partied

an absynth at 6:30 this morning with my dinah... my body wasn't having it...

we made it to bed by about 7:30... by 11:30 i couldn't sleep so i joined grace watching cbeebies on our new set top box... which josiah gave to us this weekend, partly so that grace could watch cbeebies while she (& me & dinah) slept off our respective hangovers...

the party had begun with me & producer G doing 3 tunes, part of our set @ the vibe bar a week tomorrow... part of a sequence of performances from people who live in this house (+ belgiun R)... producer G said afterwords how honoured he was to be part of that performance... the quality of the performances was very good... dinah did some, including a song she'd written in the early days of me & her... (don't brake my plastic heart in two)... i loved her all the more watching her sing it...

in my set were the two i've written for her in these last few months as well as harbour walls... a couple of nice comments after from two men whose opinunes i trust... Wfloopy (shaman) pointing out my ability to take the piss out of myself but still be good... and cedric nash pointing to the frankness in the songs... that he could here me clearly within the lyrics... this as well as the invalueable experience of performing in front of an audience that listens... (a luxury i may not get at the vibe bar)... great...

josiah & grace left a few hours ago and dinah was practically collapsed on the floor from hunger...

grace screaming the house down this morning... a house full of hungover people...

the magnetic theatre a few nights ago, grace with a captivre audience of hilda & spski & me... (grace dancing with hilda & T)

the fact that spaki wasn't at the party... missed him... i've been there, i've missed parties at this house & i respect his position on it... but he was missed...

dr K...

nippy & r9, who finally got her high healed shoes back after nippy's set last night, a good gig, maybe my last time with those shoes for awhile...

going over to Wfloopy & T's for dinner tonight, even though i've met them loads of times before it still has a slightly edgy meet the parents vibe to it...

x

CDR full moon

i seem to be getting more spam...

of the four emails that thunderbird delivered to me this morning (after taking away what it thinks is spam) one was from a real person, one was an email from blueyonder that i get every day telling me that my webspace is full... i find it comforting... the other two were spam...

the first opened with the line:

dear friends of the chang...

(am i a friend of the chang?)

and the second was from some company saying:

We supply our customers stainless steel pipes and flanges...

... and i guess it's just daft trying to work out why i in particulr have recieved these 2 pieces of spam... but try and work it out i do...

anyway, it's good friday, and this year has been the first year that i've noticed the full moon in the week before easter and linked it with the knowledge that easter always comes on the weekend after the first full moon after the equinox... trying to place what easter means to me and not getting much... egg rolling... pistachio nuts... christ born again i guess... just not that that engaged with that story these days, i do remember it being a good story...

started in on the absynth yesterday afternoon with hilda... me & dinah brought it back from prague, hilda brought the complicated ritual with the sugar and the burning...

then another one a little later in the early evening with spski... then another, then the three of us deported up to my room to wade through acres of photo's & video's (spski in particular somewhat nonplussed at the amount of camera action...)

then a tom & jerry, then half of the station agent, then i went out onto the streets of london with my book of haruki murakami short stories which i was not really in a state to read... tubed it down to shoreditch to meet producer G (& dinah) @ plastic people for CDR...

G & various students of mine have been telling me about CDR for a little while now, it's a club night where you can take your tunes... in whatever state of undress/readiness and they get played on a big system... very nice sound system it is too down there... you might have to wait a long time to hear your tune... producer G's tune (with my improvising keys on it) was played at around 12:45 am, G said this was good, the stories i've heard from my students have been their tunes being played at around 2am or later...

mad mix of tunes... very loud sound system... various different qualities of mixing so occassionally some harsh, very loud sounds coming to your ears... dinah patiently waited with me until the tune was played... long suffering but elegant... saw a couple of students (one of whom is no longer our student)... met an interesting producer called darko who had a couple of tunes being played there, one of which was directly after G's tune and it captured me & made us linger awhile longer...

then me & dinah made it out into the night and bussed up to crystal where we ate a little before returning home...

a slice of london after our prague break...

prague baby prague

was full of english people... every 3rd couple you saw in the street was english... we certainly were...

wonderful mini-break wih dinah... many stories, most of which i'll be keeping to myself...

had an hour on my own this afternoon before we started the gradual withdrawal process, the buying of provisions for the journey, the last meal out... the tram journey out to where the bus to the airport goes from...

i'd recorded the chords of this piece of music that is half falling dark lullaby & half rising chords from the past... wanted to see if i could make a start on some lyrics for it...

found my way down to one of the islands in the river... filming trams crossing the bridge... bright but cold day... may have found a theme there for the song, one or two hooks that i can gently pull at and spin out a true stroy about my life now...

x

spring has so sprung

firstly, i'm meant to be packing right now... this is to a certain extent, displacement activity...

ate in manolis' and spski & hilda met me there, we cycled off, hitting the canal beore camden (foolish) made it through to lisson grove... cycled through kensington gardens until we at last reached a great exhibition of black & white photography that was just great... yes... great...

i'm a little bit drunk but if i remember i'll link to it... german fella, vitkine...

one in particular looking like sheet music, actually telephone/electricity wires...

then we embarked once more in the parks, i led them to the canada memorial, which was similar in ripples to a waterfall in a terrible film that we three had watched last night... the blood of fu man shu... a few saving graces but many, many bad points...

we cycled up to picadilly, stealing behind for a stretch, cycling the wrong way down a one way street coming face to face with 2 mounted police... hilda later expressed regret that they hadn't engaged us in high speed street pursuit... horses chasing bicycles...

but they didn't... we arrived at the simpson's building, i lingered awhile in the novels section (mainly in M) part of a growing romance with books that i'm hoping to have again... then met them upstairs for a drink in the bar...

pricey, nice view...

then over to where dinah works to meet her in between shows, pints in the nell... before hilda headed south, dinah went back to work, me & spski headed home (him via curry hut) and here i am... just set my vacation flag on gameknot... about to put my laundry on... make sure i've got all i need to write music should i need to... check out train times...

