my original face

Coming out of Cambridge the other night on the Guzzi, a bit late after an interminable student ensembles session, I was suddenly confronted by a sea of weaving blinky lights ahead on the way to Stow-cum-Quay. As I approached, with not a little apprehension, rolling off the throttle and digging my knees into the cylinder heads as the engine braking spun the speedo backwards, I was suddenly engulfed by a local flowering of hipsters, my first real sighting en mass. And even better, most of them were on over-accessorized fixies, many brakeless. It was a suburban attempt at an 'Alley Cat'. Damn - I now know how birdwatchers feel spotting that elusive corncrake.




I suddenly felt old, watching them all huffing along in the dark (somewhat slowly) with all the wrong gear - I wanted to flip up my lid (...not, like, 'flip my lid, daddio', but the one on my helmet) and say something like " ...hey guys, I've got one of those things and I've been riding them for 30 years, thanks to my dear departed (and hard as nails) Father-in-Law...", but that would just be sad. I will post up a few bits about my Father-in-Law John's riding at a later date.

And, once again continuing with the "stuff brings happiness" tangent, I have to admit that I seem to have reached a slight impasse. ("oh no?", you say? "Who could have foreseen that?") What I haven't mentioned thus far was that the bass clarinet I had been hoping for (in a fashion not unlike those fervent TV evangelicals in the US) arrived about 6 weeks ago, and I have been messing about with it daily since (thus proving the existence of higher powers, albeit in a lower register). When, the previous summer, I played a concert of semi-free improv at Kettles Yard with two laptop guys I know, I had snagged a bass clarinet a couple of weeks before, practiced it a bit (I used to have one 25 years ago, along with a clarinet) and was perfectly happy to just let my fingers and instincts do the walking. And, to my surprise, it turned out pretty well. I fell in love with it.

But, now after 6 weeks of diligent scales and arpeggios with a metronome, I now feel completely inhibited by the thing, (especially when I put it down and pick up the sax), and the contrast is scary. I'm much, much more fluid on the damn thing then I was the last time, but now I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to do very simple versions of the sorts of relatively complex patterns that I use on sax and just freezing, totally falling on my face. After the years of practice in improvising, you just need to do it; taking a line for a walk with an almost blank mind, no preconceptions. That seems to stem either from having no inhibitions on an unfamilar medium, or being supremely comfortable and totally detached from whatever is found in your hands: one thought and you are lost, utterly and completely. Quickly: what is your original face?



However, I'm back into tenor big time, and I'm going to drop using alto on the Riprap gigs. A decision.

And other things, the violist seems to be getting on with the piece, she said she was going to play it for her chamber group - hopefully the news will be good. Here's the usual cheesy synth fragment in lieu of the real thing; just click on Viola piece.

however,as far as important things go, there is now the rebirth of the old Sturmey-Archer 3-speed fixed hub of legend to consider for us sad-assed fixie riders.

cult of stuff.

It is strangely wearying, this restless search for a better life through the acquisition of objects; although we now know happiness can be bought. As outlined in the last post, I had it in writing from a local spiritual leader that a fixie titanium audax frame would cease the endless slow but exceedingly fine grinding of the wheel of karma, and help me lose my pod, all for just £899. And now it has happened again, with the discovery that after callously abandoning my first love, tenor sax, for the last three years to play alto, mainly because I "... just wasn't, like, hearing it any longer, man..." (what was I thinking? like someone who throws over his whole life; job, relationship and family, and ends up waking up in a fly-blown motel with an excruciating headache to find that a fickle piece of tall Estonian brass has left him sans wallet or car keys when his money finally ran out....)

please, please: Newk, Trane, Prez....forgive me.

So after my tenor sat, sullen and accusing in the corner of my room for a couple of years, I guiltily gave in and started practicing the damn thing again after purchasing a new (and pricey) mouthpiece a couple of months ago. This is not unlike couples who hope an expensive holiday will help them find the magic they lost somewhere. And because these kind of hopes always prove foolish and desperate, I've always fought shy of getting involved in the 'new mouthpiece' arms race that all players can succumb to; all too often they end up with bags of expensive mouthpieces that they thought were going to change their life at some point. My stand was always this: buy something decent and learn to use it. Like bicycles, it's the man not the machine.

However, my tenor sound had been getting woolier and woolier, and I seemed to have trouble projecting when compared to anyone standing next to me. Ultimately embarassing for someone whose one-time point of pride was scaring guitarists with a 1960's duckbill Brilhart Level-air. (sorry, very obscure, I know, but once the last fucking word in 1960's rock and roll space-age sax technology; complete shite to play)




This is all caught up in sad guy stuff; such as almost keeping senile Italian motorbikes running, and, with a tight smile and a little self-depreciating chuckle, gamely taking on modern 200 mph carbon-festooned Japanese rockets at the lights (and always losing, plus having to go back and collect the trail of small bits that vibed off when I revved too hard)
Or stomping my aging converted fixie up a hill without getting out of the saddle trying to drop tri-guys riding with the latest pricey kit, jabbering about their iphones and playing with their 'on-bicycle sat-nav'. Sad, sad, very sad aging guy stuff, I kept telling myself. Not very good at all; girls are so not impressed - time to let that stuff go and grow the hell up, for Christ's sake.

