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Scottish lowlands. next stop Carslile.

face forward this time. to see what it's like -- looking towards the future. a hole in the sky dripping rain. a shaft of light from the heavens. a flock of black birds flapping in unison. the eye is drawn to the sky whilst we plunge through a landscape of the brightest greens yellows browns & reds, vibrant from within, regardless of the lack of sunlight. livestock stand, stock still & watch the progress of the day, feeding off the life of the earth & giving up their own.

now hills & hedgerows & moss & tunnels. a darker place. the life here is buried deeper in the earth. we plunge through valleys and tunnels, always near running water for like the water, rails seek the low ground.

the landscapes change so fast on this little island. Back in the states, driving from NYC to Chicago, the landscape unfolded grudgingly, from pennsylvania backwoods hills to the plains of ohio, iowa... hours at 80 with nothing changing but the names of the fast food chains. here its a blur. blink and the world has changed... the colour palette, vegetation, shapes, livestock, weather.

theres no hiding from the unexpected here. no pretense of foretelling. none but oracles & the insane. both tragic. while the middle class is just sad, losing their perception of the future they've worked so hard to insure as their pensions values are decimated just as retirement hits. all this whilst my downstairs neighbors, an art student and a social worker go into the future without savings or fear, pregnant & jumping into the unknown with no parachute to speak of. i admire these people. they remind my of my parents, penniless with kids, moving to a foreign country, not speaking the language, believing, somehow, in something, be it fate, or destiny or even themselves, to make good.

5 minutes and we're barreling through a sunlit valley... or is it a plain? the mist rises from the ground and is burnt. the sheep are cleaner here, even their undersides white. trees scarce and perfect against the skyline.

next stop carslile. the cafe car is open...

early morning coffee. a conversation with an old friend. vegetable coconut curry (cocunut milk, red onion, butternut squash, celery, blanched curly kale, curry powder, salt) with rice noodles. guitar (fingerstyle) practice. work work work.

before I know it, it's getting dark. glaswegian winters. the leaves are decomposing on the sidewalk, slick with water. each step is planted firm, like a telephone pole, driven into the asphalt. breath visible upon the air, like some powerplant emission. heat rising from the body, trapped by a woolen hat, scratchy on my bald plate of a head. there's a sweet decay in the air. i feel the earth turning black as nature folds in upon herself & waits.

notes from a train...

i prefer to sit with my back to the direction of travel, by a window, with a table for my coffee. Hills unfold, flying backwards down the tracks, converging to a point, beyond sight, towards the horizon. puffy clouds resolve to sheep, ancient stone barns... the strobe flash of a passing freight train -- blue cars alternating with green pastures. steam curls up from the paper cup. concentric rings ripple outwards from the liquid centre -- kinetic energy, vibration, waves, caffiene, imagination, perspective.

we rocket through a valley of gray, dotted with brown sandstone houses with asphalt roofs. smokestacks issue white smoke. the sky is pigeon coloured. we are flying through a thin mist, casting an uncertain spell on distance. can never be sure of what lies beyond my nose. even that i'm not sure of. it's all beyond me.

some just write. tell what is seen. pay attention. find life in specifics, not content to let them fly by at 150kmh. discrimination is not prejudice. a second of close attention reveals life in anything. gleeful, shady disorganized life. stubbornly resisting stultification. life being fundamentally free, amorphous, feeling, fleeting.

others write from a place of internal vision, eyes closed, with complete faith that these landscapes are the only ones on the horizon. they sit on the other side of the table watching the landscape rush towards them with one eye, the other resolved inwards. gods of their own domains. such vision burns through and arrives unsullied, unwavering & unchanging, right or wrong, clinging to the kernel of truth that flared like a falling star to land ... god only knows where.

so we fly west, perched in the crows nest, swaying side to side, gripping at rigging. some looking back cross stormy seas to "Europa", our immediate origins, others looking forwards beyond the storm to "The Indies", gold, spice & even older origins. but the world always turns out bigger and more varied than we imagine. and we land in some new place entirely, whose connection to us is older than our collective memories allow, yet still part of this mosaic we, bits of crushed pottery, tile, stone, found object, detritus & floatsam, organized to a picture requiring perspective greater than ours to discern.

