where i'm at

dinah came down @ around 8:30am and me, C & J were still talking, she went off to her rehearsal and i stumbled into bed around 9:30...

she woke me with a tea and a smile around 3 and just prior to going out to the amazon cafe where we were expected i was putting in fresh contact lenses...

i put one in, then the other... and i couldn't see anything... either eye...

maybe the 1st one had fallen out(?) but the second one?

i kept blinking hoping they would sort themselves out...

anyway dinah came in and asked after me and i tried to explain it but i couldn't, except that i wasn't particularly capable today and then i had a notion that turned out to be correct...

i'd put both contact lenses onto the same eye...

this is me, today,

x

water & improvisation uploaded

well as you can see, that improvisation finally came out... it actually took 12 hours and 14 minutes to render, but with the time cubase took to do it's rendering, converting to divx... i guess it's more like 13 & a half hours...

anyway, that is not why i'm here...

tonight is the night i unleash water & improvisation on the world, gordy has his film party tomorrow night so i've whipped it into a shape i'm happy with and i've uploaded it to both googlevideo and youtube...

it is the film i've been referring to as the thames path film that i did a version of for my december gig, it's been a long, long time getting here and it could still develope further but i'm signing off on it and letting the world see it...

both video hosting sites because i want to see how they compare and also to get the widest audience for it...

i'm not embedding either one here just yet because i only delivered this week's improvisation earlier today (yesterday) so i'll let that one sit there for the moment before showing this one...

but it's here or here if you want to go see it...

x

longcat rhodes, voice & WEM copicat improvisation 22nd february 2007 week 36

2 cameras... huh?

x

different sizes

i improvised this early evening with my camera and with Wfloopy(shaman)'s camera as well...

it's rendering now...

it was a long one 14 minutes or so...

the video file that my camera gave me was 56Mb...

the audio (stereo) for those 14 minutes was 225Mb...

the video file from Wfloopy(shaman)'s camera was 2.9Gb...

normally the video renders in 15 - 30 minutes, this one, if it's estimates are correct, will have taken 11 hours...

i know there are an awful lot of ...'s in this post but the difference is quite staggering, the quality is better of course, but...

anyway, i've got to teach in the morning, and when i get up to go to work this will still be rendering...

strange x

a fan

ok, so firstly, i've found a fan...

he put one of my weekly improvisations on his blog saying isn't he good?...

isn't that nice? (you know i just had a look at that improvisation - one of the few hosted on youtube - and it's been viewed 3306 times.......?)

and secondly i've been tinkering with the thames path film, the one i showed at my december gig... this week has seen me find a new way of doing something i've been wanting to do for ages and i've implemented an idea of spski's in relation to colour...

it's rendering now in it's most recent version and i can't wait to see it... gordy has a party on saturday night where we're showing films and it's a good kick up the arse to get this moved on...

i went over to felinity's new house last night where she's now living with her G, we ate fantastic vegi indian food and cooked, flipped & ate pancakes... lovely to see them both, strange to go visit her and for G to be there, not that it's strange seeing him, just that i'm so used to solo visits with felinity, this is it though, a new chapter in their life...

living together in a lovely, cute house..

makes me a little jealous...

it took me 2 hours to cycle home from there... although this was not a direct cycling experience... it was raining just slightly and i was a little camera mad... kept pulling it out of my pocket and snapping away...

well i had taken off my gloves by this point as it was not too cold and one time pulling out the camera i must have pulled out a glove at the same time...

i realised this on that road separating kensington gardens from hyde park and i spent a good twenty minutes looking for it, retracing my journey back to the royal albert hall but to no avail... i am now without my right glove which is a pain...

i cheered myself up with the thought of the miniroll that was waiting for me at home and i continued on, getting ever more into filming, until i was on the canal, the rain still there but only light... under a railway bridge, lights shining in wierd ways...

i don't know how long i spent videoing down there, and i haven't checked the footage yet, could well be all useless, too dark... but it was a lovely time spent all alone with the night and the water...

delusional

i can't help it... i'm almost all the way through the 1st wave of reading all the work, putting together my thoughts about marks...

and i come across this paragraph... i'm sure this is unethical but this student always makes me laugh in class and here they are making me laugh in amongst all this work..:

Piece: Trust Truth

This piece was very delusional, as we were constantly changing between an on & off beat. We were banging our feet against the floor while saying "Trust, Truth", eventually split into 3 groups, with each following group 1 beat behind as usually. It required a lot of concentration.