this time tomorrow we'll be sipping cheap checq drinks in some romantic bar... (one can but dream)...

deliberately didn't take my camera out with me so you'll just have to take my word for it... it was a beautiful day... stunning sunshine and flowers and buds pushing through...

spring is here

me & dinah will not be here by tomporrow... x

picture heavy high & low places

straight in with two pictures from my travels yesterday, imagine the sun traveling from one to the other...

i'd walked dinah to her work around 6:30 and i knew i had an hour before the sunset so i cycled upstream to get the right kind of bend in the river for these pictures...

my last post being about high & low states of mind, today i'm talking about the high & low places i've been going to in the last couple of days... maybe i should thin down that gig advert at the top... make sure people know that the blog continues as normal just underneath...

so those pictures directly above, whilst also bringing attention to the blog under the advert... are the low... the water level... although had i been able to actually get right down to the water i would have done, these are from the thames path...

today i was cycling around listening to my shuffle and i decided to go check out the barbican highwalk again... that strange mix of inside and outside, like burroughs talks about in his dream book, the city of the dead, loosely based on tangiers where he spent many years... spaces that are domestic but suddenly become streets, covered to uncovered... you can travel (i cycled, but one could walk) along one stretch of high walk and suddenly you're in the barbican arts centre, carry on far enough (particularly unnerving if cycling) and you come out into the outside again...

no satisfactory pictures of the highwalks... plenty of the towers... i'll have to return on another day and try and catch the walks...

it's a very utopian idea... no cars at all obviously... also forbidden to cycle (although i was breaking that rule)... reminds me of mineapolis...

i realised today that i absolutely love cycling in pedestrian places... listening to my shuffle, sometimes going really slowly, very aware of the rightfully pedestrian... enjoying being an interloper... illegal of course... and the more i do it the more likely i'll get caught by the police and fined (£10 spot fine i think it is... maybe more)... but i do love it...

after the barbican i headed west, passing by st ethelreda's catholic church, the oldest catholic church in london...
a long and chequered history, used to house a beautifully out of tune grand piano in its crypt, sadly no more, in fact today i couldn't get into the crypt at all but i know that they got rid of it a few summers ago,

i headed further west, finding myself on the pavement of the strand... still drifting slowly, listening largely to semble, saw somerset house and rolled in, wondered what it would be like to cycle through those fountains but they're down some steps... not wanting to dismount i rolled down a slope to the right, into a place i'd never seen before, steps led down quite a way, to the bottom of a spiral staircase that led up a long, long way...

so i carried my lovely £10 bike down the stairs and locked it up at the foot of this spiral staircase.. black metal affair, fire escape... (if i'd tilted my camera even more directly down you could have seen the bike in this picture)...

climbed a long way up until i got out onto the roof of the building it was attached to, stepped over into a kind of path, again the fire escape, saw two signs pointing in opposite directions for the fire escape, one back the way i'd come, the other onwards up a ladder, which of course i followed...

i pity the people following that sign in the event of a real fire, it ends somewhat precariously at a brick wall high above the city where i sat for a little while and took pictures...

odd mixture of high & low, being able to see down into these arches that are below the level of the somerset house open square, at one point i could see a pillared archway through which i could see cars crossing the river @ waterloo bridge, i look forward to looking at that same pillared archway from the south side of the river...

also looking forward to returning to this place on a sunnier day, the slight rain made it scarier than it needed to be... once dinah has finished working at the producers i'll take her up there as you can just see the big producers billboard on the theatre... i can imagine us now, giving it the finger joyously...

i realised by the time i'd got down to ground level that i'd left some marking in st ethelreda's so i jumped on my bike, this time swapping headphones for helmet, raced through the streets, passing a crowd awaiting dan brown's judgement at the law courts... picked up the cardboard envelope with the marking in it and headed home...

satisfying discoveries

x

rich time

odd not to have posted since sunday, me & my often more than once a day blog...

(listening to this beautiful semble album)

it's been a rich time...

some real lows, many real highs...

H cello came round on tuesday, we played through a couple of the tunes i'm doing @ the vibe bar, i love how we sound, me & her, my voice against her cello... hmmm...

had a long awaited conversation with someone yesterday that proved to be most hideous... this morning i woke up with my dinah, went with her to crouch end and once she'd gone off to meet her mum (whose birthday it is today) i was sat in a cafe and only then did i begin to be in a good place with that conversation... 20 or so hours later...

it was a conversation that i'd initiated and i guess i was hoping to get some resolution (for us both) through the conversation itself, but not this time, i've climbed my way to an understanding and a resolution but entirely on my own (and with the love and support of some lovely people, dinah & hilda (G) in particular),

i've thought previously about writing a song from this situation, and it is the classic model for it, a situation in which i don't feel i'm being understood, a desire to be able to better express myself... not dissimilar to how i felt back when i was writing love is lies, and though this situation has felt just as bleak as that did back then the song that could come out of this would be a great deal more hopeful...

and funnily enough if i manage to write it i think i'll be performing love is lies and it as the two other songs in my set (beyond the three that i know i'm doing right now)..

currently in the process of the first deflea of the spring/summer, the weather is warmer and so i frontlined her with the help of hilda (G) last night, when i was still under the spell of the unease from that conversation... hilda (G) & dinah & me drinking sherry and playing cards eased me a great deal... the deflea itself surprisingly easy with hilda's help, balthazara hated me as she always does for an hour or so, although she was beginning to come round to love again just before i retired to bed, she's still quarantined to the basement and the outside for another few hours but she'd forgiven me by this afternoon...

x

my pace

at long last i've set up a my space music thing...

longcatspace is where to find it... which i intended as being longcat space, but now i kind of like longcat's pace...

currently just harbour walls up there, no pictures, no friends (i even deleted tom... the friend that everyone has, everyone except me that is)...

