solidude

it's monday night and my workweek is officially over. nice to come home to my stuff just as i left it and know i'm free to play for the next few days. i'm letting the lease run out on my studio so will be teaching here come december, which will be nice; i'll never have to leave the house again! of course, this will be complicated a bit come january when lesley goes to india and i take the doggles full time, but we'll manage.

i'd been holding off telling ma n' pa about the move, but broke the news today and while they may not fully understand, i think part of them must. i can't really imagine living with someone over forty YEARS like them. wow. it still all feels good, though sad at times, but as this is a period of adjustment, that's to be expected.

i just made a list to keep on my desk to remind me of things i can be doing other than being online. sure is tempting to go here, go there, following my curiosity in a gazillion directions, but it becomes more of a distraction (like TV) after a while. i now have some freedom to follow my own bliss any time and in any way that manifests.

still have a gob of unpacking and organizing to do, but every day it feels more and more like home. les and i still see each other a lot and we're still hanging out, taking care of each other and stuff, which i'm grateful for.

looking at a quick arizona trip for Xmas and then it's back and time for my big student concert. with that, i'm going to post this and get offline. i gots things to do!

exotic honey

the newest color with which i'm painting one of the walls in the living room of my NEW PLACE! i signed the lease a couple days ago, am picking up my bed tomorrow or the next day (bye bye vile futon, your days of not supporting my slumbering frame are over!) and in general am excited for a new phase of rediscovery of what it means to be me.

october whisperS

wow, hard to think that summer is over, but these nippley nights and brisk mornings, coupled with all the usual suspects of fall's demonstrations make it pretty hard to ignore.

settling in with a cup of yogi bedtime tea as my work week comes to a close. the dogs were alone pretty much all day today and keep watching me for some sort of cue that something exciting is about to happen. lesley is in crestone for a 10 day jaunt doing an Osho meditation workshop retreat thingy and i'm keeping things held together at home here. nice to get some alone time like this; even though i was in boulder/denver for a couple weeks last month, very little of it found me truly alone. a night camping at valley view was a wonderful end, though.

i was in minnesota last week for a quick 4 day surprise visit. logistical concerns forced me to confess my plans to my mom, which left only my dad not knowing of my return. it was nice--lots of TV, fattening food, and very little exercise, which is a way of saying it was a True American Experience. dad is bopping around like nobody's business and we even carved out a few hours of together time, which NEVER seems to happen anymore, to rent a pontoon boat and putter around the lake i grew up on. it became frustratingly difficult to see anything resembling land or nature from the water--all the lakeshore has been swallowed up by McMansions and exceedingly skinny houses resulting from the massive subdividing of properties over the past 15 years. oddly enough, my mom and i had some hang time the day before and spent it doing the exact same thing but by car. we peeked in our old house, saw the new downtown mound, drove past the high school and game farm road, etc. it was good to reconnect with the proverbial stomping grounds, even if there's less ground than there was and i tend to tread lighter these days.

i'm becoming fretless. i now own a shipman fretless bass and my old kramer now has a fretless fingerboard to go along with the amazing paint job i just had commissioned. it sounds kinda bad-ass and pretentious at the same time to say "I commissioned" it, but i did. all i told her was to absorb some max ernst and paul klee and see where things go. i'm tickled at the result and hope to have a pic to share soon.

even though i've only had one sip, this tea is lulling me to slumber. i think i'll succumb. the next three days will find me hiking a lot amongst the aspens, maybe even doing some camping...

over the shoulder, boulder

it just became tuesday, which means it's either really late or really early. i've been weaning myself off espresso lately but found myself imbibing in some nice french roast coffee the past couple of days.

on wednesday i'm heading up to boulder to perform with jennifer hicks and fragile creep ( www.fragilecreep.com ) at the boulder international fringe festival. the piece is coming together in intriguing and kooky ways; last i heard i'll be wearing a lab coat with some sort of nurse motif...