But surprisingly, the new mouthpiece was good, and did change my whole sound - my old set-up must have been quietly becoming crap over a number of years. Now to address the underlying problems: the fact that my rhythmic accuracy has also slowly degenerated over the last few years when I made a conscious decision to let my playing slide a bit to finish my post-grad studies. This is not entirely a bad thing - I have now come back both in a wildly different mindset, and realizing that the idea of purely virtuoso playing is not quite enough. But we are talking hours of metronome stuff; wildly boring. The real excitement is in the composing and realizing of new textures, trying to break from being the "...the fastest tenor player..." (which I never was) and think about compositional issues, which is far, far more interesting and engaging. (Or so I tell myself?)

Ted Gioia points out in his excellent book The Imperfect Art, (after which he sadly never followed up some of the points he raised, concentrating since then on history rather than aesthetics) namely that jazz has long been, aesthetically, a somewhat immature art form because of its over-reliance on virtuosity at the expense of structure; the cult of the virtuoso soloist over the that of the composer. When younger, I could never see what the problem was, but after years of gladiatorial pick-up gigs and head-to-head tenor battles, you start to realize that the attraction of what is primarily spectacle begins to pale; this insistence of technique over content has long been banished from the aesthetic of other art forms.

but hey, none the less, I can now play really loud on tenor again, and that feels good - for all the wrong reasons. Now to get a new set of wheels for the fixie. And now that I've more or less finished the cello piece and my weird singing piece for solo viola + voice, I can start messing with The Holy Goof again, and prepping up for the Ruth Padel gig on the 30th.

a cessation of the world of desires.

Andy and I, standing in front of a trade booth at a recent track cycling meet, were confronted by a highly polished vision of another, more perfect world. It was as if we were able to look beyond our present situation where our feet are stuck in the lower realms of animals and hungry ghosts, and have a brief vision beyond our human realm to that of devas and bodhisattvas. We both knew, at that moment, possessing it would still the ceaseless working of samsara. Spooky.

It was a very, very lightweight titanium audax bike frame with the option of fixed or geared riding. So, in short, everything. Gears - or not; mudguards - or not... club runs, forest trails or towpath bashes; long audax runs or light, quick continental touring via magic plastic.

Andy, being a man of the cloth, confirmed my suspicions that the purchase of such a frame would mean my life would be suddenly fulfilled - no more frustrations concerning work, unfulfilled personal goals, male pattern baldness or tribulation in relations with the rest of humanity. And all that for just £899 (I'd still have to fit it out, though; campag?). How often does that happen in life? How rare is it that you can buy happiness and also banish middle-age spread? I rest my case.

So, I've just finished a cello suite for a friend from Slovenia, hopefully to be premiered this year. I have to say that I really enjoyed it, and I'm getting into the idea of writing for particular people. So I've also started working on a solo viola piece for a friend in Sweden - I'm really not sure how she's going to react to that one, as I've specified that she must hum/sing as well as play.... could be wildly embarrassing for all concerned. I still haven't heard back from her after a rough draft; she's probably agonizing about how to be polite, and just regretting she agreed to do it.

I sort of got into it while thinking about double-stopping, and listening to my own tuneless vocal drone as I was messing about at the piano trying to sustain lines. The dog was so not impressed. I had been been spending time juggling a little pitch matrix I had constructed and turning it this way and that trying to see what vertical and horizontal possibilities it might hold, and wishing parts of the line, the third voice so to speak, would just carry on. But, of course, a string player can only really sustain lines on two strings for any length of time; hence the humming. I'll put some bits up next post, although there's an ominous silence from the party it's being written for, so that idea might have to go.

I was down in London at Kings Place to watch my old supervisor, Martin Butler, play with the ensemble Notes Inegales. The entire program was mostly based around Peter Wiegold's compositions which were all based on various improvisational strategies. Martin, a classical pianist, has for some time been heavily getting into Miles in his Bitches Brew phase, and is working hard on becoming a jazz-ish improvisor, filtered through his own composing style. The best part of the day was hanging at the pub afterwards with a group of players and composers. Must do more of that sort of thing (the hanging bit, not the pub...)Anyway, here's a clip of Miles from that era.




Lastly, a beardie guy picture....complete with my own personal doppelgagger, a kind of reverse Dorian Gray thing; it's a painting made of me the last time I had a beard, about the age of 24; unfortunately, I had just lost the braid.