life. vast beyond the minds even of angels... incomplete, even in the most expansive dreams.

planes trains & automobiles... up at 6 am after a gig, beer, whiskey and a late night joint. feeling pretty rough after a three hour sleep. the upshot was, I slept through most of the subsequent flight to newark, train to NYC & bus to Boston. 

the bon accord had been packed with saturday night punters. mic showed up without a tuner and a shit capo & couldn't keep his guitar in tune. first set was shit. it's  so dispiriting when you can't even get it together to play in tune. such a basic thing. the punters didn't seem to mind though. I love Glaswegians... so enthusiastic & forgiving. then craig showed up with a good capo. we took a break, drank some beer, tuned up, & cooked up a fantastic second set. a wall of acoustic noise & spontaneous harmony vocals all backed up with some inspired, musical percussion from ian. closed out the night, sweaty & high. colors bleeding into each other, dark stained oak panels & preposterous imperial red carpets & dreadful off white tiles pulsated with the electrons we'd dislocated. made 30 quid. which was 30 quid more than i was expecting. i celebrated by forgetting about my imminent early start going off to oran mor for whiskey.

walked home along empty streets made slick with wet leaves, illuminated by the hideous piss-yellow glaswegian streetlamps. drizzle & wind. hood up. head down. crept, quietly upstairs, embarrassed by the screaming that'd been going on in our flat & conscious of it being 0230 in the AM. sat on the ledge outside the window & smoked a joint, a gift from a musician friend. ate leftovers. packed my stuff & lay in bed, thoughts racing. had pola arrived in calgary? would i really not see her for 5 weeks? was this a day in the life of a musician? with all the waiting, disorganization & sudden breakthroughs? was i going to catch up on work? where was all of this going? what was i building besides a precarious future & debt? deep breath. in. out. soft sweet arid aftertaste. elevated perspective. at least i'm having a good time. & the smile on my face went deeper than my stone. time to simplify. time to harmonize. time to do what i was born to do. be who i was born to be. no striving required. just diligent, loving attention. just love, love, love...

new friendships happen in the span of a second. in a gesture, or sound. in a genuine communication. had an acoustic play with picardster & found immediate common ground. these are moments musicians live for.

little cat at pavel's place likes to munch on earlobes. especially when one is resting. i've not had a cat since i was a little kid. something primal about the relationship - even when i was small there was the sense that it was something i'd done before. i sit watching a film with the cat on my lap & absently groom him. he tumbles about like some airborne feather. there's a sense of play in everything he does. the flat's on the 10th floor of a post communist block, set well back from the street. rundown, but clean. people own their flats here. 3AM & trucks are wonderfully audible across the 1/4 mile stretch. sunsets are a thing to see. a reminder that Poland's actually a beautiful country.

cat prances about as though remembering past lives as a horse. for some reason he keeps trying to reach my head. he climbs up my shirt, claws half drawn. i feel them on my skin, just short of a puncture. i grab him & put him down, to my lap. he just goes again. i put him back. he goes again ... stubborn bugger.

and he wakes me at 8AM sharp. not just to be fed, but for company. my cats were outside cats. they would bugger off & hunt, then come home & crash in the small of my back, or draped across my neck, or whatever unlikely place would catch their fancy. this guy need human contact cause it's the only thing he's got. poor guy.

off to musical instrument museum with Lili!

midnight glasgow. full moon gauzed in clouds on the left, diffusing a third of the night sky. men pissing in alleyways. God only knows why: pubs are open. august. i'm wearing: tight cotton undershirt, loose linen shirt, waterproof anorak with hood back, jeans and waterproof leather shoes. most guys wear jeans & long sleeve shirts or T-shirts with cryptic messages that declare allegiance to some clique of hipsters, & clutch burnt embers in doorways and ogle. most girls are less equipped - fishnets & lycra. short little dresses & baby-fat. lots of legs & tits & open toed shoes & shaved underarms. ridiculous but drunk enough not to feel the chill. most are drunk enough. stranger offers me a high five. i reciprocate. we grin like schoolkids. skinny kid preens in a storefront mirror. shoulders of his jacket jut like helicopter blades. he practices his swagger & slicks back greasy hair with his fingers. his shirt unironed. his belt buckle huge, drawing attention to his skinny groin. he's wearing white sneakers. he needs to hear that he looks ok, it would ease the tension, the collapsed spring being further wound, clockwise to the point of metal fatigue, but I keep to myself, don't want to injure his pride -- for all I know that's all he's got.