We were also fighting with longcat, because it didn't sound quite right, the rhythm was very misleading and it sounded like we weren't doing it right. Well at least to me. But he was probably right, he's the teacher after all.

improv blanket marking

got up this morning to watch kiki's delivery service, an early studio ghibli that was on channel 4 this morning... they're showing one every morning this week, tomorrow is the cat returns which me & felinity saw @ the pictures...

i have a mountain of marking and little time to do it in...

so naturally i've been looking at how my website looks...

but first, just a quick link to the new and improved clementine&trave wedding website...

ok, so here's the deal, i made this:



a week or so ago when i got the improvisation blanket going, and it's very pretty but has nothing to do with the improvisations... so i've now made this:



which is better, a little haphazard but i like it... it makes me want to do another one, or maybe a whole film with more deliberate patterns...

and finally W(floopy)shaman is going to redraw me a logo based on the natty logo on the copicat... my own shady version of it is currently the favicon for my random improvisation page... oh and favicons..?

how much fun is it just idly making 16x16 patterns..? the improvblanket's current favicon is another pattern i came up with...

la la la... without a care in the world... just patterns and websites and...

oh...

a big pile of marking and little time to do it in...

x

random week 35

nearly at the end of the franco era coffee liquor... mix it with milk and you have almost a white russian, christened a litvinenko by gordy even though he won't try it...

there's probably one or two shots left in that bottle... it'll be missed...

gigged on tuesday night and i took the WEM copicat with me... cool to gig with, my 1st such gig but certainly not my last... the gig was pretty good, no monitors on my voice so that was shaky but great keyboard playing i think...

then on wednesday i had an interview for some more hours work - this time for haringey music service, piano teaching, it was a good interview but my lack of skill in sightreading may have meant i didn't get it... not that i know yet either way...

improvised tonight with my piano and the copicat, as you can see at the top of the post...

and my brother trave, whose impending wedding to M now has a website, has written me a bit of code to display randomly picked improvisation from my weekly series, so why not visit the random improvisation page on longcat.net... see what comes your way...

x

a door was shut...

...which shouldn't have been shut,

so she shat in the sink.

x

week 34 goodbye space echo

1stly, i just want to say i am not one of those bloggers who post single sentence - i'm just doing this now posts...

evidence to the contrary below i know and it does look kind of refreshing in amongst all the wordiness... it's just not going to be that way... go on go, walk out the door, turn around now, you're not welcome anymore... those of you drawn to single sentence posts...

we were just about to go and i thought i had 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds...

i have my own cat balthazara on my lap as i write this, which is pretty strange, she looks down at my fingers every now and then like she's reading the words i'm typing... maybe she is...?

are you?

if the answer is yes then lift your head up and nuzzle my nose...

no, either she didn't want her secret to be known or she wasn't reading, she's gone now...

as is the ROLAND space echo... E phoned earlier and asked if today would be convenient for picking up his technological boxes... being the projector and the space echo, both borrowed for the early december gig... very glad to have had that space echo in my possession for 3 months... a little sad that it's gone, but looking forwards and thinking of the WEM copicat that's still here, maybe finding a way to use it in the live band...

i did an improvisation with the space echo before it went, slihtly illegal being as i did an improvisation for this week on monday, but then i did miss that week in august... i think this is just me catching up...

i'll be doing week 35 next week and everything will work out nicely...