mostly i'll be playing guitar/loops but have also compiled some soundtrack type of stuff to go with particular sections. should be fun and it'll be great to see all the other stuff going on these next two weekends. this is also the time of year i like to get away, not only because it's long overdue, but because most of my students are starting their transition back to school-mode.

me n' the girls did finally get out of town a couple weeks back when we camped alongside the chama river. it was wondrous but we're kicking ourselves for not researching the area better; apparently we were extremely close to some natural hot springs! gosh darnit all to betsy! it was great, though, and the dogs did well in the tent and staying close when they were running around exploring. only downside: the rattlesnakes, which killed a day of hiking we had planned. the dogs are clueless about rattlers and we were trudging around in our tevas (and chacos)...not exactly a good mix. i'll add some pics in my next rh.com picture update, which is sadly out of date.

god's green ghost miraculously garnered the 'best new band' vote in the annual santa fe reporter's readers poll. i honestly think we probably had the most interesting name on the ballot, but hey, i'll take it! no plans for any gigs any time too soon, but there are a couple folks due for visits in the coming months, so it's quite likely. dave wayne, robert muller, paul brown and i are loosely planning a non-one-off project to rehearse, compose and perform with. will tackle that upon my return.

my dad is kicking some recovery ass up in MN. he's driving, reading and finally getting back to banging away at some mystery project down in his workroom. i may get up there this fall but won't know for a while if that'll happen. they're surely planning on heading to AZ by late november, which, considering my mom's gloomy outlook on that this spring, is great news.

teaching is still going well; finagling my returning students with some new ones and am pretty much booked solid upon my return. we'll do another concert this fall or winter for sure. in fact, we just did a mini concert at the children's museum last week for a fundraiser there. only about five students, most of which i played bass for and all of which sang, which is something i'm continuing to encourage. perhaps i'll even belt something out myself wunnathesedaze.

lesley continues her busy massage life at ten thousand waves, eyeing a solo road trip and change of paradigms in the coming months. she's going to hold down the fort when i go to colorado, and i'll do the same when she goes. seems like a healthy thing for all, yes? hopefully we'll get out of the country together again next year sometime. weird--one year ago we were still in bali and she was just starting to get horribly sick; something she's still trying to recover fully from but appears to be on the path.

not too exciting, but i recently got contacts again for the first time in many years. nice to see peripherally and not have to have a plastic crutch on my face. still hiking five days or so a week in the mountains here and noni has recently been graced with the fashion and functionality of an "outward hound" backpack thingamajob. so far she's only been carrying a handful of macrobiotic cookbooks for weight, but we're putting rocks in there too to weigh/slow her down. so far so good; she's proud of her new look and it keeps her on the trail and endowed with an Important Job (you never know when you might need a recipe for daikon n' kuzu macaroons).

sold my 2880 super looper on ebay, and recently purchased a dehydrator and bad-ass vitamix blender for our continuing curiosity with raw food.

blah bla bl b...

twomonthswow

Whenever a large chunk of time transpires between posts, it causes me to think about some sort of hierarchy of importance in enumerating the missing details. with that in mind i'll hit some of the areas worth talking about and along the way inevitably discover littler details as well.

my dad is back home after 10 days at the UofM hospital. To provide a touch of background: last year around this time his eyes and eyelid starting going out of focus and drooping, respectively. He was later diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, which you could read about here if so inclined. Over the next few months his eyes got worse and it seemed it was spreading to his hands. What was supposed to be a routine doctor visit in May 08 to increase his then-new prednisone found him having trouble breathing, and the doctor sending him to the hospital pronto. A day later I flew back home to be around as best i could. Lots of feeling helpless and hand-holding, but that's about what you do when someone is laying there with tubes in every orifice and not being able to speak. Big thanks to all who offered support and good energy; his eyes are better than ever now and he's gradually able to use his hands again.

The minnesota visit came on the heels of some other pre-memorial day (read: no vacationers) vacation stuff: Valley View and Chaco Canyon. VV found me and my girls meeting up with dan in a different cabin than we normally inhabit. It was cold and snowed but was also lovely; hot springs being better when the air is colder, right? Got a cool crystal bowl sound healing and massage and one of our walks felt like hundreds of unseen eyes were watching us. We came across a couple old mining camps and saw aspen trees carved with dates back to 1934, along with freshly-scraped bark from elk horns which was REALLY high up the tree, making us a bit freaked at the size of the bucks.