and tumble out of this cauldron of revelry across the M8 headed west into desolate one way streets lined with sandstone buildings & into dark alleyways with their gravel & mud & wooden fences & rubbish bins & freshly minted blue recycling containers. and views across gardens into bedroom windows people assume to be private... not that i look.

the contrast is stark. the moon seems to grow as it tracks across the sky, shedding mist. she was huge all along. just refused to compete with drunken women for my attention.

the flat is empty & cold. the fridge barren. i click on the electric kettle & make a cup of chamomile tea. strip & shower away the grit of a day at the Edinburgh theatre festival. Japanese Noh & Little Shop of Horrors & African street rumba & pipers kicking into & out of ecstatic doubletime. a fight where chairs smashed across backs.

i'd eaten with Zac & Tiff at the mosque kitchen. "discover Islam" was the slogan. The food was cheap & tasty -- curried veg & brown basmati rice & dal & lamb stew & a skewer of minced chicken kebab. seating at dirty tables outside under a tarp to protect ageist the elements but not the pigeons that stalked between chairs for droppings.

i stretch out on the bed waiting for sleep & ask for some insight in my dreams. wake 5 hours later with this memory: my mom had given birth to another child. somehow, simultaneously my own baby boy died. and i struggled with a cancer in my chest, right where the heart is.

i ponder this over a breakfast of poached eggs on toast & fresh strawberries.

new url for my blog... www.danielmostovoy.com

for now www.theconductors.co.uk will continue to point to this blog, but will branch off into a band website once I get the opportunity to build a band website.

new songs from Poland up on myspace

there's new jungle growth outside. kitchen window is wide open. spring. beans cooking, a steady source of steam - don't forget to add water or they'll burn. i cook first thing in the morning. yesterday was beef stock. today, black bean soup. there's a logic to this. combining ingredients into a building blocks. fitting blocks together into a structure. sometimes evoking something from the past, sometimes looking towards the future.

cooking is like architecture.

yesterday -- beef bones roasted in a pan for 30 minutes with salt & olive oil. add coarsely chopped carrots celeriac, parsnips. roast for another 25 minutes. add chopped leek and onion. roast for 20 minutes. put in pot. deglaze pan with boiling water. fill pot with pan-water. simmer for 2 hours. strain. refrigerate. remove congealed fat from the top of stock. strain.

today -- beef stock, cooked black beans. puree. add salt. sweet potato chunks, celery (lots of leaves) + blanched tomatoes. chipotle paste (chipotles boiled in water, pureed). cilantro + lemon juice.

there's still stock left over for another 1, maybe 2 soups. or maybe a stew.

it's getting on. the birds have piped down. only an occasional airplane noise & the constant hum of the wind in the luscious new growth vegetation. lunch in another couple hours.

do all artists sleep in? do all artists stay awake late at night blear eyed, lucid, following paths revealed by effort and intuition? does any of it make sense in the morning?

a faint doggy smell. pickles and bread and chocolate. bitter tea. warm bodies asleep. pola's breath against my hip. the laptop warm on my lap. someone snores. a cough. and the constant hum of tires on the roads outside.

the dogs curl into themselves, maximizing contact of fur on fur. little furry heat bombs, eyes open, waiting for some human action.

the morning lies suspended, watchful. tension builds. soon it will coalesce into something kinetic. but for now, those of us that don't sleep (me and the dogs) lie in watchful repose.

it takes so long to get to the point. and it's harder when the wind squeezes through cracks between shingles, through insulation & batters the sheetrock in this attic apartment. i shiver & lose my train of thought. forget why I came here. sometimes the whole house lurches. outside, the rain stands sideways.

