i forgot my point(s)

(- title of my damn autobiography, that could be...)

it's true, in the end it took so long to write that last post out that i forgot one of the basic points i wanted to make in the first place. what i meant to say was... - and once again i'm repeating myself here! - that b's music is all about possibility, not necessarily actuality and certainly (*1) not about finality. rather than bring to us a new set of (ego-based) statements, he comes to the meeting-table with new sets of questions, or rather the latest exotic variations on the same basic (that word again) sets if questions which he has been asking over and over, all this long (short) time. he is far less concerned with control than many other composers have been (*2), much motivated by the perpetually-curious mindset which wonders, each time, "what will happen when we ask these questions in a live environment?"

- hence the endless joy of collaging one's own compositions, and also of composing in such a way as to leave vast areas of personal and interpersonal freedom, guaranteeing that no two "results" (crystallised-realised time-limited potentialities... oh boy *3) are even remotely close, never mind the same. terms like "mileage" (which apply usefully to high-end free jazz, for example) become pathetically small-minded in this context. parsecs perhaps, rather than miles.

or perhaps such distances of musical-conceptual space could be termed braxtons ;-)

anyway, that's about it - except no it's not, i need to add a second, very important, point which i omitted from the previous post (!): i have mentioned zappa on so many prior occasions that i'm not even going to bother linking to any of them, they are all over the place whenever b's orchestral music is under discussion; but one crucial difference between the two men (n.b. not just "two composers") is precisely the willing lack of control in braxton's philosophy. fz was famously an exacting taskmaster who demanded almost slavish obedience from his players (and is roundly disliked by many as a result). b. is pretty much known to be the opposite, yet his music requires an even higher degree of virtuosity in order to engage with it fully (it's possible to engage with it less than fully at considerably lower levels of musicanship - arguably another difference, although... etc *4). it is no coincidence that fz famously had terrible experiences* getting orchestras to play his stuff properly... whereas those who work with our man have driven themselves to exceed his and their expectations, time and time again, and have done so (i believe and understand) freely and joyfully. there's a message there for all of us, right?


* see comments (inevitably)
* see second comment!

(- three textual emendations, last para, 19/4/12)

back to "basics"

... and here i am again, drawing the same conclusion i've reached before: at times when it seems too daunting to engage with b's music - if, for example, my head is generally filled with other things, such as it has been recently - all i actually have to do is put some on and open up to it, and the music takes care of the rest.

i've been hanging out at the 2005 ulrichsberg festival over the last couple of days: that's plenty of music... a fortnight after his sixtieth birthday, the maestro celebrated with two days of powerful new public rituals, programmed carefully to open up new territories to the maximum extent; for myself, having acquired this box set just recently, i had hitherto not tackled the two tri-centric orchestra pieces, for several reasons - but mainly, i found myself putting these off for the lame reason outlined above, namely that i was probably a bit daunted by them. (why does this still happen, from time to time..?) - i had played the solo piano piece (comp. 301, then being premiered by genevieve foccroulle - who has since reprised*1 it, along with all the other piano works, for that other box set on leo), establishing in the process only what was already obvious, that it does not serve as background music at all; - and i'd spent a bit of quality time behind the diamond curtain wall, the performance here of comp. 323a being (i believe) another premiere, and compelling throughout. (this is the part where b. himself gets to play, of course, and inevitably it was the right-hand man who was in at the birth, thb on cornet; the third on this occasion was the young percussionist aaron siegel, already working with b. in the "small" (but incredibly versatile) groups which played most of the concerts during the mid-2000s *2). not until two days ago did i essay discs 2 & 4, which feature much of the more concentrated magic/k.

