a day in the life of piano monkey

the times between 2pm to 8pm is a very difficult hours for me to get anything accomplished. you see, i get up early. like way too early for comfort. that alarm on my clock, never gets to go on, because, well, i am usually up before 6am; and nothing i do at the moment requires me to be up that early. the only time i remember getting up being torturous was when i was working at 4 king west starbucks; to open at 5am, i would have to leave the house by 445am the latest, even when i was biking down full speed on empty yonge st. gliding down in a haze. sleepy. anyways, here in banff, even after weeks of adjustment, im still waking at 6am. for no reason. for no one. for nothing! music wait till at least the sunrise! yawn. so i kill an hour, usually doing something completely mundane, like writing a hand-written notes, reading random passages of whatever happened to be in the vincinity, play-by-myself kind of things. then off to breakfast. long one that is. breakfast is my favorite meal...

continuing with this theme of pulse and time relation and all that good stuff, i have been enjoying communicating with couple individuals recently. mostly i feel somewhat on the outer orbital of the banff center social central, but then i do not think 1. it needs me, 2. i need it (i still want it though, but can't have everything), so i've been having some fine-tuning idea bantering instead. immensely enjoyable. always fun to be lead to a new concept, a possibility, to discuss, provoke and often just share thoughts. it's good thing to share pieces of chocolates, for instance, and i think if you arent all that hungry, sharing something less tangible, such as thoughts, are also good for you. well, it's good for me for sure. this lines of reality and what can be sensed and understood are getting blurry every day. a rather interesting thing i realize is that these friends (well i hope they think i am their friend) i talk to are all very unique people. none of them...

words associated with today: deflated, broken, worn, torn, frayed, impaired, split, disturbed, shattered, fractured, ruptured, snapped, mangled, wrecked, cleaved, defective, damaged, busted, flawed, tarnished, marred, injured, deficient, spoiled, corrupted, pulverized, astringent, pulped, mashed, collapsed, crippled, fragmented, shredded, demolished, mutilated, dismembered, irregular, spasmodic, desultory, weak, unsteady, rickety, choleric, bitter, inflamed, chafed, turbulent, irascible, petulant, acrimonious, rancorous, caustic, abrasive, rough, sharp, harsh, biting, acrid, mordant, trenchant, virulent, malignant, destructive, pernicious, disappointed, incomplete, disheartened, vanquished, feeble, ruined, isolated, retracted, disjointed, vacant, void, static, wasted, depleted, slaughtered, shamed, stale, prosaic, banal, lackluster, sterile, arid, irksome, wearisome, insipid. number of words that i like from the list above: 0 number of words that i would like to keep from the list abov...

tightly bound, a compactly wound-up package of potential energy. you see the tension on its seams, barely holding on, if you take the time to do so. all you have to do is, well, add a drop of pulse, and bam ! it uncurls, grabs the ground with pure momentum, stretches itself out as this long, lean, projectile, a silver arc across the stillness. then, out of sight! gone. what could i be possibly talking about? well, i was thinking about stravinsky . specifically the pulcinella suite and piatgorasky's trascription , now known as the suite italienne . and cage, esp. his chamber ensemble pieces, such as credo in us, constructions and bacchanale for prepped solo piano . the bookbomber and monkey agreed on one thing in middle of a snow flurry in the middle of nowhere mountains of banff recently, not that it ever started as an argument. it really was a specific problem (well, not a problem, but per say, a troublesome sight) that started from the idea of 'dead' music. ya, am...

when a wall crashses, there is much commotion- much noise, dirt. the larger and older the wall is, the larger the echo of its fall. when it's freshly fallen, it's very funny to see that untouched, unused part of the ground that stands on now one continuous piece of ground. grass that are little taller, collections of pebbles, that kind of things. doesnt matter how clean you've picked up the pieces, it's apparent mess. persons whose been around for a bit would remember that big dramatic fall of the berlin wall. not only things fell apart, people fell apart, away from their artificial segregation, limitation, definition and safety. now, unless you take some serious effort and change everything else around it, let's say, put a new patch of grass that goes 'over' the parts (which is a very bizarre thing to watch, people rolling out live patches of grass, as if it's just a piece of carpet), or put bricks on top of it to create a stoned path etc., it sta...