the Polish countryside is desolate and beautiful. this seaside town is just plain desolate. but the supermarket's got everything. hooray for capitalism. the flight was bumpy. two spoiled kids in the seats directly behind me alternately screaming exhilirated "wheee!!!"s or just screaming. for any reason at all. wrapping their parents about their fingers with extortionate tears. "mommy we're falling" or "no mommy the flights NOT over, we can't leave yet". the weather was the same in Glasgow. i pinned so many hopes on this trip. not so much has changed. now i lay awake a lot & think. focus on the infinite & songwriting and keeping people at work happy. from the sublime to the mundane. And every shade in between.

What makes an Irish pub? A crowd? Boisterous talk? Music?

Guinness. Pictures of Irish poets on the walls. Lots of browns and greens and grays. The slightly sour urinal smell of spilt beer.

I went to my local Irish pub last night & was surprised to be assaulted by smells. They banned smoking recently so all the other smells crawl out of the woodwork. Guy smells like sweat, dust, fish & chips and hair products. And girl smells like perfume. Both synthetic & the natural kind i'll just call "girl smell". I'll sniff Pola's hair & smile & she'll say "what's the matter, do I smell funny" and I'll say, "no you just smell like a girl". That smell.

I used to work in an Irish pub called "Liam Mcguires" as a line cook on sautee. At the end of every shift I'd shuffle out of the florescent stainless steel white walled kitchen into the emptying dark wood-paneled common room and squint. I almost always skipped my complementary after-shift-beer and drove home on empty roads that led to empty spaces.

bus: a puff of sulphurous smoke & a fire-engine-red smear. a gaping door above the rear left wheel. a spiral staircase to the second floor. this ain't a bus -- it's a spaceship. beam me up! i wait till it slows down & hop aboard, stagger up the stairs as it lurches. every acceleration, every deceleration, every stop & turn is a lurch. every pothole an abyss. i cram my knees against the bench in front of me. i pass the conductor a pound for the fare & ask him to tell me when we've reached Angel. he just grins. in my entire year in london, i've yet to meet a surly bus conductor.

flash forward 4 years. there aren't any more buses like that in london. one gets nostalgic. these days there's a bit more space and a lot less fun. there's a tv alternatively piping advertisements and showing the public that they're under surveillance by any one of 7(!) closed circuit cameras. the buses come to a full stop before people get on or off. the whole geometry is off -- the old bus was an iconic, sexy thing. the new one's a box.

they say that the new buses are safer and more accessible by the elderly / disabled. probably true, but misleading. the real reason for the change, is cost. the driver collects the fare. no more conductor. and is it me or is the driver really a surly bastard half the time? and i wonder how much an hour of bus tv adverts costs? oh, and yes -- the fare's now 2 pounds cash -- that's $4 to you (us?) yanks -- inflation of 100% over 5 years. and this is what they call public transportation.

The weather took a turn towards the damp and cold this morning. The heating plant broke down. It's Sunday. Nobody works Sundays here. There's no use even trying to get it fixed. The dog's been howling all morning. I'm hungover & can't be bothered to get up & walk with him. But the market closes soon so I've got to get up & go.

Town's been transformed overnight into a christmas ornament. For a country where electricity is so expensive, it's a wonder that the local government will spend so much on a religious holiday. Lights strung out between buildings like so many exploded christmas favours. "Bon Anno" projected onto the church in the central square, three weeks early.

The shop's run out of milk & fresh bread. No deliveries on Sunday. Bakers' day off. We make do with a soup chicken, day old bread, some leftover fruits & veggies. Cat food. A bone for the dog.

The short drive home is unbearably lonely. Days, already shortened by winter are robbed of their resonance by the thick frozen mist that drapes the hills. Visibility sucks. In the hermetic click of a German car door. In the thick fog that dampens all the senses. I'm as alone as I've ever been. I take a breath & watch the windshield fog up. There's no hurry. It's no better at home.

I can't believe I'm bitching about being in Italy!