***

the large ensemble performance from the 18th, then, is a tri-centric reading of that braxton staple comp. 96. (never mind the wider/deeper significance of tri-centricity as it might pertain to b's system/s, in this precise context it refers to the fact that there are three conductors: the maestro plus bynum plus siegel... needless to say, the details of how this works are rather more complex and will not be entered into here..!) but, it is not just 96 either: this version is specified as 96+134. it just goes to show how hard it can be to attach opus numbers to musical strategies in the remembering mind - comp. 134 is one of the three (hugely memorable and energy-efficient) "tense rhythm" pieces featured on eugene, as raved over by me in the past; i hadn't recognised the number and thus was not expecting the music when it eventually showed up. it... really... works  :)

anyway - above all when i played this disc, i really did get back to basics 'cos this was the latest welcome return of my continually-reaffirmed discovery that life-feels-better-when-my-house-is-filled-with-anthony-braxton. treating this very much as background or ambient music (in the strict sense of the word ambient!), i nevertheless very quickly began to absorb its positive vibrations as i walked around through the spaces inhabited by the music. the spirit of the musicians was evident from the outset (i did start off, at least, by listening: i was seeking comparison/contrast with another reading of 96 i'd heard more than once recently), and any time i patched right in, i found myself seeing at once into the architecture of what was happening at the time. being around this music left me feeling cleaner, more refreshed, healthier. this is not the first time i've said it, again, but it's worth repeating that neither is it at all exaggerated.

i'm sure i'm not the only listener who's had the experience of not really paying attention to something, at least not on a second-by-second basis, then phasing back in and finding it still open and clear; on the contrary, i imagine this must happen regularly to experienced listeners - some of whom perhaps at times confuse the event with evidence of constant listening; the two things must not be conflated though, for the simple and excellently cogent reason that they are entirely different things, as i discovered when i came back to the memory of the music 60 hrs later: i have nothing of substance to say about it, except indirectly (as above). the strong sense of wellbeing was genuine and profound. i didn't actually follow most of the music, though.

- tell you what, though, it wasn't half a nice surprise when comp. 134 did kick in, cos like i say i wasn't looking out for it. another fantastic hit from the maestro, and a great number for the vibes player, here as in eugene.

***

the morning (late shifts at work this week) on which i hungrily consumed the above saw also the first of two airings for disc four, which is another tri-centric reading of a large ensemble work, in this case comp. 169 which also has a supplementary territory appended, in this case comp. 147. (this opus number meant nothing to me either, but a check on restructures reveals it to be a popular piece for small and large-ensemble collaging, and so forth.) i had to go back and give it a second go, because the first morning, after such a positive start, went suddenly and rapidly downhill just before i left for work, as i realised that i had miscalculated the start of my shift and was (about to be) late: that made for a pretty stressful experience, and the weird (yet obvious) thing was that for an hour or two previously, i'd been getting a nagging anxiety in my belly, which i had attended carefully but had been unable to quell. ok, so i now knew why, and why i couldn't, but i could also track the anxiety back to the start of disc four. that one didn't extend the golden vibe at all as it turned out.

so back i went, the next day. and once again, though for different reasons i was on edge and in need of solace. i went back to disc four because i needed to know, and to give it a fair chance, and it quickly emerged that with a little more attention paid, classifying the musical experience was possible at least in the basic degree, and although feelings of tension and anxiety can be understood in relation to comp. 169 this is only the case if it's just absorbed osmotically without any attention paid towards actually understanding it. the core strategy seems to be that players "hustle" each other's attacks, not elbowing each other out of the way (far from it, actually) but hurrying each other up, joining a queue and then immediately hastening the speed of it with pressure from the rear. as one would expect, the strategy is not just about straightforward repetition and the core idea is explored any number if different ways; but yes, the overwhelming impression is one of haste. there is obviously a good reason for this, most probably it would seem to be a statement about the western mentality as it drives/is driven by western society, but in any case: in terms of vibrational dynamics the piece is potentially a complicated influence, and it is therefore entirely proper that the maestro matches it up with the smooth, calming legato sounds of 147 so as not to send everyone away jittery and on edge. (*3)

so that was that. afterwards, without checking how much time i had left, i put disc one back on for the first time in a few weeks, the solo piano piece which had just been impenetrable to my lazy ears before. now, with a head lit up with greater understanding again, i heard the music very clearly indeed and with no apparent effort. the incredibly complex multiple strategies are so artfully deployed both by the composer and by the interpreter that they don't sound forced at all, but high-level pianists like ms foccroulle must flip when they given this stuff: one must work on three or four different horizontal strategies at once, each requiring a different variety of attack; and then there must be factored in the vertical, since although conventional harmony has no place here whasoever, the complex resonance of timbres is very much key to the music, which makes great use of the piano's ability to apply sustain to some tones while others can be layered in on top, as staccato as you please; again, different strategies here have different rates of decay so that the "cross-section" of the vertical stack at any given second really is a very complex beast indeed.