We got back here and Dan went to volunteer at a trail clearing near el malpais and he and i later met at chaco canyon for a couple days of full-moon camping and oops-i-went-off-the-trail hiking. 'twas great, but only when we ventured past the proverbial trails and found things that were real, like caves with bones, pottery shard/sherds, fossils, stone tools, etc. Chaco has been ravaged pretty thoroughly over the decades and a lot of things have been rebuilt and re-done to look authentic. Imagine our surprise and dismay when our first quick venture/pueblo turned out to have a plastic drain hole in one of the "kivas!" Luckily we met up with Sher, an instant resonant new friend from Taos and she told us the good places to go. Proof positive that if you're 96.24% of the population, you'll stick with what's near and documented in easy-to-read signs and well-defined trails. the rest of us, well, as long as we walk with reverence and care, we're gonna find the good shit!

An invitation to open for the local prog-rock theme band Gnossurrus found my old power trio AlmatrosS performing for the first time in almost two years in early june. I can't say we'll be back anytime soon, but it was fun to play out and even make a couple bucks doing it. we played at evangelo's, a charming little poophole near the santa fe plaza and there are some youtube links from that night here, though the sound quality isn't so hot. Thanks trish!

Speaking of evangelo's, i've played there a few times these past couple months, also with the funk quartet funky monkey, which is to be taken about as seriously as you might think. the trick is we're all reading charts and it's quite fun and challenging as well. can't go wrong with a fun summer funk band, right?

Still teaching full-time four days a week with my couple hours in at candyman ordering books every monday morning. My students and i rocked a huge concert in late april with me on bass and my buddy matt on drums for 95% of the songs. added bonus was my parents being in attendance; nice to share my success with them and give them something to talk about, which seems to still be centered around my pal rocque's rendition of "panama" he sang with my student andy. (guess it was a bit loud and enthusiastic!)

Les and i watched the entire first season of the "dog whisperer" series on dvd, something we'd heard about for a long time but never experienced since we remain television-challenged. great and simple stuff, and almost instant results. further proof that most animal training is really about training the bipeds in the hizz-ouse. We're being challenged by the goal of avoiding tourists on the mountains, but are savvy enough to know where and when they won't go. The weather has been spectacular, though record-breakingly high the past couple weeks. And that solstice moon totally kicked our ass, but that's another story. Speaking of solstice, Al (the 'al' of 'almatross') had his yearly party out in la cienega and it was fun to hang by the bonfire, eat el parasol and jam with various lineups of folks.

God's Green Ghost may make another appearance this fall, especially considering some recent appreciation we're getting (which is as much as i can mysteriously allude to at this juncture). Hopefully another visitor will come and kick our ass. Sad that we're losing the great milton villarrubia on drums, but best of luck to him as he ventures east.

Been engaged in a new-but-still-amorphous round of visual art using espresso lately and hope to upload/update my photoreality one of these days on my site.

well, that sums up some things, anyway. may all grass gracefully stain your knees as you kneel in awe of all this planet has to offer!

post

my last entry being a week before our concert, it's only fitting this one be a week after.

regarding said concert, it was immensely satisfying on many levels. sure, it would have been nice to have more people there but for a wednesday night it was quite respectable; we paid for the room and everyone walked with a couple bucks. not like any of us are "in it for the money" but nice to get some anyway. me? i'm in it for the mad groupies that flock to comprovisational music. i could barely read my charts for all the gently-worn bras and panties gracing the stage! ahem. anyhoo, the recording turned out well and it rocked.

last night went to see mike doughty and his band. last time he was here was just him and "scrap" on cello. this was a four-piece and was solid and fun, though he seemed overly grumpy. it almost became danceable but never quite enough to move the head-bobbers into action. at one point a woman gently approached the stage to say or request something and MD was cruelly dismissive, which changed the whole vibe of the room in a not-so-good way. that kinda bummed me and my friend talia out, but oh well, not my problem.