it was 20 minutes long and if i have my way it's sat up there at the top of this post as you read this...

ok i'm going to the shops...

x

off out

about to go over to Wfloopy(shaman) & T's place, to feed their cat...

x

exchange of printed word missed beauty

i didn't cycle to hammersmith today because it was snowing and my back brake makes my back wheel skid in the rain... haven't had my front brake connected back up yet...

but now i regret it... i was walking to the tube in the heyday of the snow a few hours ago, a heyday that is over now probably... snow doesn't last long in london...

just how beautiful would it have been to be one of the first to cycle by the canal... or through the park... with the fresh snow...

but we live with the decisions we make...

on tuesday i took the printed out cavafy poems in greek to manolis, he was pleased with them... as i was sitting eating my beakfast in his cafe that day one of the oddball regulars piped up that his book is now available on amazon... i've spoken to him before about his book, an expose of tabloid journalism apparently... anyway he went out to his car and brought me back a copy...

so giving the printed word to manolis brought back the printed word from the oddball regular...

x

cloud organ improvisation - week 33

edited together a sound which i wanted to check out... so i did the improvisation on monday night, very much on the spur of the moment...

x

last day off

listening to howe gelb's marvellous Sno Angel album, which is what i was listening to when i beat Wfloopy(shaman) for the 1st time online earlier on...

took a few printed out greek poems over to manolis's earlier only to find - and remember at the same time - that he doesn't open on mondays... so i ate a monday roast in the amazon instead... me & dinah having missed our amazon sunday roast yesterday because we were down south living it up with producerG... birthday boy...

we'd cycled off on our matching shopper bikes... cutting a dash as she told me... getting on the train @ kentish town down to tulse hill, cyling a little further when we got down there...

her bike is simply elegance itself and she only bought it on saturday so we're still in the honeymoon of it...

she returned on the train from somewhere past watford with it and we cycled up to the amazon, ate, then cycled over to regents park just because we could... beautiful day as it was... then yesterday the somewhat drunken and lovely time with producerG & his C, meeting a few lovely, lovely people as well...

then back here and a bottle of rose cava before the evening and a kind of house fun thing set up up by Gordy... darts, other daft games, dr K came, only spski was absent from the house and it was really nice, good to hang out with people we don't always get on with...

today i've been slowly thinking about music... sounds... i'm considering arranging a cover of guinevere by crosby, stills & nash... just me & my keys... a rhodes sound doing the chords which will be tricky, just my left hand... and my voice and a hammond organ doing the harmonies...

maybe it's too ambitious but i dig the notion...

also i need to sort out the sound setup of my keyboard before the rehearsal with T's band on wednesday...

also a tune that's brewing, started on sunday while i was waiting for dinah to be ready to leave the house... a touch of a bheki mseleku tune in there and it may morph into the half remembered faces tune i started the night me & filmo saw the dead C...

today has been my last day off for this week, the new semester is upon us and my wednesday's off are now a thing of the past... so i need to get used to doing everything i need to do today, like my laundry which i must get going real soon...

Howe Gelb now singing his Down Home 2000 album which is odder, not so nicely produced... but still great...

ok later x

searching

just been to manolis's and i want to find something that he will enjoy reading, he's in a little bit of a low patch, i offered to lend him my book of cavafy that i know he likes but he said if it was in greek... maybe... so now i'm about to search for cavafy poems in greek to print out and bring to manolis... he told me that i was very habitual, and that kant was also habitual... people used to be able to set their clocks by kant...?

also i've been on a strange and so far fruitless search since yesterday when i used some hakim bey spoken word stuff in my improvisation. it struck me that i should be able to identify where i got it from... and indeed what it is... when he was speaking and who he was speaking to...

and i have no idea... it seems to be on the winter solstice some year.. he's speaking as peter lambon wilson, i have no idea where it came from, maybe soulseek, or maybe through deoxy... or then perhaps it came from those grey lodge folk...