me & dinah just went out to nambucca on holloway road to see some live music, 4 bands, of which only the first: jade fox was any good in my book, although the last (git knickers) were very good, although really not to my taste... too moptopy for me...

ate in the ever wonderful crystal of holloway road, and indeed we'd breakfasted at the incomparible amazon cafe on holloway road earlier, as my dinah so rightfully says... it's all about holloway road...

x

tunes

my sweet dinah left for work and i left for producer G's house in gypsy hill...

half a chance to see felinity and our folks but the do they'd been to (the parents) had no seats and they'd been standing way too long and in the end tiredness won & i didn't get to see them, partly because the session at producer G's went on more than i thought it would... very productive it was too...

i now have a very provisional backing for 3 of the tunes i'm doing @ the vibe bar (and yes, patroclus, please come...) the other 2 will be piano, voice, cello affairs...

i love working with producer G, something functional and fun going on there... we went to the pub for a couple afterwords, with his C, had to leave his cat rudi in the house sadly, he'll make a good boozer sometime soon i think...

then raced home to have a quick pizza and then meet R - chiro R - who put in the cat flap all those years ago... he came to drink wine and to pick up the cot that is the last of josiah's stuff to leave my room...

just have to get the piano from blewbury to london now...

a little drunk now, dinah preparing a ciperinia (yes, indeed, there is probably a correct way to spell that drink) for herself and then we're off upstairs to watch another episode of carnivale... good telly...

x

toilets i have known

i've often considered writing a toilet review section of this blog... i so appreciate a good public toilet... well, more often i'm found appreciating the toilet of a retail outfit, or possibly an entertainment building...

and obviously i'm not at the top of my spelling game right this minute as i write this...

today i worked in the morning and then was let loose on the thames for the afternoon... hoping to get a game of chess with the guy i bought carter beats the devil from on thursday... one of the waterloo bridge bookstall people...

cycling along listening to gillian welch... weaving my way between pedestrians... as the weather improves that strecth of the thames is going to get fuller and fuller with the walking... wounded or otherwise... and i may have to stop using it, even though i love cycling through pedestrian bits, being patient, going at the same speed as the walkers if necesary... being responsible even as you're being irresponsible...

i dreamed a highway back to you came on (shufflewise, came after a miles davis track (with charles mingus)) and i had to cycle a fair bit further than i was going to to accomidate the song, all 10 or so minutes of it...

ended near the NFT and popped in for a cup of tea & a pecan plait, taking advantage of the toilets while i was there... but the mens was being cleaned so i was forced (yes... forced) to use the disabled toilet which was a joy...

very well maintained, a tap you could leave on if you wanted to... (very important)

actaully the second disabled toilet i'd been this week, i'd found one in the barbican that i could fit my whole bike into on wednesday, solving a potentially awkward situation...

so anyway, i sat down with my tea & my pecan plait and i read solidly for a good twenty minutes or so... this carter beats the devil book is certainly a page turner, i've been taking weeks and weeks to finish books recently and i've read 177 pages of this one in 2 days...

echoes of jonathon strange & mr norrell, not just because of the magic theme but also the compulsiveness of it...

going roung to producer G's tomorrow, he lives not very far from the furthest point on that mad 35 mile cycling day i had a few weeks ago...

sang the neurotic love song to dinah yesterday and it was great... partly just to sing it to her whom i wrote it for, but also to practise singing to an audience... i recorded myself singing it today and i have a lot of work to do before the vibe bar gig (24th april)...

then H cello on tuesday, it's all beginning to happen...

my bed calls

x

more slowing

spam?

i said to myself as she walked away,

did she really tell me her name was spam?

she'd come to the railing to ask if i was scared of rolling over and falling into the thames... i was lying on that apron of concrete behind the railing by the tate modern, where the steps go down to the water... my camera was resting on my keys to get the right angle for this film... 5th so far of my slowing bicycle wheel videos... considering using one or more of them behind my gig @ the vibe bar if i can... i'd gotten my head down there to check that the angle was right on the camera and then i'd realised i liked it down there... decided to lie down there for the ten minutes or so the wheel takes to slow down...



i realised after a little while that i was attracting attention from the passers by but it didn't really bother me, just means that their faces are often facing the camera when walking passed...

then spam happened...

i told her that the video would be up on my blog, which is why i'm posting here so promptly... well... 9 hours later or so...

after this i cycled into town to eventually meet dinah in her break... passed through the barbican and it's high walks... a fascinating place that i cycle passed on my route to londonbridge work... the crashing into the barrier event (which was on the same day that me & dinah became officially boyfriend/girlfriend) was right by the barbican, the three towers i just find amazing... many photos of them today... in fact if you ever scroll all the way to the bottom of this blog, my bottom edge is taken from a photo of one of the barbican towers...

but hang on a minute... that was yesterday... i hadn't uploaded the pictures or indeed blogged properly so i'm getting my days mixed up...

oh no... can't tell all of yesterday's shenanigans now...

oh... mixed up...

but it's still uploading over there on youtube so... just briefly...

the inspiration for using films in my gig came from a gig i went to last night with felinity, P over on livejournal was performing her poetry inamongst a variety of different poets/film makers/musicians...

P had the misfortune to go on after the musicians who inexplicably played for thirty minutes or so, depleting the audience sadly... not terrible music actually, i kind of liked it, and really liked moments of it, it was just badly timed...