lesley left for the UK last tuesday. she was planning on going at the end of the month but sped it up due to some concerns she's had about some numbness and tingling in her extremities. being a british citizen, she still gets free care over there so took full advantage of it with a comprehensive blood test. now she has to wait for that to come back and take the next step(s). could still mean she's gone for a while, or may be back next week. our hunch is that she impinged a cranial nerve, possibly from doing so much yoga, but it's nearly impossible to self-diagnose these things. i'm just glad she's getting it taken care of, as the symptoms have been freaking us out this past month.

ma and pa will be rolling through next week from phoenix back to minneapolis. the snow birds have been flooding our sleepy town the past couple weeks. they're going to come to my students' recital and it'll be nice to see them, even if lesley won't. i don't think i'll get up to MN this year, but won't rule it out. i do want to go next year as its my 20 year HS reunion; not having attended any of the others, this one seems worth it somehow.

i've been pondering the possibility of going to japan this fall, but am having trouble with the cost. there's a trip organized by 10,000 waves that sounds delightful (hot springs, northern mountains, rustic villages with no white people, sake) but would be roughly $5K for only ten days. i do want to go somewhere, though, just not sure. in mid-may les and i are heading back up to valley few for a couple days. got a cabin already reserved and will hopefully see dapper dan as well.

gGg

It's an overcast wednesday morning in the fe. Got a delicious opportunity to catch up on sleep and am in the preparatory throes of our upcoming concert in one week. This will be a stellar lineup and the first time this sextet will be heard (maybe the only?). I've been sketching a lot of ideas out, utilitizing the DUH! realization that's crystallized so clearly these past couple weeks: notation! Now, seeing that this particular concert will also feature two other composers, i'm not going overboard or anything (especially with the ONE rehearsal we'll have), but damn it feels good to write out those neat little black dots again. I realized, since my last post and two more concerts i've taken in since, that it's quite clear that i need to be writing again. i've been doing the pure improv thing now for several years, and while it's beautiful and not in the least getting discarded, i need structure. the three concerts of staggering inspiration have been rez abassi's organ trio, andy milne & dapp theory and the stunning claudia quintet; the last two from this past weekend. all had kick-ass compositions and puh-lenty of improv. DUH!

One of the primary things i'm doing now is providing purely rhythmic heads; cued junctions where we can come together out of the ether, nail something together, and then float back up again. music is the shizzit.

mowntyn

saturday night 23:15 just got back from a night out with al. we started at alfanoose, a new lebanese old-skool family-run restaurant...what a rarity that's become lately. we then went to stepbridge studios and hung out with jack clift and later checked out rez abassi at gig. great night of absorption, which i really needed to do.

i've been a bit slack in my yogadoings and diet, and like always i can really tell, as the level of balance and acuity drop off. hope to get back on it this week. i prepped a 25 squarepusherfoot garden the other day; raised some beds and fenced it off in an aesthetically-pleasing manner.

and in gear geek news: i'm now the proud owner of a fender american deluxe cherry sunburst strat with unfinished maple neck, locking tuners, nice tremolo system and S-1 switching. i've never really spent any time with a strat before and i really fell in love with it. even did some recording last week that turned out pretty good.

i'd sure dig having an organ trio.

so les came back from her r n' r in the panhandle state and things have been humming right along. it blows my mind how fast time seems to be moving. things feel so accelerated and fast--and that's just in santa fe. i wonder how/if the freneto-meter is in more bustling cities? or is everyone feeling it? is it a 2012 foreshadowing? hmmm.

i got another perspective on blinding anger and the seeming relegation thereof to the animal domain. it moved up a bit. a couple weeks back i was driving back from a morning hike and i saw this girl running down the snowy sidewalk BAWLING in her socks and shirt. some meatfuck was chasing her and after i scratched my head and passed them i looked in my rear-view mirror and saw him tackle, hit and kick her. wtf?! so i pulled over and called the cops, all shaky and freaked out and scared to do anything because the guy was large, pissed and obviously prone to violence. long story longer i walked down his street to locate him and talked to the operator whilst doing so. cops came, found her, handcuffed him and i don't know what happened after that. i'm not sure of the point of relating all this other than i was pleasantly surprised i could react that strongly.