That is now so gone, with the impending start of term....although there was an intermediate stylish goatee phase, after which Jane threatened divorce.

back from the not-so-frozen wastes....

Another inexcusable silence on my part, partly caused by a 3-and-a-bit week camping holiday in Sweden,(no sniggering; as I know that anyone of a certain age tends to equate this sort of thing with a naughty Sid James - ' Carry on' state of being...blonds, volleyball, healthy outdoor pursuits and high jinks in the sauna) and partly by an almost crystalline stasis of any of my higher mental functions, i.e., almost anything above lizard-level brain stem function.

This could be in part caused by me having become beardie guy over the holiday, as I didn't fancy shaving for three weeks with cold water (..I know...wuss...). No doubt the effort of forcing hair though the skin of my lower face took almost all of my psychic energy, not to mention creating a dangerously yang state of mind. And, to be honest, another contributing factor could have been my recent temporary abstention from any sort of strong waters in the evenings, which usually contributes to a state mildly reckless euphoria and well-being; a welling of hope and a readiness to share my lot and reach out to other seekers of the ox. This was precipitated by my sifu suggesting a temporary cessation of caffeine and the oil of the sun would result in a much better circulation of chi.. this, however, remains to be seen. I have mostly become very dull. (how can you tell the difference, you ask?)

So I had secretly hoped the beard would give that kind of slightly dishevelled George Clooney look as seen in The Perfect Storm,





or perhaps even the steely U-Boat commander looked sported here by Jurgen Prochnow from Das Boot



But it didn't quite work out like that. It was more of a 'Papa Hemingway' look as he progressed towards the bitter end:




Anyway, this sort of thing is all clearly explained at the mandatory website for guys

I really have to raise my game, among other things. There's been a lot of composing and cycling occurring as well, a solo cello piece, a prospective viola piece and now some settings for John Clare poems for a festival next summer.









more soon...

Job 2:7 metaphorical boils

Again, another hiatus in the progress of this blog; I've just finished term, had a run of good gigs, and done the TS Eliot festival. I had spent the last month and a half composing for that, and had arranged a rehearsal and recording session for the material with Ruth Padel and Grevel Lindop so as to release some of the current repertoire after the gig in Little Gidding.

It was not to be... more a rising crescendo of tribulation to try a Job, although the word YHWH never passed my lips. Nor did I think it was directed by Satan....(and of course you knew there had to be a YHWH.com) But do read the bizarrely lame exegesis relating the trials of Job to 'Chippy' the parakeet and his ordeal with a vacuum cleaner on the Job link...my life is more like that, really.

Ok - so this is how it went:

First, 5 days before the session, Russ did his back; ...badly, he was now out of action, and didn't know whether he could play the actual gig in two weeks, let alone the session.

Then Roger had a problem with the times on the day due to a misunderstanding; my fault. But there was confusion as to when he would actually be around, although I had someone to cover.

Next, the mixing desk at the ARU studio was still AWOL; there was a clumsy portable fix, but it is the sort of thing that makes engineers mutter dark thoughts and maledictions under their breath, especially when pressed for time.

Finally, the day before the rehearsal/recording, one of my poets bailed - there had been a major crisis (public rather than personal) and they felt it was impossible to go ahead.

ha ha ha .... all in all, interesting times. Session cancelled.

I had written, as threatened, a lot of stuff for bass clarinet. good stuff. Like "Forests are Falling"
and " Sighting the Tiger" for instance, to go with two of Padel's poems, along with a Rameau rip-off and other stuff. But it all went well on the day, as Grevel and Malcolm contributed to a great gig.

The one last thing that finished off this series of minor trials was getting run over very slowly while commuting into Cambridge one morning. I was on my old touring bike, purchased from John Pavey 20 years ago. we went back a long way, touring all over the continent... Alpine passes, the Mont Ventoux - and never mind the Pyrenees and the Tourmalet



... I was sitting at a junction next to a car on his left (as you would) preparing to go straight on. He, on the other hand, decided to try and take advantage of a very short break in the traffic coming from the right to make a rapid, clever left turn. He started gunning the engine (no indicator) and suddenly my front wheel was disappearing under his wheel arch, along with the rest of the bike as he started to roll... I flopped off as this was happening across his hood and started thumping it, while making observations to no one in particular about sexual congress, genitalia, procreation outside the church's sanction and his possible position on those issues. We then had a frank exchange of views which ended up with him giving me his phone number and driving me to work as I sat in a quiet fury. Of course, he was an Estate Agent.

hey - but the LeMans is taxed and on the road, Le Tour has started, and I've cycled 250k so far this week

aarrgh...