Truth is, I'm alone in lonely country among friendly people I can't much communicate with which just makes it worse. Except "hello" and "please" and "thank you very much". The language flies through my head, with the occasional word attaching to my brain -- wait a minute... that sounds like french... finestre,,, fenetre... window, yes! Another word in my meagre word bank. At this rate it'll take years to save up enough words to assemble into a conversation!

And people don't hang out in the local cafe. They just show up, drink their essence-of-coffee and jabber as though they've known each other all their lives -- which is probably the case. Then go on about their business, as they do every day.

But I stay. It's too cold at home. The house too big for just one person. Too expensive to heat for just one, even if the power plant hadn't crapped out on me. It had been working intermittently, just to keep the house warm enough to keep the frost out.

I'm glad to be leaving tomorrow. This trip's been a type of fast. Cut myself off from external stimuli & see what happens. Just the dog and Babushka for company. Results have been downright surreal.

Last night, for example, Babushka was on about her cat again. He had AIDS, so we had to put him to sleep. We took him away while her head was turned. Of course we didn't tell her he's dead. We just said he took off. These things happen you know. Maybe he found a girlfriend in the next village. You never know.

The conversation has the same theme with few variations:

"Not my cat" she says. "He wouldn't leave willingly. He was attached to me".

She thinks the local cobbler took him. And put him to work catching rats in his cellar.

We have this conversation every day. "Where's my cat?" She lowers her voice. "I need some help" she says in a voice pitched for me alone. "I need a young man like you to help. Take me to the next village. The cobbler stole my cat. I'd go myself but I'm scared."

"What about Tarzan & Anton & Simon?" I say. "They're our cats. Why don't you take to them?"

"You call them Cats? Maybe. But they're just local village cats, not my cat! Mine was the best one. That Cobbler knows his stuff... why would he steal any but the very best?"

None of this is true, of course, but rituals have a momentum of their own. "Why would a cobbler need your cat?" I say parroting myself word for word from the conversation we'd had every day for the last two weeks.

"Everybody could use a good cat" she normally says, "for the rats you know".

But yesterday the conversation took a new & strange turn. "The cobbler's a waste of space," she said. "Couldn't make a pair of boots to save his life. He just tans the leather & measures it out for the boots. Then at night, the animals get together in the cellar & assemble the boots. They have a workbench down there. A regular factory! Everybody knows. That's why he's able to deliver a quality product. Cause the animals have a sense of pride in what they do. They'll put their hearts into every pair of boots they make. The cobbler makes a good living off their pride!"

I nodded my head sagely. I still don't know if she was shitting me. In any case there was just enough truth in what she was saying that I didn't have the heart to contradict her.

sunlight: first light through the shuttered window. open a crack. watch the winding dirt road unwind through the valley that falls down and away. vineyards. dolcetto. cabernet. barbera. piemontese sunlight feeding piemontese varietals. a light breeze carries fragrant red dust. this is the dry season. every breath takes in some of the clay that makes up the terroir. mornings are bright. afternoons brutal, evenings sublime in the colour the sun imparts to the sky.

all this sunlight, captured in the grapes, transformed by bacteria to alcohol. this is what we do here. alchemy. the cantina stinks of the stuff. we work & the tannins crack the calluses on our fingers & turn our nailbeds red.

the dog got drunk last night on spilt wine and tore about the house on wobbly legs. he loves the stuff. afterwards he slept it off, snoring like an old man. silly puppy.

This is what we do here. transformation of sunlight into rocket fuel. taste bombs. alchemy.

siren: doppler echoes off project high rises. bushwick, 5 stops into Brooklyn on the L. a broken down studio where nobody cared how hard i'd bang on the drums. landlord was a balding jamaican rasta-man with bloodshot eyes and a beautiful white smile. he cooked jerked fish & rice over an illegal electric stove. smells of ginger & weed soaked through the space & got into everything... EVERYTHING. cheap beer in the corner Puerto Rican 24 hour mart. dead pidgeons on the street but the rats under (and above) ground were very much alive.

every day the sirens come tearing through the neighborhood like from another planet. local emergencies. foreign aid. buildings here act like the hood on a gramophone - all sounds amplified & reverbed like they've been let out of some wet stalactite / mite riddled cave. we go to the roof to smoke a joint & listen to them. there. someone's dying. burning. murdering. raping.