reminds me that when i met that iching guy who had had some contact with hakim bey he'd told me that hakim bey was really against the internet... favouring real breast to breast communication... or letters...

going over to W(floopy)shaman's tonight for chess and food... he who has only just gone over to internet chess... we're breast to breast chessing tonight as well as our internet game...

rehearsed with T's band minus the guitarist last night, we're gigging a week on tuesday if you fancy, we were fantastic @ the metro and we'll be a touch better @ leonards...

slow day i've had today, a kind of malaise i'm almost under, not as bad by any means as some days but, what with the next semester so close and the work still to be done for it... it can seem like a day like today is a waste, but i don't see it like that, if i need to spend a day like today - even as it's hard to see what it does for me... i celebrate the day i've had... i love the way i live my life...

x

week 32

x

playing with voices

it's possible my ipod shuffle died today... i was thinking about using different people's voices in my improvisation and i emptied the shuffle so i could play the voices through it and it... well... i don't know, it doesn't look good now but you never know, it may come round...

so i did use the voices, william burroughs, hakim bey, archie shepp, daniel pinchbeck, neil young...

speaking, although william burroughs was also taking a tape recording of his voice and pushing it backwards and forwards over the tape head... well... it was the 60's - or maybe the 70's...

the improvisation was the 32nd in the weekly series, i've just watched it... the voices work well... i think...

google is being weird, it's been uploading for half an hour and it's got almost nowhere, so i won't be putting it in this post...

it's the longest of the improvisations @ 27.44 minutes, i wonder if anyone will have the patience for it...

mind you, unless it's another symptom of google's weirdness (which it probably is) it looks as if 92 people watched my 3rd cutup film yesterday and 138 people watched last week's improvisation... yesterday... all in all the report tells me that my videos were watched 1969 times... yesterday!

either i've suddenly got a lot more popular or google is suffering from something... the improvisation blanket page over on my newly updated longcat.net has been behaving strangely yesterday and today...?

...

T came round today for some help with his HTML... i told him what i know which is something but not much... in fact my HTML knowledge should be increasing fairly soon being as i now have longcat.net to play with... tinkering with HTML for blogger or myspace has kept me fairly well oiled but most of the work is done by their respective templates...

my own blank website...

maybe i'll reluctantly get a piece of software to do it for me...

ok, big day tomorrow...

x

venus impovisation blanket

as i turned off my computer last night i thought to myself:

oops, i should have checked that email about what time the meeting is tomorrow... oh well, i'm fairly sure it's @ 2...

earlier that day i'd had two meetings, one @ 11 and the other @ 2 and for some reason i thought the meeting today was @ 2 as well...

but it was @ 11...

and i knew this as i was waking up, picking up my phone and seeing it was my work phoning... the only reason they would ring would be to say where are you?, so by the time i'd answered it and was speaking to L from work i couldn't pretend not to know, that i'd fucked up, which gave my voice a certain resigned sound... i'm sure she thought i'd just slept in deliberately...

so my day was somewhat shadowed by a slightly guilty feeling of missing work... also some work i was overdue on which had to be completed, (still being completed)...

felinity rang late afternoon when i was @ manolis's, having spent a few hours writing reports... she was going round to J & A's, parents of connie... J our cousin... she's moving out of that neighbourhood soon and she never remembers their house number as she walks passed their road... actually having organised a visit she'd once again forgotten the number, did i have it?

the kind of thing i would ring her for... i did indeed have an email from them awhile back with the relevant details...

much later me & dinah went out to see pans labyrinth but it was sold out so we saw venus which was very good...

and in between all of this i have been tinkering with longcat.net and animated GIF's...

it has expanded to 2 html pages, the second of which has the improvisation blanket which pulled a fancy GIF from me and by then i was rolling along, in FLASH, in vegas, smartFTP, photoshop...

also made a rather nice GIF of my signature which now lives at the bottom of that page...