I'm sorry if this blog does languish from time to time; but, like standing quietly for a period of time, things around you begin to emerge. If, for instance, you were to practice Three Circle Stance at dawn by the stream you'd become aware of a deer walking quietly behind you, rabbits emerging from the brush and going about their business as if you weren't there, small birds pecking around the ground near your feet and a sparrow hawk alighting in the branches in the oak above you. Or you'd start to wobble around like the poor sod in the video. But, to be honest, it has been anything but quiet for the last month: college stuff rises to a crescendo of mild hysteria towards the end of term...exams, marking, recitals...not too mention trying to remember how to play saxophone again, catch up to some looming compositional deadlines. There's a series of Ruth Padel settings to finish and rehearse in the next few weeks. I've got about four sketches on the go, and I'll post up some clips soon

Apart from all that, I've been poring over the score of Ades' Asyla every afternoon for the last week.... damn. Superb handling of orchestral color, which makes me realize that I didn't grow up performing, conducting or just being immersed in the 19th century canon. The beginning, with two pianos tuned a quarter step apart, chromatic cowbells and high string harmonics make for a unique gesture in the opening. The whole thing seems quite humbling and reinforces the fact that I'm arriving at this quite late having started out as a jazzer... it keeps sending me back to the drawing board with Holy Goof. It's the adroit use of color and gesture that I envy. The people who I admire for this seem to come from a French brilliante kind of effortless use of texture, which I know is always much harder than it sounds; folks like Takemitsu or Dutilleux.

Life goes on here - Spring has arrived with a vengeance - there's a pair of buzzards nesting in the next field, I hear them mewing at dawn when I'm out emptying the wonderdog (who is limping badly these days - best not to think about it yet). The daffs, cowslips and primroses are up and the snowdrops are finished. The hawthorne is beginning to blossom, and the tawny owls nesting next to the house have finally shut up in the mornings. I've been able to practice in the meadow for the last couple of days in the evening, which is always a special thing - I love to hear the sound bouncing off the hill opposite.

So...trying to re-learn sax again for upcoming gigs, recording and such in the summer.. ..depressing; I used to be a contender. Things feel more and more like a one-way ticket to Palookaville lately. It seems that my tenor concept is particularly crap at the moment; I've been making myself listen to recordings of my gigs, which I always avoid as it is sooo depressing. The fact that I now don't have the time to spend hours on my horn seems to be the most evident on tenor; most days for the last few years I come home and put in as hour or so just trying to keep my fingers and embouchure intact. This now shows up in an improvising concept that seems to consist primarily of tired stock phrases I've been calling on for years and fluid scales which are ok, but nothing to do with music. Time for a re-think, or at least a Glenlivet.

The header photo is one of the latest distraction here at the Lazy K, a Guzzi Le Mans - someone gave this to me as it needed a good home and some fettling. The poor guy didn't have the time to work on it, and I think after 5 years in the garden shed it was precipitating a major domestic in a small-ish terrace with two young kids.

onward

slobbing out.

Slobbing out on the sofa, slightly the worse-for-wear because of my special grape nerve medicine, I ended up watching a sober (unlike me) adult (ditto) documentary about Hokusai instead of my more usual Pimp My Ride for once. Through the mild fug of post-teaching exhaustion, there was suddenly a discussion of how Hokusai's technique (and I include here not the usual print of Hokusai's Great Wave but one made years earlier with more or less the same view of OFuji-san, but without the frantic humans to give it scale and facing in the opposite direction, which gives it a completely different feel) with his use of repetitive visual units both in details and structural layout was not unlike the contemporary concept of fractals. And with that, I suddenly made one on my usual chaotic lateral and-not-terribly-original leaps to think of Cage's use of small number series (4:3:2:3:4) to generate both global (overall structure) and local events in his piece First Construction (in Metal) about which I had had to gabble for two hours at my second year guys earlier in the day. I'll bet they are so glad we didn't start on fractals.

That would have almost been as bad as my experience yesterday of trying to explain stasis in minimalist compositions and contrasting it with an 19th century Romantic narrative-based aesthetic by getting spun off on a riff that eventually ended up with me discussing my imminent arrival in the warm-ish nether regions according to most Western Judeo-Christian narratives versus the never-ending enso of many Asian systems, while a group of open-day 18-year-old six-formers embarrassedly stared at their shoes. They were embarrassed for me... Uh-uh - not going there again.

For my own composing, of course, anything quite so organized is liable to break down as rapidly as a 30-year-old Italian motorbike's electrics, something I have considerable experience of. But I take comfort in Adorno's dictum about intentional objects ("art") in that they are not necessarily aesthetically validated by "instrumental" behavior; i.e. the mimicking of physical processes modeled and tested through reductive scientific reasoning. You can breathe a sigh of relief right there and get on with stuff..

I always start off with the best of intentions, but find myself soon wandering around grabbing at shiny sounds.... but we are so not talking synaesthesia here.