my dad had some breathing difficulties last week and spent six hours in a phoenix emergency room waiting room. seems it was a blood pressure drug thing, but the scare was it was a myasthenia gravis crisis, which could be a breathing problem and could be severe. he was diagnosed with this last fall and so far its only manifesting in his vision and face. i know my parents aren't going to be around forever, it just feels more real when something like that happens.

had a big scare with noni a couple days ago. i was trudging through some new discoveries around the burns trail and she took off after something. next thing i know, WAY across the valley and up this gynormous hill she goes bounding and then leaps over the guardrail for the ski mountain highway (byway?). i totally freaked, yelled and screamed and clapped and prayed and cried and felt so powerless. what was worse was i couldn't see where she went. then cars start coming from both directions, one of which was a huge blind corner. ugh. long story mildly-shorter than before: i ran down the hill and she was sniffling around the river, oblivious to my yelling. five minutes previous her mommma had taken off to look for her--maybe she found her, maybe not, but after putting noni's lead on i had to then yell for tesia, as she was nowhere to be found. made it back ok and actually found myself needing a pint, a need i availed myself of over at second streety brewery where my friends matt and sean were playing. hate to say it, but it was tremendously therapeutic. that's about my quota for the month, then!

folks are consistently coming out of the flu 'epidemic' and into the new light of daylight savings. guess there's politics going on, protests, births, deaths, starts, finishes, g minor seven chords, fish frys and floods all churning in the butter-matic for the bready lubrication of an entity-who-shall-not-be-named.

chocolate vein

it's monday night and i'm listening to the roots and blogging from home; bit the bullet and finally got a wireless signal of my own emanation. no more relying on neighbors for this homeslice. listening to the roots--?uestlove is the shizzit.

les is in florida and will be returning tomorrow night. i'd like to say it's been great having the place to myself, but i've been go-go-going ever since dropping her off at 5am on saturday and have been working ever since. luckily it's my weekend now and i can let my hair down. in fact i think i'll do just that.

that's better. yeah-it's tough being a single doggydad; i can't even conceive of the level of stress and lack of sleep a real daddylife would entail. luckily we have a doggydoor now so are able to leave the dogs without worrying too much, which is a real godsend.

tomorrow i'm playing at vanessie's as part of a public conversation put on by creative santa fe, of which i'm still a board member. i'd always heard of this place but had never been, and after a gift certificate found its way into our hands we went there a month or so ago and it sucked! overpriced and poorly prepared. we were expecting something along the lines of geronimo's but hit closer to applebees. okay, it wasn't THAT bad, but i sure wouldn't pay to eat there.

went to peter breslin's duology4 on saturday. a former student of mine, morgan wells, was one of the participants. all in all it was a good night but i had issues with the sound levels. ran into john and tricia and julia, who wants to talk this week about my comic in the santa fe reporter!!! i don't know what will come of it but am hopeful. peter's the shizzit too. i'd love to hear him do a duet with the aforementioned ?uestlove...him, along with other duets with Diamanda Gala and Kevin Kling.

I eschewed pat metheny last night, largely due to fatigue. I was happy to hear a couple of my students attended, though. The weather is warming up here in general, though it snowed last night and was a bit chilly today, especially up on the mountain. i went off the trail at one point and quickly found myself up to my ass in snow. i had to roll out and then maximize flesh-to-snow contact by walking on my hands and knees back to the trail again. yowza.

set up my studio for recording again and hope to have some new mp3s to share in the days ahead. i'm sure there's more i'm missing, but that about brings me up to date.

