has lost her mind, thinking she's the alternate olivia in the alternate universe... & bubbles is almost guaranteed to turn up helping her remember her real life...

but also... in episode 3 there is a great character (alternate universe) who is on super mind expanding drugs & he is able to kill people by carefully putting ball point pens places, causing a sequence of events that lead to someone dying...

anyway - his name is milo stanfield...

which is almost the same name as the name marlo stanfield, the name of the mob boss in the 2nd season of the wire...

now - the wire is so much better than fringe... & fringe is helped by it's links to the wire, for me... it's still good, fringe, mostly, it does make me miss the wire all over again though...

which reminds me... did i ever get to the end of the sopranos... this time around...? yes - i think i did... also very good... in fact i was i was trying to find a link from fringe to the sopranos, the lead woman - olivia - in fringe - i was thinking that she was meadows insane college roommate in the sopranos - although that memory is getting weaker - and is it really true that that character killed herself? am i thinking of a different program? like heroes perhaps? maybe it's the cheerleaders insane college roommate...

oh - but marking - yes... marking... x

the wire & strangers

so finally it ends, dinah away for the night at floopy's feeding their cat and giving her some love... so i choose to watch the last two episodes of season 5 of the wire...

knowing that it's the last series and there is no more...

it was may when i started watching it, virgin central gave me the 1st episode and i did what i do to get the rest of the 1st season...

then the 2nd season, then the 3rd, the 4th...

and now i'm genuinely sad that it's left my life... such great characters and such a ring of truth to it... truth in a TV way, like i know anything about baltimore police, but it rang true...

anyway, i still want to do the longcat hadron collider next wednesday, i have a few possible believers... i hung out with yimkin today and i look forward to doing more music with the man,

but a story... this concerns my trip into the world on monday, searching for video to my hammond organ thing... i see a man sat on a bench by a bit of grassland... near the reservoirs... and he speaks to me - or rather him being there speaks to me, and late on monday night i realise he could represent another verse in the stranger song...

i don't believe i've mentioned the subject before but it's about a stranger, well several strangers... and somehow after seeing this man (who i also video'd, asking his permission to use it afterwards) another verse and a bit started to work out for me in a way that i love, as though the truth of the situation i'm writing about, or maybe my position within it is becoming clear because of a mad creative journey i went on to do with a different piece of music...

anyway, on tuesday i realised i had to go back to that place near the reservoirs, listening to the instrumental, to write the lyrics... so off i pop, it takes me just over 15 minutes to cycle there, i stay there for awhile writing, it gently starts to work...

i decide to check out closer to the reservoir and the river lee and i get a puncture, and me with no stuff (pump, tire levers, puncture repair kit) so i have to flag down passing cyclists, of which there are many, it being round about rush hour by now and the river lee being quite the bicycle highway...

i get about 5 no's before i get a yes, a nice australian man who works in industrial design, and not only does he have all the necessary stuff but he sets about fixing the puncture for me as well...

so now i have another stranger... another verse if i want it, or maybe a middle 8...

like many things in life, you start looking for something and suddenly you've got too many of them...

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

great telly & sketchup

so many things happened today, J came round and painted the living room ceiling, i finished one round of marking and dropped it off, dinah finished her last bit of coursework and dropped it off, i dropped off my bike at the menders, to be picked up tomorrow,

i bumped into N & his lovely daughter C, popped over to his to see john, (the only name in this place), toyed with the idea of doing this week's improvisation with him but decided against it later, a little too soon since the last one...

walked back to here and got distracted on the old railway line, the one that is a school, many estates, allotments... found a path i'd seen on google earth, leading to a green space just the other side of the bridge from that school by downhills park...

kind of strange and not as far away from the world as it could be but nice enough...

then home and i watched the last 2 episodes of the wire series 1 which was genius...

chilled a tiny bit with J then me & dinah hung out, eventually watching fargo, then the last episode of madmen series 1 both of which were also genius...

and finally sketchup which i've had for a little while but never really looked at, i caught sight of a sketchup file somewhere and opened it up... some nonsense i'd very roughly done the 1st time i used it...

so i've been using it, the 2nd time now, and it's great... i'm building something, like a house, quite burroughsesque... a building in his city of the dead is probably what it is... that place he describes in my education - a book of dreams...

x