I think I loved the place before I was even through passport check, I’m not sure how that is possible. Some of Dad’s friends met me at the airport and helped me get set up here, which has made the transition a whole lot easier. A lot of people speak English so I haven’t even practiced my Russian all that much, though knowing the cyrillic alphabet has proven useful.
Unfortunately I am also fighting an infection so now I have to spend my precious first day here going to the clinic, but that’s better than spending the rest of the week sick I figure. Dad arrives tomorrow with the crew and I’m looking forward to seeing at least part of my family, though I’m still not 100% on what my job is here. Anyway, more soon!
London! It turns out that walking around looking at old buildings and not talking to anyone is really not my thing. Feels lonely and a little bit like walking around in a museum, especially since people here don’t seem to look you in the eye on the street or return friendliness with the same. (note: the exception to this is when you are drunkenly taking the train home and you wind up meeting several kind strangers, two of whom gave us a lift home from Richmond Station)
I dragged David to St-Paul’s Cathedral to walk up the steps and then to Evensong, which I have to admit was not really my thing either. The service, not the building I mean. The building is incredible, and hearing the choir in such an amazing acoustic space while looking around at the art that is EVERYWHERE is an experience worth having, but I really don’t feel at home in a church service. I actually had to spend the first several minutes just trying to relax, even though I’m sure people don’t really care why anyone else is there. Anyway, the music was nice, a bit too consonant for my taste, and the cathedral was amazing.
After we went to The Slaughtered Lamb and saw Joe Innes, Kitty The Lion, and Sparrow and the Workshop , and it was a pretty stellar evening. Joe’s music kind of made my heart feel like it was going to burst out of my chest (I’m sure the several beers I’d had by that point didn’t hurt), Kitty The Lion were upbeat, fun and unmistakably northern, and Sparrow and the Workshop kind of blew us away. If you’re ever in London check out the shows put on by the Electroacoustic Club, they’re great.
Anyway, this is definitely the way I like to see a city.
Jeremy and I did a road trip out to Edinburgh the other day and walked around. I got a new hat! The city is very beautiful and full of history. Is there anywhere in Europe that is not gorgeous?
my quintessential Newcastle moment: we are sitting on the floor in between sets waiting for the final installment of noisy experimental improvised music at Culture Lab, and there is noisy music playing, then a loud HUMMM as well. we all keep talking since it is probably a part of the song. after about a minute, someone tells us it is the fire alarm and we have to go outside. as the lot of us walk downstairs, everyone sings along with the fire alarm tone, harmonizing.
I’m a chump for not walking to dig my camera out and ruin the whole thing, but there it is in words anyway.
As you can probably guess, there is a neat little arts community happening up here.
I’ve finally arrived in Newcastle after a long drive in the rain with a dear friend.
I suppose I ought to explain what this whole trip is about. My dad is working on a documentary called “Exporting Democracy”. It’s about emerging democracies and whether or not Canada can and should help promote democracy abroad. My role in the thing is mostly to do with music stuff – I did a bit of production management for a shoot with the Yellow Door Choir and I’ll be doing the score as well. However, he recently hired me to work as a PA on their next shoot, taking place in Kiev, Ukraine next month.
Well, it was originally supposed to be happening now, but due to the H1N1 pandemic the entire country is pretty much shut down, so we postponed the shoot to December and I hopped a flight to England instead.
I couldn’t really justify being here without working on music of my own, so I’ll be spending the next week or so with Jeremy in Newcastle working on the album (with a healthy bit of party thrown in I imagine). Jeremy did an exchange year at UdeM in my first year, and being the two only anglophones in the program we spent a lot of time studying together. He is such a lovely person and some of my fondest memories of my time at uni are with him, biking to school and eating fruits while looking out over the city and quizzing each other on time code, and of course working on our final year project in sound recording, Lullaby, which will be on the album as well.
This is the place we’ve been walking our dog for as long as we’ve had a dog. After Thanksgiving they close the gates and you have to walk in, but it’s the best place to go during hunting season, and usually the park being closed means you bump into fewer people. My friend Michael and I sometimes go winter camping here as well since the park is closed and you have the whole island to yourself.
I never got around to posting this, so here it is! Recorded at our campsite at Algonquin Park in September. Here is a post about Lucy’s and my grand adventure hitchhiking out of Toronto and into the wilderness.
In other news, I’m going to Europe next week! I’ll write some more on that in the next couple of days, but it should be a pretty amazing experience and I will be coming home with more work done on the album as well.
I could totally live in New York. I’m not generally big on cities, but it is just such an immense, incredible place. There is so much diversity in the way people talk and dress, interesting characters everywhere you look.
I was only there for a few days to see Leonard Cohen, a legend and one of my biggest heros. and man, what a generous performer. He played for hours, with at least three encores. At various points he closed the show with Suzanne, Famous Blue Raincoat, Take This Waltz, I can’t remember what he finally wound up ending with. The intensity, passion, and sincerity he gave every note was such an inspiration and I hope I picked up a thing or two through osmosis. His performance of I’m Your Man was the best we’d ever heard and the audience leapt to their feet at the end of it. In Chelsea Hotel you could hear the memories behind the voice, it was very moving. Famous Blue Raincoat was mine for memories, from sitting on Aubrey’s roof in high school under the stars, to the night I met Charlie at The Range in Slab City. He seemed to enjoy singing his songs even after so many years, visibly giving himself up to the intensity of the moment on more than one occasion. At one point the Webb Sisters did a beautiful version of If It Be Your Will and as we all sat spellbound, the camera zoomed in on Leonard’s face as he mouthed the final words to the song.
He opened the concert by saying that he didn’t know when he’d pass this way again and that it was their intention to give everything they had, and they certainly did.
I left humbled and inspired, and with a commitment to to strive to bring that same intensity to my own performances, to stay present and to let myself go to the music, and to truly enjoy each moment to its fullest every time I play a song. I remember Charlie and I talking about how we would like to write a letter to Leonard Cohen thanking him for everything, and now I have even more to be thankful for.
I travel around North America and play music and am interested in a whole bunch of projects ranging from songwriting to musique concrète to instrumental composition. I love stories, the woods and pianos.
Right now I'm working on an album of folk songs and a radio drama off the grid in Slab City, California. If you like what I'm about, please follow me on twitter or join the mailing list.