P was great though, really nice to see her do her thing, including walking london which she quoted on her blog the day she wrote it in a very emotional, windswept post a little while ago...

i'm going to try and perform there myself, with that promoter at least... kookie guy with his french poetry and his odd pronunciation of the word applause (applose)...

dinah came right at the end, we'd met earlier on before she went to work and it was lovely that she could come to that event, felinity had left by then so they didn't meet this time, soon though i'm sure...

the barbican was yesterday then, along with the insane rain/hail showers and bright sunshine... i did another of these slowing bicycle wheel videos just on the north side of the thames, a mad hail shower gracing the second half of it... i'll be uploading it soon, (not that i expect anyone to sit through it, ten minutes is a long time on the internet) - i may try google videos soon, check out the quality against youtube...

that's right, today i went from this video to the bookstall underneath waterloo bridge and bought carter beats the devil, on felinity's advice... challenged the bookseller to a game of chess but he said he was packing up soon, i'm going to try and play him tomorrow or friday...

but i've been muttering inanely for way too long, the video is still uploading but i have a girlfriend to entertain... ah... there you go... there it is in all it's glory...

oh and i made a friend today - lovely man by the name of M, a teacher @ westminster...

x

unseen partial eclipse

as i write this the sun has just gone back to it's full orb here in england...

not that i saw it go partially eclipsed... just knew about it...

the good old BBC news website... i witnessed a total eclipse back in... well, i don't know, i guess it was last century now, hotel full of cops were playing at the total eclipse festival down in devon... crazy times they were, although the eclipse itself was a distincly un crazy time....

sat on a hill, watching the cloudy sky go a little darker for a few minutes, talking crap like we'd been talking crap for several days...

anyway, a QAA @ work and i have to be there.. (quality assurance audit)

(really digging this mp3 blog, along with the greasemonkey mp3 player userscript)

x

old folks

since josiah came and took her stuff away we can't get our old amp to work down in the basement, somehow her speakers killed it... i remember the day several months back when we were plugging them in, mysteriously killing the amplifier, we knew she would take back her amp/speakers at some point and i'm sure we'll sort something out... but right now i want to hear some vinyl, in particular a miles davis album called someday my prince will come which has a tune on it called old folks...

saw a tony robinson documentary called me & my mum on channel 4 tonight, very moving, resonated with the book i've just finished - running in the family by michael ondaatji, also very moving, tracing rumours, stories and history concerning his family, his mother & father... a fantastic picture near the end of his mother & father together, pulling faces, shortly after they were married, with the caption what we think of married life, his mum reminding me of my sweet dinah... (boobelah seems too long a name, dinah is going to be her jewish name)... both in how pretty she is in the picture but also the mucking around...

i finished it last night in bed, one last spurt of reading to finish it, one scene where his mum walks into a railway tunnel to meet his dad, who is drunk and has thrown himself naked out of a moving train and is trying to stop all the trains that go through... the sense of the struggle that that couple went through for each other... very romantic in a kind of desperate way...

me & dinah (just to be clear, i'm talking about my G) went to see romance & cigarettes last night that was similarly romantic/dark... very good, all singing all dancing, genuine story, the way that story works out was in my mind as i read about michael ondaatji's family and story...

just as michael ondaatji's families story was in my mind as i watched tony robinson's inward struggle with putting his mum into care...

-

dinah has borrowed a DVD from her parents... an HBO series called carnivale, never heard of it but HBO do good work & her mum & dad say it's great, we're going to watch it shortly, well, the first episode... good quality tv... (i hope)

and now a small note on playing with musicians who you can't afford to pay, i have two co-conspiritors for the gigs coming up and in the last week they've both cancelled & rearranged rehearsal's twice... i understand, one has to pay one's bills... but it's a little frustrating... they are both great musicians and i'm glad to have them, inconstant schedules notwithstanding...

so a small tale in this vein:

tomorrow i was due to meet H (cello) but her cello is going into the menders so we rearranged & on the offchance i asked G (producer) if he could meet me - our rehearsal last friday was cancelled and we hadn't yet found a time to do it...

yes he says...

then i get a text from felinity reminding me about a tentative plan we'd made on tuesday night, followed almost immediately by a text from G (producer) saying he can't make tuesday after all...

followed by a phonecall from H saying she can't do our rearranged time now...

the moral of this is that i am now free as planned to go out with felinity to see P do poetry, me & H are meeting next week, me & G will no doubt meet soon...

it will happen... the music will be great... just small frustrations that's all...

oh and how beautiful it was cycling over the millenium bridge (illegally) at around 8 in the evening tonight, with the light still just about in the air... the sun must have set maybe 20 minutes before, afew tufts of red cloud around, the sky to the west still bright but to the east it was night time... st paul's ahead brightly lit and an ethereal beauty to everything...

hmmm... british summer time... lost an hours sleep but to have that light in the evenings...

x

long may this be true

i so love writing songs...

this song that arose from some muttered lyrics and some chords that i wrote while rendering those tree films has now migrated for the first time away from my fender rhodes onto T's piano... the chords are so, so sexy, it begs for a keyboard solo, i really want to keep my solos down to an absolute minimum for the vibe bar gig, ideally just one knock out solo for the whole set... leave them wanting more... and this tune could be the one...

i keep having more ideas for it and altering the basic pattern of it to accomodate, it's such a simple riff that it's based on, two chords that everyone and their dog has used in tunes, but where i go with it...

i was supposed to be at work today but a lack of communication (and also a certain black cloud that has coloured my week played a part in a negative way) meant that i slept in and spent much of my day on my own instead... which proved to be lovely...

once my boobelah had gone off to work (after the legendary breakfast) i took ages getting out of the house, spent awhile gazing at this here computer screen... got firefox 1.5 and greasemonkey which are slowly revolutionising my web life... actually a process i started last week swapping all my blog bookmarks with live bookmarks that tell me when that blogger has updated... (you could do the same with this blog if you use firefox... if you see one of these:in either the bottom right hand corner of the browser or in the address bar, click on it), just beginning to use firefox in the mess around with it, make it do what you want it to do kind of way that i've been hearing about...

for example i've got a userscript for greasemonkey that keeps the actual time when i'm posting... if you use blogger you'll be familiar with this, before, even if i spent an hour writing my post, the time of the post would still be whatever time it was when i started writing...

should you wish to follow me on this geeky journey you'll have to be using firefox 1.5, install greasemonkey and only then can you get that kookie little userscript...

