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

work dribbles in

head full of paperwork today, no fun...

but i did get to meet with yimkin and talk about antistardust... the strings plan is pretty groovy it seems, he agrees that it would be great, (did i even tell you about that?)

anyway, met with felinity after, which was delightful as ever, strolled about, taking in an obscure christian short film, the outskirts of the diehard 4.0 première, the fountain installation at the RFH, the bar/balcony while iggi pop played a gig...

and work, yes work,

probably going to budapest in august to teach search & reflect, that came up today, and i got a phone call from someone my ex-apprentice J knows (oh J, i miss you) who needs a piano accompanist for his daughters grade 6 flute exam next thursday...

just been playing through the music and it's tricky, i'm going to have to learn it in a few days... not my scene normally but i so need the work...

so excited about the strings for stardust - anti-stardust rather...

x