- i was able to keep that up for a few (enrapt) minutes. eventually i wandered off and lost the thread, but i was running out of time anyw


* see comments

mystical (ludic) syntax

one of my recent purchases (absolute bargain in leo's year end sale!) was the confusingly-mistitled gtm (syntax) 2003, which actually dates from 2007. if i'm going to be picky about this (and when am i not? let's face it), the vocalist's name is also repeatedly spelt wrongly (as well as correctly!) on the cd - ann rhodes for anne rhodes, director of the syntactical ghost trance choir, and also mrs carl testa apparently... i knew nothing about this, not being that far into the loop, but it seems that b's longtime bassist (taking over from chris dahlgren, pretty much) is also half of what-may-or-may-not-be the first proper braxtonian couple, as it were, which is in any case a tremendously welcome development, wedding as it does the love of music with that other kind of love; herein we begin to glimpse the possibilities of the virtuous circle or ascending spiral, seldom considered (its evil twin so much the more common in our imperfect lives).

- and it would have been silly to buy the one without the other: gtm (outpost) 2003, which actually does date from that year; though even here there remains some doubt about the actual date of the performance. (no, this one was not recorded at wesleyan for a change!) the first half of this one is actually a duet between b. and chris jonas, one of a distinguished line of dedicated reed scientists drawn to the maestro in his teaching capacity. (mr jonas has played a lot of gtm. he was gone by the time of the 12+1tet, but was the returning guest when that band was reconvened to mark the occasion of b's 65th birthday.) the second half features the adaptable vocals of molly sturges, in addition to the two reeds (and i would say that two reeds is the minimum it takes to give a proper gtm reading - solo recordings exist, but there has to be something missing, when one voice alone can enter the playing space...). and that, not in short at all, is why i am linking these two together. (they were non-identical twins anyway, released in the same week!)

ok, so... delight is my usual response to the sound(s) of anne rhodes' voice; and not so long ago (just last year indeed) i had never heard her. yet now it feels as if that voice has been in my ears forever, so perfect a vehicle is it for the music of my main man... back in the day, i almost made a slogan of my distaste for vocal jazz, and i remain very picky about singers in general, but that has been wavering over the last year and this lady is one key reason why. when singing without inflection, her simple attacks have the most marvellous timbral purity; it just makes my heart smile. and of course her range (in all senses) is well suited to the demands of the music. (she's not lauren newton; but then there is only one of those!) we know she's actively involved in teaching b's work as well of course, mainly through the choir as mentioned above, so we can all hope for exciting further developments from her... back to gtm (syntax), obviously a choir offers all kinds of wonderful possibilities which one voice alone can never hope to replicate, but a) we know from before the simple formula b+voc = magic/k, so that's fine and b) in this case, unheralded as it may be, there is heavy use of electronics right from the word go. i don't know anything about this at all: there is no mention of it on the cd, and therefore none at restructures; i have asked b. via email, but not really holding my breath for a response, and for that matter i have also asked mr feigin, but didn't get a response to that one either (and bearing in mind how hard i had to press in the end for an answer on that other matter, i didn't want to make much of a big song and dance about it; possibly he hasn't even noticed that my last mail to him contained a question..!). whatever we are dealing with here - and it comes across really as a sort of hitherto-unknown, hybridised gdtmcw construct - the effect of it is quite otherworldly, and entirely and wholeheartedly to be recommended {{{@*@@@**@}}}