anyway, geekness aside i finally made it out onto the streets to get a little something and i realised that i just wanted to keep on walking, so, with my shuffle in my ears and the light rain gradually dampening the hat, i strolled up the disused to crouchend, popped into prospero's books and bought a book of murakami short stories then retired to banner's cafe to drink tea, eat popcorn and read from the michael ondaatji book i'm still reading after what seems like months...

emerging a little later i got the 91 (kismet) bus back to here... ate the remains of the cake i got from waitrose yesterday and proceeded to work on that tune... which is where this posst started...

happy days..

x

trading wake ups

boobelah goes to synagogue on a saturday morning, or at least she'd like to, before she was going out with me she went every week...

it's an 8:30 start and she does a double show afterwards, getting home around 11pm, big day...

anyway she hasn't been so good at getting out of bed since we've been together (which has been 6 months now in the unofficial calender - half a year ago today we sat down to watch night of the living dead together in all innocence...) and i've been promising her for weeks now that i'll get up at 8:30 on a saturday morning and make her a mocha to ease her into the day...

whic frankly was a pie-crust promise until today, every friday night in recent weeks i've been drunk and stoned and 8:30 on the saturday morning has passed me by at a discreet distance, trying and succeeding not to to wake me...

and last night we drank a little bit too, me & boobelah got in a bottle of rose and gorby (another G in the house - does the cleaning) joined us, getting out the limoncello once the bottle had gone...

you know sometimes when you've been drinking you just wake up at an ungodly hour whether you want to or not?

anyway that was me this morning at 8:20am... suddenly conscious despite all my efforts, so i got up and made the mocha... made her happy... went back to sleep with a smug smile on my face... she went off to the synagogue... all was well...

and then i was woken about 4 hours later by my boobelah coming into the room and telling me that there was a cup of tea and breakfast waiting for me down in the kitchen... lovely surprise enough just to see her, normally she's out all day... and that she'd cooked breakfast...?

the jubilee line had broken and so she couldn't get to the synagogue, i sat down to a manolis style breakfast, timed to perfection, with the tea cooling to the perfect temperature just as i finished the food...

i love that woman...

x

mini break

boobelah and me (i don't know, it's a bit long... more on that later) are going on a minibreak...

woohooo x

just booked it, going in a couple of weeks, to prague...

now...

my G has been calling me boobelah for months now, and me her... it gets shortened to boobs all the time and i have no control over it... i call her boobs when we're out in public and people must think i'm calling her breasts... she knows that if she calls me boobs in return it will cancel that but she can't bring herself to do it... not very often anyway, and although i could try and not call her that in public i just wouldn't succeed...

but it seems a bit long for a pseudonym here... watt is possible but it would take a bit of getting used to... (the watts being her band)...

who knows?

x

one monkey

a hazard to public hygiene that's what i am...

there's a wierd bit under a railway bridge on the regents canal that has an odd concrete shape in it... when i first saw it i thought it was a grand piano, even though it would be insane for a grand piano to be down there...

i've often cycled past it and thought about using it in a music video... me sat at this concrete shape as though it were a piano... as if i'll ever be making a music video!

anyway, i drank afew with felinity tonight and i was cycling along the canal afterwards (with no lights), needing a wee, i decided that when one monkey don't stop the show came on my shuffle (from the album soul journey by gillian welch) i would stop and take a piss...

and lo and behold if that moment didn't come just as i was passing the concrete piano...

so i stood astride it and wee'd for all my worth...

there, you really needed to know that huh?

funnily enough the last time i'd seen felinity (last wednesday, in amongst my huge cycling day) we'd drunk a pint and she'd enquired after what i do when nature calls on one of these long cycle journeys...

a little later, after the piano soiling, i was cycling on the little bit of road you have to cycle on at night because a section of the regent canal by camdem is closed...

all very safe, hardly any cars, i realised that in that space - still kind of cycling by the canal in my mind - i was cycling without lights, without my helmet, whilst listening to my ipod shuffle... really can be stupid if i choose to be...

it really was a killer day when i'd made that journey the other way earlier today... spring teasing us... me & G had breakfasted at manolis's where an old greek cypriot guy who i'd met before stopped to chat with us... at one point he gazed deep into G's eyes and said...

you have beautiful... literature... and culture in your country... but you allow your children to be ignorant...

my journey was heavenly, the sun shining down, one of those dusty, sunny afternoons... i'd found bebel gilberto in my computer and i had my shuffle on random... her august day song came on at one point on the canal, the lovely feeling of the sun, the music, the moving at speed beside water... as though everything was expanding... an apreciation of space... internal and external...

then after work i had a pint with jazz pianist J from hammersmith before meeting felinity... somehow with the approach of spring my desire to drink pints has increased, guinness all the way...

x

space

when i was moving josiah's stuff out of her flat to put in my room for awhile i kind of knew it would take her a long time to sort it out to come get it...

for a long time her best friend S (witchy godmother to grace) was going to take it down there and pick up the cot that grace used to sleep in when they lived round the corner, the cot is witchy's, her kids had it and i think they want to keep it for future generations...

anyway it never happened, every time i asked her about it she would sound slightly annoyed and i gave up asking...

josiah knows someone down in brighton who is super organised (goes by the name of R) and R is the one who is even now driving through south london with josiah & grace in tow to get the stuff...

it's been here 8 months more or less, it was last july, reading through that post that i link to above i remember what it was like, hot, walking backwards and forwards between her flat and my house, cathartic, emptying the flat where she'd lived so much of her life... and all of grace's life...

and now they've got their place sorted down in brighton and that is there life...

i'm looking forward to playing with this magnetic theatre with grace, i bought it the other day from oxfam... my G says she had one when she was a kid... my G, now surely she should have a pseudonym....?

x

a kiss the mentalers

this is a tiny bit of video of me & G kissing yesterday in the same park that i did those cutup tree films in:



