a day in the life of piano monkey

(btw, we are a bit west of this map. but we could see that we came a long way, from shore of ontario!) greetings, i have been away from a normal civilization for awhile.  from the 15th, i have been travelling on this short school bus that is packed with non-conforming 20-30s, most of us being musicians or bohemians of some sort.  it has been a quite an experience, just being on the road for no particular reason. right now, we are perched on the ranch in saskatchewan, where the horse lady is leading the life of grass, earth and horses, of course. it's been quite difficult to get on to the internet and do a proper blog posting, but at least i am able to put up something for today! though it really isnt the right time to post something in detail, as being in the middle of such busy interaction, one's head tends to be full of too many things.  but i am taking notes (analogue datakeeping!), and will be able to sort the thoughts out, as there have ...

it was three weeks ago today that banff residency fall 2009 had its final day, 12 12 2009. the last symmetrical day of the first decade of the twenty-first century shoot everyone like hot popped corns, to random directions all over. we all went back to places, pre-destined and mostly familiar. but nevertheless, changed without hope of true reversal. one cannot return back to a particular point of time. memories are imperfect. we all fill it in with wishes, hopes or/and despair. so comes that weird banff-family effect. the passengers of the voyage, especially the long ones, always end up bleeding onto one another, much like the water colour blobs on paper, slowly infusing and changing. no longer such clear edges nor lone isolated colour. at this point, certain readers may be very tired of this banff rant. i know, ive done it almost a year now. incredibly so. and i still have not ran out of things to say. and just to let you know, it's probably far from being over- it'll alw...

im literally starting to burn the last bits of banff life now. 45 hours, from some 5114 hours. 3.75hrs, my body will be hurled across the sky in a small tin can operated by westjet, then saturday at 2140@yyz local time, i will be literally at the end of the year, then from there, 184 hours till the next tin can ride over the big puddle. from that point, approx. 260 hours till the end of the epic year. (i did mention i do like to count things, if somewhat ocd-ish, sorry!) i have this candle i bought couple weeks ago, complete splurge. a real lavender infused glass cup candle. and whenever ive been burning it, i was rather careful about not being frivolous (silly! the whole idea of scented candle in fully wired studio with more than enough lighting itself is already frivolous)... at times, i was able to smell the delicate scent wafting through the hallway, coming back from another studio from rehearsals and such, and instantaneously drop my shoulders and breath in deeper. and now, with...

in the early morning with delicate frost under foot i walked among the mountains and rivers in their twilight toward the long awaited slumber the loons are no longer calling about green needles now in raw sienna and burnt umber occasional sun breaking onto tenebrous mountain tails the last splashes of gold, payne grey and terre verte with the prosaic bow river bubbling about i was just a lost dot in the grandeur of the late autumnal poise soon this land will sleep blanketed in the woolly clouds withholding all lives within closer toward the quietness where one can hear a drop of a single snow flake i thought of many lives past and the cobwebs of history of memories, tarnished with patina of regrets, love, nostalgia as i must let go if i were to go on i wept along the river before it freezes into the long wintry silence trapping all my words within its taciturn solitude

  i used to take chemistry as an undergraduate. as a hopeful pre-med, i had to take the holy trinity of basic science: physics, chemistry and biology, and my favorite used to be physics. for the simple reason i can see it! most of things, even small things, can be seen and felt through a well-built models and there was something about the fact that physics involved moving things. things that are in transitional space, reacting, bouncing off one another, transferring force, torque etc etc. biology on the other hand, was completely boring. i bet it gets better as you get into higher level, but unfortunately at the undergraduate level, it's all about memorizing and little bits of very simple concepts. bah. don't we have sufficient biological catalogue for that? it was classes more closer to calculus and identification than actual meaty parts of biology (as i understood it must exist at some point, back then. i think it's one discipline that the introduction stage can be quite ...

the days are going to go faster from this point on- well from last week really. it's the cusp point in the middle of the residency. escalating. accelerating. speeding. break neck speed. concerts get longer and longer and once musing ideas become furious physical manifestation. all the sudden, november rolls over slow, mellow autumnal golden october with frosty bits and early dark evenings. the loon calls get sparse as they will move to a nicer place and the wailing elks will quiet as the season falls and the next hopeful seeds have been planted. the supposedly-existing bears will fall asleep in the deep secret den (thouh i wonder if they sleep less now that the weaterh is so different?). the trees are going to be still green around here, but they will somehow become paler, as if put through a color filter with an old camera, becoming silvery whispers of their summer formal mad bonker selves. entering an incubation period. november is always a funny month in a sense, it's no...

instead of skipping up tunnel mountain, i have decided that i am going to try to go around flat trails, to northeast of banff center- which will get you to either bow falls or hoodoo trail. this was monkey resolution of two days ago. however, ive been foiled yesterday as i found some new tracks going up up up. so had to take it. needed to be done, or i would be left wondering the whole time. anyways. it turned out to be a light scramble up to the tunnel. so with a little surprise, i ended up doing tunnel yesterday. still not a bad thing. it was a nice find. you see, the trails i know are learned during mostly in winter time. snow and ice covered. barely visible path unless- well unless it is the path that everyone takes. not boring, however, predictable. so finding these little capillaries of trails in this autumnal sliver of time have been rather interesting. hence, i am determined or rather, undetermined to stick to a path, but to go wherever it ends up being. the mountains are so bi...