thus for the syntax... as regards gtm (outpost), i confess i still haven't heard the duo disc but then we are dealing here with singers, and ms sturges - whoever she may be - contributes significantly to this music as well. if it must be admitted that her voice lacks *for me* the same magnetic quality that i find in anne rhodes, that is not to criticise, and besides, molly s. offers certain extended techniques which the later collaborator has never (yet) demonstrated. specifically, she has mastered a variety of throat-singing and uses it, and other unexpected inflections, to great effect in the concert... here, offering us still another subtle variation, the twin reeds entwine around each other and the voice also, the latter at times enmeshed, at times piercing through or soaring above. again, the effect is such that a diligent listener could lose him*self entirely within the sound-idea-space... and i trust that the audience was indeed held spellbound.

... and that brings me to another (slightly tedious) unresolved question, because the notes for disc 2 read as follows: "although comp. 265 is naturally divided into eleven sections by the applause from the audience one should remember that it was written as one piece of music." ah, tracks 2-11 on the cd actually are one piece of music, with (arguably helpful, but unnecessary) indexations breaking the piece up into smaller sections; track one is the end of something else, beginning in media res and soon proceeding to a rousing rendition of comp. 40i, then wrapping itself up to enthusiastic applause; i will just add again at this point that we don't hear any more of that, not even at the end of the disc, which is clipped off in midstream and may, or may not, dovetail with the beginning of track one (possibly, but i am not convinced). so, yes, it is safe to say that a pattern is emerging... one of missing details here and wrong info there, all of which could very probably drive me mad if i let it become a mission to sort it out. i'm not proposing to do that: firstly, and let's just be clear about this, leo records has supported b. as a featured artist for a long time now and has released more recordings of his than any other label, (excluding the revived, rapidly-mushrooming braxton house); many different facets of the man as both musician and composer have been explored, just within this one label's discography, and that is continuing into the future even now; if that legacy brings with it the odd mistake here and there, i can live with that. secondly - let this not be overlooked either - the production credit on outpost is shared equally between leo feigin and b. himself, hence the "absent-minded professor" must assume his share of the blame for any misinformation regarding the product. whatever, the music is great and i'm grateful for it. friendly experiencer, dive on in...

* see comments

braxbites: birth and rebirth

i'm taking the piss really by covering this one in "journo mode", i.e. shortened and simplified, when it's really only just up the track from the starting point of the next/current (ha!) braxtothon phase... but back here in the real world, the train is still half in, half out of the station and who knows how long it might take me to get as far as september, 1978... in any case by the time i get there i'll have spoiled the surprise somewhat through repeated familiarity with the material, since i've been getting into this one recently (*1). fuck it, if and when i come back to it there will be a different emphasis, but in the meantime there are two posts intended for this month started and not finished (ha!), so i thought i'd create an opportunity to see january out with some casual observations on a very remarkable recording.

on the face of it these two "weren't" fully natural partners, mr roach being very much from the previous generation and generally associated with music less experimental than that of the aacm masters (generalising horribly here - told you this was journo mode)... but of course that assumption would be pretty much crap anyway, the drummer being a long-standing supporter of outward-facing music and musicians, and noted for other successful associations with revolutionary (later) creators (c.t. springs readily to mind). but even if that were not the case, this meeting is far more auspicious than naysayers would ever guess, for the simple reason that the two men are (among other things) master subdividers.

 - b. subdivides everything - breath, utterance in all its forms, even silence ( { }   ).
 - max roach subdivides his playing surfaces into regions, deploying such precision in his attacks that the well-mic'd kit can foster the illusion of comprising dozens, perhaps even hundreds of separate pieces. he subdivides sections of horizontal space - the same as any other drummer - but does it with exceeding fineness, often sardining more discernible attacks into a tiny packet of time than ought to be possible for a human arm... and lastly he (like - and unlike - andrew hill) at times subdivides the rhythm and then re-renders it in such a way as to imply limitless variability; this last habit, incidentally, can sometimes create an entirely different illusion in a careless ear, namely that of the drummer's being unable to hold a steady beat (here a potential issue in the gentle, beautiful "magic and music"). roach actually can beat you into the ground with it all day if and when he chooses to, but he is above all always, always looking to be creative and varied in his voicings and (as i understand it) this is above all why he is/was/will be cherished among musicians.