emcee light

i'm at counterculture in front of the wood stove, watching it dwindle down in intensity as lazy snowflakes pitterpatter around outside. rustle of newspaper. beeping fryer alarm. beethoven 'eroica'. throat clearing. fork on plate. refrigerator closing. coffee cup on table. hum of walk-in cooler. jingling of metal bracelets. laughter. chair scrapes. conversation. plate in bus pan.

i'm trying one last time to interest the santa fe reporter in an original comic. if this one doesn't fly i'm going to approach the sun instead; they might even prefer jacko n' noam to the new one (val y shoe--val is a goldfish who lives and cavorts with uncle shoe, my boston chum). we'll see, i guess.

hung out at 2nd street last night with tricia while "celia" from oregon, who'd just rolled through to play for free, serenaded the room. her real persona came out only after a theatrical sidetrip into tiny-tim and librarian characters; the uke lady with freaky hair and child's voice sang a song about dr. bronner's making your "hoo hoo tingle" (which started out really weak, got kinda funny, then went on too long) then the librarian beatboxed and rhymed something. odd. then she became a more normal folky chicksinger with a guitar who looped and had prerecorded harmonies she sang with. not bad. fun to see tricia, though, and post-restorative-yoga lesley stopped by for a spell too.

it's my weekend and i will not be voting. go ahead and reprimand me, as i might just deserve it. i just don't have any faith in this country's political machinery anymore, which i know makes me unqualified to ever complain about the next presidential epoch. there was one candidate who made me hopeful, and when he was ousted for basically not being a multi-millionaire, i resigned as a voter. there it is.

what rhymes with annapurna?

once again, internet access at home has been cut off. this time due to the moving of ellie, our neighbor with whom we shared a wireless signal. so i'm back to cafes and such, clickclacking away with other laptoppers and people who actually come to these places to just eat. crazy.

my cold came and went and kinda kept trying to come back, but all in all my health has returned to mostly-normal and life is humming along like a buzzcut on a wolverine. this past weekend i played percussion at a trance dance at la fonda hotel; about 1/4 of the amount we had last time but 50 people is still ok. it went ok but i feel pretty done with the whole thing. especially the fact that the prerecorded music we have to play along with (!) changes gears too much. i just don't think you can really get a good trancey groove if you don't keep building with music that builds with you. luckily the folks from taos who came down agree and we're going to start doing these things once a month in both towns. not sure how much i'll journey up there, esp. if on weekends, but there's lots of potential down here.

al was with me and is finally warming to an idea i proposed to him last year: an acoustic-esque duo with him on percussion and me on whatever i play. that could be very cool.

if not already mentioned, my old pal from high school, chris mcintyre, is coming to the fe in april. i'll be scoping out some performance venues for him and an ensemble as well. i tried high mayhem and wasnt' surprised at the lukewarm response. too bad for them, though, as chris would be a good person to know and wanted to work with them this past fall. oh well.

i'm booked almost completely solid with my teaching schedule right now. i just can't bring myself to add another day, however. i like my 4 days on/3 days off way too much. i made another video for youtube, but for some reason it uploads as an empty mov file. weirder still is that my file on my desktop is only 156kb, yet it opens as a full three minute thing with sound and everything; something that should at least be a couple MBs or so. i dunno. it came from iMovie. advice?

we got caught in a huge snow storm yesterday after i did a sacreligious (probably) snow dance on our dog walk. not that i'm taking any credit whatsoever, mind you, just kinda funny. it turned out to just be a mountain flurry, however, so nothing to crunch around on in our streets and such. the doggles are doing great, though.

i was reading a story called "push here for tears" in last month's sun magazine and quickly realized how much the author and i have in common, esp. in regards to feelings of intense anger in relation to animal abuse but nothing as intense about child or human. i have a theory why: i'm willing to bet he, like myself, has never had kids. i'm delighted i have kids in my life, but don't see it in the cards...

illin

it's been over five years since my body has succumbed to any sort of stay-put illness, but lo and behold i'm plagued by the common, boring cold. no cool symptoms to brag about, like bleeding eyeballs or pulsing boils. nothin. so i'm holing up at home, trying to catch up on sleep and watching way too many movies.

christmas/new years came and went. more anon.

*cough*