a day in the life of piano monkey

it is approaching end of another year and i cant help but to look back and how much life have changed in such a short time. as aforementioned, mr. banffmagic's been working nonstop here in the mountains, touching many people's lives. including mine. out of the blue, i had a small need to let him know that i have been touched and that my life in fact, have changed a whole a lot since i came to banff. perhaps though it is tad bit too dramatic, fateful may have the befitting word. a year ago this time, i had no idea that i will be living among one of the greatest mountains of the world. or to play with such musicians and characters, to experience another phase, getting back into music, being able to enjoy what i do- playing music, communicating, opening up and creating a whole new life full of airlight spiderwebs. a year ago, i wouldve been still dragging my bicycle out at half past four, going down on yonge street, cold and dark, to get there in time for my opening shift at ...

Chagall Paris juggler. 1969. Oil on canvas. 115,5 x 89. Sotheby\'s. 05.05.09. Lot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcpamvLB2JU this is stokowski/philadelphia version of clair de lune. kinda cheesy but nostalgically beautiful i think. apparently clair de lune made it huge by being part of the recent vampire saga, twilights or something. anyways. last night was another friday concert in rolston hall, banff centre, alberta. funny enough, collaborative monkey was playing a solo piece, suite bergamasque by debussy. if you are wondering what it is about- well, i am sure you have heard at least a part of it at a certain point- that would be clair de lune. mr. banffmagic has been here for two weeks now, and he is staying for another week. hooray. there are several different aspects of banff magic, but i say this man is the core of the magic for me. an amazing musician and a human being, i think his best gift is that he could make anyone feel hopeful about the next phase of- well, whatever...

today i feel like im in a small paper box. cardboard box. like a small parcel that would cost about five canadian dollars to send. making small noises as i bounce from one side to another. not a heavy parcel, something light, with a bit of packing peanuts. webbing of thoughts and emotions, things that are important, im getting more tangled and tangled. as if building a cocoon for myself. another time to wait, to wait... till it's time again, to molt. meanwhile, im collecting. busy collecting, consuming, inhaling. senses so attuned that it's difficult to look at the vast sky- it's too bright, to open, to great. this morning when there was a brief snow blizzard, it was such a relief. as if i could finally open my eyes and look at the world without squinting, without the need for sunglasses. just enough for a small monkey to see just enough before she has to look away. there are things to be done and im trudging through, actually, am quite enjoying the minutes of my da...

banff centre musicians were trying to outreach the normal society of town of banff today through a small musical adventures at the local high school. but really, who is outreaching who? who are we to be so separated from the very place we are? or to be so far from the very seeds of our own supports- the people around us. see, it's a difficult subject, the death of arts music. it did die somehow and it is obvious that there isnt much interest from the general public as far as classical music is concerned. all these new release budget recordings are repress from the old days, with their royalties expired. the audiences are much older than the performers much of the time and when i see young kids, i know better to talk about kings of leon and 30 seconds to mars than john bull or robert schumann. to discuss the reasons or the mechanics of this present state of classical music would be way over my head. all i know that is once shown a proper example, most of people i know do not min...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4eZv_wYadk banff is slowly being covered with ice. day by day, there are a bit more ice here and there. the days are quite warm with the sun and it's actually pleasant enough to walk around with shorts and long socks, much like british school children. around canadian thanksgiving we had a proper snow storm, where for briefly, there were icicles hanging around and the frosted ground were compacting under the boots, each step. squick squick. i really love this place with its winter coat on. i am not so sure if the common grey blue mountains are the ideal for other people- in downtown, there will be many gay people, dressed in all kinds of bright colours, enjoying the festivity of the winter. bustling, moving with enough energy to stay warm and happy. bursting with activities. but the winter i really like of banff is the one that is silent. quiet. calm. almost muted. each stone slightly different, dyed dark with the dusk of the year. falling ever s...