the opening and (esp.) closing tracks both rip it up mightily; there is wondrous subtlety at work throughout, from both participants (as always mr doofus); and in "tropical forest" they co-create a glorious miniature with tempered, skewed and bent attacks. this album may or not may not currently be available in its basic form: the occasion for my hearing it in the end (*2) was after the camjazz box set last year ( -no, i didn't buy it or even know about it until) when a friend ripped a few of the discs that i didn't already have, for my still burgeoning archives... if it turned out that the album is not in print on its own then i might not be averse to sharing the files, but we'll have to see. (still haven't sorted out the re-ups of the few uploads i had on the go before. at this rate, after the recent earthquake down under, how long has filesharing got left anyway? false alarm..?)

... point is, one way or another, all devotees need to hear this recording, which really does exactly what was claimed for it: honours and extends the tradition(s) all at once. no wonder they enjoyed each other's company!


* v. comments

the trillium (comp. 126) mystery: update

since last week i have corresponded with mr feigin regarding the contents, etc, of disc 2 of this set, a vexed question which i have been (gradually) trying to investigate since last year. briefly, act "two" of trillium dialogues m , i.e. track 2 on the disc, is actually a duplication of the concluding passages of act one. on this occasion it wasn't even me that picked that up: i had played the cd more than once, but never in a state when i was even trying to give it my full attention, or not for more than a few seconds at a time... and in any case the repetition only added to my confusion over whether or not material was being replicated during the performance. (at the back of my mind, warning bells had been going off - but because i couldn't be sure without making a detailed check, and didn't quite feel like doing that at the time, i just didn't mention it at all during the write-up and then forgot about it altogether, pretty much... until jon-a added a comment to the post, which prompted some further investigation.

for a while that just consisted of waiting for an answer which didn't come... the one avenue open to me was not leading anywhere... but i got there in the end. sort of... getting a bit closer, anyway..! and the story (*1) goes: this was an unusually hard cd to produce, apparently, the project was dogged by ill-fortune from the start - not the performances, but the efforts to release (some of?) the results; back in the days when most people did not have superfast broadband, powerful computers etc etc the back-and-forth with liners, diagrams, and so forth was a lot of work - which basically turned out to be wasted, when some of the members of the ensemble began asking for more money. haha, they are said to have reasoned that the shibboleth braxton would guarantee big sales (!) and held out... until the project was completely shelved at the "reality" end.

it was only years later that clearance finally came through, said musicans having taken (it seems) a very long time to accept that creative music = commercial leprosy [in this piss-awful excuse for a society we have been stuck with all this long time... here's the deal by the way people: SLOWING DOWN is the key to this, they have the whole of "civilisation" set at far too high a mental speed, preventing any sort of self-awareness in all but the most dogged, cussed or disciplined individuals... more than ever before, everyone is encouraged to form "opinions" very very fast no matter how complex the subject...WE CAN STILL CHANGE THIS]... so, finally the choral concert project is green-lit again and it duly comes out, and with all that spent effort (and staggeringly naive, avaricious careerism) in the background, it's perhaps not entirely surprising if the music itself is not given as much attention as might be desirable, under the circumstances... which is unfortunate, because as we know, etc.