wait, you may have your answers. i do not. therefore, let's rephrase: how did i end up here? what path did i take? was i aware of all the turns and curves of the way i took along? did i just pass things by and forgot to look into the fleeting moments of- glimpse of the blackbird flying through the thin branches of winter rockies, the final momentum of the melted-ice water as it detaches from the ice chunk, what about times and recollections? the times that i have shared with people who i thought i would know forever, and am surprised to find them popping into my thoughts at present? would they still be there awhile from now, just to be dusted and awaken? the way their shadows lengthened, until it all looks silly and distorted, taking its time, one degree, one minute at a time under the leisurely paced sun into a prolonged, reluctant summer sundown in all shades of gold and bronze? a chance, or more likely, chances which evaporated (very slow process) right behind my back, and i was...

by some sort of bizarre spunk of life, i had the great pleasure, or should i say, shock of meeting up with one of my old friends, actually, one of the very first friends i met here in canada , in this continent, last night in banff . it was exciting enough to just to think of it that i forced self to eat in solitude so that i will be ready to pop out of the door when she calls! for one reason or other, i lost touch with almost all of my highschool friends. i guess there were only very few 'friends' to begin with, therefore, losing them was much easier- as you lose one, you also lose another link that connects you to another person, so on and so forth, therefore, if you have smaller pool to pull from, there is less chance of reconnecting by chance. and i had a pretty shitty time in my ahem, teenage angst years (in this case i think i will just end up having angst life though), therefore perhaps i was trying to getaway from all that uneasy bits of memories and recollections. ...

I've always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone. Now, what that X represents I don't really know, whether it be two and seven-eighths or seven and two-eighths, but it's a substantial ratio. (glenn gould, 32 short film about glenn gould) i casually refer to my life as the life of piano monkey. well, not the ones at the zoo, but with a circus, really. i am taken care of, my basic needs are met and there are many perks that comes with doing what i do- esp. here in banff, the luxury would be the studio i can park myself and do whatever i want to do with it, while looking out on the great looking mountains, bold, cold and bigger than life. what do i as an exchange? i am to play music, well, piano scores and attempt to support the instrumentalist/composer/audience by creating musical experience. whatever that means. so most bulk of my energy is spent on...

i frequently trip on words whenever i talk on the phone. actually, not just a phone, it becomes a damned phone. or damning phone. condemning phone. there you go. i do not like the nature of urgency and instantaneity. the possibilities of multiple events happening all simultaneously without being able to see the entire set (talking on the phone somehow always reminds me of a bad set for gladiatorial improv a la theater-of-absurd, you know the kinds where you and your team vs. THE other team goes up in the battle of attemped wit, while the panel looks down with serious grimace on their eyebrows, and tap those little silvery bells which rings with the utmost joy and shards of brightness?), not being able to perceive nor predict the rest of the communication- you just cling onto words with death grip, or more frequently, with no care in the world (for words, haha). and it's noisy. too noisy for comfort for any extended time. i never know how long am i expected to talk for. or how lon...

once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down long the road and... if it sounds familiar, congratulations! you just recognized joyce (james joyce, a portrait of the artist as a young man. penguin books, 1981 reprint. p.1) i always thought it would be great to start something quoting just that. what is this blogging about? what is your profile? for something that is supposed to be convinient, the great internet asks you so many personal questions that it would deserve a good slap on the face, 19th century victorian style. not that i am so fond of that time and era anyways, too many unintended fun (usually with great costs) took place then. not to say we are any better. i feel like a kid who want to take their shirt off at the changing room at the high school gym just a second longer than necessary, for the sake of, i am not sure, to be peeked upon or something. if you look, im supposed to be offended. if no one looks, im to feel neglected, isolated, separat...