once in awhile, in course of human interactions, i would develop certain association. usually visual, sometimes a scent or tactile sensations, these associations then will sink deeply into my mind, until they become part of not just who they are, but of what i am to them as well. like images that one cannot dissociate anymore consciously, let say, christmas and father klaus, or coca cola and polar bears. though not as commercially successful, it's still quite a significant point for me- every single time, to let those images to come, whatever they may be, whenever they arrive. in banff, with this spaceship fellow passengers, it is rather frequent that these images crystallize. because everyone is different and vibrant in their own way, all kinds of different covalent bonds forms over the time and each one of them are quite different from one another. i could honestly say that those connections i have made are ones that i will carry with me to the outside world, with much fondn...

in pale blue light of the dawn such fragile light, as if it is made of frost, you are a marble statue. lines, still, gentle arcs, just as you are. graceful. like the trajectory of the loons gliding through the late autumnal sky. i dare to stir the silence slight haze of breath and slumber. it was unforeseen, proper magic. and i shall keep it in a safe place to enchant evaporate away from this physical state in your absence i cast the image on closed eyelids a proper bullet that goes through fast, light, shatters the old world like the cracked and broken old tv tube it is no longer possible to gaze with an old view as life pulses through the warmth of the blood spreads, like spiderweb, like frosts on glass, capillaries, carrying millions of colours words sounds touches i am stained with the very being of you.

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 ...

it is difficult thing at times to go against one's grain, regardless how nice or gritty it may be- depending on the person, of course. how weird it is that we go through months, years worth of efforts to become something that is socially accepted and encouraged, however against the grain it may be. i am not so sure about the happiness of the average of the general public, however, i do think that the mean definitively exist and that it does crush on souls at times. inconvenient and often painful, however, one tries to see it as much as one could as the necessary evil, some sort of human trial thing: come on, you can! (insert music: eye of the tiger or something grande) with no defined schedule and the kind of work i do (weirdly, it's the kind of work that if you want to be the average, it isnt too difficult, but if you want to excel, holy cow, you better the patient because.. well, i hear that you never get there. i donno. i hope they are wrong), i am left with much room in m...

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...

it was a full moon last night here in banff. with a bit of clouds around, not dispersed, but in thin layers, as if you were pulling cotton candies. it is amazing to see what happens to the (familiar landscape - sun + moon - people) + people. the perspective is everything, yes, we all heard it multiple times. but boy, it is quite something to experience a bright moonlit night in the mountains. in the residency, there are many different people and one of my favorite person is a horse lady. really. as much as she loves us, i bet she's always capable of finding more love for a proper horse! for me, im just glad to be in the proximity of someone who is so aware of the things- esp. nature related, so that i may learn something vicariously. and i do. so as the calender flips and stuff, we conspired to organize a night walk. why not. in banff, without the artificial light, the moon really gets to shine on such nights. so much light and no colours. just gradations. like black and whit...

*repost from last year's musing somewhere on back of my pocket with dust bunnies. on tired face still pale with the weight of the days with the thickest paint and brightest glitters one night a year, we celebrate another artificial holiday once in remembrance of the deceased now in rememberance of currently deceasing. laughed out loud at foolish pageantry another consumerism success, i often looked with disdane at this despearate escape to fantasies of each one. tonight i look closer as a mobster in observance the girls and boys with their unquinched wanting for friendship and belonging, dresses up as princesses and heroes, going through strangers' door to another breaking the daily rule of isolation and self-containment giggling with excitement not only for the candies but for the rare moments of togetherness the adults with even more thirst crowd the streets with if overtly sexual, sometimes crude often genius creative but mostly store-purchased icons of dreams musings frustr...

hullo to all spirits passing by. no, unlike the cold and cruel winters that literally ate up the celts, there wont be much casualties due to the weather alone at this point of time. so please, feel free to do go on and do something else with your time- especially you wont be bothered with the necessities of life, supposedly, or are you? anyhows, the all saints day deserves some sort of commemoration and so here it is. however, we will continue to celebrate the old end-of-the-season party with sluttier-than-thou costumes and overflowing alcohol and ethanol- smelling bravura. all sarcasms aside, it is the first day of november, and in the mountain times, i have about 27 minutes left of it. i wonder: where did all the time go? oh well, sigh. i thought that i would be able to grow further do more etc etc., but here i am, tearing another page of the calender and thinking: well, monkey is still monkey. nothing much new. only thing may be that i had such a rubbish time trying to gage the...