well, mr feigin has said that he will try and listen again to the music when he has time (to be fair he does maintain a very busy publishing schedule)... and i've asked him to keep me posted. but yeah, pending those further reports i think it's just a mistake, something which crept in through sheer bad luck perhaps, at who knows which stage of the proceedings. as my ecstatic, possibly unreadable ramblings indicate (i'd calmed down a bit by the time the morning concluded!), the duplication may cause a bit of disorientation or confusion but does not actually ruin the listening pleasure - or, indeed, the spiritual and vibrational value to be obtained from sharing the same energetic space as the music... since, after all, these qualities are precisely the ones which b's music - among others' - has that so much other music lacks... vibrational qualities... the maestro has been talking about this stuff for a long time without many (outside the circle of musicians) understanding what the hell he was on about (indeed, i didn't always know what he was talking about either), but he didn't invent any of the theory, it was all understood in times gone by and it still holds very much true. so, no, don't think that the music cannot still be of great value: you just might want to programme the player so that it only plays act one, which makes up the lion's share of the disc anyway. (all four acts would have required a further disc and a higher price to begin with, so we were presumably never likely to get the whole thing anyway. was all of it even performed/recorded? hmmm.)

... and then again, maybe the message in the libretto for the repeated section is so important that everyone might just as well cherish the error and play the whole thing regardless. twice the message, twice the impact, twice (it can be hoped) the likelihood of retention by the memory... it seems oddly appropriate when considered from that angle. (speaking of odd angles, this post was partly (*2) brought to you by way of the syntactical ghost trance choir. did everyone get that yet?)


* see comments

cent's 2012 manifesto

... more of the same, right? well, sort of... let's start right off by saying that as far as the braxtothon is concerned, i spend way too much time writing about not writing it so i shall stop doing that for the time being, and that's a resolution, right there - if and when "it" arrives at last, it shall do so without fanfare...

- but yes, this is generally a time of (big) change and not just for me, i know people all over who are experiencing it (in various ways) so it's official, 2012 begins at least as a year of change. whether or not it actually blossoms into the year of change remains to be seen of course.

now, let's see, i fucked up on one score at least - i missed the obvious time to do the james fei post since that album was in the leo records sale this winter, as those (in print) leolab releases always are... hardly much point right now in trying to recommend something which was just available very cheaply when few people will feel like paying full price for something so remorselessly academic in nature - even by the standards of this tiny corner of the blogosphere! - so ... i guess i missed that one for the time being, it is hardly a first for me to have an idea then fail to follow it through.

this last (rather salient/deeply-ingrained) characteristic of mine may or may not change, along with all the other personal stuff at the moment... i can hardly become much less reliable a poster, though last year was more productive than the previous two - and despite my lack of core work last year (would never have believed the year would end with that still unresolved... i might have learned by now though..!), i am basically quite happy with what i wrote over the last twelve months, and only slightly disappointed by how much i failed to "convert" - some of it was just gonna be too time-consuming anyway (châteauvallon revisit, unless i split it into two parts or even three... four, any advance?)... some of it probably will (ahem) turn up this year, assuming there is still an internet. (and if not, there goes my attempt at co-creating an abstruse and obscure original artform... this could only exist on the net or something else just like it.)

i digress... for a change... actually getting back to leo records for a minute, i'm not finished there yet: yes of course i bought a few things, not many this year, but most of them braxtons, all at least 2-disc affairs... some of them, at least, will get some posting attention at some point i'm sure... in the meantime, i am trying to get to the bottom of what happened to comp. 126 otherwise known as trillium dialogues m acts "1&2"... so far what i seem to be discovering is that mr feigin is very quick to answer mails about potential orders, but otherwise disinclined to acknowledge them at all... but i have to speak to him about something else anyway so shall ask him directly at the same time, i think. (he is in fact the listed producer on that album, and indeed very often is, so who better to ask? was it all just a mistake, or what..?) i will of course pass on my findings, if there are any...

- and that concludes this (year's) broadcast :)

state of play

... as we draw towards the end of another year - one which, if many predictions (and indeed current signs) are reliable, may turn out to be the last complete year of life-as-we-know-it on this troubled and generally underappreciated proving ground of ours... the planet, that is - i just thought the time had come to look back a bit and keep the blog up to speed with my thinking and current activity. after all... this week was "supposed" to see me get that duet monkey off my back once and for all (*1) while the free time remained to me - i have finally decided to take a different, full-time job, since a rare opportunity (round here) had cropped up, which means i am freed at last from the sentence of menial servitude which i had "accidentally" called down upon myself five and a half years ago, just around the same time we moved into this current house, in fact... now bear with me here, i am aware that i don't generally blather on about my private life that much in this corner of the blogosphere (or any corner of it, these days) - but the fact of the matter is that a year which opened with what i thought was the discovery of "where it had all been going wrong" (only to decide again afterwards that my discovery hadn't made any discernible difference) actually is finishing now with genuine, clear, deep and (presumably) lasting change not so much on the horizon as right up close, all around me and everyone in my household.