(i've only just realised that the videos don't show up in the livejournal feed of this blog... i'll be trying to remember to link to the video as well as embedding it...)

and then the mentalers:

it was on thursday, i was observing a primary school placement for work and before the lesson the class teacher brought a child to the student teachers (my students) to apologise to them for his behaviour... even though it wasn't really my place to say it i thanked him for the apology - neither of my students were going to thank him and i think it's important...

anyway, over the course of the lesson that i observed he played up a fair bit, he clearly has some kind of special needs in terms of his behaviour, he kept looking at me, i started to identify with him in my mind, his way of being completely oblivious to what was going on around him until brought back to focus by a teacher, something i miss about my adult life, the ability to completely absorb yourself in some tiny detail... i say i miss it, i think i still have it to an extent, i just don't let myself do it very often...

when the kids left the room he said goodbye to me about 10 times... there's some connection there that i really like, even though i'll probably not see him again...

leaving that school i cycled up to near londonbridgework and had lunch with producer G which was great, loads of ideas floating around about our little project, a student came to sit at the next table...

now i have an ability to speak my mind without fear of consequence... i rarely regret what i say but i'm often aware that it wasn't the most appropriate thing to say at that point...

the night before this me & G had watched king of comedy, the scorsese/deniro black comedy, it features sandra bernhard as an obsessive fan of jerry lewis... this particular student had come to my mind as i watched sandra bernhard's character, something i told her when i saw her in that cafe, taking care to mention that it was how mental the character was that made me think of her...

she took it well, she said i might have said she was cute but she accepted mental... (she has a stage persona who is entirely mental)...

anyway as i left the cafe i said see you tomorrow morning to her,

bright and early she replied...

she didn't come in the next day...

i hope it wasn't to do with what i said, i guess i'll find out on friday... odd to be telling this story today, even though i've been meaning to tell the story for a few days, because today i read ganching's very sad and beautiful account of her friend who she lost this week through mental illness...

the words mental, mentaler have a negative connotation attached to them generally in english and i just want to say that i don't mean it in a negative way... if anything is clear to me these days it's that we're all mental and i count myself a mentaler... not as mental as some, but mental enough...

x

quick one

grace turned 2 & a half on friday, me & G have been boyfriend & girlfriend for one quarter of a year since saturday, and will have been being foolish together for one half of a year next saturday...

we had a lovely day today, dressed up a little (as in... she got all calss... i looked like i always do).. some stranger in the street said: oy posho & becks... hello... we went to the amazon and then on to waterlow park, the second day there for me... then cafe nero in highgate...

then on returning home she cut my hair...

saw nippy yesterday, once i'd been out taking pictures in the park and my camera ran out of batteries i came home and hung with her for an hour or so which was great... just really good to talk to her and have her in my space... her presence prompted me to set up my mic with my mixing desk that i've been meaning to do for months... we had a good talk about a certain subject that's been bothering me and last night in my dreams i was given something that i only knew i wanted through talking to nippy...

then we went and saw her son play ice hockey, about the 3rd or 4th time i've been and i've still never seen him score... R & S were there with their three boys... it's been ages and it's always good to see them, the boys change so much...

anyway i love my haircut... i'm just throwing this together before i go and cook / eat with my beautiful girlfriend...

pictures to follow... and video's

x

still need to tell you about the mentalers...

x

dog face

strange that i should pretty much ignore youtube for months and then only 24 hours after i start posting videos again i'm being called a dog face in reply to a comment i'd left about someone else's video (those two young, chinese men miming)...?

the last victory, being a documentary about the palio in sienna is a wonderful, wonderful film... spski recently bought it on DVD and me, him & gorby just watched it, they'd both been to sienna, i never have... i've been to duino in northeast italy and there were echoes of that place in this film...

having watched it, it has become necessary to know one or two pertinent facts, although i can't share these facts or indeed the questions until you've seen the film...

i taught with nippy today, who had some fantastic news about her son and schooling, i did a dance... i so love teaching with nippy, we want to teach together more... at the end of the lesson we had a jam, only a few students and we pretty much each played an instrument that wasn't our main instrument... i sang, nippy on bass then drums (she told me that she wanted me to form a band, so that she could play drums for me), students: N on keys, B on drums then bass, O on electric guitar & only Y doing what she does... being singing...

not the greatest music ever made but it worked quite afew times and it was great for me to practise microphone technique, the kind of singing/improvising that i would so love to do more of, reminded me of that gig over a year ago with S who now runs little bit of sunshine with M... the improvisation that part of harbour walls
came from...

also good for the students and teachers to do something they're not very good at...

oh and the mentalers... have to be another post...

yesterday in pictures & video

all in all it was a 35 mile cycling day, i think my route looks a little like a strange fruit, or possibly a strange face... no pictures from the morning cycle as i was in a hurry, the pictures start once i'd gone past to the south western tip of my journey, once i'd left felinity in clapham and i was chilling out in battersea park:

at first i thought these were wierd modern sculptures but after a while i realised they were sculptures that had been wrapped up for some reason...

i sat down by the water and let the various different waterfowl come and say hello and then ignore me:



this one was preparation for the second of the slowing bicycle wheel videos, which ended up at 13 and a half minutes, not so successful as the first which was cut short sadly because my camera was full, here it is in all it's 6 or so minutes (there's an angry swan chasing geese):



yes the videos are probably way too long, i have a fondness for what others often think boring... partly though, watching these today, which was such a foul, cold, rainy day it's just lovely seeing the way the sunlight plays on the water...

outside the stage door waiting for my G i was listening to my shuffle and taking pictures...

and finally to describe a little more precisely what it was like hearing these herbie hancock tunes last night as i waited for my food @ crystal...
i'd completely forgotten that i'd put them on there, all day i'd been randomly listening to tracks as i cycled by the canal or the river thames, not one herbie tune all day... i mistook them for miles davis tracks... from the era when herbie used to play for him, as did tony williams, the drummer... i hadn't put any miles davis on there at all... it was great hearing miles... (so i thought)... but i had absolutely no notion how it had got onto my ipod shuffle... (i'd had a long day - i was pretty stupid by this time, and romantic in that full moon hanging over the millenium eye kind of way)...

