Monday, May 31, 2004

No rest for the wicked

That's what my mom used to say when I whined about my chores as a kid. I was a very literal-minded child and I was always concerned that the remark meant that I was wicked (in the traditional bad way) and that therefore I had to do lots of chores.

Nowadays I know better -- wicked is actually a good thing. :) The part about no rest has not changed. Yesterday's experience at the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival was really, really good. I had a great time improvising with my assigned cohorts. I think it went extremely well. The event is wonderfully peaceful, happy and convivial. It's great to be with so many of one's own kind, and make and renew contacts. The redwoods are beautiful, and the Henry Miller Library helps to create an atmosphere of freedom that feels so good held up against the usual city and suburban grind. This gig is a lot more like vacation than a gig, although I would hardly characterize gigs as "work", exactly; more like a soul's compulsion. It was pretty hot though.

Today I can't give myself a day off. There is a lot to do. There is a press package to send out, articles to write, practicing to do, contact info to be logged in and dealt with, and CDs to listen to. Ben McAllister from Seattle gave me a CD of his music, and Will Grant, who attended the festival and played too, gave me a CD of what he's done with the recordings we made earlier this month. It's all preparatory to our Luggage Store Gallery gig on July 1. Paul, in his role as official photographer, took about 150 pictures yesterday which will need to be developed and gone over. Soon there will be all new photos on this web site.

Celeste and her new girlfriend Nicole were there too. They are a cute couple! I got to say hi to Ken Lee (close friend of Michael Haumesser who engineered Taste the Wall -- who has a baby now, astonishingly) and Jonathon Grasse (my grad schoolmate, now teaching at UCLA). It was nice to see Ernesto Diaz-Infante again and to finally meet Matt Davignon after only emails up till now. I got to meet flutists Marjorie Sturm and Emily Hay. Ben McAllister seems pretty cool. I wonder if he's overflowing with positive energy all the time, or just at festivals. :) Max Valentino played a sensuous and warm bass guitar.

Friday, May 14, 2004

Album name change, again...

Wanted to let you all know that I've changed the name of my upcoming fourth album, AGAIN. It was going to be Exit Stage Wrong. Now, I've found one that is a better fit for the overall concept: Not Made of Stone.

In other news, Will Grant and I got together to do some recording last night at Celeste's Berkeley abode. I got my first look at the Long String Instrument, which is living there with its creator, Ellen Fullman, while Celeste is away at grad school. :) Will and I had to be very careful not to disturb it as we set up recording equipment nearby.

We took stabs at recording the flute part I've written for his piece, Dreams. We also recorded me doing a range of different flute sounds -- multiphonics,key percussion, different percussive tongued and air sounds, etc. -- and some spoken words, for him to process and use as laptop music in the gig we are going to do together on July 1st at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco.

I'm almost done with the orchestral score for Road Spiders. I have until Thursday to get it finished and printed so I can deliver it to John Gluck after the Punk Rock Orchestra show.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

We interrupt our regular innocuous journal postings...

Ahem.

Can I just step up here for a minute and say I'm ashamed to be an American? Being an American means that atrocities are being committed in my name right this minute. Not only that -- my parents had atrocities committed in their name also. The Phoenix Project, the heinous thing upon which the current program of abuse in Iraq is based, was implemented during the Viet Nam war.

Here's a link where you can read all about it, and hopefully weep: http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

Here is a link to the official Army investigative documents about the prison abuses in Iraq: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/

So if anybody tries to wring their hands and tell you that what's going on in Iraq is "unprecedented", that's just not true. It is what happens under any colonial regime when the invader sets about oppressing the native inhabitants of its new colony.