oh the in's and out's of web spaces... my head is full of that stuff and i need to get back to the reports...

longcat.net

up until today (by which i mean sunday) my website @ longcat.net hadn't been updated since 2nd february 2003... which predates this blog by a year and a bit... very nearly 4 years ago...

well i changed something and now it's very easy for me to upload stuff to it again, not that it was that hard before, just hard enough that i never did it...

also i've been thinking more about the improvisations and selling them on CD's and the website would be a good place to base that...

so if you'd care to pop over there you won't find very much yet... but it's there, and there's no longer an advert for the online radio show i used to do, with a piece of code my brother made me which still tells you when the next broadcast would have been had i still been doing it...

it amazes me that i was still doing it back in 2003 actually, but i must have been...

at present i have all 35 improvisation videos all laid out, small... but working...

it appeals to me...

my plans for that site include a random improvisation button, a list of improvisations based on type - (piano only, piano/voice, rhodes only...), and this notion of the bespoke cd... not that i know how that's going to work yet... oh and a section for my films... maybe a section on teaching too...

anyway, got a meting tomorrow that i need to check the time of then get myself to bed with that lady of mine...

be well

x

pre gig dundeeism

so it was 1:40 am, last night, searching the internet for the word "mellotron", some citizen of dundee using firefox on a PC became the 5000th person to visit this here blog...

(since july 23rd 2005)


dundee...

in the east of scotland on the firth of tay... known as the city of discovery due to it's scientific background and also... but look, there's no point me just repeating information i read moments ago on this page about dundee...

suffice it to say that i hereby recognise dundee as the place of residence of my 5000th visitor and let's be done with it...

it was very nearly going to be finsbury park, london but my beautiful girlfriend did in the end agree to let someone else be the 5000th... she is after all far more special than a mere number...

we're going out in about an hour or so to my gig @ the metro club, oxford street, i've had a mad day of it... teaching this morning, racing over to kennington to run through the set one more time then back on the bike to soho square to load the gear in for the gig, soundcheck... before cycling home through strangely empty cycle lanes ...

i'm pretty knackered but a good dinner will sort me out... then tart myself up and take dinah by the arm and lead her through the bowels of the underground to tottenham court road where we'll probably catch the band on before us (the unready) before i get up there with T's band and rock the place out...

very slight nerves but they've got time to arrive in more numbers as 10 o'clock looms nearer and nearer...

x

welcome 5000th visitor

...(since july 23rd 2005)

which was roughly a year? i think since i started blogging...

was it really 2004 when i started this thing...? yes indeed, june 2004...

anyway, as i did almost a thousands visits ago i will bestow upon my 5000th visitor some kind of geographical reference...

there, now that's an incentive if ever i offered one...

long day of travelling by public transport today, gigging tomorrow and my keyboard has to be where we're rehearsing so that i can cycle from my work in the morning...

so it meant that i strapped it to my back and braved the tube down to kennington this morning, dropping it off and getting straight back on the tube to go to hammersmith, where i stayed an extra hour beyond my regular classes (but why?) which put me right in the rushhour as i caught the tube home again...

were those mad storms last thursday? yes i believe so... so that's two thursday's in a row that i've been tubing it to hammersmith... last week because of aforementioned storm and wind... i remember getting off the tube @ finsbury park to a veritable wall of commuters... fighting my way out of the tube doors, more fighting just to make my way off the platform...

dismembered limbs and blood all around me and i had to wash my sword on the...

hang on...

no, no, no...

so why did i stay an extra hour at hammersmith?

because my boss turned down my idea for splitting up my two classes over there into those who find it easier and those who find it harder, as recompense she offered me an extra hour or perhaps two if there was interest from the students, a space where select students could get more attention from me... and this week 5/6 students took up that offer... more hourage for me and also potentially a good learning situation, early days thereof today but hopeful...

you know, i think the mad storms were two weeks ago... can't be sure...