i started half believing that the universe had put them there for me... here you go longcat, miles davis...

a hazy glow

i would have liked to say here that i rode my bike for x miles today...

but i don't have the energy for the gmap pedometer tonight... having rode those x number of miles...

as me & spski came out of the ICA having seen mirrormask the full moon was hanging in the air right by the millenium wheel...

just right, just right for the film we'd just left and just right for the day i've had...

only got 5 or so hours sleep in the end last night what with my stupidly early morning today and that kind of sleeplessness, a shadow of wobblyness over the day, is exactly the kind of thing that makes me cry in films all the more... although i would have cried in mirrormask anyway, the gorrilla/birds made me cry tonight... not quite the part that i'd expect to be bringing tears flowing...

so to see the full moon afterwards on top of that...

and all this on top of...:

(very quickly because i'm going to have a bath and then bed any minute now...)

cycling 14 miles to sydenham, including the regent canal passed victoria park, the isle of dogs, the grenwich foot tunnel under the thames, an unknown river with a cyclepath beside it almost all the way once i'd got south of the thames...

the observation of the teaching - a class of 25 6-7 yr olds... the teaching of my students... moving stuff...

the journey from sydenham to clapham to meet felinity for lunch, including sydenham hill that i'd cleverly avoided on my way to sydenham, and dulwich which is like a country estate, cycled passed my old flat on half moon lane above the hat shop (now a different shop)... and clapham common which is beautiful...

then the lunch with felinity in which we both elected to drink a pint of john smiths... (very wise)... very nice indeed, could easily have stayed in that pub all afternoon but of course she was working...

then battersea park which i just wanted to check out, stooging around, taking pictures/video (none uploaded yet so no examples... hmmm... no, i need my bed... but it would make it look so nice...?)

then drifting downstream beside the thames, from albert bridge to the tate modern... using their loo, hanging out a little way down the stone steps to the water's edge... listening to much shuffledge...

then cycling to the stage door of whichever theater G works in to meet her, having a cup of tea that made me late meeting spski for the film... racing along the strand to get to the film on time...

then the film... the full moon, the return cycle journey with spski, the detor via crystal for food, the herbie hancock album that i'd forgotten putting on my shuffle that appeared for the first time as i was waiting for my food, mistaking it for miles davis (similar band)... the conversation with spski at the kitchen table... the bath that i'm about to have, the bed that yawns to me...

x

ouch

i'm planning my route for tomorrow's school visit, it's going to be 14 miles long and i'm going to have to be there by 9 am...

that means leaving mine by 7:15 i reckon, to be on the safe side...

that means getting out of bed @ 6:30am...

considering i eventually arose today at around 1:30pm that is going to be quite a challenge...

also mirrormasking tomorrow with spski, who was my consultant on the route...

x

productive

the marrying of a chord sequence that's been banging around in my head for awhile and some lyrics that i've been muttering to myself for the last week...

i think it's the session i had on friday with producer G, the possibilities of the sound... the mpc being able to deliver some bollocks should i want it...

i was a little concerned on friday that i only had 2 tunes that i knew i wanted to play at the gig and now this one floats out of the ether, along with the shadow of all those chord sequences i wrote this winter... if i could find a way of bringing them into the lyrical light...

of course once it's all written i have to learn it all, no small feat...

but it feels good to be writing, and to be in love,

and for songs to spring from love instead of from pain as is so often the case...

happy days,

x

snapshot

as always on mondays i'm a little short on sleep, spent a very obsessive hour and a half last night going through all the pictures i've ever taken on my camera and finding new ones to put on my desktop... the camera which i left at producer G's on friday and this is the kind of activity that is indicative of being without it... i hope that makes sense...

spelling is nowhere today...

i just taught a workshop for new students here @ londonbridgework, they come in for interviews this week and have this workshop with me first... i always love it, seeing new faces, reaching into energy of the piece that i teach (now time for unification now time), the future that is in that room...

then now i'm waiting for a student so i can go through her composition with her, while at the same time working through in my head how i'm going to teach my afternoon class (first year teaching students), using clapping music by steve reich, i do enjoy thinking like this, taking the way i was going to teach this and swapping it around, placing the emphasis in a slightly different way... somehow still feeding off the energy of the morning workshop...

and at the same time i'm working out my hectic timetable for schools visits, the second year teaching students are out on placements in primary & secondary schools and i split the visits with another teacher, the madness of it all, getting from school to school, briefly existing in the culture of whichever school it is, and each school culture is so different...

i'm liking the mixture of past & future in this present time...

just a thought x

adventures (some whilst asleep)

cycling from londonbridgework to producer G's house in gypsy hill i was wearing the cape, even though it wasn't really raining enough to warrant it, i hadn't yet worked out the cycle route that avoids the elephant & castle roundabouts and i was hairily rounding the second one when a gust of wind inflated the cape like a sail and reduced my speed from some to very little just as a bus was waiting for me to pass it...

in the middle of the night last night G woke to find me trying to pick her up, don't worry just hold on to me i said and though at first she went with it, once she'd worked out what was going on she started grabbing the sheets, the duvet, the bed and yelling... whereupon i woke up and got back into bed...

two nights ago she awoke to find me leaning over her
me: i've got to look under the bed,
her: oh... honeybunny...
me: BUNNY, bunny, BUNNY, BUNNY...
whereupon i woke up and got back into bed...

at producer G's yesterday we got the backing in shape for the neurotic love song, all sampled from my ipod shuffle, all from illegally downloaded mp3's... the gig is going to be great, i spoke to H cello on thursday and she's up for it, by the time i meet her in a couple of weeks me & G should have got the backing to harbour walls done too...