we're surviving. and we put our life energy into our music. and it brings life to this god-forsaken hellhole. and makes us happy. so we're blessed. yessshhhh. we're surviving. just.

knee: she fell off the bike. by the time i got to her she was crouched over the side of the road. large patches of skin missing on her right knee, left hand & chin. we sat by the edge together till we both were calm. june on martha's vineyard. not quite hot yet. smell of seaweed, asphalt and sand. blue sky with high feathery clouds. indirect sunlight. we walked to the nearest pharmacy & i cleaned her up. she was very brave about it. she still has scars on her knee.

shoes: new shoes. leather, with sheepskin on the inside. like walking on clouds. or maybe newly mown grass. no weather will reach me inside these shoes. yes. now i'm truly bulletproof.

the pavement frozen this morning. 5:30 on Dumbarton road, looking out for a taxi to queen street. The first cab stiffed me. said it was too icy. but the roads were clear, just the sidewalk tricksy with the first ice of the season. clouds of steam burst out of holes in the ground, buildings and people. a yellow light. i love these british cabbies. so cheerful. not a surly face among em.

Streets of glasgow empty apart from the occasional taxi. First train to Edinburgh at 6AM. dawn caught the frost on the fields and set them aglitter -- rays of pure northern light refracted and magnified through angles. Sheep crowd together to stay warm. The faint tang of woodsmoke.

tea? coffee? yes please. wrap chapped hands about the paper cup and experience thaw. burns the tongue. tastes like the brown water it is. i remind myself not to drink coffee unless i'm in italy.

full moon: exerts magnetic power over subtleties. effects are cumulative, creating an extraordinary phenomenon by just that little bit of extra illumination. I met my best friend on a full moon night. he came to check out a room i had for rent. we talked homer + shook hands on the deal after he checked the space out perfunctorily. then we went out & drank beer + talked some more about Odysseus & man's potential for being crazy, creative, treacherous & somehow humble before the higher powers that move us. like the full moon, exerting its pull on our phyche. subtly. so soft that only lunatics admit it.

i met my ex-wife on a full moon night. she must have been posessed. a dancer. in need of anchorage. i was to be that anchor for 3 years till i too was pulled out of stability - disloged by that full moon. the towers fell & we moved out of the city. i quit my job & worked as a cook. money was tight. love and money are the grease that keeps people from burning each other up as the rub up and down the sharp bits. love and money keep things from tearing up. money was tight. and love... well it didn't grow fast enough. a full moon & a crazy fight. flying tea kettles smash flourescent lights. a grown man, curled into a ball, crying.

swan: big graceful mean bird. not so white up close as it appears from afar. don't get too close, mind, that beak'll tear your nuts off. not that i blame him all these silly humans gawking & clipping wings to keep him in the pond. boston garden. where the boats are modelled after birds on some whim -- no respect, i tell you. Up close he's actually light grey where the feathers meet the body. and his tongue is black -- like his eyes. a swooping neck and a wingspan twice its length. he floats, cause he cannot fly. if he could, he'd be gone in a heartbeat & he'd shit all over this town - cars, cyclists, pedestrians, trees, buildings and pigeons. but now he floats, an illusion of tranquility. the foiled locomotion bulging, not so gracefully in the fold of his wings, like an untamed erection. now he floats & picks the scraps the humans leave for him, & chases it down with whatever paltry grass & algae he can muster in this man made cesspool -- at the very least they could keep it clean for him -- come on now. this is not the bird i was taught to love in school, reading EB White... This is not the bird memorialized in romantic songs and poems. This is not the bird mascotting expensive crystal. This is not the symbol. This is the reality. This is nature in its sublimated furious glory.

Train: I'm sitting in a Poznan train at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It's the most modern train station i've seen. 4 levels of open plan intersection of glass, steel & granite. Trains here don't make much noise. At 6AM it's quiet, apart from bootheels on stone & the sound of so much air reverberating against so many hard surfaces. Everything's some shade of transparent or gray, with the exception of a conspicuous clock at each end, backlit white with black hands. The seconds hand moves smoothly in continuous time. The minute hand is bound to discrete time, jerking about, predictably like some clockwork epileptic -- so German.