what all this tubing did for me today was give me an opportunity to read from 2012 the year of the mayan prophesy by daniel pinchbeck that Wfloopy(shaman) & T have leant me... it's turning out to be very good... (set me up for a satisfying fantasy the other day where i was somehow the chosen one writhing in spiritual agony while a blinding light created a crop circle around me)...

oh... and i've had a notion about my weekly improvisations... i don't know if there's interest enough for this, but i thought i could offer for sale a cd of whichever improvisations people wish... each one typically 15 minutes long, so you could fit 5 on a cd...

but how to make them nice not just the usual burnt cd's i can do myself... hmmm... cdbaby?

anyway, i'm rambling...

welcome oh 5000th visitor, your presence is a present...

x

31st longcat weekly improvisation

i'm gigging on friday @ the metro... in tony cannam's band... today i've been checking out the sounds i'm using and today's improvisation comes from my keyboard and the 2 modules i'm using for that band...

also the arcdev industries dubbox tape delay simulation on the hammond organ...

i'm loving where those two sounds take me...

x

pre assessment jitters

so i'm @ work, but the students are self organising in preparation for the assessment of this particular module which is in about 40 minutes...

strange to be so close to them but not actually helping them...

but that's the way it is today, i've got yimkin coming in to help assess and that'll be nice... now i'm popping over to have a cuppa fith M...


lurvely

x

cutup of 31 weeks improvising

rehearsed tonight (monday) with T's band, really looking forward to friday's gig @ the metro...

fancy it?

let me know if you want to come xx

PS - enjoy the cutup x

judaism rehearsing

not sure why i've slowed down blogging...

but there you have it, i have for now slowed down... from sometimes as much as twice per day, and at least daily, i'm down to 2 or 3 a week...

it won't last...

dinah became officially jewish on friday, along with her mum, & me & Wfloopy(shaman) went along to the friday night shabbat service at the liberal synagogue to mark the occasion...

i love the way the shadows fall in a lattice in this picture, this is the eternal flame, and there are seven lights shining down on the support casting this very precise lattice... hmmm...

the service was pretty empty, apparently the saturday morning shabbat service is larger and i'd like to check it out one day, to hear the full choir singing the songs and also a full congregation repeating those hebrew words...

afterwards we went to thaitanic in crouch end... ate our fill... and later went back to W & T's for tea, pink wine, conversation, smoking...

found out that T has a book by peter lamborn wilson, a writer i love, i've borrowed it and i'm gathering all i can find by him (under that name and also under the name hakim bey) to take round there sometime... i think W in particular would love immediatism...

rehearsed yesterday with T's band, we're gigging on friday @ the metro... 1st gig outside of the south london pacific... nervous but really looking forward to it...

and my backdrop for my mypace page went offline so i've uploaded a new one, similarly foolish to this backdrop, what with the various different bright patches and the difficulty of reading some words... something i will fix one of these days, must ask Wfloopy(shaman) how to level out an image to make reading against it easier...?

ok, hope all is well with you dear reader... catch you soon x

surprise cinema success with 30th improvisation

expected nothing and got everything...

we were walking to the cinema to see perfume and our stomachs were full and we were late, and dinah suggested we take our time walking and see night at the museum instead...

and we both shook our heads slightly as we nodded..

even in the cinema we still kept looking at each other and wondering why we were there...

but it turned out to be really great... it made me cry (steve coogan & owen wilson)... it delivered...

that's not a recommendation, it was a certain situation that led to us being in the right place for that film.. but it was great...

and of course i did my improvisation today as you know because it's there at the top of this post... didn't broadcast it live... just set it up around 5 and went for it, balthazara coming in and staring at the space echo for awhile on my lap in the middle... the whole thing a bit too dark... and my hard drive giving up about a minute before the end (and the end only being the end because i finally noticed it had stopped recording)... but it was a good one anyway i think...

working tomorrow, 1st time time in almost a week... i love my life...

x

creative deoxy gig

yesterday was one of this semesters' tuesday offs...

the semester ends in a week...

so although i popped into work to assess 2 of the students briefly, i haven't been working at all since last friday...

a nice long stretch of time to be thinking about things...

my film making is in an interesting place... what with the water & improvisation film in a nearish the end phase and the water & memory film so near the beginning...

as usual the end process informs the beginning process and my film making ability raises up another notch with each film i make...

also engaged in music making a fair bit... mainly the music to water & memory but also thinking about putting music to one or all of my royal northern gardens short films...