i just cycled into town to meet my G on her break between shows, drank a cheeky cocktail (mojito for me, cosmopolitan for her)... hmmm...

playing backgammon last night with actor G, drinking white russians, he won the first game, then at the end of the second game i had no way of winning unless i threw two doubles in a row... in the game after i could only win if i threw a double 6 on that last throw...

i won both games...

x

the rain

decided to miss my manolis meal before going to hammersmith today in favour of going to the bike shop and getting some rain protection...

a new rear mudguard and a cape... the mudguard does a great job actually, my wet arse has been more a victim of my back wheel than the falling rain, the cape is huge, kind of strange, it's like a poncho, my head pops through a hole in the middle, it stretches over my handle bars and behind my saddle... completely incasing my upper half...

i cycled to work and the rain was off & on, i was fully caped to the canal, then the rain had eased and i wanted to listen to my ipod so i changed my costume for the canal journey, donning the cape once more for the final road bit, although the rain was patchy, at one point i stopped a passer by and asked her opinion, she thought it probably wouldn't rain for the 20 minutes i needed to get to work from there...

i was listening to roberta flack & donny hathaway's album, something i've had on cd for years, one of my students wanted to learn some piano from a tupac song and i recognised it as being from that album, the original sample, a tune called be real black for me, beautiful...

all in all, what with both canal journeys (there & back) i managed to listen to the whole album by the water, it's a killer, i like it more now than i did when i bought it, in particular their version of you've lost that loving feeling, and where is the love?, just fantastic, great voices and great musicians, the album closes with a piano/fender rhodes duet that is just heaven...

my phone started working today after not working for several days (including over 24 hours after i'd paid my bill), and i'm looking forward to listening to the messages that have been building up, there's one from the piano movers and i hope one from H (cellist), which coincides well with meeting up with producer G on friday...

me & G went and saw memoirs of a geisha last night, the very last chance we had, the last day of her holidays, it was alright, very good in places, too long and too hollywood in others places, she'd read the book and so wanted to see how it translated... the shoes were great...

we've also been watching the league of gentlmen, the first series of which is on VHS in the TV room, i've borrowed the 2nd & 3rd series on DVD from a friend of a friend... not always funny but pretty compulsive... the last episode we saw was actually very funny, an audition in which a woman has to say a line to get an advertisement job, i can't describe why, but the way she says the line is just pure comedy gold...

also the way those 3 actors produce so many different characters...

not right but not all wrong

rained for my journey in to work today...

and my current technique for dealing with the rain while cycling is not wearing the hat, but wearing the ear warmers...

this because the hat may get damaged...

the whole issue of my trousers...

this led me, a few weeks ago, to talk about my wet trousers with my students over in hammersmith, i'd cycled in, it had rained... take it from me, 16 - 17 year old students don't want to talk to their teachers about wet trousers, cue awkward silence...

anyway, once in work today, feeling soggy, i was able to feel slighted by something one of the other teachers said, about something they were'nt prepared to put up with, something which i do put up with, amazing how powerful the feeling of being taking for granted is once it's awakened...

then just now one of my housemates raised his voice in a slightly unpleasant way to me and i realise that i'm just not in the right space today...

nothing too terrible i just shouldn't be speaking to people...

oh and my phone has been cut off, so that's helpful... the universe assisting me in not talking to people...

of course i had a very funny chat with spski before this other housemate came into the room, but then that is the wonder of spski, even when i'm a little wrong i'm not too wrong for him...

and waking up with my G this morning was a blessed, blessed thing...

one of those days when people are either good or bad for you, after the meeting at work, me in my slighted damp state, i walked with producer G to the cafe and he pretty much made me alright just by being normal with me... i'm looking forward to meeting him on friday and checking out how we might work together musically...

i'm disappearing under my duvet now...

x

almost not worth it

long time no post... sorry,

i guess my life's a little busy... doing nothing as ever...

flew the helicopter on sunday...

some spectacular crashing video...

but now i'm running out the door for work, later...

x

before sunset...

... which will be at 17:41, although if i'm trying to watch it from that hill on hampstead heath it'll be more like 17:32...

still haven't checked out sukhdev sandhu & his night haunts but i'm still digging the chart with all the times on it...

i've been a bit mad with work and cold and sleeplessness the past couple of days...

although me & spski did find time to go to the photographers gallery on great newport street, in particular alec soth is great... sleeping by the mississippi is his show and it moved me...

last night W shaman came round for another bout of chess... the last time we'd played he beat me twice, out of two games... last night was a return to form, he beat me twice again, but out of a total of eight games... a lovely night, obviously it's nice to win, but it's mainly just good being in his company, for the first time since K has put a turntable downstairs i played some records... vinyl enveloping us in it's warmth as we went head to head with those pieces...

maceo parker & all the kings men - doing our own thing
van morrison - common one
the unpredictable jimmy smith - bashin'
van morrison - tb sheets

which has a great opening tune, maybe even the whole first side is good, but the second side...

oh no mr morrison, what were you thinking of...

john martin - solid air
portishead - dummy
john lee hooker - mr lucky

oh vinyl...

G came home a couple of games before the end and stoogged about a bit... the three of us hanging out once the chess was done...

later on me & G watched before sunset, the follow up film to before sunrise that we saw a few nights ago...

there was less at stake now, the first one, whilst good, hadn't been fantastic, this one's set in paris, it was alright, probably even good, we laughed alot, ignoring some crucial dialogue no doubt...

something in the opening of this one suggests that richard linklater had made his first film based on something that had happened to him... if this is true, and it's quite believable, i like that his character (the american man) is such a rooster prick as she calls him in the first film...

i also like that the two characters appear in waking life, in bed, another space for them to live in...

oh and my cold yesteray was an evil thing, today it seems much better, thanks largely to jai krishna's fantastic vegetarian food which i cycled off to pick up somewhere between about the 4th and 5th games i think...

long live jai krishna

x