mai nichi, mai nichi

mai nichi, mai nichi...The back has slowly gotten better, I'm through marking the mounds of portfolios in the yearly academic cycle, and the summer beckons; I can make believe I'm a musician again for a couple of months. As well as that, I had hoped at this point to have done more than a couple of 200k runs on the fixie, rising at 5am once a week to get back from a 100k all smug for breakfast, with a view towards a couple of big ones around the lengthened days, along with a bash at the Dunwich Dynamo, an overnight run of 220k, not so bad in itself, but then after a breakfast of egg and chips at the cafe and quick snooze on the beach I'd have to turn around and ride home. As you get older, since you can't ride any faster you start riding longer distances, it seems. Still, all is not lost. You could go along with Clark Kent here recommending a proper breakfast to get you through it.



But anyway, I'm back on the bike, the Guzzi squeaked through its MOT, (must work on the brakes) and the only bad thing left from the back episode is a stiff neck. I'm going to try a WSW club run early tomorrow for the first time in a month and a half... and I'm sure I will suffer.

Although I should be doing something serious and finishing up the Holy Goof, or a couple of solo pieces I've promised, I find myself instead sitting at the piano going through some Ralph Towner solo pieces, and listening to a lot of Saariaho. The economy of Towner's writing for guitar is beautiful, most of the harmonic infill and middleground comping being suggested by just a few dyads instead of full ten-fingered textures that writing on a piano would normally result in. And the Saariaho is completely otherworldly - I've just gotten a DVD of her opera; must get some scores. There's a lot of stuff I like there, and more than a bit of Takemitsu. As far as my own sorry efforts go, I've finished about half the Neal Cassady piece anyway, and the concert has been put back to January, so no pressure - just another 10 minutes to write. I just need some words.



And it's been a fairly busy couple-three weeks; the John Clare Festival went well, and I've just been having a run of local gigs: jazz trios, funk bands, backing up singers and so on.
So time to get my finger out and harass Malcolm to get me the second aria. Just spending a bit of time trying to hustle a few gigs for next year, and start writing some stuff for the Chuck Perkins gig in October.

But here's a bit of a gig with Malcolm:

the old gods awaken...

There are two possible ways of re-mounting the auto-advance plate and cam lobe in the distributor on a Guzzi, and it's impossible to know which one is right without splitting the frame, dropping the engine and pulling out the distributor drive cam; so you have a 50-50 chance of getting it right. This morning, I stood next to the Guzzi's inert carcass and flipped a coin in the mild late-winter sunshine, full of hope for the immediate future.

On the one hand, hitting the start button is greeted with a throaty roar (and as a musician, I've begun to realize that the reason the sound of various V-twins is so attractive is because of the asymmetrical firing pattern - each one , Guzzi, Ducati, Harley, has a unique signature sound depending on the degree of that asymmetry; the, say, 135 degree da-dup of a heartbeat instead of the even, bland 180 purr of a BMW [sorry Rog...]); or, on the other , the engine produces a few strange poops and echo-y metallic burps as the ignition tries to fire on the exhaust stroke. Needless to say, the latter was the outcome at lunchtime, after a morning spent stripping out the old electronic ignition system I now knew to be dead, and re-installing a pair of standard breaker points.

It took two clumsy hours to install the first time, but only 30 minutes to change over for the second try; and the fact that it was the right way around was announced by a hellish, rising open-pipe din as one of the carb sliders stuck and I frantically stabbed for the kill switch. Whey-hey.

Next, some time spent trying to getting the timing, points, valves and carbs back in the ballpark, as I've changed the whole set-up between all the mismatched parts from the two bikes..


In the meantime, I've been spending a lot of time sketching some Arias for the opera project Holy Goof while I'm waiting for some text from Malcolm. The idea of Cassady's adventures, first with the Beats, later with Ken Kesey, to his last mad walk of into the freezing night along some railway tracks to his death is beginning to get exciting. If I can get a couple of arias into some kind of orchestral suite form for Peter Britten's orchestra next year, it could serve as a launching for an entire opera production. All I need is (sigh) money.

Also, I'm spending some of the weekend going over the AHRC composition grant for the Riprap project, and starting to think about the Ruth Padel gig this June 27th, and setting up a companion gig in Cambridge for her as well, and I've just gotten a green light for one in November as well. I'll have to organize a recording of the new stuff once we play it in a bit.

Still thinking about bass clarinets.... when will they come into my life?