& i've finally uploaded a video of that online gig i did in december, as you can see it's at the top of this post... almost half an hour of music... i put a couple of video things overlaid on it to suit my whimsy...

x

foolish again

Wshaman(floopy) came round tonight with his new for christmas chess set...

we didn't get it out in the end because we were working on my film, water & improvisation - also a little bit of thought on the new film as well..

i'm deeply in debt to him for tonight... several hours of work and it's almost finished now... just a decision about the colours... and maybe a second opinion from spanna if i can pin her down to a day...

dinah had been out at the theatre and when she came home we were wrapping up the work and we fell to chatting and playing cards...

a very pleasant evening indeed, and once the evening drew to a close around 1 am i set about preparing the film for rendering, intending to set it going and then go to bed, checking it in the morning...

but it seemed to be going so quickly... it's estimate of how long it would be was only around 30 minutes...

shame to leave the computer on all night for only 30 minutes of rendering i thought to myself, i'll stay up until it's done...

and of course it took a lot longer than it thought it might... and i'm still awake @ 4 in the morning even though my baby went to bed around 3 hours ago...

so i'm taking my foolish self to bed right now...

x

cats love

really tired tonight after a strange but great day, working this morning and spending the afternoon drifting around with my bike and my camera...

some eastend wasteland, the book stall under waterloo bridge, although we couldn't play chess because it was too windy... the canada memorial, regents park, a lock on the canal...

a little blue now but balthazara is right here x

broadcasting to noone

when i did my online gig just before new year i had 2 online audience members, today i broadcast my 29th weekly improvisation through the same system and got no audience members whatsoever, noone online, and noone in the room with me...

which is exactly how i normally do it... there have been two improvisations with audience, the one in the online gig and the one in that gig in early december... all other improvisations - all 27 of them - have been solitary affairs, me & my instruments, my camera videoing and my computer recording...

but there's something quite melancholy about inviting an audience and getting noone...

it's my own fault, i only started spreading the word about it last night, just like the online gig only sending out a mypace bulletin that day about it... i need to get better at getting my audiences for these online things...

i still intend to broadcast the improvisations each week but i don't know how many no audience broadcasts i can do without giving up on it... which would be foolish... but it's easy saying that now... 10 weeks and no audience later would feel very different...

so today's improvisation is uploading now... also the video of the online gig is currently converting to DIVX to make it even vaguely small enough to upload later on...

la la la... things happening in my computer that i just have to wait for...

ok, the video uploaded, as you'll know as it's at the top of this post now...

other than the improvisation today i did a couple of cool things, the first of which was to teach a piano lesson first thing...

i was really asleep when B rang me for directions to my house... but she'd been awake since 3:30 am, driving an hour to the airport in germany, catching a flight to london, travelling to finsbury park station... only to hear my nowhere voice emerging from dreams 5 & a half hours after she'd got out of bed...

good to do, my first one to one piano lesson for awhile, i intend to get back into it and build up a few different students... (do you live in north london...? do you want lessons?)

and the other thing was to cycle down to the canada memorial to resume filming for the water & memory film... strange business as when i arrived the water was turned off, blue skies and clouds reflecting off the smooth surface that is normally covered in cascading ripples...

i'll have to find out what the deal is... i don't like it, even though it gives a great contrast for the film...

afterwards i cycled over to waterloo bridge to play A @ chess... very windy it... we only played one game (we used to always play 3) and i won...

(of course)

x