I sit facing backwards, ass to the east & watch the city fall away from me through the window. Where are the people? It's inhuman, the cleanliness. Even the graffiti looks spotless.

fellowship & fortune:

i went to visit grishka in berlin
i lost myself in post utopian burbs
a tattered backpack and fifth of gin
i took a swig and swung down to the kerb

i traced the roads and pathways using fingers
a sweat stained map -- can't find my destination
i cram it in my jeans confusion lingers
can't see a point in knowing my location

tomorrow all these moments will be gone
just memory will linger on inside
i've fellowship and fortune at my side
it's time to muster faith and soldier on

an empty field lay fallow for the rain
a rusty tractor grown right through with weeds
the perfect moon was driving me insane
illuminating country gone to seed

i found his building having drunk a pint
the project housing crumbling concrete
flourescent filthy stairways much too bright
for clueless strangers blown in from the street

tomorrow all these moments will be gone
just memory will linger on inside
i've fellowship and fortune at my side
it's time to muster faith and soldier on

and leaning in to pound upon the door
i stumbled gripped the combing stood upright
i couldn't tell the ceiling from the floor
but somehow knew that things would turn out right

an aperture was opening a crack
and sudden movement -- jet propulsion reigned
i crushed my friend's embrace pounded his back
and dozed off on his sofa fully drained

tomorrow all these moments will be gone
just memory will linger on inside
i've fellowship and fortune at my side
it's time to muster faith and soldier on

raincoat: friction of rubber on rubber. it grips at itself, then lets go with a squeal. i squeeze through the gate & out into heavy weather, hooded & buttoned up. a bright yellow beacon among miles of tilled farmland -- sugar beets, corn & lavender all observable from this vantage. Somewhere to the east, a ray of sunshine slices it's path. i look for rainbows, none come. the wind & dark clouds swing low from the west. the path is a muddy rut. hedges on both sides, littered with slick roots & moss coverd stones. all the animals are hiding. what am i doing out here? water collects on my brows, my lashes and drips off the tip of my nose onto my lips. but my body stays mercifully dry.

My nieces Isabelle & Alexandra at dinner in Rocca Grimalda Italy:
munchkins%20munching.MP3

some fun recordings I made end of august with Galkin during his yard sale:
galkin_%22sun%27s_too_hot%22.MP3
galkin_%22tumbling_down%22.MP3
galkin_%22when_the_cold_beer_flows%22.MP3

Witnessed a lightning storm last night. Far off East. Barely heard the thunder. Orion overhead. Made tea. Turned off the light and watched the flicker. Like some far off city in the east being bombed. And I was frightened. Not of the lightning, but of the fragility of survival. Of how utterly helpless I would be without my supply chain, diesel motor & electricity. Of my complete inability to sustain myself if the shit were to hit the fan.

Then I crawled into bed with Pola & cried.

Some fun stuff I found while cleaning through my portable recorder's flash memory: Hope the titles are self explanatory:

Galkin_Nomka_house_On_The_Beach_Imrpov.MP3
dMo_Nomka_improv.MP3

The first from Nomka's birthday party in Highland Park. The second from mine at Andrey's farm in Upstate NY.

Back in Marcia's attic room in my parent's flat in London. A strange combination of work and play where the line between the two is hard to draw. But hey I'm not complaining! Looking forward to a weekend of rest. Meeting up with Dan in Oxford on Sunday.

Moving countries again. This time back to sunny England. Weekend at Anka's. Also moving. Yard sales & plastic bags.

new remix of hesitate on my site. new vocal track, some other hacks. Thanks to Dave Resnick for putting so much into the song & teaching me what I needed to know of the technology to take it forward. it's amazing that the original tracks were recorded almost 5 years ago!

new website, new blog... I've caved in & started using iWeb on my Mac to do the web design. I know... template driven design is lame, but who has time to be a musician, finance geek & computer nerd at the same time? I've got to hand it to the folks at Apple -- they've made it super easy to build a website.