a day in the life of piano monkey

on nineth day of the new decade, i had a great pleasure of playing two beautiful piano quartets with friends here in england.  i live in a small village called chinley in derbyshire.  there is where minnows weave.  about 45 min or an hour away from manchester (depending whether you drive or do the train), we are just a little dot in the middle of the gentle hills, in the peak district, the second most visited national parks of the world.  i think the honour of 'most-visited' goes to mt. fuji.  in 'mainstreet' chinley, we have a carpet shop (it's been there for ages and i am yet not sure how it retains its business), a chemist's, a royal post office, a deli store (i have yet to set my foot in there- they opened up for almost a year now i think?), a curry shop, a newsagents, a laundromat and a corner shop.  ooh and a hair dresser's and a hypnotist's office.  we actually do not have a pub in the village, so for a pint, we need to walk about ten minute dow...

the hills around monkey home 01-03, 2010 is covered with generous amount of snow. though i was told apologetically that uk does not get much snow- no, nothing like canada, they say, this is quite a bit. it came. over. the night. blanket. perhaps about 20cm. schools and government offices are closed. grind to halt. it's the wet, compacting snow. huge flakes, heavy ones that falls right through, no weaving in and out about. with all those grey and white around, however, i have received a pale yellow, meyer-lemon- wrapped- in- white- tissue- paper coloured postcard in the mail, with a little sketch of a hand holding a flower, by picasso. have you had encountered real meyer lemons? they are quite special little guys. they arent exactly just lemons. found, collected from china, then replanted in the states, meyer lemons are cross between lemons and sweet citrus- probably mandarins. unlike boisterous big, thick-skinned real lemons, they are very thin and smooth skinned and rather swee...

hello world. we are in the listening room of the banff centre with the expensive, complicated, fancy, algorithm-weighted pre-amps, monitors, speakers, even a crazy room calibrating machine that looks like something straight out from the dr. who show. apparently it shoots out huge noise (really, think black/white salt-pepper old vacuum tube tv after the stations has gone to sleep, as sound...), then receives it back into the monitor, into mad calculation to recalibrate the room... into.. a proper. space. amazing. noisy. sounds like shooting shrapnels out to the room space and see how they fall. with the expansive soundscape and expensive ludwig mies van der rohe barcelona chair, 1928 (though it's missing its accomplice, the foot rest! that would add another thousand bucks no problem. oh how i love bauhaus furniture- and how ridiculously expensive they get!), we the three stooges- mr. bearcub, senior audio monkey and piano monkey (who has just been moved out of her spot by.. well, ...

early snowfall in the rockies. thanksgiving wknd. fallen leaves and lingering tails of nights. paler morning lights and fading afternoon sun. tis that time of the year again, though this recent time-leap into winter is rather unnerving. i felt as if i was transported through time, directly to chrismastide as i sat and had glass of port by the fires of farrally hall. i think it is perhaps the best thing i have done this fall term, to reside in farrally. hooray. human conditions- or should it be humane? anyways. as the first wk excitement turned into semi-concrete establishment of each individuals, i sense that people are taking a look around- not just the maps and locations of groceries and such, but of fellow residents. this artist colony is a fantasy magic world. we all escaped for a little, some longer than others, but same ideas: to leave the practical empirical world to be frivolous, impractical and fanciful. i keep thinking if one wants to be super efficient, the way to do it is d...

often i think it's mighty inconvenient that one cannot bank time. it's one thing one cant save or reserve, so whenever we have a little bit of idle time, things get super interesting. each of us use this fragments of time differently and i think how you use time or how you even get to this pieces of unplanned 'ends' of time says much about you as a person. some people i know are super efficient in allocating their time for the entire day, week, month and year.. who knows really. some, like me, are not so good with time management. for me, it all gets too relative, esp. when there's something interesting or shocking, amusing or plain real boring. then the time really start to tick backward. i swear. one of the girls who used to work at banff center building had her last day yesterday. she's a typical work-exchange kid, from australia. but here's something that sets her apart. unlike most of us who were in our early 20s and were too cool to acknowledg...