this is good, this is good... don't worry too much if you struggled to make it through that para btw: the last period of my life has above all been characterised by the feeling of being trapped in a swamp, thrashing around this way and that but never much closer to the sight of an exit, and my ludicrous employment situation (which i don't propose to detail here in any case) has summed that up. well, finally the end is right here, and 3rd jan 2012 will see me begin an entirely new phase of my life... one which has, indeed, been set up layer by layer during the past year (the january "revelations" being important after all; i just hadn't understood how to make proper use of them... so often the way!), but which has been distilling drop by drop in the alembic the whole time, so to speak, with this very blog being the evidence of it as much as anything is... when i look back in that regard, even my becoming a parent seems to be a less significant existential shift than my embarking into the blogosphere and (finally/properly) opening my ears in 2006...initially, as a wide-eyed acolyte of (what was then) the new church of course...

... but this latest shift brings about another (minor - but... ) change in my weekly existence, concerning the one detail of my employed life which i have mentioned here and there in the 'sphere, namely the fact that my working week begins with monday morning off, at home and all by myself with the hounds... furthermore the afternoon of the same day has been the only time mrs c and i got to spend together without the tiny tyranny, so as you can doubtless, etc etc, this is not so very little to be tossing away after all, as if it were just a sweet wrapper... my last ever (...) monday morning, as things have worked out, just came and went this week, and like i said above the plan (ha!) was to read over the notes, preferably the night before (ha!!), listen one final time just to keep it all fresh in the ear memory, and write it up however-long-it-took... well needless to say in the end none of this transpired, and not for the first time recently when given the chance to stretch out and inhabit the house truly in my own time, i surprised myself at slow that desired pace turns out to be... extreme yin to counteract the otherwise self-whipped extreme yang of the gathering intellect... not actually any great surprise when it's articulated like this, you understand, but then it's only sinking in properly as i type it... live from the coalface indeed... (or at the mirror, with perhaps a razor in my hand...) - in any case, though i never did what i intended at all, i had a fantastic time on "final monday" in the end, both portions of it, and the morning did indeed see plenty of braxton... first time i have really used the new (replacement) mp3 player to do any close-up listening as i pootled around... i have thus far put it greatly to use, as much to get the new battery broken in as anything else, but with mainly rock and metal and the odd bit of, say, bobby previte or john zorn... this has not left me empty or unsated, far from it actually (*2) - yet apparently many invisible boxes were still unticked, 'cos when i eventually strapped myself in for the pittsburgh (friendly) experience, it felt as if numerous parts of my system for which i have as yet no names were are at last receiving desperately-craved nourishment... i say in all seriousness... or rather i repeat (as i so often do...(*3)) - man, that was a great hour or so, fucking right on is all i can say... some of it flickered back to me from months ago, most of it was as new of course... such astounding conceptual/structural depth to the music/s that one could never (surely) revisit precisely the same experience as one listens, not over the course... anyway, that in turn led on to a set from the '93 quartet and by the end of the morning i felt older but in a younger body/mind/system, which can only be a very good thing i suspect :))

that's about it for now really - kitchen to do before mrs c and the pink princess return (my bonus prize was a last wednesday, when i would normally be working - haha, gotta do sat instead of course, only four hrs though... easy enough to smile through it now that i'm finally leaving!) - oh yeah the braxtothon - as you can see - has not exactly left the station altogether, even though parts of it have evidently been in motion for months and months now... but it really doesn't matter - from another perspective it's already written... and soon enough it actually will be ;-)

happy seasonal stuff everybody

cent x


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